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06Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to the Situation in and in Relation to Burma: Message From the President of the United States (H. Doc. No. 119-130)
46 public bills, H.R. 7340- 7385; and 4 resolutions, H. Res. 1036-1039, were introduced.
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Reports Filed
Reports were filed today as follows: H.R. 1355, to amend the Energy Conservation and Production Act to reauthorize the Weatherization Assistance Program, direct the Secretary of Energy to establish a weatherization readiness program, and for other purposes, with an amendment (H. Rept. 119-480); H.R. 3474, to clarify that the installation of mechanical insulation property is an energy or water efficiency measure that may be used in Federal buildings for purposes of section 543(f) of the National Energy Conservation Policy Act, and for other purposes (H. Rept. 119-481); H.R. 3699, to prohibit States or local governments from prohibiting or limiting the connection, reconnection, modification, installation, transportation, distribution, or expansion of an energy service based on the type or source of energy to be delivered, and for other purposes, with an amendment (H. Rept. 119-482); H.R. 4690, to amend the Energy Conservation and Production Act to repeal certain Federal building energy efficiency performance standards, and for other purposes, with an amendment (H. Rept. 119-483, Part 1); H.R. 4758, to repeal provisions of Public Law 117-169 relating to taxpayer subsidies for home electrification, and for other purposes (H. Rept. 119-484); H.R. 1343, to require the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information to submit to Congress a plan for the Assistant Secretary to track the acceptance, processing, and disposal of certain Form 299s, and for other purposes (H. Rept. 119-485); H.R. 1588, to require the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information to report to Congress on any barriers to establishing online portals to accept, process, and dispose of certain Form 299s, and for other purposes (H. Rept. 119-486, Part 1); H.R. 1665, to require the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture to establish online portals to accept, process, and dispose of certain Form 299s, and for other purposes (H. Rept. 119-487, Part 1); H.R. 1665, to require the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture to establish online portals to accept, process, and dispose of certain Form 299s, and for other purposes (H. Rept. 119-487, Part 2); and H.R. 1731, to amend the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 to establish a uniform fee schedule applicable to the processing of forms for the consideration of applications for the placement of communications facilities on certain buildings and other property owned by the Federal Government, and for other purposes (H. Rept. 119-488, Part 1).
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Speaker
Read a letter from the Speaker wherein he appointed Representative Mann to act as Speaker pro tempore for today.
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Recess
The House recessed at 11:50 a.m. and reconvened at 12 p.m.
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Recess
The House recessed at 2:10 p.m. and reconvened at 3:30 p.m.
Pages H2008-09
Critical Mineral Dominance Act
The House passed H.R. 4090, to codify certain provisions of certain Executive Orders relating to domestic mining and hardrock mineral resources, by a yea-and-nay vote of 224 yeas to 195 nays, Roll No. 55.
Pages H1993-H2002, H2009-10
Rejected the Leger Fernandez motion to recommit the bill to the Committee on Natural Resources by a yea-and-nay vote of 209 yeas to 212 nays, Roll No. 54.
Pages H2002, H2009
Pursuant to the Rule, the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Natural Resources now printed in the bill shall be considered as adopted.
Pages H1993-94
H. Res. 1032, the rule providing for consideration of the Senate amendments to the bill (H.R. 7148) and providing for consideration of the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 142) and the bill (H.R. 4090) was agreed to yesterday, February 3rd. Disapproving the action of the District of Columbia Council in approving the D.C. Income and Franchise Tax Conformity and Revision Temporary Amendment Act of 2025: The House passed H.J. Res. 142, disapproving the action of the District of Columbia Council in approving the D.C. Income and Franchise Tax Conformity and Revision Temporary Amendment Act of 2025, by a yea-and-nay vote of 215 yeas to 210 nays, Roll No. 56.
Pages H2002-08, H2010-11
H. Res. 1032, the rule providing for consideration of the Senate amendments to the bill (H.R. 7148) and providing for consideration of the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 142) and the bill (H.R. 4090) was agreed to yesterday, February 3rd. Meeting Hour: Agreed by unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 10 a.m. tomorrow, February 5th; and further when the House adjourns on that day, it adjourn to meet at noon on Monday, February 9, 2026 for morning-hour debate.
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Presidential Message
Read a message from the President transmitting a notification stating that the national emergency with respect to the situation in and in relation to Burma declared in Executive Order 14014 of February 10, 2021, is to continue in effect beyond February 10, 2026--referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs and ordered to be printed (H. Doc. 119-130).
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Quorum Calls: Votes
Three yea-and-nay votes developed during the proceedings of today and appear on pages H2009, H2009-10, and H2010-11. Adjournment: The House met at 10 a.m. and adjourned at 6:57 p.m.
Every speech and line is the Congressional Record's own text, read from GovInfo. Speakers are matched to members by GPO's own metadata. Referandom places each turn on the Clerk's video by matching its words: 194 of 261 spoken turns were found. Turns without a time are still listed; they just can't seek.
Morning-Hour Debate
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of January 6, 2026, the Chair will now recognize Members from lists submitted by the majority and minority leaders for morning-hour debate.
The Chair will alternate recognition between the parties, with time equally allocated between the parties and each Member other than the majority and minority leaders and the minority whip limited to 5 minutes, but in no event shall debate continue beyond 11:50 a.m.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to condemn Islamophobia in the United States, an alarming and dangerous trend that goes against the most basic values of our country. Hatred and religious discrimination don't make us safer, stronger, or more united. They do just the opposite.
When fear and division are used by people in power, families in our communities are the ones who pay the price. When national leaders single out and demonize an entire faith or culture, it tells people that intolerance is acceptable, that cruelty is strength. Too often, the loudest voices of hate hear that signal clearly.
Across our country, Muslim Americans are feeling that impact. Mosques have been threatened. Families have been profiled. Children have been made to feel like they don't belong in the only country they have ever known. It is wrong, it is unjust, and it is profoundly un-American.
As Members of Congress, we have a responsibility to stand up for fairness, freedom, and basic decency because Islamophobia has real consequences. Families are afraid to report crimes, workers lose opportunities, students feel isolated, and American citizens are treated differently because of how they pray, how they dress, or where their parents were born.
In western New York, from Buffalo to Niagara Falls to the city of Lackawanna, and everywhere in between, we know what it means to face discrimination, hate, and division, and we know the power of standing together united.
My district is home to one of the largest Arab American communities in the country. Families came here for the same promises as generations before them, to build a better future for themselves and their children. They believe in the American Dream. Neighbors in the city of Lackawanna came together in an act of love for the community and created ACCESS of Western New York. ACCESS helps families in crisis, supports young people, and gives immigrants and nonimmigrants alike the tools they need to get on their feet. They bring people together instead of pushing them apart.
That is what America looks like at its best. At a time when division feels constant, western New York shows there is another way forward, one rooted in respect, compassion, and shared humanity.
We all have a choice. We can allow hate to grow, or we can stand up and say it has no place here. I choose to stand against Islamophobia, and I urge my colleagues and all Americans to do the same.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and honor an extraordinary public servant, a trusted leader, and dear friend, my chief of staff, Ms. Christine Lee, who is actually retiring after a distinguished career in public service.
In this Chamber, we often speak about policy, votes, and headlines, but behind every office, behind every Member, there are people whose work rarely show up in the Congressional Record, people who make the institution function, who keep the mission on course, and who serve quietly with excellence every single day.
For years, she has been a steady hand guiding our office. She brought clarity when things were complicated, calm when things were chaotic, and purpose when the days were long. She understood that public service isn't about credit. It is about responsibility. She carried that responsibility with integrity, discipline, and grace.
As chief of staff, she did far more than manage schedules and operations. She shaped culture. She built a team that worked hard, treated people with respect, and never lost sight of why we are here: to serve the American people, especially the veterans and families who depend on us.
She has an uncommon ability to see both the big picture and the smallest details. She could navigate complex legislative strategy while never forgetting the constituent on the other end
In moments of pressure, she was unflappable. In moments of disagreement, she brought thoughtfulness. In moments of decision, she was always guided by principle.
I have relied on her judgment more times than I can count. When I needed honest counsel, she gave it, even when it wasn't easy. When the office needed leadership, she stepped forward without hesitation. When the mission demanded long hours and personal sacrifice, she never asked for recognition. She simply got the job done.
That kind of leadership doesn't happen by accident. It comes with character, from experience, and from a deep belief in service before self.
Her impact extends well beyond my office. She has mentored young staffers who will go on to serve in Congress, the executive branch, and communities across the country. Her legacy lives on in the people she has trained, the standards she has set, and the example she modeled every day.
Public service is often described as thankless. Too often the people who give the most receive the least public recognition, and today we correct that.
Ms. Lee has helped shape legislation, supported veterans, solved real problems for real people, and strengthened this institution. She has done so with professionalism, humility, and unwavering commitment.
On behalf of the constituents of the Eighth Congressional District of Texas, on behalf of my staff, and on behalf of a Member of Congress, I want to thank her.
Her service has mattered, her leadership has made a difference, and her example will continue to guide us long after she steps away from this role. As she begins the next chapter of her life, she leaves with our deepest respect, our sincere gratitude, and our very best wishes.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Rick Garcia, a giant in the fight for equality in Illinois.
I met Rick in the 1980s when being out, visible, and unapologetic came with real risk. We used to call each other primos or cousins because we shared the same last name.
Rick believed that change didn't happen by accident and worked across political, religious, and community lines to build unlikely coalitions. He helped pass Illinois' landmark ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation.
As a cofounder of Equality Illinois, Rick fought to ensure that love and identity are never grounds for discrimination.
Rick's legacy lives on in the movement he helped build and the laws he helped pass, which are now as important as ever.
May we honor his legacy in action. May Rick rest in power.
Mr. Speaker, the price of groceries keeps going up. Starting this week, 4 million people per month will be pushed off their food stamps. In Illinois alone, 360,000 people will lose those benefits. All due to cuts from the big, ugly bill.
Americans are being forced to go hungry so the President can pay for his terror campaign in our cities. Children, people with disabilities, and veterans will lose their ability to put food on the table.
Food pantries are already seeing longer lines for services. Local grocers warn that this will impact them, too, as people will be unable to shop for food. SNAP benefits are not just a safety net. They also foster economic activity and community stability.
The President has made his priorities clear by cutting food assistance for millions of Americans to fund his agenda, while families are pushed closer to hunger.
They can lie, tell us to ignore what we see and experience, but the American people will not forget.
Well, first of all, Mr. Speaker, my Democratic colleagues--maybe not all of them, but what I just heard--gave a complete mischaracterization of the program integrity measures that Republicans put in the big, beautiful bill. While the fraud, waste, and abuse is on display for all Americans, not only in Minnesota, but all across this country, we find it unacceptable. We believe that one of our first responsibilities here in the people's House is to steward the people's sacred treasure.
We put financial controls, anti-fraud measures, and, again, program integrity reforms so that people who need these safety net programs can avail themselves. They will not be drained anymore by people who are illegally in this country, ineligible, or who are able-bodied adults who just simply refuse to work. That is all. I mean, I think that is, as we say, an 80-20 issue in this country.
No, people aren't starving and being thrown into the streets with no support who need it. We are protecting and preserving not only the tax dollar, but these important critical safety net services for the American people who are eligible.
I am grateful for that leadership from the President and from my Republican colleagues. I can't imagine that most Democrats throughout this country actually support us protecting their tax dollars, too.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a true west Texas giant and American hero, Mr. J.L. Stevens of Big Spring, USA, a World War II veteran who just turned 100 years old this past week. He is a living monument to the grit, courage, quiet humility, and service that define both west Texas and America's Greatest Generation.
In 1943, at just 17 years old, Mr. Speaker, this gentleman enlisted in the United States Navy, serving as a gunner's mate aboard the USS Hambleton, where he directly engaged the enemy on D-day while supporting the Allied invasion of Normandy. Despite suffering combat injuries in Europe, Mr. Stevens continued his service, which concluded in 1945 in the Pacific theater, where he personally witnessed the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender in Tokyo Harbor, bringing World War II to its official end.
After the war, Mr. Stevens returned to his home in west Texas, where he worked as a carpenter, helping to build the firehouse there in Big Spring and the city's original VA hospital.
Mr. Speaker, Mr. J.L. Stevens represents the very best of west Texas in his heroic service to our country and a lifetime of hard work, faith, and devotion to his family, his community, and this great country of ours. I ask my colleagues to join me in wishing him a happy 100th birthday and thanking him for a legacy of service that will long endure.
Mr. Stevens, here is to many more. God bless you, and God bless America.
Mr. Speaker, this week began Black History Month. As second vice chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, I am proud to rise and put proper emphasis on this important annual recognition. All month long, I will be working to amplify the stories of notable Black Americans from Georgia's Sixth Congressional District.
Today, I am particularly honored to kick off my constituent recognition by sharing the story of a truly exceptional American. Dr. Hillard Pouncy, Jr., was a student, research scientist, and beloved father and grandfather. Perhaps most notably, he was one of the original Tuskegee Airmen during World War II.
Dr. Pouncy's accomplishments in life seem almost too extraordinary to be true. Born in Prichard, Alabama, Hillard lived with his grandparents to
In segregated Alabama, he navigated the obstacles required to receive an education. Hillard had to travel to a neighboring county in order to complete his high school education. This didn't faze Hillard. He finished as the valedictorian of his class.
After high school, he went to Tuskegee in search of work and the furtherance of his education. After seeing Black cadets march on campus and watching them fly airplanes, Hillard said that he just knew he would become a Tuskegee Airman. He loved the look of their uniforms and the promise of what kind of doors could be unlocked as a Tuskegee Airman.
Through advanced training, bombardier school, and navigation training, Hillard witnessed and experienced firsthand the obstacles and challenges that men of color faced, even as some of the most highly skilled members of our Nation's Armed Forces. Again, this did not faze him. He trained as a bombardier with the 477th Bombardment Group and was part of the remarkable history of the Tuskegee Airmen.
Following his military service, Dr. Pouncy earned advanced degrees in chemistry, obtaining a Ph.D. in organic chemistry. He enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a research scientist with Union Carbide, which took him all over the world.
In retirement, Dr. Pouncy and his late wife, Mrs. Mattie, retired to Austell, right in the heart of Georgia's Sixth Congressional District. As a beloved resident at Presbyterian Village, he always took time to give back to his fellow residents and schoolchildren in our community.
Dr. Pouncy passed away just before Christmas at the ripe age of 103. At his memorial service, I was struck by the stories that I heard of what a devoted public servant he remained long after he retired. Dr. Hillard Pouncy truly represented the very best of us.
Our Nation has come a very long way since the days of Jim Crow, and I marvel at the progress of our American life seen through the eyes of a truly original American citizen, a man like Hillard Pouncy.
Mr. SPEAKER. In 2014, Dr. Pouncy sat for an interview about his life. As he reflected on his pride watching his grandson graduate from one of the finest schools in the country, he chuckled and said, ``Things are different now, for the better.''
Thanks to the courageous service of Dr. Pouncy and his fellow Tuskegee Airmen, and Civil Rights Movement leaders like Dr. King and John Lewis, yes, things are different now, for the better. And though we face a great many challenges at this moment of our American story, we owe a debt of gratitude to a man like Dr. Hillard Pouncy. As we prepare to mark what would have been Dr. Pouncy's 104th birthday on February 8th, I rejoice that such a wonderful man was able to walk this earth for over a century. All Black History Month long and beyond, I will continue to do all that I can to uplift the name of Dr. Pouncy and every man and woman who has made such significant contributions to the advancement of this great nation. We are truly better off because they were here among us.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the 1984 Walla Walla High School girls' basketball team and to celebrate the long-overdue recognition of their State championship victory.
The 1979 and 1984 Walla Walla High girls' teams remain the only State basketball champions in Wa-Hi history. Yet, for more than four decades, the 1984 champions have had no victory cup to mark their achievement.
What began as a casual conversation last spring has turned into the long-awaited correction of that injustice. This Saturday, after 42 years, the 1984 team will finally be recognized with a ceremony and the presentation of a specially made championship trophy.
These remarkable women represent the best of our communities: perseverance, teamwork, and pride that will stand the test of time. Now, finally, they will have a victory cup to recognize their significant achievement.
Mr. Speaker, I would also like to give a shout-out to the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin for covering this story. It is a reminder that while we can sometimes be frustrated with the way media covers things politically, we always appreciate a local news source for these types of stories.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Driver and Lindsey families of Pend Oreille County, whose century-long story tells the very best of rural America: perseverance, hard work, and renewal.
Their history stretches from a hand-built homestead in the 1920s, through decades of loss and reclamation, to today's 800-acre hay operation that continues to be an anchor in their community.
This year marks three remarkable milestones: 100 years since the original home was built, 80 years since the farm was reclaimed, and 20 years since the current operation began.
The Driver and Lindsey families embody stewardship and resilience. They have tilled the same soil for generations, adapting through challenge and change, ensuring this family legacy. Pictured to the right of me today is one of the fifth generation of the Driver family, and we know that he has much to look forward to as he builds his community on this wonderful family farm.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to celebrate the 145th anniversary of the Spokane Tribe of Indians, a proud milestone honoring one of eastern Washington's oldest and most resilient communities.
The Spokane Tribe recently hosted its 1881 Powwow near Wellpinit, bringing together families, dancers, and community members to mark this anniversary with song, dance, and fellowship. The day was filled with vibrant drumming, traditional ceremonies, and shared meals that reflected the enduring spirit of the Tribe.
As the American flag and the Spokane Tribe flag flew side by side, this celebration stood as a powerful symbol of unity, resilience, and the living heritage that continues to enrich the inland northwest.
Mr. Speaker, I am not a Native Tribal member myself, but growing up in eastern Washington, I did have time to spend playing basketball with the Nez Perce Tribe of Indians in Lapwai, close to my family home. On several occasions, I was able to join and observe powwows.
Mr. Speaker, if anyone in Congress or watching at home has not had the opportunity to attend a powwow, it truly is one of the best celebrations of our shared culture and history. It is something that all Americans should attempt to do as we celebrate our 250th anniversary.
I close by again congratulating the Spokane Tribe of Indians on their leadership, tradition, and community pride.
Mr. Speaker, in the ever-changing landscape of community media, I am pleased to salute the 17th anniversary of the launch of Scarsdale10583, the online source for local news and information in the village of Scarsdale and in the neighborhoods of Hartsdale and Edgemont in the town of Greenburgh.
Joanne Wallenstein, an advertising and marketing professional with a background in magazines and internet experience, is the driving force for the team that includes Wendy MacMillan and Stacie Waldman. All three are committed Scarsdale volunteers for organizations like the local PTAs, the League of Women Voters, and numerous other community groups. This gives them the grassroots contacts and feel for what is happening every day that they report on regularly. They report on what is happening by being there in person at event after event.
The publication is truly local: high school sports stories, local meetings, recreational activities, and neighborhood associations and their activities.
We recognize the hard work of Joanne and her colleagues, and from the
Mr. Speaker, I want to recognize the outstanding programs provided by the village of Dobbs Ferry that benefit the senior citizens of that community.
Under the able leadership of Abby Connett, in a new center designed for their use, Dobbs Ferry Seniors serves hundreds of seniors annually with a daily nutrition program at lunchtime 5 days a week and activities and programs to engage seniors of all ages.
There are fitness classes daily, from tai chi and dance to chair yoga and mental fitness programs; my favorite, sports trivia; and a variety of board games, mah-jongg, bridge, Rummikub, along with the classic senior staple, bingo.
Abby and her talented crew host annual events, as well, such as an art show in May and the recent 20th annual Seniors Week in October with multiple activities. There are trips planned to shopping locales and tourist sites, as well.
From the floor of the House of Representatives, we salute the work of the Dobbs Ferry Seniors and the active and energetic members who show that age is more than just a state of mind.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the outstanding work of the residents of the Bronx who labor tirelessly on behalf of their neighborhood, active in Bronx Community Board 10. Most of the area is represented by my colleague, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez, places like Throggs Neck, Pelham Bay, Westchester Square, and the like. However, Community Board 10 also includes the major complex of Co-op City in my 16th Congressional District.
Co-op City benefits from the leadership of Joseph Russo, chairman of the community board, and the excellent district manager, Matt Cruz. Co- op City residents on Community Board 10 include Board Secretary Nancy Rosario; Stephanie Woods, who chairs the Youth and Education Committee; and board members Janine Thomas, Stefani Hazell, and Maritza Fludd.
The board has vibrant citizen committees engaged in every aspect of neighborhood life: economic development, housing and zoning, municipal services, parks and recreation, planning and budget, youth services, education, health and human services, and veterans services, with board members and community volunteers engaged together in dialogue and action to serve the overall region.
I am pleased that Co-op City is a major contributor to the work of this board.
From the floor of the House of Representatives, we salute Bronx Community Board 10 and its crew from Co-op City, serving the Boogie Down Bronx.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the extraordinary service and well-earned retirement of Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan, whose leadership has profoundly shaped the Catholic faith in New York and across our Nation.
Since becoming archbishop of New York in 2009, Cardinal Dolan has been a steadfast advocate for religious freedom, Catholic education, and the dignity of every person. He has led with conviction, compassion, and humor, reminding us that faith must also always be lived out through service.
Under his leadership, the Archdiocese of New York was strengthened in meaningful ways, including the reopening of dozens of Catholic schools, ensuring that families across our State continue to have access to education rooted in faith, values, and community.
Beyond New York, Cardinal Dolan has become a respected national voice for the church, guiding conversations with clarity, humor, and grace, and bringing people together in moments of challenge and celebration alike.
I am honored to call Cardinal Dolan a friend. While he will be deeply missed as the leader of the Archdiocese of New York, I wish him the very best in his retirement and have no doubt that his voice and his witness will continue to inspire for years to come.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Alfred ``Al'' Magnatta, who passed away just a week before what would have been his 101st birthday.
At a young age, Al answered the call to serve his country during World War II, enlisting in the U.S. Air Force. Serving as a B-17 aerial gunner with the Eighth Air Force was an experience that forever shaped his life.
After returning home to New York, Al continued to serve his community by joining the Congers Fire Department, eventually serving as their fire chief, becoming the oldest fire chief in the department's history and its longest serving member.
Al continued to serve his community by providing leadership at the county level, helping guide emergency response efforts, mentoring future firefighters, and shaping fire service standards. Throughout his decades of service, he responded to countless emergencies and earned the respect of all who served alongside him.
Al represented the very best of our community, and I extend my heartfelt condolences to his family, friends, and all who had the privilege of knowing him. His legacy will never be forgotten. May he rest in peace.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize an extraordinary act of courage and public service by Ramapo Town Police Chief Daniel ``Dan'' Hyman, whose quick actions saved the life of a fellow neighbor.
While off duty, Chief Hyman noticed smoke coming from a home. After seeing a resident attempt to escape the fire, he immediately sprang into action.
Without hesitation, he secured a ladder, climbed to the window the resident was attempting to escape from, and calmly coached the individual to safety. His quick thinking, bravery, and selfless action helped save a life from what would have been a tragedy.
Chief Hyman joined the Ramapo Police Department in 1989 and has served his community with integrity, valor, and professionalism for more than three decades.
His actions represent the very best of public service and our community. I commend Chief Hyman for leading by example and for reminding us what true heroism looks like in our communities.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the extraordinary career of Robi Schlaff, a devoted public servant who has spent her career protecting women, children, and families across Westchester County.
Since 2013, Robi has served as director of the Westchester County Office for Women, overseeing critical programs that support victims of domestic and family violence. She also serves as executive director of the Westchester County Family Justice Center, where she helped build a coordinated, victim-centered model that has become a statewide example.
Earlier in her career, Robi practiced family law, representing children and survivors of domestic violence and served as a mediator in family court. She has been instrumental in developing initiatives such as the Domestic Violence High-Risk Team and the Pace Women's Justice Center, earning national recognition, including the End Violence Against Women International Game-Changer award. In addition, she worked alongside Pete Grannis in the New York State Assembly and the Department of Environmental Protection.
As Robi retires from her role, I am proud to recognize her unwavering commitment to protecting our communities. Having worked with her in County Executive Astorino's administration, I am deeply grateful for her public service and her friendship. I wish her all the best in her well-earned retirement.
Mr. Speaker, as every local businessowner knows, every
Paradise Gym encouraged patrons and community members to donate new toys to children and their families, sharing the message that donating toys not only gives joy but offers hope to those navigating cancer treatments and care for their loved ones.
The support and community of southern California is unlike any other, and I am so proud to see our neighbors come together and give back. This is a true testament to the character of Paradise Gym and the power of community and service.
I thank Elsa and the staff at Paradise Gym for their commitment to service. We are so grateful for them.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge an outstanding accomplishment by Rorimer Elementary School in La Puente, California, a part of the Rowland Unified School District in California's 31st District.
Rorimer Elementary has been designated as a 2026 Seal of Excellence School by the California Association for Bilingual Education, one of only four schools in California awarded this designation after undergoing an extensive review process.
This award recognizes schools for their strong vision for biliteracy, multicultural competency, and educational equity.
As a Spanish dual language immersion school, Rorimer Elementary has demonstrated notable gains in academic achievements and bilingual proficiency among English learners using effective research-based instructional strategies.
Rorimer Elementary's success has been built through creation of a school-wide culture that embraces and celebrates developing students' bilingual language proficiency and cultural awareness in grades TK-6.
The strong relationship built between Rorimer's teachers, staff, and families has been central to the school's success.
Congratulations to the team at Rorimer Elementary for setting an amazing example for bilingual education.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize former La Verne Fire Chief Christopher Nigg for his distinguished time of service with the La Verne Fire Department.
While in service at the department, he led significant operational and organizational advancements, strengthening emergency response, workforce readiness, and regional integration.
Chief Nigg worked collaboratively with regional partners to enhance service-and-response delivery, fostering a culture of professionalism, trust, and shared accountability focused on serving the community.
Notably, he led the department to streamline emergency response with an efficient ambulance operator program and established a comprehensive succession plan for long-term organizational stability.
I am so grateful for his leadership and service, promoting safety for the community in California's 31st District. He will be remembered as a team player, fierce advocate for fire prevention, and an innovative leader. We wish him the best in the next chapter of his life.
Mr. Speaker, 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of the most famous road in the country, Route 66, and it travels right through the 31st Congressional District in California.
Last month, the city of Azusa unveiled its Route 66 centennial monument and mural at the newly designated Route 66 Tribute Corner in honor of this historic highway. This new mural and monument are part of a series of monuments that will be unveiled from Chicago to Santa Monica as part of the official project organized by the U.S. Route 66 Centennial Commission.
Mr. Speaker, we are excited that many will continue to get their kicks on Route 66, as we celebrate this historic highway that connected our community to the rest of the country and opened up a pathway for migration, tourism, and development in the San Gabriel Valley and the great State of California.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate an organization that is near and dear to my heart, Scouting America.
February 8 is National Scouting America Day, which recognizes the legacy of the organization and the young Americans who have gone from Scouts to leaders in their communities.
On May 17, 1977, I became an Eagle Scout myself, as a member of Scout Troop 52 in Walker Township, Pennsylvania. Over the years, I proudly held various leadership roles with Scout troops in Pennsylvania, including two separate stints as Scoutmaster for Troop 353 in Howard.
During my time as a Scoutmaster, I was honored to see many young men achieve the rank of Eagle Scout. Since the rank's inception, close to 3 million Scouts have earned Eagle Scout status.
Scouting America--formerly known as the Boy Scouts of America, and actually that is still the name of the movement as chartered by Congress--was established in 1910 by William D. Boyce. The mission of the organization is to prepare children for lives of impact and purpose. Since it was founded, more than 130 million young men and women have participated in Scouting America's programs.
Mr. Speaker, at its core, Scouting encourages its members to leave our country and the world a little better than they found it. Scouting America has helped build future leaders by combining educational activities and lifelong values with fun. Scouting founder, Lord Baden- Powell of England, defined Scouting as a game with a purpose. Through over a century of experience, we know that helping youth is a key to building a more conscientious, responsible, and productive society.
I am proud to co-chair the Congressional Scouting Caucus. This past summer, we welcomed dozens of Scouts from across the country to Camp Capitol Hill and Eagles on the Hill. This was an opportunity for Scouts to meet with Representatives and showcase what they have learned or built as a Scout. It was an honor to see the various projects Scouts have completed. All of them demonstrated the important values of service, community, and character.
