Right Drug Dose Now Act of 2025

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

Mr. Speaker, this week, we welcome thousands of law enforcement personnel to Washington for National Police Week. We remember officers who lost their lives in service to our communities and our country, and we thank all officers who work to keep us safe while reflecting on how we can invest in law enforcement to better serve our communities.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to strongly support this resolution because we strongly support our local law enforcement officers. Yet, we also strongly support our State, Federal, and Tribal law enforcement officers, as well. Why are these brave officers not part of this resolution? This is a strange development.

In the last Congress, the 118th Congress, we passed H. Con. Res. 40 to honor local law enforcement. We also passed H. Res. 363 in 2023 to recognize the police lives lost that year and the importance of funding and supporting all law enforcement, Federal, State, county, and local. These were followed by H. Con. Res. 106 and H. Res. 1213 in 2024, which did the same.

This year the majority has chosen to have us solely recognizing local law enforcement. Why is that? What explains this strange omission of the Federal police officers who serve us?

With President Trump back in office, the majority apparently now sees fit to honor only local officers and not the Federal law enforcement officers who fought so valiantly to protect every Member of this body and the Senate, our staffs, and our democracy on January 6, 2021. Apparently, their commitment to backing the blue is so weak that they now won't even mention Federal officers because they have to maintain the pretense that Capitol officers did something wrong by defending us against the violent rampage of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, and other extremist marauders who stormed the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.

Is that right or will the majority please prepare a resolution honoring Federal law enforcement, as well that we can bring to the floor?

This is one troubling sign among many of an ideological abandonment of our Federal law enforcement officers and there are more than 137,000 of them, not just the Capitol Police.

Speaker Johnson still refuses to hang a simple plaque honoring those officers as is required by Federal law. The bill mandating the creation and placement of the plaque, H.R. 2471, was signed into law on March 15, 2022, and the plaque was supposed to have been erected within 1 year of that, March 15, 2023.

The plaque is finished, it is ready to be placed, and it looks like this. It reads: ``On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6th, 2021. Their heroism will never be forgotten.''

Well, it seems it is already being forgotten by the GOP majority or at least they want us to forget it. Are my friends so captive to conspiracy theories and revisionist fantasies about January 6 that they will not do the bare minimum to honor the police officers who fought tooth and nail to protect every person in this room who was there, including Members on my side of the aisle and Members on the other side of the aisle?

The people we are failing to honor by not hanging this plaque include at least 140 police officers who were beaten with poles, bats, American flags, Trump flags, Confederate battle flags, and their own shields. These are people who lost fingertips. They suffered concussions, broken jaws, and broken ribs. They had heart attacks and strokes. They sustained multiple other violent injuries and suffer from them, many of them, to this day, in one of the worst days of injuries for law enforcement officers in the United States in this century.

This affront is now adding further symbolic insult to the grievous injury that began at the beginning of this administration. President Trump granted full pardons to more than 1,500 insurrectionists and rioters and commuted the sentence of the rightwing extremists who spearheaded the attack on this Chamber and on the police officers who defended us.

More than 600 of those defendants whose pardons are full, complete, and unconditional were charged with assaulting or obstructing law enforcement officers. Now President Trump, backed by his own Justice Department, thinks that the violent insurrectionists should be compensated, not the police officers, but rather the people who perpetrated this assault on America.

President Trump said: A lot of the people in the government really like that group of people. He is creating a compensation fund not for the officers

and their families who fought and suffered and several died to save our country but for the domestic terrorists, as leaders of the Republican Party described them at the time, who tried to destroy it.

That is the decision, to cast his lot with the Proud Boys and other extremists that he incited on that day.

Many of the officers who served on January 6 feel betrayed by the officials whose lives they saved that day. Take former U.S. Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell who was nearly crushed to death on January 6.

Sergeant Gonell is an Army veteran from the Iraq war and was upholding his oath to defend and protect the seat of our Nation's government. He said he saw violence on that day here at the Capitol far worse than anything he experienced fighting for America abroad.

Despite the fact that he and many other officers nearly lost their lives and now face lifelong injuries that have forced him out of the line of police work, they still cannot get approved for Public Safety Officers' Benefits, which provide disability benefits to officers catastrophically injured in the line of duty.

As Sergeant Gonell recently told my staff, Trump is treating the rioters like they were the ones defending the Capitol. He noted that at every turn when Republicans could honor the bravery of law enforcement officers that day, they have instead chosen to do nothing.

