Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to require that the Supreme Court of the United States be composed of nine justices.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

In this 119th Congress we have watched the President's followers in Congress surrender to the President one constitutional power after another.

Amazingly, the Speaker and the MAGA party have abdicated nearly every single essential power that the Framers exclusively vested in us, Congress, the Representatives of the people. First is the power to declare war, which has been usurped by the President with catastrophic results for the country and without a peep from his sycophants in Congress.

Next is the spending power, the power of the purse, the power to appropriate Federal dollars to spending and grant programs and to specify their purposes, powers that have been continually violated in acts of impoundment, nullification, and redirection by the President who has not only effectively shut down the Department of Education, USAID, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but has even helped himself, without any appropriation from Congress, to $1.8 billion of taxpayer money to give away to Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other convicted insurrectionists who attacked this body in order to try to overthrow a Presidential election in January of 2021;

Next is the power to impose tariffs and taxes and the power to regulate

commerce with foreign nations, powers that have been ripped away from us without any protests from the majority so the President could launch preposterous trade wars against the world and aggressively insult and alienate our beloved neighbor and democratic ally Canada.

They have abandoned even the power to decide whether or not the President should receive Presidential emoluments, gifts, payments from foreign governments as he piles up a pirate's treasure of hundreds of millions of dollars in gifts from foreign autocracies and monarchies.

They have abandoned the unquestioned exclusive congressional power of Congress to build and exercise control over needful buildings and structures for the national government like the White House; the Reflecting Pool, which they are now calling the strait of warm ooze; and The Kennedy Center. All of these structures are being bulldozed, demolished, desecrated with Presidential graffiti, and renovated according to unilateral and independent executive decisions without even congressional consultation--all for the first time in American history.

They are dangerously ceding our power to regulate the times, places, and manner of Federal elections conducted in the States to the post office and to our monarchically minded President who has no constitutional role in elections and was impeached by this Chamber for inciting a violent insurrection to try to overthrow an election, which he lost by more than 7 million votes, 306-232 in the electoral college.

So what constitutional power do our colleagues propose to surrender today? Well, it is just a power that Congress has had since the beginning of the Republic under Article III, Section 1: the power to define the composition of the Supreme Court and the number of Justices who serve there.

Over the course of our history, Congress has exercised this authority seven different times by changing the number of Justices on the Court.

With the Judiciary Act of 1789, Congress established the first Court with six Justices. In 1801, President Adams and Congress shrank it to five Justices.

When President Jefferson won in 1800 and came back to power, then it was back to six Justices.

In 1807, Congress expanded it to seven Justices when it created the Seventh Circuit, keeping to the congressional tradition of one Justice per Federal Circuit.

In 1837, Congress expanded the number of Federal Circuits to nine and then added the corresponding two seats to the Court, bringing the Court to nine Justices.

In 1863, Congress briefly added a 10th Federal Circuit during the Civil War and added a 10th Justice, giving Lincoln one more to appoint.

In 1866, Congress went back to seven Justices.

In 1869, President Grant and Congress increased the Court to nine again with another Judiciary Act, again, matching the number of Justices to Federal Circuits. That is the tradition of circuit riding.

Today, we still have nine Justices, although we have 13 Federal judicial circuits, the vast majority of which are not represented by even a single Justice among the nine currently serving on the Supreme Court.

In fact, the floor leader from Arizona has not only no Justices from his State on the Supreme Court, there are no Justices from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has 67 million Americans living there.

Five of the Justices today come from the New York City metropolitan area, basically one for each borough. Is it really possible that there are not people from other parts of the country who could effectively and honorably serve on the Supreme Court?

Well, if we decided this on an originalist basis, we might move to place 13 Justices on the Court to match our 13 Federal circuits or we might go to 6 Justices, which was the original number there.

However, MAGA's proposal is to strip Congress of all authority in the matter, to freeze it and cement it permanently in the constitutional architecture for all time, with the suddenly magic number nine.

This is odd. Nine is neither the number of Federal circuits we have-- that is 13--nor is it the original number of Justices Congress placed on the Court. That was 6. Therefore, what is going on here?

Well, surprise, surprise, America, it is another partisan power grab by MAGA, our colleagues who fear for the results of the November election, as their policies have brought us nothing but war, inflation, corruption, lawlessness, and a $40 trillion debt, one-quarter of it supplied by this Presidential administration.

The MAGA party wants to cement into place a profoundly partisan and lopsided 6-3 Roberts Court that was gerrymandered and engineered by Mitch McConnell after the untimely deaths of Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsburg, each in the final year of a Presidential term.

After Justice Scalia died on February 13, 2016, President Obama nominated my constituent, Merrick Garland, to fill the seat. Senator McConnell did not even allow hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee, much less a vote in the committee, much less a vote on the floor. He said he wanted to let the people decide, and 11 months was too close to the next election; forgetting, I suppose, that President Obama had won one of those genuine constitutional 4-year terms in office.

That seat sat open for a record-setting 422 days before they filled it with Justice Gorsuch. In other words, they were for an eight-Justice Court during that year, but when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, less than 2 months before the election, when early voting had already started in some States, Senator McConnell rushed through confirmation hearings and then a final vote for Amy Coney Barrett just 8 days before the 2020 Presidential election took place, laughing about this glaring disparity in treatment, acknowledging what everyone knew: Well, that 1-year rule was just for the Democrats. They were very happy to barrel through that nomination at the last moment.

Now, by essentially stealing these two seats from the American people, MAGA has put four of the five seats in the ruling majority rightwing faction in the hands of Justices appointed by two Presidents who lost the Presidential popular vote--George W. Bush in 2010 and Donald Trump in 2016.

The rightwing capture of the Court, fueled by corporate dark money and the Citizens United decision, has plunged this Court into a legitimacy crisis, an ethics crisis, and a jurisprudential crisis like has never been seen before in American history.

Trump's followers in Congress now seek to freeze into place the political Court that MAGA built for decades to come. Thus, they urge us to give away another critical power that the Framers vested in us.

As gas and diesel prices soar out of control and Trumpflation spirals up for groceries, healthcare, housing, as Trump's reckless and forever war of choice in Iran spirals downward, and America increasingly stands isolated in the world, MAGA wants to impose a straitjacket clamp-down on our democracy, our freedom, and our constitutional rights.

The Roberts Court overthrew Roe v. Wade and destroyed the constitutional right of women to comprehensive healthcare in every State in the country. It demolished the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, and the Callais decision just this term. Also, these fraudulent textualists invented out of thin air Presidential immunity from prosecution for felony crimes committed in office.

In Federalist 51, Madison said that the major safeguard against tyranny and despotism in America would be the natural identification and loyalty that Members of Congress would show to our own branch of government. We would stand up for ourselves, Madison thought.

``Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,'' he wrote, but today's Republicans show no loyalty to the constitutional architecture of Congress, to our rights, our prerogatives, our powers. They are content just to keep their heads down, to close up shop, to go home as early as possible just to keep their jobs so the President will not mobilize social media and Elon Musk's money against them in a primary. They want to preserve their survivability, their marketability. What a

humiliating and spectacular collapse of the tradition of congressional self-respect and constitutional patriotism.

I urge every colleague in this body to oppose this ridiculous constitutional amendment and giveaway of congressional powers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The floor leader offers a charming and completely self-defeating argument when he goes to the Roosevelt plan. FDR was a President, and Congress rejected his plan.

The gentleman acknowledges that Congress has changed the size of the Supreme Court seven different times, and we have also declined to change it several times.

Now, he describes what Roosevelt wanted to do as Court packing. This is Court packing on steroids. The gentleman wants to say that this President happens to like the people on the Court right now, through all of the packing and stacking and gerrymandering that has taken place in the last few years, and therefore we should freeze it, not just only for his own term but for all time. That is extraordinary.

In the meantime, they have not offered a single argument to explain why nine Justices should be the number that we constitutionalize and place in cement forever.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), who is the ranking member of the Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet Subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I will try to answer the interesting questions raised by my distinguished colleague, Mr. Jordan, in seriatim.

First of all, anything that we do to try to improve the fortunes and the well-being of the American people, our colleagues call socialist. They call Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid socialist. That is just water off our back.

The President talks about communists. The only communists on Earth today are his best friends and his role models, like Kim Jong-un, who he writes love letters to, and President Xi, who he has praised more than two dozen times in public.

How about Vladimir Putin, who he follows around like a puppy dog? Vladimir Putin was head of the KGB. If there is a problem with communism, it is over on that side of the aisle.

The gentleman legitimately asked the question: Why did the former chair of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Nadler, advocate for an increase of four seats on the Supreme Court--which we are not debating today? What we are debating is whether Congress should have the power to do anything, to increase or reduce the size. He asked about that. It is a legitimate question. I will tell you exactly why.

The gentleman may be unfamiliar with the history here, but Congress has traditionally linked the number of Justices on the Court to the number of Federal circuits. We have 13 Federal

circuits. His proposal was to go from 9 to 13.

Even the gentleman's beloved Ninth Circuit--which I think he is supposed to be representing in some sense--would be represented on the Supreme Court. We could have one Justice from each Federal circuit. That is what circuit riding was all about. You don't need some conspiracy theory to explain it. He was very overt about why he wanted to go from 9 to 13, which we could discuss another day.

Here the question is whether we should nullify, obviate, and destroy our own power to decide who should be on the Court. Still, the gentleman has not offered one single argument explaining why the number nine should be magic other than it cements into place all the decisions of this rightwing Roberts Court.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon), the distinguished ranking member of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

By ``leftwing socialist group,'' I assume the gentleman is referring to the Framers of the Constitution. It is the Framers who set up the system. They are trying to overthrow the system that the Framers created. The Framers gave Congress the power to control the number of Justices on the Court.

Where does the number nine come from? I still await a single positive argument for why we should inscribe into law forever the number nine as the number of Justices we should have and nullify the power that the Framers of the Constitution and the Founders of the country gave to us.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Stansbury).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I will add to the remarks of the distinguished gentlewoman, this point: It is interesting that our colleagues suddenly want to dabble in constitutional amendment politics. Nobody is crying out for this, as my colleagues have argued, but you know what people want by 85 percent? People want the equal rights amendment. Where is the Republican Party on that? They used to support it.

Three-quarters of Americans, more than 75 percent, want to overturn Citizens United by a constitutional amendment, which transformed every corporate treasury in America into a dark money political slush fund. We want to get rid of that. How come they are not here today on that?

How about a constitutional amendment on the right to vote or abolishing the electoral college and giving us a

national vote for President? We have commanding popular majorities that want all those things.

Yet, they come forward with a constitutional amendment no one is talking about where you need two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate, and three-quarters of the States. You can measure the sincerity of this whole proposal by virtue of the fact that there is no national movement for it in any way.

This is, again, another little bone that is chucked over toward the White House to show them that they want to freeze into place the vanishing power of Donald Trump.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman quotes me as having said that I said there was no possible reason that someone would want nine. No, I didn't say that at all.

I think there might be a number of reasons. One very clear one is they want to freeze into place the majority they have in the Court right now, a majority that was created by the most suspect political maneuvers on the Senate side. The gentleman would like to lionize the number nine and place it in cement.

Why wasn't it nine when Senator McConnell blocked any confirmation or vote on a replacement for Justice Scalia after he died? He kept it at eight for an entire year in order to get to the next administration so they could put Justice Gorsuch in instead of my constituent, Merrick Garland, who is one of the most talented people ever nominated to the Supreme Court. He was the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit, and they kept him off. Eight was fine with them then. Now, they want to go to nine because President Trump likes it just fine.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Menefee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, quickly, just as Congress has exercised its authority seven different times to reduce the size of the Court or increase the size of the Court according to appropriate historical circumstances, it has rejected numerous proposals to do that, including in the famed Court-Packing Plan.

I don't know why our colleagues insist on thinking that FDR's field proposal is somehow an argument for giving our power away. We exercised our power properly in that moment.

The gentlewoman from Wyoming refers to the Democratic political program. I am not sure what she is referring to, but it is certainly the opposite of the GOP political program of endless war, inflation, corruption, illegal tariffs, and billion-dollar ballrooms.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am moved by the remarks of the distinguished gentlewoman from Colorado. It seems to me if it doesn't make money for the Trump family, they call it socialist. That is interesting, especially when it is President Trump who is taking large pieces out of American corporations, like Intel. No other American President has done anything like that. He is, obviously, the state socialist and hanging around and palling around with every communist dictator on Earth.

Again, we have not heard a single positive argument for why we should cement for all time nine as the number of Justices on the Supreme Court. I am beginning to conclude that there simply is no argument.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, finally, a serious argument. I thank the distinguished gentleman, the former attorney general of Kansas, for responding.

First of all, he describes this as the Keep Nine Amendment. If you want to keep at nine, you don't need a constitutional amendment. You just make that argument in Congress, just like people argued in prior centuries to keep it at ten or keep it at six or let's move to seven, so we don't need to freeze it into the Constitution.

Secondly, he says that this should be a bipartisan issue. It should not be partisan. Agreed. We should have a bipartisan commitment to the handiwork of the Framers. It is in the Constitution that it is up to Congress. Yet, the gentleman leaves us by saying: Well, we are actually going to turn it over to the people to decide whether to revoke this power that the Framers invested in Congress.

Of course, that is what it would mean to amend the Constitution. Why would we want to do that? We have dealt with this in a responsible way throughout American history. We are suspicious that our colleagues first gave away the war power to the President.

