Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from Wisconsin, Chairman Steil, for his incredible work on this, his leadership, his friendship, and making sure that we are here today and getting this done. It has been a partnership I have been happy to engage in.

I am proud of the legislation that we put forward.

Let me say that again to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle: I am proud of the legislation that we put forward. It is, in fact, good legislation.

Let's back up 1 minute and talk about the problem. Right here, according to data I have got right now, 11,000 trades totaling between $600 million and $900 million of legislators over the last year.

We have got one Member, a Democrat, $79 million of 406 trades; one man, a Republican, $75 million on 1,000 trades. A Democrat, $55 million on 3,923 trades.

I could keep going on a bipartisan basis. I want to make clear that it is a bipartisan problem.

I want to take a minute to say that we should recognize the bipartisan nature of the work that it took to get here, even though there is some disagreement here now.

I have got friends on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Morelle, Seth Magaziner, and others I have been working with closely to try to advance this cause, and I want to thank them because they have worked in good faith to try to address this issue.

I want to be clear to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I have often heard excuses. It says: I have a right to trade equities. I have a right to trade stocks. Let me be very clear: You do not have that right. There is no such right guaranteed in the Constitution.

It is a privilege to serve in the United States Congress. When you come to Congress, you are supposed to set that aside. You are supposed to come here and serve. You come here for 2 years, 4 years, 6 years, 8 years--preferably not 40. You set down your personal interests, and you serve.

Unfortunately, a lot of Members have been violating the spirit of that. That is why we are here today. We passed legislation in 2012 that made a lot of this transparent.

Today, we have legislation on the floor that I am proud of, that would stop the ability of Members of Congress to acquire equities and would have significant transparency and presale requirements before you can sell equities you hold.

Yes, I had legislation that would have required divestiture. I prefer that approach, but you have to build a coalition in a body. I think this is a giant step forward.

I wish my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and my colleagues on this side of the aisle would recognize that and praise it. If we did that, it would be night and day in this body if people were not allowed to acquire Microsoft while you are voting on technology; acquire Lockheed when you are voting on Defense; acquire pharma or Big Insurance when you are voting on healthcare policies when you are supposed to be focusing on the American people and not focusing on your portfolio. That is where we should be as a body.

I am proud that we are bringing this legislation forward today. I hope that everybody will support it, regardless of which side of the aisle you are on.

Obviously, I am the lead author also of the SAVE America Act. That legislation has been offered on the back of this bill. I think my colleagues on the other side of the aisle should support it. I don't think they are supporting it for a lot of political reasons. I am not going to debate that here because right now we are talking about this bill addressing stock trading.

I will say one thing that I think merits being said: I think we should be having a straight up-or-down vote on this stock trading bill. That is what I think. I think my friends who worked in good faith to do that deserve that on both sides of the aisle. I am going to end up voting for this because I support both measures. I am not done this year demanding that we have a straight up-or-down vote on stock trading. You can't, whether you are on this or that side of the aisle, hide behind the SAVE America Act for your opposition to what we need to do to change the culture of this institution.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Steil and my friends who I worked with on this.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman from Florida for his strong work on making reforms to this appropriations package. He did it in the previous Congress last year. He is doing it

again this year. There have been a number of significant reforms that he deserves credit for, and I wanted that to be clear when I am offering amendments to change the text.

I would note there are still things in the appropriations process that I am not fond of using taxpayer money for, and the United Nations is one of those things.

The amendment that I am offering here would prohibit any funds in the bill from being made available to the United Nations at all.

The bill continues to fund millions of dollars for the United Nations, despite longstanding concerns over anti-Israel bias, corruption, peacekeeper misconduct, institutional failure, and ways in which the United Nations operates on a regular basis in direct contradiction to the interests of the United States. That is undeniably true for observers of the United Nations, particularly over the last couple of decades and in recent years.