Of course, if my colleagues across the aisle want to focus on local law enforcement, then I might ask why we are simply honoring them with this concurrent resolution and not taking more meaningful action, like restoring millions of dollars in Federal grants that help support them that were recently terminated by the Department of Justice at the direction of DOGE and Elon Musk.

Those grants supported programs like the rural violent crime reduction initiative, which delivered financial assistance directly to dozens of rural law enforcement agencies across America and allowed agencies to upgrade technology and equipment, hire and deploy personnel, support victim services and crime prevention programming, and fill in other gaps in policing for small, rural, underfunded police agencies.

We should be grateful for all of our officers, Federal, State, county, and local, who help keep us safe while people are in their communities and while Members of Congress come to Washington, D.C. We should be grateful for all of them.

Let's join together to uplift all law enforcement officers whether they are local or State, Tribal, or Federal, and let's support them symbolically with our words but more importantly with our actions. Let's restore all of the funding, the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been cut or that face cuts by this new administration.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to hear the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee denounce the assault, the violent assault, on Congress, the Capitol, our police officers on January 6, 2021. I wonder if he would work with me to help enforce the law that was signed on March 15, 2022 by President Biden for a plaque to be placed in honor of the police officers who served us so valiantly and so bravely and saved our lives on that day.

It was supposed to have been up by March 15, 2023, and the Speaker simply has remained noncommittal and indifferent. The plaque is actually completed. It is ready to be put up. We can show it again. It is not as big as this poster, but it is the smallest token of recognition and honor that we should be able to extend to the Capitol officers, many of whom are still with us on the force, for their sacrifice and the sacrifice that their families made based on their work that day defending us.

I wonder if the chairman of the Judiciary Committee would follow through on his very impressive statement that we all denounce the violence of any kind against officers, including the more than 140 Capitol officers who were wounded, injured, hospitalized, some of them permanently disfigured and maimed on that day as well as officers around the country.

Now, on the point about defunding the police. Look who is defunding the police: Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and their silent partners in Congress are defunding the police. They just terminated $500 million worth of grants, lost funding from the Department of Justice providing Federal support for local violence reduction by community police, community policing and prosecution, victim services, juvenile justice, child protection, substance abuse and mental health treatment, corrections and reentry, justice systems enhancements, research and evaluation, and

other State, county, and local level public police and safety functions.

I brought this to the attention of the Judiciary Committee because, again, this was an operation by DOGE. We have got a Federal District Court opinion from northern California saying that DOGE basically has no legal status because it wasn't created by Congress. It might be a completely renegade operation in an attempt to create a fourth branch of government.

In any event, those of us who voted for the money, and that is people on both sides of the aisle, voted for the money to be distributed by the Department of Justice to local grantees didn't even know about this. I shared with the chairman and with all the members of the committee, the one name of the DOGE employee, an unelected bureaucrat, a juvenile bureaucrat from Silicon Valley who worked his way up through Tesla and so on, and they ended up in DOGE, cut hundreds of millions of dollars to local police. They defunded the police.

DOGE defunded the police. Donald Trump defunded the police. I introduced an amendment to try to restore every single grant that they cut off in severing that Federal investment in local police.

My colleagues uttered not a word, not a word in opposition to my amendment, but they all voted against it simply because they are walking the line with Elon Musk right off the edge of the Constitution because there is no constitutional grounding for anything that guy is doing.

They walked the line behind Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and they just defunded hundreds of millions of dollars from community law enforcement and public safety, so don't give me that lecture about defunding the police, which our side has never supported, but their side has just colluded in right now in terms of what the Department of Justice did.

That doesn't even get into their attempt to dismantle completely the ATF, shut down critical functions in the Department of Justice that protect us from foreign involvement in our elections, to take down the kleptocracy task force and so on. I don't want any lectures coming in our direction, either.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will start just by asking my friend from Ohio whether he is referring to me when he uses the word ``you'' or if he is referring more generally to some other people because I would categorically deny having done any of those things.

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

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

Well, the gentleman refers exclusively--and I think he is aware of this because he is an extremely clever debater--to things that different local governments did or did not do. I don't know what Denver, Colorado, or Burlington, Vermont, did. I know what the United States Congress does, and we never defunded the police, and we never tried to defund the police.

On the other hand, my good friend, I believe, participated in--and if he didn't, I am happy to stand corrected, but I know a bunch of his colleagues said they wanted to defund the FBI, just like those who want to defund the ATF and shut it down right now, so that is a reality.