Scouting demands physicality, innovation, curiosity, and for participants to enjoy the outdoors. It gives Scouts the opportunity to try new recreational activities like mountain biking, kayaking, and camping. All of these activities are an ode to the beautiful landscapes across our Nation and experiences that a Scout will never forget.
Scouts explore their interests and improve their skills while working toward Scouting's highest rank, Eagle. By first imagining, planning, then doing their own service projects, Scouts learn the value of hard work and experience the thrill of seeing it pay off.
Scouts are known as leaders within their communities, and approximately 15 percent of all military academy cadets and midshipmen across the United States' service academies are Eagle Scouts.
I am grateful for the longstanding partnership between Scouting America and the Department of War. I can think of no better recruitment tool for our military than the lessons learned through Scouting.
Mr. Speaker, Scouting has touched the lives of so many. I am proud of the way it has shaped our youth. I wish a happy 116th birthday to Scouting America.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today because of something deeply
Over the weekend, the President announced on Truth Social, of course, that he intends to shut down the Kennedy Center for approximately 2 years for so-called renovations. Since then, he has talked about leaving the building's steel fully exposed, raising questions about whether this is a renovation at all or something far more drastic.
Let's take a step back. The Kennedy Center is not a private real estate project. It is not a campaign prop. It is not a vanity playground for demolition. It is a national cultural institution, created by Congress in 1958, and later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy after his death. It opened in 1971 as a living memorial to a man who believed the arts were essential to democracy itself. The name, the mission, the existence all come from statute, law. No social media post, no board reshuffle, and no personal declaration has the legal authority to change that.
For more than 50 years, the Kennedy Center has been a place where Americans of every background could come together to experience excellence in music, theater, dance, and culture. It was built to foster national unity, artistic expression, and America's creative spirit, not to feed the ego of a single individual.
Unfortunately, over the past year, we have watched the systematic takeover, with board members fired, loyalists installed, programming politicized, and artists walking away in droves. The consequences were immediate.
Though Donald Trump's hand-picked leadership has been suspiciously tight-lipped about the Center's finances, they reportedly oversaw an 82 percent decline in theater subscriptions, a 57 percent drop in ballet packages, and a $1.6 million loss in ticket sales in just a matter of months.
The decline was not because the building had suddenly become dangerous. It is because artists and audiences rejected what the Kennedy Center has been becoming. Now, rather than reverse course, the President's solution is to close it for 2 years?
According to reporting this week, many board members, staff, performers, and even Trump-appointed officials were blindsided by this announcement. There was no plan presented, no consultation, no transparency.
The New York Times reports that budget documents describe needed maintenance, yes, but nothing that required shutting down the entire institution. In fact, the very official overseeing facilities said that just 2 months ago, there were no serious discussions about closing the Center.
What changed? What changed is that the Center could no longer sustain programming. Artists were pulling out, performances were being canceled, ticket sales were collapsing. With every bad story detailing what the Center has become under President Trump's control, the more of a headache and source of embarrassment it became for the President.
Now this renovation begins to look less like infrastructure work and more like a cover story for institutional failure.
As the top Democrat of the Appropriations Subcommittee that oversees the Kennedy Center's funding, I can tell you this: We have repeatedly asked for financial information, for meetings, for transparency about what is happening inside the center. Our requests have been ignored.
That should alarm every Member of this body because this is not just about a building. It is about whether Congress is going to allow a President to seize control of a congressionally created institution, run it into the ground, and then unilaterally shut it down without oversight.
Sadly, this is part of a much broader pattern. We have seen this administration's attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts, their attacks on the National Endowment for the Humanities, their interference in museums, including the Smithsonian, their political litmus tests for cultural programming, and now the attempted transformation of the Kennedy Center into a monument to one man's personal brand.
The Kennedy Center is the only memorial in Washington dedicated to President John F. Kennedy, a President who believed that art belonged to the American people, a President who believed culture was a public good. This takeover, and the incompetence that has come with it, is an insult to that legacy.
The law is very clear: The Kennedy Center's name and mission are established by statute. Changing that requires an act of Congress, and I will do everything in my power to make sure this institution stays the way it is.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend President Trump for taking decisive action to confront one of the most devastating public health challenges that currently face our Nation, the disease of addiction.
With the launch of the Great American Recovery Initiative, President Trump is elevating our national response by coordinating Federal, State, and community resources. This action by President Trump will expand access to treatment, to prevention, to long-term recovery, and support millions of Americans and their families.
This initiative recognizes what addiction truly is, a chronic, treatable condition. This comprehensive effort reflects a shared American value that every life is worth saving and every individual struggling with addiction deserves a path to recovery.
According to data collected in 2023, nearly 5,000 Pennsylvanians lost their lives due to fatal drug overdoses. That means that across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, we lost 14 lives each day to addiction.
Under the leadership of President Trump, I look forward to working with my colleagues here in Congress to support this initiative and ensure that it delivers real results for the families and those suffering with addiction across our country.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the 90th birthday of Sister Paula DelGrosso.
Sister Paula's religious vocation began in the 1950s. After spending more than 30 years in education, she heard a different calling, a calling to serve her community in another way. She worked to establish the St. Vincent de Paul's Food for Families Soup Kitchen.
Sister Paula has worked with community leaders, service organizations, and supporters to operate the soup kitchen. Now, for more than three decades, she has lived her faith by feeding the hungry.
Mr. Speaker, as one of Sister Paula's many volunteers, I witnessed firsthand her commitment and her passion to serving her community. On her 90th birthday, I thank Sister Paula for her dedication and her devotion for those in need. I wish Sister Paula a happy birthday.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor George Lake of Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, as the first recipient of the Pennsylvania Veteran Ag Entrepreneurship Award.
After completing his service in the U.S. Marine Corps, George took the responsibility of owning the Thistle Creek Farms in Warriors Mark.
George has transformed his family's 600-acre farm into a nationally recognized regenerative livestock operation which produces a premium beef brand.
Motivated to help owners of small farms succeed, George also devotes time to mentoring fellow beef farmers.
Mr. Speaker, I thank George Lake for his military service and offer congratulations on receiving the Pennsylvania Veteran Ag Entrepreneurship Award.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the 75th anniversary of the DeGol Organization, which is headquartered in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
The origins of the family-owned and -operated enterprise date to 1950 when
Today, the DeGol Organization includes Seven D Wholesale, DeGol Carpet, Seven D Windows and Door, Hollidaysburg Rail Car Services, and the Scotch Valley Country Club.
In addition to driving economic growth and facilitating job creation, the DeGol Organization has supported communities through the Bruno and Lena DeGol Family Foundation. The foundation's philanthropy has funded numerous capital improvement projects, education initiatives, and nonprofit programs.
Mr. Speaker, with a distinguished legacy of leadership, I congratulate the entire DeGol family on this milestone anniversary and offer best wishes for continued success.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to sound an alarm, to sound an alarm about something dangerous and dark and pernicious that is happening inside our government. I recognize there are only a handful of my colleagues in the Chamber to hear that alarm and a few folks in the gallery, but I pray that Americans writ large will hear it.
George Orwell in his famous book ``1984'' wrote of a time when ``The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.'' His warning proved pressing because today the Trump administration asks the American people to ignore what they see with their own eyes and what they hear with their own ears, which is the complete corruption of their government from the inside out.
The Trump administration's pay-to-play schemes are literally ripping off hardworking American taxpayers as we speak. We see the evidence everywhere: A $10 billion payout that Donald Trump, the President of the United States of America, now demands from his own Treasury Department in a lawsuit that he filed against the IRS.
By the way, who does he demand pay him this $10 billion? The American taxpayer. The countless pay-to-play schemes and vanity projects that have consumed his administration, all paid by American taxpayers, are stripping the pocketbooks of Americans to line their own.
Last weekend, The New Yorker reported that the President and his family have raked in $4 billion in personal profits by leveraging the Presidency. Let's think about that, $4 billion.
The most salient example of this, by the way, we just learned about in the last 7 days. It was an expose by The Wall Street Journal about a scheme that the Trump administration engaged in last year.
The Trump family, according to these public reports, sold a 49 percent stake in their crypto company to a member of the Emirati royal family. They did so for nearly half a billion dollars.
We don't know every detail of this transaction. We do know that the Trump family received $187 million from that transaction, a payday entangling the President's financial interests with a foreign country.
Months later, we know that the Trump administration approved a crypto deal with the UAE that included transferring advanced U.S. technology and AI chips.
Mr. Speaker, this is corruption, plain and simple.
It is the prioritization of personal profit over the national security interests of our country, the country we all love so dearly.
It is wrong. It is immoral, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say nothing. Worse, some of them defend this conduct, notwithstanding that they know it is unlawful, that it is violative of our Constitution.
We have an Emoluments Clause, Mr. Speaker, for a reason. The Foreign Emoluments Clause was one of the few provisions to survive and be transferred from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution in 1787. It was contemplated for precisely a scenario as this one.
George Mason, one of our Founding Fathers during the Constitutional Convention, warned his fellow delegates that ``if we do not provide against corruption, our government will soon be at an end.'' His words are as true today as they were when he said them 240 some-odd years ago.
It is shameful the lack of courage from my Republican colleagues. It is repugnant to the constitutional order that we all have been sworn to defend, to protect, and to vindicate.
The question I have, Mr. Speaker, for my Republican colleagues and for every American of good faith is: When is enough enough? How many sweetheart deals will Republicans refuse to condemn?
The corruption must end, Mr. Speaker. The corruption must end.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair reminds Members not to refer to persons in the gallery.
Mr. Speaker, let's go back to the year 1919. We had just 48 States. World War I had just ended but we called it the Great War because we didn't know there was going to be another. Charlie Chaplin had just released a short silent film called ``Sunnyside,'' before talking pictures would be all the rage. In this very Chamber, the House voted to send the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, to the States for ratification.
Today, Mr. Speaker, I rise to celebrate the 106th birthday of someone born that year, an American hero named Hazel Womble of Jacksonville, Florida, who is today one of our Nation's oldest living veterans. Here she is surrounded by friends and family.
Born on Christmas Eve in 1919, Hazel would go on to serve her country with extraordinary courage in World War II. Hazel enlisted in the Navy Reserves and served as an operating room nurse at U.S. naval hospitals from Portsmouth to Newport and even overseas in Bermuda.
In the darkest days of the war, she answered her country's call with the steady hands and a nurse's calm demeanor, holding the line not with a rifle but with a lifesaving skill and unwavering resolve.
She earned the World War II Victory Medal and the American Theater Ribbon, continuing her service to our Nation until her medical discharge in 1953.
At 106 years young, Hazel is not a page in our history book. She is a living chapter of American courage. Her life reflects a generation shaped by sacrifice, strengthened by service, and sustained by quiet resolve.
Mr. Speaker, we honor Hazel Womble not only for the years she has lived but the example she has set. Today, we celebrate an American who continues to inspire us all more than a century after her journey began. America is very proud of her.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring attention to a serious and growing public safety and public health concern that I think requires congressional action. It is the operation of illegal and unregulated biological laboratories that we see in communities throughout our country.
I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting legislation that I have introduced from the House committee recommendations. They are the Preventing Illegal Laboratories and Protecting Public Health Act and the STOP Health Threats Act.
Many of us became aware of this issue in the San Joaquin Valley in 2023 when an illegal biolab was discovered operating in my district in Reedley, California. Local officials uncovered a clandestine operation storing biological materials, laboratory equipment, medical waste, and dangerous, dangerous pathogens like malaria, like COVID, like HIV. There were thousands of laboratory mice in unsafe conditions.
All of this was inside a warehouse located near residential areas. It was not a licensed facility. It was operating in the shadows without proper licensing or permits. Why? Ostensibly, the reason was to develop medical kits for COVID testing and for pregnancy testing. Clearly, that was not the case.
Local authorities initially lacked the clear tools and resources to determine what hazards they were dealing with or how to safely respond. The situation placed local law enforcement officers, code enforcement staff, and nearby residents at serious risk.
It required coordination of local, State, and Federal agencies to fully assess the threat and dismantle this operation. It was slow in coming.
Now, over the weekend, some of my colleagues have probably noted a national story in Las Vegas, where there was the report of a discovery of a new lab and that materials were under investigation related to the illegal biolab that was created in 2023 in Reedley, California. This does not surprise me.
We cannot assume that communities across the country are immune from similar risks. Many jurisdictions simply do not have the expertise or Federal support needed to quickly identify and respond to unauthorized biological operations. That is why I have introduced legislation based upon committee recommendations.
This is bipartisan legislation aimed at strengthening Federal coordination, improving oversight, and helping close regulatory blind spots that have allowed unauthorized facilities to operate undetected. We hope this will ensure local communities have the access and the resources necessary when a biological threat emerges.
Too often, local officials are asking: Who do we call? Who has the authority? Who has the expertise? Our legislation helps answer those questions before another emergency unfolds.
Mr. Speaker, first responders should not have to walk into an unknown biological environment without clear Federal support. Parents should not have to worry about hazardous material being stored in facilities next door to schools and residential areas. Communities deserve transparency and safeguards, whether the incident occurs in California, Nevada, or anywhere else in the country.
It is important that we protect our constituents from a larger crisis. The legislation would strengthen oversight, coordination, and response mechanisms that can prevent confusion and reduce the risks.
I urge Members on both sides of the aisle to review these two pieces of legislation and to become cosponsors. Together, we can ensure that Federal agencies, State authorities, and local communities are better equipped to address these unauthorized biological operations that would prevent threats in their areas. The public demands that we provide preparedness, and preparedness demands action.
Let me also thank local officials that acted responsibly when it was first determined they had a problem. They include Code Officer Jesalyn Harper from the city of Reedley, City Manager Nicole Zieba; mayor of the city, Mayor Tuttle, of the city council; and Supervisor Nathan Magsig. All of these individuals worked together with our office to, in fact, act on the situation in Reedley, California.
Mr. Speaker, I urge that we act on this legislation so that people around the country can feel safe from any kind of illegal biological labs that may crop up in their communities. Together, we can close these gaps, support the communities, and keep our constituents safe.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize Beth Ragland, who I call my honorary mother, a remarkable Nebraskan who is celebrating her 90th birthday this week.
Beth represents the spirit of our district. After the passing of her husband, Ken, she chose not to slow down but to keep moving forward with a purpose. She returned to the classroom, pursued her long-held interest in law, and earned a degree with a perfect 4.0 grade point average.
She went on to serve as an intern at the Sarpy County Courthouse, where her curiosity and work ethic stood out immediately. I know firsthand that the county attorney from Sarpy, Lee Polikov, values her hard work and support.
Beth is an inspiration to her fellow students. She reminded them, and all of us, that learning, service, and ambition never end at any stage of life.
Her unyielding spirit inspires us all to work hard for whatever we desire. Her generosity, resilience, Christian spirit, and joy for learning continue to uplift everyone around her.
On behalf of Nebraska's Second District, I wish Beth Ragland a very happy 90th birthday and thank her for being such a powerful example of perseverance and purpose and for being my friend.
Mr. Speaker, in recognition of Black History Month, I rise today to honor two community leaders and two outstanding youth for their contributions to the Second Congressional District of Nebraska.
Brenda Council has been described as a pure force, a trailblazer, a fighter, and a leader who has paved the way for so many in Omaha. As a prominent politician and community leader from North Omaha, she has established a historic career marked by several firsts for African- American women in Nebraska.
She was the first African-American woman to serve on the Omaha City Council and president of the Omaha School Board and first to serve in the Nebraska Unicameral. She served on the Omaha Board of Education for 11 years and is president of the National Caucus of Black School Board Members and State senator for the 11th legislative district.
Council has held leadership roles in many organizations such as the Urban League of Nebraska, North Omaha Community Care Council, and United Way of the Midlands.
Ms. Council has been married to her husband for 40 years. Together, they have one son and five grandchildren.
Fred Conley is a pioneering figure in Nebraska politics, recognized as the first African American elected to the Omaha City Council. His career, spanning over 50 years, is defined by breaking racial barriers and advocating for the revitalization of North Omaha.
Raised in Omaha, Mr. Conley is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. His political career was born from community activism, specifically the right for district-based voting. Prior to the city's removal from at- large elections, a system that historically marginalized Black candidates, Conley ran for the city council twice.
Following the transition to district elections in 1981, Mr. Conley was elected to represent North Omaha and dedicated his efforts toward infrastructure and economic development. His leadership was recognized by his peers who elected him city council president. In 1988, Mr. Conley served as Omaha's first African-American acting mayor.
Mr. Conley's legacy includes the enforcement of fair housing laws and the physical reclamation of community landmarks. He was instrumental in their naming of the Malcolm X Park and supporting the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial.
His continued civic work through service on the Papio-Missouri River Natural Resources District Board, and as a founding member of 100 Black Men of Omaha leave a great mark in our city.
Mr. Conley and his wife, Teresa, have three children and have resided in the same North Omaha district they have dedicated themselves to for over 40 years.
Earsul Banks IV exemplifies resilience, resilience in the face of adversity. Despite significant academic disruptions caused by a chronic battle with sickle cell disease, Banks utilized mentorship from 100 Black Men of Omaha to regain his academic standing. He is a dedicated member of the chorus, drill team, and marching band. Mr. Banks is an unstoppable force who transformed health challenges into an opportunity for personal and academic growth.
Mara Johnson Anthony is a high-achieving high school student who maintains a 4.0 GPA with AP courses. She balances academic rigor with leadership in volleyball, the art club, and the Girls Inc. Eureka! program.
Her extensive history of community service includes the Open Door Mission and organizing gift drives for overseas troops and local seniors. Ms. Anthony is known for her compassionate leadership and is a role model for her peers.
Mr. Speaker, I greatly admire these leaders in the Second District of Nebraska. They make our district better and our community better.
Mr. Speaker, this week marks 3 years since a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. Mr. Speaker, it has been 3 years since toxic chemicals burned in the sky, families were forced from their homes, and a small town became a warning sign for what happens when corporate negligence meets congressional inaction.
For the people of East Palestine, this anniversary is not symbolic. It is personal, and it is ongoing. It is a constant reminder of a Congress who continues to put profits and corporations over people.
From the very beginning, I have shown up for this community. I don't represent East Palestine, Ohio, but within weeks of the derailment, I traveled there. I met with residents. I pressed FEMA, the EPA, the CDC, Health and Human Services, and the Department of Transportation for answers and resources.
I helped secure an EPA order, forcing Norfolk Southern, not taxpayers, to pay for the cleanup and remediation. When families were told that they may be taxed on disaster relief, I fought to change the law and succeeded. In 2024, President Joe Biden signed the East Palestine Tax Relief Act. That is what accountability looks like. That is what results look like.
Mr. Speaker, 3 years later, the most important question remains unanswered. What has Congress done to prevent this from ever happening again to East Palestine or any other American city? The answer is not enough.
That is why this week I am introducing the Railroad Safety and Accountability Act to protect labor and public interest voices in rail safety decisions, voices that Federal regulators have tried to push aside.
That is why I have continued fighting for passage of the bipartisan RAIL Act led by Democrats and Republicans representing Ohio. It is one of the most comprehensive rail safety proposals before Congress.
The bill would require two-person train crews and increased inspections, especially for trains carrying hazardous materials. It would strengthen emergency notification so first responders are not left in the dark. It would raise penalties for safety violations and address the exact equipment failures that caused the East Palestine derailment.
The RAIL Act is supported by rail workers, local governments, and a bipartisan group of lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans in and out of Ohio. Yet, for two consecutive Congresses, House Republican leadership has refused to even give the bill a hearing. That is not gridlock. That is a decision and a terrible one at that. It is a decision to put profits over people.
Since the derailment, President Trump, Vice President Vance, members of the Cabinet, and Ohio Republicans have all visited East Palestine, held press conferences, and promised action.
Here is the reality. Mr. Speaker, 3 years later, this Republicans House has not passed a single rail safety law to prevent another East Palestine. It is not even that. It is not just that the law has not passed. There hasn't even been a hearing.
On February 3, 2025, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy made the following statement: ``In partnership with the Trump-Vance administration and Congress, USDOT will work to advance rail safety. As President Trump has pledged, we will ensure that people of East Palestine are not forgotten, and we will use every resource to prevent other communities from enduring what they experienced.''
During a Transportation and Infrastructure hearing last year, I asked Secretary Duffy directly what concrete steps were being taken to stop another derailment like this one. I asked him directly and specifically had he worked with the chair of the committee to move forward any legislation. His answer was no. Further, he said he talked about it on Fox News before anyone else.
Here is a news flash for Secretary Duffy and House Republicans. Talking on television does not make trains safer. Talking on television does not make our communities safer. Talking on television does not do what East Palestinian residents have asked us to do for over 3 years. Press conferences do not replace legislation, and communities cannot rebuild on empty words.
Meanwhile, large corporations continue to resist stronger national safety rules and real accountability, while pursuing massive corporate expansion and relying on congressional inaction to protect its bottom line.
Monitoring the damage after a disaster matters, but monitoring alone is not prevention. Studying the aftermath is not the same as fixing the cause.
Mr. Speaker, the contrast is clear. I have legislated. I have shown up. I have questioned those in power and refused to let East Palestine be forgotten.
Others have toured the site, issued statements, and moved on, while blocking the very reforms that would keep another town from becoming another headline in a disaster.
Mr. Speaker, 3 years later, East Palestine has heard plenty of promises and many pledges, but Congress and the administration have not delivered the safety laws to stop the next disaster.
Mr. Speaker, East Palestine deserves action. America deserves action. We deserve accountability. We deserve a Congress that puts people over profits, and I will keep fighting until that happens.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call for Congress to act with urgency to address the alarming news that we have just heard from Las Vegas of the discovery of yet another illegal, dangerous biolab run by Chinese nationals.
In 2023, when the secret lab in Reedley, California, came to light, thanks to the tremendous efforts of local officials there, I gave several speeches on this floor calling attention to the danger that this posed to all Americans. I noted that we don't know how many similar such labs might be out there.
After I requested an investigation, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party reached a similar conclusion that we don't know what other such labs might be out there.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be true that we had reason for concern because the lab that was just discovered in Las Vegas is run by the same individuals under the same sham LLC as the one that was uncovered in Reedley.
What is more, officials there described materials and equipment that are consistent with the operation that was going on in Reedley: commercial-grade freezers and refrigerators, equipment for processing biological materials, and thousands of vials which are now under examination by the FBI.
In Reedley, the pathogens that were discovered included E. coli, Ebola, malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis. We have every reason to believe that these same dangerous pathogens have been found in this latest Las Vegas lab.
Mr. Speaker, the question still remains: How many other such labs are out there?
As my colleague from Fresno, Mr. Costa, just said on this floor, many local communities simply don't have the ability to uncover these things on their own. That is why we need a national framework. We need national resources. We need more national oversight, and that is precisely what my bipartisan bill, authored together with Mr. Costa, will do.
Mr. Speaker, I am calling today for an immediate markup of this legislation so that we can get it passed through the House and signed into law in order to protect our communities.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to provide a brief update on the California high-speed rail,
We are also now raising questions about what has happened to the $17 billion that has already been spent and whether, perhaps, there might be fraud at issue, or at least waste or a lack of diligence in the use of taxpayer funds.
I don't think it is any coincidence that, as these efforts ramp up, the legislature is now considering a bill, which the Governor himself provided language for in a budget trailer bill, seeking to keep records related to the high-speed rail secret and seeking to make it so that this particular project has a greater ability to keep information secret than anything else in the public domain in California.
It just goes to show how desperate the political leaders in California are, starting with the Governor, to avoid any accountability here.
Mr. Speaker, the Governor, for his part, held a big ceremony yesterday with much hoopla about a supposed milestone for high-speed rail, which is to say the completion of a single railhead in Kern County.
Mr. Speaker, I will remind the Governor that this is the year 2026. The high-speed rail project was supposed to be completed, having a full-fledged, high-speed rail system from Los Angeles to San Francisco, 6 years ago, in 2020. Yet, we are supposed to get excited about the completion of a single railhead in 2026.
Mr. Speaker, after 17 years and $17 billion, there still has not been any track laid for this project. The New York Times estimated that it won't be finished this century at the current pace. Even the rosiest, most optimistic projections of the authorities are that by 2045, almost 20 years from now, we might have a line that goes from Gilroy to Palmdale.
That would mean that if you wanted to go from L.A. to San Francisco, you would have to take one transit system for 2 hours, get off of that, get on the high-speed rail, then get off of that in Gilroy and take another transit system for 2 hours to get into San Francisco. That would be a 6-hour trip with three transit systems in 2045 that you could do today in 1 hour on Southwest Airlines.
Mr. Speaker, we have cut off Federal funding for this boondoggle. It is time for the State to do the same and stop wasting the precious dollars of our hardworking taxpayers.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the service of Orange City Fire Chief Sean deMetropolis, who is retiring from the city of Orange after 30 years of stellar service.
Chief deMetropolis began his career in 1995 and worked his way up to be fire chief. In addition to serving our community, Chief deMetropolis also stepped up to serve our great country by serving on FEMA's Task Force 5, which included a 20-day deployment to support Hurricane Katrina victims.
Chief deMetropolis has always led by example by dedicating his life to keeping the city of Orange safe.
Mr. Speaker, I congratulate Sean on his well-deserved retirement, and I thank Sean for his service.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the heroic actions of my neighbor, Otoniel Gomez.
Mr. Gomez lives in Santa Ana with his family. On December 5, tragedy struck. The Gomez family woke up to the smell of smoke.
Otoniel jumped out of a second-story window to escape the fire. Then, without missing a beat, he grabbed ladders to help his wife and children climb to safety.
Thanks to his bravery and quick thinking, the entire Gomez family, including their dog, Lyka, escaped without injury. That night, Mr. Gomez did show us what true bravery is all about.
Mr. Speaker, I pray that Otoniel's family continues to recover from the loss of their home.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the legacy of Doris Ann Derleth Hirota.
Doris was a Santa Ana resident, the youngest of seven, and she was born at the beginning of the Great Depression in Rochester, New York, in 1932.
Doris went on to attend nursing school in Chicago, where she met her husband, Tomio, when they both began their life of service to others.
In 1965, Doris and Tomio bought their home in Santa Ana, California, where they raised eight children and countless grandchildren and great- grandchildren. It was in this same house, on January 14, 2026, that Doris passed away at the age of 93.
Doris was surrounded by her family, sending her back to Heaven, where they all know she came from.
Mr. Speaker, Doris' legacy and memory will live on in her family.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the legacy of World War II and Korean war veteran Howard Koch.
During World War II, Howard served in the Army's elite 10th Mountain Division, America's only mountain and winter warfare fighting unit.
This unit, the elite 10th Mountain Division, was formed to defeat the Nazis who were entrenched high up in the snowy mountains of Italy.
This unit was made up of champion skiers, mountain climbers, and European mountaineers. After intensive training atop the Colorado Rockies, they climbed Italy's Riva Ridge and defeated the Nazi troops in a surprise attack.
That was not without paying a heavy price. Nearly 1,000 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division were killed, and some 4,000 were wounded in 4 months of fighting the Germans. They were successful, and the Germans surrendered.
Howard lived to be 101 years old, making his final journey to Heaven just last month.
Mr. Speaker, the memory of my very good friend, Howard, will live on, and his heroism will continue to inspire all of us.
Mr. Speaker, President Trump signed a funding bill into law yesterday that did more than just end a partial government shutdown. It corrected a serious wrong.
Buried deep inside the funding bill that the Senate passed and sent to us last November was a hidden provision that never should have seen the light of day. It was quietly inserted without transparency, without debate, and without notice to House leadership.
It allowed a handful of United States Senators to sue taxpayers for the rogue actions of the last administration. It enabled them to seek $500,000, per occurrence, for having their phone data seized by the Biden FBI.
This could have resulted in millions of tax dollars lining the pockets of a select group of United States Senators. It is no doubt that they were the architects of this provision. That is not accountability. That is corruption.
Nevertheless, Leader Thune and these Senators forced the House to swallow that provision in order to reopen the government after 43 long days. Families across the country were hurting. Pay for our troops was in jeopardy. Our airports were facing serious safety risks. In the meantime, congressional Democrats were referring to the shutdown as leverage.
Ultimately, House Republicans voted to fund the government and end the suffering. However, we never lost sight of undoing the self-serving money grab from taxpayers by a select group of Senators.
Hours before our vote, I introduced the first standalone bill to kill that provision. I also cosponsored Representative Austin Scott's legislation, which achieved the same outcome. It passed the House unanimously.
