Mr. Speaker, and still I rise. And still I rise. I rise today, Mr. Speaker, a liberated, unbought, unbossed, unafraid Democrat. I rise, Mr. Speaker, after having been censured but not silenced.…
Mr. Speaker, and still I rise. And still I rise. I rise today, Mr. Speaker, a liberated, unbought, unbossed, unafraid Democrat. I rise, Mr. Speaker, after having been censured but not silenced. Censured, but not silenced.
Yes, I am that person who chooses to take on some of the great social injustices of our time. There are times when taking on these injustices necessitates that we take action right here in this Chamber. I am proud of the things that I have done to call to the attention not only of the Congress, not only of this country, but to the attention of the world some of the injustices taking place in my country. Quite frankly, it is the country that I love because of what it stands for in its great documents, liberty and justice for all, as told in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Yes, I sometimes have to take difficult positions. When I do, I sometimes have to face difficult consequences, but I do so, and still I rise, Mr. Speaker. And still I rise.
Today, Mr. Speaker, I rise to address corruption within the Trump administration, corruption within the Trump family, corruption within Trump politics. I want to show how this corruption is encroaching upon something that is very sacred in this institution.
Let me start now, Mr. Speaker, with corruption within the Trump family. Mr. Speaker, I had the preeminent privilege of being a part of a hearing today in Financial Services. This hearing had to do with fraud, fraud being perpetrated.
Well, I want to talk about the corruption being perpetrated. I spoke about this at the hearing today, and I shall revisit some of these things that I called to the attention of the public at the hearing today.
The first is a news article. It is styled ``Trump meme coin down 96 percent as bitcoin and meme coins slide.'' This is the $TRUMP memecoin. This article is dated February 9, 2026, and I shall read excerpts.
It reads in part this: ``Last February, the coin's market capitalization stood at $3.5 billion''--we are talking about now the $TRUMP memecoin, $3.5 billion--``already well below its $14.5 billion peak on the eve of his second inauguration.''
When the Trump administration took on the task of being President again--which I regret occurred, to be quite candid with you, but when it did, it also, at the same time, by and through Trump the person, introduced a memecoin. That memecoin stood capitalized at $3.5 billion.
Well, this is $14.5 billion at its peak. It was $3.5 billion later. At its peak, it was $14.5. ``Today, it has fallen to $1.78 billion.'' To repeat, so as to allow people to completely understand, initially it was capitalized at $3.5 billion. It then made an upward move to $14.5 billion. This was at its peak. Today, this is following February 9, it fell to $1.78 billion.
Why is this important? Why is it important for me to call this article to your attention? It is because there is something called pump and dump, pump and dump. This is where clever people will create something such as a memecoin, and they will instantly start to put money into it, but they use famous people.
In using these famous people, this name identification in and of itself brings credibility to the product that they are placing in the market. That credibility causes the product to move rapidly in its value. It goes up. As it goes up, the people who are pumping it, they then find reason at some point to take out their profits. They take out their profits.
They pump it, and then they dump it, meaning they get rid of the product. They no longer want it. When they dump it at its zenith, they take out great profits. They make not only millions, but billions. They remove the profits.
Let me read on: The indication is there was ``a large-scale pump-and- dump scheme involving at least 15 cryptocurrencies, including $MELANIA.''
That is the currency of the President's wife, whom I have great respect for, by the way. I really do. I have met her and found her to be a very pleasant lady, but I have observed her from afar, and I have great respect for her.
``The complaint alleged that First Lady Melania Trump was used as a
`window dressing for a crime engineered by''' other persons. But the point is this: It was engineered by other persons, but the Trump family made large sums of money as a result.
In fact, I have a second article that is styled ``Melania Trump's meme coin architects accused of pump-and-dump fraud in lawsuit.'' This one is dated October 23, 2025, and it is from The Guardian.
I would beg that people would peruse these at their leisure so that they might acquire additional intelligence about the articles that I am calling to their attention.