In any event, why don't we talk about what Congress can actually do? The President's new budget proposes to cut--so this is something that my colleague and I could agree on--$1 billion across 40 Department of Justice grant programs which support local police departments to reduce violent crime, hate crime, and crime against women.

Would my colleague work with me to oppose that suggestion in the President's budget? They want to cut $646 million from FEMA for violence and terrorism prevention. Why do they want to do that? I have no idea.

They want to cut $545 million from the FBI, cutting its workforce by more than 2,000 personnel. That sounds like defunding law enforcement to me.

I know they don't seem to be as fond of Federal law enforcement as they are of local law enforcement, but do they really want to cut more than half a billion dollars from the FBI to be fighting criminals and terrorists? For the life of me, I don't understand how they can do that while they swear fealty to law enforcement. It just makes no sense.

They want to cut $491 million from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, making our cyber and physical infrastructure far more vulnerable to attack by foreign bad actors like Vladimir Putin and President Xi and Kim Jong-un. I know there are some people in high levels of office who are fond of those people, who write valentines to Kim Jong-Un, but the rest of us would like to be protected from them. We shouldn't be dismantling the cybersecurity infrastructure of America.

They want to cut $212 million from the DEA. Can you imagine? If a Democratic President had proposed any of this, they would be screaming, their hair would be on fire, but Donald Trump proposed it, and they just mumble along like it is no big deal.

What about all of these efforts to defund Federal law enforcement, like the DOJ, FEMA, FBI? Will our colleagues work with us to restore that money?

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

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

Yes, the record is becoming increasingly clear here. My colleagues don't want to do anything about the dismantling of hundreds of millions of dollars of funds that we appropriated at the Department of Justice that have been mysteriously deleted by a DOGE employee from local law enforcement. These are grants that go to local police departments and victim assistance agencies all over the country. They got rid of that.

Then the President comes forward with a budget that will cut more than $1.5 billion, maybe $2 billion from local law enforcement to go after violent crime, hate crime, to defend the victims of rape and sexual assault, and my colleague changes the subject once again to talk about weaponization.

We have never seen weaponization of the government like what we have seen under Donald Trump and his Department of Justice. The first thing they did was they got rid of a dozen experienced veteran criminal prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's office and the Department of Justice simply because they had worked to prosecute January 6 insurrectionists and rioters.

Yes, let me repeat that. They fired prosecutors for doing nothing more than their jobs to prosecute the criminals who beat the daylights out of our police officers, and they sacked all of those prosecutors. They were some of the most experienced veteran prosecutors that we have in the U.S. Attorney's office. Then he named to be the acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin. He was just forced to withdraw that nomination because he was standing by a Neo-Nazi Holocaust revisionist who said that Hitler's problem was that he didn't finish the job. He also said that those who are born with disabilities should be killed at birth. Ed Martin called him a great man and a great leader.

He withdrew the nomination, but still he put Ed Martin in the Department of Justice in a position that is not subject to Senate confirmation. They have weaponized the Department of Justice. They have weaponized the Department of State. They are going after anybody they describe as a political enemy. Ed Martin was writing letters to Members of Congress when he didn't like what they had to say.

We have never seen weaponization of the government like what is taking place right now. They took the U.S. Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer, and they sacked her because she refused to take the position that Mel Gibson should get his guns back. That wasn't part of her job, but they tried to conscript her to it. The pardon attorney refused to do it because she said that was not her job and there were too many questions about domestic violence episodes.

If you want to have a separate hearing on weaponization of the government under Donald Trump, let's do it. In the meantime, let's support local law enforcement and let's support Federal law enforcement. Let's have another resolution praising all law enforcement for what they do, and let's get that plaque up.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, this is Police Week. In colloquial terms, it is Law Enforcement Week. Traditionally, we do two things in Law Enforcement Week. One, we recognize the valor, the sacrifices, and the commitment of the police officers who serve our communities, who serve us in Congress, and who serve across the country.

Two, we try to think of ways we actually can assist them in doing their jobs better so we can make their work more effective and safer, and we can make the police function generally more efficacious for the American people.

Unfortunately, with this bill, we are not doing either. In fact, the majority is really falling down on the job in terms of both of those major objectives.

In 2022, on March 15, we passed H.R. 2471, to post in the Capitol on the west side of the Capitol a plaque in honor of the hundreds of police officers who nobly served us on January 6, 2021 when our institution, when our democracy, came under attack by Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other violent extremists who stormed the Capitol, drove Members of the House of Representatives out of our Chamber, drove Members of the Senate out of their Chamber, and attempted to overthrow a Presidential election.