Then they give away the spending power by letting him just abolish entire agencies and entities, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, USAID, and the Department of Education.

Then they give the President the power over tariffs, which we have because we have the power to regulate commerce domestically and internationally, and he imposed the largest tax in American history unilaterally. That is what a tariff is. It is not a tax on China or any other country. It is a tax on our businesses and our people.

Now we are in a trade war with Canada. If you travel to the north of Michigan in the Upper Peninsula, you go to the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, you go to the Adirondacks in New York, the small businesses are crying out for help because Canadians are boycotting us because of the whimsical, irrational, and deranged trade policies of this administration.

We have real problems to deal with. We don't really need to be giving away the powers of Congress and upsetting the proper balance of powers that was set by the Framers originally.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, one still searches in vain for a single justification for why we would surrender and abdicate yet another power that Congress has in the Constitution, this time freezing it into the cement of constitutional architecture for all time, that there will be nine Justices.

Mr. Speaker, they haven't even explained what that means. For example, let's say another Senate decides to do what Mitch McConnell did and hold a seat open for a year. Now that we have written a number into the Constitution for the first time, does that mean that the Supreme Court can't meet or can't vote? It is a serious question.

In other words, can the Supreme Court not operate if it doesn't meet the magic number of nine? They haven't told us, which shows this is just frivolous political confetti that is being thrown into the air. It is not an attempt to really think through the powers of Congress, the powers of the Court, and so on.

My friend from Kansas said that the Court shouldn't be a political football, and I agree with him about that because there are important things entrusted to the Court, like the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, and due process, all things under attack by this administration.

Their gerrymandered Supreme Court, well, they have done all right sometimes, not as good as the district courts and the appeals courts have done. We have won more than 80 percent of the cases against President Trump in those courts, which is why they have been calling for the impeachment of judges, including Republican-appointed judges like Judge Boasberg, who was appointed by President Bush. They have called for his impeachment. That is making a political football out of it.

We have had colleagues who have put up posters to impeach this judge and impeach that judge. They wanted to have a hearing about it in the Judiciary Committee, where they are talking about it. That is making a political football about it.

I think we can all be intellectually honest. We know after Brown v. Board, the right-wingers, the anti-integrationists said to impeach Earl Warren, and the Republican platform for decades had language attacking the Supreme Court for Roe v. Wade.

People have a right on all sides of the political spectrum to express what they feel about the Supreme Court, but why suddenly should we amend the Constitution of the United States to revoke our own powers simply because President Trump happens to like this Supreme Court and they voted for his immunity from felony crimes committed while in office, the so-called textualists and the so-called originalists.

Where do you see in the Constitution anything about the President having immunity? When the Framers wanted to write immunity into the Constitution, they did it, like through the Speech and Debate Clause for Members of Congress. Maybe that is what they are going to want to give up next, the Speech and Debate Clause protecting us from prosecution by the executive branch for saying things that he doesn't like.

That is not in the original Constitution. The President has it, but they made it up. Where did that come from? The stork brought it. They invented it.

They call themselves originalists. It wasn't in the Federalist Papers. It wasn't in the original Constitutional Convention records. It is not in any of the ratified convention records. Where did that doctrine come from? They made it up.

Mr. Speaker, we all can argue about what the Supreme Court does, but nobody yet has made a single satisfactory argument about why we should freeze, for the first time in American history, the number of Justices at nine when it has always been up to the Representatives of the people in the House and the Senate.

Let me just close on that thought. The Senate already gets some say over the Supreme Court by rendering the power of advice and consent. The only power we have is the power they want to give up.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina for yielding me the customary time, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, how long should the American people have to wait for our prices to come down? Republicans promised that prices would come down on day one. That was 589 days ago, coming up on 2 years.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my Republican colleagues again: How much longer do we all have to wait? Are they going to tell us, or is it a big surprise? Is it another week, another month, another President?

Mr. Speaker, when are my Republican colleagues going to take responsibility for the fact that they are in charge of everything? Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the executive branch. Hell, Republicans even control the Supreme Court.

Mr. Speaker, because of Republican policies, the affordability crisis in the United States of America is getting worse. It is getting worse, so how long until they acknowledge that their stupid tariffs and their illegal war with Iran are driving up prices and making life harder for people?

Mr. Speaker, how long until the Epstein files are fully released? Some of us still haven't forgotten about that one or the fact that the files remain hidden and that Trump's involvement is being covered up despite congressional laws to the contrary.

How long does America have to wait until Republicans stop blaming everybody else and acknowledge that they have failed? I, for one, am sick of the gaslighting and the projection. I am sick of the broken promises. I am sick of the lies. I am sick of the corruption, the grift, and the greed. The people who I represent are sick of it, too.

Mr. Speaker, I do a farm tour every year. I represent a lot of rural communities and hundreds and hundreds of small- and medium-sized family farms that have been on the same land for generations. I heard a story about one farmer who is being asked to pay an extra $25,000 for a single piece of essential equipment because of Trump's tariffs. On top of that, the price of diesel is ruining their livelihood.

That is what this administration is doing to rural America, to small towns, and to the family farms that I represent. This President and this Republican Congress are destroying them. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are destroying them.

It is just as bad for consumers because Trump's tariffs, trade wars, and higher gas prices are getting passed along to us, as well. Gas is still over $4 a gallon. Ground beef is up 9 percent. Tomatoes and apples are up over 10 percent. Turkey is up 8 percent. Fish is up almost 8 percent. Cars are more expensive. Clothes are more expensive. Utility bills are more expensive. Everything is more expensive.

Inflation is killing people, and this Republican Congress has a bunch of bills today which will do nothing, nothing, nothing to lower prices.

I am going to talk about those bills in a second, but first let me say: Do you know who is not getting destroyed, Mr. Speaker? It is the rich, the powerful, and the well-connected. Those people who hang out in Mar-a-Lago are not getting destroyed. They are doing better than ever.

The multimillionaires and the billionaires are doing great, thanks to all the tax breaks that they got. Big Oil, Big Ag, and Big Tech get massive giveaways from Republicans. Some of those giveaways are in the bills we are considering today, one of which is a giveaway to the mining industry, and I am sure their lobbyists will get a nice, big bonus for getting that one across the finish line.

It is really gross. It is really gross. The rich and the powerful are doing better than ever while everyone else is seeing double-digit price increases, but don't bother trying to get Republicans to do anything about it. Let's look at their priorities so far this Congress.

Here is what they have been doing while gas is $4 a gallon. Let's see what they have been doing. They have been pretending to rename the Gulf of Mexico, pretending to rename Lake Ontario, pretending to rename The Kennedy Center, introducing a bill to put Donald Trump on Mount Rushmore, introducing a bill to make his birthday a national holiday, introducing a bill to put him on the $100 bill, introducing a bill to name Dulles International Airport after him, and introducing a bill to name the Washington Metro after him. I mean, you can't make this stuff up.