When you are a nation that is $40 trillion in debt, when you are a nation that is trying to figure out how to fund the basics of government and find the dollars that we need to secure the Nation with a strong defense, to modernize our military, to ensure border security, all the things that we need to do while we are still racking up debt to the tune of--by the way, paying for interest on the debt to the tune of over a trillion dollars a year, spending more on interest than we are on our own national defense, it strikes me as an inappropriate use of taxpayer money to continue to send that money to an entity that has been working in such negative ways with respect to our interests as a nation.

Again, I applaud the chairman for all of his great work on things like UNRWA, working in collaboration with me and others on trying to remove that funding--it was very important--the United Nations Human Rights Council abomination, the United Nations Population Fund, other things that I know that the gentleman has been working on.

To be very clear, I am not trying to impugn the bill in any way from that perspective. I just wish to go further.

I think it is important that we pull the funds from an entity operating against our interests. It has repeatedly failed to earn the confidence of the American people. It has stood up in solidarity with the worst and most evil countries in the world against our interests and dared to wag their finger at the United States, built on the back of our funding and generosity and, by the way, real estate, to give them a platform to target us and to target our interests, in addition to constantly and consistently going after our friends in Israel.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I note that it is just not enough for us to say that they can do better. This is an organization that has too often allowed terrorist infiltration within its own entities and sided with terrorist organizations directly against us and our allies. I have seen repeated reports of misconduct involving United Nations peacekeeping operations and too little accountability for those failures.

We act as if the United States is not capable of working on unilateral, bilateral, and other bases to be able to do all the great things we want to do around the world.

My dad is a polio survivor. There are a lot of things that we can do to try to make sure we are eradicating these things around the world. We don't necessarily need a bureaucratic organization that its entire organizational structure and bias is structured against us, despite the fact that we fund the overwhelming majority of its operations.

The United Nations has been operating against our interests. We are asking American taxpayers to continue to take those dollars and give them to an entity that has, in its open statements to the world, been against our interests so many times, time and time again, including siding with some of the worst countries on the Human Rights Council and the biggest abusers of human rights. The United Nations is put and exalted as somehow being those that we should listen to rather than the United States.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I urge adoption of the amendment to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent on advancing American interests, not funding institutions that too often work against them. We are wholly prepared as a nation to be able to address these issues and concerns. You say, what will happen? China, Russia, and the rest of the world fear the United States. They do not fear the United Nations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is false.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I say no. I say no.

Well, Chip, that is a controversial opinion.

I don't think so.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This President did that.

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

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

These are all things that require actual leadership.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is the truth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's defund the sanctuary jurisdictions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why are we allowing this to occur?

It is insane.

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

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

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

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

Let's rapidly develop nuclear power.

Let's pass strong permitting reform.

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

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

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

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

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

Of course, we are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are we going to pay for it?

How are we going to pay for it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is why. It is the money.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's not empower government to police speech.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 33 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, June 25, 2026, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the 2026 Service Academy Appointees from the 21st Congressional District of Texas.

I include in the Record the names of the following individuals who have accepted Academy Appointments:

Cecilia Rose Burris, Fr. Joseph T. O'Callahan School, Fort

Sam Houston, Texas, United States Military Academy; Zachary

Allan Jaster, Smithson Valley High School, New Braunfels,

Texas, United States Military Academy; Marlee Beatrice

Lightsey, Canyon High School, New Braunfels, Texas, United

States Military Academy; Jacob Lee Olson, Bracken Christian

School, Bulverde, Texas, United States Military Academy;

Mason Alexander Sutton, Geneva School of Boerne, Boerne,

Texas, United States Military Academy; Wes Thomas Anderson,

Dripping Springs High School, Dripping Springs, Texas, United

States Naval Academy; Michael Reid Poole, Westlake High

School, Austin, Texas, United States Naval Academy; Brandon

Ells Tragord, Alamo Heights High School, San Antonio, Texas,

United States Naval Academy; Catherine Kennedy Drummond,

Westlake High School/Georgia Military College, Austin, Texas,

United States Air Force Academy; Karina Deylen Mendivil,

Madison High School, San Antonio, Texas, United States Air

Force Academy; and Javan Warren Bammel Penniman, New

Braunfels Christian Academy, New Braunfels, Texas, United

States Air Force Academy.