Now, the new administration has seen fit to pardon more than 1,500 rioters and violent insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow our constitutional form of government on that day, and they succeeded in bloodying, wounding, injuring, and hospitalizing more than 140 police officers on January 6. Several officers died in the subsequent weeks, and several people died on that day.

Now, we have passed a law, not a recommendation, not an idle promise, and not a suggestion in a suggestion box, we passed a law to post this plaque in the U.S. Capitol. Yet Speaker Johnson has done absolutely nothing to post this plaque.

I know that some of my colleagues think that they are being most effective when they are doing nothing. This is a Congress that is getting a reputation for being perhaps the greatest do-nothing Congress in the history of the United States. Here is one thing that this Congress can do, which is to post this plaque which reads: ``On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6, 2021. Their heroism will never be forgotten.''

What extraordinary irony that is. Their heroism is already being forgotten, or at least there are some people who would like us to forget their heroism. That is on the symbolic front, because everybody wants to pay lip service to the police, and everybody wants to say that we honor them. Let's really honor them.

Let's put up a permanent plaque for future generations of Americans to see that these officers risked their lives for the people in this Chamber, for the Members of the House and the Senate, for the leadership of the House and the Senate, for the staff who work here, and for the reporters who work here.

We have many officers who have had to leave the police service because they have been wounded and disfigured permanently by the injuries they suffered at the hands of these people. This is the very least we can do at a time when the President of the United States says that he wants to create a fund for January 6, not a fund for Michael Fanone who had a heart attack and had to beg for his life; not a fund for Sergeant Gonell who was forced out of the force because of permanent injuries and now is living on a fraction of the salary he had before trying to support his family; not a fund for Officer Hodges who was tortured in the eyes of the world, who got caught in the doorway while the insurrectionists beat him with all of their weapons that they brought back that day.

No, it is not a fund for them that President Trump is suggesting. He wants a fund for the rioters. He wants a fund for the families of the insurrectionists.

As Sergeant Gonell said recently, it seems like he believes that the rioters and the insurrectionists were the ones defending the Capitol on that day.

Let's get this plaque up. We voted for it on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis.

I appeal to Speaker Johnson to enforce the law even if he doesn't like it anymore and even if he changed his mind about the plaque. This is the law. Let's get it up there.

Now, secondly, we should be talking about how we could actually aid, abet, and assist law enforcement officers in their work. Unfortunately, we have not had from the majority a single bill that

they are willing to bring to the floor to increase any funding for local law enforcement. On the contrary, the emissaries from DOGE--and here I don't necessarily hold my colleagues accountable for this because they didn't seem to know about it any more than we did--but the functionaries of DOGE slashed more than $500 million that the Department of Justice was giving to local police departments across the country, community safety groups, and organizations assisting victims of rape and sexual assault.

As far as we can tell, one person in DOGE, one unelected, midnight bureaucrat whose career was made with Elon Musk, who seems to have skipped town now, that guy cut out hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to local law enforcement and community safety groups across America.

I introduced an amendment in the budget reconciliation process in the Judiciary Committee to restore all of that money. Not a single Member, neither a Democrat nor a Republican, spoke against it, and my Republican colleagues did not say a word, but they all voted against it. They voted to uphold that nasty handiwork of DOGE slashing hundreds of millions of dollars, which we appropriated on a bipartisan basis in the House, in the Senate, and it was signed by the President, programmed by the Department of Justice and awarded to their communities, my community, your communities, communities across the country, and one young person, a midnight computer hacker from DOGE, Elon Musk's emissary, destroyed all of it, more than 300 grants.

Now they come forward with a budget for next year that would cut more than $1 billion out of law enforcement: FBI, Department of Justice, and ATF, you name it, Mr. Speaker, right down the line. I will have some more to say about that after.

So what do we have?

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill. In 2004, Congress passed LEOSA, a law that allows both off-duty and retired officers to carry concealed firearms irrespective of State law. It compelled all States to allow off-duty and retired officers to carry concealed firearms under the terms set by Congress overriding the rules of the State.

Now, when Congress debated it 20 years ago, members of the Judiciary Committee on both sides of the aisle expressed anxiety about the bill trespassing on the rights of the States to decide on gun laws for themselves. The Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee at the time, Congressman Sensenbrenner, opposed LEOSA for the reason of federalism and State rights. He voted against it. Several police groups opposed the legislation expressing concerns about how it would affect officer safety, how it would create confusion in the event of an active shooter, how it might expose their agencies to more liability, and the insufficiency of training requirements for retired officers.

