Reserved for the Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from South Carolina (Mrs. Biggs).

Recognizing the South Carolina National Guard

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from South Carolina, particularly for her shout-out to the National Guard from her own State that has been deployed to the District of Columbia.

Unfortunately, that has been necessary, and I am proud of the President for trying to make sure that we secure the Nation's Capital. They are one of the many National Guard units that have been deployed to do the job that the people of D.C. should be doing if they were competent and if they were doing what they are supposed to do as the Nation's Capital. The President is taking charge, and he is leading to ensure that our Nation's Capital is safe for the American people to come visit.

I will note that, relatedly, when we are talking about the state of law enforcement and the state of the security of the American people, we have heard a lot of criticisms from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, both in the House and Senate and generally around the country, directed at the great men and women of ICE, the law enforcement agency that is dedicated to the task of removing illegal aliens and, in particular, dangerous illegal aliens from the streets of the United States of America according to the law.

They are particularly focusing on and targeting those individuals--I believe the number is around 1.5 million people who are currently in the United States under orders of removal. That is, they have gone through the process. Judges in this country have ordered the removal of 1.5 million people, and ICE is tasked with removing them. Hundreds of thousands of them are dangerous individuals who have committed crimes in their home countries, who are trafficking narcotics, and who have been engaging in criminal behavior in the United States of America.

What do my Democratic colleagues do? They stand up in defense of criminals, of criminal illegal aliens, and are in constant attack on the men and women of ICE.

Let's just go through some recent criticisms of the great men and women who are working for ICE:

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz smeared ICE officers as a ``threat'' to the public, called ICE reckless, suggested the State is at war with Federal officers and under attack by ICE, and smeared ICE as the ``modern-day Gestapo.''

California Governor Gavin Newsom likened ICE to ``secret police,'' calling them authoritarian, and calling on the people to push back.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker claimed ICE is turning the country into Nazi Germany.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul accused ICE of ``terrorizing people.''

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro claimed ICE officers ``make our neighborhoods less safe.''

Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan said ICE officers caused ``chaos and terror.''

Senator Chuck Schumer declared that ICE does not belong in our neighborhoods.

Senator Tina Smith called ICE ``a clear and present threat.''

Senator John Hickenlooper smeared ICE as a ``reign of terror.''

Senator Jeff Merkley likened ICE operations to ``fascism'' and claimed officers are doing nothing but ``terrorizing our communities.''

Senator Bernie Sanders asked people to ``stop ICE from what they are doing as soon as possible.''

Senator Elizabeth Warren claimed ICE is ``intentionally stok[ing] fear and tear[ing] communities apart.''

Senator Ruben Gallego said ICE exists ``to scare the American public.''

Senator Mark Warner equated ICE officers to a brutal dictator.

Senator Dick Blumenthal accused ICE of spreading ``lawlessness and recklessness.''

Senator Alex Padilla accused ICE of ``indiscriminate violence.''

Senator Dick Durbin accused ICE's officers of committing ``atrocities.''

Representative Ilhan Omar said ICE is ``state violence,'' called officers ``vile and beyond cruel,'' and stated ``abolishing ICE is not enough.''

Representative Pramila Jayapal called ICE officers ``deranged,'' accused them of ``kidnapping,'' said ``resistance'' to ICE is ``inspiring,'' and claimed ICE officers will ``shoot at you and kill you.''

Representative Eric Swalwell smeared ICE officers as ``masked thugs,'' called them ``terrorizing bandit[s],'' said it was his ``priority'' to ensure officers are ``no longer faceless,'' compared them to the KGB, and demanded they ``stay the f-- out of California.''

Representative Jasmine Crockett compared ICE to ``slave patrols'' and called them thugs.

Representative Delia Ramirez said DHS ``is the single biggest threat to public safety right now.'' I will repeat: She said DHS ``is the single biggest threat to public safety right now'' and attacked ICE as a ``terror force.''

Representative Summer Lee said ICE is ``out of control'' and ``a police state.''

Representative Ayanna Pressley called ICE ``a rogue, violent agency'' that ``has no business in our communities'' and ``must be abolished,'' and accused ICE of ``terrorizing our communities.''

Representative April McClain Delaney called ICE ``lawless.''

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called ICE ``an anticivilian

force'' and said they ``should not exist.''

Representative Rashida Tlaib said ICE is ``terrorizing our communities'' and ``turning our country into a fascist police state,'' called it a ``rogue agency,'' and called for it to be abolished.

Representative Julie Johnson excused violence against ICE as people ``channeling that frustration.''

Representative Laura Friedman said ICE officers are ``terrorizing our friends and neighbors . . . and bringing chaos and violence to our streets.''

I have dozens more of these. I could continue to fill time on the House floor by going through the absolute vitriolic attacks on the people of ICE, literally another 30 in the list that I could read off. That is what is occurring on a daily basis and is directed at the people of ICE.

Now, I will give you a tale of two choices. I want you to look at and make a decision here about who you want to focus on. Over here, we have victims of dangerous illegal aliens that were in the United States of America. Over here, we have five Americans who are no longer with us.

We have Kayla Hamilton, a 20-year-old woman with autism living in Aberdeen, Maryland, who was savagely strangled to death by an illegal alien, an MS-13 gang member released by Biden at the border.

Mr. Speaker, we have Sergeant Brandon Mendoza from Arizona, a 13-year Mesa Police Department veteran, who was struck by a previously convicted illegal alien who was drunk when he struck Brandon.

Somewhat probably most infamously, we have Laken Hope Riley. Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student who attended Augusta University. She was killed by a Tren de Aragua gang member illegally paroled into the country under Joe Biden.

We have Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old Maryland mother of five. While going out for a walk, she was raped and murdered by an illegal alien who snuck across the border under Biden.

We have Jocelyn Nungaray, a woman whose mother I have gotten to know, a woman whose mother I invited to join us at the inauguration of President Trump a year ago because of her courage for standing up and calling out the lawlessness of the people who have been released on the streets of this country and that resulted in the death of her daughter, Jocelyn.

Jocelyn was a 12-year-old girl in Houston, who was out for a walk, when two Venezuelan illegal aliens released under Biden forced her under a bridge and forced her to take off her clothes before she was savagely killed in Houston, Texas, my home State.

Do you want to know what? Their lives mattered. Those individuals' lives mattered. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle, whether they are in this Chamber or in the other Chamber or in State houses across this country, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to ignore what has happened to these five Americans.

By the way, they are simply the faces of hundreds of thousands of Americans who have lost their lives violently through narcotics, through fentanyl, through drunk drivers, through murder, through rape, and through intimidation.

They represent a large block of Americans suffering at the hands of people who have been released on our streets purposely for crass political purposes by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. The fact is that has left us with a current situation that is even worse.

I will go through a few more. Then I want to bring my colleagues into this conversation.

Here behind me, after all of the eruption over what has occurred in Minnesota, where there has been a lot of vitriol directed at ICE in Minnesota, let us look at these individuals right here. These represent about eighteen individuals who are the people that ICE has been arresting in Minnesota. There has been a lot of news over one incident in Minnesota.

What we have here is a Somalian illegal alien convicted of homicide.

We have a Salvadorian illegal alien convicted of three counts of homicide with a deportation order since June of 2025.

We have a Mexican illegal convicted of homicide, who was previously deported in 2002.

We have a Sudanese illegal alien convicted of homicide.

We have a Laotian illegal alien convicted of two counts of homicide with a deportation order since 2009.

We have an illegal alien from Sierra Leon convicted of two counts of homicide with a deportation order since 2022.

We have a Mexican illegal alien convicted of homicide with a deportation order since 2015.

We have a Somalian illegal alien convicted of manslaughter with a deportation order since 2022.

We have a Sudanese illegal alien convicted of attempt to commit homicide, weapons possession, and DUI.

We have a Guatemalan illegal alien convicted of negligent homicide with a vehicle and a DUI with a deportation order since 2022.

We have a Burmese illegal alien convicted of negligent homicide.

We have another Laotian illegal alien convicted of the strong-arm rape of a 12-year-old girl and kidnapping a child with intent to sexually assault her with a deportation order since 2024.

We have a Laotian illegal alien convicted of strong-arm rape, aggravated assault with a weapon, and strangulation with a deportation order since 2012.

We have a Laotian illegal alien convicted of rape and child fondling with a deportation order since 2003.

We have a Laotian illegal alien convicted of rape, rape with a weapon, and sexual assault with a deportation order since 1996.

We have a Mexican illegal alien convicted of sexual assault of a child and DUI with a deportation order since 2016.

We have a Laotian illegal alien convicted of a strong-arm sodomy of a boy and a strong-arm sodomy of a girl with a deportation order since 2018.

We have a Laotian illegal alien convicted of sexual assault and sodomy of a girl under age 13 and procuring a child for prostitution with a deportation order since 2006.

These are the individuals in Minnesota that ICE--who is being attacked, criticized, and demonized by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--went out, risked their lives, and put their lives on the line to remove these people from our streets so that our children and our families might be safe.

No, I am not going to apologize for ICE. No, I am not going to join in the bandwagon of criticism against ICE. Yes, you review procedures. Yes, you make sure you do things by the book and that people have due process.

When we are talking about people who are on our streets, as guests of our country, and they are committing violence against the people of our country, let's remember we have a duty to remove them, deport them, and do it immediately and swiftly.

Let's flip the page real quick. I have a couple more. Let's look beyond just Minnesota. Remember that when you have dangerous people in places like Minnesota and lawless States like California and New York, where you have sanctuary cities, then there are dangerous people throughout our country, too.

This is just the worst of the worst from yesterday, just yesterday.

In Virginia, a 20-year-old citizen of Guatemala was convicted for possessing obscene material of a minor and filming child porn.

In my home State of Texas, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico was convicted for aggravated assault of a family member in Harris County.

In New York, a criminal illegal alien from Jamaica was convicted for burglary.

A criminal illegal alien from Mexico was convicted for burglary.

A criminal illegal alien from El Salvador was convicted for false imprisonment and battery.

That was just yesterday. Let's look real quick at the worst of the worst from 2025 generally, not just yesterday.

In Louisiana, we have a sexual predator, an illegal alien from Honduras, whose criminal history includes active warrants for 394 counts of pornography involving juveniles and two counts of sexual abuse of an animal.

In Kansas, a violent criminal illegal alien from Mexico was sentenced to 20 years in prison for one count of forcible

assault on a Federal officer after he violently punched an ICE officer and attempted to strangle the officer with his own badge cord.

In Virginia, an Afghan national who entered the United States under Joe Biden's ``Operation Allies Welcome,'' provided support to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and his father is a commander of a militia group in Afghanistan.

In Nebraska, an illegal alien from Honduras and a leader of MS-13, also known as Fantasma, was wanted in his home country for a quadruple homicide. After being charged with firearms charges in Honduras, he allegedly bribed his way out of jail and illegally entered the United States.

In Houston, the criminal history of an illegal alien from El Salvador included convictions for sexual assault of a child under 17, multiple DUIs, child fondling, and illegally reentering the United States previously. When ICE conducted an enforcement operation in November to arrest him, he brutally beat an ICE officer with a metal coffee cup. He caused a severe laceration of the officer's mouth and burns to the officer's face.

Where are my Democratic colleagues' concern about the ICE officer who put his life on the line and gets mauled and has a laceration across his face because he is trying to stop murderers, rapists, and child pornographers from being on American streets?

In my home State of Texas, Jose Alfredo Uzeta, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico, operated a dental clinic and performed dental procedures on patients, despite not having a license for more than 20 years. His clinic was uncovered after one of his former patients reported he was convicted of a dentistry act violation and indecent assault.

Another criminal illegal alien and his family members ran a sex trafficking operation where they would approach women and girls, some as young as 14, and lure them to the United States under promises of jobs.

That is all these people right here. That is these people right here.

We have a criminal illegal alien from Vietnam who has been convicted 25 times for crimes including possession of a controlled substance; second-degree robbery; cruelty toward the elderly; arson property; taking vehicle without consent; and theft.

I could go on and on. Those are the people who ICE is trying to get off of our streets.

Here is the question. This is how I want to open up a conversation with my good friend from Pennsylvania, Scott Perry--a great American and somebody I am proud to serve with here in this Congress and proud to serve with in the House Freedom Caucus.

I will yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania in colloquy about how he views whose side we are on. That is what I want to know: Whose side are we on?

Are we on the side of American citizens--Americans, including some immigrants and immigrant families, like beautiful Jocelyn Nungaray--are we on their side or Officer Mendoza? Or are we on the side of violent criminals whom ICE is trying to remove from our streets?

It sure seems like my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are on their side. They are on the bad guys' side. There really are white hats and black hats, and you have to choose. They are on the bad guys' side.

They are not standing with ICE, not standing with law enforcement, not standing up to defend the law enforcement officers who are putting their lives on the line to keep these guys off of our streets so that these Americans aren't killed.

I just wonder if my friend from Pennsylvania has a similar view that it ought to be easy to choose sides, and if my friend from Pennsylvania, like me, chooses to side with Border Patrol and ICE and law enforcement and local law enforcement to protect Americans against violent thugs and criminals on our streets?

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania for the purpose of a colloquy.

Gang members. Tren de Aragua gang members who took her under a bridge in Houston, Texas, for the last moments of her life, raping her and killing her, and her beautiful mother today is standing up and saying: Enough. Enough.

We should enforce our laws. We should stand with law enforcement against the thugs and the gang members who are killing Americans, including Jocelyn, Officer Mendoza, Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, and Kayla Hamilton.