Yet, just like the SAVE Act, the bill sat on Leader Thune's desk week after week, month after month. I introduced a resolution that would have enabled Speaker Johnson to argue the unconstitutionality of the Senate payday
I even attempted to insert a repeal amendment into the National Defense Authorization Act. Yet, when we sent our funding bill to the Senate last week, we gave Senate leadership a taste of their own medicine and forced them to choose between the Senate payday or reopening the government.
Let me be very clear. I support real accountability. Last October, I signed onto a letter urging Attorney General Pam Bondi to launch a criminal investigation into the activities of Special Counsel Jack Smith and to consider possible Fourth Amendment violations during Operation Arctic Frost.
That deserved scrutiny. That deserves answers. It doesn't merit restitution paid for by hardworking waitresses, truck drivers, and small business owners. Hardworking taxpayers shouldn't be punished to put millions of dollars into the pockets of a select group of Senators.
The Tennesseans who I represent have suffered enough because of the many failed policies of the last administration, and they shouldn't be forced to pay more.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the Qualified Immunity Accountability Act because no one is above the law or the Constitution.
Across this country, we are witnessing a dangerous pattern: Federal law enforcement officers--specifically, ICE agents--operating with near total impunity. We have seen constitutional rights violated, and we have seen communities terrorized. We have seen American citizens harmed and, tragically, killed without meaningful accountability and reform.
Time and again, the Department of Homeland Security has failed to act or rein in its agents. That is not how we uphold the rule of law in this country.
Qualified immunity protects government officials, including police officers, from being held liable in civil lawsuits. Qualified immunity was meant to be a good faith protection to protect good faith officers from frivolous lawsuits, but that is not how it functions today. In practice, qualified immunity has become a get-out-of-jail-free card, a legal shield that blocks accountability even when an officer violates someone's constitutional rights or uses excessive force when none was needed. I know this because, as an attorney, I have tried these exact cases in court.
My bill changes that. The Qualified Immunity Accountability Act lowers the standard for prosecution so Federal law enforcement officers can be held accountable when they violate an individual's civil rights. It makes clear that no Federal agent, ICE included, is above the Constitution, and when rights are violated, there will be real consequences.
This bill simply reaffirms what is in the Constitution. It protects law enforcement who act in good faith, while ensuring that those who abuse their power cannot hide behind a doctrine that was never intended to excuse misconduct.
Accountability strengthens public safety. It builds trust between communities and police. Proper accountability does not weaken this. There are so many brave law enforcement officers who do their jobs and serve their communities with honor and distinction. Unfortunately, we have had some bad apples who are spoiling the bunch, and in doing so, are actually making it unsafe for law enforcement to do their jobs.
Across the country, ICE agents have conducted raids without warrants, detained U.S. citizens, used excessive force, and torn families apart, often with little oversight and no consequences. Communities are left traumatized, afraid to report crimes, afraid to seek medical care, and afraid to leave their homes to live their daily lives. This is not public safety. This is government-sanctioned fear.
When an agency can violate the Constitution and face no accountability at all, that agency is not enforcing the law, it is undermining it. The Constitution guarantees due process. It guarantees equal protection. It guarantees freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. Those rights are not optional, and they are not discretionary. They are not suggestions. They do not disappear because someone wears a badge.
This bill sends a simple message. If you violate someone's civil rights, you will be held accountable, no matter who you are.
I originally submitted this bill as an amendment to the ICE funding bill that was voted on yesterday, but Republicans in this House refused to have any amendments on this important issue even considered.
It is clear that they want to continue to give Kristi Noem and Donald Trump the green light to continue terrorizing our communities and have untrained ICE agents run rogue, killing American citizens.
This is not how trust is rebuilt. This is not how we restore faith in the rule of law. This is not how we honor the oath that every public servant takes to support and defend the Constitution.
Justice can never be conditional, and accountability can never be optional.
I urge my colleagues to support the Qualified Immunity Accountability Act, pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and stand on the side of the Constitution, the rule of law, and the basic principle that justice must apply equally to everyone.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and honor the retirement of Mr. Ronnie Fender after 44 years of extraordinary judicial service to Cook County, Georgia.
For more than four decades, Judge Fender has served with integrity, with patience, and an unwavering commitment to justice as a justice of the peace and as a magistrate judge. His courtroom has been a place not only of law but of fairness and respect for all who appeared before him.
Beyond the bench, Judge Fender was an educator who shaped minds with the same care and wisdom he brought to the law. His influence extends far beyond written rulings. It lives on in the countless people he taught, mentored, and served.
Though retiring from full-time service, Judge Fender will continue contributing as a senior magistrate judge on an as-needed basis and as a court bailiff. We are grateful for that continued dedication.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the invaluable role of pharmacists in supporting older adults as they navigate the difficulties of medication management.
This expertise is especially vital as we age when new prescriptions, changing doses, and potential drug interactions become more common, influenced by slower metabolism, reduced kidney function, and heightened drug sensitivity.
Pharmacists, after six to eight years of rigorous training, including a Doctor of Pharmacy degree, serve as trusted experts in how medications work, interact, and affect aging bodies.
Through services like medication therapy management, they review entire regimens, including prescriptions, over-the-counter products, vitamins, and supplements to identify duplicates, unnecessary drugs, or risky combinations that could lead to dizziness, falls, or confusion.
Pharmacists ensure medications are effective and taken correctly, while offering simplified routines, clear explanations of benefits and side effects, adherence tools such as pill organizers and synchronized refills, and convenient delivery options.
Pharmacists provide accessible guidance anytime, empowering informed decisions that promote safety, independence, and healthy aging.
Mr. Speaker, I rise here today to recognize the monuments being dedicated to the ancient Scottish Rite Valley of Savannah, Georgia.
The birth of the Scottish Rite dates back to 1801 when the Supreme Court of the 33rd Degree for the United States of America and the first Supreme Council in the world was established.
The Scottish Rite of Freemasonry seeks to better its members and strengthen their communities by teaching and promoting brotherly love, tolerance, and truth. The Rite embraces strong social, moral, and spiritual values that include compassion and dedication to God, family, and country.
These monuments serve as symbols of all the values the Scottish Rite stands for.
I thank the generous donors: Illustrious Brother Albert Nelson, Jr., and Lady Nellie; Dr. and Sir Knight James Arnold and Lady Barbara; Illustrious Brother Charles White and Lady Nordene; and Brother Morgan Derst and Lady Pam for their kind contributions.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize science teacher Bill Eswine, who has decided to retire at the end of the school year after 54 years of service to Savannah Country Day School.
Mr. Eswine was originally hired in 1972, and through his enthusiasm, adaptability, and love for teaching has taught science to generations of children. His impact is visible across the school's campus in the Savannah community, serving as director of the Coastal Ecology Camp and caretaker to various campus educational gardens.
Beyond Country Day, Mr. Eswine has been recognized as Teacher of the Year and honored by organizations such as Garden Club of America, the Georgia Independent School Association, and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. His commitment to education and fondness for learning has made a lasting difference in Savannah.
Mr. Speaker, I congratulate Mr. Eswine on a well-earned retirement.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to highlight the dedicated work of the staff that I get to work with and who work for me.
Mr. Speaker, I have served my community in the Bay Area as a city council member, a mayor, a county supervisor, State assembly member, a State senator, and now as a Member of the House of Representatives. In all of those years, one of the keys to our success and our engagement has been the dedicated public servants who have worked for me in all of those capacities. They are the people I will talk about today.
At community centers, healthcare clinics, schools, small businesses, townhalls, and more, our staff and I have encountered tens of thousands of Californians.
At these stops, I heard from families across California 10 about the urgent need to lower the cost of living and make everyday essentials more affordable. I heard from healthcare providers and patients about the looming harm of cuts from the big, ugly bill to Medicaid, called Medi-Cal in California, and the Affordable Care Act. I heard from students and teachers about the growing need for Federal support for education and specifically for special education.
I heard from seniors worried about threats to their Social Security and Medicare. Overwhelmingly, I heard from constituents about the deep concerns of the actions of the current administration, both here in our communities, in our country, and abroad.
Day in and day out, our team and I answered phones and read constituent emails and letters. Over the past year, we registered and responded to more than 170,000 constituent opinions in our district. When constituents call our offices here in Washington, in Walnut Creek, California, and Antioch, California, they speak to real people. We answer the phone. Sometimes that person is even me, which has led to some interesting conversations. Every single constituent receives a written response quickly.
One of the statistics that I am most proud of this year is that we hosted 23 townhalls. Under the lawlessness and the chaos of the current administration, townhalls and community meetings are more crucial than ever. Since coming to Congress, I have hosted almost 300 community townhalls. In 2025, we hosted more townhalls than in any prior year and connected with thousands of constituents across our community at these events.
Outside of townhalls, our team is still crisscrossing our district. They attended more than 370 community events in 2025 alone.
Sometimes, the only time people ever interact with their congressional Member's offices is because they need help desperately with a Federal agency. We are the last people they call desperately for help. Thanks to our casework team's compassion and persistence, we helped nearly 1,500 constituents in 2025, assisting with everything from immigration to Social Security.
Here in Washington, D.C., our legislative team was also hard at work. Last year, I authored 11 pieces of legislation and sponsored more than 200 bills. We used all of the tools at our disposal to hold the administration accountable in sending a voice for our constituents from 3,000 miles away here to this Chamber, sending dozens of oversight inquiries, joining amicus briefs, and more to protect our constituents.
Mr. Speaker, Tip O'Neill famously once said: ``All politics is local.'' I thank my staff for living that admonition from Speaker O'Neill.
Altogether, I hope this work helps people back home see that this House, Congress, even in the minority with this administration, can work hard for you. I look forward to continuing to serve you this coming year.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today as tensions across this country and in this very Chamber have reached a boiling point.
Yesterday, many of us, freshmen Members like myself and those Members with decades in this Chamber, faced one of the hardest votes any of us will ever take. We were forced to decide on a vote on a bill that bundled funding for ICE and DHS with the remainder of our government appropriations.
This is because we all know, Republicans and Democrats alike, that this administration is using ICE as a taxpayer-funded paramilitary force that is holding itself above the law with no transparency, accountability, or guardrails.
We see the carnage every day and the consequences everywhere. Federal immigration agents are terrorizing our communities, including last month in Minnesota, where two 37-year-olds, both Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed in separate shootings during the 9-week siege and occupation of Minnesota.
Now, 2 weeks ago, I traveled with 27 other House Members to Minnesota to a field hearing to hear firsthand the accounts from the victims and the advocates about ICE's abuses. I was jarred, and I am still troubled by their testimonies, including vans set up to stop all passersby for their papers; the dragging of a pregnant woman through the streets; the seizure of an elderly grandmother with asylum, pulled from her car and leaving two grandchildren in a running car, in ice cold temperatures, in the back seat; the shackling and detention of observers who merely honked their horn or blew whistles or took pictures; and detention holding pens of up to 50 people without adequate food, water, or bathroom breaks.
Now, I stand with Minnesota because what is happening in Minnesota has cruel consequences everywhere, including in my home State of Maryland. In my district, Maryland's Sixth, the administration covertly just acquired a $2 million warehouse in Williamsport to build a 1,500- bed processing center with no public or congressional input.
ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons likens these warehouses in Williamsport and nationwide to Amazon Prime facilities but for living human beings.
Let me be clear: People are not packages. Let me say it again. People are
A viral video surfaced showing ungodly conditions within ICE's Baltimore field office, a facility where my Sixth District constituents and other Marylanders are being detained.
For over 2 months, I sought to gain access to this facility to conduct a congressional oversight tour to see my constituents. Last Friday, after multiple unexplained cancellations by ICE, I finally gained access. What I found was truly disturbing. My team and I are still processing the horrendous conditions we saw in a holding site for temporary detention of 12 hours but which stretched for multiple days.
Detainees had precious little due process. They were forced to sleep on thin mats with foil blankets. They had a communal sink and toilet. I saw individuals behind thick walls signaling, rubbing their bellies, because they were hungry.
After pressing ICE, I also confirmed that the viral video was true. I asked to also speak with these detainees, but they would not allow me.
But I refuse to stay silent. In this Chamber, we have to unite around a shared principle. We all want our laws and immigration laws to be enforced but transparently, fairly, humanely, and in accordance with our values.
I want to make clear where I stand. I did not and will not vote on any bill that funds ICE until the American people and Congress have clear answers and meaningful change.
What we need is transparency and accountability, starting with the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Time and again, she has proved her incompetency.
I am also joining with my colleagues to cosponsor legislation, including banning ICE agents from wearing masks, requiring body cams for law enforcement agencies, and not deporting American citizens, as well as respecting constitutional laws and due process. These are commonsense measures we all should and must support.
In closing, this is not about values but who we are as a country. On my exit from the ICE Baltimore facility, a career DHS employee said: This is not who I am but what I do. I retorted: What we do is who we are.
Our country deserves transparency, humanity, and a respect for our constitutional laws and individual rights. I hope my Republican colleagues have the courage to stand up. Enough is enough.
Mr. Speaker, as the April tax deadline approaches, I am grateful that millions of Americans will keep larger tax cuts thanks to President Donald Trump signing the Working Families Tax Cut Act into law.
Based on the great law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, average tax refunds are projected to rise $1,000 this year in tax savings, with families keeping their own money.
These savings come from no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security for most recipients, and a deduction for made-in- America auto loan interest.
With the leadership of President Donald Trump and with the leadership of Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Republicans allow families, workers, and seniors to keep their own earnings.
In conclusion, God bless our troops as the global war on terrorism continues. Trump is reinstituting peace through strength, revealing war criminal Putin lies insulting Trump and mocking Trump as this is Ukraine Week across America and around the world, supporting Ukrainian patriots successfully succeeding as they keep and defend a sovereign Ukraine, defeating war criminal Putin from resurrecting the failed Soviet Union, as we also support the adoption and promotion of fair and free elections in the Republican of Georgia.
We rejoice for the people of Syria that the Assad dictatorship has been removed, and we thank President Donald Trump for his leadership to remove the dictatorship in Venezuela of Maduro. The people of Venezuela now have an opportunity for freedom and liberty. The people of Syria, because of Donald Trump, have been given a chance.
It is an exciting time in world history, as we have a President who stands up for freedom and democracy, for peace through strength.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize American Heart Month, observed every February, to raise awareness about cardiovascular health.
The first CPR training occurred in the early 1960s. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed February American Heart Month to make heart disease and cardiac arrest prevention a national priority.
Since its formation, the American Heart Association has been helping
More than 350,000 cardiac arrests happen each year away from medical facilities. The American Heart Association's goal is to ensure those lives are saved. Heart disease causes one in four deaths in the United States.
The American Heart Association provides resources on the many ways we can minimize our risk of a heart attack or cardiovascular disease.
Mr. Speaker, as a former healthcare professional, it is important for Americans to know that they are the first responders in the case of an emergency. Americans who learn CPR can be ready to help save a life.
Mr. Speaker, ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.''
I read these words today, the very first of the Articles of our Bill of Rights, the First Amendment, because 250 years later, our President does not seem to recognize them.
We were born from assembly. We live by free speech and a free press. These are the core tenets of our United States. Yet, the President floods American cities with lawless, thuggish ICE agents.
Their grotesque operations have killed two Americans in Minneapolis. It is hard to articulate the sheer brutality and the bone-chilling horror of the Renee Good and Alex Pretti murders, citizens shot dead while exercising their First Amendment rights.
Two journalists have been arrested. Children have been taken from their homes. U.S. citizens have been unjustly detained. At this point, more than 35 people have died in ICE custody, and 15 have been shot.
If we allow this to continue, then what does that say about our Nation?
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the Paralympic athletes from Wisconsin's Seventh District on earning the prestigious honor of competing as part of Team USA in the upcoming Olympics and Paralympic Winter Games starting this Friday, February 6.
Liam Cunningham of River Falls is competing in sled hockey. Dan Rose of Tomah and Matt Thums of Ogema are both competing in wheelchair curling. They overcame tremendous obstacles and hardships to earn their position with Team USA. They are role models to young athletes everywhere, proving that with resilience and determination, Mr. Speaker, you can achieve any goal you set your mind to.
Keep up the hard work and good luck. Make Wisconsin proud.
Mr. Speaker, every day I hear from small business owners about the challenges of operating in this economy. In the past year, small businesses have faced unrelenting attacks from this administration on everything from tariffs to immigration enforcement.
According to a recent survey from the Small Business Majority, 47 percent of small business owners say that increased Federal immigration enforcement has had a negative impact on their business. Many small businesses have lost revenue or had to modify their operations because employees and customers are afraid to come to work or to patronize their business.
When masked ICE agents in full tactical gear inflict violence against American citizens and then show up at businesses without identifying themselves, small businesses pay the price.
Most businessowners support commonsense immigration reform to modernize the legal immigration system to make it easier for qualified workers to come into the U.S. legally, but in Minnesota, following the tragic shootings, more than 60 Minneapolis-based business leaders called for cooperation to de-escalate tensions and achieve durable immigration reforms.
It is important for this body to hold Federal immigration officials accountable and ensure that small businesses do not bear the brunt of this administration's immigration enforcement abuses.
Mr. Speaker, this week, a Federal judge paused the administration's plan to end temporary protective status for Haitians. While this ruling provides temporary relief, we must stay engaged.
Now is not the time to end these protections. Haiti faces the Western Hemisphere's worst humanitarian crisis. There have been 3,000 civilians killed by gangs, millions displaced, widespread hunger, and Hurricane Melissa's devastation.
Mr. Speaker, 350,000 Haitian TPS recipients applied, passed background checks, contribute $4.4 billion annually to our economy, and pay over $1 billion in Federal taxes. Now is not the time to abandon our brothers and sisters in Haiti. We must stand up for protections and, indeed, pathways to citizenship, which have long been enshrined in the laws of this Nation.
I call on this administration to extend temporary protections and urge my colleagues to join us in that fight.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to condemn the out-of-control, untrained, secret ICE paramilitary that is beating and killing Americans all around the country.
Under this administration, rogue, lawless immigration agents are sowing chaos, causing terror and fear, and inciting violence on our streets. They are doing it with impunity because there is no accountability from the FBI.
This is not the America we know and love. This is not the democracy that freed itself from a king.
This is fascism, pure and simple. If the administration will not hold these rogue agents accountable, then we must do it.
That is why we must pass my ICE OUT Act to end the current qualified immunity standard for ICE and CBP agents and ensure victims of this excessive force can seek justice and accountability.
I will keep pushing Congress to do everything in its power to rein in this authoritarian immigration dragnet and get ICE out of our communities.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the importance of the Older Americans Act nutrition programs.
Providing nutrition assistance to seniors is one of the most fiscally responsible actions Congress can take, and it is also the right thing to do. An entire year of meals costs about the same as a single day in the hospital.
Unfortunately, one in four Meals on Wheels programs around the country have wait lists. Many older Americans wait months or even years to access program benefits. It is not just about the food. Nutrition programs also promote socialization, wellness, and safety checks. Food delivery or community meals might be the only social contact older Americans have during the day.
I have joined Meals on Wheels for deliveries in Oregon, and it is very meaningful. I have introduced a bipartisan House resolution recognizing the value of these Older Americans Act programs in addressing hunger, malnutrition, and isolation among seniors.
I invite my colleagues to show their support for the Older Americans Act nutrition programs by visiting their delivery and community meal programs and by signing on to our House resolution.
Mr. Speaker, 2026 marks 125 years since Congressman George Henry White of North Carolina delivered his historic farewell, or Phoenix address.
He was the fourth African American to represent North Carolina's Second Congressional District during the late 19th century, elected in 1896 and again in 1898, after moving to Tarboro, North Carolina, and at the time the only African-American Member of Congress.
He chose not to seek a third term of office, as new laws were enacted and due to other factors. In his farewell address, he spoke with remarkable hope, declaring that African Americans would one day return to Congress, rising again ``Phoenix-like.''
Though it took 28 years, his words call us to remember his service, especially during Black History Month. Let us prove worthy of the faith he placed in this incredible institution by ensuring that no voice is ever again forced to leave this Chamber unheard.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize two incredible athletes from Wisconsin's Eighth Congressional District who will represent Team USA at the 2026 Winter Olympics. Deedra Irwin of Pulaski and Paul Schommer of Appleton will compete in the biathlon this month in Milan and hope to be the first to bring home a medal for the U.S. in biathlon.
This is not the first Olympic trip for these two outstanding athletes. Both represented Team USA in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. This is not an easy feat to achieve, and competing in biathlon requires athletic skill, precision, and mental fortitude.
This event combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. Athletes have to race on skis through a course and stop to shoot at targets from different positions and at varying distances.
Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in wishing Deedra and Paul the best of luck in the upcoming Olympic Games. As they get ready to compete, I hope they know that everyone across northeast Wisconsin and our great country will be cheering them on.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate the College of San Mateo's football team, the Bulldogs, on becoming back-to-back champions. Their dramatic 28-27 victory in the California Community College Athletic Association Championship was their impressive third title in 4 years.
While the San Francisco Bay Area welcomes the NFL for Super Bowl LX, I would like to also properly call attention to this remarkable program. Bulldogs Coach Tim Tulloch says it best: These students work hard to overcome adversity, and this transformational program builds young men for the rest of their lives. The team has a 3.4 GPA. Thanks to their academic achievements and talent on the gridiron, many earn scholarships to transfer to 4-year universities.
Congratulations to the College of San Mateo Bulldogs on another historic championship title. They represent the Nation's best of community college athletes in the heart of my district, and they make us all proud.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor and celebrate a remarkable woman, Helen Pluta, whose life was defined by compassion, generosity, and unwavering commitment to others.
Helen's contributions to Rochester are profound and lasting. Alongside her late husband, Andy, she helped build the Pluta Cancer Center that began as a vision for compassionate, patient-centered care and continues today as a place of hope and healing that has served thousands of patients and families in our community, including my own.
Helen gave of her time, her spirit, and her heart, bringing warmth and laughter wherever she went. Helen and her entire family's generosity opened doors and eased burdens. Their dedication reminds us what it means to truly care for your neighbor.
We mourn her passing, but we also give thanks for a life of service, love, and profound impact.
Rochester is a better place because Helen Pluta walked among us.
Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1032, I call up the bill (H.R. 4090) to codify certain provisions of certain Executive Orders relating to domestic mining and hardrock mineral resources, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 1032, the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Natural Resources, printed in the bill, is adopted and the bill, as amended, is considered read.
The text of the bill, as amended, is as follows:
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The bill, as amended, shall be debatable for 1 hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Natural Resources or their respective designees.
The gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Huffman) each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman).
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 4090.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Arkansas?
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4090, the Critical Mineral Dominance Act.
This legislation addresses one of the most urgent challenges facing our Nation today: our growing and unnecessary dependence on other nations for the critical minerals that drive our economy and sustain our national defense.
The United States has never been more reliant on hard rock minerals than it is today. Copper is the backbone of our electricity grid. Nickel, cobalt, and lithium go into the batteries that power our communications devices and back up critical infrastructure such as hospitals and data centers. Rare earth elements make possible the cutting-edge technologies that enable our economy to innovate and our military to keep us safe.
The global mineral race is not optional. Over the next 15 years, demand for copper and rare earth elements is expected to rise by 50 percent; cobalt, 150 percent; and lithium, up to 500 percent. Shortages of all the above could be upon us within a decade.
Yet these minerals are right here under our feet. We have the safest, most sophisticated, efficient, and environmentally friendly mining technology and workforce anywhere in the world. The United States should be the world's mineral supply chain. The only reason we are not is because of our outdated, shortsighted Federal policy that hinders domestic mining.
President Trump recognized the dangerous gap between America's mineral needs and mineral production. Upon returning to office a year ago, he signed three executive orders to help close that gap.
The first directed Federal agencies to correct or rescind regulations that unduly burden domestic mining and instructed the Secretary of the Interior to accelerate geologic mapping.
A second executive order required Federal agencies to prioritize mineral development on viable Federal lands.
The third directed Federal agencies to assess the economic costs and national security risks of our dependence on foreign minerals.
H.R. 4090, sponsored by the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Stauber), would codify the natural resources-related provisions of these EOs and require additional reporting from the Department of the Interior.
The reports will, for the first time, reveal the true costs that mineral dependence imposes on the U.S. economy. They will clarify the scope and location of America's vast mineral deposits.
During markup, the Natural Resources Committee worked in a bipartisan manner to strengthen the bill, adopting two minority amendments that required DOI to report to Congress on barriers to byproduct mineral production on Federal lands and to examine projects with the potential to produce hard rock minerals from coal ash and coal byproducts.
Mr. Speaker, the alternative to American mineral dominance is buying foreign minerals from supply chains controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. That is where we are now: mineral dependence. Mineral dependence benefits no one except the CCP. Mineral dependence does not help the environment. It does not drive economic growth. It doesn't make us or our allies safer.
American mineral dominance will create thousands of new mining and mineral-related jobs. It will establish the United States as the hub of the world's mineral market. It will secure critical mineral access for the U.S. military and for our allies.
Mr. Speaker, we need these minerals to build a better future. Our choice is whether to lead the world in meeting that need as only we can or to cede that responsibility to corrupt regimes, systems, and foreign enemies we know will abuse it. The American people have made their choice. It is time for us to honor it.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Stauber for his work on this legislation. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 4090, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 4090, a bill that hands the mining industry, amazingly, the power to gut its own regulations while doing nothing to secure American mineral supply chains or help make life more affordable for the American people.
It is more of the same from House Republicans and this administration, more favors for their billionaire buddies, and more ways to enrich themselves all at the expense of the American people, who are struggling.
If we asked everyday Americans right now to list 100 things that you care about that you want Congress to be working on to make your life better, I promise you that giving more sweetheart deals to multinational mining corporations would not be anywhere on that list. I can think of a thousand better ways to spend our time than debating this bill on the House floor. We could be reining in the out-of-control agency ICE, which is terrorizing communities around the country and murdering people in the streets.
We should be addressing skyrocketing healthcare costs, which our Republican colleagues seem to have forgotten entirely about. We could be talking about how to lower energy prices, including the skyrocketing utility bills caused by Donald Trump's crazy war on clean energy, but no. We are back here, once again, talking about deregulation designed for and by the mining industry.
H.R. 4090 would codify parts of President Trump's executive orders on mining. I will say that we can agree on many of the bill's stated goals: creating good jobs, strengthening our supply chains, reducing the global influence of our adversaries, and safeguarding national security.
The stated goals are one thing. Then there is what actually is in the bill, what the bill does, and that is quite another thing.
We should not confuse the mining industry's best interests with the public interest. This bill would direct the Interior Secretary to take all necessary steps to expedite and approve certain priority projects with no restrictions on who operates the projects, what they mine, or where.
There is nothing to stop this administration right now from prioritizing mines owned and controlled by our foreign adversaries. That loophole, that glaring problem, that national security threat, is not corrected at all in this bill. There is nothing to require a focus on minerals actually needed for clean energy and national defense. There is nothing to prevent the administration from approving mines on sensitive public lands or even in our national parks. These are all simple safeguards that, for some reason, are not in this legislation. That is ripe for abuse and misuse of our public resources when you advance a bill like this.
In prioritizing lands for mining, the bill makes no mention of minimizing conflict with neighboring communities, like Tribes, or protecting other important natural resources and uses of public lands like logging, grazing, and recreation. The bill also looks to the mining industry itself for direction on which regulations to roll back, and again, no public input and no Tribal consultation.
My colleagues across the aisle often tout the United States' environmental and labor protections as the best in the world, but as protections are eroded in favor of polluters over people, who is to say that basic protections for drinking water and worker safety aren't the next targets?
Mr. Speaker, our environmental laws have reined in the industry's worst pollution and abuses, but regulations being successful doesn't mean that we no longer need them. Nothing in this bill guarantees that minerals mined here will stay here or benefit Americans.
Time and again, we have suggested guardrails that could be put in place, into bills like this, to make sure that foreign adversaries don't end up taking advantage of all of these corporate giveaways that our Republican friends keep putting on the table. It ensures that they don't come here and, practically for free, extract our publicly owned natural resources and take them to other parts of the world and use them in ways that are not in our interests. We keep offering these guardrails. Our Republican colleagues keep saying no.
Under the General Mining Act of 1872, anyone, including subsidiaries of foreign adversaries, can claim our publicly owned materials, mine them for free, ship them abroad into the global market, and do nothing to help the interests of the United States of America.
Time and again, we have raised this glaring vulnerability with legitimate solutions on the table to address it, and our Republican friends refuse to work with us.
Mr. Speaker, I oppose H.R. 4090, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Stauber), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources and the lead sponsor of this legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of my bipartisan bill, H.R. 4090, the Critical Mineral Dominance Act.