Despite all of that, LEOSA became the law after Congress legislated some important limits on it and imposed commonsense training requirements on the former officers. Those have been in place for more than 20 years.

Now, H.R. 2243 would terminate the realm of discretion that States have to limit when and where individuals may carry their concealed firearms under LEOSA. It would force States to allow off-duty and retired officers to carry concealed firearms onto all private property open to the public, including restaurants, bars, parks, national parks, and playgrounds. It would also force States to allow off-duty and retired officers to carry concealed firearms on buses, trains, and subways. It would even force States to allow for the concealed carry of firearms in gun-free school zones. It also allows the off-duty and retired officers to completely disregard State laws prohibiting high- capacity magazines.

This legislation not only supersedes the considered policy judgments of the States, but it threatens the safety and security of Federal agencies by forcing them to allow concealed carry in many Federal buildings. Forcing Federal offices and buildings to allow concealed carry is a completely unnecessary and dangerous risk.

The legislation also weakens training standards. Under current law, a person carrying a firearm must meet State training requirements every year, but this bill would allow individuals to do concealed carry with training certifications obtained every 3 years. This is troubling given that the bill extends nationwide concealed carry to retired officers who are no longer receiving the training that accompanies their old employment.

Our colleagues have different reasons that they advance for this, which I think are pretty refutable. In the big picture, this bill does nothing for existing police officers right now. It does nothing to enhance public safety, and our friends have completely missed the mark I think in terms of what law enforcement week should be all about.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my distinguished colleague's suggestion that I may have the wisdom of somebody who has been here for 21 years, but actually I wasn't here either. I got it just from the books myself.

I was here, I should say, in 2021, when the Chamber was stormed, and that is a day I will never forget. Forgive my passion on the point of getting that plaque up. I wish our colleagues would just help us convince the Speaker of the House that this is something that is simple, and it should be done. It is not a partisan issue.

On that day, we were not Democrats or Republicans. We were Americans, and we were legislators together being hounded and chased out of this Chamber by people who did not accept the constitutional rules of the game.

To me, it is a matter of great regret and melancholy that somehow it has become politicized to the point where people can't even acknowledge what they were saying at the time. We had Republican leaders who were describing it as terrorism and saying it was absolutely inexcusable and indefensible. Now, all of a sudden, we have the majority which will not even follow the law by posting a plaque in honor of the officers who gave blood and sweat and tears on that day.

One of them, Officer Hodges got caught in the doorway. The whole world saw him screaming to high heaven for probably--I don't know if it was 45 seconds or maybe it was up to 90 seconds, as he was being beaten and pummeled, and he was being crushed in the doorway. When they finally dislodged him, they took him back where they were taking the officers. We were very short-handed. They wanted to tell him to just stay there and wash his eyes out. He took about 5 to 10 minutes while they were pouring water in his eyes, and he got up. Do you know what he did? He went back outside, and he rejoined the battle because he said he

knew that they needed him. We were outmanned, and we were outflanked by the forces of violence that came down on us on that day.

That is the kind of bravery that we should be at least acknowledging, if not praising. I know at the time we thanked them for saving our lives, and people did die that day. Again, there were more than 140 officers who were wounded and brutalized and injured, and many still have the physical injuries and scars that they are dealing with, as well as the mental scars, because there is a lot of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Several of the officers who were there had been in the Iraq war, and they had been in the Afghan war. They testified before the January 6th Select Committee, and several of them testified they had never seen violence as brutal and as bloody as what took place on January 6, 2021, with the various extremist groups that came and led the attack on the Chamber and then gave bloody instructions to the rest of the mob about how to treat police officers in their effort to go and ``hang Mike Pence.'' That was the chant. I can still hear in my mind, ringing off the walls of the Capitol: ``Hang Mike Pence.'' ``Hang Mike Pence.'' ``Where's Nancy?'' ``Where's Nancy?''

We are not going to allow this to be buried into some kind of Orwellian memory hall. We have got a law requiring that that plaque go up, and we are going to see that that plaque goes up and that the law is enforced.

As for the LEOSA reform, again, it doesn't even purport to do anything for police and law enforcement. Today, it would, I suppose, increase some of the mobility of retired officers, off-duty officers to go to places like restaurants, bars, public parks, national parks, metros and buses, and so on, if they are police. I think that that should be decided by our communities, whether people are doing concealed carry there.