This one says: ``The $MELANIA coins were released for just a few cents each on 19 January, the day before Donald Trump was inaugurated as U.S. President.'' The day before he becomes President, the coin is released.
Then within hours, this coin price soared to $13.73. It went from a value of a few cents, just a few cents to $13.73. However, it then collapsed almost as quickly and is now only worth about 10 cents. It went from pennies to $13.73, collapsed to less than 10 cents--about 10 cents. That is less than 1 percent of its peak price.
This coin traded at a peak of $45.47 and now goes for $5.79.
The article also indicates that: ``The Trump family has pocketed more than $1 billion in pretax profits from several cryptocurrency-related products and companies over the past 12 months.'' In 12 months, they pocketed more than $1 billion in pretax profits.
Pumping and dumping allowing consumers to be left holding the bag. Many people who assume that because the President's name is associated with it or a family member of the President is associated with it, they assume that it is credible and then they do incredible things. They just buy into it because they assume that the name itself gives it the credibility that will cause them to make large sums of money.
Well, some people do make large sums of money. These are the people that introduce these coins. These are the people that pump them up, and these are the people who take their profits right off the top at the zenith of the market for the coin.
This kind of scam, this kind of scheme is something that we should not tolerate emanating from the highest office in the land. The President of the United States is in the business of performing what I call a hustle, a hustle of the country itself, of the market itself.
The President uses all sorts of scams to make money based upon the fact that he is the President of the United States and his name should bring some sort of credibility to products that other people will buy into and lose money.
I regret that this happens, and the best way for us to stop it right now immediately is for people to understand that the President's name is not worth what it appears to be worth. People should not buy into these scams simply because the President associates his name with it.
At some point, the President and his family members will take their money out and when that happens, the dumping starts. When the dumping starts, those consumers who bought in in good faith end up losing money.
Pump and dump: raise the price, sell, dump, and leave others holding the bag and they take the profits. This kind of corruption is not limited to just the family of the President.
Just today, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary Noem, has been relieved of duty. There is a good reason why. Just today I spoke about this at the financial services hearing when we talked about this corruption.
Here is an article titled: ``Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts.'' This is indicating that the Secretary had these contracts within the purview of her jurisdiction and that there were ad companies, companies that were advertising on behalf of the Federal Government. These ad companies received some $220 million in DHS contracts. Now, well, maybe that is not all bad. Ad companies make money. Ad companies should make money when they perform a service, a worthy service, but there is something about this contract and some of these that are a little bit different.
By the way, this article is dated November 14, 2025. ProPublica is the publisher, and I will read just a bit more about this before I go on.
Let's read: ``Advertising firms make money by taking an often-hefty commission. Federal records show the contracts have gone to two firms.'' We are talking about the Secretary now and her contracts that were let under the jurisdiction of her office on her watch.
``The contracts have gone to two firms. One is a Republican ad company in Louisiana called People Who Think, which has been awarded $77 million.'' That is not the bad news, ``But the majority of the money, $143 million''--I repeat for emphasis--``$143 million has gone to a mysterious LLC in Delaware. The company was created just days before it was awarded the deal.'' Days before receiving a $143 million contract, a mysterious LLC was created in Delaware, $143 million.
Mr. Speaker, if it really walks like, looks like, and quacks like a corrupt duck, then that is probably what it is, and that is what this is--$143 million, a just created company.
Well, the President and Ms. Noem have had a little bit of a disagreement about this it seems. The President denies any association with this, as he always does. My speculation is that Ms. Noem is correct when she gives the indication that the White House approved of what she was doing and, of course, the President doesn't know anything about anything at all associated with some sort of corrupt activity that he might be aligned with. In this case, Ms. Noem is the person who is going to take the fall. She has been removed from her position.