Why do I know their names? It is because I met their families, and I have talked to them, and they are human beings. They were Americans who were living their lives and going to college and going to school and serving their country, and they are dead because people decided, for political purposes, that they wanted to flood our streets with gang members from Venezuela and criminals instead of protecting Americans.

That is right.

And what we are talking about, again, at the risk of repetition: A Somali illegal alien convicted of homicide, a Salvadoran illegal alien convicted of three counts of homicide, a Mexican illegal alien convicted of homicide, a Sudanese illegal alien convicted of homicide, a Laotian illegal alien convicted of two counts of homicide, and I could go through all 18 again.

These are violent individuals. These were all on the streets of Minnesota. Minnesota ICE was on the streets trying to track down these people, and the radical left, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, want to side with these guys.

Yes.

I have not heard one, but I have heard--and I read 30 of them before. How about Boston Mayor Michelle Wu comparing ICE officers to a Neo-Nazi group.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson accusing ICE of being ``secret police'' who are ``terrorizing our communities'' and a lawless, racist force.

New York City's Zohran Mamdani said: ICE enforcement is ``an attack on us all.''

New Jersey State Senator Britnee Timberlake threatened that ICE officers `` . . . will find themselves in the same position as those who carried out the illegal acts in Nazi Germany. . . . ''

Minneapolis City Council member Robin Wonsley claimed ICE is carrying out ``terrorist attacks.'' I could go on and on. They have been calling on people to go out and attack ICE.

By the way, the man that was engaged in that incident in Minnesota-- and they will review all of that--he was dragged by a previous protester down the street by a car.

I read a minute ago about the ICE officer who was lacerated across his face when one of these thugs attacked him with a steel coffee mug. I talked about another guy that had this cord wrapped around his neck, and they tried to get him. One of these guys did that to an ICE officer.

Where is the concern for our law enforcement? My grandfather was the chief of police of a small town in West Texas back in the 1940s. Where is the concern for them? My great-great-grandfather was a Texas Ranger. I was proud to be in the U.S. Attorney's Office, proud to be the first assistant attorney general, and proud to work with law enforcement.

Does every member of law enforcement always get it right? No. They are human beings. Do we have ways to go through and punish, rectify, review, and ensure due process and that rights are protected? Yes. Should we? Yes.

I want to remind people these are not American citizens. These are guests in our home who are abusing that invitation--or noninvitation to the extent that they were legally here--invitation to the extent they overstayed a visa, invitation to the extent they were abusing a visa that they were issued. For whatever reason that they are here, they are violating that trust and engaging in illegal activity and carrying out the sickest and most heinous crimes.

It cannot be allowed to proceed, and we cannot allow people to side against our law enforcement that are trying to keep our streets safe so that we don't lose Rachel Morin, and we don't lose Laken Riley, and we don't lose Kayla Hamilton, and we don't lose Officer Mendoza, and we don't lose Jocelyn Nungaray.

Totally objectively--I have been to this floor, I come to this floor a lot, and I watch the House floor--I do not remember a single incident, a single time in my 7 years of being in the United States House of Representatives, not once have I seen it. In fairness, I might have missed one. Maybe somebody will find it in the Record. I have been down here countless times when it is an attack on law enforcement, countless times when it is an attack on President Trump and this administration.

I think this really matters. I am going to ask you another question that I think is important. Why are these people here? Why are these gang and thug members here? Why? Was it President Trump?

Did President Trump put them on our streets?

And, today, we have a flow of basically statistically zero at our border.

Do you remember when we were in this House Chamber, do you remember when we were debating legislation last year, and we were debating bills, and what did they say? They said: Well, we have got to pass comprehensive immigration reform in order to solve the problem and secure the border, when it

was Joe Biden as the President and Alejandro Mayorkas as the Secretary of Homeland Security. Now it turns out, somehow magically, without that being signed into law, magically President Trump is able to stop the flow at the border.

Do you think that is an accident?

Correct. A day. We had as many as 15,000 in a day, okay, and now we are getting far fewer than 10,000 in a month.

And was it not, in fact, true that under President Biden and under Alejandro Mayorkas' regime at the Department of Homeland Security, was it not true that these individuals--and you saw me reading off, by the way, a lot of the years when they had deportation orders, 2022 or previously. Was it not true that these individuals that were released into the United States were either released under parole. In an abuse of law that allows for isolated cases of parole, they released thousands en bloc.

Hundreds of thousands en bloc under parole, an abuse of the law, an illegal act, abuse of asylum to release people in our country, and then wide-open borders where people were flooding across the river.

Did that in totality, coupled with people overstaying their visas, coupled with, frankly, a far more liberal immigration system than we should have, result in all of these individuals being on the streets? None of my constituents asked for that.

None of my constituents wanted illegal aliens who were violent and committing crimes on the streets of our country. President Trump is stopping it. Tom Homan is stopping it. Stephen Miller, Secretary Noem, all of the great men and women in Border Patrol and ICE, they are stopping it.

Now, my question is: Why? Why do our colleagues on the other side of the aisle not want to stop it? Could it be for political reasons? Could it be that they want non-Americans to be in the United States to try to transform America and to politically motivate and to politically put Democrats in power? Could that be?

I don't want to be so cynical as to speculate here on the House floor, but what other motives would there be to allow dangerous individuals to pour into our communities and carry out what has been carried out?

The impact of illegal aliens being in our country or, frankly, those that were wrongly put in our country through parole, asylum, overstaying their visas, or expansive abuse of legal immigration, has a consequence, right?

It has a consequence in the form of lost lives. It has a consequence in the form of hospitals that are overflowing with individuals, particularly in Texas, but around the country, jail cells that are overflowing, and schools that are overflowing. All of that is a consequence in terms of costs and continued problems.

Just last week, two illegal aliens suspected of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were charged with allegedly weaponizing their vehicle against a Border Patrol agent in Portland. Both suspects originally crossed the southern border under Biden and were released into the interior. The driver wound up with a rap sheet, including DUI, while the passenger is linked to a shooting and a prostitution ring in Portland. That is what is happening.

Now, why do I mention that here? Because we just said that President Trump was able to use current law and current authority to secure the border and stop the flow. He is currently using current law, current authority, to remove illegal aliens, including the 1.5 million people here under an order of removal.

I want to remind everybody of that. We just blow past that little detail. There are 1.5 million people running around this country who have an order of removal from a judge. They have gone through all the processes. They have had all the fricking lawyers that are paid by the NGOs to try to keep them out of court and keep them in the country, and 1.5 million of them have an order of deportation, of removal.

What do we do about it? This is what I want to say. We, Congress, owe it to the President and to the great men and women of Border Patrol and ICE, to our constituents, and to future Americans, who could be endangered by a future administration with open borders, to codify that which President Trump has been carrying out to defend our country.

We owe it to all of them to pass a new and updated version of H.R. 2 that we passed in the previous Congress. We stood on this floor as conservatives and united this Conference behind a singular mission of passing laws to prevent the abuses that were being carried out by Biden and Mayorkas.

I promise you--remember, we had a President Trump in 2020. We had a secure border in January 2021, with low numbers of border crossings and enforcement of the law. What happened? Biden took over; Mayorkas took over; and we had an explosion. Then, we had dead Americans and dangerous, lawless people on our streets.

We, Congress, have a duty to lay it all on the line and to make sure that, this year, under this Congress, with the Republican majority in the House and a Republican majority in the Senate, we deliver to the President's desk the equivalent of H.R. 2 from the previous Congress, which would codify the changes to parole, codify the changes to asylum, codify the changes in catch and release, codify the permanent and continued development of the wall, all the tools necessary to stop the flow at the border that the current administration has put into action. We should demand it. We should change the law so that no future Biden and Mayorkas can endanger the American people.

Does the gentleman from Pennsylvania agree?

Right.

Zero. Now, if we are lucky--if we are lucky--we might get a handful if pushed to the brink. Remember, we got four or five of them to vote for, I think, the SAVE Act.

Let's bring that up for a second. Should we not--in addition to guaranteeing that we secure the border and codify the great work of President Trump to prevent the death and destruction of the American people, should we not also guarantee the integrity of our elections by passing yet again the SAVE Act, pushing our Senate colleagues to pass the SAVE Act, and send it to the President's desk, which would simply guarantee that only American citizens vote in American elections?

It is that simple. Shouldn't be controversial. Shouldn't be a really difficult concept. We have passed it in the House. The Senate is blocking it. The question is whether Republicans have the nerve to put it on must-pass legislation, to fight for it, to break the filibuster in the Senate, to move the bill and get it to the President's desk, along with some other good changes, like voter ID and other things we should do.

Does the gentleman agree that we should, in addition to codifying H.R. 2, secure American elections with these requirements under the SAVE Act to save America, as President Trump rightly said, as President Trump told us in our Conference meeting a week and a half ago, to get it to his desk? Do you agree?

I have one final question, one final point. In addition to protecting Americans with H.R. 2 to codify the President's actions, in addition to ensuring that American elections are secure and that you can trust the integrity of elections by passing the SAVE Act, voter ID, and what is necessary to guarantee the sanctity of our elections, should we not also consider something like the PAUSE Act to pause and take a break on immigration when, in fact, we legally have 1.1 million green cards, 1 million guest workers, and north of 1 million foreign students each year?

We have more immigrants than every other country in the world combined. We have a foreign-born population of 51.9 million, almost 16 percent, a record high. This is the important part. We have social welfare and social safety nets that are being used by noncitizens that are blowing out the rolls and driving up the cost of all of these goods.

My point here is that we have had massive amounts of immigration over our history. All of us love the actual melting pot that America represents, but here is the key issue: You actually have to be willing to assimilate for it to be a melting pot. It is not a melting pot if you are coming here and waving a Palestinian flag or waving the flag of Honduras or Guatemala instead of saying I am coming here to be American, to embrace Western civilization, and to embrace the greatest country the world has ever known that has bled around the world not for conquest but to liberate people, that has died for people around the globe to make it a safer and secure place.

People want to come here to be a part of that, God bless them, but the people who come here who want to change it, who want to turn it into an Islamic state, who want to undermine it and who want advance sharia law, who want to bring their flags of their country here instead of adopting and becoming an American--shouldn't we not take a total review of our immigration system, from top to bottom, in addition to codifying security of our border and ensuring the integrity of our election, that only citizens vote and that only citizens are counted for purposes of representation and how we apportion our Members of Congress?

All of these things that I am talking about are common sense to ensure a simple principle that American citizens are able to run this country.

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Pennsylvania for joining me tonight. I appreciate his commentary, I appreciate his leadership, and I appreciate his service in the United States military. I appreciate his service to his constituents, and I appreciate his great family.

It is a sacrifice for all of us. It is tough when you have young kids, Madam Speaker. Our kids are about the same age. We leave them at home, and we come here, but we are doing it because we want to save this country for our kids and our grandkids. That is why I am in public service.

I know when I had a diagnosis of cancer about 14 years ago, Hodgkin's lymphoma, I didn't know if I would be around days or weeks, and 14 years later, I am sure some of my colleagues, maybe they are happy to see me, maybe they are not.

I know that when I leave my kids, I know God gave me some more breath and some more time on this planet to try to make sure that we save this, the last great hope for mankind as President Reagan called it.

Madam Speaker, I will close with this, and I will turn it over, so my friend from North Carolina can take the floor.

We are here to represent the American people. The American people did not send us here as Representatives to give away our country. They did not send us here as Representatives to allow our friends on the other side of the aisle to empower dangerous tax cuts, thugs, gang members, and people who are killing Americans. They did not send us here for that.

Every time we vote on appropriations bills and every time we are putting forward legislation, we ought to be thinking about these Americans who lost their lives at the hands of these non-Americans. We ought to be thankful we have a President who recognizes that these non- Americans needn't be on our streets, that we should be siding with ICE and Border Patrol, and that we should be defending the men and women in our law enforcement across the country so we can protect these Americans. So that we can choose to side with the American citizens, not the non-Americans who are dangerous, and we can side with law enforcement to protect these.

We can act. This is my message to my Republican colleagues: We have a choice this year. We can retreat and get into the mode of elections. Or we can lead, we can work, and we can roll our sleeves up and right now codify the rules, the laws, and the actions of the President to secure our border and ensure that no future President can abuse them.

We can do that right now. We can pass H.R. 2. We can send it to the Senate. We can force the Senate to act if we just have the will to do it.

We can send the SAVE Act again. We can add voter ID. We can send it to the Senate. We can dare them to break the filibuster by forcing a talking filibuster instead of the fake filibuster of a forced 60-vote threshold.

Make them work. Make 51 Senators sit on the floor and have a quorum. Make them speak. Make them do their job so that we can defend our country and defend our people. Pass the SAVE Act, pass voter ID, and secure American elections. Secure our border permanently instead of just having it depend on the current President. Reform our immigration system. Pause it. We have done it before. Pause it, review it, and stop people from overstaying their visas. Fix the system.

Make sure we are not importing people who are adherent to sharia law and want to undermine Western civilization and create mayhem and be against our way of life.

Choose the path of leadership. Come here as a Congress and bind together. Don't sit around complaining about having a two- or three- or four-seat majority.

Lead, act, and go.

That is why we are here. That is why that flag exists. Madam Speaker, put your trust in God, and put the armor of God around you. Stand up and lead for this country.

If we do it, then the American people will send us back here in a bigger majority.

If we do it, then President Trump will be able to accomplish even more in the next 2 years than in these 2 years.

If we act now, then we can actually save this country.

If we act now, then we can secure the border.

If we act now, then we can secure our elections.