I thought that a belief in federalism was something that unifies us. That is something that the State governments can decide in cooperation with the local governments. The Congress of the United States does not need to be making decisions about restaurants in Charleston, South Carolina, or bars in El Paso, Texas, or what have you. Why don't we let the people of the States and the localities make those decisions.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent presentation of the bill. I wish it were one that we could be together on, but I think it just goes way too far in terms of trespassing on States' rights and States' powers. We have a nice equilibrium and stasis in terms of where the law has been for the last two decades, and this seems unnecessary. It does seem to me like a diversion from the things we actually could be doing to be making the lives of police officers safer.

The reason why so many police organizations are with 90 percent of the American people in supporting a universal violent criminal background check is because nobody should be accessing guns, any kind of gun, if they are not able to pass the Brady background check. That background check has saved countless lives since it was instituted. The reason the vast majority of the people support it is because we need to close those loopholes. You should not be able to skip a background check by finding a gun online. You should not be able to skip a background check by going to a private gun show or engaging in a so- called private sale or transfer.

We need a universal violent criminal background check. That will do far more than anything we are looking at today to make the lives of police officers better, to make their jobs easier, because they are on the frontlines of these killing fields across the country.

America's rates of gun violence are completely out of control when compared to the nations in the European Union or Canada, our next-door neighbor. We are losing 5, 10, or 20 times the number of people that the residents of those countries are losing because our gun laws are like Swiss cheese. They are filled with holes. Let's close those loopholes. It doesn't diminish anybody's Second Amendment rights.

Justice Scalise said it himself in District of Columbia v. Heller. You can have criminal background checks to make sure that only the right people are getting guns and not the wrong people are getting guns. There are things we can do to improve public safety and to assist police officers, and we should be working on those.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 30) expressing support for local law enforcement officers.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Con. Res. 30.

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

Mr. Speaker, this week, we celebrate National Police Week. In so doing, we honor those officers who have been killed in the line of duty, as well as those who bravely serve their communities every single day.

More than 60 years ago, President John F. Kennedy signed a proclamation that designated May 15 as Peace Officers Memorial Day and the week in which that day falls as Police Week.

Thousands of law enforcement officers are visiting Washington, D.C., this week to honor their colleagues who have made the ultimate sacrifice. I extend my sincere gratitude to all local law enforcement officers and their families for their sacrifice and their service.

These police officers risk their lives every day to protect our communities, and they do this despite the obstacles and dangers that we all know that they face. Police officers rush into harm's way out of duty and devotion to their sacred oath: ``To Protect and Serve.''

The families of law enforcement officers also bear the burden of service through missed birthdays, school events, and sports games. This resolution is a small way in which we can show our thanks. I encourage all Members to take time to pray, show their support for, and say thank you to our local law enforcement heroes.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this resolution. I thank the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Ezell), who served in law enforcement as a sheriff, for his work in putting this together and sponsoring the resolution. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, let's be clear: Republicans honor local law enforcement, Democrats defund them. Five years ago this summer, they spent the whole summer doing that. That is all you would hear from Democrats, got to defund the local police. We have been consistent. We have condemned violence every single time it happened whether it was January 6 or the summer of 2020. They haven't.

The summer of 2020, I still remember the guy standing in front of the burning building on CNN saying, this is a mostly peaceful protest. They spent the whole summer trying to defund the police, so don't give us the lecture.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Ezell), the fine gentleman who served in local law enforcement, who was a sheriff, and who knows what it is like to go out there and protect his community, for sponsoring this resolution.

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

Mr. Speaker, you can try to rewrite history, but it just doesn't work. Let me just read off the Democratic-run cities that did defund the police.

Here is the game the Democrats want. All during the summer of 2020, they were saying: Defund the police. Democratic-run cities all over the country were doing so.

Now they say: Oh, but because crime went up when we defunded the police, we want Federal taxpayers to send us money to make up for the cuts we did there and spent the money elsewhere. That was the game.

If you don't believe me, here is the list:

Austin, Texas, $150 million cut;

Boston, Massachusetts, $12 million cut;

Burlington, Vermont, $1.1 million;

Denver, Colorado, $55 million;

Eureka, California, $1.2 million;

Hartford, Connecticut, $2 million;

Kansas City, Kansas, $42 million;

Los Angeles, $150 million;

Madison, Wisconsin, $2 million cut;

Minneapolis, $8 million;

New York City, $1 billion cut that summer;

Norman, Oklahoma, $865,000;

Oklahoma City, $5.5 million;

Philadelphia, $33 million;

Portland, Oregon, $16 million;

Salt Lake City, $5.3 million;

San Francisco, $120 million;

Seattle, Washington, $69 million;

Washington, D.C., $15 million--we know about the crime that has happened in this city; and of course, in the ranking member's home State of Maryland, Baltimore cut their police department $22 million. Now they are saying: Oh, make sure the Federal money keeps coming.