By the way, there were Articles of Impeachment filed against her. I am one of the persons who signed on to them and believe that she should have been impeached. She has been moved now to some other position, but I think that Ms. Noem should be removed from the government, from the offices of the government. The good offices should not have Ms. Noem associated with them after this incident with the contracts, but more important than this, this is about money.
I think about what has happened with the human lives that have been lost--innocent persons, two people; American citizens, two people; unarmed, two people participating in peaceful protests--two people who have lost their lives. These people have families that are still in mourning, still in mourning, and the President and Ms. Noem just move on.
They go on to the next big scam, scheme. They move on to the next big thing that the President does that is questionable. For example, going to war without conferring with Congress. He decided that on his own volition he can just take nuclear-powered aircraft carriers into a position off of the coast of a country, engage in gun boat diplomacy, and then, after he concludes that the diplomacy has not succeeded, simply decide he is going to go to war and so much as say it.
Then we decide here in Congress that we are going to take up the cause of being Congress people because of the Constitution, which accords the power to go to war, conferred upon the Congress, placed within the hands of the Congress. Each Member of Congress will have a voice and a vote. When we decide we are going to take up this challenge and say to the President, you can't do this, this is wrong, and it has to stop.
Well, my Republican colleagues will cover, and they do a good job of allowing the very power that has been accorded them, placed and entrusted to them in the Constitution of the United States of America, they now delegate that to the President even when it is in contravention of the Constitution, and it is because there was no imminent threat to this country from Iran.
No imminent threat, which is one of the reasons why I voted against H. Res. 1099--I believe that is the number for it--because it had in there that Iran is a threat to the United States. Iran is not a threat to us. We are a superpower. Iran is not capable of harming us. Then they say, well, in 10 years, they could. Well, in 10 years a lot of other things could happen, but I don't think we should simply go to war because someone says to us that Iran is a threat to us when we know better. Our intelligence would tell you better.
Iran is just not a threat to the United States of America, and as such, I don't
think we should be at war with a country that is not an imminent threat to the United States of America.
Mr. Speaker, Iran is not an imminent threat to the United States of America. We shouldn't be at war with Iran. I voted today for the War Powers Resolution, the Khanna resolution. It is a resolution sponsored by two Members of Congress. I mentioned Khanna.
This is a resolution that we should respect, and we should make sure that history shows where we stood in such a time as this, when the resolution was presented to us on the floor.
I absolutely believe that if there is an imminent threat, then we can take--we can allow the President to have certain latitude. Without that, it should not be done.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Massie and Representative Khanna. Representative Massie was the lead, I believe. Representative Khanna was there with him. I thank them both for what they have done to bring this to the floor, and I regret that the resolution did not pass.
Mr. Speaker, moving on to the Trump politics and the corruption in politics, the corruption in politics emanates from the President having decided that he will simply take, in mid-decade, congressional seats from various States wherein Republicans have the ability to do this because Democrats happen to have seats that are coalition seats. These are seats where different groups have joined together, and they are electing representation of their choice.
Down in Texas, the President said let's take five seats from the Democrats and award them to the Republicans. The Governor of the State of Texas, being the loyalist that he is to the President, complied completely, totally, and absolutely as best as he could. I am not sure that he will succeed when the final bell rings on election night in November. I am just not sure.
They made every effort to do what the President has demanded, being the loyalists that the attorney general and the Governor of the State of Texas are. As a result, these seats were removed. There were five seats, one of them in Houston, when the Ninth Congressional District and the 18th Congressional District were combined. That means one less seat in Houston, Texas, on the Democratic side. When this was done, it created mass confusion, unbelievable confusion.
There were people who were prognosticating all kinds of things. People were saying that certain Members were not going to be returning. All of this prognostication has been, unfortunately, derailed because the persons who were engaged in it didn't quite succeed like they thought they would. They won't succeed like they think they will.
It is amazing how this corruption now brings in the crypto industry. The crypto industry has decided that they are going to target people around the country, spending not $1 million but millions of dollars. The crypto industry would, if they could, control the Congress of the United States of America. I am one of the people standing in their way. I will continue to stand in their way.