If we act now, then we can guarantee an immigration system that no longer imports people into our country who want to undermine it.

We can provide healthcare freedom, and we can balance the budget if we act and we lead. Right now, let's secure our country. We can do it this year. That is our calling.

We are not here to get re-elected. We are here to deliver for the American people.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time here on the House floor. As always, I wish it was a little more filled with my colleagues involved in robust debate on the issues of our day and the issues that present our work here in the House to solve problems for the American people.

I want to say something quick that I think is really important as we are having a lot of debates this week, and a lot of people are raising questions about bills that we are bringing up and what we are moving and what we are not moving, the President making a decision today. I want to address where we are as a country because I think it is really important for us to establish what we have accomplished under this President over the last 18 months and under the leadership of this House and this Senate.

I am going to get into some disagreements in a minute, and I am going to get into some things that I think we ought to do. But let's be very clear about the State of this country and how much we have improved the State of our Nation over the last 18 months.

Mr. Speaker, 18 months ago, our borders were wide open. Eighteen months ago, the people of Texas that I represent were in danger. Eighteen months ago, we had criminals pouring into our communities in Texas and fentanyl pouring in and destroying homes and families.

The President came in and didn't need changes to the law to do the work of actually securing the border and did so. He did so with the great men and women of ICE and Border Patrol and the leadership of Tom Homan, the now two Secretaries of Homeland Security,

and other patriots who were working to secure the border, and they brought it to a complete standstill.

That is one thing, one thing that had a measurable impact on the people that I represent, the communities that I represent, and on this entire Nation. We are no longer living in fear that more criminals are coming across so that the Jocelyn Nungarays of the world get murdered and taken from us as did Laken Riley in my friend's home State of Georgia.

That is something we should celebrate and recognize and talk about and remind the American people that you can't take it for granted. You can't take good, strong leadership for granted. You can't take the fact that we now have enlistments and people that are looking to join the United States military at all-time highs. You are seeing people who want to be a part of the military because the President has removed the absurdity of the woke agenda and the DEI and all this stuff, taking their eyes off the ball of becoming the best fighting force in the world. Now people, young men and women, want to join the military again.

I know. I know my colleagues know because they talk to the men and women who want to go to the academies. They are proud to be in the United States military again. That is this President. That is this leadership. That is this Congress that is delivering that.

It is this President that took on the cartels and declared them as the terrorist organizations that they are. It is this President that took on Maduro and went after the change that needed to occur in Venezuela so we no longer had that pressure point that was facilitating our enemies in China and in Russia, that was reestablishing our footprint in the Western Hemisphere and making clear that this is an American hemisphere.

This President did that.

This President is reestablishing the faith in a government that believes in making their Capital City safe and secure again, pretty again--things you can be proud of as we celebrate our Nation's 250th birthday.

We are reestablishing our position around the globe, making clear that America is going to have a position. We are not going to engage in endless wars, but we are, in fact, going to make sure that our enemies know who we are, what we are doing, and that they are going to listen and that they are going to come to the table.

These are all things that require actual leadership.

This country is immeasurably better because of the last 18 months of this President, this Republican Congress, the Republican Senate, despite some of our disagreements. Yes, we have the sausage getting made where we have disagreements like we saw today. I am going to highlight a few of those things and talk about some directions that I think we ought to go.

But I want to be very clear. It is the Republicans in this body, in particular, and the Senate that had to end-run Democrats who did not want to fund ICE and Border Patrol. They preferred for political purposes to endanger the people of the country. They refused to appropriate money for the law enforcement agencies tasked with ensuring our country is secure and required us to use the reconciliation process to backdoor funding to ensure that ICE and Border Patrol would get funded.

That is what we are having to do. That is what leadership looks like.

It is not the best way to do it. We should have just appropriated it in January or February, but our Democrat colleagues refused to do it, preferring instead to endanger the American people.

Republicans stopped that. Republicans united to stop that. Republicans in both Chambers united to stop that, and I am proud of that. And I am proud of the things that I talked about and our position in the world and the secure border and the strong military. I am proud that our economy is moving in the right direction and getting stronger every day after the doldrums of the previous administration. These are all things that we should be proud of and why this election season is going to be so important.

This raises certain questions about what we do in our remaining 5 or 6 months before this election and the remaining 6 or 7 months in this Congress.

Today, the President was supposed to come up here and have a bill signing ceremony back here in the old House Chamber, and ultimately he chose not to come. The President's rationale was that he believed that rather than coming here and signing a housing bill that he wanted to make sure that this body, the House, and the Senate knows that he expects us to pass the SAVE America Act in order to secure our Nation's elections.

You cannot have a Republic that the people believe in if they don't believe in and trust their elections. That is what this is about. I don't know whether we will get it across the finish line by the end of this Congress or not. I was proud to author the bill 2 years ago here in the House, my friend Mike Lee in the Senate. I am proud that we have now passed it three times out of the House, and I am proud that we are continuing to have this conversation because we need to have the conversation. We need to have the fight. We need to have the discussion. The Senate needs to be forced to debate it.

Democrats who refuse to pass it need to make clear to the American people who is look blocking it, and it is not Republicans. It is not Republicans. It is Democrats who refuse roundly in both Chambers to say that very simply put, only American citizens should vote in American elections.

That is the truth.

Now, look, I voted against the housing bill yesterday, and I am going to explain why. I don't think we should be in the business of expanding government programs.

I don't think we should be in the business of expanding Section 8 housing. I don't think we should be in the business of telling local governments what they must do. I don't think we should celebrate the streamlining of permits, which are mostly on government-owned properties and so forth.

There were things in the bill that I do think moved things in a positive direction. I am glad that my good friend, French Hill, worked hard to try to do that in this difficult body.

I think the Senate made the bill worse. I couldn't vote for it. I couldn't support it. I have said why. I have a duty to my constituents to explain why. I was one of 32 Republicans who voted against it.

I don't think the bill was good enough. I don't think it should have included $200 million for an affordable housing pilot program from Congresswoman Tlaib. I don't think it should have included some of the grant programs, the PRICE program, the community enhancement for HUD, which I think goes through NGOs, which I don't trust won't be layered in fraud. That is not what I think this body should do in a limited government.

Today, we were supposed to bring up another bill under a rule, along with two appropriations bills, a veterans bill. I served on the Veterans' Affairs Committee for two terms before I joined the Rules Committee. I am proud to support and work to defend veterans.

We have gotten in the habit here of passing bills to say we did something. I think this is another one of those. It is all well intended.

I have groups of veterans coming to me that are for it and against it. They don't like the way some of the pay-fors impact them, some of the fees, some of the things that get transferred from one veteran to another. This is going to have a significant amount of spending. That is on top of the PACT Act, which we passed a few years ago.

I bring all that up simply to say that we have a habit here, when it gets into election season, of just moving bills because you want to check a box. I don't think we should do that. I don't think we should be doing that for housing. I don't think we should be doing that for veterans.

I think what has made this Congress successful is sticking to our job of fiscal responsibility. Holding our spending in check, stop increasing the debt, stop increasing the deficits, helping get interest rates down by driving down the deficits as a percentage of our gross domestic product, while the President drives up the economy, strengthening our military, strengthening our borders, doing the core constitutional functions of our Republic, that is what our job is.

My colleagues on this side of the aisle sometimes get frustrated. You cannot dare criticize because, somehow, you are undermining the party during election season.

I have been very clear that there is no comparison here between a party that wants to side with the woke agenda that is destroying our country, that wants open borders, that doesn't want to stand with our military, and that wants to undermine our President at every turn. There is no comparison of what this President and what this Republican Party have been doing for the people of this country.

We need to do better. We need to finish strong over the next 6 months of this Congress. Here are a couple of things that I think we need to do.

Number one, this Congress needs to pass codification of the President's successful border security provisions. We did so in the previous Congress, under H.R. 2. It would solve the problem of the abuses of parole, the abuses of asylum, and the catch and release policies that were abused under Biden. We can pass that in this House. We can send it to the Senate.

Yes, the Senate may sit on it, like they are doing with the SAVE Act. That is up to the Senate. I don't like this phrase: It is not a legislative exercise or a law-making exercise.

Yes, it is. We are supposed to do our job in the House. We should send over the codification of what the President is doing, to address what I saw today, a bunch of immigrants and migrants in Mexico who are saying to the camera: We are going to wait till Trump is gone, and then we are coming.

That is going to happen. If there is a Democrat in the White House and if there is a weak Secretary of Homeland Security, like there was under Mayorkas, then they will let people come into our country, and then more Americans will die. There will be more Laken Rileys and more Jocelyn Nungarays.

Number one, let's fix that. Let's codify border security. Let's call the question. Let's have the vote. Let's do it here. Let's send it to the Senate.

Let's end the magnets. Let's codify the end of free healthcare and education under Plyler v. Doe and other taxpayer-subsidized public benefits for illegal aliens.

Let's defund the sanctuary jurisdictions.

Let's hike remittance fees. We added 1 percent remittance fees on illegal aliens last year, in the big, beautiful bill. Let's increase it to 5 percent, 10 percent, 20 percent. Why should people who come here, who are here illegally, not be paying a remittance fee, at least for the time, while we are not getting them out of our country? Let's make revenue on the fact that they are earning dollars here and not when they are sending them overseas or sending them home. Let's collect that for our purposes, because we have to spend a lot of money on this. Let's increase those remittance fees.

Let's act as a body to end automatic birthright citizenship, even as we are looking at what the Court does. The Court isn't the only one to make these decisions. We can. There should not be birthright citizenship for just being born on our dirt. There should be birthright citizenship for being born to an American citizen, mother or father. It is the right way to do things.

Let's reduce and reform legal immigration. Let's pass the PAUSE Act. We have 53 million foreign-born people in the United States. That is 16 percent of the population. That is the highest percentage we have ever had. We need to pause. We need to take a breather. We need to remove certain people from this country, as the administration is doing. We need to continue to do that.

We need to press pause on the legal immigration still bringing people into our country until we have established who we are as a country and have ensured we have the sovereignty and the cultural solidification of who we are as a nation.

Let's halt the Islamic invasion. Let's pass legislation to ensure that people who are coming here are vetted for their adherence to sharia law, which is deeply contradictory to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and the rule of law here in the United States.

Let's pause H-1Bs. Let's review, reform, maybe even repeal H-1Bs, and overhaul the entire system. They have been abused. They have been fraudulent, certainly in Texas--I am sure also in Atlanta and other places around the country. Let's formally end diversity visas and chain migration.

What is all this to the average person? I am just telling you that these are the things that are causing us to have imported 5 million people from majority Muslim countries since 9/11. That does not sound like the thing a country should do that wants to preserve and protect itself after it was attacked, in the middle of what is now a multi- decades-long war, cold and hot, of the Islamists against the West.

The imams and the Muslim Brotherhood will publicly state that they are waging jihad against the West. America is the prize, and Texas is the prize in America.

Let's do something about it. This body can do something about it. Stop hiding behind the First Amendment. Stop hiding behind the touchy- feely cultural stuff that we talk about in our schools, saying, oh, that sounds hateful.

It is not hateful to say that we ought to preserve and protect this country, and we should not allow people who are coming here to undermine the rule of law, undermine the Constitution, and try to Islamify a Judeo-Christian nation into something that it is not.

Let's do those things. Let's fight the rise of sharia law. Let's pass legislation that clearly bans it. Let's ban the entry of and remove foreign nationals who adhere to sharia law and undermine the rights of women. That is occurring right here in this Nation, even as we speak.

Let's codify the elimination of foreign aid and expose the NGO funding, which is typically hostile to our interests. We are not doing enough of that. The administration is doing a great job. We have done some of it here. We need to go further.

Let's exit and reform NATO. Let's exit and reform the United Nations. Let's codify our exit from the World Health Organization that the President unilaterally executed from the executive.

Let's end funding for the National Endowment for Democracy, which is often abused against us and our allies. Let's stop foreign aid for recalcitrant countries that refuse to take back illegal aliens.

These are all things we should be doing as the people's House. There can be some debates and nuances about different pieces of these things. I am not saying every one of these is something that you just decree from on high. We are a republican form of government, of representatives.

Let's have the debate. Let's do it. Let's talk about it because this country did, in fact, pause immigration in the mid-20th century, and it was good for our Nation for a bit. It was good for us to take stock. It was good for us to ensure that we have people assimilating and becoming a part of our country rather than trying to break down our country.

We must dismantle and destroy the Marxist and Islamic organizations and networks undermining our safety and the rule of law, codify that antifa is a domestic terrorist organization, codify that the Southern Poverty Law Center is a domestic terrorist organization, and investigate and cut off the funding that George Soros is putting forward, often, we believe, illegally, an extension of DAs that are putting criminals on our streets.

Why are we allowing this to occur?

It is insane.

Let's fight for energy freedom. Let's kill the remainder of the subsidies that are destroying our grid and undermining actual energy freedom. Let's kill corporate cronyism, the grift and the regulations. Let's end the renewable fuel standard crippling American refinery production, but let's go ahead and allow year-round E15. I am good with that, E20, E25, I don't care. Let the market figure it out, but get rid of the renewable fuel standard.

Don't come in here and beg for an E15 year-round mandate because you want to have a bailout for farmers, and then don't tell me: Texan, you might want to have the refining capacity that we need.

Don't tell me that we shouldn't end the renewable fuel standard. Let's work together and do that. I am happy to. I want our farmers in Iowa, Minnesota, and places that want to have

E15, E20, whatever, year-round. Great. Let's get rid of that regulation, but let's get rid of this other regulation too, Mr. Speaker.