This bill will help strengthen our Nation's critical mineral security and enable our critical mineral dominance by codifying several of the policies that President Trump put forth in his hardrock mining executive orders earlier this year.
This bill does three things, Mr. Speaker. First, it mandates a new study on the cost of U.S. mineral import reliance, including from adversarial nations like China. This will help give the United States a much clearer picture into our critical mineral security, including what kind of vulnerabilities we face by failing to mine here and continuing to depend on other nations.
Next, it requires the administration to expedite priority mining projects on Federal lands and identify Federal lands that have the potential for new mineral production, as well as increase geological mapping to give us a much clearer picture of our incredible mineral wealth right here in the United States.
Lastly, this bill directs the Secretary of the Interior to revise or rescind any agency actions that are a barrier to domestic mining, as well as make recommendations to Congress as to how current law can be changed to streamline mineral development. It will also conduct a broader review of State and local laws that are also holding us back from our true mineral potential.
I think each and every one of my colleagues in this body, from both sides of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, understands and realizes the important role that critical minerals play in our 21st century economy. This will only increase as time goes on.
We have tremendous mineral wealth in our country, not only in my district in northern Minnesota, which is home to the largest untapped copper-nickel deposit in the world, but in States all across this great Nation.
There is no reason for the United States to be dependent on other countries, including foreign adversarial nations, for our critical mineral future. Nobody does it better than the United States.
I implore my colleagues: Where is the world currently mining for critical minerals that have better labor standards or environmental standards than us?
Mr. Speaker, nothing in this bill green-lights any mining project without necessary scrutiny. Nothing in this bill allows for a project to bypass NEPA, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, or the Endangered Species Act, nothing.
This bill is a strong signal from Congress to the executive branch that we need to get serious about our critical mineral strategy and take necessary steps to win once again.
Before I yield back, I would note a number of the outside groups that are supporting this legislation. They include labor unions like the North America's Building Trades Unions and the Laborers' International Union of North America, LIUNA.
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a statement in support from Albert Gore, executive director of Zero Emission Transportation Association, representing the views of the domestic electric vehicle industry; a letter of support from a group of 17 organizations representing different areas of the domestic mining sector; a letter of support from the Essential Minerals Association; and a November 2025 op-ed published by RealClearEnergy, expressing support for this legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, there we have it, and I am sure not for the last time in this conversation. The risk of terrible environmental harm by this huge corporate giveaway is nothing to worry about because we have NEPA. We have the Clean Water Act. We have the Environmental Protection Agency. We have all of these environmental safeguards, every one of which is under withering attack from the same colleagues across the aisle who are moving bills like this and from this administration.
This is across the board. There is legislation to gut all of these bedrock environmental laws. There are actions by this administration and litigation moving forward from the industry.
Mr. Speaker, it is cold comfort indeed. I am, frankly, shocked that anyone across the aisle could even say these things with a straight face and point to our bedrock environmental laws as an assurance that nothing will go wrong for the environment, our public lands, our natural resources, Tribes, and others who are worried about this corporate giveaway.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from upstate New York (Mr. Tonko).
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill. Critical minerals are essential building blocks for a clean energy economy and many other technologies central to our everyday lives. I do not dispute that, but how we source and process these materials matters just as much as how quickly we deploy them.
We must pursue critical minerals in a way that is responsible and in a way that is sustainable. Demand for these
This should push us toward thoughtful policies that strengthen domestic supply chains and not reckless ones that endanger our environment and communities like H.R. 4090.
One underutilized source of critical minerals is recycling. By recovering and reusing already mined resources, we are tapping into a new domestic supply. While recycling alone will not meet all of our projected demand, it can significantly reduce pressure on primary extraction if we invest now. This bill completely ignores the role of recycling to strengthen our supply chains.
Another way to strengthen these supply chains is through enhanced transparency. Last Congress, I introduced the bipartisan Critical Materials TRACE Act to improve supply chain visibility. Transparency can help drive responsible sourcing and innovation and reduce environmental, labor, and human rights abuses, ultimately making our supply chains more secure.
These are areas where bipartisan agreement is indeed possible, but H.R. 4090 is not that answer. This bill would make it easier to sell off public lands to polluting mining companies and weaken key protections that safeguard our drinking water and protect communities.
We can meet our critical mineral needs without sacrificing public lands, environmental laws, or, yes, public health. For these reasons, I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, there seems to be a lot of agreement on this issue. There is the fact that we need more critical minerals in the United States, and the demand for that is not going away. We need it for economic security. We need it for national security. The rub seems to be where these critical minerals and elements are going to come from. What we are promoting is that they come from America.
The other argument seems to be that we need them but not in our backyard. That has been the position of our country for far too long.
Mr. Speaker, instead of not in our backyard, it is much better in our backyard because we have better labor standards, better environmental standards, and better health and safety standards.
God has blessed our country with these deposits of minerals really from sea to shining sea. We just need to be getting them out of the ground here, creating American jobs while doing that, creating more American jobs and more wealth while we refine those ores into metals and then manufacturing from that.
That is what our vision is. We want to see Americans use American resources to promote American security and American economic growth. I wish we could all agree on that, but that is what this bill will help to promote.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock).
Mr. Speaker, take a good look around you. Everything you see wherever you look, everything that makes your life comfortable, everything that makes your life possible--everything--is either mined, or it is grown. There are no exceptions. Everything you enjoy and depend upon is either mined or grown from the ground. The generation that built our country understood this.
Mr. Speaker, over the chair from which you preside is emblazoned the prayer from Daniel Webster, which reads: ``Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests and see whether we also in our day and generation may not perform something worthy to be remembered.''
Yet, for 50 years, the environmental left has torn down these great achievements and waged war against everything that is mined or grown. They have piled tax upon tax, restriction upon restriction, and regulation upon regulation that have made mining and agriculture increasingly expensive and needlessly scarce.
That is the heart of the affordability crisis. The left has turned abundance into scarcity. Finally, in our day, a new generation is discovering that this self-destructive lunacy is not going to end well.
That brings us to this bill to reduce the regulatory burdens that the left has imposed upon our Nation's ability to prosper and advance. It codifies President Trump's executive orders that identify the resources that we can develop and calls forth the powers of prosperity that those resources promise.
It restores freedom to meet the challenge that Daniel Webster set before us by realigning our institutions on behalf of the American people so that we too can perform something worthy to be remembered, to make America great again.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member Huffman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I strongly oppose H.R. 4090. This bill hands the mining industry the power to gut its own regulations. It directs the Secretary of the Interior to expedite and approve any mine that the administration deems a priority, and it tells the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service to identify any public lands that should be a priority for mining, without any public input or Tribal consultation.
In the eyes of this administration mineral dominance means mining above all else--above protection of our public lands, above the people who will live with toxic pollution, and above the local communities' interests.
My home State of Arizona is all too familiar with the harms left behind from an unregulated mining industry. Over a century of mining left polluted waters, poisoned land, and generations of families feeling the health impacts, including my own. Tribal nations had their lands stolen and sacred sites desecrated by the mining industry.
Some may argue that the mining industry is different now and that our regulations are in need of change. I agree that we are in need of modernization, but H.R. 4090 is a move in the wrong direction.
We need only look at the notorious track records of mining companies abroad to see what disaster will look like in the United States.
BHP, one of the world's largest foreign mining companies and one of the co-owners of the proposed Resolution Copper mine in Arizona, was responsible for the disastrous collapse of a Brazilian tailings dam that killed 19 people and spilled tons of toxic waste into a major river in 2015. This disaster has been called Brazil's worst environmental disaster.
Rio Tinto, the other co-owner of Resolution Copper, blew up a 46,000- year-old sacred aboriginal site in Australia in 2020.
Now, just upstream from Phoenix, Arizona, BHP and Rio Tinto are pushing to destroy Oak Flat, a sacred site for multiple Apache Tribes that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, to build the Resolution Copper mine. This is a mine that would create one of the largest toxic tailings dams and ponds in the world.
Does that sound like an industry ready to responsibly regulate itself?
Through the Save Oak Flat from Foreign Mining Act, I seek to reverse the giveaway of publicly owned land and the natural resources beneath it to this foreign mining conglomerate. It is clear that we have to reaffirm that decisions about mining on public lands must respect Tribal nations, local communities, and public health. Tribes and local communities most impacted by mining deserve more say, not less, in the future of their lands and waters.
This bill is about making it easier for foreign entities to extract and take away America's resources and leave the pollution to forever scar the land. We must fight back. We must listen, and we must be the advocates and fighters that we were sent here to be. We must protect our public lands for future generations.
Mr. Speaker, I urge strong opposition to H.R. 4090.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, if you read the bill, there is absolutely nothing in the bill
We all want these things. We all recognize that we need these things. We have to have these critical minerals. We have to have these rare earth elements, but the mindset is that we will just get them from somewhere else. We will ship off our environmental issues to some other country and let them deal with it instead of dealing with them here in America, where we, again, have the most stringent rules, have the highest expectations, protect human rights, protect the environment, and promote occupational health and safety.
Show me some place in the world that does that better than we do. It is certainly not Communist China, where all of these rare earths and critical minerals are coming from right now.
Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Stauber).
Mr. Speaker, my good friends on the other side of the aisle will promote, again, anywhere but America and any worker but the American worker when it comes to mining. Anywhere but America, and any worker but the American worker.
They are exporting their environmental guilt. They are okay with getting these critical minerals mined by child slave labor.
Mr. Speaker, 30 percent of the cobalt comes from child slave labor. Both the Trump and the Biden administration agree with that.
Mr. Speaker, there is nothing in this legislation that removes NEPA. Nothing in this legislation removes the clean water. Nothing in this legislation removes the clean air in the decisionmaking, and nothing in this legislation removes any of the endangered species protections.
Mr. Speaker, we took a bipartisan trip last year up to Alaska. Greens Creek Mine is in a national monument. There is exceptional mining of the nickel in the national monument. We can do it here, Mr. Speaker, better than anywhere. We have the mineral wealth. We have the workers. We can do both. We can have a clean environment and clean water and domestically mine.
My friends across the aisle consistently say: Yes, we need critical minerals. Yes, we need if for strategic national security. Yes, we need it for medical instrument technology. Yes, we need it for our everyday lives. They refuse to allow it to happen. They put up roadblock after roadblock. They say that they want it, but they never support it, or very rarely support it.
That is the mindset and the philosophy, Mr. Speaker, that has brought American critical mineral mining to its knees and allowed China to take over.
China's global mineral dominance is not a threat. It is a reality. This is what is happening right now because of that philosophy of not in my backyard, not in our backyard.
There is a philosophy that it is better in our backyard. We do it better than anybody. Look at the unions that are supporting this piece of legislation. It came out of committee in a bipartisan fashion. This is what the American people want, bipartisan work. Here it is.
I look forward to this bipartisan piece of legislation that strengthens our national security moving forward this afternoon.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, there they go again. For the second time, we hear references to NEPA, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the bedrock environmental laws, that they will protect us from all of these terrible scenarios that they say Democrats are raising as scare tactics.
I just can't think of anything less persuasive than hearing that kind of cold comfort from the very folks who are attacking every one of those bedrock environmental laws with other legislation and through administrative actions by this President and in the courts. It is remarkably hypocritical and certainly not very persuasive.
Now, when we think about this mining free-for-all that our Republican friends are trying to create with this legislation, we are not having this conversation in a vacuum. We have to think about who benefits.
Just 2 weeks ago, the Trump administration announced that it would invest over a billion dollars and take an equity stake in USA Rare Earth, a mining and manufacturing company. So much for concerns about socialism. Reporting uncovered that USA Rare Earth hired Cantor Fitzgerald to help with fundraising, a firm chaired by Brandon Lutnick. If that sounds familiar, it is because he is the son of Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick.
In October, the Trump administration announced equity investments in the mining company Trilogy Metals, while simultaneously directing agencies to fast-track permitting for Ambler Road, the controversial project needed to access Trilogy Metals' proposed mine site. Trilogy Metals' third largest shareholder is John Alfred Paulson, a Trump mega donor and an economic adviser. His Trilogy shares increased by $70 million in value after that announcement.
It is a similar story for Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who personally sold shares worth between $50,000 and $100,000 in the mining company MP Materials following a July announcement of one of these lucrative equity deals.
The administration is making a pattern out of picking winners and losers in the mining industry, and a suspicious number of those winners have close ties to Trump officials or Trump family members. This is an incredible grift that our friends across the aisle are playing into.
These deals tie taxpayer dollars to corporate balance sheets and incentivize administration officials to prioritize individual corporate interests over the broader public good.
Earlier this week, myself, Ranking Member Robert Garcia of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Ranking Member Martin Heinrich of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources sent a joint letter to the administration, demanding answers on Trump's taxpayer-funded mining spending spree.
To date, there has been no public disclosure of procedures or safeguards in place to ensure these ownership stakes do not influence permitting decisions, regulation, enforcement, contracting decisions, or other agency decisions relating to these mining and mineral projects. Before we give this administration even more power to enrich themselves and their friends at the expense of everyday Americans, let's get some answers to these basic questions.
Now, with that, Mr. Speaker, a lot has been said about China, the boogeyman of China, our adversary on the global stage. Yet, we have a bill before us that, my guess is, the People's Republic of China would absolutely love. Here to tell us more about that is the gentlewoman from New Mexico.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez).
Mr. Speaker, we keep hearing from the other side that we need to mine in America, and we just heard the ranking member talk about how if we are going to mine in America, if we are going to mine anywhere, we should make sure that it is done free of corruption. He didn't use that word, but that is the word that we are worried about.
What I am going to talk about today is that we should make sure where those minerals are going if we are mining in America. That is the question I keep asking: Where are they going? The reality is, because they keep refusing amendments that I bring up, those minerals are going overseas, and those minerals are going to China.
Under our outdated mining laws, a foreign corporation can set up a shell company to stake a claim. Guess what. They get U.S. minerals for free, zero royalty.
The Critical Mineral Dominance Act--these titles they have are always the opposite of what they do--this act that they are trying to sell the American people today, is yet another handout to multinational mining companies that will do nothing to stop our adversaries from shipping our publicly owned critical minerals overseas.
Mr. Speaker, at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this
In a hearing last year, I described legislation similar to what I am proposing to Trump's Secretary of the Interior Burgum. His response: ``I don't think we should be allowing foreign adversaries to mine critical minerals in our country.''
Sadly, Republicans must disagree with Secretary Burgum because they keep opposing every one of my amendments to protect American minerals from foreign adversaries.
With every rejection, they are telling the American people that they care more about big international mining corporations than they care about you, about your clean water, about your working conditions.
This bill would allow our adversaries to fast-track permitting, and the people who pay for that are United States citizens who those regulations are meant to protect.
It doesn't make any sense, except, as I mentioned earlier, that Republican bill titles are always the opposite of what the text says. This bill doesn't give the United States dominance. It opens the door for foreign ownership of our critical minerals.
Republicans always seem to stand with the richest corporations instead of Americans.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record immediately prior to the motion to recommit.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentlewoman from New Mexico?
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, in preparing for this floor debate, I should have asked my staff to bring posters of smoke and mirrors because it would be fitting for the arguments that we are hearing that seem to try to distract us from everything but the real issue. That issue is that we are not producing the minerals and elements here in our country that we need for our economy and our defense, and China is dominating those markets.
Now, I agree with the gentlewoman from New Mexico: We should be processing these mined materials here in the United States. We have to ask ourselves the question: Why aren't we processing more minerals in the United States? Number one is that we can't get new mines. Why do we need a processing facility if we can't get the material we need to go through the processing facility?
The other one is that we can't permit a new processing facility in a timely manner and build it in a cost-competitive manner because of our overburdensome permitting and regulatory processes and laws that we have here in the United States.
This is the argument why we need permitting reform, why we need to speed up the process, and why we need to give certainty to investors that we can build here in America again.
When we talk about refining metals, let's talk about copper. In 1995, we produced three times more copper than China. Today, they are producing 10 times more copper than we are. We have two copper smelters. They have 50. It is not because we don't know how to build copper smelters, don't have copper deposits, or don't want to produce copper in the U.S. It is the fact that there have been so many obstacles and barriers put in place that it has driven that industry overseas to other places.
It is time we bring it back here and do it in a more environmentally responsible manner--again, with human rights protections, health and safety protections, environmental protections, and the standards of the United States. It is time we start doing this in our backyard and not exporting our issues to other countries while we turn a blind eye to it.
Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Stauber).
Mr. Speaker, I want to paraphrase in my own mind what was said moments ago across the aisle, real simple: anywhere but America, any worker but the American worker. I am paraphrasing from my own mind what I heard. The excuses, the excuses, the excuses, the excuses. We have to mine here. We can't mine here.
In fact, Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman who just spoke in her beautiful State, she has allowed oil and gas development. In her beautiful State, she has allowed mining. Why not in my State? Why can't my union workers make the $135,000-a-year jobs, but in her State it is okay? This bill is for the entire country.
Mr. Speaker, my constituents need good-paying jobs, too. It is good for our economy and good for our communities. The technology we use is second to none.
I want to answer my friend from New Mexico who just spoke. She asked: Why aren't we processing and refining here? I have good news for her. Very shortly, there is going to be legislation to allow that, to permit the mining and processing here in the United States of America. I am going to go directly to my good friend and colleague from New Mexico to help sponsor that with me because she is right. Let's do it here. Let's mine here, Mr. Speaker. I am going to give her and my friends across the aisle that opportunity very shortly.
The fact of the matter is, we have the opportunity. We have to remove the political science--the truth and the facts--to allow this mining to move forward.
This is our backyard. My good friend across the aisle, who is managing the debate, talked about the economic value or the lack thereof. I share with my good friend and colleague that in my State of Minnesota, just one mine proposed, just one, will bring between $1.4 and $1.8 billion of Federal revenue, $800 million for the taxpayers of Minnesota. Every single school district in the great State of Minnesota benefits from mining.
You want to know why I am passionate? These are my constituents that will be mining these critical minerals with the best labor standards and the best environmental standards in the world. We have been mining in Minnesota for 145 years. We have mined the iron ore that makes over 80 percent of this Nation's steel.
The cleanest water in the State of Minnesota, Mr. Speaker, is in the heart of mining country in Buhl, Minnesota. We know how to do it.
Let's stop exporting our environmental guilt. Let's stop exporting our environmental guilt and do it here with our labor standards, our technology, and our workers.
I am happy that New Mexico has oil and gas development and mining development. I am happy for those workers. We need that. Let Minnesota mine.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, if my friend from Minnesota actually heard us say the things that he just says he heard in his own mind, I am genuinely worried that we need to get an audiologist in here. I am glad that we have a court reporter and that we have a video record because we said nothing of the kind.
My friend, Mr. Westerman, did say something very important. I don't know if this was his intent, but he sort of made one of our points for us. We cannot mine our way to security with brute force because China controls 80 percent of the world's processing power and nearly 90 percent for rare earth elements. If our only solution is to just have more and more mines and to open up this mining free-for-all in the United States, as Republicans seem singularly focused on, we are essentially giving a gift to our largest adversary.
Let me tell you what this bill does to address the lack of processing capacity here in the United States--or anywhere outside of China-- nothing, absolutely nothing. That is what it has been throughout this Congress from our friends across the aisle--crickets about addressing the real problem when it comes to our competitive threat of China on processing but a rush to open
Setting up a safe, environmentally sound processing industry in the United States and with our allies does have some barriers right now, but rarely is the lack of raw mine materials one of those barriers.
Take copper and lithium, for example. The Bipartisan Policy Center published a report last year that found that sourcing feedstock domestically or from free trade agreement countries was not a primary barrier to processing.
Much bigger barriers are competition for labor and a lack of price competitiveness, which are major barriers across the board. For some of the other essential minerals like cobalt, nickel, and rare earths, while feedstock is a challenge, it certainly isn't the only one. It is naive to think that fast-tracking mines alone will secure our supply chains and fix these problems.
Instead, we should support a responsible processing strategy, build a more circular economy, and innovate around low-impact mineral sources, like byproduct recovery from mine tailings and recycling, as Mr. Tonko from New York talked about a moment ago.
We need to train the highly skilled American workforce that we need to do all of these jobs. These are things that we need to be working together on. Instead, it is always a rush to open up public lands and give more corporate giveaways for mines.
It has been suggested that there is some sort of a spiteful agenda behind all this, a NIMBY interest where some States allow oil and gas extraction but they don't want it done in Minnesota and other places.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez) to speak about some of those accusations that have been made.
Mr. Speaker, I came to the floor to offer an amendment so that we could prevent our foreign adversaries from mining American resources for free and taking them across the ocean to their lands. When we let our foreign adversaries take our resources away for free, it doesn't do any good for American dominance or for American taxpayers.
My opponents in this argument have decided to attack New Mexico's oil and gas and mining interests. Let me remind the gentleman that in New Mexico--and I am pleased that in New Mexico we have a lot of oil and gas production, including in my district--we have wind and solar production, including in my district; we have mining, including in my district, but we do it with sensible regulation so that our clean water and air and the economic interest of our citizens are protected.
What I am suggesting to him is that the environmental protections that we have in New Mexico apply across the country because there was a time when it wasn't like that.
That is because there was a time when it wasn't like that. I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that in my backyard, where I played, where I drank water, and where we fished as children, those waters were destroyed by mining. That was because there wasn't enough regulation.
Guess who had to clean up that mining? It was taxpayers, taxpayers in the State, and not so much the Federal Government.
What we are trying to do is protect the taxpayers from these mining companies that will put profit above planet and will put profit above the interests of the communities that live there. It is because when they mined irresponsibly, they destroyed water and destroyed jobs.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
They destroyed things I care about. They destroyed fishing, and they destroyed farming. I am downstream. I own land. I own farmland that is downstream from those mining companies' destruction. I am trying to protect that. I am trying to protect everybody who relies on clean water, who is downstream from mining companies.
Mr. Speaker, let me tell you, there are 50 million gallons a day of contaminated water that is put into our groundwater and our streams from mines that didn't have regulation. That is what we are trying to do, to avoid an increase in that 50 million gallons a day of dirty water.
We cannot afford to destroy our water. We cannot afford to fast-track mining companies that aren't going to do the right thing by the American people. We cannot afford to send our resources overseas to China.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, let's look at the issue at hand here. I want to address the policy issue and the weakness in the argument that we could restrict mining companies to 10 percent Chinese ownership. That is a bad policy decision.
It is a bad policy decision, Mr. Speaker, because if you are the Chinese Communist Party and see a mine is getting ready to happen in the United States, and it is going to be done by a company that is traded publicly, you could go buy 10.1 percent and stop the project. We don't need that kind of policy.
Plus, that policy doesn't apply to the jurisdiction of this bill. If a policy like that needs to be designed, then it needs to go through the Financial Services Committee.
Also, don't think, Mr. Speaker, that our opposition on this--being China, for the most part--will not play dirty. What they do is when they see any kind of mining project or processing facility considered in the United States, they dump product onto the global market, driving the price down to make the economics such that nobody would invest in that project.
Fortunately, that is being addressed. Just this week, the administration announced something called the vault, which will be a repository for critical minerals. It will be similar to our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We will have strategic critical mineral reserves.
We need to be able to produce those critical minerals here in the United States to put in that reserve, which will insulate against foreign bad actors dumping in our markets to drive the prices down to make projects not economically viable.
Again, the real issue here is that we need this material in America, sourced by American mining companies, processed in America, and going into American manufacturing. We can partner with our allies around the world to help make this happen, but when we look at where the deposits are, they are here in America. We have to produce oil and gas where the oil and gas deposits are. We have to mine copper where the copper deposits are.
Again, we are blessed to have all of those things here in our country, but we are not utilizing them. Because we are not utilizing them, we are allowing our adversaries to control the markets.
It is not just an economic issue. It is a national security issue. That is why we need legislation like this legislation. That is why we need permitting reform.
We talk about building processing facilities in America. We passed the bipartisan permitting reform bill, but, unfortunately, many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle voted against that.
The Senate is considering that now. Hopefully, the Senate will pass that bill in a bipartisan manner, like we did in the House, but with a larger bipartisan group. We can get it to the President's desk so we can create certainty, so we can start building more processing and manufacturing here in our country, and so we can utilize these abundant resources that we have.
Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for speakers. I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I oppose H.R. 4090 for all the reasons that have been discussed.
This is a bill that directs the administration to prioritize and approve mines, any mines that it wants, even ones owned by foreign adversaries, giving them an expedited path to mine our publicly owned minerals and to export them, usually straight to China.
The Republicans have named it the Critical Mineral Dominance Act, but they forgot to make sure that it was America that would benefit. Democrats have tried again and again to add commonsense guardrails to stop foreign adversaries from benefiting from our
Let's drop the facade. This bill is not about American mineral dominance. It is not about critical minerals, either, because nothing in this bill limits the special treatment to strategically important minerals. Nothing in this bill would stop the administration from declaring a gold mine a priority and fast-tracking it. We have already seen them give millions of taxpayer dollars away to a gold mine in Nevada. Gold has never been critical, except when it comes to, I guess, decorating the White House.
This bill is an industry giveaway, pure and simple, and it leaves Americans footing the bill.
We have heard a lot of passionate talk from across the aisle about mining more here in America because we do it best and because we have such strong environmental and labor safeguards. However, this bill tells the Interior Department and the Forest Service to roll back those very regulations that my colleagues brag about and to go ahead and weaken pollution protections if the mining industry thinks they are too ``burdensome.''
Communities around the country know the consequences of unregulated mining all too well, especially Tribal communities who have borne much of the brunt of mining pollution: toxic waste, poisoned land, polluted water, and generations of pollution and disease.
Is this what it means to Make America Great Again? I think we can do a lot better than that. Democrats are willing to work to find responsible, strategic solutions to securing our critical mineral supply chains, but this bill takes us in the wrong direction, creating an industry-led free-for-all that allows anyone to mine our minerals, profit from them on the global market, and then leave Americans with nothing but the pollution.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I will reiterate the fundamental fact of this debate. In the 21st century, America's economy, military, healthcare, communications systems, and transportation infrastructure depend on hardrock minerals.
There is no scenario where the United States and the rest of the world aren't competing to purchase these critical minerals. The only question is whether we are all competing for minerals mined here in the United States or in mines controlled by our foreign adversaries.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, in 2024, the United States was 100 percent net import reliant for 15 nonfuel mineral commodities. Additionally, of the 60 minerals identified as critical by USGS, the United States was 100 percent net import reliant for 12, and at least 50 percent net import reliant for an additional 30.
Mining them here is better for our economy, our national security, our allies, and the environment. H.R. 4090 will help close America's mineral production gap and begin to end our dependence on foreign minerals.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. All time for debate has expired.
Pursuant to House Resolution 1032, the previous question is ordered on the bill, as amended.
The question is on the engrossment and third reading of the bill.
The bill was ordered to be engrossed and read a third time, and was read the third time.
Disapproving the Action of the District of Columbia Council in Approving the D.C. Income and Franchise Tax Conformity and Revision Temporary Amendment Act of 2025
Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1032, I call up the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 142) disapproving the action of the District of Columbia Council in approving the D.C. Income and Franchise Tax Conformity and Revision Temporary Amendment Act of 2025, and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the title of the joint resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 1032, the joint resolution is considered read.
The text of the joint resolution is as follows:
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The joint resolution shall be debatable for 1 hour, equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform or their respective designees.
The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gill) and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Frost) each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gill).
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the measure under consideration.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Texas?
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.J. Res. 142, a resolution disapproving the action of the District of Columbia Council in approving the D.C. Income and Franchise Tax Conformity and Revision Temporary Amendment Act of 2025.
Congress has the constitutional right to review legislation passed by the D.C. Council under the D.C. Home Rule Act. It also has the authority to block such legislation. In this case, it should do just that.
In December of this past year, the D.C. Council enacted, without the Mayor's support, legislation that denies tax relief to D.C. residents and businesses that was afforded to them by the Working Families Tax Cut Act.
While D.C. taxpayers still enjoy the benefits of such tax relief with their Federal tax filings, they are being stripped of corresponding relief that should also be afforded to them at the local level. In other words, the D.C. Council has rejected tax provisions that help relieve the burdens faced by D.C. residents and businesses.
There are nine tax provisions that the D.C. Council has completely opted out of in the D.C. Income and Franchise Tax Conformity and Revision Temporary Amendment Act of 2025. Seven of them are targeted at tax breaks for individuals. This includes service workers relying on tips as part of their wages, workers relying on overtime, senior citizens relying on Social Security, and even residents just trying to write off their charitable contributions.