They graded me out, and I got an F. I am as proud of that F as any A I have ever received in life. I am very proud to say that the crypto industry does not find favor with me. They believe that those who receive A's from them should be rewarded by eliminating the opposition in Congress that is to them, the opposition to them in Congress.
The crypto industry is on a roll now. They are going to go around the country. They are going to buy congressional seats. That is what they are doing. They buy congressional seats. They buy reputations for people who are running on their side of the ledger. They then spend just millions of dollars on ads to try to remove people who are antithetical to what they are doing with their crypto program, the program which entails as little regulations as possible.
The best use of cryptocurrency right now seems to be that of allowing those who are engaging in blackmail and extortion to move large sums of money. They move large sums of money without it being traced. There are billionaires who would love and are enjoying knowing that they can move large sums of money without it being traced because these large sums of money can be used for nefarious purposes. They can be used for evasive purposes, evading taxes. These are large sums of money, unregulated, because the money can just move from one person to another in a flash.
Blockchain technology is a wonderful thing. The problem that we have--and the thing that I consider a problem for this country--is the impact that crypto may have on the dollar and the fact that these dollars do not move through a central bank, meaning from one person through a central bank to another person.
At some point, we will find that cryptocurrency can be used to fund nefarious operations against this country. How do we prove it right away when the money moves from one person to another without going through a central bank? I want to see this regulated. I do. I am going to continue to want to see it regulated, and I am going to continue to fight to have it regulated.
This is something that I believe is going to injure our interest rates when we borrow from other countries, if it has an adverse impact on the dollar. The dollar is the reserve currency of choice across the globe, meaning countries hold dollars in reserve in their coffers.
We should cherish and protect the dollar as a reserve currency. There are some people who are trying to knock the dollar out of this place. There is a war for currency supremacy. In so doing, the dollar, if it is diminished in some way, our interest rates could go up.
We have to be careful in terms of having the supremacy of the dollar continue. Cryptocurrency could conceivably have an impact on the dollar. I have had some tell me that it can, and they are concerned about it. These are experts.
My hope is this: We will wake up and understand what is happening with the cryptocurrency purveyors, the people who want to take control of Congress. They are willing to spend millions, untold millions, to remove people from office who are antithetical to them. We have to take a stand against this. I will take that stand. There are many who will stand with them. In doing this, something else is occurring.
When they can take the congressional seats by drawing lines and simply taking them, and then if they can take them by using cryptocurrency--and these are friends of the President. They are friends of the President. The President and the cryptocurrency persons who would desire to control Congress, as the President would desire to control it, are all in this together. For the most part, right now, he does.
These people, when they use this cryptocurrency, they are using it to take away seniority. They want to get rid of senior Members of Congress, and they are using their crypto dollars--they are really American dollars. They are using this money to remove people from office, and they are going after senior leadership in Congress.
Mr. Speaker, senior leadership is important in this Congress. Senior leadership means the persons have been here. They have served. They understand much of how this great institution functions. They also understand how to get things done efficaciously.
There is something more important than all of this as it relates to senior leadership. If we decide that seniority no longer has any merit in the Congress of the United States of America--and that is the direction we are moving in. If we decide that seniority no longer has any merit in the Congress of the United States of America, money will rule. When money rules, many persons will lose. A good many of them will be people who just don't have access to billionaires, millionaires, people who are exceedingly wealthy who can fund their campaigns.
These campaigns are being funded. There are people who say they don't take money from corporate America or don't take corporate dollars. Well, no, they don't, but they have the money from these corporations in these independent expenditure accounts that are actually funding the campaign. That is a clever way to avoid saying that someone is getting the money into their campaign, although it benefits their campaign.
These companies are spreading this money out in huge amounts to benefit
campaigns. They are taking the seniority out. Seniority matters. It does in Congress.