Let's rapidly develop nuclear power.

Let's pass strong permitting reform.

As we sit here now 2 weeks in the supposed darkness on the FISA 702 expiration, number one: I would like to take a bet from anybody about whether they think our government is still conducting warrantless surveillance even though FISA has expired. I assure you they are, Mr. Speaker.

Number two: Shouldn't we continue to do something about it?

Let's protect Americans from warrantless surveillance in their country and government and the corporate use of technology to target and spy on Americans. Let's ensure warrant protections when we are talking about FISA.

Ban government control of American citizen spending by banning any central bank digital currency. If you don't know what that is, Mr. Speaker, if you don't know what a CBDC, a central bank digital currency, is, it is the government being able to monitor and control your currency, your spending, and your dollars electronically and being able to say: Oh, no, you can't buy that gas now. Oh, no, wait, we don't like guns. No bullets, you can't buy bullets.

China does it all the time, and you don't think we are 5 seconds from it happening right here in the United States of America, Mr. Speaker?

Of course, we are.

Let's ban government and corporate surveillance in our cars by killing the kill switch where we have mandated technology going into cars making them more expensive so they can monitor you and monitor your face while you are driving, Mr. Speaker.

In what kind of world in America do we have surveillance in our automobiles mandated by the government?

Ban the funding of block cameras and other government surveillance. Let's stop it.

Mr. Speaker, I am a security, law and order guy. I was in the United States Attorneys Office.

Do you know what makes my job easier as a prosecutor?

It is having all the information in the world and all the surveillance data in the world to know exactly what everybody is doing and be able to go put them in jail.

Nevertheless, Mr. Speaker, do you know what I like?

It is freedom. I don't want the government monitoring everything we are doing.

Let's not forget why we are sitting at $40 trillion in debt to reduce deficits and debt. We did a great thing in the big, beautiful bill by enforcing reforms to Medicaid and making sure that illegal aliens couldn't get welfare benefits in Medicaid. We had significant reductions in waste, fraud, and abuse. We did some good work, and we held discretionary spending flat for 3 years.

I didn't mention that earlier as one of our great accomplishments. Under this President and under this Congress, for 3 years we held discretionary spending flat. I don't know when we have ever done that. That is an extraordinary piece of work that we have done, but we are not denting the debt yet. We are not denting the interest that is piling up around the ears of our kids and our grandkids.

Let's continue to reduce or hold discretionary spending flat. Let's eliminate programs plagued by fraud and let's have reforms to eliminate fraud. Let's ensure any reconciliation package is actually deficit reducing.

I sat in meetings today in the Speaker's Office talking about reconciliation. My perspective is dollar for dollar, year for year, spending pay-fors match the spending--no gimmicks, no games, no 10-year out-year savings for up-year 1-year spending. That is not hard. It is just something we ought to do.

Let's further reform welfare mandatory spending benefits. Let's pass a balanced budget amendment. Let's do the work we need to do to get spending down and keep it going in the right direction.

However, don't send up to me, White House, a supplemental spending bill because of Iran for $87 billion with an E15 mandate in it. I am not going to vote for that.

Are we going to pay for it?

How are we going to pay for it?

We used to pay for our wars. Yes, we racked up debt after World War II, but we also did a lot of war bonds, we did a lot of rationing, and we had a lot of tax increases to deal with the war. I am not for tax increases.

What I am saying is: Let's work through what we need to do to pay for $87 billion.

By the way, that doesn't even begin to do what we need to do to modernize our defense and replenish our stockpiles. We should do all of that, but we should pay for it. Guns and butter is a novel concept. We have been doing a good job. Let's not break from it. Once we start breaking from it, it gets real easy. We should hold the line.

Let's ban congressional stock trading. Oh, my gosh, oh, the wailing and the gnashing of teeth.

Mr. Speaker, there are only 435 of us. If you don't like it, then leave. I am going to be leaving at the end of the year after four terms. I think this is supposed to be a body where you come up, you serve, and you go home. I am not, by the way, trying to diminish anybody who has been here for five, for six, or for eight terms. I support term limits, but whatever.

My view is, though: Why are you here day trading and engaging in the active trading of stocks when you are voting on the very thing you are supposed to be doing for the American people and not yourself?

I am open to ideas on how. I am not open to it being an option. A majority of this body wants to do it. We just haven't done it. It is overwhelmingly popular with the American people, and I think it would give great confidence that we are in this for the right reasons.

Let's make America healthy again. Let's provide real American healthcare freedom. Employer-provided health subsidies should go to health savings accounts. They shouldn't have to go to Aetna or shouldn't have to go to Blue Cross. Let those employer-provided funds go directly to you, Mr. Speaker, and allow you to go use those for direct primary care or to health sharing ministries. Let's shake the system up.

Let's break the back of the insurance companies and the great big hospitals that are running this town. Seven times more is spent on healthcare lobbying in this town than on defense. It is by far the biggest industry in this town.

Mr. Speaker, do you want to know why we can't solve healthcare?

That is why. It is the money.

Let's stop subsidizing sugar drinks. We had a vote on this over here, and we couldn't pass it.

Mr. Speaker, how can you not pass something saying: Stop subsidizing sugar drinks?

I don't even know what the argument is against it. Drink water. It was good enough for a millennia for human beings.

Why are we using taxpayer dollars to say you should drink a Coke?

Protect Americans from poison in our food, air and in the water. Let's protect children. Let's defund abortion and Planned Parenthood like we did in the big, beautiful bill and transgender surgeries.

Let's stop mifepristone and the pill that is going around killing literally hundreds of thousands of unborn babies. Let's defund and limit that mifepristone.

Let's then protect children from online abuses in AI, but let's do it the right way.

Let's not empower government to police speech.

Let's not allow the Federal Government to set massive standards preempting States. Let's ensure we protect our rights while we protect our children. We have done it for every other scourge on our kids. Let's do it on this disaster that is technology in the pockets of our children. We can do that. It is not partisan. Let's just do it.

Let's protect American land and housing from foreign ownership, and let's pass a constitutional amendment for term limits. If we can't pass a constitutional amendment for term limits, then why don't we just say we are not going to provide pay for Members after a certain period of time?

Or why don't we limit people from leadership positions or committee chairmanships after a certain period of time?

We don't need to amend the Constitution to do that. I introduced a bill to do that.

I am not saying these are all 100 percent the right thing to do. I am not saying my bill on banning congressional stock trading is the only way or the right way. What I am saying is: Let's do it.

We sit around a lot, and we talk about these things. That is the nature of a legislative body, but we have been talking about some of these things for way too long.

We have been talking about passing a balanced budget amendment for a long time. Let's do it.

We have talked about term limits for a long time. Let's do it by means of an amendment or by statute.

We have talked about reducing spending. We are starting to do it a little, but we haven't touched mandatory spending.

We have talked about what we need to do to secure our country and secure our border. Let's codify it. Let's do it. Let's not just depend on the President so that we are in this yo-yo every 4 years or every 8 years.

Let's make sure we have got abundant energy for the American people. Let's not pick winners and losers. Let's stop subsidizing X over Y.

Let's have clean nuclear, and let's have clean natural gas.

Let's have a strong military that has the tools that it needs. I am 100 percent on board for that, but you have to pay for it. Stop pretending that you don't have to pay for things. Stop running around, as Republicans, saying: Supply side, supply side, can't touch taxes, but, man, I can sure spend a lot.

Great. I am for supply side and I want to cut taxes, but stop spending.

You can't have your cake and eat it, too. We, Republicans, can lead this country. We can inspire them to show up and support us to guarantee we have the strongest Congress, alongside this President, to defend this country and to ensure that we carry forward in the right way, but we have to do it.

I don't care if it is one or two or five or ten of those things, but can we do any of those things?

Can we start with something like codifying border security? Can we ban congressional stock trading? Can we tackle the issue of healthcare and a Reconciliation 3.0 product? Can we fund defense, but pay for it?

These are all basic things the American people expect us to do. Let's do it, and then let's carry forward this country for our kids and grandkids.

Mr. Speaker, I don't know if I will get a chance to get back down on the House floor next week before we celebrate our 250th birthday, but that brings up two things for me to recount in my last 2 minutes.

One is to the great people of Kerrville, Texas, and to the Hill Country that suffered under the devastating floods last year. You have been an example to all.

Yes, there have been questions about what happened and looking at what could be done differently and so forth, but the amount of money that was raised under private dollars--almost $150 million--record numbers that were given out and then distributed in a sober and appropriate way, a community that rallied around their faith, stood up and defended--they didn't come here.

I didn't have constituents coming here, begging: Chip, come introduce a bill. We have got to have some big Federal Government bill to save our bacon.

We did what we thought was right. FEMA was there. They helped, and then we tried to do it the right way. I am so proud of that community. I am praying for them. I am praying for those who lost their lives and their families as they hit this 1-year mark. I ask the rest of this Nation and the rest of my colleagues to do the same.

Finally, I remind us as we are celebrating the 250th birthday of this country and all the sacrifice of all of our forefathers who bled, died, and fought for it that we have an obligation to do the same for our kids and grandkids, or we will lose it. That is the one thing that our Founding Fathers understood better than anybody.

I remind people that we are not just celebrating our 250th birthday, but we are celebrating the 200th anniversary of the death of both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on that July 4, 1826, when Adams died saying Jefferson lives not knowing that Jefferson had passed away just a few hours before.

If you don't believe in the divine intervention in this country's founding, then think about that, that those two men died 50 years to the day from July 4, 1776.

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

Mr. Speaker, it was great to have had the chance last night to be at the White House with the President, his Cabinet, and my colleagues.

Obviously, we celebrated the Christmas season and our collective belief that this season is particularly important for the American people in recognition of who we are as a people in a Judeo-Christian society and celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

It is not just a holiday for white lights and garland and making merry. It is a holiday that serves as the center of who we are as a people.

As the Speaker knows, sitting there in the Speaker's chair under ``In God We Trust,'' it is that collective faith that we have in the Lord Almighty and our collective belief in his Son that has served as the core of the strength of this country from its founding. I will talk about two things today that are related to that.

One is a policy issue. That issue is the ability of the American people to get healthcare and care for one another. The other is defending our Judeo-Christian heritage in Western civilization from the onslaught of those who wish to push the Islamification of our country into the forefront.

Mr. Speaker, I will start on the point of the healthcare policy because I think it goes to the central problem we face as a people right now. A lot of folks are talking about ``affordability.'' It has become the political hot-button buzzword. It is affordability.

This is being driven intentionally by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle because they have got virtually nothing to run on. They made a choice to shut the government down in order to set up a fight and to try to elevate the issue of healthcare because they believe they can win on it politically.

Mr. Speaker, I want everyone to think about that for a minute. They shut down the government because they want to politicize the issue of healthcare and not actually work to solve the problem.

Republicans, in my view, have avoided the issue of healthcare out of political fear historically. I believe that this Republican Congress, this Republican House and Senate, and this Republican-led White House have the opportunity today to transform healthcare for the American people so that it can be affordable, so that they can have choice and they can go to the doctor of their choice, and to empower doctors and patients, not insurance bureaucrats and government bureaucrats.

I want to repeat that again because I am going to engage in a colloquy and yield to my friend from Missouri in a moment on this important topic.

Right now, the average American family is getting crushed and is unable to afford healthcare because Democrats broke our healthcare system.

I want to be very clear: Democrats knowingly chose to break the American healthcare system 15 years ago. We told the world what would happen, and it has come true.

American families and the businesses that employ most of them are spending about $25,000 a year for insurance premiums that give them fewer options and restricts them on what they can do, gives them higher copays, higher deductibles, and fundamentally makes it impossible for them to have actual care.

I go back to my point about In God We Trust and celebrating the Christmas season. As Christians, we are called to take care of those less fortunate than we are. We are called to help those who need help. That is why so many of our hospitals historically were nonprofits built up from faith-centered institutions. That is why so many hospitals are Saint Fill-in-the-Blank Hospital. It is because Christians came together to say that we should care for those who need help, but then came in government.

In all of its infinite wisdom, government came in and regulated healthcare, restricted our options and socialized the payments.

Now what is the result?

It is an impossibility of the average American family to be able to actually get healthcare from the doctor of their choice. It is the inability for them to go get insurance that will give them comfort that if the cancer that I got in 2011 hits them, that they will be able to go get care because they can't afford it. They can't afford it because we have broken it. We didn't break it, Democrats broke it.

Right now, Republicans have a choice: Go along with Democrats to continue to socialize healthcare, continue to enrich insurance companies and continue to take away options from the American people or we can stand up for healthcare freedom and stand up for the ability of an average American family to be able to go to the doctor of their choice, get insurance, and go on health-sharing ministries such as Medishare and be able to defray costs, rather than having constrained, regulated, no-option, expensive health management by bureaucrats.

That is what we have.

The fact is, Mr. Speaker, there is this big debate right now about so-called subsidies. I want to be very clear about what we are talking about. We are talking about COVID-era pandemic cash that was thrown out into our economy in this case for some plus-ups for some subsidies for the broken ObamaCare system.

Now we are 5 years removed from COVID, and my Democrat colleagues are trying to say that if we don't extend those subsidies that somehow we are denying people healthcare. That is just flat false. It is a lie.

The fact is, ObamaCare remains in place. Its subsidy structure remains in place for better or worse, and those subsidies that they are talking about would literally go into the pockets of insurance companies whose profits have gone up 1,000-plus percent over the last decade.

It is an insurance enrichment scheme.