Look, I am not against some of these grant programs. We will look at all those. However, don't say you didn't defund the police. You did. Everyone knows you did, and you all talked about it, and you cheered it on. For the bad guys who harmed the police that summer when you were encouraging cities to cut the police, you were raising money to bail them out. Your Presidential candidate was raising money to bail them out. You can have all the revisionist history you want. The facts are the facts.

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

Will the gentleman yield?

I was referring to that party that you belong to, not you personally.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have not said I was for defunding the ATF or the FBI. What I have said, what the American people have said clearly is they don't want these agencies weaponized against the very people they are supposed to serve. We all know about that. Think about this, though, when you think about the FBI's budget, it is like $12 billion. More than half of that budget, more than half of the personnel at the FBI are focused on intelligence and counterintelligence.

I think most Americans probably think the FBI should spend most of its

resources on going after traditional crime, organized crime, bad guys, gang activity. I think that is probably where they think it should be, but, no, they are spending half their budget, half their personnel on surveillance of Americans. I think that is a little different.

How about the ATF? We all know the example of the ATF raiding Bryan Malinowski's home. Bryan Malinowski was the highest paid official in the Little Rock, Arkansas, municipal government. He ran the Bill and Hillary Clinton airport. He was a gun hobbyist. The ATF thinks he has done something wrong. Instead of just going and visiting him, coming to see him, picking him up at his work, taking him back to his house to execute the warrant, the search warrant, no, they had to kick in his door, predawn raid, 10 cars pull up. The first thing you see on the doorbell cam is them putting tape on the camera. Mr. Speaker, 53 seconds later, Bryan Malinowski has been shot in the head and subsequently dies.

I am for these agencies actually serving the taxpayers, not being engaged in things like that. We respect the police and want it done right. At the local level, God bless them. I have not been for defunding them. We are for honoring local police, like this good sheriff, this Member of Congress, and what they do day in and day out. That is what this resolution was about.

The other side, they want to come here and start talking about all kinds of things I didn't intend to. You heard my opening statement. You heard the gentleman's opening statement. However, the other side wants to go start attacking things.

Okay, fine. We are just setting the record straight. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, again, I would emphasize what a fine resolution we have here sponsored by the gentleman from Mississippi, and we do. We all do appreciate the work of our law enforcement men and women who put that uniform on every day, risk their lives to protect our families, our communities, all the things that we care about.

We hope this resolution is a unanimous vote. We hope both sides support it.

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

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 405, I call up the bill (H.R. 2243) to amend title 18, United States Code, to improve the Law Enforcement Officer Safety Act and provisions relating to the carrying of concealed weapons by law enforcement officers, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 2243.

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

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2243, the Law Enforcement Officer Safety Reform Act, which reforms the LEOSA, makes important updates to the existing LEOSA program.

In 2004, President George W. Bush signed LEOSA into law. The law exempts certain active and retired law enforcement officers from local and State prohibitions on the carrying of concealed firearms.

In order to qualify under LEOSA, active law enforcement officers must meet several important requirements. For example, they must be authorized to carry a firearm by their agency. They cannot be subject to disciplinary actions by the agency that could result in the loss of their police power. They must meet certain firearms qualification standards. They cannot be under the influence of alcohol or other intoxicating substances, and they must not be prohibited by Federal law from possessing a firearm.

Retired law enforcement officers must also meet several requirements in order to qualify under LEOSA. For example, they must have separated from service in good standing and served as a law enforcement officer for an aggregate of 10 years or more. They also are required to meet certain firearms training standards and must not be prohibited by Federal law from possessing a firearm.

The LEOSA Reform Act will allow these officers to carry a concealed firearm in the same manner many licensed citizens carry a firearm in their State.

For example, the LEOSA Reform Act will allow law enforcement officers qualified under LEOSA to carry concealed firearms in national parks, certain Federal facilities that are open to the public, on public transportation, in school zones, and in other areas.

The bill also reduces the frequency that qualified retired law enforcement officers are required to meet certain qualification standards.

Many States allow State licensed concealed carry permit holders to carry a concealed firearm in gun-free school zones and on public transportation in the State in which they are licensed. This bill affords qualified law enforcement officers the same privilege.