They are all being targeted by the D.C. Council. Specifically, the D.C. Council is opting out of the following tax provisions that House Republicans championed for all Americans: no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security for senior citizens, no tax on auto loan interest for certain personal car loan deductions, and even the increased standard deduction, meaning that D.C. taxpayers who do not itemize their tax deductions will not be able to claim the full amount of the federally expanded standard deduction in their local tax returns. In addition, individuals who take the standard deduction will not be afforded an additional charitable deduction like they will have in the Federal Tax Code.
Stripping away this tax relief from the residents of D.C. is egregious, but, Mr. Speaker, that is not all. The D.C. Council has not stopped there. They are working also to ignore the Working Families Tax Cut Act's pro-economic growth business deductions.
That is, the radical D.C. Council also wants to stunt local businesses and prevent economic growth. They are blocking the 100- percent expensing of qualified nonresidential manufacturing and property production and improvements that help fuel such commercial investment.
Finally, the D.C. Council is blocking the full and immediate expensing of a business' domestic research and experimental expenditures. They apparently would rather have investments and innovation in other States or even foreign nations as opposed to right here at home in the Nation's Capital City.
You might find yourself wondering why would the D.C. Council do this to their own residents and businesses. I will tell you why: It is because the Working Families Tax Cut Act was President Trump's bill.
The D.C. Council would rather punish their own residents, their own people, than recognize the achievements of President Trump's legislation. This is anti-working class, anti-senior citizens, and of course antibusiness.
They say they need more time to analyze and consider these provisions, the same provisions that had numerous congressional debates and hearings. These justifications are just excuses to play politics. It is all at the expense of local residents and businesses who want to and should be able to keep their hard-earned money in their pockets to reinvest in their families, communities, and businesses.
The House must swiftly exercise its constitutional responsibility to oversee the District of Columbia and reject this misguided legislation from going into effect.
I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to unite in support of D.C. taxpayers and businesses and support this necessary resolution of disapproval.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I am strongly opposed to H.J. Res. 142, which would repeal provisions of a law enacted by the District of Columbia because D.C. deserves the right to govern itself.
The Supreme Court has held that Congress can delegate full legislative authority to D.C. for local matters, but Republicans in Congress choose not to do so.
Last year, President Trump and congressional Republicans passed the one, big, betrayal bill, a deeply unpopular law that is the single largest transfer of wealth and resources from the working class and the working poor to the ultrawealthy billionaires and corporations in our Nation's history. The law ripped healthcare coverage away from millions of Americans to give tax breaks and tax giveaways to billionaires and megacorporations.
Not only that, but for States across the country, it has caused a revenue shortfall that has thrown State budgets into chaos, threatening services like healthcare, childcare, schools, eldercare, and emergency response. To protect against this, numerous States have passed laws to decouple their tax code from the tax provisions in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. This includes States like Maine, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, and Alabama. This also includes the District of Columbia.
To avoid a more than $600 million budget loss over the next 4 years from the big, betrayal bill tax changes, the D.C. Council enacted a decoupling law. As part of this law, D.C. increased the child tax credit and earned income tax credit benefits to put more money in the pockets of working families struggling to afford the basic necessities in their life.
H.J. Res. 142 would overturn this law and rip away the money that parents and low-earning families could use to stay afloat in this disastrous Trump economy. Today is just another day in Congress where instead of being on the floor debating legislation on healthcare, instead of debating legislation on bringing down the cost of groceries, instead of debating legislation on making sure we can make this country more affordable for working people, congressional Republicans want to use this time to attack working families in the District of Columbia.
Overturning this law will create chaos for D.C. families and businesses at the start of tax filing season. The gentleman brought up businesses, but D.C. began accepting and processing tax returns on January 27. Families are already beginning to file their taxes and claim the newly expanded EITC.
This resolution would force D.C. to suspend this year's tax filing season, which is already underway, for several months. Changing their tax code now would create additional hurdles and confusion for families and, yes, for local businesses, as well, especially families that are already counting on receiving that larger earned income tax credit to deal with the failure of congressional Republicans and Donald Trump to bring this economy to a place that works for working people.
The D.C. business community even sent a letter to Congress urging opposition to this disapproval resolution because it would create chaos and financial instability. This group includes the Federal City Council, the D.C. Chamber of Commerce, the D.C. Association of Realtors, the D.C. Hospital Association, and the Hotel Association of Washington, D.C. They are all opposed to this resolution.
The big betrayal act is so deeply unpopular that half of the public believes it will hurt them and their families, including two-thirds of Medicaid enrollees. Instead of accepting this reality, congressional Republicans are disregarding home rule and forcing it down the throats of D.C. because they can.
I find it also very interesting and kind of cool that today I get to debate with a colleague from the other side of the aisle where we are both the youngest Members of the United States Congress. We may be the youngest, but his ideas are very old.
Undermining democracy in D.C. isn't new. It is just wrong. The people who live in the Capital of the world's greatest democracy deserve that democracy themselves.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my strong support for H.J. Res. 142, which provides for necessary and lawful congressional oversight of the District of Columbia.
This legislation rightly exercises Congress' clear constitutional authority to intervene in the District's affairs when its interests, or those of its residents, are at risk. While there are many examples of the District's poor governance that warrant scrutiny, the issue before us today is whether the D.C. Council should be permitted to decouple its local tax code from the historic tax relief enacted through the Working Families Tax Cuts Act.
This landmark legislation, passed by House Republicans last July, delivers meaningful tax relief to working Americans by expanding the child tax credit, allowing nonitemizers to claim charitable deductions, eliminating taxes on tips and overtime, and more.
As much as my colleagues on the other side have tried to spin this resolution as a tax giveaway to the wealthy, the reality is that it delivers meaningful relief to Americans at every income level. Yet now, they are supporting an effort to deny that very relief to the residents of the District of Columbia.
While States retain the authority to determine how they raise and spend their tax dollars, let me be clear: The District of Columbia is not a State. Congress has both the authority and the responsibility to provide oversight in this matter, as well as many others affecting the governance of our Nation's Capital.
Mr. Speaker, I thank this resolution's sponsor, Representative Gill, and Chairman Comer, for their leadership on this important issue. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting in favor of H.J. Res. 142.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Frost for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I also strongly oppose this resolution, which is yet another attack on the rights of over 700,000 D.C. residents.
This is the 10th bill that House Republicans are considering to either repeal or amend local D.C. laws. We know that D.C. has more residents than two States, pays more in Federal taxes than 26 States, and more per capita than any State as it relates to paying those taxes.
D.C.'s locally elected officials are accountable to D.C. residents, and local leaders should be empowered to address local matters without Congress interfering.
I have said this many times before, but issues like this go straight to the heart of representation. It repeals a tax law which the D.C. Council passed unanimously. The act created a child tax credit and expanded the earned income tax credit. These credits will significantly reduce child poverty in D.C.
D.C.'s act temporarily paused several provisions of Trump's larger bill from applying to D.C.'s tax code. Now, H.J. Res. 142 will deprive D.C. of $600 million in revenue over the next 4 years. This could force D.C. to cut public safety and education, and certainly impact its ability to serve the community. The threat of a budget crisis will increase borrowing costs for D.C., forcing more of the city revenue to go toward interest payments than actually helping people, as happened when Republicans cut D.C.'s local budget by about a billion dollars last year.
H.J. Res. 142 will also cause chaos in the D.C. tax filing season, which has already begun. Trump's Department of Homeland Security is doing horrific things across the country. The DOJ is defying the law to withhold the Epstein files. We are dealing with a cost-of-living crisis across the country. Instead, today, we are debating to vote to actually increase child poverty within the District of Columbia.
We strongly oppose this. Instead of actually acting like a super city council for D.C., we should be considering issues like D.C. statehood.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose H.J. Res. 142.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Gill for yielding time today.
Mr. Speaker, I was proud to vote in favor of the Working Families Tax Cut Act to deliver tax relief to millions of Americans that included no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and support for small businesses, so what does the D.C. Council do?
They voted to deny their own residents these benefits. This means a waitress working in a Washington, D.C., restaurant gets taxed on her tips on her D.C. tax return while her counterpart in Virginia doesn't get taxed on their Virginia tax return. For a construction worker putting in overtime, D.C. takes a cut.
This is the kind of move that makes people furious. Congress delivered tax relief for Americans and Washington, D.C., said: Not for our residents. The District claims they need the revenue.
By their own estimate, this revenue is .6 of 1 percent of their annual budget. They are squeezing every penny out of working families over less than 1 percent of their budget because they can't spend responsibly.
Let's think about what that means. D.C. would rather tax a single mother's tips and take money from overtime checks from hardworking residents than make responsible spending decisions. That is not governance. That is a shakedown.
This is D.C. politicians protecting their spending habits on the backs of waitresses and construction workers. This is the same broken government mentality we see time and time again.
Mr. Speaker, I support this resolution disapproving of D.C.'s tax grab.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is very interesting, as we sit here, I keep hearing my colleagues bring up the ``working families tax cut bill.'' They keep bringing it up, and I am asking the staff here, I don't remember voting on the working families tax cut bill. We have looked it up, and we can't find it. This body has not voted on the working families tax cut bill this Congress. We did vote on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and I asked myself, why do they keep changing the name of their legislation?
Mr. Speaker, they don't want to say the name of their legislation. The reason why is simple. We know that Donald Trump came here to the Hill after this bill was passed, and because it was so deeply unpopular with the American people, he said that we have to rebrand, have to change the name.
It goes to show how unpopular and how bad this bill is. They even called it the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It has the word ``beautiful'' in it.
The bill is so bad for working people that 64 percent of adults-- Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and people who don't care about politics--hate it so much that the bill that they put the word ``beautiful'' in, they can't say the name anymore because it is so damn toxic because it takes most of the resources from working people and gives it to the billionaires and megacorporations. Now, months later, they still want to tout the bill, but they won't dare call it the name.
It just goes to show that this administration is obsessed with helping the well-to-do and well-connected and not working people.
Anytime we hear in this debate this working families tax cut bill, we never voted on such a bill. The name of it was the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
These are the most resources in the history of this country that are going from working people to the ultrawealthy, billionaires, and corporations.
Say it three times: One Big Beautiful Bill Act, One Big Beautiful Bill Act, One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That is the bill that we voted on. Mr. Speaker, 64 percent of Americans are against it.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 7 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time.
Mr. Speaker, I strongly oppose this unprecedented, undemocratic, and paternalistic disapproval resolution. This
The substance of the D.C. law that is the subject of this disapproval resolution should be irrelevant to Members of Congress since there is never justification for Congress to legislate on local D.C. matters, but I will discuss it.
The D.C. law, which the D.C. Council unanimously passed, established a child tax credit, increased an existing earned income tax credit, and decoupled D.C.'s tax code from some of the tax provisions in the so- called One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
This disapproval resolution would repeal the D.C. law. Let's be clear: The D.C. law changed only the D.C. tax code. It did not, and could not, change the Federal tax code.
The D.C. tax filing season began last week. This disapproval resolution would change D.C.'s tax code during the current tax filing season, causing an administrative nightmare for D.C. and tax software companies. D.C. would have to suspend the current tax filing season for several months to update tax forms and guidance, and taxpayers who have already filed returns would have to file amended returns.
The D.C. law is not unique. Like D.C., approximately half of the States, both red and blue, automatically adopt Federal tax changes in their tax codes. However, like D.C., several of these States, both red and blue, have passed laws decoupling their tax codes from some of the tax provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The approximately 20 States, both red and blue, that link their tax codes to the Federal tax code, as of a specific date would have to change that date to adopt the tax provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The D.C. law expires in 225 days, giving D.C. time to evaluate which provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act it wants to permanently adopt or decouple.
This disapproval resolution could harm D.C.'s credit rating, forcing D.C. to pay higher interest rates. Rating agencies consider the possibility of Congress meddling in D.C.'s fiscal matters as negative for D.C.'s rating, but also consider as positive that ``Congress has never voided or otherwise overturned a revenue-raising measure approved by the District.''
If this disapproval resolution were enacted, Congress would have overturned a revenue-raising measure approved by D.C. Last year, when Congress cut D.C.'s local budget by $1 billion, D.C.'s rating was put on negative watch. This disapproval resolution is an even bigger threat to D.C.'s rating.
The D.C. law established a child tax credit and increased an existing earned income tax credit. These credits are projected to reduce child poverty in D.C. by 20 percent. This disapproval resolution would repeal these credits.
The D.C. law is expected to generate approximately $600 million in local revenue over the next 4 years. If this disapproval resolution were enacted, D.C. would have to make up for that lost revenue, such as by cutting critical programs.
The 700,000 D.C. residents, the majority of whom are Black and Brown, are capable and worthy of self-government. I urge my colleagues to oppose this disapproval resolution and to instead make D.C. a State. Free D.C.
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter to Congress from the D.C. Office of the Chief Financial Officer, an independent office established by Congress.
Mr. Speaker, the letter states that if this disapproval resolution were enacted, the office would have to suspend the current D.C. tax filing season for several months to update tax forms, schedules, and instructions, to reprogram the tax processing system, and for tax preparation companies to update their software.
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a joint letter to Congress from D.C.'s elected Mayor and the elected council chairman strongly opposing this disapproval resolution.
Mr. Speaker, while they disagreed on whether the D.C. Council should have enacted the D.C. law that is the subject of this disapproval resolution in the first place, they both strongly oppose this disapproval resolution. Their letter states that this disapproval resolution, if enacted, not only would violate D.C.'s right to self- government but ``would have major and immediate impacts on tax administration in the District.''
Mr. Speaker, I finally include in the Record a letter to Congress from the D.C. business community.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
Mr. Speaker, while the D.C. business community may not have supported the D.C. law that is the subject of this disapproval resolution, their letter states they oppose this disapproval resolution because it would, if enacted, cause ``chaos in the middle of tax filing season'' and ``create fiscal instability and uncertainty, impeding the District's ability to attract investment.''
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.J. Res. 142, disapproving of D.C.'s recent decision to decouple from key provisions of the Internal Revenue Code.
This resolution ensures that D.C. residents can benefit from President Trump's historic tax cuts, just like hardworking families across the country.
Unfortunately, I can't say the same for my constituents in California's 40th District. Under Governor Newsom's rule, California has repeatedly chosen to decouple from Federal tax relief, denying hardworking families and small businesses much-needed breathing room after years of Bidenflation.
Californians are struggling with some of the highest taxes and cost of living in the Nation and are getting no relief from Governor Newsom and Democrats in Sacramento.
Mr. Speaker, I am proud to support this resolution because workers and families in D.C., California, and across the country deserve a chance to get ahead.
I hope this resolution inspires California's leaders to come to their senses and allow the full relief of the important wins in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that provided the working families tax cuts to take effect for Californians.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I am glad to hear the gentlewoman say loud and proud, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a bill that 64 percent of Americans don't like and believe gives more resources to the rich, the well- connected, the wealthy, the billionaires, and the corporations than them. So say it out loud, and I am glad to hear that after I pointed out this fake name that my Republican colleagues keep bringing out.
As we are talking about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, my colleagues continue to bring up the fact that they worked hard to write and pass it. They worked hard to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. They said that they ``had numerous congressional debates,'' but D.C. didn't get a vote on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
They bring up that they have put this resolution forward. They are running from their offices over here to the House floor to debate on this resolution to overturn a local law passed by members of the D.C. Council who were elected by the people who live here. They claim to care about the taxpayers of D.C., but I guess they don't care enough to give them the real representation that they deserve: a vote in the United States Congress.
That alone shows us what this is all about. They don't care about the taxpayers of D.C. They have no problem
If they truly cared about the taxpayers of D.C., they would put this resolution aside and pass H.R. 51, free D.C., and make sure that we have D.C. statehood. That is making sure that you care about the taxpayers of D.C.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.J. Res. 142, legislation to reverse a District of Columbia law that bars the citizens of our Nation's Capital from seeing the benefits of the working families tax cuts enacted by Republicans and signed into law by President Trump on July 4.
Instead of seizing the opportunity to provide relief to the working families and small businesses in their communities, the elected leaders in D.C. are going out of their way to deny their own citizens tax relief. That includes policies like no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and an increased standard deduction which 91 percent of Americans use to file their taxes.
They say that they are the party of the working class. They are the party of the taxing class because they do not want the people who are waiting tables in Washington, D.C., to have no tax on tips because they believe that they can spend their hard-earned dollars better than they can. That is the difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.
We are the party of the working class: no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and tax relief for seniors. Under the working families tax cut, a family of four who makes less than $73,000 will pay zero dollars in Federal taxes, and every single Democrat in the House and the Senate voted against that provision.
We also increased the child tax credit to $2,200 and made it permanent, and every single Democrat voted against it.
We created Trump investment accounts for every new child born in America, $1,000 in seed money to transform their lives, and every single Democrat voted against it.
They are the taxing party. They are not the party about affordability. They are not the party about working families.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, there it is again from one of the highest-ranking people of the Republican Party on the other side: working families tax cut bill. No bill exists. We haven't voted on a bill called the working families tax cut bill. We voted on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Mr. Speaker, even one of the gentlemen who was most instrumental in passing this bill that they are here blatantly lying about and saying that it helps working people when it really helps the richest, wealthy people in this country, he won't even call it by the name because most adults in this country know the truth. They know that it is the largest transfer of wealth from them to the billionaires, the corporations, and people like Donald Trump and his friends.
Mr. Speaker, there is something that Ranking Member Garcia brought up that I think is really important. This is the tenth piece of legislation this Congress that the Republicans have brought forth focused on the District of Columbia, focused on D.C.
If we polled every Republican district, polled my colleagues' districts on the other side of the aisle, polled everyone who spoke, polled everyone's district in the United States Congress, except for Eleanor Holmes Norton's district, polled every single one of them, I promise you that trying to overturn the laws that the D.C. Council has voted for will not appear in the top 10 issues that their constituents are dealing with.
Actually, I will go a little further. I don't think it would appear in the top 100 issues that their constituents are facing.
Instead of bringing forth 10 bills to undo democracy for the people of D.C., we could have done 10 other things. Instead of bringing forth a bill on D.C., we could have done something on housing. Rent is skyrocketing. People can't afford to live in a home because of the rising costs of rent.
Number two, instead of bringing the second bill on D.C., we could have done something about utility prices. The power of heat, the power of A/C, the power of power is up 6.7 percent. Donald Trump said that he would cut utilities in half. That hasn't happened. They have gone up.
When the third bill to do something on D.C. came to the floor, we could have done something about healthcare. We have a broken healthcare system in this country. While health insurance companies are making skyrocketing profits, we are paying more. More Americans are dying because they are not rich and because they don't have money.
When the fourth bill on D.C. came to Congress, we could have done a bill to lower grocery prices for Americans. Donald Trump ran saying that he would do something about it. Donald Trump said that when he was elected as the President of the United States, he would lower grocery prices on day one--on day one. Grocery prices are up.
When the fifth bill came to the House floor on overturning a D.C. city law, we could have done something on corruption or something on Congress. We could have banned Members of Congress from buying and trading stock. We could have done something to put some guardrails on the Presidency so that no President can make money off of being the President of the United States. We know that being the President is one of the most lucrative things that Donald Trump has done. We could have handled the corruption in the Supreme Court.
When the sixth bill came to the House floor on the D.C. laws, we could have done something on campaign finance reform. We could have ended Citizens United or done something about the fact that corporations and billionaires can flood our elections with unlimited amounts of dark money, essentially trying to change the outcome and to elect pawns and puppets to help them do what they want.
When the seventh bill came to the House floor on Washington, D.C., we could have done something to maybe rein in ICE, this agency that is going around and terrorizing our neighbors. I mean, maybe--maybe, just maybe--Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti would be alive right now if maybe on the seventh D.C. bill, we did something about this.
On the eighth D.C. bill, we could have done something to help small businesses by passing legislation because we do too much to help the big corporations and nothing to help small businesses and entrepreneurs.
On the ninth one, on the ninth bill that Republicans brought to the floor this Congress, maybe we could have done something on reversing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that they passed, and we could have taxed the billionaires.
The gentleman was saying we are the tax party. I want to tax the billionaires more. I want to make sure they are paying their fair share. Hell, if a teacher, a nurse, someone who works at a grocery store is paying their fair share, how come billionaires aren't?
On the 10th one, which is this time, maybe we could have done something about the tax that the Republican Party and Donald Trump have put on working families, which are the Trump tariff taxes, which are part of the reason why costs are skyrocketing across this country from housing to groceries.
There were 10 bills to undo the democracy of people who live here in D.C., 10 issues and 10 solutions we could have worked on to help working families.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I encourage all of my colleagues in Congress to oppose this joint resolution.
Voting ``no'' means that we refuse to support this congressional Republican effort to end the child tax credit in Washington, D.C.
Voting ``no'' means that we oppose the fact that Republicans are using important time in Congress that should be spent on making life better, safer, and more affordable for American people instead of attacking the residents of Washington, D.C., with higher prices and lower budgets for D.C.'s schools,
Voting ``no'' means supporting D.C. home rule and defending D.C. against bullies in Congress.
The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act is an attack on the working people of this Nation and across this entire Nation. It cuts healthcare and food assistance from working families to give massive tax breaks for billionaires and megacorporations.
Republicans in this Chamber need to work on accepting the unpopular and damaging nature of the law that they passed. It sounds like they are almost there because they have even gone so far as to rename the bill called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that they passed that 64 percent of Americans believe are bad for them.
Mr. Speaker, I encourage all of my colleagues to vote ``no,'' and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, as my colleague pointed out, it is good to be here in floor debate with the other youngest Member of the House of Representatives. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I suspect we would both agree that we do need more representation in Washington in this body from younger Americans.
Even though he and I disagree on many things, including this resolution, Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot from the other side of the aisle about how they support working families.
Mr. Speaker, this is a resolution that would provide no tax on Social Security, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, provisions that specifically help working families, families in this country. Yet, they are opposed to it.
Mr. Speaker, we have heard a little bit about fiscal responsibility. That is something that Republicans have championed for quite some time. In fact, it has been pointed out that our ideas are old. I would point out that my colleague is right. Our ideas are old in the sense that individual liberty and fiscal responsibility are ideas that have withstood the test of time. That is something that conservatives recognize.
The city of Washington, D.C., does not adhere to those ideas. If they would like to pursue a more responsible budget, I think that we would all be thrilled. Yet, what are they spending their money on?
Recently, the city of Washington, D.C., gave almost a half-million- dollar grant to the Central American Resource Center, which advocates for local rent supplement programs to go to noncitizens; in other words, illegal aliens. They gave almost a million dollars over two grants to Georgetown University, a university whose endowment is about $3.6 billion.
In fiscal year 2025, D.C. spent approximately $434,000 to establish a reparations task force. That same year, they spent $40 million for the Office of Migrant Services to ``ensure migrants arriving in the District are treated humanely and have the resources they need to reach their destination or resettle.'' In other words, they are taking money out of the pockets of working-class families and giving it to illegal aliens.
In fiscal year 2025, again, D.C. spent almost $2.3 million on the Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Affairs. That same year, they spent $7 million for the Green Bank. In fiscal year 2025, they spent $441,000 for the Medical Cannabis Social Equity Fund.
Mr. Speaker, we support fiscal responsibility. This is not fiscal responsibility. This is taking money from working-class families to fund leftwing social programs and pet projects.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I strongly support this joint resolution Disapproving the Action of the District of Columbia Council in Approving the D.C. Income and Franchise Tax Conformity and Revision Temporary Amendment Act of 2025.
It is an egregious targeting of the hardworking residents of the District, and it ignorantly and foolishly blocks economic growth.
Congress is within its right to deny this legislation pursuant to the D.C. Home Rule Act, and it should do so because it is the right thing to do for the people of this District.
The people and businesses of this town deserve the tax relief these provisions grant, not just at the Federal level, but also at the local level. It is time we support them.
The following organizations have endorsed this resolution, including: AMAC Action, America First Policy Institute, the D.C. Police Union, Heritage Action, the Independent Women's Forum, the International Franchise Association, the National Association of Convenience Stores, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, the National Restaurant Association, the National Taxpayers Union, the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The House must swiftly exercise its constitutional responsibility to oversee the District of Columbia and reject this misguided legislation from going into effect.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to unite in support of D.C. taxpayers and businesses and support this necessary resolution of disapproval, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. All time for debate has expired.
Pursuant to House Resolution 1032, the previous question is ordered on the joint resolution.
The question is on the engrossment and third reading of the joint resolution.
The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed and read a third time, and was read the third time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on passage of the joint resolution.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that the ayes appeared to have it.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the unfinished business is the vote on the motion to recommit on the bill (H.R. 4090) to codify certain provisions of certain Executive Orders relating to domestic mining and hardrock mineral resources, and for other purposes, offered by the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez), on which the yeas and nays were ordered.
The Clerk will redesignate the motion.
The Clerk redesignated the motion.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion to recommit.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 209, nays 212, not voting 11, as follows:
Messrs. McGUIRE, MURPHY, PERRY, Ms. De La CRUZ, Messrs. RUTHERFORD, ROGERS of Kentucky, ALLEN, and NORMAN changed their vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
Messrs. BISHOP, CASTEN, and Ms. DEAN of Pennsylvania changed their vote from ``nay'' to ``yea.''
So the motion to recommit was rejected.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the passage of the bill.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that the ayes appeared to have it.
Disapproving the Action of the District of Columbia Council in Approving the D.C. Income and Franchise Tax Conformity and Revision Temporary Amendment Act of 2025
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the unfinished business is the vote on passage of the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 142) disapproving the action of the District of Columbia Council in approving the D.C. Income and Franchise Tax Conformity and Revision Temporary Amendment Act of 2025, on which the yeas and nays were ordered.
The Clerk read the title of the joint resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the passage of the joint resolution.
This is a 5-minute vote.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 215, nays 210, not voting 7, as follows:
So the joint resolution was passed.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I may hereafter be considered to be the first sponsor of H.R. 2433, a bill originally introduced by Representative Green of Tennessee, for the purpose of adding cosponsors and requesting reprintings pursuant to clause 7 of rule XII.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from North Carolina?
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I may hereafter be considered to be the first sponsor of H.R. 1849, a bill originally introduced by Representative LaMalfa of California, for the purpose of adding cosponsors and requesting reprintings pursuant to clause 7 of rule XII.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from North Carolina?
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 10 a.m. on Thursday, February 5, 2026; and further, when the House adjourns on that day, it adjourn to meet on Monday, February 9, 2026, when it shall convene at noon for morning-hour debate and 2 p.m. for legislative business.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from North Carolina?
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I may hereafter be considered to be the first sponsor of H.R. 5658, the Child Care for Every Community Act, a bill originally introduced by Representative Sherrill of New Jersey, for the purpose of adding cosponsors and requesting reprintings pursuant to clause 7 of rule XII.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentlewoman from New York?
Mr. Speaker, I am honored to recognize Edith Younger Edmunds of Halifax County, an artist who uses her quilts to celebrate African-American history.
At 100 years old, Edmunds is still making quilts, a passion she discovered at the young age of 7, and is still using the same sewing machine she had since 1954.
Her quilts go beyond artistic talent. Each stitch reflects the coded patterns enslaved people used to navigate the Underground Railroad, preserving the powerful stories of America's past.
Through her publications, ``Secret Stitches: Underground Railroad Quilt Activity Book for Children and Adults'' and ``Sacred Stitches,'' Edmunds educates future generations about the role of quilts during the Civil War and the fight for emancipation.
Today, she and her daughter, Amy Edmunds, continue this work together. I am honored to represent such a talented constituent who is dedicated to keeping our history alive one stitch at a time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to say happy Black History Month and to remind all that Black history is American history.
I honor Rosa Parks, an American hero, on her birthday.
Rosa Parks' courage was not confined to a single act when she was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, on that bus. Known as the mother of the modern civil rights movement, she was an advocate for justice and a public servant who devoted her life to the NAACP, strengthening our democracy, and serving 20 years as a congressional staffer.
Since her death 20 years ago, I have saluted her and made Ohio the first State in the Nation to recognize December 1 as Rosa Parks Day.
As America celebrates our 250th birthday, we must honor not only our Founding Fathers but also the mothers of our democracy, women like Rosa Parks.
Mr. Speaker, I wish Rosa Parks a happy heavenly birthday. May she rest in peace.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and legacy of former Lady Lake Commissioner John Gourlie.
