Mr. Speaker, this last month, Nevada County, indeed the entire State of California, lost one of its finest, its truly great citizens. Eduardo Agullo Garcia was born in Barcelona, Spain, during the…
Mr. Speaker, this last month, Nevada County, indeed the entire State of California, lost one of its finest, its truly great citizens.
Eduardo Agullo Garcia was born in Barcelona, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War. He was the second child and only son of Jose and Esperanza. His favorite memory as a child was playing marbles in the streets, although he frequently returned home with an empty bag.
His life was forever changed when he applied and was accepted into the American Field Service program and became an exchange student in 1955. He sailed across the Atlantic with fellow students. They spent the time discussing American customs and culture.
It was on this ship that he was advised to avoid asking out girls who wore a pin because the pin indicated that they had been pinned by a boy and were not available to date. He traveled across the United States on his way to Millbrae, California, where he was hosted for the school year by the mayor of Millbrae, Webb Witmer.
When he arrived at the San Francisco airport, he was greeted by American AFS students including Nancy Campbell. While he was intrigued by Nancy,
he would not ask her out because he saw a pin. He didn't realize until the end of the school year at Capuchino High School in San Bruno that she wore a pin because she was a member of Job's Daughters, an international organization. It was not the type of pin that he thought.
When he discovered that she was not actually seeing someone, he immediately asked her out. After Eddie graduated from Capuchino High School, he returned to Spain to complete his compulsory military service. After the military, he went to work for a chemical company in Spain. He and Nancy continued their relationship via letters and visits.
As Nancy neared completion of her degree at University of California, Berkeley, he asked her to marry him. They were married in California in 1961 and moved to Barcelona for several years. Their daughter was born in 1963, and 8 months later they moved back to northern California.
Eddie was importing and selling sporting rifles and ammunition but turned to wholesale decorative accessories. He started his company, Garcia Imports, out of the garage of their house in Millbrae. It soon grew to a small warehouse in San Bruno and then a bigger warehouse in San Mateo and then in Redwood City and finally in Hayward.
He traveled extensively for business, both overseas and the United States. He achieved one of his greatest goals by becoming a citizen of the United States in 1973.
After over 40 years in the home furnishings industry, working side by side with both his wife, Nancy, and his daughter, Barbara, he and Nancy retired in 2008.
In 2009, they moved to Grass Valley. They were not entirely sure what they wanted to do in retirement, but they met some wonderful friends and soon became very involved with the Tea Party, the State of Jefferson, and the Nevada County Republican Party. It was a full-time passion for both Nancy and Eddie.
Eddie joined the Nevada County Fairgrounds Foundation in 2011 as a director. In 2015, Eddie and Nancy, as well as their daughter, Barbara, and son-in-law, Larry McDonald, were named the Family of the Year by the Nevada County Fair's board of directors. The board chose the Garcia-McDonald family for their volunteer efforts, their vision for the foundation's station, and their ongoing support of the Nevada County Fairgrounds.
After nearly 60 years of marriage, Nancy passed in 2020, which was, of course, such a great loss for Eddie. However, he stayed busy in the last several years supporting political campaigns, keeping an eye on local politics, and working to improve his adopted country.
He was very passionate about the candidates he supported and has traveled with friends to support those candidates wherever he could. He continued to pursue his passions right up until he passed peacefully and quickly on October 9, 2025.
Eddie, we miss you, my friend, but your legacy will be felt by our community forever.
End the Redistricting War
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to, again, call for an end to the terrible redistricting war that is cascading across the country with the domino effect going from one State to the next. States are throwing out their entire congressional map and upending representation in their State. It is something that is deeply unpopular with Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, and it is deeply unpopular with the American people.
Gerrymandering is bad enough, but throwing out the maps specifically to gerrymander in the middle of the decade is even worse. At this point in time, we have seen Texas and California both adopt gerrymandered maps, although both States now find their new maps being challenged in Federal Court, which adds yet another element of uncertainty for Representatives and constituents alike.
However, it has gone far beyond California and Texas. We are now seeing States either already or in the process of starting to adopt new maps in States like Missouri and potentially Indiana, Kansas, and Florida, perhaps, as well as Virginia, Illinois, or Maryland, and several others. It seems that hardly any State will be spared. Many have said they wanted to but simply don't have time this year, so they are waiting to do it until the next cycle.