My Democratic colleagues broke healthcare, and now they are down here saying: We must give more money to insurance companies.

That is what they are saying.

Any Republican who goes along with that needs to answer for doing the same thing.

Why would we give more money to the insurance companies that saddled up with government to enrich themselves rather than help the American people?

Mr. Speaker, 85 percent of all Affordable Care Act revenue insurers received comes from the Federal taxpayers. Mr. Speaker, 85 percent of all the revenue, I should say, that the insurers receive are coming from the Federal taxpayers. Insurers received at least $35 billion in Federal subsidies in 2024 for people who didn't use their plan a single time. Mr. Speaker, $35 billion went into the pockets of insurance companies for people who didn't even use their plan.

I want to say this, and then I am going to yield to my friend from Missouri: We have solutions. When people say that Republicans don't have a plan, it is false. We put out plans. We have put out solutions. We have solutions.

We believe in expanding people's access to care by empowering them with the same tax treatment, equal tax treatment, the corporations get. Individuals should get the same tax deductions and tax breaks to be able to have healthcare.

Mr. Speaker, we believe in expanded health savings accounts that you can use for direct primary care to go to a doctor, have that doctor's cell phone number, have a relationship with that doctor and not be put into some complicated scheme where you have to get approval for somebody who is in network or not in network and who may or may not be within 100 miles of your house.

We want the American people to be empowered. We want them to be able to go defray costs and share costs in health-sharing ministries and Medishare and all these different organizations that are, frankly, the last lifeboat that people have right now for access to care.

We want to allow providers to own hospitals rather than be restricted from being able to do that so that the corporate, monolithic hospitals are not the only option.

We want 1,000 flowers to bloom and for people to have the freedom option.

Guess what, Mr. Speaker?

You can leave ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act, structure all in place. Leave it all sitting there, but just provide the American family with a freedom option. Allow them to have choice.

Shouldn't that be our right as Americans?

People talk about a right to healthcare. What they are really saying with that is that government should be providing healthcare rather than the individual, the family being able to have the right to get the care of their choice.

What on Earth kind of freedom do you have in a country where you literally can't go get healthcare and you are prohibited from it?

The government has stopped us from exercising our freedom.

We have plans. What we don't have is the backbone and the willpower to stand up and deliver.

I say: Do it now.

I say: Stand up and fight for healthcare freedom now.

I am tired of it. I don't want another election. I don't want another: Don't worry, we will do it next time. I want to do it now because too many people are suffering at the hands of a bureaucracy and the tyranny of government-run health management rather than the ability to get care.

The current situation with respect to healthcare exists entirely by record of vote and a record of policies because my Democrat colleagues put forward policies that the American people are having to live under today.

They broke the healthcare system.

My Democratic colleagues are proposing an insurance company enrichment scheme. Literally they are printing money in the Treasury and giving it to insurance companies.

Their solution for healthcare is enriching insurance companies. Our solution for healthcare is empowering doctors. Our solution for healthcare is empowering people. Our solution for healthcare is spreading costs out among people who want to help each other out in the American way.

It is why I started talking about Christmas.

The question for Republicans is: If not now, then when?

When are we going to stand up and deliver for the American people?

That basic right--I will say it--right to access healthcare of our choice without government interfering, without government regulating, and without government stealing our ability to care for our own families and loved ones in our community.

I know the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Burlison) feels the same way. He has done incredible work on this subject. We are aligned, I think almost entirely, on the opportunity for Republicans to lead, the opportunity for Republicans to stand up and deliver for the American people on healthcare freedom for every American. Every American should be able to do that.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Burlison).

Mr. Speaker, I know my friend from Missouri needs to head home, but before he heads out, I would ask him a couple of quick questions in colloquy.

For the average viewer out there who can't necessarily follow all this, if we distill this down simply, no matter what you call it, no matter how you define it, what we are simply proposing is that individual families, individuals, be able to get the same tax benefit as currently corporations get when they are putting their dollars into a Blue Cross, Aetna, or some other insurance plan, right?

I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Because of a broken system created by wage controls post- World War II, instead of employers only being able to get the tax break when they give dollars to pay Blue Cross to provide some sort of plans and then you have to then further subsidize that--so maybe your employer puts in $1,800 and you put in $900, in total, it is costing $2,700 a month.

Instead, we are saying: Look, get the same tax break, employer, but put it into a massively expanded, tax-free account, where you are able to use it for insurance, real insurance, that you can go get, a catastrophic coverage and/or direct primary care, all sorts of plans out there where you have a doctor who says: Look, for $100 a month, you can call me. I am at your call. I will do this kind of service.

Another option is health sharing, whether it is secular or faith- based, where you have, oh, wait a minute, I don't need catastrophic insurance for this problem. It is a broken leg, but I don't have $5,000 for the emergency room visit and all the care and whatnot, so you share and defray that cost across people often in a faith-based organization, but sometimes secular.

Isn't that the engine of what we are talking about?

Then, would it not require us to simply say that you can leave ObamaCare in place? That can sit there and keep doing what it is doing, but we are going to give people this option, so employers can put it in there.

If you are self-employed, you can get the same tax break. It is all equal tax treatment. Nobody is treated differently. We would have a product over here that would allow for true catastrophic insurance, right--not regulated, not all sorts of complications, not telling you what you can do, not do, but a risk-based product that says: Hi, I am a healthy 24-year-old. I would like to just know that, if I am in a bad accident or if I get cancer, that I will be able to have care. I will pay $100 a month for that risk assessment, and the insurance companies can figure all that out, or $200 a month, but not $2,000 a month.

Isn't that what we are talking about?

Correct.

The last point, to that point, when our Republican colleagues, in particular, and other colleagues talk about all these things--we need transparency, we need association health plans--I support that. I support transparency, right? We need to fix some particular technical thing with our existing plans, right? Whatever these little solutions are--PBMs, right? There are all these--oh, we are going to do something on PBMs. Well, sometimes, that works. Sometimes, it doesn't. Will any of that be transformative?

What will be transformative is giving individuals and patients the power to deploy the dollars in a tax-advantaged way, in a marketplace where they can go get the options that are best for them.

Correct?

Right.

Right. If you have an F-250 pickup, right, and you have a crappy, little engine in there that doesn't work, but you add four- wheel drive and leather seats, and you do all this stuff to make it a nice truck, but it has a lawnmower engine in it, would it work? Would it be effective?

That is what we are talking about. That is what Republicans do. They have fallen into the trap of saying: Please give me the leather seats on the F-250, or I really want the four-wheel drive, or I really want a good bed liner and bed cover, and, oh, give me all the options and music and speakers and, oh, it looks great, great running boards, but you have a frigging lawnmower engine. The truck is useless.

We have to actually transform healthcare, and we have the opportunity to do it with proposals like yours, like mine, like a number of proposals that our colleagues have. The question is: Will we have the willpower to do what the President has laid out-- Mr. BURLISON. Yes.

--which is to stop subsidizing insurance companies, stop enriching insurance bureaucrats, and empower the American people?

I thank the gentleman for his time.

I wish him safe travel back to Missouri, and hopefully, next week, we can get busy saving the American people from a broken healthcare system.

America Under Attack From Within

Mr. Speaker, I am going to take a few minutes in the time that I have remaining to talk about another issue that is critical to the State of Texas and this entire country.

That is the fact that America, Texas, and Western civilization are under attack from within. The cheap labor lobby, leftwing NGOs, radical progressive Democrats, Marxists, globalist organizations, and the United Nations have mobilized a coordinated effort to subvert our security and immigration system to harm the American people.

Particularly concerning is the threat posed by Islamists who are spreading sharia law into Texas, who are advancing throughout the country, and who have a stated goal of undermining American life, not assimilating into it.

This is a political movement, well funded, targeted at the American people, Western civilization, our rule of law, and the Constitution.

We should not be allowing more people into this country who are adherent to sharia law, period. The Muslim Brotherhood's own motto is: ``Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.''

Meanwhile, Europe has fallen. London and Paris are mere shells of their former strong selves. You watch veterans who fought to defend the United Kingdom in World War II. Those still alive tear up and cry, wondering what it was that they fought for when they watch the radical extension of Islam into the streets of London and throughout the United Kingdom.

In France, a majority of young French Muslims put sharia above their own national laws, and more than a third have sympathy for Islamification. French officials have warned President Macron that Islamists are infiltrating France's republican institutions and are a threat to national cohesion. The authors of the report to Macron identified the Federation of Muslims in France, FMF, as the main French emanation of the historic Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded 100 years ago to promote a return to core Islamic values.

They said that the FMF controlled 139 places of worship in France and a further 68 affiliated--in all, around 7 percent of the total. The organization ran some 280 associations.

Mr. Speaker, 7 out of 10 French voters would back a ban on the Islamic veil in public because of what is happening in France.

In the United Kingdom, Muslims are increasingly turning to Britain's sharia courts, which are not part of the U.K. law and operate as informal bodies. The number of sharia courts in Britain has grown to 85 since they first began operating in the country in 1982.

Polls have found that 41 percent of the British public believe that Muslim immigrants have had a negative impact on the United Kingdom. Nearly half think that Muslim women are pressured into wearing a hijab. Almost a third think that Islam promotes violence.

Parallel legal systems are not keys to a thriving society. There must be one rule of law for all the people.

All the way back in 1991--a lot of people won't know this--the Muslim Brotherhood issued a memorandum about North America, detailing a plan for the ``enablement of Islam in North America,'' establishing an effective and stable Islamic movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood, which adopts Muslims' causes domestically and globally and works to expand the observant Muslim base. It was a coordinated and specific effort to advance Islam into the United States.

Our Founders did not envision a Nation that remotely resembled today's Muslim world and the radical elements of sharia. America was founded as a nation grounded in a distinctly Judeo-Christian history and understanding of human nature.

It was Great Britain that led the ending of slavery.

John Adams said: ``One great advantage of the Christian religion is that it brings the great principle of the law of nature and nations . . . to the knowledge, belief, and veneration of the whole people.''

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams hinted at the incompatibility of America's Republican virtues with the values of Muslim nations after meeting with the Islamic Ambassador about the Barbary States' inclination to make war upon nations that did them no wrong after they were informed it was a requirement of the Koran.

In Jefferson's papers in 1786, he wrote: ``We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor given us any provocation.

``The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found and, to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Musselman''--Muslim--``who should be slain in battle was sure to go to paradise.'' That is Jefferson, 1786.

Our Founders knew that sharia law was not consistent with Western civilization and our values. Sharia law is a problem that is growing throughout the United States and certainly growing in Texas. My home State bore the brunt of a 4-year mass migration invasion under the previous administration, but there has been a quieter one of Islamists leveraging our immigration system and corporate interests to extend and use diversity visas, chain migration, and H-1B visas to flood our country with people who don't believe in it and have no intention of assimilating into it.

A new Muslim community in Texas, not even a few days old, with a 150,000-square-foot Muslim community center, was opened in Houston, called EPIC City. It is in Plano, outside of Dallas-Fort Worth and it has raised all sorts of questions about their intentions to create an effectively Muslim-only community where sharia law no doubt would and will be practiced. Now they have renamed it The Meadow rather than the East Plano Islamic Center. They continue to develop and grow it even as there are almost 300 mosques in Texas and more mosques being built in Texas every day than any other State in the Union.

Meanwhile, let's look at what is going on in the United States broadly. Our Nation's foreign-born population has reached 51.9 million people, comprising some 16 percent of our population. We are at the highest levels of percentage in our history. The last time we had a similar level of foreign-born population, in roughly 1920, we froze immigration. Largely for about 40 or 50 years we froze it, and then it has been exploding over the last 50 years.

I have introduced legislation called the PAUSE Act to pause immigration and to pause it until we get our hands around all of the problems that are currently plaguing our immigration system: the abuse of birthright citizenship, to have profit-centered ways to create American citizens, by people coming here, coming across the Rio Grande, having children, making citizens that then can use American resources, our hospitals, our schools, our legal system, our welfare.

We continue to allow a broken visa system to have extended family members be brought into the United States expansively and purposefully. The H-1B program has been exploited and abused now for years and must be abolished or massively reformed.

We obviously still have a very badly broken border that is only currently being held in check by a President and by leadership in the administration who are devoted to doing it, that are empowered to do it. However, all of the ways in which Biden-Mayorkas and that entire administration allowed our border to be wide open and have 10 million people flood our country, all of those things still remain in place statutorily.

Congress could fix it. We haven't. The House passed legislation 2 years ago--what it was called in that Congress was H.R. 2--to meaningfully change the law so that it can't be exploited to endanger the people. We have not brought that back up again this year. We should. We should codify these changes. Our priorities matter. The results of this are stark.

Thanksgiving week we saw what happened with the West Virginia National Guard servicemembers, Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, who was 20 years old, and Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe, 24. They were savagely ambushed and shot blocks away from the White House. Specialist Beckstrom tragically lost her life. The attacker, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who was imported through the Biden-Mayorkas illegal Operation Allies Welcome parole program, drove from Washington State to carry out this diabolical act in our Nation's Capital.

According to DHS, over 5,000 Afghans brought to the United States through Operation Allies Welcome had either national security or public safety concerns.

We are importing people who want to undermine and destroy our country, and both sides of the aisle have been guilty of this. This is not a debatable reality. It is literally occurring.

For us to survive, we have to act. We need to pass the PAUSE Act. We need to pause immigration. We need to pass legislation like the bill that I introduced to preserve a sharia-free America that would prohibit the entry of people that are known to be adherent to sharia law, which is deeply in conflict with our values and our laws.