John Gourlie, a beloved community member known for his musical talent and infectious personality, unfortunately passed away a few days ago at the age of 74.
Commissioner Gourlie was first elected in 2022 and reelected in 2024. He proudly represented what it meant to be a Floridian. I mourn the passing of a man whose life reflected a dedication to servant leadership.
During his time in office, Commissioner Gourlie represented Lady Lake with the utmost precision and attention to what made the city great. As a former businessowner, welder, and auctioneer, he understood the necessity and vitality of connecting local commerce and fiscal responsibility.
Beloved within the community, those who knew him knew him not just as a commissioner, but as a friend who could put a smile on anyone's face with his karaoke and guitar. As a man of many roles and regions, there was no better representative of Florida.
I know there is no replacement for a man this rooted and invested within the community, and there are no words I can speak which may ease the pain, loss, and grief experienced by both his family and the town he so lovingly served.
Mr. Speaker, to the town of Lady Lake, I offer my full support as a Member of Congress and wish his family the best in this difficult time.
Mr. Speaker, I want to honor the life and legacy of my dear friend Ismael Ahmed, whom I lovingly called Ishman.
He was one of my first mentors, and I grew so much working with him at ACCESS, the largest Arab-American human services agency in the Nation.
If you knew Ishman, he definitely introduced you to beautiful music and
His laugh was a belly laugh that shook his whole body, and you couldn't help but laugh along with him.
Even with all of his community work for justice and the art community, one thing I will always remember is the incredible patience and love he showed my grandmother, Sity Shama. He never turned his back on her, even while she was trying to raise her grandkids on her own and was going through a lot of mental health challenges. I will always love him for that.
I am going to miss him. I know that his decades of service to our community will be his legacy, and he can rest now.
Rest in power, my dear friend. You really did good for our community, and we will never ever forget it.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to highlight Colorado as a top producer of Olympians representing Team USA at the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milano Cortina.
Colorado's Fifth Congressional District is known as Olympic City USA, with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee headquarters in Colorado Springs.
Today, I am honored to highlight three incredible athletes on Team USA who reside in my hometown of Colorado Springs: Amber Glenn, Danny O'Shea, and Ellie Kam. They are among the 16 U.S. figure skaters nominated to the 2026 U.S. Olympic team.
Mr. Speaker, Colorado's Fifth Congressional District will be rooting for Amber, Danny, and Ellie as they compete in the next few weeks.
Mr. Speaker, with the opening ceremonies taking place this Friday, I ask you to join me in wishing them success in their careers and to bring the gold home for Team USA.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the life and memory of my constituent, Daniel Kinross, who passed away recently at the age of 82.
Dan loved his family, his community, and his country. He lived a life of service to them all. He proudly served our great country in the United States Coast Guard. Throughout his life, he focused on his community, serving as a Ross Township commissioner and a coach of youth sports teams.
Service was in Dan's bones. In western Pennsylvania, a life like Dan's, devoted to family, community, and country, shows exactly who we are.
Humble, proud, and always ready to do our part, Dan embodied the very best of our western Pennsylvania values: hard work, patriotism, and sacrifice.
Mr. Speaker, I am holding the Kinross family in my heart as we celebrate Dan's life and mourn his passing.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and celebrate three extraordinary athletes from Colorado's Third District who are headed to the 2026 Olympics to represent our country.
A half-pipe skier from Aspen, Alex Ferriera, already has two Olympic Games under his belt, and I am confident his experience will lead to success.
Charlie Mickel is a men's freestyle skier who specializes in moguls. Hailing from Durango, his dedication to competitive skiing has led him to this incredible milestone. We are very proud of his journey.
Hailey Swirbul began cross-country skiing in her hometown of El Jebel at just 10 years old. She made her Olympic debut in 2022, and we can't wait to see her back in action. The best is yet to come for Hailey.
On behalf of Colorado's Third District, I congratulate Alex Ferreira, Hailey Swirbul, and Charlie Mickel, and I wish them the very best as they make our Nation proud in Milan this month.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor and in somber recognition of the seven crew members of the Lily Jean who were lost at sea when their trawler sank off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts last Friday.
The Gloucester community and the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts mourn the loss of Captain Accursio, Gus Sanfilippo, his crew, and a NOAA observer.
Captain Gus was more than just a seasoned mariner. He was a mentor, a leader, and beloved figure in the Gloucester fishing community.
We also remember John Paul Rousanidis, Sean Therrien, Freeman Short, and Jada Samitt, a young Federal observer just starting her career.
We also think of their families who, devastated today, live with the constant anxiety that comes with having loved ones away at sea.
We also extend our deepest gratitude to the U.S. Coast Guard for their relentless efforts, searching more than 1,000 square miles to try to find the crew.
Fishing is not just an occupation. It is a way of life built on the hard work, risk, and enduring love for the sea. Fishermen often say they have salt in their blood.
My thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of the crew of the Lily Jean, and we stand with the entire Gloucester community during this heartbreaking time.
I want to also remember deckhands Paul Beal Sr., and Jr., who understood that fishing is not simply a job, but a calling passed down through generations.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize a remarkable North Dakotan--this handsome young man--Ray Curtis of Minot.
On February 11, Ray will turn 109 years old. He is the oldest living World War II veteran in North Dakota and one of the oldest in our entire country.
Ray served our Nation during one of the most defining moments in world history. Like so many from his generation, he answered the call without hesitation and helped secure freedom.
Ray now resides at Minot Lodge Senior Living, surrounded by family and caregivers.
North Dakota is so proud of Ray Curtis. We are grateful for his service, his sacrifice, and his example.
Happy birthday to Ray. Congratulations on a life well-lived in service to our country.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Akron Rites of Passage as the Ohio's 13th Congressional District Champions of the Week.
Led by 13 elders in the community, AROPI, as it is also known, is an African-centered organization established for the purpose of educating, training, and empowering its participants in African-centered rites of passage, process, rituals, customs, and practices.
Its further purpose is to promote all aspects of healthy growth and development of individuals, families, and the community of African descent in Akron, Summit County, and surrounding areas.
Five years ago, the Akron Rites of Passage Institute introduced a community initiative called the Legacy Building Project to support the ongoing growth, development, and long-term sustainability of the African American community.
Terrence Shelton, a co-chair of the project, also served as the copresident of the Akron's Rites of Passage Institute. Earlier this month he laid out plans for a new African-American cultural center and museum complex on behalf of the program. The building will house a museum, a business incubator, and center to teach people about trading and investing as a means to building economic wealth in the community. He envisions museum exhibits highlighting Akron sports legends, scientists, and artists like LeBron James, Gus Johnson, Rita Dove, and Woodrow Nash.
He said this project is not just a project for Black people. This is a project for the city of Akron. It is everyday citizens doing remarkable things like this who help make our community the birthplace of champions. Community members from the Akron Rites of Passage Institute are certainly champions in their own right and have made Akron and Ohio's 13th Congressional District proud.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman is no longer recognized.
I rise today to recognize and congratulate Lou Taubert Ranch Outfitters of Casper, Wyoming, for being named one of the 50 best clothing stores in America by The New York Times.
Lou Taubert Ranch Outfitters first opened its doors in 1919 after being founded by C. W. Taubert, an immigrant from Germany who grew enamored with the cowboy spirit and the allure of the West.
From its beginnings as a hardware store catering to the local agricultural community, Lou Taubert has grown to be a cornerstone of the Casper community. Now, over 100 years later, it does not matter whether you are a rancher, a cowboy, or a tourist passing through, you are treated to the authentic spirit of the West at Lou Taubert's.
Please join me in recognizing and celebrating the accomplishments of Casper, Wyoming's Lou Taubert Ranch Outfitters.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Mary Ann Nihart, whose life of commitment to healing and community uplifted countless neighbors across Pacifica, California, and beyond.
Mary Ann's career in nursing and mental health spanned four decades. She began her service with the County of San Mateo and later joined the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center where she rose to become clinical director and chief nurse of Mental Health Services.
Her excellence earned her Nurse of the Year and distinguished service awards from the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, among many other honors. While caring for thousands of veterans, she also inspired and guided younger professionals pursuing careers in the practice of psychiatric nursing.
Mary Ann's dedication to the community didn't stop with her day job. She also served on the Pacifica City Council and for two terms as Pacifica's mayor. She was a hands-on, visionary leader who championed public engagement and collaborative governance.
In her final battle with cancer, as with every other facet of her life, Mary Ann Nihart embodied courage, kindness, and an unwavering dedication to others.
Though we mourned her loss last Saturday, we will be celebrating her inspiring legacy for many years to come.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and honor Department of Natural Resources Officer Charles Ruth for 31 years of exceptional service to the State of South Carolina.
For more than three decades, Charles devoted his career to protecting our natural resources and preserving the outdoor traditions that make our State unique. During his time with South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, he served as the State's big game coordinator. He helped oversee the management of deer, wild turkey, and black bear populations across our State.
Over the years, Charles helped shape over 100 laws, engaged directly with the public of South Carolina, and ensured our wildlife policies were based on sound science and respect for landowners and sportsmen.
Thanks to his commitment, South Carolina's approach to wildlife management remains one of the strongest and most respected in the country. His work will continue to benefit our State for generations.
Mr. Speaker, after months of delays and distractions, Trump's DOJ finally released another trove of documents from the Epstein files.
The DOJ claims it is in full compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but that is simply not true. It is just the latest in a long line of lies and excuses from this administration.
To date, the DOJ has only released half of the files, in direct violation of Federal law.
The survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse have already endured unimaginable pain. They deserve truth and accountability.
However, in this latest release, some of the survivors' names and images were exposed while the men who abused them remained redacted.
What is DOJ hiding? Who are they protecting?
Here is the bottom line: Anything short of full compliance amounts to a coverup.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Congressional App Challenge winners for Indiana's Third District: Ishan Ramrakhiani and Rikhin Kavuru.
Together, these two students identified a gap in AI services and decided to provide a solution. Using their technical knowledge, they programmed an innovative app that offers AI assistance for professional video editing called Auter.
This app allows users to employ editing tools specific to their needs using plain language and AI. This app showcases both students' outstanding knowledge and experience in computer coding.
Creating an app from scratch truly speaks to their initiative and desire to make an impact. Throughout the process, both students maintained determination despite technical hurdles.
Their creativity and determination for success are truly inspiring. I know both Ishan and Rikhin have bright futures ahead. I wish them continued success as they pursue their academic and professional goals.
Mr. Speaker, as we celebrate Black History Month, it feels right to honor someone who has spent a lifetime making sure Black history in St. Louis was seen, recorded, and remembered.
After more than 40 years, Wiley Price is retiring. For decades, Wiley documented St. Louis through the lens of The St. Louis American. That matters because Black St. Louis has not always been seen clearly or treated as central to this city's story. Wiley made sure it was.
Wiley was there for the joy and the grief, from church basements and street corners, and for Presidents, moments of celebration, and moments of strife. While others passed through, Wiley stayed, year after year, building trust, bearing witness, and creating a record that cannot be erased.
If someone wants to understand Black St. Louis over the last 40 years, they won't start with official reports or headlines written elsewhere. They will start with Wiley Price's photographs, which tell a story that could never be written.
As he retires, he leaves behind more than images. He leaves behind a history of this city, told honestly and with care. His work will never fade, and St. Louis is a better place because of him.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and thank County Court Judge James Worden upon his retirement. A lifelong Nebraskan, his judgeship has been evidence of his dedication to public service.
Throughout his two-decade tenure, Judge Worden has served Nebraskans with integrity and a profound commitment to upholding the rule of law.
Whether it was expanding others' understanding of the judicial system, celebrating families' new beginnings through National Adoption Day events, or demonstrating compassion in the Scotts Bluff juvenile drug court, he exemplified a judicial career built on the conviction that justice should be firm, fair, and just.
Judge Worden will be remembered for his strong faith and devotion to his family and as a trusted member of his community. He is someone who quietly led by example and generously gave his time to strengthening the lives of others.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Judge Worden for his faithful service to the State of Nebraska. I wish him, Joni, and his entire family all the best in the years ahead and congratulate him on a career defined by respect, service, and lasting impact.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of all the NIOSH workers around the country, including the 400 in my district. For 50 years, NIOSH has been helping workers all over the country, making sure that workers are safe and healthy.
During all the DOGE cuts, 1,500 NIOSH workers lost their jobs. We got to work. We worked with labor and others, and 100 Members of Congress, and we started getting those jobs reinstated.
We asked Secretary Kennedy to work with us to make sure that every single one of these workers got their jobs back. Just a few weeks ago, we found out that every one of them did get their jobs back.
I thank the NIOSH folks for their ongoing support, for everyone in labor for working with us, and for the work of this Congress to stand up for workers, especially my colleagues over here.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor and recognize the career of one of our Nation's greatest spy catchers.
My constituent, Marvin ``Dell'' Spry, spent nearly 20 years in the FBI running counterintelligence operations to keep our country safe. Mr. Spry ran the FBI investigations that caught Aldrich Ames, a high- ranking CIA official who betrayed his country for money and spent nearly one decade spying for the Soviet Union.
In 1994, the FBI caught Ames, and Mr. Spry put him in handcuffs. After pleading guilty to espionage charges, Ames received a life sentence and died in Federal prison last month.
Mr. Spry received many decorations for his outstanding leadership of the investigation and retired from the Bureau in 2006. Since then, he has continued to share his wisdom and expertise with FBI trainees and young people interested in law enforcement.
On behalf of a grateful nation, I thank Mr. Spry for his patriotism and honorable service to our Nation.
Mr. Speaker, today, I rise as Federal agents once again descend upon Portland, not to protect, but to terrorize.
Over the weekend, during a peaceful labor-led protest, DHS agents deployed tear gas on civilians, including children in the crowd. DHS, let me say that again, tear-gassed children. The clouds were so dense, they sickened families and left a stench that lingered for miles.
This wasn't crowd control. It is state-sponsored violence.
The courts agree. Yesterday, a Federal judge ordered a temporary restraining order against Federal agents tear-gassing peaceful protesters.
This isn't the first time Federal agents have used excessive force. In Portland just last October, after protesters were already restrained, Federal agents pepper-sprayed them pointblank. This is not law enforcement. This is Donald Trump's goon squad deployed to punish dissent and sow chaos in our communities.
Let me be clear. Portland will not be bullied into compliance nor into betraying our values.
Mr. Speaker, I echo Mayor Keith Wilson's call: If you are still working for ICE, resign. It is no honor to participate in this kind of hostility.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Dr. Judy Selk Flores, recipient of the Guam Council of the Arts and Humanities Agency's Lifetime Cultural Contribution Award, an artist whose lifework has shaped Guam's cultural landscape and preserved the soul of our island.
Dr. Flores came to Guam as a child in 1957 and made this island her home. She learned the CHamoru language, immersed herself in our traditions, and devoted her life to preserving Guam's rich cultural identity. At a time when much of our heritage risked being lost, she chose to safeguard it through living, breathing art.
Through batik and visual storytelling, she captured island life, family, and tradition, turning memory into something tangible that our people can carry forward. She did more than create art. She built community. As a founding member of the Guam Visual Arts Guild and the founder of Guahan Art, she opened doors for young artists, teaching them to have confidence, purpose, and pride in their work.
Today, we honor not only an artist but a steward of heritage. Dr. Flores reminds us that culture endures because people choose to protect it, just as she has and continues to do every day.
Mr. Speaker, families with disabled adult children
That is right, recipients are asked to prove over and over and over again whether a person still has a genetic condition, a chromosomal disorder, or a known lifelong disability. On top of that, these reviews are too often done incorrectly, inconsistently, and without regard for medical reality.
This process is exhausting for families, distressing for individuals with disabilities, and a waste of money because--that is right--we are spending a lot of taxpayer dollars to prove over and over again that Americans with permanent conditions need assistance.
The burden on these families doesn't stop there because Medicaid waiver hours are being reduced nationwide, which means families are losing vital community-based care, forcing parents who are able to fill the gaps.
This is not efficient at all. This is neglect. This administration must step in, make changes now, and end the unnecessary reviews. Support the families instead.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on my bill designating the United States Postal Service facility located at 1225 Kempsville Road in Virginia Beach as the Colonel Edward Shames Post Office Building.
Colonel Shames was a proud Virginian and a member of Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division, notably featured in the hit HBO documentary ``Band of Brothers.'' He parachuted into Normandy on D-Day, fought through Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge, and led under fire in some of the most consequential battles of World War II. For his courage and sacrifice, he was awarded a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.
After the war, Colonel Shames continued serving our Nation, eventually retiring as a colonel, and later made Virginia Beach his home, where he became a dedicated community member and a tireless advocate for veterans.
As the last surviving officer of Easy Company, Colonel Shames represented the very best of the Greatest Generation. Naming this post office in his honor ensures his legacy of service, leadership, and patriotism will endure for generations to come.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill.
Mr. Speaker, what happened to Aliya Rahman is chilling, and it is a warning for all of us.
Aliya is a U.S. citizen. She is a software engineer. She identifies as disabled, autistic, and as someone suffering from a traumatic brain injury.
On her way to a doctor's appointment, she was stopped by ICE. They screamed conflicting orders at her, dragged her from her car, and carried her while she screamed: I am autistic. I am disabled. She said: Please, I am disabled.
It didn't matter. She was denied medical care. She lost consciousness in detention. She suffered a concussion. She had to be taken out in an ambulance.
Mr. Speaker, this is not about immigration enforcement. This is not about public safety. Aliya was a victim of terror at the hands of her own government.
We owe Aliya and all Americans real accountability, and I will not stop demanding it on the floor of this House. It is repugnant, absolutely disgusting what happened to her, and she is not the only one.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Mr. Paul W. Brown on his retirement from the FBI, where he served as Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Atlanta Field Office.
Mr. Brown has served the FBI diligently since 2006, with experience spanning counterterrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
Holding degrees from both Western Illinois and Tarleton State University, Mr. Brown built a well-rounded foundation that supported his work in law enforcement and investigations.
Mr. Brown's leadership and public service have contributed greatly to safety in our communities and will leave a lasting impact on the United States of America.
I congratulate Mr. Brown on his well-deserved retirement. I know the FBI and the American people are forever indebted to him for his work to keep us safe.
Mr. Speaker, Arizonans are sick and tired of the chaos at the Department of Homeland Security. Instead of targeting hardened criminals, DHS is arresting hardworking people off our streets to meet arbitrary deportation quotas.
Faith leaders in my district tell me constituents are avoiding church, keeping kids home from school, and skipping medical care, terrified of being profiled based on the color of their skin.
To meet their quotas, DHS is proposing to turn an industrial warehouse in a Phoenix suburb into a 1,500-bed detention facility. ICE's Acting Director called it Amazon Prime but with human beings.
People across the political spectrum are strongly opposing this and for good reason. They don't want human beings held in a makeshift jail down the street from their child's high school. They don't want masked agents in their church parking lot. None of this makes Arizonans safer.
Congress has a duty to rein in the Department of Homeland Security that is absolutely out of control. I won't stop until that happens.
Mr. Speaker, a core part of American sovereignty is the ability to determine who is able to enter our country. The sole purpose of our immigration system is to benefit American citizens.
That is why today I introduced a bill that would implement a Somalia immigration moratorium.
Mr. Speaker, we have seen the multibillion dollar Somali fraud scandal just in the past week, and Americans are furious. The reality is that Somali immigration makes America less prosperous, less safe, and less culturally cohesive.
Mr. Speaker, 78 percent of Somali immigrants in Minnesota alone receive welfare benefits, even after being in the United States for 10 years or longer. Somali men commit crimes at rates significantly higher than Americans, and only about half of Somali immigrants can speak English very well. Again, that is even after being in our country for over a decade.
The reality is that Somalia's clan-based society is unassimilable into American society.
It is time to put the American people first, and I urge the House to support my bill.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor the extraordinary life and legacy of my constituent and the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Bob Weir. Bob was more than a musical icon. He was a neighbor, a friend, and a beloved part of our North Bay community.
For decades, Bob made his home in Marin. He raised his family there, opened his doors to other artists, and helped build the vibrant local music vibe that so many of us cherish. He played intimate shows at Mill Valley's Sweetwater and took the stage at the Mountain Theater atop Mount Tamalpais.
Bob's music, his generosity, and unmistakable creative spirit helped define the identity of the North Coast. His legacy will endure every time a kid picks up a guitar, every time the lights come up at the Sweetwater, and every time music echoes across Mount Tam.
We are grateful that he made our community part of his life. We send our love to his family, friends, and all my fellow Dead Heads across the world.
Mr. Speaker, let the record reflect, I delivered these remarks barefoot in honor of Bobby Weir. I think he would appreciate that.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to observe proper decorum on the floor.
Mr. Speaker, Congress is leaving and won't be back until next week. If it is like every other weekend, a lot of what you see on television is going to be incidents going on in Minnesota affected by the immigration situation.
I remind my colleagues and the American people that we are a Nation of immigrants, but every year we naturalize about 800,000 new folks. That is about five times what it was when I was a child. Mr. Speaker, 16 percent of the people in our country were not born in America. That is the highest it has been since before 1890.
We have nothing to apologize for that we are not letting enough people in this country. However, sadly, there are too many elected officials who, in essence, want to get rid of the immigration laws. We saw this in the 2016 election in which way too many Democrats promised free medical care for people who come here.
In any event, we are very generous to immigrants. We cannot have unlimited immigration.
Mr. Speaker, Thomas Massie and my Epstein Files Transparency Act led to millions of files being released that have shocked the conscience of the Nation.
Today, I call for Congress to hold in front of the Oversight Committee every single person who emailed about going to Epstein's island. They need to answer some basic questions. Who raped these underage girls from working-class families? What did they see? What did they know? What did they participate in?
The American people are frustrated with the rich and powerful getting a different set of justice. There cannot be two tiers of justice in America, and I will not rest until the people who committed these heinous crimes and this heinous behavior are held accountable.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share my deep frustration and anger for the people of northwest Indiana's First Congressional District as they open their heating bills that have skyrocketed this winter.
Hoosiers understand that utility rates are regulated at the State level, but they also understand, just as we do here, that Federal policy plays a role in whether our Nation is increasing energy supply or restricting it.
It is simple economics. When supply goes up, prices go down. Unfortunately, recent actions by this administration have moved us in the wrong direction.
In northwest Indiana, two major energy projects that would have increased supply and lowered costs were canceled. An $8 billion hydrogen project at the BP refinery in Whiting supported by labor, industry, the State, higher education partners, and the Federal Government were halted. An $18 million alternative aviation fuel project in East Chicago was also canceled. These projects would have strengthened our energy supply, created jobs, and supported our regional economy for decades to come.
Mr. Speaker, I urge the House to find ways to increase the energy supply so we can lower the costs in northwest Indiana.
Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to honor an exceptional member of my staff who is moving on to his next chapter.
Marc Rabourdin, my deputy district director, has served the people of Virginia's Seventh Congressional District with distinction for more than 4 years.
Marc began his service to the Seventh Congressional District working for my dear friend and predecessor, former Congresswoman and now Governor Abigail Spanberger.
He has continued to deliver results for central and Northern Virginia on my team with the same professionalism and care. From day one, his dedication has made a real difference in the lives of the people we serve. Always calm, steady, and deeply knowledgeable, Marc has been a trusted presence and an invaluable resource to our constituents and our team.
A true public servant, Marc earned his nickname, the mayor, in our office because he knows the communities, local leaders, and needs of the Seventh District better than just about anyone.
Mr. Speaker, while we will miss him, we are grateful for his service to Virginia's Seventh Congressional District and wish him every success in his next endeavor serving Virginians.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heart full of joy to celebrate a story that reminds us why sports, family, and community matter.
At the University of Toledo, sophomore Rocket Miriam Diala was greeted after a hard-fought win by her mother, Francisca. Her mom had traveled 4,300 miles from Germany to see her daughter play women's college basketball at UT in person for the very first time.
Francisca often stays up past midnight to watch Miriam's games on TV because of the 6-hour time difference. We can just imagine the embrace in the stands, the tears, the joy, and the gratitude.
Miriam's performance showed talent, discipline, and resilience, but the real victory was love made visible. This community wrapped an international student in a sense of belonging, friendship, and a second family. That is the spirit of Toledo. That is the promise of America.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Francisca for her sacrifice to Miriam and for inspiring us. To the Rocket family, keep lifting one another higher.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material in the Record.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from New York?
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to forcefully speak against the Trump administration's horrific ICE
Mr. Speaker, 2025 was the deadliest year for ICE detention in two decades with 37 total deaths. Already in 2026, eight more individuals have died, including the murders of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. The American public is outraged at the brutality of ICE, and they demand accountability.
According to polls, 76 percent of Americans, including 79 percent of Latinos, have seen the video footage of the murder of Renee Nicole Good. Mr. Speaker, 57 percent of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, disapprove of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws.
Put simply, ICE is out of control. The number of people with no criminal records being detained is 16 times greater than in previous administrations. Mr. Speaker, 92 percent of individuals recently held in ICE detention have no criminal conviction whatsoever.
More than 170 U.S. citizens have been wrongfully detained at raids and protests. More than 20 of them were held incommunicado for a specific period of time without being able to call their loved ones or an attorney.
DHS is now claiming they can enter anyone's home without a warrant signed by a judge, clearly ignoring the Fourth Amendment of our Constitution. A recent memo distorting the truth was circulated to our offices.
Still, congressional Republicans continue to fund this rogue agency without restraint. Congress already gave ICE $75 billion through the 2025 reconciliation bill.
They paid for the slush fund by cutting healthcare and nutrition assistance while giving tax cuts to rich millionaires and billionaires. This Chamber has decided to continue funding for ICE without any accountability whatsoever.
As we begin negotiating to fund DHS for the rest of the year, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is unified in demanding real accountability provisions, including requiring ICE agents to identify themselves, prohibiting agents from wearing masks during enforcement, restricting the use of deadly force, strengthening hiring and training standards, enforcing humanitarian standards in ICE custody, and protecting sensitive locations.
Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus stand united in opposition to giving ICE one more cent without meaningful reform. In fact, I think ICE should be dismantled altogether. We are finalizing a bill that would do just that. It would rescind the agency's funding and rebuild it from the ground up.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. Omar).
Mr. Speaker, two of my constituents, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, beloved neighbors and community members, were murdered by Federal immigration enforcement agents.
These are not distant headlines. These were beloved community members fighting to protect their neighbors.
Alex Pretti was a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA who cared for veterans. He was a healer, and he should be alive.
Renee Good was a 37-year-old beloved wife, mother, and community member. She should be alive.
Kristi Noem's DHS must be held accountable. We cannot continue to operate as if this terror is acceptable. We cannot allow a Federal agency--one that was created for the purpose of terrorizing--to function as an occupying force in our communities.
Real accountability starts with abolishing ICE, impeaching Kristi Noem, and rethinking how we enforce immigration policy in this country. We cannot stop there. We must demand that those who are responsible for terrorizing our communities are investigated thoroughly, not by the agencies that oversee them but by truly independent authorities.
We have seen Federal agencies block State investigators and stonewall accountability. That is unacceptable. Our system of justice cannot tolerate a situation where people are killed and the only response is silence, spin, or justification from the administration's officials.
Minnesota was once known as a place of refuge. It has now been turned into a war zone by a Federal Government that has lost sight of the values that make America great.
Everything we love--our communities, our rights, our Constitution, and our humanity--is on the line right now. We have to fight like our future depends on it because it does.
Mr. Speaker, I am a lawyer. I have served as a judge. I know what the rule of law demands. What this administration is doing with ICE is not enforcement. It is lawlessness. It is cruelty. They have turned ICE into a force of masked thugs. In my community in the Houston area, people are paying the price.
Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres died in ICE custody near Houston. DHS claims it was heart failure, but this administration has shown such contempt for the truth that we can't believe a darn thing they say. His family is demanding answers, and so are we. I have requested the death report, but, Mr. Speaker, ICE has yet to respond.
Under Trump, as noted earlier, 43 people have died in DHS custody or at the hands of DHS agents or their contractors. This is not a coincidence. This is cruelty masquerading as policy.
In Minneapolis, two Americans--Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti-- were murdered by Federal immigration agents. We have all seen the videos. We know both deaths were completely unjustified. We know that this was not domestic terrorism. The American people know it, too, no matter how much this President tells us not to believe our very own eyes.
Instead of accountability, the felon in the White House rushed to smear and lie about the victims. It is a disgrace. It is shameful. It is immoral.
This administration is terrorizing our communities, threatening our cities, trampling on the Constitution, and tearing our country apart. It must stop, and it must stop now. Congress must act. Stop ICE now.