These are actual bills that Republicans have introduced; and let us not forget letting the President pilfer taxpayer money to build a tacky ballroom, a stupid arch, and fix the airplane that Qatar bribed--I am sorry, excuse me, donated to him.

That is the focus of this Republican Congress. That is what this Republican Congress is obsessed with: worshipping Donald Trump, while you stress out about how you are going to pay your mortgage or your kid's tuition or your parents' medical bills.

So, I mean, while they worship Donald Trump, the American people have to struggle with how they are going to make ends meet. And they are not getting any help from anything that is going on in this Chamber.

The big Republican push this week is repassing a nonbinding resolution that condemns socialism. They already passed it, and it already does nothing. So I am not sure why they need to pass it again, but that is their big, important bill this week. You just heard it from the chairwoman of the Rules Committee.

What is their definition of ``socialism,'' you ask? What exactly are they condemning? I actually asked Republicans last time around in the Rules

Committee to define what they are condemning. To define socialism if you will. You all might be shocked. Social Security? Republicans condemn that as socialism. Medicare? That is socialism. Medicaid? That is socialism. Public schools? That is socialism. Food safety inspections? That is socialism. National parks? That is socialism. Public transit? You guessed it. You guessed it.

They must really think Americans are stupid. This is the same old Red Scare bs. By their definition, anyone in the United States who supports Medicaid is a socialist sympathizer. I mean, is Joe McCarthy coming back from the dead?

This is insane. It is literally crazy that this is the garbage that we are talking about while people are seeing their costs going through the roof. People can't afford to make ends meet, and this is what this Congress is focused on right now? I mean, come on.

While we are on the topic of condemning political ideology that we disagree with, let me ask: Where is their condemnation of fascism? I mean, the Trump administration weaponizes the government to silence opposition. It attacks the free press, wants to invade our allies, shoots innocent people in the streets, dehumanizes immigrants by saying that they ``poison the blood of our country,'' calls political opponents ``the enemy from within,'' and let's not forget they tried to overturn a free and fair election in 2020. Is that not fascism? Where is their condemnation of that? Silence. Silence. Nothing.

Mr. Speaker, I don't envy the gentlewoman's task today. She has to defend a pretty lousy agenda, and I think she knows it. But I just wish we could get some acknowledgment from the other side that things are not all fine and well in America right now.

Prices are up. Inflation is up. Bills are higher. Life is harder, and it is because of this President's policies. Instead of acknowledging it, it is like Republicans are living in an alternative reality. I mean, it is like what happened to the Republican Party? It doesn't exist anymore. It is like a cult.

We do have an affordability crisis. That is just a fact. Instead of working with us to address it, Republicans are pretending like it doesn't exist. Instead, we get more culture war nonsense and more giveaways to special interests.

But November is coming soon. Mr. Speaker, November is coming very soon, and I think my Republican colleagues are getting desperate. I think they know that the jig is up. I think they know that the American people are about to hold them accountable for all of their broken promises. I think that is why you are seeing this last-ditch attempt to throw the kitchen sink of culture war issues at the wall to see what sticks.

This is a lousy, awful, rotten rule. And by the way, it is totally closed. Nobody can offer any amendments to anything in this rule. It may even fail because we had a bipartisan vote yesterday in the Rules Committee against this rule, so we will see what happens on the floor. But, come on, people are hurting.

I would say to my Republican friends: Your constituents are hurting. They want us to do something to help them. They don't want this. They don't want this. They want something real. So if you can give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires and you can bail out the Mar-a- Lago class, how about helping the average person, the hardworking men and women who are trying to make ends meet. That is what they want. That is what they expect.

I urge a ``no'' vote on this, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentlewoman from North Carolina's explanation, and I know that those are the Republican talking points, but I have got news for you. Nobody is buying it.

I mean, I don't know whether my friend was home talking to her constituents over the break, but I was home talking to my constituents. I was in other States talking to voters, as well, and do you know what? Life has gotten harder for them. Prices of everything are through the roof. And to the extent that any working person got a small tax cut while the rich got these big tax cuts, millionaires and billionaires got all these big tax cuts, to the extent that they got that, any little tax break they received has been totally erased by the cost of living and by high gas prices because of this illegal, reckless war.

By the way, wouldn't you think that Congress would want to exercise its constitutional prerogatives and actually debate the war in Iran and actually vote whether to authorize it or not? We have been forced to try to bring privileged resolutions to the floor to try to get any kind of a debate on this. There should be hearings. There should be a full vote on whether to authorize this and whether or not people want to go on record as saying we are going to spend over $100 billion on this stupid, reckless war in Iran. By the way, that resulted in the Strait of Hormuz being closed, which was open before the war began. We are going to spend the money on that, but we are not going to spend it on helping alleviate the high cost of living on people in this country.

This Congress is the least productive Congress in history. This has been a total failure, a total failure.

I would just encourage my Republican colleagues, don't take my word for it. Look at every public opinion poll, including those coming out by FOX News and rightwing influencers. They will tell you: Nobody is buying it.

One of the things that I have heard over and over again during the August work period was that the American people are rightfully outraged that an out-of-control AI data center buildup is wreaking havoc on their communities. Data centers are driving up utility costs and polluting water supplies, all while Big Tech reaps record profits. Yet, now with November on the horizon, some House Republicans are acting as if they did not turbocharge the data center buildup.

I mean, a year ago, Republicans were bragging about giving tax breaks to Big Tech in order to build data centers across rural America. You can check it out yourselves. It is section 70421 of the big, ugly bill.

According to the Republican chairman of the tax writing committee, this provision would: significantly reduce barriers for large-scale, capital-intensive projects in rural areas, most notably, hyperscale data centers. That is the Republicans.

That provision alone cost the American taxpayers $40 billion. That is money that is going to Big Tech to build unpopular data centers instead of lowering the cost of healthcare and housing or groceries.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record an article titled, ``Big, Beautiful Success Story: Rural America Rebound on the Horizon with New Opportunity Zone Incentives.''

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let me just say to my friend, the chair of the Rules Committee: You can't fool people. You just can't. I mean, people go to the supermarket. They have to pay their utility bills. They have to pay their rent. People are trying to see where they can afford a home.

I mean, they know what the reality is. To somehow say they are being beautiful, I mean, come on. That is ludicrous. That is assuming that people don't believe their real-life experiences every day.

She talks about the most productive Congress. I mean, 104 laws were passed in this Republican Congress. When the Democrats were last in charge, we passed 365 laws.

The issue is what do these laws do. We passed bills to try to expand healthcare for people. We passed bills to try to make sure that children had access to Head Start and to daycare. We passed bills to actually protect our environment. We passed bills to try to keep the world out of war. That is a big contrast to what we are seeing in this Republican Congress.