If we allow this to occur, the seniority, the means by which some people move up, if it no longer exists, then money will rule. If money rules, we will lose.
We cannot allow money to dominate more than it does currently because it already has an outsized influence. If we allow money to take complete control--no seniority, I assure you--then people who just don't have access to the billionaires, the multimillionaires, and the very wealthy will not have access to Congress.
Then, people who look to certain people to bring up issues that are important to them will get them not as a primary consideration, not as a secondary consideration, not as a tertiary consideration--I am not sure where they would rank in the hierarchy of considerations--maybe quaternary, I don't know, but I do know that they won't be primary.
As a result, what happens to people who are here championing the cause of the very poor; the people who believe that Social Security is an investment, not simply an entitlement; the people who believe that there ought to be Medicaid for people who cannot afford insurance and who are living sometimes in the streets of life; and the people who understand that Medicare is something that we have to protect because the insurance companies don't want you after you become a certain age?
There are people here who fight for these things. That fight can be minimized. Don't you think for one second that there are not people who wouldn't take that money that is now in Social Security, in the government's hands, and put it in the stock market. There have already been efforts to tamper with Social Security.
I stand and fight for these things: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. I have a history and a track record of fighting for these things. We fight, and we win. We win because you still have these programs. If we had lost the fight, you wouldn't have Social Security as you know it now.
Texas was offered $100 billion for Medicaid expansion and rejected $100 billion--Texas did--and we have to fight to get these things done. That fight will be limited to people who are wealthy in and of their own right and who can afford to take on the crypto giants and the very wealthy. It will be fights among the very wealthy and the puppets of the very wealthy. When that happens, this country is going to be a country that can no longer say that it stands for liberty and justice for all.
How can it be justice for all if poor people who need healthcare can't get it? How can it be justice for all if Social Security is minimized or placed in the stock market and is subject to the whims of the market? No. The system that we have is a tried and proven system that works well, so we have to protect it.
We have to protect it from the crypto corruption that is finding its way into Congress to take out senior leadership and to destroy the system by which persons get there after having served for some time and being a senior person in line to have the opportunity to serve as a leader. That is pretty important for people who don't know millionaires and billionaires.
Mr. Speaker, finally, I think it appropriate to talk about not only how the corruption has permeated Congress and how the corruption is right before our eyes in the stock market, where pumping and dumping is taking place, but how the corruption is taking place as it relates to persons who simply are trying their very best to engage in the process of buying and selling stocks but find themselves on the losing end.
All of this corruption is taking place before our eyes, and we have to do something about it. I think that the best way to do something about a thing is to go to the root of it--the root cause. What is it that is at the very essence of the thing?
Mr. Speaker, this corruption is aided and abetted by a President of the United States of America, who is engaged in the corruption and the skimming and scamming in the stock market. He is a President who would take seats from one side and award them to another side just to maintain power and to make sure that he stays in office. He said as much that he is afraid that we will impeach him, and he is right. This President is at the root cause of this.
If you look around the world, you will see all of the turmoil that he is creating around the globe, across the globe, using the military at a whim.
He has taken on certain things that we just never expected a President to do. We always thought Presidents would have a certain amount of dignity, a certain amount of decorum, and a certain amount of principle.
This man has no principles. He does whatever he chooses, when he chooses, and he knows that he has the backing of Congress--that would be the House and the Senate on the Republican side, not the Democrats-- and he has, to a certain extent, the backing of certain people on the courts who are loyal to him.
I regret to see all of this happening, but I do know this: There is a solution that the Constitution has given us here in the House of Representatives and in the United States Senate.
This is why this was instilled in the Constitution, this remedy that I am calling to your attention. It was put there for a time such as this and a President such as Trump.
This is why it is there. This is why we should use it, so that we would honor the Framers of the Constitution and their infinite wisdom and understanding that, when someone is placing himself above and beyond the law and being aided and abetted in the process, then there has to be a means by which that person can be dealt with.