Mr. Speaker, in the span of 12 weeks, our country was shaken by the tragic killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who lost their lives because of the violent and reckless choices that the Trump administration has made.
When I went to Minneapolis shortly after Renee Good's killing, I heard firsthand how the Trump administration's dangerous escalation of immigration enforcement is a threat not just to Minnesota but to every community and every American.
Since Trump took office, at least six people have died during enforcement activities by Federal agents. People are not just dying in our streets. They are also dying in immigration detention centers run by ICE and private companies that have been empowered to profit off of detaining mothers, fathers, and children who pose no threat to our communities.
Just last year alone, 32 people died in ICE detention, including Jean Wilson Brutus, who had been detained at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey.
While this administration claims they have our communities' best interests in mind, they have already proved through their actions from New Jersey to Minnesota and across the country that safety is not their priority. No one is safe in Trump's America, not mothers, not fathers, not our elders, and not even our children.
That is why we must continue to stand up to fight for our communities and why we must drive Trump's paramilitary out of our communities, why we must end ICE, why we must end private detentions, why we must remove Secretary Noem, why we must remove Stephen Miller, and why we must continue to fight for the soul of our Nation.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus for convening this very important discussion this evening.
Over the past year, the Trump administration has pursued immigration
Last month, in my district in New York's Capital Region, a family of five, including an 8-month-old who was reportedly a U.S. citizen, was detained and deported after ICE entered their apartment without-- without--a judicial warrant, a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.
In December, our Afghan community was repeatedly targeted, including ICE arresting a father and son after they exited a mosque following morning prayer. People who fled the Taliban, fearing for their lives and their families' lives, are now wondering if they will be picked up next by ICE.
This is not who we are as a nation. We are supposed to uphold the values of freedom, the values of democracy, and the American Dream. Instead, the very people who came here in pursuit of that dream are afraid to attend school, go to their jobs, go to church, and even leave their homes for fear of being hunted down, detained, and deported.
Nowhere have the effects of ICE's operations been clearer than in Minneapolis. The murders of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens and both shot multiple times by U.S. agents, were senseless and horrifying. Two people who should be in the arms of their families today have instead been killed in the streets.
In their brutal and deadly campaign, ICE has lost all public trust and credibility. This agency as it exists and operates cannot continue. ICE must be abolished.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York, Mr. Adriano Espaillat, for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise on this day in opposition to ICE, CBP, and any others that are added to this Federal militia that is supposed to be part of the administration of immigration in the United States of America. I also rise in remembrance of all those innocent lives its agents and enforcers have stolen.
For 1 painful year under the Trump administration, this rogue agency has engaged in an unrestrained crusade of cruelty against our migrant neighbors and the places they call home, all powered by the $85 billion and counting hand-delivered to them by Republicans in Congress and their overlord in the White House, all conducted with immunity granted not by law but by lawlessness.
ICE agents are in our streets, where they are out every day kidnapping, trafficking, torturing, and, indeed, even murdering immigrant Americans and American citizens in the cold and hidden recesses of their detention centers, where atrocities beyond our wildest nightmares are occurring without cessation.
I am speaking of atrocities like the death of Jean Wilson Brutus at the Delaney Hall Detention Center, who passed away from a medical event while under the careless and unconcerned watch of ICE.
The title of ICE's press release following the tragedy?
``Criminal illegal alien passes away at University Hospital following medical emergency at Delaney Hall Detention Facility.''
How callous. How sick.
In one sentence, these twisted individuals reveal the systemic rot and culture of inhumanity that is inherent in ICE operations.
It is heartbreaking to know that Mr. Brutus' death was not an isolated tragedy. There have been 45 deaths and counting under Donald Trump's tyranny.
In what moral nation would the penalty for seeking a better life for yourself or your neighbors be a terrible death?
In what decent society would the government deploy propaganda to convince the masses that its victims deserved their fate?
Catching an ICE agent in a bad mood should not warrant capital punishment. Being undocumented should not be a death sentence.
Hear me when I say that ICE is a rogue entity incapable of doing its duty and incapable of re-earning the public trust that it has betrayed. It is an existential danger to public safety, American decency, and the American Dream.
Mr. Speaker, if there is a single revelation to emerge from this abyss of wickedness, let it be that our immigration apparatus needs bold and systemic change, and may that change be a system centered in compassion, not cruelty; entrusted to competent officers, not kidnapping traffickers and killer thugs, and bent toward justice, not broken by ICE.
Mr. Speaker, as a Member of Congress and a physician, I am outraged and sad about the killings of U.S. citizen and mother, Renee Nicole Good, who was shot and killed by an ICE agent; and U.S. citizen and VA ICU nurse, Alex Pretti, who was fatally shot by an ICE agent during the same enforcement surge in Minneapolis, sparking widespread protests and intensifying scrutiny of Federal tactics.
Last year was the deadliest year in over 20 years, with over 56 people dying under ICE and CBP custody in detention centers. Reports of detainees like Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, who died in a hospital in my district after complaining for days of chest pain without receiving the appropriate urgent care, are concerning and smell of neglect.
The violence and brutality against noncriminal immigrants and U.S. citizens are not public safety. It is cruelty. That is why Secretary Noem must be impeached and removed, and there must be transparency and accountability.
That is why I introduced the Humanitarian Standards for Individuals in ICE and CBP Custody Act to prevent death and to protect human dignity.
Mr. Speaker, Minnesotans are grieving the loss of two precious lives and enduring immeasurable community suffering due to the ill-advised policies of the Trump administration and the failed leadership of DHS under Kristi Noem.
Their systemic refusal to prioritize public safety and adhere to any semblance of due process in my home State of Minnesota has shown all of us that the trauma and suffering are very much intended consequences of their policies. Cruel indifference to constitutional rights and human dignity have become standard operating procedure for DHS.
There could be no more stark proof than the list of names behind us. It is consistent with the harrowing firsthand accounts that I have received directly from my constituents and individuals in DHS custody, and it is horrifically clear in the videos documenting the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
The impacts of these tragedies and aggressive operations continue to be felt every single day and are staunchly opposed because the people targeted are an inseparable part of the fabric of their communities.
Minnesotans are fiercely dedicated to protecting their communities. They see themselves in their neighbor--not because of a shared language or a shared place of birth but because they hold steadfast to their shared humanity and to the belief that every human being deserves to be treated with dignity.
Through a relentless commitment to freedom, community, and their constitutional rights, Minnesotans have exposed the charade of this administration's narrative. They are rejecting dehumanization and division in perilous circumstances, many at great personal risk and an immeasurable cost in the loss of Renee, Alex, and the 40 others listed here.
I join my fellow Minnesotans in calling for Operation Metro Search to end now. It is incumbent on every single one of us to honor their resilience, embrace their courage, and put an end to this senseless and preventable suffering in my community and in every community across this country.
Mr. Speaker, across the Nation, out-of-control ICE agents are terrorizing our communities. They shot Renee Good in the face four times. They are tearing people out of their homes, out of the windows of their cars, and illegally detaining people who have Brown skin.
This is fascism, pure and simple, and ICE must be held accountable.
Since I was elected to Congress, I have made six oversight visits to the Northwest Detention Center in my district. Each time I have gone, the lack of medical care and serious privacy concerns have consistently been issues.
I was told by a detained individual that they were unable to receive the medications that they needed until nearly a week after they had run out. When they finally received it, it was the wrong dosage.
Another person who I met with asked the officer, who had accompanied them to a health appointment in the community, to step out of the room while he received sensitive medical information. The officer refused.
This administration's reckless dehumanization of our immigrant neighbors is horrific, and it is not just immigrants who they are terrorizing. Tribal members in my district and across the country are being instructed to carry their Tribal IDs with them in case they are stopped by ICE.
DHS is not above the law, and neither is Secretary Noem. We must hold them accountable, and we must prevent more death and violence.
That is why I voted against funding lawless, out-of-control agents who are terrorizing our communities and why I continue to call on us to impeach Secretary Noem and to hold the Trump administration accountable for the chaos and the violence that they have unleashed and to restructure a Department that is no longer holding the trust of the American people and that needs serious reform.
Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, Congressman Espaillat, for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, people across the country and in the Inland Empire are scared that they could join the roughly 50 individuals who have died under Donald Trump's and Kristi Noem's brutal immigration crackdown, such as Renee Good, Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, Alex Pretti, and many more.
Just north of my district sits the Adelanto ICE processing facility, which has seen multiple people die while in custody. The conditions at Adelanto have long been deplorable, which is why I have long called for it to be shut down.
Yet, we must look for ways to press our case even more forcefully. Just yesterday, I voted against more blank-check funding for ICE and CBP. No accountability and no reform equals no taxpayer money.
I call on every Member of this body to hear the cries of communities from coast to coast: Impeach Kristi Noem, end open-ended DHS funding, and stop the killing of our neighbors.
Mr. Speaker, let's be clear. This is not about catching the most violent criminals. It is about power. It is about control. It is about cruelty. It is about depravity and abandoning human decency.
I have spent time in Chicago. I have spent time in Minneapolis-Saint Paul. I have talked to the people there. We knew it would end like this.
President Trump and his apologists and his enablers have been demonizing and dehumanizing immigrants and refugees for years. Americans are now dead at the hands of ICE, and over 40 others have been killed in DHS custody. Despite what Secretary Noem has said, over 170 Americans have been arrested and detained. As I said, we knew that this is how it would end.
There are people of color across this country afraid to leave their homes because right now ICE and Border Patrol will detain anyone who they think they can use to meet a quota based on the color of their skin or the accent that they are using.
This didn't have to go like this. I remind everybody who is responsible for supersizing the ICE budget and bringing us to this place, it was Republicans in Congress who did this, even though we warned them that this is what would happen.
ICE needs to be dismantled. Secretary Noem needs to be fired, and Stephen Miller has to go. He is the mastermind of this ghoulish plan.
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from New York, Representative Espaillat, for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I stand in memory of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, who were murdered for standing up for what is right and exercising their constitutional First Amendment right to speech and assembly, and in the case of Mr. Pretti, his Second Amendment right to carry arms. I also stand in honor of the 38 people who have died in ICE custody since Kristi Noem became the head of DHS. Although they are not household names, their lives are no less valuable, and we cannot forget them just because we didn't see it happen.
Being detained in an ICE facility should not equal a death sentence.
I recently conducted an oversight visit in Tacoma, and I met with four of my detained constituents. One detainee had lost over 12 pounds since November. He achieved up to a Ph.D. here in the United States. He has four United States citizen children. His wife is a United States citizen. Because of a paperwork error, he will be deported to a country he has never been to and he does not speak the language. He is a deacon in his church. He is a good member of our community, not the worst of the worst.
Another one of my constituents just turned 18 and was so terrified he couldn't even answer questions. He was afraid to say anything. He will be deported because he is caught up in a broken immigration system.
We will not let them disappear into the system. We will not stand by and let ICE bring more violence to our cities and open detention facilities in rural communities like Newport, Oregon, that I represent. We will not normalize cruelty as public policy.
While innocent people continue to die in detention centers and on our streets, we must continue to speak up and fight for real change.
The Constitution is clear. It guarantees due process. It guarantees the right to assembly. It guarantees the right to bear arms.
I took an oath to uphold the Constitution. I would ask that my colleagues do the same and uphold the oath that they are obliged to stand up for.
Americans are living in a time of viciousness. Under Donald Trump, we are living in America the brutal, a Nation where the wrong skin color, the wrong accent, the wrong language makes you a suspect, puts you in danger, threatens your life. Masked agents without warrants and long guns are barging into people's homes and businesses without apology. Americans who stand up for the Constitution, for the rule of law, and for due process are threatened and some are killed.
We have seen it out on the streets in Los Angeles, in Chicago, in Minneapolis, and across the country. We have also seen it in secret. I saw it just last week in a detention center in Dilley.
What do we call a place that keeps a 2-month-old baby in a trailer prison? Is that what America is? What do we call a place that keeps a 5-year-old boy in a trailer prison, that refuses to provide any education, that withholds medical care, that traumatizes children so brutally?
That is what ICE has become, not an immigration enforcement agency, but a reckless, lawless, brutal agency. Congress should disband ICE, should impeach Kristi Noem, and this Congress should help restore the Constitution of the United States of America to the people of our Nation.
Mr. Speaker, it has been 365 days of Trump 2.0, 365 days of terror, abuse, and violations of our rights.
After infusing $150 billion into DHS and ICE, people in this Chamber have chosen to give them even more money, even after seeing what DHS does with its unlimited resources, even after seeing what they do with unchecked power.
Let me say what they did to Silverio, what they did to Marimar, to Keith, to Renee, to Alex, what they did to Illinois resident Nenko Gantchev in an ICE detention center. Also, Mr. Speaker, what they are doing right now to my own constituent, Steven, a 14-year-old boy with autism in a detention center plagued with measles, it is unconscionable. It is unacceptable.
Many of us are clear: The Department of Homeland Security is the greatest threat to the homeland right now, and that is why we must claw back funding for DHS and ICE. It is why we must pass my Melt ICE Act and end DHS detention and monitoring, disrupt immigration enforcement, and return taxpayer dollars back to the communities.
We also must immediately start the proceedings to impeach Noem. I said it before, and I will say it again. She will either quit, she will get fired, or we will impeach her.
Here is the thing: Our tax dollars should be used to make sure working people have every single thing they need to thrive, not money used to execute U.S. citizens.
Let me end by saying this: We brought the Department of Homeland Security into this world just two decades ago. We also have the ability and the authority to build a world without it, and I will work every day to make that happen.
Mr. Speaker, that is what the American people are doing right now in the streets of America. That is what they are using to protect themselves, whistles and their cameras. That is what they are doing against the fascist army.
Speaker Johnson says: ICE is doing what ICE is designed to do.
That is what he said.
How many more of our neighbors have to be executed? How many more of our neighbors have to be killed?
I refuse to send another dollar to the Department of Homeland Security. My residents don't want their tax dollars going to execute people in the streets, abduct 5-year-olds, tear gas children, and separate our families.
This is what the Trump administration is doing right now with DHS funding. It is a fascist army, and it is shameful.
I grew up in southwest Detroit, Mr. Speaker, with 20 different beautiful ethnicities. We were the northern border. What my community and our community kept telling us back then during its creation, literally, is they told us they are violating people's civil rights. We do not feel safe with them in our community. People were jogging around our parks and getting stopped to be asked what their legal status was. They were militarizing southwest Detroit. They told us back then: Stop funding ICE.
Kristi Noem has violated the United States Constitution, eroded due process, and again violated Federal processes and laws by preventing Members of Congress already from conducting oversight in their facilities. Shame on them.
This is not an agency, Mr. Speaker, that can be reformed. You can impeach the Secretary, and she needs to be impeached, but this is an agency that was created to do what it is doing now. It is built on violence and racism.
ICE must be abolished. Kristi Noem must be impeached. These murders should be prosecuted.
I am not looking for people to get fired. I am looking for them to be truly held accountable for killing our loved ones and for ripping our children from our arms. Not one more penny should go to this agency that terrorizes our communities.
Mr. Speaker, today, while Kristi Noem staged yet another photo op, this time in Nogales, Arizona, families across this country are still grieving people who should be alive.
Let's be clear: Border communities are not war zones. Border towns, like Nogales, which I represent in Congress, are vibrant, binational communities where families live, work, and thrive.
Instead of listening to local leaders, this administration keeps choosing militarization, fear mongering, and political theater, and it is costing people their lives.
On January 7, an ICE agent murdered Renee Good, an unarmed U.S. citizen, in Minneapolis. Two weeks later, just miles away, Alex Pretti was shot and killed by Federal agents. In both cases, the administration lied about what happened, smeared the victims, and blocked independent investigations. These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a growing pattern.
For border communities, this violence is not new. In 2012, 16-year- old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was shot and killed by Border Patrol through a border fence while he was walking home on the Mexico side of the border in Nogales, Sonora. He was unarmed. He was a child.
For far too long, communities like mine have been told to accept this as the cost of enforcement. That is why, yesterday, I voted against continued funding for DHS. I will not rubberstamp an agency that enables violence, racial profiling, and terror in our neighborhoods.
ICE has already been handed $75 billion through the Republican's big, ugly bill, money that was ripped away from SNAP, Medicaid, and working families. That money is being used to militarize our cities, not keep people safe.
This is a moral infliction point. We can choose dignity, accountability, and real solutions, or we can keep funding abuse, pretending its policy.
Mr. Speaker, you have heard from many of our colleagues, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and other Members representing the State of Minnesota, the State of Illinois, the State of Michigan, and others.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has presented a policy position on DHS. The Members voted on that position, approved it, and it is the following:
We propose to suspend ICE and CBP immigration enforcement actions in Minnesota. We also propose to end warrantless stops. We also want to suspend indiscriminate arrests and militarized tactics against civilians nationwide.
Allow the agency to continue legitimate statutory enforcement, focused on serious public safety threats. This includes, obviously, the immediate protections against the detention and targeting of U.S. citizens. That is right, Mr. Speaker. This agency has been rampantly arresting not just green card holders, TPS recipients, Dreamers, moms, and dads, but also U.S. citizens.
We also call to redirect the $75 billion OBBB enforcement funding away from mass detention and quota-driven arrests toward humane community safety and affordability concerns.
This includes independent investigations into the deaths in DHS detention. As I said earlier, many people have died while in DHS custody.
We want to deliver accountability by advancing comprehensive legislation to unmask ICE agents. No ICE agent should be anonymous, without a first name, a last name, and a shield number. We want to mandate body cameras with strong protocols; protect sensitive locations, including houses of worship, schools, and hospitals; and restrict the use of deadly force.
We also want to enforce humanitarian standards in ICE and CBP custody, ban military-grade equipment, strengthen civil rights, and the inspector general's oversight.
We want to protect whistleblowers and return Border Patrol where they should be, at the border. These are the proposals that have been adopted by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Again, Mr. Speaker, the country is alarmed. Our citizenship is imperiled with these aggressive actions by ICE.
Let's dismantle ICE. Let's take a look at these best practices, and let's move forward as one United States of America.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from engaging in personalities toward the President and to observe decorum on the House floor.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today with urgency and outrage.
The Trump regime, with its lawless and cruel immigration agents, has become a source of nightmares for children.
People are living in hiding, fearful, as these agents are kidnapping, assaulting, and murdering people.
Last month it was Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
Next month? It could be another beloved, hard-working member of your community.
Agents are detaining sick children.
Last month it was Diana Crespo, a seven-year-old from my district and her parents who were detained on the way to urgent care.
Next month? It could be another sick second grader in your community.
Children are being traumatized, communities are being torn apart, and people are being murdered.
Republicans need to wake up from the delusion that what Trump is carrying out in your name is lawful, needed, or making us safer.
When your children and grandchildren ask what you did when secret police came for families, when children were imprisoned, when U.S. citizens were murdered by federal agents without accountability, what will you say?
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the topic of this Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Utah?
Mr. Speaker, I am so glad to be joined by my colleagues this evening to talk about the historic tax relief we are providing for working families this tax season. I think it should be on the mind of every single American, and we are thrilled to be able to highlight some of the many things that we have accomplished in the preceding calendar year.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Missouri, (Mr. Smith) before I begin my remarks.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Moore) for yielding and for being an incredible member of the best committee in Congress, the Ways and Means Committee.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to my staff director, Mark Roman, who is leaving Federal service at the end of this week.
For more than one decade, Mark has been one of the most capable and loyal public servants I have ever worked alongside. My team is stronger today because of his judgment and the example his work ethic sets for the rest of my team. He has not only been my most trusted adviser, but I am proud to also call him a true friend.
Mark began working in the House of Representatives just over 20 years ago for his hometown Congresswoman, Ms. Nancy Johnson, from Connecticut. Mark went on to work for two congressional Members from Illinois before he joined my team in 2015 as my deputy chief of staff to serve the great people of Missouri's Eighth Congressional District.
Mark's keen eye for tax policy in particular and, in fact, his keen eye for all policies within the Ways and Means jurisdiction made him so important to me when my colleagues selected me to serve as a member of the Ways and Means Committee. He went on to become my chief of staff and my staff director when I was the Republican leader of the Budget Committee, and my staff director for the Ways and Means Committee for the last 3 years.
Mark's deep understanding of and relationships within the conservative and the populist movements have been invaluable as we worked to build the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
I am told that most Ways and Means Committee staff directors often have their legacies defined by their one signature accomplishment, and I think it says so much about Mark that his signature accomplishment will be the largest tax cut in our Nation's history and a bill remembered for rejecting special interest tax policy in favor of relief for the tens of millions of working American families, farmers, and many small businesses that are the heartbeat of this Nation.
I know that Mark's wife, Tate, and his two wonderful children, Johnny and Ann Tate, have made a lot of sacrifices along the way to allow him to serve for so long, and I will say I am blessed to call them family as well.
Mark is not going far, and even though he won't be here in the Capitol with us, I have no doubt he will continue to leave a lasting impact on all of us after he leaves. His incredible tenure of service has strengthened my team and this institution for the better.
Mr. Speaker, please join me in thanking Mr. Mark Roman for his dedication and years of public service to this institution.
Mr. Speaker, I will briefly add that I had the opportunity to serve on Chairman Smith's Ways and Means Committee, and I have seen the work that Mark Roman did, mostly behind the scenes, the stress that he is put under, and the outcomes that we have delivered.
Oftentimes, we don't talk about this being a functional place. Sometimes when you go to Congress, Mr. Speaker, all you hear about is the gridlock, the nonsense, and all the rhetoric. Mark Roman accomplished some things for the American people that he will never get credit for.
I am going to speak a little bit about it today, but I also wanted to add how much I appreciated getting a chance to work under Mark. I wish his amazing kids and family all the best. We hope that he really, truly won't go far.
Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, I want to share a brief message about what we have accomplished this last year.
Mr. Speaker, House Republicans have turned a season of dread as tax season approaches into a season of historic relief. Tax season is officially underway, and this year, 91 percent of all taxpayers will experience an easier and more simplified filing process.
We locked in the doubled standard deduction, and not only at the rate that Republicans established in 2017. We actually boosted it for this new approach. It is now considered permanent policy, meaning that families will pay no taxes on the first $31,500 of what they make.
It will also save Americans an estimated 210 million hours per year in paperwork and $13 billion in compliance costs annually.
We talk all the time about simplifying the tax code. Everybody talks about it, and we have done it. Since 2017, we decided to double the standard deduction.
That immediately targets middle- and lower-income Americans who choose not to itemize. Itemizing is still an option you can do, Mr. Speaker, if you have multiple different types of elements that you can deduct from your taxes. You can still choose to do that, but the vast majority of Americans, working Americans and everyday Americans, use the doubled standard deduction.
That is real tax relief. It goes unsaid a lot. It is such a standard piece. Nobody truly disagrees with it--``nobody'' meaning both parties. It is something that we have now established as the norm, and it will give immediate relief to the vast majority of American families.
Because the historic tax cuts are retroactive to 2025, the average refund is projected to increase by $1,000, with a total of $91 billion in additional refunds being returned to the American people this spring. We also repealed the Democrats' $600 reporting requirements for payments through PayPal or Venmo
This, again, is an effort to simplify the tax code and make it work for American families so they will be able to have more of what they earned. I will get to more of that.
Filing taxes is a pain point--we all know that--for most people because of both the amount and the process. We have simplified it to improve the experience for filers and increase accountability for lawmakers deciding where those funds are allocated.
Working families were our top priority in these tax cuts. We wanted to help them achieve the American Dream, make life more affordable, and make filing taxes less of a burden. This year, Utah families will be able to keep more of their hard-earned money through the increased standard deduction and face less burdensome paperwork.
It is very simple. Republicans have created a tax code that simply works for American families. This is something that doesn't work against them, as so oftentimes things from Washington, D.C., do.
Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be a part of delivering this win for Utahns, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Stansbury) for 30 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material in the Record on the subject of my Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentlewoman from New Mexico?
Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight during Black History Month to raise the alarm on the rewriting of American history that is happening at our national parks, our museums, our monuments, and our public spaces as the Trump administration is attempting to erase the histories, the stories, and the lives of our Black, Native, Chicano, AAPI, and LGBT+ communities.
I rise tonight to talk about what this means for the past, the present, and the future of this country because, as they say, those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it, and this country has come too far to forget.
Mr. Speaker, how we as a nation remember matters, what we remember matters, and who we remember matters because this collective memory is the map on which we build our future. Our Nation's national parks, our monuments, our memorials, our museums, and our public spaces are the places in which those memories are inscribed.
Now, I begin tonight with a simple premise: that the act of remembering is a deeply political and a deeply powerful act. So, too, is the act of erasure, of erasing and removing history. These are not merely acts of omission, but acts of power, acts of dominance, and, yes, even acts of violence.
Erasing is about telling people that their histories and their people do not matter. That your history, your ancestors, and your collective memories of pride, joy, struggle, resilience, and generations that came before do not matter.
This is exactly what this administration is doing. They are trying to take us back to a time where only the stories and lives of the few mattered. It began a year ago, on day one, when the President signed an executive order renaming Denali, the tallest mountain in Alaska and most sacred site to multiple indigenous communities, renamed after a President from Ohio without any consultation to the indigenous people of Alaska.
That same day, the President signed an executive order mandating the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion offices across the Federal Government, leading to the illegal firing and loss of leadership across Federal and military service.
In March, he signed another executive order called the ``Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History'' order, directing the Smithsonian and the Secretary of the Interior to remove what they called improper partisan ideology from exhibits and materials across the country.
It targeted mentions of slavery, Native American history, Chicano history, AAPI history, LGBTQ+ history, climate change, and other topics which they claimed were divisive, anti-American, and created ``national shame,'' thereby erasing the history of tens of millions of Americans.
Secretarial orders, including those at the Department of the Interior, that have led to the censorship of government websites and the tearing down of signs at multiple monuments, references to the histories of famous leaders removed from websites, national holidays erased, rewriting history and removing us from the American story.
What is this all in service of? It is promoting some singular narrative to undermine the recognition of this Nation's true history and its long history of struggles that have shaped it, from overcoming the loss of land, the killing and displacement of indigenous people, slavery, Jim Crow, internment, and the continued struggle for justice across our communities.
This is our true history as a nation, not something we should be ashamed of, but what has shaped who we are. These actions erase the story of what makes this great Nation beautiful: it is multicultural, multiracial, indigenous, Black, Brown, White, and diversity that makes us who we are.
This erasure delegitimizes the movements and wins we have secured generation after generation, from the struggle for civil rights at Selma and the Edmund Pettus Bridge, slavery at Gettysburg, and westward expansion into Tribal lands that secured Tribal sovereignty.
References to transgender were erased from the signs at Stonewall, where the birth of the modern LGBTQ+ movement began. References to indigenous history were removed in places where people came from, including the battleground at Little Big Horn in Montana. Memories of Black and Native history were erased from Independence Park, Cape Hatteras, and The National Mall.
Remembrance of internment of Japanese Americans was removed from Jamaica Bay in New York City. References to climate change were removed at Fort Sumter in South Carolina and Acadia National Park in Maine. Public institutions and gift shops were banned from carrying books. In America, they were banned.
In addition, the Department of Education is seeking to defund schools, universities, and institutions for teaching the history of the people and students and children who are there.
Mr. Speaker, these are not isolated incidents. This is a wholesale attack on American history, on American democracy, on American progress, and the stories of our people. It is, at its core, about power. As George Orwell noted: ``Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.''
This is not, as this administration claims, about patriotism or telling the American story. It is about controlling knowledge and history itself. Those whose histories, whose stories, and whose people are lifted up, especially as this country is celebrating its 250th birthday.
We are here tonight to say: Not on our watch. We will not let this country slide into an Orwellian or authoritarian state where we cannot even tell our own histories.
We are here to tell the truth, just as history does.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Matsui).
Mr. Speaker, I rise today because history is not just being forgotten, it is being erased.
In 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, approving the removal of American citizens of Japanese descent to remote camps. My parents and grandparents were among the 120,000 forced to leave their homes and their businesses.
They were sent by their own government, our government, to a camp in Poston, Arizona. They lived in appalling conditions, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, solely because of who they were.
I was born in that internment camp, and that history lives with me every day. It drives me to fight for my neighbors, for their rights, for their dignity
That is why the National Park Service's decision to remove references to the incarceration of Japanese Americans, along with other hard truths about our history, is not benign. It is deeply reckless.
History is not just something we remember. It is something that teaches. When we strip away the truth, we strip away all the warnings that go along with it.