It has gotten completely out of hand. It has gotten to the point where we could get into this world of rolling redistricting where district lines are never settled for more than a couple of years and where the connection between voters and Representatives is continually being severed.
I have called time and again for an end to this redistricting war or an armistice. The fact of the matter is that there is still an opportunity to do that, but it is a very narrow window of opportunity that exists.
My bill, H.R. 4889, would bar mid-decade redistricting in every State in the country. This makes sense as an act of Congress under our Article I Elections Clause authority. But it makes sense, in particular, because redistricting itself is a creature, it is a creation of the Constitution, of the Federal Government, which says that it has to be done every 10 years. It is only a new phenomenon, a fairly recent phenomenon, where States are deciding to do it more frequently than that.
So we can, as a House, pass this measure. I believe if it were brought to the floor it would pass overwhelmingly to stop this madness in every State in the country.
The reason I say it is a narrow window is because the filing deadline in Texas is coming up on December 8, and, realistically, nothing that we do here would affect the map in that State after that point in time. So that is really, effectively, a deadline for a national solution to this problem. Even if, by the way, that deadline were to pass and Texas or California would not be affected, I still think we should move forward to spare these other States from having to deal with the adverse consequences.
I begin today calling on the Speaker of the House to bring this bill to the floor for a vote so we could end this madness. We could stop mid-decade gerrymandering, we could go back to the way it is supposed to be where we redraw our district lines once every 10 years, and we could focus all of the time, energy, and resources being put into this fight--which, by the way, it seems is not going to help one party or the other to any significant degree, it is probably going to be more or less a wash, but we can get back to focusing on the issues that actually matter to the American people.
California's Culture of Corruption
Mr. Speaker, last week, Governor Gavin Newsom's chief of staff was indicted for 23 felony counts in a Federal corruption investigation. This is his former chief of staff. She left the office at the end of last year.
The charges include conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct justice, subscribing to false tax returns, and making false statements to the FBI. The main conduct being alleged involves theft of campaign funds totaling $225,000, tax fraud, as well as fraud surrounding a PPE loan.
The indictment lists a number of co-conspirators, including the former chief of staff for California's attorney general, including a high-powered lobbyist, including another well-known consultant, as well as a number of other un-named co-conspirators. In other words, these are the people running our State government in California. These are the people who control our politics in California.
Now, I have spoken about a culture of corruption that exists in Sacramento, and this latest series of events has cast that culture of corruption in stark relief. Indeed, the former chief of staff or communications director for both Jerry Brown and, I think, Dianne Feinstein used those very words in the aftermath of this indictment to describe the area that he had worked for many, many years, a culture of corruption. He referred to Governor Newsom's chief of staff who has now been indicted as a ``Mafia boss.''
So I think it is important for people to take note of what has transpired because it does cast a light on the corruption that is endemic to politics in Sacramento.
Mr. Speaker, I believe that this is really the core issue when you look at
why California has declined as a State, why our quality of life has declined as a State, why we pay the highest gas taxes yet drive over the deepest potholes, why we spend tens of billions of dollars on a high-speed train and yet absolutely nothing gets built, and why we spend more and more and more money on education every year yet we have the highest illiteracy rate in the State.
The fundamental issue is not Democrat versus Republican even. It is the people of our State versus this entrenched and corrupt political class.
So I do believe that in order to get our State back on track, we need to reform the way politics and government are done in California. I believe we are actually on our way to starting to do that, not only with examples of people being held accountable as of this indictment, but also with The Coalition for Common Sense that you see forming across California, Mr. Speaker. This is the same coalition, for example, that came together last year to defeat our political establishment and pass Proposition 36 to make crime illegal again in California by an overwhelming margin, 68 percent of the vote, in that election.
So I do believe that there is a coalition of people who care about California, who want to reform our State, and who want to restore sanity and good government and common sense. Hopefully, this latest truly troubling and horrifying example will help to speed that process along in a very healthy way.
Expanding Refineries in California
Mr. Speaker, today, I voted for and the House passed the REFINER Act.
This is an important piece of legislation that is designed to identify obstacles to expanding refining capacity in the United States, and it is designed to promote energy independence.