I would just say this: What Donald Trump has done with the acquiescence of the Republican majority is they have added a new tax on average people, close to $4,000. There is a $4,000 Trump tax on almost every family in this country. The people who don't feel it are the ones who benefited from the trillions of dollars in tax cuts given to millionaires and billionaires and big corporations.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent also to include in the Record an article from Politico titled, ``Amazon's tax bill plunges after GOP tax cuts.''

Mr. Speaker, I am going to also urge that we defeat the previous question. If we do, I will offer an amendment to the rule to provide for consideration of H.R. 738, the Universal Right To Vote By Mail Act, which would ensure that all eligible voters in America have the option to vote by mail.

Mr. Speaker, President Trump has issued an executive order to undermine the credibility of our elections and to make it harder or even impossible for millions of Americans to vote by mail. We learned today from a whistleblower that Trump officials are defying court orders and pushing ahead with these unconstitutional plans.

Mr. Speaker, let me remind you, President Trump personally loves voting by mail. He voted by mail in Florida as recently as 2 weeks ago. To everyone listening, Trump wants to vote by mail, but he doesn't want you to be able to do so.

Voting by mail has been proven to increase turnout and reduce barriers to voting, such as bad weather, illness, disability, and long lines. We should expand mail-in voting to make it easier for Americans to participate in our democracy, which is what this bill would do.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record along with any extraneous material immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Salinas) to discuss our proposal.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert into the Record an article from the Associated Press titled: ``US consumer confidence falls to lowest level in 7 months with gas stuck above $4''.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert into the Record an article from NBC titled: ``How Trump's economic policies are widening America's wealth gap''.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert into the Record an article from CNN titled: ``Trump's tariffs are bigger than his tax cuts for most Americans''.

I say to the gentlewoman that I appreciate her reciting the RNC's talking points, and I would encourage her to keep on reciting them and bring that message home, to go home and tell the American people that things are great, that things are unbelievably wonderful, and that you should thank the Republicans in Congress and Donald Trump for raising the prices on everything.

Go home and sell that message to the American people. I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, we won't have to do anything.

The bottom line is that things aren't good for people. As I said, there is a Trump tax of $4,000 on average Americans. That is what they have to pay in additional costs for everything, from rent to healthcare to groceries to you name it. That is the Trump tax.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Kamlager-Dove).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Stansbury).

Mr. Speaker, can I inquire of the gentlewoman how many more speakers she has on her side? We haven't seen any other than her. I am just curious.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Let me, first of all, respond to something the gentlewoman from North Carolina said about Republicans trying to protect our children. I would just ask, where the hell are the Epstein files? We have forced resolutions on this floor to be passed, to demand a release of these files.

Congressman Massie came to the floor. Again, he has another resolution. Still, we have no compliance with the law. We know that this administration is up to their eyeballs in the Epstein files. When is that going to happen? When is that going to be released? I mean, talk about protecting children.

Mr. Speaker, you know when Republicans send us home this week, what exactly will be cheaper? Will groceries cost less? Will rent go down? Will anybody's electric bill shrink? Will health insurance premiums come down? The answer is no. Not one damn thing on the agenda this week will address the affordability crisis. Nothing.

Congress will have condemned socialism again. Mission accomplished, I guess. You know that tells you everything about the priorities of this Republican majority. Whenever the conversation gets uncomfortable, they change the subject.

Why are groceries so expensive? Socialism. Why are healthcare costs so expensive? They showed socialism. Why did Trump start another new war in the Middle East? You must be a Socialist for asking the question. When are you going to release the Epstein files? When is that going to happen? Socialism, socialism, socialism. It is literally insane. It is Trump derangement syndrome.

Meanwhile, the President's big win this week is pretending to rename Lake Ontario after getting into a trade war with our closest ally and neighbor. This is nuts. This Chamber ceases to be a serious body when we don't call this stuff out and when we don't actually bring bills to the floor that address the real needs of the American people.

The American people are not stupid. They know who is focused on listening to their problems and who is focused on playing political games.

We should be working to lower costs, period. Contrary to what Trump says, affordability is not a made-up word, and it does have a definition. People cannot afford to pay everyday expenses. They can't afford their groceries. They can't afford their rent. They can't afford to fill their gas tank up. They want lower healthcare costs. They want lower housing costs. They want lower energy costs. They want lower grocery bills.

They want an end to the corporate giveaways and tax loopholes that let big companies jack up prices and gouge consumers. You know, they want an end to giving these corporations the ability to cheat on their taxes and to avoid accountability.

That is what people want us to do, not fight absurd culture wars and debate far-right fringe garbage. If our Republican colleagues want to have another debate about socialism, fine, let's have it. Waste more time passing more nonbinding resolutions. At the end of the day, people are going to vote based on their bank accounts, pocketbooks, grocery bills, and gas prices.

People look at life through their kitchen window. They are tired of all of this bs that is being talked about in this Chamber. They are sick of a Congress that debates trivial issues passionately but important ones not at all. They want to know when we are going to care about them. They are sick and tired of a Congress that gives tax breaks to entities, that gives big donations to political parties and political candidates. They want to know when they come first.

My friends, you have failed miserably to deliver on your promise to make life more affordable for people. People are counting on us. They want us to do better. You have a chance. We will work in a bipartisan way to try to deal with some of these high costs the people are faced with right now.

No, we come back after a recess, and this is what we are dealing with. This is garbage. This is a waste of time. This is an insult to this Chamber. It is an insult to the American people. They will remember in November.

Vote ``no'' on this rule.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 1) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to require that the Supreme Court of the United States be composed of nine justices.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.J. Res. 1.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the Supreme Court's job is to tell the American people the truth about the law, even when that truth is unpopular, even when a President doesn't like it, and even when Congress doesn't like it.

That only works if the Court is independent. Alexander Hamilton expressed this in Federalist 78. He explained that the courts must be insulated from the political branches or they cannot do their job of protecting the rights of the people.

Disagreeing with the Supreme Court is not just legitimate. It is American. We amend the Constitution, or we pass new laws. We elect Presidents who appoint different judges. That is how you change outcomes you don't like. That is the process the Founders gave us. But there is a world of difference between changing the law and changing the rules of the game because you don't like the last call.

Packing the Court is not simply a policy disagreement. It is an attempt to change the structure of one of the three branches of government in order to guarantee the outcome you want.

That is not reform. That is revolution.

Here is the question every American should ask: If a sitting majority can change the size of the Supreme Court the moment it dislikes rulings, what happens the next time the other side is in power? What stops them from doing the same thing?

As Justice Breyer said, this will start an ``arms race.''

Once you go down that road, the Court stops being an independent check on government power. It becomes another political institution controlled by whoever happens to hold the majority.