We should take away the tax status of CAIR and other radical organizations with ties to terrorists and a vast network of well-funded organizations, using American tax dollars, United Nations' funds, wealthy donors, George Soros funding, foreign funding, nation-states all pouring into organizations, NGOs driving this agenda, the Marxist- Islamist red-green alliance that wants to destroy America as we know it. I introduced legislation to take away CAIR's tax status.

Why are we giving them tax breaks to try to destroy America?

That brings me to the final point which I was alluding to before on H.R. 2, that is legislation designed to codify effectively what President Trump is doing: to stop the abuse of parole, to stop the abuse of asylum, to stop the abuse of catch and release, to stop all of the abusive ways in which an exploited border can undermine our security and endanger us.

We cannot rely on the administration to do it. Congress needs to act. Congress needs to codify it. Congress needs to change it. States and State leaders need to stand up and use the legislation that we did pass in January to enable suit against the Federal Government when they failed to secure the border that we included in the Laken Riley Act because States can no longer be beholden to a Federal Government that refuses to secure the border.

We have a reprieve under President Trump. That reprieve will no doubt one day come to an end, and States must be empowered and have leaders who are willing to stand up and fight.

States need to challenge things like Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court ruling that said that we must have taxpayer funding going to pay for the education of illegal alien children. If you want to choose to do it, that is for you to decide. We should not be forced to use taxpayer dollars to do that. We should challenge that Supreme Court ruling. We should stand up to defend our country.

The fact is you can't win a war that you are not willing to recognize exists. It is undeniably true after the election of the mayor in New York, Mamdani, with what is going on in Dearborn, with what is going on in Minneapolis, with what we are seeing happen in Texas, in Dallas and Houston, what we saw unfold in London and Paris, that there is an attack on the Western way of life. We must stand up and defend it if we are going to be able to pass down a country to our kids and grandkids.

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

Mr. Speaker, I come here this evening as someone proud to be a

part of an organization called the House Freedom Caucus.

I have people that I represent in Texas, constituents, but I also have people throughout the entire State, people across the country who stop me in airports, and they talk about what we do as the Freedom Caucus.

I say: Pretty simply, we stand up for freedom. When people say: Well, why would I want to be in the House Freedom Caucus? My answer is: Well, why wouldn't you want to be in the House Freedom Caucus?

It is a caucus of individuals dedicated to the Constitution, dedicated to freedom, dedicated to limiting government, all of the principles on which most of us, at least on this side of the aisle, run on. We happen to believe that when you come to Washington, you should do what you say when you are campaigning, that you should do what you say. It shouldn't be that complicated. Unfortunately, it often is.

I am proud to be in the trenches often with so many colleagues in the Freedom Caucus who recognize the importance of standing up and fighting for the principles and for the changes the American people sent us here to carry out and execute.

We have had a number of really extraordinarily important issues before this body in my time in Congress and in recent years. Right now, we have extraordinary issues facing us.

Earlier today, when we had bills on the floor of the House, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were complaining and criticizing and alleging that we are not accomplishing anything, we are not getting anything done. Alternatively, when I talk to the people that I represent, when I talk to Texans, and I talk to the people that I said that stop me in airports and that thank us for doing what we do in the House Freedom Caucus for conservatives here on the House floor, I would say that I am very proud of the things that we have done over the last 15 months.

I am proud that we cut taxes. I am proud that we made sure that we put reforms in place to stop fraud and abuse. I am proud that we were able to put reforms in Medicaid and in food stamps to eliminate welfare for people who aren't working and for people who are illegal aliens. I am proud of the fact that this President has stopped the flow of illegal aliens at the border, that he has designated cartels as terrorist organizations, that he has taken the fight to the cartels and is going after Venezuela and trying to restore our dominance in the Western Hemisphere. I am proud that we have people now registering and enlisting in the United States military in record numbers because he has restored people's belief and confidence in the United States military. I am proud that he is standing up in defense of common sense, of saying that we shouldn't have boys in girls' locker rooms, and that we should be doing the things that would restore order and common sense throughout our country.

I am proud of what we have been doing. I have to say that the House Freedom Caucus stands at the epicenter, I think, of the great things that we have been accomplishing. But for the Freedom Caucus 3 years ago, in a notorious event here with respect to the Speaker and selecting a Speaker, we demanded certain changes to this institution.

We demanded that we have better representation in the Rules Committee and on Appropriations, and we demanded that we move solid and strong legislation, like H.R. 2 and our border security bill that we passed 3 years ago. We demanded that we have reforms on spending and that we try to move regular order and get bills through so we can actually get appropriations done.

Over the course of these years, we managed to pass the strongest border security bill in the history of this body. We managed to pass spending bills that held spending flat for the last three cycles. For 3 fiscal years, we have been able to hold discretionary spending flat. We managed to have serious influence in shaping what happened in the big, beautiful bill, as it came to be known, in particular stopping the absurdity of the green new scam subsidies. We singlehandedly stood up and took the arrows to say: We are not going to pass this, and we are going to demand change, and we are going to demand reform.

I can go through a list of countless things, whether it was the FISA reforms from 2 years ago, which I am proud that we implemented because we demanded that we actually protect Americans from warrantless surveillance and warrantless searches. We should demand to protect citizens when we had abuse under FISA and abuse by our intelligence community and the FBI against the American people.

By the way, sidenote, we should do that again. We should have more reforms. We shouldn't allow the intelligence community to roll over us. We should stand up again here on the House floor and make sure that the American people are protected. I think there is bipartisan support for that.

The Freedom Caucus has stood at the center of these fights and tried to demand that we protect the American people, that we protect them against the long arm of the government, that we try to hold taxes in check, hold spending in check, do even an ounce of what we said we would do when we campaigned.

I am proud to affiliate with such a great group of people. I am proud of what we do. I have no problem taking the arrows from people in this town that I am a part of the Freedom Caucus because I can promise you, the American people thank me and the American people thank us. They thank us for standing up against the inevitability in this town of Big Government, big spending and debt, and the expansion of the tyrannical bureaucratic state against the freedom of the American people.

I am proud to be affiliated with the Freedom Caucus. We are here today not only to talk about that and to talk about the things we need to do, but we are here to celebrate one of our own, one of our dear friends, Tim Reitz, who serves currently as the House Freedom Caucus executive director. Tim will be leaving this week to go continue to stay in the fight and go to an organization down the street. We will miss, Tim.

His work has been tireless in the advance of freedom. His work has been at the center of all that we have been able to accomplish over these last 4 years in his role as executive director, which I think now has been just over 4 years.

He has served under at least three different chairmen of the House Freedom Caucus, one of whom is here, and I am sure I will hand over the mike in just a second, to my good friend, Scott Perry from Pennsylvania.

Before that, he served as chief of staff, legislative director, and legislative assistant to my good friend and former Member of this body, Jody Hice, who is sitting behind me now.

We are all here to thank Tim for his service. He is a great American, a Georgian who worked for Paul Broun, a former Member of this body as well, before he worked for Jody Hice of Georgia. He is a graduate, I believe, of Georgia State University, but a big fan of the Georgia Bulldogs as well. In fact, he is so much a fan of the Georgia Bulldogs that he owns two bulldogs, Rocco and Rockette. He is married to his beautiful bride, Dawn-Marie, who works for the President in administration in the Office of Management and Budget and who herself was a staffer on Capitol Hill.

Now, as someone who served as a staffer himself, someone who worked over in the Senate as a staffer, I can tell you how much work goes into being an accomplished and a productive staffer.

Look, I have got a lot of staffer friends who are here in the leadership office, the whip office, my team, but I don't know anybody who has worked harder than Tim Reitz as a staffer, whether it was for Jody or in an individual office, whether it was for us, the Freedom Caucus in advance of his duties, but importantly in advance of the cause of freedom.

For those of us who come here--and I have got to be blunt here. I always offend people, but I might as well just stick with what works for me--we have got a tendency in this body to come up here to be part of a club. It is like people come here to be a part of something. It is like, look at me, I am a Member of Congress. There are a fewer number of people--and this includes staff, too--there are a fewer number of people who come up here to do, to do things, to fight for things, to take the

arrows in defense of something bigger than ourselves.

It is not enough to come here and just check the box. It is not enough to just come here and pass a bill because somebody tells you we have to. You come here, and you stand up, and you say: When the American people elected us--and when you have staffers who are sitting there working for us, knowing what they fought for and why they work for us, and they stand up and say: Yeah, but we didn't come here to do that.

Like let's take FISA. We didn't come here to rubberstamp what the intelligence community tells us to do. One of our House Freedom Caucus colleagues, Michael Cloud--I want to give him credit. Michael said he is in Appropriations right now or he would be here to celebrate Tim. As Michael said about 3 weeks ago in a Republican meeting: When does the intelligence community ever come forward and say: Hey, we have all this power to collect data and to do all this stuff, hey, we are going to give it back today. Here, we are going to give you some of that power back.

Has that ever happened in the history of mankind? Has that ever happened here? Of course not.

We came here to say we are going to do something about it. Tim came here to do something about it. Tim joined forces with the House Freedom Caucus to say we are going do something about it.

Two years ago, we did something about it. We worked legislation through the Judiciary Committee. We worked legislation in coordination with the Intelligence Committee and actually got some good reforms and a minimal 2-year reauthorization so we could come back and do it again.

Here we are and it is going to expire in another 10 days because we extended it 2 weeks last week. We actually have an obligation now to do the right thing, and I know Tim. He would say, look, I am going to stick around another 10 days if we can get it right because we ought to protect the American people.

The people who come here to effectuate change, those are the people that you, the American people who are watching this on C-SPAN, all 12 of you, should be thanking your lucky stars that you have someone like Tim Reitz here fighting for you as a staffer and being willing to work as the executive director of the Freedom Caucus, which I think is one of the most respected organizations among the American people and one of the most reviled organizations among the swamp creatures because they don't like having their BS called. Tim Reitz has been a faithful member of that.

Mr. Speaker, now that I have a quorum of my colleagues here, I will stop filibustering and turn it over to my good friend Scott Perry, who is the chairman of the Freedom Caucus when Tim was an executive director.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my good friend from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Pennsylvania, who ably, as I said, served as the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. He knows all too well the service that Tim provided to not just the House Freedom Caucus, not just the House of Representatives, but to this great country, in service, obviously, alongside our colleague, Jody Hice.

As my friend from Pennsylvania said, we are growing the movement. That is what is happening here, and Tim is going to be part of the movement in a different position, just as our friend Mr. Hice is from another position. God has a place for us at a certain time, and that place has been here with the House Freedom Caucus these last 4 years. Now, it is going to be somewhere else, and we are going to miss him.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Burlison), so that he can share a few of his thoughts.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Missouri, and his quote of William F. Buckley about standing athwart history yelling ``stop'' is one of the, I think, seminal moments of the modern conservative movement that Buckley launched and that Ronald Reagan then carried forward. People don't realize that that was literally the first edition, the first version, of the National Review.

It was a seminal moment of the conservative movement, and I think it encapsulates very well what we try to do in the House Freedom Caucus in standing athwart the institutional largesse of this town, this body, Congress, and the swamp in general, and yell ``stop'' and say ``enough.''

We came here to do something different. We came up here not to rack up debt. We came here to change things, to stand up for the people, to stand up for freedom, and to stand up for limited government.

Tim has been at the center of that, and so has my good friend Josh Brecheen from the great State of Oklahoma. I know we have to move through, and we have several other colleagues. He has what he is going to say, a little extemporaneous point. My good friend worked for Senator Tom Coburn, another great advocate and someone who served in this Chamber, served in the United States Senate, and understood that point of yelling ``stop'' and standing athwart history.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Brecheen).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from Oklahoma for his remarks.

I am now going to turn to the gentleman from Louisiana. I know he shares our sentiment about our friend from Georgia, Tim Reitz.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Louisiana (Mr. Higgins).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana, a gentleman who knows law enforcement and the United States military.

I would note that, in the House Freedom Caucus, as a Representative of the House, we have a diverse group of individuals, numerous men who have worn the uniform, including my friend from Pennsylvania, Scott Perry, who spoke earlier, and, notably, the gentleman I am about to yield to who served faithfully in service to this country and put his life on the line in defense of freedom. He knows why we are here.

I echo what my friend from Louisiana was just talking about and why I tell people that as proud as I am to be in the United States House of Representatives representing the district in Texas, the 21st Congressional District that I represent and 750,000 Texans, I am proud to be serving in this body. It is an honor. It is the honor of a lifetime. I am even prouder to associate with the men and women of the House Freedom Caucus who lay it on the line every day, in the political sense, in trying to fight for the things we said we would do and to mean it, and to take the arrows and to wear the scars of trying to actually move this body, to move this country so that we can save it for our kids and grandkids.

I say that on purpose here because Tim has been at the center of that. I know that this man, my dear friend from Arizona, a great patriot, Eli Crane, shares the sentiment of what I just tried to share rather ineloquently.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Crane).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from Arizona (Mr. Crane). I thank him for his service to this Nation in the military. I thank him for his service here in Congress, as I do all of my colleagues here.

As I get ready to recognize my friend from North Carolina, I would like to note that, as my friend from Oklahoma (Mr. Brecheen) said earlier, the House Freedom Caucus opens all of our meetings and tries to close all of our meetings in prayer. People don't realize that when we had the big debate over the Speaker 3 years ago, and it was heavily a good number of the Freedom Caucus who were a part of that debate, we met or spoke on the phone I would say literally every day, or all but a couple, from election day in November all the way through early January and through the resolution of that debate.