This legislation improves public safety as our officers face increasingly greater dangers, and current restrictions hinder their ability to carry firearms and protect themselves and others.

At a time when violent crime continues to plague our Nation, we must support our active and retired law enforcement officers and ensure they are able to protect themselves and to protect others no matter where they are in the United States.

This legislation is supported by the Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, the Major County Sheriffs of America, the National Association of Police Organizations, the National Narcotics Officers' Associations' Coalition, the National Sheriffs' Association, and the Sergeants Benevolent Association NYPD.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, a law enforcement officer does not cease being a law enforcement officer merely because he is off duty or because of where he goes, or she goes. Upon retirement, the scars of service, including the animosities built up with many people who do not care for law enforcement officers because they have been subject to the enforcement of the law over the course of a career, upon retirement those old animosities often linger.

Those of us who support this measure and support it strongly understand and argue that it is essential to the safety of our existing officers and to the safety of our retired officers that we recognize that ongoing risk and burden that they have taken on and that they continue to carry and allow them to continue to carry the means to defend themselves and others in reasonable locations, as in many States ordinary civilian concealed carry permit holders may do.

We think it is commonsense legislation, and I would just point out in response to some of the comments of my colleague from Maryland, I wasn't here in 2004 during the debates that he cited over the original LEOSA. I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of what he said, but I would say this: It is now 20 years later, and I think that history has shown us that many of the concerns presented in 2004 were not, in fact, realized by LEOSA's enactment, nor will they be realized as a result of enactment of this strengthening of that underlying statute for our officers.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished ranking member for his argument and advocacy today.

I would just point out to the body that while my distinguished colleague speaks with his usual passion on many subjects, the only subject before us today is whether or not this body is going to pass, to enact, to approve H.R. 2243, the LEOSA Reform Act. That is the sole question in front of us.

That measure is critically important to the safety of many law enforcement officers retired to many law enforcement officers off duty. The bad guys don't stop looking for them just because the cop is out of uniform and at a restaurant or taking his family to a national park or otherwise visiting a location where today the law may preclude him or her from carrying the means of defending himself, his family, his colleagues, or the stranger standing next to him.

We trust those officers to do exactly that while they are on duty and in service, and we should trust them to do exactly that under the reasonably expanded scope contemplated by this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote in favor of this bill and to send it to the Senate.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my bipartisan resolution honoring the brave men and women who serve in local law enforcement.

These officers work tirelessly to protect and serve, putting their lives on the line every day to uphold the rule of law.

As a former sheriff, a son of a police officer, and a 42-year career police officer, I have walked in their shoes. I know the toll it takes on them. I know the long hours, sleepless nights, and time spent away from family. I know this stuff.

I know what it means to respond to a tragedy, to console a grieving victim's family after a horrendous crime has happened to them involving tragic accidents. I have seen things most Americans will thankfully never have to experience.

When others run away from danger, law enforcement and first responders run toward it. They fight crime, protect the innocent, and too often, make the ultimate sacrifice.

During my time in Congress, Mississippi has lost too many heroes: In June 2023, Madison Police Officer Randy Tyler was shot and killed while responding to a hostage situation. In January 2024, George County Sheriff's Deputy Jeremy Malone was shot and killed during a traffic stop on a rural highway. In August 2024, Summit Police Patrolman Troy Floyd was shot and killed during a regular, routine traffic checkpoint. Earlier this year, Hinds County Sheriff's Deputy Martin Shields, Jr., was shot and killed after responding to a domestic violence dispute.

These officers represent the best of our State and our Nation. Fallen heroes like these officers are being honored this week during National Police Week as thousands of law enforcement officers come to the Nation's Capital together here in Washington. That is why there is no better time for us to pass this resolution and make it clear that we stand for law enforcement.

My resolution expresses our gratitude to local law enforcement and their families for their service and sacrifice. It calls for stronger partnerships between officers and the communities they protect, and it honors the memories of those who never came home.

We have seen targeted, ambush-style attacks on law enforcement officers. We have seen departments struggle to recruit and retain talented officers because they were vilified for deciding to serve their communities.

Mr. Speaker, this is the time for Congress to take the lead. It is time to make clear that we stand with the men and women of local law enforcement who protect each and every one of our communities with honor and courage.

I am proud that this resolution passed last Congress with overwhelming support. This police week, I urge my colleagues to join me in voting for this resolution to send a clear message that Congress backs the thin blue line.

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