We have already seen what this kind of rhetoric looks like. In 2020, Senator Schumer stood outside the Supreme Court and told Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh: `` . . . you have unleashed a whirlwind, and you will pay the price.'' That was a threat, a threat that goes well beyond any normal policy disagreement.

Mr. Speaker, 2 years later, an armed man was arrested outside Justice Kavanaugh's home. Thankfully, law enforcement intervened before anyone was hurt.

Words have consequences, and when political leaders convince people that the Supreme Court is illegitimate, some people take that rhetoric seriously.

Some on the left aren't even hiding where this leads. The Democratic Socialists of America now openly call for abolishing the Senate and replacing the Presidency and the Supreme Court. I am not making that up. That is in their platform.

Seeking to expand the Court is an admission that your arguments have not been good enough to persuade voters or your fellow legislators. We rely on a political process, including robust one-on-one debates, to convince voters that ours are the superior plans.

When you can no longer convince enough voters that you have the best ideas, you have two choices: You can go back to voters with a better argument, or you can try to change the system so their vote doesn't matter as much.

That is why the amendment before us is so important. It fixes the number of Justices at nine permanently. That is not because nine is a magic number. It is because a fixed Court cannot be expanded by whoever happens to win the next election. It makes the rule the same regardless of who is in power.

To my friends on the other side of the aisle: We don't have to like every decision the Supreme Court makes. Heaven knows there are plenty of decisions I have disagreed with. That is not the point. The point is whether we are willing to live under a Constitution that limits our power even when we are the ones holding it.

If we want to change the law, we can change the law, but we should not change the Supreme Court simply because we don't like the people sitting on it.

Constitutional government requires accepting outcomes we don't like and fighting for change the right way: through elections, through legislation, and through the amendment process this very body is using today.

Let's keep the Supreme Court independent. Let's keep it at nine Justices, and let's keep the Constitution bigger than whoever happens to be in power.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I get it, that the gentleman does not like Donald J. Trump and that this is an ideological position he is taking, which is kind of what the scholars have said is the definition of Court packing. When you want to increase the number of people on the Supreme Court so you can effectuate your ideological bent, yes, that is Court packing.

This isn't new, this position that we are taking today. This was introduced in the 116th, which was under Donald Trump. It was introduced in the 118th, which was under Joe Biden. By the way, it was Joe Biden's own special commission that said it would be wrong to actually increase the number of people on the Supreme Court. Now, we have introduced this in the 119th.

I do appreciate the gentleman talking about Arizona needs representation on the Supreme Court. I also think we need representation in the Ninth Circuit--it would be nice if you could help us along there--the circuit, a court that actually goes from the equator to the Arctic Circle. You can't even get an en banc there because they have 29 justices, appellate judges. You can't get an en banc in the Ninth because it is all random.

Anyway, back to the point here, my colleagues on the other side tell us that the Supreme Court has changed before. They are right. However, there is an important piece of history that they leave out. For much of the 19th century, the size of the Supreme Court was tied to the size of the Federal judiciary. As the country expanded and Congress created new judicial circuits, Congress added Justices to help carry those responsibilities, but that changed in 1869.

Congress fixed the Court at nine Justices, and for more than half of the length of this country, it has been nine Justices, regardless of the number of circuits.

There is one historical example that matters most to the question before us today, and that is Franklin Roosevelt who, in 1937, after winning reelection, was furious that the Supreme Court had repeatedly struck down parts of his New Deal as unconstitutional. That was the birth, perhaps, of the attempt to have an imperial executive.

Instead of changing laws to comply with the Constitution, he proposed changing the Court. His plans would have allowed him to add up to six new Justices, and who would appoint those Justices? The President of the United States would. Who was the President? Franklin Roosevelt.

Everyone understood what was happening. It wasn't about building a better courthouse. It wasn't about adding circuits. It wasn't about helping manage expanding judicial caseload. It was about changing the composition of the Court for ideological purposes.

Here is what happened: The plan faced fierce opposition, including from members of Roosevelt's own party. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes pushed back. The Senate ultimately rejected the plan, and this is what they said--this is from the records today: ``We recommend the rejection of this bill as a needless, futile, and utterly dangerous abandonment of constitutional principle.'' Not holding firm at nine, but because you wanted--not you, but the Democratic Party at that time--not even the Democratic Party, excuse me, let's be very clear, one individual, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

``It is a proposal without precedent and without justification,'' they said. ``It would subjugate the courts to the will of Congress and the President and thereby destroy the independence of the judiciary, the only certain shield of individual rights.''

``It points the way to the evasion of the Constitution and establishes the method whereby the people may be deprived of their right to pass upon all amendments of the fundamental law.''

``It is a measure which should be so emphatically rejected that its parallel will never again be presented to the free representatives of the free people of America.''

Do you know what ``it'' was, the measure that they were so offended by? It was an attempt to pack the Court.

Next time, I will probably start reading all the folks on the other side who want to do that very thing.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Harris).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I do think it is a charming and quaint argument to say that President Trump has packed the Court.

Here are some patterns that you need to know just from the last term alone: 50 percent of the cases decided were decided unanimously. That doesn't sound like a packed Court, and only 5 of 57 cases, just 8 percent, were decided 6-3 with six Republican appointees on one side and three Democrats on the other. Ninety percent of the 57 cases were decided with at least one liberal Justice in the majority, 90 percent.

The three liberal Justices voted together in fewer than one-quarter of the nine unanimous cases. That doesn't sound like packing. That sounds like a lot of thoughtful folks on the United States Supreme Court rendering decisions they believe in and they believe comprise constitutional opinion.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Norman).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Norman).

Mr. Speaker, I get a kick out of their arguing about following the constitutional tradition and talking about using the constitutional system. That is exactly what we are doing. We are using the constitutional system. This is not the first time this has been offered. This has been used multiple times.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Johnson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Ms. Hageman).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. Boebert).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Schmidt).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Kansas.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close and reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the consternation my colleague across the aisle has when he says that he hasn't found any arguments persuasive.

Let me tell you something: He would never find any of these arguments persuasive because he wants to pack the Court. His very argument is that if you pass a constitutional amendment, you can never change the Constitution. It is absolutely one of the most specious arguments I have heard because if you amend the Constitution, guess what. Does that mean that that amendment itself, that you have brought in, can never be amended again? No, because the system is clear, the system that he has been arguing against this entire time. The system, the Constitution itself, allows us to say to the American people: We would like to amend the Constitution. We are going to give it to you. We think this should be done.

Mr. Speaker, that is really what we are talking about here. We are talking about this failure to appreciate the position that they sit in. They say that this whole thing, quite frankly, has been about Donald Trump. That is what their whole argument against this has been.

Oh, they passed this immunity clause. Where did that come from? Well, maybe stare decisis. That is what they argue. That is where the Court is. Take a peek at that. Yes, go back and read it. You will enjoy it.