Every single one of those meetings and every single one of those calls we opened in prayer and closed in prayer, with the humility of knowing that we don't always know the right thing to do. We try to follow God. We try to follow the Constitution. We try to follow our hearts and to honor the constituents who sent us here in making tough decisions. Nobody has all the right answers. Through our prayer and deliberation at our weekly engagement, our brotherhood and sisterhood and camaraderie and faith in each other, and the support of people like Tim Reitz, we try to come to a conclusion to try to shape this body and to shape this country.

That is what we are called to do. We are not called to come here to punch the clock. We are not called to come here to just do the same old thing because the same old thing has resulted in $39 trillion in debt. The same old thing has resulted in expansive government at the expense of liberty.

Tim knows that. That is why he has sacrificed. That is why he has been here, working in the trenches, as has my good friend from North Carolina, Mark Harris. I know he feels the same way about Tim. I know he feels the same way about prayer. I know he feels the same way about this brotherhood and sisterhood that is the House Freedom Caucus.

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

I thank my friend from North Carolina (Mr. Harris) for his remarks, and I thank my colleagues who have come down to the floor to speak.

We have got a little time remaining in this Special Order, and I am going to do what I want to do, which is filibuster a little bit in case any of our colleagues are trying to get here from other parts of the campus.

I will note that we had other colleagues that wanted to come, one of those, my friend Keith Self from Texas who replied back to the thread that he was down reading the Bible at the Museum of the Bible. And I said: Well, where are your priorities, Mr. Self? And I joke only because we can say that as a group because of how much this group reveres the Word of God and tries to honor the Word of God. My friend from Georgia, Tim Reitz, does so as well.

I would note that there are other Members who are stuck working hard in the Appropriations Committee. I think our chairman, Andy Harris, is in the Appropriations Committee as we speak. Michael Cloud wanted to come down here, and he is stuck in the Appropriations Committee. I would say that it is arguably in part because of Mr. Reitz' great work that we have got those guys on the Appropriations Committee in the first place so that they were able to be otherwise occupied. It is not a committee that was often known for Freedom Caucus members participating.

I will say a couple things here before we break loose just to see if a few other people can get to the floor. I will focus on policy for a minute and then bring it back to Tim, which is this: None of us came here, nobody in this body came here campaigning on spending more money that we don't have, nobody; but yet we do. I am proud that the Freedom Caucus has stood up to say enough, and as a result, for 3 straight years, discretionary spending has been flat. That is a big deal. That is a big deal.

Nobody came to Congress saying they wanted to expand the power of the Federal Government to engage in warrantless surveillance of the American people and spy on them. That was happening. Mr. Speaker, 2 years ago we made massive reforms as a direct result of the work of the people in the House Freedom Caucus and Tim Reitz. Now the people are safer and more secure. By the way, we should build upon that.

Nobody ever runs on saying that we should have open borders allowing anybody in the world to come into the United States.

Nobody runs on saying we should allow criminals to stay in the United States, and yet, often we adopt the very policies that allow those things and encourage those things to occur, but not the House Freedom Caucus and not Tim Reitz.

We stood up and we said: Enough. We need to change things. We need to fight for policies that will secure the border, and we laid the groundwork for many of the things the President is doing. We sent a loud message to the American people that we believed in that when we passed H.R. 2 because we worked hard as a body to develop past that, and that is no small thing.

One of my other staffer friends was reduced to tears on this very floor sitting right here because she has spent 20 years of her life fighting to try to secure the border of the United States knowing how bad it was, and finally, finally, we had advanced legislation that would accomplish the task.

We couldn't have done that or held spending flat or fought to stop spying on the American people without the work of Tim Reitz. We couldn't have fought for any of the reforms that we got in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. We couldn't have stood on the wall, four of us in this body, my friend Mr. Kean, my friend Mr. Clyde, myself, and my friend Mr. Norman from South Carolina. We couldn't have stood up and repealed green new scam subsidies destroying our grid and undermining the security of the American people but for the work of Tim Reitz working through the weekend alongside us making sure that we got that done.

Now I have million-dollar ads being run against me by some Marxist in California. Thanks, Tim.

Look, fighting is hard for the reasons that my colleagues have talked about. Tim has done it, and he has done it knowing that the scorn of the town, the scorn of the swamp would be directed towards him. He has done it as a staffer, not as somebody who stands up--and I don't know if you call this the limelight or not, I don't know what this is, but not like those of us who are Members who run and carry the election certificates. He has done it, as my friend from Louisiana said, behind the scenes as counselor, as a staffer--and by the way, Tim is emblematic of a number of staff that I am not going to name here because I will leave people out. But there are people on this very floor and in this body right now that we rely upon who are great patriots and serve their country every single day.

We often give a shout-out to staff, but there are some who rise to the top, and Tim is one of those. He is one of those who gets it, who understands it, understands what is at stake, he who stood up when it mattered and figured out how to take a win. You can't be afraid to win. You can't be afraid to figure out a way to fight and then deliver.

The country depends on people who are willing to do that. I know that, as my friend from Arizona said, he is a little bummed. I share that sentiment. I know my friend from Georgia, Mr. Hice, who is still a very active part of the movement, as I said earlier, I know he was bummed when he lost Tim to the Freedom Caucus. We are going to be bummed to lose Tim down the road, but he is joining friends of ours in continuation of the fight.

For those of us who want to fight for the country, the fight never ends. We are called by Paul and Timothy to finish the race. I am proud to say that we are in this race, and we are going to finish this race.

I often will say on the campaign trail that when I went through cancer 15 years ago and had Hodgkin lymphoma and had a less than a 50 percent shot, they told me--although my doctor was great. He said: Your shot is either 0 or 100 percent. You should choose 100 percent. I think that is great advice. Choose 100 percent. When I got through to the other side of that, my daughter at that time was 3 months old. My son was 2 months old. And God gave me another shot at this. He gave me a little bonus time on this Earth. I decided to not care, and as I will say on the campaign trail: ``Leave it all on the field.'' Leave every single thing out on the

field. Don't walk off the field without knowing that you are bloodied, you are beat up, you are muddy, you are dirty, you are exhausted, knowing you did every single thing you could to leave this great country in stronger shape for our kids and our grandkids so that flag, so that this Chamber, so that those words ``in God we trust,'' so that the heroes at Arlington National Cemetery that I was walking around this morning giving a tour that we can stand up and be proud that we put everything on the line.

Speaking of that, as I was getting ready to wind down to a rousing conclusion, I am proud to hand over the microphone to another veteran, another man that has put it all on the line both in service to his country in the military and now in Congress, a dear friend who was the gentleman that I earlier said was reading the Bible down at the Museum of the Bible. I think he sprinted here from the Museum of the Bible.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Self) to celebrate our good friend Tim Reitz.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Self) for his comments, and we are about to wrap up and wind down here. I just want to say a couple more quick things. I am giving a heads up to those that are coming in that we have a couple more minutes.

I would note that we have got to recognize those who have served before my friend Tim Reitz: Justin Ouimette and Steve Chartan. We have had great patriots who are still very active in the conservative movement who were a part of this organization that Tim worked with and learned from. I know he wants to give credit where it is due. I would just tell you that I had a friend of mine who was a former member of the House Freedom Caucus who texted me watching this on the floor who said: Tim is a hero and a patriot that never throws in the towel and deserves to be honored.

I have gotten lots of messages like that from staff, from current Members, and from former Members who recognize what Tim has meant, again, not just to the House Freedom Caucus, but to the House of Representatives and, importantly, to the United States of America in service to a greater cause than just being here. They are in service of the Constitution, of God, of freedom, and all those who have given the last full measure of devotion to defend this great country.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for coming down. I thank my good friend, Tim Rice. I want to wish him well in his next endeavors. I thank him for his service to the United States of America. I wish him the best of success, luck, health, and happiness with his beautiful bride.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the bipartisan nature of remarks tonight in remembrance of the importance of this week and Independence Day and our great Nation's history and this particular one, celebrating the 250th.

I am going to first, though, focus a little bit on my home State of Texas. It was 1 year ago this week that we were in the throes of negotiating what was called at the time the big, beautiful bill, an important piece of legislation that I am very honored to have been a part of working through. It was difficult in working through all the complexities of the tax policy, dealing with the complexities of the reforms to Medicaid, to welfare programs, saving $1.7 trillion, pulling back some of the subsidies and unreliable power that was so critically important.

But all of that was going on--and my son, Charlie, who is here with me now, we were here. We were in the throes of the debates. We were at the White House on the 2nd, debating it. We were here on the 3rd, late night. We vote on this thing.

And then I was supposed to be in Kerrville, Texas, which is where I go every summer for the Fourth of July. There was a big concert down on the river, and I was supposed to be there, where my family has gone for, now, at least a decade.

I talked to the President about being here for the bill signing because of all the work we had gone through, and I ultimately told the President that I would stay here for the bill signing.

So I stick around, visited with some friends on the night of the 3rd, and I am watching the weather forecast. I wake up on the morning of the Fourth of July. My son and I were getting ready to go see some friends, and I see the news reports.

All of a sudden, it starts to sink in what had happened in Kerrville. We have had a number of moments here on the floor of the House, one in particular almost a year ago, in which we remembered those lives who were lost and what occurred there in Kerrville.

But now, 1 year since this coming Saturday on the Fourth of July, I do

think it merits reflecting on what occurred and, importantly, what occurred after.

That area of the Guadalupe River is surrounded by high cliffs in certain areas. It is a very beautiful part of the State. It cuts through the limestone, and so we had been in drought conditions. You have hard ground, limestone. A massive amount of water pours into that area. It is an area that was inhabited by thousands of people, celebrating, obviously--it was Fourth of July--but summer camps. That is what a lot of people came to focus on.

Remember that we lost 27 little girls from Camp Mystic, and, fortunately, we didn't lose any from any of the other camps, but we lost over 100 other people. A lot of people forget that part. They were people who were camping with their families, whole families that were swept down the river.

There has been a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking since then, people saying what could have been done and what should have been done, the force of the floodwaters, all that occurred, all that happened, ripping up 100-year-old Cyprus trees, but I just want to focus in on what I believe is the true story of what occurred after.

That is the faith of the community of Kerrville who came together to figure out how to rebuild through the great charity of people across not just the county or the State, but the entire country and the world. We raised over $150 million in private contributions, of which over half, pushing $80 million to $100 million, had been pushed out the door--the rest of it should be out the door by the end of this year--to help small businesses, to help people keep afloat, mental health, keeping people in houses and apartments, giving people the ability to stay on their feet, and all done through the power of the strong faith of the people of Texas.

In the town of Kerrville, there is a giant cross that sits up on the hill, and there is an entire garden there dedicated to the gospel of Christ. The extent to which Christian faith was driving the people of Texas and central Texas and the Hill Country to help their brothers and sisters and help families cannot be overstated.

I have to tell you that, as a Member of Congress, I don't tend to do a lot of the requests for funding. I don't come up here and try to file bills when there are disasters in my home State of Texas. My view is that we are the eighth biggest economy in the world. We have 31 million people, and the Federal Government is not an ATM for every ill that befalls the people.

I am proud of the people of Texas stepping up. Yes, FEMA was there. Yes, the Federal Government was a part of the effort in dealing and managing with the aftermath, getting assets there, the Coast Guard heroism.

But there were a lot of volunteers, too--colleagues, friends of mine, Morgan Luttrell, others who were literally in the water looking in search and rescue. The number of people who volunteered, I came in on the night of the Fourth of July, and I went to the facility where they were gathering in all of the experts and all the people who were there and all the volunteers, and the sheriff and all the local law enforcement.

This one young man was just sitting in the parking lot, and he had just driven down from Lubbock 5-odd hours and just came down on a whim as a volunteer with a bunch of drones so he could help.

I kept running into people from all over who had just driven there, the Cajun Navy who came over. All of the people who stepped up to help, I want to express my gratitude and thanks to so many different people, local volunteers, the people who helped out, but all the way up to the President of the United States himself; Susie Wiles herself; former Secretary Noem; Governor Abbott; the head of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, Chief Nim Kidd; the Kerr County sheriff, Sheriff Leitha; and countless local leaders.

More than 850 people were rescued from the floodwaters during those critical days, notably the Coast Guard, which President Trump had acknowledged at some point here. The $150 million of charitable contributions, all of the things that occurred, it is such a great place, central Texas.

There is a reason people from all over the country--my colleague Buddy Carter had one of his family members, even though he is a Congressman from Georgia, who was impacted by the floods. There were friends of mine and colleagues from other parts on the other side of the aisle who were reaching out to me because they had people who were affected by the floods.

At the end of the day, it is that cross sitting above Kerrville. It is the cross that reminds us that, even in our darkest moments as humanity, hope remains. The suffering is not the final word.

The love of Christ was on display there. The love of Christ is constantly on display there in the Hill Country and reflected in the actions and the compassion shown by Texans and Americans around the world.

I want to remember those people. I want to remember the lives lost. I want to remember the heroes. I want to remember the people who were there at the moment.

With all due respect to a lot of politicians, particularly in Austin, Texas, particularly some of the statewide, elected officeholders in the State of Texas--and they know who they are--they sit around pontificating and pointing fingers at people about what they should or should not have done from the comfort of your office and your perch in Austin, Texas, when good people lost their lives trying to help little girls who lost their lives.

Dick Eastland, who was swept away in the flood, and his family and the people who are maligning their family for what the camp should or should not have done--the fact of the matter is, they were there at 4 o'clock in the morning. They were there trying to figure out how to manage one of the most devastating floods that we have ever seen. Politicians who want to Monday-morning quarterback and want to try to point fingers are not helping.

