Floor Statements

Cancel culture is eroding the very foundation of who we are as an American people. Rowan Atkinson, the star of the British TV series ``Maigret'' said that it is like a medieval mob coming to burn witches. That is what the cancel culture is all about.

How about taking an analogy from George Orwell's ``Nineteen Eighty- Four'' novel where they take history and they throw it into the chute. They revise history constantly, and you can't even control what you think anymore, Mr. Speaker. That is what cancel culture is becoming.

How about from a book called ``The Girl With Seven Names'' about a courageous young woman who escaped from North Korea and she tells us how North Korea did the same thing?

How about China under the Chinese Communist Party as reported in ``The Hundred-Year Marathon'' by Mr. Pillsbury who wrote that book?

That is what we see happening, this attempt to erase who we are as individuals and then replace them with something else.

Let me give you some other examples. Pepe Le Pew is no longer tolerated by the left and by the woke mob. Miss Piggy is canceled. Dr. Seuss books are canceled.

Here are some others. How about this one: Goya Foods, because this guy had the temerity, Robert Unanue, who is the CEO of Goya Foods, had the temerity to support President Trump so people attempted to boycott and cancel his business. Senator Josh Hawley wrote a book. He is canceled because he says that he wants election integrity.

How about Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson?

San Francisco erases those schools named after Washington, Lincoln, or Jefferson.

Matthew Yglesias, the liberal opinion writer who resigned from Vox, a company that he cofounded, because his woke staff says he is too center right.

How about Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham?

They were all attacked for being conservative voices.

The attack is to silence conservatives' voices. The new rule is we will only be tolerant if you are accepting of our views--not just accepting--if you comply--not just comply--you bow to the tyrannical rules of the left.

Gina Carano, the ``Mandalorian'' actress, was fired by Disney because she says that being a Republican in 2021 is like being a Jew in Nazi, Germany. So she has got to go. They canceled the action figure named after her.

Adam Rubenstein, a former New York Times reporter and editor, has got to go because he lets Tom Cotton's piece get published in The New York Times. Oops. We can't have that.

J. K. Rowling, the very successful author of the Harry Potter series, is canceled because she has the temerity to suggest that transgender rights might endanger women's rights. You can't have any conflicting view out there, Mr. Speaker. No, you can't do that.

Then Mike Lindell, you know him, he is the My Pillow guy. He is on TV all

the time advertising. You can't have him because he is a friend and supporter of Donald Trump and questions the election results.

We have reached the point in our society where the left says that if you do not bow your knee to what we say is the new norm--and the only acceptable dogma--if you are a heterodox in any way, Mr. Speaker, we will cancel you, we will dock you, and we will erase you. That cannot stand, and it will not stand.

This group and the gentleman from Colorado will continue to fight. I thank the gentleman for yielding. We will continue to fight this outrageous attack on who we are as American people.

Mr. Speaker, let me tell you what Democrat support is really about on H.R. 51: Democratic partisanship, Democrat power, Democrat policy, Democrat progressive issues.

No State has been admitted by the Constitution. No State was created from a territory, which was crafted in the Constitution. That is what you want to obviate.

Even our Founders understood this very clearly, as they iterated, in Federalist No. 43, ``The indispensable necessity of complete authority at the seat of government carries its own evidence with it. It is a power exercised by every legislature of the Union, I might say of the world, by virtue of its general supremacy. Without it, not only the public authority might be insulted and its proceedings interrupted with impunity; but a dependence of the members of the general government on the State comprehending the seat of the government, for protection in the exercise of their duty, might bring on the national councils an imputation of awe or influence. . . . `'

That is what is at stake here. H.R. 51 is bad, according to the Founders, but it also violates the 23rd Amendment. That is clear as well.

It is time that the Democrats realize it and quit trying this power grab and vote this thing down.

Madam Speaker, if this bill passes, the President may only act if the Secretary of State allows him to act, and that is backward. The Secretary of State should not be authorized in statute to tell the President, the Secretary of State's boss, that the President may act. It is antithetical to the executive powers as set forth in the United States Constitution.

Let me say that again. H.R. 1333 gives the authority to initiate a suspension of entry not to the President but to the Secretary of State in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security.

But it is the President, in whom all executive power vests, who should determine whether to suspend entry and not just in consultation with or the permission of the State and Homeland Security Departments.

While we are discussing this, we have a crisis on our border, a crisis created by this President. For months, he refused to acknowledge the crisis. When he accidentally slipped and said it was a crisis, we were later told he didn't really mean it was a crisis.

Well, here is the deal. You are housing illegal aliens in hotels. That is the kind of crisis this has become. The situation is so bad that the Biden administration has reopened and expanded facilities to house illegal aliens who have surged across the border.

President Biden inherited a secure border and policies that were working and, instead, has created an inhumane border crisis.

If he wants to solve the crisis, he needs to finish construction of the wall; reinstate the migrant protection protocols; reinstate the asylum cooperative agreements with Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador; and remove the other incentives to come, like $1,400 from the COVID package that was just recently passed.

He can bring it under control, but the best way to bring it under control is to move immigration judges to the southern border to deal with asylum cases that are occurring today, not the backlog. Those people are already in here. Deal with those cases today.

Getting back to this bill, it is representative of an executive branch that is willing to give over and cede Presidential authority to Cabinet members instead of the President himself. This bill should not be passed. It should not even be considered.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

When I hear that, oh, this bill simply is just trying to give a phone call, well, then why didn't it say that? Why didn't it say that in the bill? It didn't say that. It talks about access to an attorney. I am an attorney. I did court-appointed attorney work. I did it all the time.

Madam Speaker, this may not give someone a court-appointed attorney, but what it does is, you open it up. If Democrats don't think that consumes resources, then I just wonder if Democrats have ever been to a port of entry and watched people coming through and seen the secondary inspection process.

This is going to bog down your ports of entry, and it is going to lead to litigation. This is a trial lawyer's blessing, a trial lawyer's dream, I can tell you that, because that is what is going to happen. There are going to be mistakes made, and even if there aren't mistakes made, there are going to be lawsuits.

This is not designed to facilitate border ingress and egress. This is not designed to help commercial traffic. This is going to bog down our system.

While that is going on, Democrats say this is not going to be a problem. It will redirect and redeploy Border Patrol agents and Customs agents to deal with this. That means it is going to really slow things down, and everyone knows what that means. That means that all the people who are coming are going to have an even wider open field.

In February, over 101,000 aliens were encountered. In March, over 172,000 aliens were encountered at the border. The number is going up. It is not going down. It is going up. Do you know why? Because the policies of this administration draw people in. They have done absolutely nothing to slow this down.

Madam Speaker, do you know what the number one most important thing would be? How about the President of the United States of America stand up and say: No. We will send you back. Our border is closed. If you want to come in, come in legally through the ports of entry.

How about doing that? Well, he has not done that. That is why you see people showing up with Biden campaign T-shirts on the border. That is why the Mexican President said this is Biden's border crisis. That is why the El Salvador President has expressed the same. And that is what Border Patrol agents also understand.

Ranchers and people in my district and those who live on the border, that is why they will say: This is Biden's problem. He created it. He inherited a solution and created a crisis.

The person who he has tapped to lead the efforts to address this surge at the border has been all over the place, just hasn't been at the border.

Madam Speaker, this individual has not been to the border once, but the solutions are not a mystery.

President Biden has to stand up and make a statement: You have to continue construction of the wall; reinstate the MPP program; reinstate the 12 international agreements that were in place that were slowing this down. That would have stopped it. The last thing is, move your asylum courts down to the border to deal with current asylum cases.

Madam Speaker, I object.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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