Here is the deal. They sit right now upset over a few decisions that this Supreme Court has made. They cannot accept that you have probably three conservatives, three liberals, and three in the middle. That is where the Court sits today.

An amendment freezing this at nine, first of all, doesn't mean that you can never amend it again, but it also doesn't mean that these are going to be the same nine in perpetuity for eternity.

They want to set aside a tradition that has been in place for over 150 years.

They make this argument regarding the circuits. Guess what. Those circuits have changed and changed, but oddly enough, we have kept it at nine. Instead, they want to negate and have ignored what their personnel have said for the last few years, ever since Donald J. Trump was reelected, ever since you put some new people on the Court, even though, as we take a look, they are winning cases against this administration.

Yet, they say that we have to take and expand this so we can get to 13. That is what they want. Why do they want it? It is because they want to make it progressive. They want to turn the Court around. They want to change its ideological principles or what they perceive to be ideological principles.

That is what they want. They want to pack the Court. That is what packing is. It is where you put a number there. That is why Stephen Breyer said and that is why Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, no, don't do that.

Justice Breyer said that if you do that and it is 13 next time, does it become 21 after that, or 50, or where does it end, because it becomes a political arms race at the Supreme Court.

We are saying not to get into a political arms race. Let's make it permanently nine. Let's give it to the voters. That is a rational thing. It will never be persuasive to these folks, and that is too bad because guess what. This has been comfortable. The Biden administration was comfortable with nine.

This particular provision was proposed in the 116th Congress, in the 118th Congress, and now again in the 119th Congress. It didn't matter whether there was a Republican or a Democrat in the White House. What it meant was let's make sure the Supreme Court is protected from those who want to change it ideologically. That is where they are. That is why everyone should be supporting this particular amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1499 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume.

During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Committee on Rules met and produced the rule, House Resolution 1499, providing for the House's consideration of four measures: H.R. 1501, H.R. 9436, H. Res. 1490, and

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, in the 119th Congress, the House has been the most aggressive, successful, and productive since the 80th Congress in 1949. Total measures passed by the House are 899. Tax relief was $82 billion across all filers this tax season with 97 percent of all tax filers receiving a tax cut last year, and the 3 percent who didn't were the highest earners in the country. Regulations lifted by Congress are 23.

When you place these three points within historical context, they reveal that this Congress is the most successful and productive since 1949.

Now, obviously, the House cannot control the actions of the Senate. The statistics demonstrated by the House of Representatives this Congress are truly historic. I would put them up against the abysmal record of sleepy Joe Biden and his enablers every day.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I will continue to talk about the accomplishments of the 119th Congress. House Republicans, so far in the 119th Congress, have passed the Working Families Tax Cut Act, which delivered the largest middle- and working-class tax cuts in U.S. history. That cannot be refuted, Mr. Speaker. It cannot. Anyone who tries to do that is themselves living in an alternate universe.

We expanded 529 education accounts. We saved American farms by allowing farmers to spread tax payments on sales over 4 years if the land continues to be used for agriculture purposes. We doubled the small business expensing limit. We permanently extended the small business deduction. We delivered a $6,000 bonus deduction to seniors on Social Security. We eliminated the tax on auto loan interest for American-made cars. We permanently increased the child tax credit to $2,200. We eliminated the tax on overtime. We eliminated the tax on tips. We created Trump accounts to help children begin saving for their future. We permanently allowed businesses to immediately deduct domestic R&D expenses. We permanently doubled the death tax exemption. We permanently increased the standard deduction. We ended taxation of suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns. We repealed the green corporate welfare subsidies.

Mr. Speaker, we don't have enough time in the time allotted for this rule debate today to list all of the wonderful things that this House of Representatives and this Congress have done to improve the lives of the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, in order not to allow Americans to be misled by statements being made here on the floor, I am going to continue to list items among the dozens that were in H.R. 1 that could have been stand-alone bills but for efficiency's sake were included in H.R. 1.

We permanently secured our Nation's borders, funded the construction of the border wall, and provided funding for additional Customs officers and Border Patrol agents. However, in addition to that, we passed the Laken Riley Act as a stand-alone to require detention of illegal aliens who commit theft.

The Working Families Tax Cuts included provisions that make illegal immigrants who are convicted of or who have admitted to sex offenses or domestic violence inadmissible and deportable. The Working Families Tax Cuts creates a new criminal offense for operating a vehicle within 100 miles of the southern border while fleeing Border Patrol agents. The Jeremy and Angel Seay and Sergeant Brandon Mendoza Protect Our Communities from DUIs Act makes driving while intoxicated or impaired grounds for deporting an illegal alien.

The Kayla Hamilton Act requires background checks for criminal history or gang affiliation before unaccompanied alien children are placed in American communities.

Not a single illegal alien has been released into the U.S. in 16 months. Four hundred thousand illegals who were charged with and convicted of a crime have been deported. Emergency rooms have reported significant reductions in illegal immigrant visits, freeing up critical resources to better serve American citizens in need of urgent medical care.

Fentanyl trafficking at the southern border has been reduced by 56 percent in FY 2025. The HALT Fentanyl Act permanently schedules fentanyl and fentanyl analogues as schedule I drugs.

More than 146 migrant children have been rescued from sex trafficking and child labor. We hear about this every week on the news.

Another act, the SUPPORT Act, reauthorizes support and treatment programs for opioid use disorders and other substance abuse disorders.

We lowered costs by cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in our country.

We protected children by passing legislation that would end gender- affirming care--gender-affirming care, what a distortion of the American language--for minors, and we banned biological males from girls' and women's sports.

Mr. Speaker, if we have done nothing else, that is a huge accomplishment, but we have done so many other things.

We passed the KIDS Act that protects children online by holding Big Tech accountable and requiring stronger safeguards to protect kids from predators, exploitation, and harmful online contents. Again, we could go on and on, and I will, to correct the record of what we have done in this Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, we have no more speakers.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are saying we are wasting our time here when we talk about all that we have accomplished in this session of Congress. They especially don't like it when we talk about socialism.

I encourage the American people to go online and look at this manifesto from the Democratic Socialists of America. It is out there for all the world to see. This is an expanded version from the first one that I saw that looked like it was written by a seventh grader. This one really fills out what these people want to do, and it is why we are bringing one measure today, under this rule, to condemn what these people want to do.

It is abhorrent to all Americans. Its goals are repugnant to the principles that form the foundation for American constitutional liberties that benefit all Americans. There is simply no way to reconcile what the DSA envisions for America with the Constitution that protects us all.

For example, the DSA's stated long-term goals, to completely replace the Presidency and the Supreme Court, threaten the foundation of separation of powers and the stability of American democracy.