In fact, during World War II, Fort Bliss in Texas was used as a detention center for Japanese Americans. Today, you don't see a sign. You see another active detention center.
This administration is detaining children on the same ground used to unjustly hold people during one of our country's darkest chapters. We are, once again, seeing people singled out because of who they are.
ICE is ripping families apart. Innocent people are being hurt. Children are being detained. Again, we hear incendiary rhetoric at the highest levels of power, language that dehumanizes, that scapegoats, that tells people who to fear, and who to blame.
We have been down that road before. When fear is normalized, when lies are repeated, injustice is excused, and when history is erased, it becomes easier to repeat it.
Our national parks are not just places of beauty. They are public classrooms. They carry the responsibility to tell the full American story, especially the parts that expose how fragile our freedoms truly are.
That is why I have fought to expand and protect the Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program to make sure that these places are preserved and accessible, not hidden, not sanitized, not erased. Because civil liberties are not self-sustaining. Democracy is not self- fulfilling. We must work at it.
History does not protect us unless we are willing to tell it. I believe that this is a great and wonderful country, but that promise only survives if we confront our past honestly and refuse to let fear write our future.
Mr. Speaker, I will not be silent about our past. I will not stop fighting for our future.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Stansbury for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, national parks hold a sacred mandate. They are not just places of extraordinary beauty. They are places of truth. Their purpose is to preserve and interpret the full breadth of the American experience: the good, the bad, the inspiring, and the painful.
Erasing history doesn't make it disappear. It makes us more likely to repeat it. History shows us in this country and around the world that when governments begin scrubbing uncomfortable truths from public spaces, they are often moving toward something darker and more dangerous.
People don't visit our national parks to not only marvel at the mountains or coastlines. They come to understand who we are. They come to confront the complex tapestry of our past: our triumphs, our failures, and the lessons that bind them together.
That is why the recent removal of the interpretive materials titled ``Life Under Slavery,'' ``The Dirty Business of Slavery,'' and signage addressing climate change should alarm every American.
These changes don't make us more patriotic. They make us more ignorant. Let's be clear: These materials were not factually incorrect. They weren't misleading. They weren't partisan. They were accurate reflections of our history and our present. They are histories that make some people uncomfortable, but discomfort is not a justification for censorship.
If we allow history to be erased in our national parks, places meant to endure beyond political cycles, we normalize the idea that facts are optional and truth is negotiable.
That is not just an attack on historians or park rangers. It is an attack on democracy itself, and the timing could not be more ironic.
As we approach America's 250th birthday, our national parks should be a place of reflection, learning, and honest celebration. Instead, we are fighting simply to ensure that these public lands continue to represent the full dimension of the American experience.
National parks are not propaganda tools. They are not instruments of partisan comfort. They exist to preserve and interpret the full American story, not just the parts that make some politicians feel at ease.
That is why the work of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks is so critical. This nonpartisan organization is made up of more than 4,800 current, former, and retired National Park Service professionals, people who have devoted over 50,000 years of combined service to caring for our most valuable, natural, and cultural resources. These are experts. These are the stewards of our shared history.
We owe it to them and to future generations to protect the integrity of our national parks because a nation confident in its values does not hide from its history; it learns from it. It tells the truth, even when the truth is hard.
Mr. Speaker, on January 22, the Trump administration forced the National Park Service to remove panels at Independence Hall National Park, the cradle of our liberty, telling an important chapter in George Washington's Presidency.
Early in our Nation's history, Philadelphia was our Nation's Capital, and when Washington moved to the President's house near Independence Hall in 1790, he brought with him eight slaves from his Virginia plantation.
Mr. Speaker, 10 years earlier, Pennsylvania had begun to abolish slavery, allowing slaves brought to the Commonwealth by residents of other States to claim their freedom if they lived there for 6 months or more.
Therefore, from 1790 to 1797, President Washington rotated the slaves he brought to Philadelphia so that they could not establish the 6 months of residency which would have given them their freedom.
The panels that President Trump ordered to be removed were the result of decades of scholarship and community advocacy to acknowledge and examine the paradox between slavery and freedom at the founding of our Nation.
Telling the story of the slaves who lived in President Washington's home in Philadelphia is an expression of the American values of courage and honesty, acknowledging that our Founders and our Nation were not perfect at its inception, but that we must continually strive to form a more perfect union, to learn from the lessons of the past, lest we repeat them, and to acknowledge the humanity of those who were enslaved.
Telling the history of George Washington's use of slave labor reflects a mature choice to own up to past imperfections and mistakes rather than erasing history and the people who lived it.
The current White House has chosen a different path, seeking to erase our history and the people who lived it to fit a whitewashed and largely fictitious narrative.
The White House says that the panels were removed to ``ensure accuracy, honesty, and alignment with shared national values'' and claims that the panels were aimed at ``demeaning our brave Founding Fathers.''
This White House doesn't want Americans to learn about the horrors of slavery, the wrongful internment of the Japanese Americans, the denial of civil rights to a host of people, or other abuses of our past because they don't want us to identify the abuses in our present.
The panels at the President's house must go back. The city of Philadelphia has filed a lawsuit, and I am working with Congressmen Evans and Boyle, my colleagues in the Philadelphia delegation, to demand their return. However, that is not all that needs to happen.
Our history, all of our history, the triumphs and horrors, must be acknowledged.
Mr. Speaker, we all need to take notice and stand up to this administration's abuses, lawlessness, and attempts to erase facts and history because the ability to tell the truth is probably the most essential American value.
Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague, Representative Stansbury, for bringing us together tonight to discuss an important and alarming situation.
Every American should be outraged at the Trump administration's attempt to erase American history and specifically to erase the history of Black, Native American, Hispanic, and other people of color who have helped shape this country.
The Department of the Interior under this administration recently removed a slavery-related exhibit at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia recognizing people enslaved by the Founders. They removed a sign from Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park mentioning Native American massacres. They have removed a sign at Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site in Colorado describing the forced removal of a Native Tribe and a family's slave ownership.
Why? Why are they doing this? When people try to erase history, they are often doing it because they want to shape the future. They want to shape a future in which America does not honor the full diversity that has made our country the beacon of light that it is in the world. They do not want people to know about the struggle that went into building this more perfect Union. They want to build a future that looks more like the past. We cannot allow that to happen.
This insidious plot to erase American history goes far beyond the national parks and the Department of the Interior. The Trump administration has given guidance to Federal agencies to limit the use of or avoid using 200 words, including ``Tribal,'' ``Native American,'' ``immigrants,'' ``racial,'' ``Black,'' and ``women.''
They are not trying to erase all of our history. In fact, they have restored a Confederate statue of General Albert Pike here in Washington, D.C., and ordered a portrait of Robert E. Lee to be placed in the Pentagon. These are men who committed treason against this country in the defense of slavery.
This administration has continued to allow its own employees to post white supremacist language on social media. A 25-year-old DOGE employee wrote: ``You could not pay me to marry outside my ethnicity,'' and, ``Normalize Indian hate.'' This came to light a year ago. He is still employed by the administration.
The assistant chief counsel for ICE had a social media account: ``America is a White nation,'' and ``'Migrants' are all criminals.'' He is still employed.
Mr. Speaker, this is not okay. We must fight back, and I thank my colleague for bringing attention to this matter.
Mr. Speaker, on a hilltop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, there is an interpretive plaque on a boulder. It stands where the government locked up thousands of Japanese as so-called enemy aliens.
My great-grandfather, my GG, was one of them. He was locked behind barbed wire while his son, my grandfather, joined the Military Intelligence Service in service to a country that saw him as the enemy. That small stone marker is all that remains to tell their story.
Today, the Trump administration is removing national park signage that tells the truth about slavery, the genocide of indigenous Americans, and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.
In Nazi Germany, it started with burning books. In the USSR, they erased people from photographs. In North Korea, they deleted political leaders from online archives. Today, in the United States, quite ironically, the Trump administration calls it removing negative information about past or living Americans.
What happens when they decide the story of my GG is too negative to remember? What happens when they want to whitewash history and remove the service and sacrifice of our communities of color?
In March 2025, the U.S. Army removed its web page honoring the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the all-nisei unit that became one of the most decorated in American military history.
That is not a simple edit. It is not an accident. It is not an oversight. It was an intentional action by this administration to push a revisionist history of American history, scrubbing away one plaque, one web page, one sign, one sentence at a time.
Mr. Speaker, five incarceration sites are now part of the National Park System. They are Manzanar in California, Minidoka in Idaho, Tule Lake in California, Amache in Colorado, and Honouliuli in Hawaii. Across the country, a dozen federally recognized landmarks and museums preserve this history, our history, from Heart Mountain to Topaz to Santa Fe. Are they next? Will the truth be rewritten or, worse, completely erased?
History is not just decor for a museum exhibit or a national park. It is a warning label for the same injustices we are now seeing repeated today. We see it in the targeting of immigrants. We see it in the dismantling of civil rights protections. We see it in efforts to attack birthright citizenship. We see it when they invoke legal powers that once falsely justified locking up over 120,000 Japanese Americans.
Looking back, what would have changed if someone had just stepped in, if the books had been saved, the pictures restored, the stories preserved, and the truth protected? That is the choice before us now.
We are the truthtellers. We are the truthkeepers. It is on us to truly be the keepers of this history and to make sure that the truth is known and cannot be forgotten.
We have the chance to make this the moment when someone did step in, when someone did say not again. The question isn't whether history will repeat itself. The question is: Will we let it?
Mr. Speaker, our country's history is complicated. Our country's history is at times uncomfortable to confront. That does not make it divisive or offensive to preserve and to learn from.
Japanese incarceration during World War II stands as one of those uncomfortable chapters that Trump and his administration are attempting to erase. More than 125,000 Japanese Americans, including my parents and grandparents, were rounded up and placed in desolate camps at the hands of their own government.
There are dozens of these camps memorialized around the country for people to visit and honor these experiences. At the Manzanar National Historic Site in California, content is now being censored because the words on the plaque there make this administration uncomfortable.
As the saying goes, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
This administration wants us to forget that our government is capable of rounding up entire families and upending their lives, as they did to my family, without any due process. They want us to forget the past while they perpetuate yet another legacy-defining human and civil rights abuse on a national scale.
Will Americans generations from now visit alligator Alcatraz and think to themselves: How could our government do this? How could our leaders do this?
Will students on school trips one day walk through cages behind razor wire, trying to comprehend the brutality that took place there?
More importantly, these future generations of Americans will look to us, the Congress, to see what we did to try to stop it.
We cannot stop it alone. We need Republicans like you, Mr. Speaker, to join us. Think of our future. Think of how history will remember this government you are a part of: executions of Americans on our streets, demanding
One day, everyone will say that we were against this. One day, they will say that you should have been against this, that we should have been against this.
Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Arizona, and I would really just commend the people who watch C-SPAN, all 14 of them, the greatness of my friend from Arizona and how much he focuses on the spending concerns of our country and the vast amount of debt that we are passing down to our children and grandchildren and what we can do to fix it. He is one of the smartest guys on the subject, and I am deeply proud to serve alongside of him.
I appreciate his time here. I actually would like to sit here for 1 hour or 2 to regale him with charts, but I have to go do another thing.
Mr. Speaker, I am here right now because the American people are demanding that we, the elected leaders in Washington--that we in the people's House--that we secure the elections of the United States. They are tired of wondering whether their votes matter. They are tired of wondering if those who have no right to vote--those who are noncitizens--are actually packing our ballot boxes with illegal votes.
I am more determined than ever to secure our elections, but in an age of progressive, suicidal empathy, basic concepts such as voter ID and proof of citizenship have been attacked as suppression. Let me be clear: Nothing could be further from the truth.
Voter ID, voter identification, is arguably the single most commonsense proposal to ever grace this Chamber. A proof of citizenship requirement to register to vote is an idea so basic, so assumed, and so inherent to a functioning republic that opposition to it would offend every man who signed his name to our Declaration of Independence.
I have good news for the American people. No longer will our elections be governed by a check box if we do our jobs in this House Chamber and our colleagues in the Senate do their jobs. No longer will people pretend to be an American and, thus, influence our elected leaders. No longer will our elections be insecure if we do our jobs.
Last week, I joined with my friend, Senator Mike Lee, in the Senate Chamber to introduce a bill that we call the SAVE America Act. This legislation builds upon bills that we introduced last Congress, the SAVE Act, legislation that was focused on a simple idea of requiring demonstration of citizenship and for States to guarantee that their voter rolls are matched to guaranteed citizenship to be able to have an election in that State.
We had a simple bill to guarantee that only citizens are voting in American elections. Now we have added another simple concept: voter identification. Under the SAVE America Act, an individual will be required to provide that proof of citizenship in order to register and, on election day, required to demonstrate voter identification in accordance, by the way, with a majority of American States.
Mr. Speaker, the problem is that we passed the SAVE Act. We passed the SAVE Act in the previous Congress, and Chuck Schumer and Democrats stopped it. We passed the SAVE Act in this body last year, in this Congress. So far, Chuck Schumer and Democrats are saying that they wish to stop it in the Senate.
So the question is: What will we do here in this House Chamber? I am proud to say that our House leadership is working with us to advance the SAVE America Act as early as next week to be able to move that bill off of the House floor, to get it sent over to the Senate, and thereby allowing the Senate to be able to move that legislation, if--if the Senate will do what it can do, which is force those who are saying that they are going to filibuster to actually take the floor of the Senate and filibuster.
See, people don't understand Senate rules. They think that the ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'' version of the filibuster is the filibuster. But the truth is that Senators have, for a long time, hidden behind the rules to say that there is somehow a magical 60-vote threshold to move legislation through the Senate.
There is not. The 60-vote number is simply a fake filibuster--a zombie filibuster, as my friend, Mike Lee, calls it, meaning it is an arbitrary rule that was put in place to, yes, if you have 60 votes, you can shut off debate.
The core of the Senate--the core of the filibuster was about people being able to speak. Because on the Senate floor, you can speak, you can vote, or you can be assessing whether you have a quorum. Those are pretty much the things that you can do on the Senate floor.
So guess what. If you have a quorum, if you have 51 Senators sitting on the floor of the Senate demanding action for the American people, such as passing the SAVE America Act, then you can force the vote, unless a Member wishes to speak.
If Members in the Senate wish to speak against passing a commonsense piece of legislation that polls at 80 percent, then let them do it.
Let Democrats go to the floor of the Senate. Let them take the floor. Let them look at 51 Republicans sitting on the Senate floor who want to move a bill that 85 percent of White Americans, 82 percent of Hispanic Americans, 76 percent of Black Americans, 71 percent of Democrats, and 95 percent of Republicans believe we should pass so that we can have security in our elections.
We can pass the SAVE America Act. We will do that in the House Chamber next week. We will have citizenship. We will have voter ID. We will send it to the Senate, and if the Senate does its job, if Senate Republicans put this on the floor of the Senate, then we can force action and force Democrats to stand up on the Senate floor and oppose the will of over three-quarters of the American people.
I want to see them try. I think if we do it, I think we will win, and I think we will save this Republic, and we will save America.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is an incredible leader and passionate on this, and it is absurd that something that America desperately wants has been this difficult for the Democrats, particularly in the Senate.
How many Democrats, when we passed it out of the House before, voted with us?
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) for the purpose of a colloquy.
Last year, we had five Democrats join with us and, this year, four Democrats joined with us. I think there will be pressure for a number of Democrats to join with us here and in the Senate.
I will give you one last concept, being someone from Arizona. How do you protect a republic if your citizens don't trust the institutions and don't trust elections? So even if you are uncomfortable with the legislation, which I have no idea why you would be, defend the institution by passing a piece of legislation that actually raises the level of faith and trust in our elections. How can it not be amazingly good for this Republic?
Mr. Speaker, I want to yield the gentleman his time, but I will just close by saying: We sit here in this Chamber under the In God We Trust motto. We sit here in front of this flag. We think about all of the people who came before us who sacrificed for this country. This is the most basic of things that we can do to restore trust in a Republican form of government, where Representatives are sent to Washington to represent them.
They have to believe in it. They have to believe in us. They have to believe in the country. What more can you do besides guarantee that their votes
Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Arizona for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to do this somewhat quickly because they are a couple of fairly simple concepts.
Almost every week when we are in session, for a decade, I have come behind this microphone and tried to help people understand the fiscal situation in the United States.
Some of the math is both hopeful and incredibly frustrating. So think about this: Our tax collections are up almost 10 percent--almost 10 percent. Tax collections are up in the last 12 months. Yet, over the last 12 months, we have borrowed $2.34 trillion. We are borrowing right now, if you take over the last 12 months, $74,000 every second.
You go: But how can that possibly be? Tax receipts are up.
Our problem is fairly simple. Refinancing the debt, we have to bring about $10 trillion to $11 trillion to market over this 12-month period, and much of that is debt that was sold a few years ago, when interest rates were very, very low. So it is getting refinanced at today's rates.
The other thing that I talk about constantly, because it is my intense frustration around here, is the Democrats and--I am sorry--many of my Republican colleagues have turned healthcare into financial engineering instead of: What does it cost to provide services? What does it cost to help our brothers and sisters be healthy? We are actually seeing that we had some projections from CBO and others of about a 5 percent growth in spending on healthcare. I am going to show you some of this.
We are seeing some numbers coming in that are closer to 8 percent or 9 percent growth in that spending, so interest and healthcare.
Mr. Speaker, much of it is demographics. Remember, in less than approximately 3 years, over half of the Federal spending will go to those who are 65 and up. It is substantial because of a couple of things.
We got older as a population. We have gone 30 to 40 years with falling fertility rates. Remember, we are well below replacement rates in the number of children we have. There is math that, last year and this year, there was pretty much flat population growth.
Then there is this. I'm trying to help folks understand the reality of what your Federal Government is.
Do you see the blue area? This is defense and nondefense. In a couple of days, we are actually going to get an update, and my team actually thinks that this number will go from 26 percent of being, what we call, discretionary to maybe down to 25 percent. That is one quarter.
Every dime of this is borrowed, and that is all Members of Congress actually vote on. The rest of this, whether it be interest, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or other mandatory spending, all of that red is on autopilot. It is a formula.
If you add this up, basically it is under $2 trillion. I just told you we have borrowed over $2.3 trillion in the last 12 months, meaning every dime of this is borrowed, and a chunk of mandatory is borrowed.
That is our reality. Your government is basically an insurance company with an army paying out a lot of annuities. It is demographics. Yet much of the craziness you hear behind these microphones is anything they can say to keep you from focusing on the fiscal reality of what is going on in our country.
We have been trying to figure out how to express some of this, so I am going to do it in a couple of different ways.
Over the last 12 months, receipts have grown 10 percent. Spending is up 4 percent. You say: Shouldn't we be closing the gap? Except the problem is the spending last year was over $7 trillion, where tax receipts were $5 trillion. Do the 4 percent growth over here on spending, the 10 percent growth on taxes, you still have--closing the gap--maybe $250 billion. That is wonderful. If you are heading toward $7.4 trillion spending, that is less than 1 month of borrowing.
You have got to understand. We just finished the fourth month of this new fiscal year, and we have already borrowed--we have borrowed since October 1 $926,724,000. Meaning in the next couple of weeks, depending on how much cash the Treasury decides to keep on the balance sheets, we are going to hit a trillion dollars. This was supposed to be a year where we would start seeing the debt starting to go down.
I blessed. I chair the Joint Economic Committee, I am number four on Ways and Means, and I chair the Oversight there. My job is to get the math right.
We always said we thought this would be a $2 trillion borrow year. Tax receipts are up, but spending is up substantially, once again, because of the financing of $38.5 trillion of U.S. sovereigns, $10 trillion of it having to be refinanced this year, $2 trillion virgin, meaning it is new borrowing, and healthcare costs.
When we bring these charts in, it is one of the classic problems of when you do this thing, look at this. Tax receipts are way up; but the tax receipts and spending are upside down. One is based on $7-plus trillion, the other is based on $5 trillion, meaning that gap is not nearly as tight as you think it is.
I am going to pass through some of these.
Part of the great battle is--and Chip was basically teasing for the 14 people that watch C-SPAN. Sometimes I am worried there is not even 14--if you ever have a curiosity, if you really care about saving the Republic, I would argue what takes us down is potentially the bond market. If we keep borrowing like this, the bond market is going to start running this country.
Go to the Joint Economic Committee Republicans' website. We put out some amazing data, and we are trying to make it easier to absorb. We are doing better with charts and graphs, but another thing we do is every workday we send out a text message. We call it the Daily Debt, Schweikert's Daily Debt, and it basically does this math for you. It tells you here is what we borrowed over the last 12 months, and here is what we have borrowed this fiscal year.
The beauty of this is you can say: Over the last 12 months, we are borrowing $74,400 every second. So far this fiscal year, so 4 months in, we are borrowing $85,000 every second.
Start telling the truth about the math and understand so often the theatrics you see here in Congress are so we can give you a dopamine hit, but we don't have to deal with these numbers because these numbers are difficult, complex, and really hard to explain. The armies of lobbyists and people in our hallways here, Mr. Speaker, what do they do when they get to our office? They don't walk in the door and say: We really want you to save the future generation. Spend less money. Everyone is at our door either wanting money or wanting us to regulate their competition. That is bureaucracies. That is businesses. That is private groups, charities. Give us more money, or create a barrier to entry so I don't have to compete with someone else with better, faster, cheaper technology. That is particularly true in healthcare.
We have done presentation after presentation here showing how you could crash the price of healthcare legalizing technology. Even today, I had a little bit of a verbal kerfuffle--love that word--with a Member who is a doctor, and he is my friend. He despised the concept, but I was showing him part of the paper that says if you have this sort of data coming off your body, whether this be the Oura ring, whether the WHOOP, the Apple Watch, the things you can wear, the data from it using the latest AI packages is statistically more accurate than a human. Why wouldn't you legalize that to help people keep healthy?
Well, it turns out when you tell a medical professional that, they get a little cranky at you because it is always about the money here.
This chart you can find on the Joint Economic Committee website, but I am trying to actually show what is happening. As we are refinancing our debt, we are having to spend a lot more money. We calculate that just interest this year, Mr. Speaker, will be probably about $1.2 trillion.
Think about this hierarchy. Let's do this together: Social Security, $1.5 trillion; interest, $1.2 trillion; Medicare, maybe $1.1 trillion; Medicaid and
When you get these folks that walk in the door saying: Just stop spending money, balance the budget tomorrow. I can do it, except you would have to get rid of every bit of government, every bit of defense, and then you tell me about the $600 billion you want me to remove from Medicare, Social Security, military pensions. What do you want to do?
That is the reality. Just interest this year will be 3 percent, maybe even higher, of GDP. When you see us talk about we want to get the debt down to just 3 percent of GDP, that just covers our interest carry.
I have a couple of these other charts I sort of want to walk through.
Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Arizona has 10 minutes remaining.
Excellent. If I do this quickly--and I apologize for talking so fast. I have had a lot of coffee today. I am trying to detox.
Something almost no one around here pays attention to, but it is my job on Ways and Means and my job with the Joint Economic Committee to talk about the financing. How do you have a country that if we are going to burn $2-plus trillion this year, that means you are bringing at least a quarter trillion dollars to market every month. Yesterday and the day before that and the day before that, we had to borrow about $7.3 billion that day; $7 billion a day, that is so far this fiscal year. If you do it over the last 12 months, it is almost $6.5 billion a day is what we borrow.
You don't need to actually pay real detailed attention to this, but what I am trying to show is the average maturities on our bonds and that they have to be refinanced. Every quarter, this is what is coming to market and the fact that we are moving away from much lower interest rates to much higher interest rates, but there are other things going on.
Do you remember how often--and, Mr. Speaker, you have probably had this experience. You are at a townhall, and someone says: How much do foreigners own of our debt?
And now you try to explain that China is actually, I think, down from $1.2 trillion down to $700 billion and is maybe now third. Japan is number one, but there were certain things that happened. When Central Banks were buying U.S. debt, there was a level of stability that came with it. This is an interesting concept, and some of the bond market folks are starting to write about this. They held it because they needed an offset for the currency. They needed it for trade. They wanted just stability.
As foreign governments and foreign central banks are getting rid of U.S. debt, bond markets, hedge funds, and others are the ones buying it. Okay. Wonderful. We have people buying our debt.
But do you see the problem? These are traders. If there is a carry trade, if there is an opportunity to make a spread, if there is an arbitrage, they sell it. You are starting to see, if you actually look--there is actually a thing called a bond VIX, a volatility index. We are starting to see much more volatility in U.S. debt. That actually scares me.
You want stability. You want the markets to believe in us. You want the markets to understand we are going to get our act together, that we are creditworthy. Yet Greece today can sell a 10-year bond cheaper than the United States. I can think of 12, 13 countries that today, if they offer a 10-year bond, that 10-year bond goes at a lower interest rates than the United States. Does that bother anyone? Does that tell anyone anything? Is anyone listening?
Look, I have chart after chart after chart.
There are ways we can communicate to the bond markets that we are taking our debt seriously. There are ways we can protect Medicare and Social Security, but we have got to tell the truth about them.
Right now, the Social Security trust fund is empty in 6.5 years. That means 7 years from now, if you are on Social Security, if we follow the law as it is today and Congress continues to fail to act, you get a 24 percent cut. Our model says we double senior poverty in 7 years. We will double the number of baby boomers who live on the street.
In 6.5 years, the Medicare trust fund is empty, and your hospital, others, get an 11 percent cut. That is our model right now.
You start to say: How do we preserve these programs?
Well, maybe we can actually take on the things we know are going on.
Next week, Mr. Speaker, I am going to try something that is probably politically crazy, but we are going to walk through the financing of Medicare next week. I am going to walk through how it actually works, because some people think the magic trust fund pays for everything. The general fund, which is all borrowed here, pays for about 40 percent of it.
In conversations, even with my brothers and sisters here, and even with some of the staff, they are not understanding the complexity.
Once again, the Social Security trust fund is empty in 6.5 years, and the Medicare trust fund is empty in 6.5 years. We go from $1 trillion last year in Medicare spending to $2 trillion in 7 years.
It is demographics. It is baby boomers. Hell, I am one of them. I am just on the younger side.
Look, I am crazy. I am 63, my wife is 63, and we have a 3-year-old and a 10-year-old we have adopted. That is being optimistic about the future.
We need a society to get this to work. We have a paper in our office that was written by a bunch of freaky smart economists out of Cambridge and Boston saying if you use a 6 percent generational discount rate-- and I said this last week, but I am trying to get it to burn into people's psyches--for a baby born today, you need 104 percent of that child's lifetime income just to pay government pensions--Federal Government, not State, just Federal Government.
Does anyone see the immorality, the craziness that is going on? We are all terrified to tell the truth about this because we make our voters mad because partially the political class has lied to the voters for so many years about our finances.
We are going to come back and start to walk through the math of--you have seen of some of the proposals on Medicare Advantage. The White House is coming back and saying they are going to just cap the growth. You saw many of these Medicare Advantage companies' stocks just crater.
We believe we have a much more elegant solution, and actually may come in at a much bigger savings, is to realign the incentives. I love the Medicare Advantage. Mr. Speaker, 55 percent of our brothers and sisters who are on Medicare use Medicare Advantage.
But the incentive for the insurance company that is managing it should be not trying to constantly build risk models to raise the cost to get in more cash. How about we do this: Get rid of the risk adjustment, get rid of the star rating, and just do something very simple: Give us a bid, and you make money by helping those you are insuring be healthier.
It is a crazy concept, but the basic concept of a capitated model was, hey, these insurers will profit by doing their job well. You have got to put in protections so it is not denial of services and not denial of access to pharmaceuticals. But if you fix those things, there are models around the country that have worked amazingly well.
Sometimes you have to have discussions that--it may have to be more than 1 year; you may have to have 3 years with opt-outs if you don't like your insurer--so they will invest in you to be healthier, maybe even buy you the technology, buy you the things to do that, and make a profit.
We are right now going to have to make a decision as a body. Are we going into the command and control and try to starve the beast, or are we going to build a model that incentivizes doing it better, faster, cheaper, and in this case, much, much healthier.
We are looking at right now over $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years of just Medicare being financed with debt, just debt. Now, add in what is left in the trust fund, add in what is coming out of your payroll taxes--I know it is political suicide around here to tell the
Next week, Mr. Speaker, I am going to come back, and we are just going to walk through the opportunity of how we preserve these programs using a calculator. I know Congress is often a math-free zone, but let's give it a try.
Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.
The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 57 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, February 5, 2026, at 10 a.m.