The people who had faith in the Lord Almighty, the people who stepped up to help each other in the time of tragedy that we had last year, they are the ones who I want to lift up and thank because it is not about finger-pointing. It is about standing alongside our brothers and sisters when bad things happen because bad things have always happened, and bad things will happen again. It is how we respond to them. It is what we do in the wake of them. It is our faith in the Lord Almighty and our faith in Jesus Christ that is what perseveres, not political self-interest and self-motivation.

I also note here, as I think about what happened there and the greatness of Kerrville, the greatness of the Hill Country, and the greatness of the State of Texas and the whole world in response to that, from my perspective, I think about all the things that that day represents, July Fourth.

Now, so many of us are going to remember July Fourth there in Kerrville for that event, but I am going to be back in Kerrville this Fourth of July. I am not staying here in D.C. for the great celebration here. I have been to a bunch of them in this town. I am going to go back to Kerrville because I want to be with the people who I represent, and I am proud to represent them as the Congressman for the 21st Congressional District.

The Fourth of July, what I prefer to call Independence Day, is for me such a special reflection of who we are as a people, as a sovereign nation.

I was blessed during the window of COVID to road trip with three of my staffers to Philadelphia on July 2, 2020. People will recall that, at the time, much of our Nation was shut down. You couldn't go anywhere. You couldn't do anything.

At the time, there was a lot of turmoil, rioting in the streets, burning down businesses, statues being thrown in the water, and statues being defaced. I wasn't going to have any of it. I wanted to exalt the greatness of our country.

So, I grabbed my staff, and I said: You guys want to go on a road trip, the great American statue road trip? We drove to Philadelphia, and we went straight to Independence Hall. I recorded a video outside of Independence Hall, talking about how it wasn't the bricks, the building, the Liberty Bell sitting out there in front of Independence Hall--none of that. You could graffiti it, paint it. You could destroy it. You could throw it in a river or a harbor. It was what was done in that building.

I went over to the National Park Service, and I said: Hi. I assume the building is not open because of COVID. And they said no, God bless them. As a Member of Congress, they let me go in with my three staffers.

There we were there on July 2. Any student of history will know why that matters. It is, in fact, on July 2, not July Fourth, that we voted, that our Founders voted. That was the vote that mattered.

The words of the Declaration of Independence are awesome. I say that as a University of Virginia graduate and proud believer in all of those principles articulated by Thomas Jefferson and the other people who had a hand in that drafting. It was the vote--it was the willingness to vote and say we are leaving and breaking away from the Crown. Those last words in the Declaration of Independence, pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor--we talk about those words, but they lived them. They sat there in Independence Hall, looked each other in the eye, and voted to do it.

Again, at that time, in that summer, when statues were being torn down and stuff being thrown into the water, my point when I went up there and recorded video was: You can undo all of that, but you don't undo the courage of those who came before us to fight to give us this great Republic and great Nation in which our freedoms can be enjoyed by us and by our progeny.

I recorded a video at Independence Hall. We stayed there and visited. We got to be there in Independence Hall on July 2. I don't know if I will ever do that again, but certainly not in a building that was pretty much empty except for me and three staffers.

Then, we left and went down to Fort McHenry, where we were regaling the words of ``The Star-Spangled Banner'' and Francis Scott Key coming back down through Baltimore. You think about what that meant. I could sit here and give an entire speech on the words of ``The Star-Spangled Banner.''

People want to diminish ``The Star-Spangled Banner,'' saying that it is more difficult to sing or doesn't soar as ``America the Beautiful'' or something. I disagree wholeheartedly. The words echo when you are at a stadium and listen to the words and see what it means: that that flag was, in fact, still there. It is so important that we remember that and remember why that is our national anthem.

Then, we drove back down to D.C. and went to various monuments here in Washington. We went down to the Jefferson Memorial and Lincoln Memorial. We went to the Roosevelt Memorial. We continued to do that to honor the greatness of this country, even as some were trying to tear it down.

I say all of that to say that our sovereignty as a nation matters. It is not something that you can just sort of trivially dismiss.

I am going to make a quick political commentary here and then come back to our celebration of the 250th. I have about 15 minutes left. I want to talk about the Supreme Court ruling today, because it matters a great deal.

Today, the United States Supreme Court issued an opinion that I believe was profoundly misguided and undermines our national security and our sovereignty as a nation in a profoundly damaging way.

I have friends and people who have debated this issue for years, good friends on both sides of the aisle. This is the issue of so-called birthright citizenship. Are you an American citizen for simply and solely being born on American soil? I remember thinking a long time ago that there was something kind of magical about that concept, that if you are here and in America, and you are born here, you are an American.

It became clearer and clearer to me as that privilege--it is not a right; I want to come back to that in terms of what the 14th Amendment says--but what that privilege means to be an American. It was being abused. It was being abused by people for profit and being abused by people for some sort of monetary benefit or a benefit of some social welfare or benefit of going to a hospital or going to school, all things which I understand, as a parent, seeking, but we have turned on its head everything that is good and great about our Nation.

This opinion today by the United States Supreme Court, saying that the 14th Amendment, which was very clearly ratified to deal with the issue of slavery in a post-slavery world--to whom do these former slaves now owe allegiance? To factor that into determining how you define our character, as we are adopting the 14th Amendment, it was very clear that ``subject of the jurisdiction thereof'' was meant to deal with that.

For five Supreme Court Justices today to manufacture in whole cloth that the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, somehow conferred upon someone citizenship because a parent came to the United States and birthed the child on American soil, despite not being a citizen and despite not having any allegiance to the United States, is not just appalling, but it begs: Who we are as a nation?

The Chief Justice, no doubt, and Justice Barrett, and the other three Justices who joined that opinion no doubt believe they were doing some sort of great service by trying to establish that this means some great thing for the United States.

I would argue that what they are doing is destroying the United States because you no longer have a sovereign nation. If you are telling the world that all you have to do is flout our laws and break our laws, come to our country and have a child, and that child gets to have citizenship, which has things conferred upon it--voting and other privileges and access to welfare benefits--then all of those who bled and died for this great Nation, to just hand that over in violation of the entire text, spirit, and letter of the Constitution and the 14th Amendment, is detrimental to our republican form of government.

Roberts, emphasizing: Children born of parents unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States satisfy both elements of the Citizenship Clause under the Constitution, he concluded, they are citizens at birth.

That is false.

The Supreme Court majority ruled that illegal aliens invading our country, having U.S.-born children, and is somehow legally sound even though the Justices in Wong Kim Ark rejected that notion.

This is something that has been debated for a long time, but when we think about this, an estimated 124,000 to 300,000 anchor babies--which are children born to illegal aliens--are born each year. In 2023, up to 250,000 children were born to illegal aliens, which accounted for 7 percent of total births.

I cannot imagine that if you told those men that were sitting in the foxholes in Bastogne, and they were storming the beaches in Normandy to scale the cliffs, had bullets firing at them, that they would say: Yeah, sure, let's turn over the country and our sovereignty as a nation to anyone who comes onto our soil and just tries to claim it.

It is being abused by our adversaries to undermine our national security.

The fact is, the United States Congress cannot just sit idly by and allow the Supreme Court to do this. People will say: Well, Chip, separation of powers. The Supreme Court is going to get the final word on what the law is.

Well, I would tell you that the Supreme Court has clearly made significant errors in judgment in the past. No one needs to look too far to figure out what that is: Plessy. There have been other opinions, Roe v. Wade, which the Court has now rightly gone in a different direction.

I would argue, though, that the Congress needs to react swiftly and make very clear that we define what ``subject to the jurisdiction thereof'' means, that Congress should act swiftly to say we are not going to fund this false notion of who citizens are; and, thirdly, that we are going to just pause immigration.

If the Supreme Court of the United States, in its infinite wisdom, says they get to decide as the final arbiter who is or is not a citizen, then why should Congress allow people to come into the United States to abuse it, to have children, to take advantage of a citizenship that is not actually allowed under the Constitution because the Supreme Court got it wrong?

If the Supreme Court were to order or interpret the law that the President of the United States or the Speaker of

the House or the majority leader of the Senate needs to appear before them unclothed to report to the Supreme Court, should those leaders of the other branches comply?

Well, Chip, that is absurd. Okay. Well, if the Supreme Court issues a ruling that is patently and factually unconstitutional, must the other branches follow it?

I say no. I say no.

Well, Chip, that is a controversial opinion.

I don't think so.

The Constitution of the United States does not stand for the proposition that the Court ruled today. It simply does not. I think even a basic reading of the Constitution would make that clear.

Justice Thomas and Justice Alito, both excoriating the majority opinion, made sure that it is very clear how wrong their opinion was. However, to make that determination begs the question of what this body, Article I, must do. Not can do, must do.

This is the people's House. I can tell you that the people who I represent have no interest in continuing to pay taxes to fund people who are coming to the United States to take advantage of our country for profit or for any other motive. They have no interest in doing that. So why should we continue to fund a government that would do that?

Look, I can tell you right now that for the decisions I have remaining in my time in Congress in this term, for the remainder of our funding decisions and appropriations, for whatever we are going to do in reconciliation, we better fix this. This Congress better fix this because I have no interest in continuing to fund the operations of a government that has been undermined by the United States Supreme Court.

We should pause all immigration immediately. And, by the way, they say: Chip, you can't get that through the Senate. We have 60 votes.

Well, let's keep having that fight, too, because the SAVE America Act is not the actual full nature of the fight. The issue here is whether there is in any way, shape, or form a 60-vote threshold that we have to follow. There is not.

The Senate, as a body, is, yes, to be a cooling saucer. Yes, as a conservative, I like there to be barriers to quick action for legislation, but under no circumstances does the Constitution or anything else contemplate 60 votes, besides rules arbitrarily set by Members of the Senate.

Here we are at a time when this body, Congress--the House and the Senate together--need to act to protect our Nation's sovereignty: By allowing only American citizens to vote in American elections; to require voter identification in elections of our Federal officials; to, yes, make very clear that ``subject to the jurisdiction thereof'' means what it means; and, no, we are not going to import people into the United States as long as we are being told absolutely you must grant citizenship for any child born here.

We have a choice, and we need to make it. We can pass the laws necessary to address what the Court did. We can also codify what the President has been doing to secure our border to stop the abuse of the American people that was happening under Biden and Mayorkas by codifying--as we did under H.R. 2 in the last Congress--that work, stop the abuse of asylum, stop the abuse of parole, stop the abuse of catch- and-release policies and all the policies that were being abused to undermine our country which, by the way, is also tied to the birthright citizenship issue.

You cannot have laws that are being openly exploited by certain Americans in conjunction with NGOs and outside groups and people who want to exploit us, including our enemies, to put people in the United States, have the Court just declare that they can be citizens because they decided so, have taxpayer dollars providing benefits to people who have no allegiance to this country, who come here and fly other flags, who come here and say we should change our country; that cannot be how a sovereign nation exists.

We are here this week in this town, and we are going to have a great celebration, and we should. This country has been able, more than any other country on the face of the Earth in history, to provide a better way of life, prosperity, freedom, and the ability to carry out one's faith. This country has led the world, but here we are, and this country hangs in the balance.

For 250 years, we have been that beacon of hope. God bless all of the people who want to come to our country. I am glad they do, and I want to be able to invite and have people come to our country. However, when our country has been badly exploited for decades, when there are people here right now who want to destroy the United States, who want it to become an Islamic state, who want to milk our welfare benefits, commit fraud against the country, and who don't want to raise the American flag with the flag of another country, I do not understand for the life of me why we do not continue to do what we are doing by this President and remove people and why this Congress will not act right now, immediately, to respond to the Supreme Court.

There is no criticism of leadership. I understand why we are leaving. It is July Fourth. I want to go to Kerrville. I get it, but right now I would rather be here. I would rather be here every day from now until we actually solve the problem.

If we do not defend this country, if we do not make sure that we can have laws that we can depend upon and a Constitution that we can rally around and believe in it, then what do we have left?

The other thing that is getting lost in the shuffle of this celebration--I do want to close with this. I have talked about it before. It is not just the 250th birthday of the United States, but the 200th anniversary this Saturday of the passing of both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on the same day.

I bring that up for a reason in closing. We have a duty to protect that which I believe was divinely inspired by the Lord Almighty. We put In God We Trust up there for a reason. We have Moses overlooking the Chamber for a reason.

You cannot tell me, Mr. Speaker, that Jefferson and Adams, both so central to both the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and its adoption by the Continental Congress on July 2 by a vote, July 4 by drafting, in 1776 to then pass both 50 years to the day on July 4, 2026, with Adams passing saying: Jefferson lives, only to find out, in truth, Jefferson had passed.

These were two men who squabbled, two men who fought, and two men who had different views in terms of federalism but who came together in mutual respect for what they had accomplished and 50 years later pass on the same day, you cannot tell me, Mr. Speaker, that this Nation was not divinely inspired and divinely created.

As we sit here in our 250th birthday and that 200th anniversary of the passing of those two great men, my ask of all Americans and the leadership of this great Nation is that we put it all on the line to save that which was, in fact, divinely given to us.

God gave this to us and to the world. The people of the world who want to come here will not have a nation to come to if it is no longer a nation. We have a duty to protect it. It is, in fact, compassionate to protect this Nation for everyone in the world.

That is our calling for our next 250 years. That is why we are here. It is why I wish we were all here right now, in full-throated debate, just as they were in the Continental Congress, at its each other's throats until they finally got unanimity to adopt the Declaration and to take that vote and to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

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