The DSA seeks to centralize State power. We all know that expanding State control crowds out civil society and individual choice. Even under a ``Democratic'' banner, hyper-centralized authority diminishes opportunities for dissenting views and personal freedoms.

The DSA seeks to abolish national boundaries. Think about that. The chaos we experienced when President Biden allowed millions of illegal immigrants to enter the U.S. will seem like child's play in comparison. We know of the security risks caused by President Biden's open borders. Murderers, child rapists, and other criminals were granted carte blanche to terrorize American communities.

Think about the implications of a permanent absence of borders. We know the financial costs caused by President Biden's open borders. In one sanctuary State alone, emergency housing for illegal immigrants surpassed $1 billion in FY 2025. Providing such services on a permanent, ongoing basis would bankrupt every State.

Let me just quote from a few pages of this manifesto. They want to have ``publicly owned energy and transit infrastructure. Phase out the use of fossil fuels. Reclaim and repair our Earth's resources for all.''

This sounds like free buses in New York that have been promised.

``Feminism for All: Socialist feminism fights for queer liberation and the freedoms for all working-class women.''

``Healthcare for All: Guarantee universal healthcare at no cost to individuals, including complete access to reproductive and gender- affirming care.''

What does that mean, Mr. Speaker? That means abortions at any point in the child's life.

They want housing for all: ``Build new, publicly owned social housing, strictly regulate investment properties, establish universal rent control, and guarantee right to counsel for all tenants.''

Mr. Speaker, this is dangerous. There are people who are going to be in this Congress in the next session who support these programs.

Again, I encourage the American people to look at this manifesto from the DSA. They are called Democratic Socialists of America. That is what they are called. That is what is asked for here, Mr. Speaker.

As I said at the outset of the debate, we have a solid slate of bills contained under this rule. They are substantive, impactful, and address pertinent issues occurring across the Nation like this manifesto.

We can and should pass this rule and each of the underlying bills to continue our work in service to the Nation and to the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the previous question and ``yes'' on the rule.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, you will hear from advocates of Court expansion that the Court is a mere rubber stamp for Trump. This is a Court that defied Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, to deport people without a hearing, to send troops to Chicago, to use emergency powers to impose tariffs, and to revoke birthright citizenship by executive order.

Some of my colleagues on both sides may be surprised that I just uttered those words, but those are not my words. Those are the words of three of my former colleagues, three former State Democratic attorneys general, who strongly support the Keep Nine Amendment and disagree with my friends on the other side: Chris Gorman from Kentucky, Steve Rosenthal, and Tony Troy from Virginia.

Mr. Speaker, it is sad that until this Congress, this was a bipartisan issue. It wasn't a Republican issue. It wasn't a Democratic issue.

Back when I served my State as attorney general in 2020, I wrote to the then-sponsors of this measure in this body and expressed my support for it, and it was a Republican from Virginia and a Democrat from Minnesota.

Mr. Speaker, I include both of these statements and letters in the Record at this point.

State of Kansas,

Office of the Attorney General,

Topeka, KS, October 16, 2020.

Hon. Collin Peterson,

Washington, DC.

Hon. Denver Riggleman,

Washington, DC.

Dear Congressmen Peterson and Riggleman: I write in support

of your proposed House Joint Resolution 95, which proposes to

amend our United States Constitution to fix at nine the

number of Justices on the Supreme Court of the United States.

I commend you for your bipartisan leadership on this matter,

the importance of which is apparent in light of recent calls

for Congress to ``pack the court'' by amending statutes to

add additional justices if the perceived balance among

current justices tips in a manner disfavored by some.

Your proposed amendment is simple and self-explanatory. It

would add the following thirteen words to our Constitution:

``The Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of

nine justices.'' If proposed by the requisite two-third

majority of both houses of Congress and timely ratified by

three-fourths of the state legislatures, this amendment would

remove from the Congress authority to increase or decrease

the number of justices on the Supreme Court in response to

political pressures. The passions of the moment must not be

allowed to undermine the independence of our Supreme Court.

The need could not be greater. Twice in the past century--

once in 1937 and again today--cries to ``pack the court'' by

adding more justices for the purpose of diluting the

influence of those already seated have risen to the fore of

our nation's public discussion. The intent and effect of

those cries have been to challenge the Supreme Court's

independence in exercising judgment in cases and

controversies before it. For the past 150 years, no other

justification or need for altering the number of justices has

gained attention, demonstrating that fixing the number of

justices at nine, as is currently the case, is

administratively and legally suitable. As the late Justice

Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously said just over a year ago,

``Nine seems to be a good number.''

Our Constitution already provides mechanisms for public and

political considerations to influence the composition of the

Supreme Court over time--namely, the processes by which

Americans elect a President and United States Senators and by

which the President, with the advice and consent of the

Senate, appoints justices when vacancies arise. Other

provisions of our Constitution, such as the granting of

lifetime tenure to justices during good behavior, are

designed to ensure the independence of the judiciary. So too

is your proposal.

By removing from Congress the ability to pack the court

with additional justices in response to political pressures--

regardless of whether those pressures come from the political

left, the political right, or elsewhere--your proposed

amendment would reinforce our long and proud American

tradition of an independent judiciary that, as Alexander

Hamilton put it in Federalist 78, ``ha[s] neither FORCE nor

WILL, but merely judgment.'' I commend you for bringing this

measure forward and for your bipartisan cooperation in

proposing it. I hope the House of Representatives and the

Senate will see fit to advance it for consideration by the

state legislatures so the American people, through the

constitutional amendment process, can decide for themselves

whether threats of court packing should remain an option

available to Congress. I, for one, think it should not.

If I may be of assistance in your efforts, please let me

know.

Sincerely,

Derek Schmidt,

Kansas Attorney General.

Mr. Speaker, I have long supported the Keep Nine Amendment because I think it is the right thing to do for our Republic.

As has been stated here many times in today's somewhat jovial but I think very serious debate, turning the Supreme Court into a political football, whose size is expanded first by Republicans, then by Democrats, whoever has the political will and whoever is aggrieved at the moment will undermine that Court's ability to perform its unique and critical constitutional function.

For all of the distress that my friends on the other side have right now in their complaints about the Court, I assure this body those will be magnified manyfold if we allow ourselves to get into a bidding war over the size of the institution across the street.

Mr. Speaker, I have sat there seven times at counsel table. I have argued three causes. I have second-chaired four others--

I will tell you that sometimes I like how the court rules, behaves, and questions. Sometimes I don't like it. I have been on the winning end. I have been on the losing end, but neither of those is a justification to attack the institution itself.

My friend asks why nine and why would we give up our power? And the answer to that is we are not giving up our power because it is not within our power to do so. We are asking the people of this country, through the process that the Constitution establishes, whether they want to restrict our power and protect their Court at nine.

We should say ``yes,'' and I urge my colleagues to support H.J. Res. 1.