Before we go through exactly what the bill does, I wanted to make clear why this is so important for those of us in California. California is seeing the closure of two of its refineries, Phillips 66 and Valero, which represent a significant chunk of our State's overall refining capacity.
Now, we already pay the highest gas prices of any State in the country. We also have electricity prices that have gone up by 34 percent over the last several years, The New York Times just reported, far more than any other State. We pay the highest gas prices out of all 50 States, substantially more than the national average, higher even than Hawaii, which is an island State.
The causes of that are well understood, and it is those very causes that are now causing these refineries to close in a way that is going to make the problem even worse by further constraining supply.
The reason, of course, the cause, is the taxes, the regulations, the particular fuel blend that is required, and the continually changing environmental mandates that cause the cost of doing business to continually grow and that require these refineries to continually update their equipment in a way that makes doing business just no longer viable.
All of these things together led researchers at USC to determine that, by the end of next year, Californians could be paying an average of $8 a gallon for gasoline.
The bill we passed today here in Congress, in the House of Representatives, will help with this because, in addition to the data collection that it requires and the aspects of it that seek to support an agenda designed to promote energy independence through getting rid of needless regulations, it also is looking at State actions that are contributing to our decline in refining capacity.
California, I am sure, will be the State where the most such actions are identified. I am looking forward to the results of this and then being able to act to use whatever leverage we have here at the Federal level to try to spare Californians from the continually rising cost of gasoline and to restore a little dose of common sense to our State's energy policy.
State of California's Economy
Mr. Speaker, yesterday, California's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office revealed that the State has an $18 billion deficit--an $18 billion deficit. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office noted that this is the fourth straight year that the State has had budget problems, even though revenue has been increasing.
The LAO, the Legislative Analyst's Office, also noted in their report on the State budget that the State's economy is not in good shape. Indeed, job growth this year has amounted to zero, nothing. There has literally been no job growth in the State of California.
In addition, consumers in California are increasingly pessimistic about our State's economy, so these problems have all been building and building and have, in particular, accelerated during the governorship of Gavin Newsom.
In his first year as Governor, our State budget was $208 billion. Now, the budget is $322 billion. It has increased by more than 50 percent. Can Californians say they are getting 50 percent more for their tax dollars? Of course not.
The problems in our State have continued to grow. We continue to lead the Nation in homelessness, unemployment, taxes, regulations, and poverty.
I would hope that this latest report from the Legislative Analyst's Office will be a wake-up call for the politicians in Sacramento that we need to start doing things differently. We need to have less of a tax and regulatory burden. We need to support small businesses and workers. We need to get the budget under control, so we don't continue to spend more and more as we get less and less.
Proposition 50
Mr. Speaker, this is the first opportunity I have had to address the House since the passage of Prop 50 in California to re-gerrymander our State and to return us to the era of political gerrymandering.
Of course, I was against the proposition because I am against gerrymandering everywhere. I am against it in California. I am against it in Texas. I am against it in every State, Republican or Democrat.
My district, the currently drawn Third Congressional District, did indeed vote against Prop 50, and if it had its way, it would remain one contiguous district.
Unfortunately, this was not decided on a district-by-district basis, so it must be acknowledged that the people of California have spoken. Even though there is an ongoing Federal challenge to the new map, I am proceeding under the assumption that the new map will govern the elections in 2026.
I did want to point to one particular provision in Prop 50 that I actually support. Indeed, I think a good part of the reason why it passed is because they actually put this provision, this sentence, right there in the description that people saw on the ballot when they voted, which is the proposition that established a State policy of supporting independent redistricting nationwide. While it, on the one hand, brings back gerrymandering in California, on the other hand, it calls upon Congress to establish independent redistricting commissions in every State in the country.
I am going to answer that call to action from the voters of our State. I am currently working on legislation to do precisely what the initiative calls for, to establish independent redistricting in every State in the country. It will be modeled on the independent redistricting commission that Prop 50 just pushed aside in California.
If we can get this passed here in Congress and signed into law, then by the time of the next Census in 2030, when States are actually supposed to be redrawing district lines, the horrible scourge of gerrymandering, this scourge on our democracy, will finally be put to an end in the United States of America.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