It is political. It was intentionally political. The process is political. The process is such that you can bring that person before the bar of justice right here in the House of Representatives and, when that person is brought before the bar of justice here in the House, every Member has a vote.
Do not let people calling themselves constitutional scholars try to convince you that it is anything more than what President Gerald Ford said it was. President Gerald Ford said that this process is something that is lawful whenever 218 Members say that it is, assuming that that is the majority on a given day.
Whatever the majority says that it is in the House, there is no appealing the decision of the House. No Member has to say why they voted the way they voted. You vote. You vote your conscience with this process. When you vote your conscience with this process, if you vote to do as they did in a bygone era with Andrew Johnson, as they did with him, they voted to impeach him because he spoke ill of the House of Representatives.
Don't let people convince you that it has to be something that is more than what the will of the House says that it is because it is not appealable. It is comparable to an indictment in the House--not the same, but comparable.
Then, if this process functions as it should, it goes over to the Senate. Then, the Senate takes up the process, and the Senate can try the President. If the President is convicted, the President can be removed from office.
This process, you have been wondering what it is, I am sure. This process is one that we have a countdown on, and I am absolutely committed to it. There is a countdown to impeachment. Impeachment is the process. This is what the Framers of the Constitution accorded to us for a time such as this and a President such as what we have: impeachment.
There is a countdown to impeachment, and, yes, Mr. President, quake in your boots because I will tell you the truth: You will be impeached. We are laying the foundation for it right now. You are going to be impeached again.
There are people who would say that if you can't get him convicted in the Senate, why impeach him in the House? It is because we want posterity to know that the House of Representatives did its job.
Let the Senate then have the opportunity to do their job. We send bills to the Senate all the time that we know that the Senate won't pass. We do it all the time. We did it for tens of years with healthcare knowing that we couldn't get it done, and we finally did get what is called ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act.
That didn't happen overnight. Many times, we sent legislation over to the
Senate that didn't pass, and we do it now. Yet, when it comes to impeachment, the persons who don't want to see it will say that we shouldn't use that same paradigm. You shouldn't send it over unless you know that the Senate is going to take it up and pass it.
If that is the case, we wouldn't send most of what we send over to the Senate right now because we can't pass it, and the Senate won't take it up, for whatever reasons. I am talking about from the Democratic side. We should not allow that to become the asset test for whether we are going to do the right thing. The right thing to do is to impeach him right here, send it over to the Senate, and give the Senate an opportunity to act.
I am committed to this process. I do it as a matter of conscience. I do it as a matter of conscience. I do it because I believe that we shouldn't allow this country to just go down the tube or down the drain. I don't want to see my country on the trash heap of history. This is a great country, and it can be great if we remove the stain from its conscience that the President has imposed upon it.
This is our time. We are the people, and we can change this because this President is truly unfit to hold the office that he holds. There are people who would defend him to the nth degree, and I cannot understand how you can see all that is happening to this country and still defend this President's actions.
We now have found ourselves devolving into authoritarianism. Then what lies beneath authoritarianism? One-person rule. One-person rule meaning more so than one person with cohorts, one person alone ruling a country that extolls liberty and justice for all, government of the people, by the people, for the people. That is where we are headed.
I stand in the way, with some others. I don't stand alone on this. There are others who are with me. But the people in this country are going to rise up and demand impeachment. In fact, they are already doing it. They are just waiting on us to catch up. Well, I am going to help us catch up.
There is a countdown to impeachment, and I am guaranteeing you and I am assuring you that there will be additional Articles of Impeachment brought before this House of Representatives. I do it as a matter of conscience, and I do it knowing that there are people who are going to spend all kinds of money to prevent me from doing it. Let them spend. But I will leave, if they do succeed, knowing that I gave it my best. Every day that I was here, I gave it my best, and I pledge to you you will continue to get my best.
God bless you. God bless the United States of America. The countdown to impeachment continues.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back.