These outstanding students have much to contribute to their chosen Academy and to our country. We appreciate their talents and their patriotism.

I hope my colleagues in the House of Representatives will join me in congratulating these truly heroic young men and women.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for his time.

I appreciate my colleagues on both sides of this debate and where they are coming from. I understand my friends who come from States that want support for farming. We all want to make sure that we are figuring that out. We worked through the farm bill. I just think we ought to be going about this a different way.

If we need to do something to support farmers, let's have a direct conversation about it. Expanding E15 is just the wrong direction to go. It is going to harm refiners. It is going to drive up the cost of gas. I think it is going to drive up the price of energy, generally. It is, in fact, a mandate. It is an expansion of the mandate. That is what the practical effects of it will be.

Truthfully, I have no problem if you want to pull back on the Clean Air Act in terms of what it does with respect to the E15 requirement in the summer, but then let's modify the Renewable Fuel Standard.

We have created this botched system. We are making it massively difficult for refining capacity to grow in the United States. We are not actually solving the problem here. What we are doing instead is trying to put a Band-Aid on it, which expands the mandate. It doesn't fix the Renewable Fuel Standard, which is the core of the problem. It is trying to backdoor into farm subsidies while doing it on the back of our energy and gas policy.

Mr. Speaker, this bill should go to committee. This bill should be amended and debated. We shouldn't be putting it on the floor right now. It is not ready for prime time. I am going to oppose the legislation, and I hope my colleagues will, too.

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to take up too much time, given that I believe we are trying to expedite this and move forward.

We are in agreement on what we want to do to fund the Department of Homeland Security that we are going to fund here now, but the idea that we are isolating Border Patrol and isolating ICE is offensive to the men and women who serve in ICE and Border Patrol and are serving this country every single day to defend the people of this country.

It is absolutely ridiculous that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have done this to those men and women. I want everybody who is watching to understand what is happening here right now. While we are all unified in funding the rest of DHS, we are absolutely horrified that we are blowing up the appropriations process to target those brave men and women who are doing the Lord's work to keep us safe from cartels, from dangerous actors, and from illegal aliens across the streets of America that have been endangering the American people.

Mr. Speaker, it is nice to have the gentleman from Maryland on the pro-warrant side of this conversation this go-round.

I will note that there was a significant amount of abuses by the previous President with respect to the amount of focus on the American people using FISA and the abuses therein.

I hope we can achieve a bipartisan consensus here on how we reform this regardless of who is in the White House and regardless of who controls Congress. We need to do that in defense of the Constitution.

The reason I rise in opposition is because this body, this House, spoke and sent a bill to the Senate that has reforms that our Intelligence Committee chair worked on and a number of people worked on. We had reforms on there to stop the central bank digital currency. We sent it to the Senate, and they didn't even give it a vote. They didn't even put it on the floor for consent. They just said: Stuff it. We are going to send you a 45-day extension.

By the way, 45 days, which takes it to June 12, which some of us several weeks ago said: Let's do a 60-day extension and let's sit down and work, like the gentleman from Maryland said. That is what we ought to do.

We should go to committee. We should have a full-throated debate in committee. We should amend it. We should have a debate about warrants. We should have a debate about protecting the American people from the abuse of power by government.

My colleague from Texas, my friend over here, Mr. Cloud, he came into a meeting and he said the intel community never walks in, ever, saying: We have all of this power to collect information. Oh, we are going to give it back.

That never happens. The only way that happens is if we act, if this body acts, the people's Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, the question I would ask is: How much warrantless surveillance, how much spying on American citizens should we allow? How much? How much is acceptable? Because right now we know for sure there is warrantless collection of information on the American people.

We have other issues we have got to deal with: the kill switch, surveillance in automobiles, central bank digital currency, tracking what we spend, how we spend it, and what we can buy.

This body ought to be defending the people of the United States against the power of government being used against us. Under no circumstances should we allow technology to breach the wall that the Fourth Amendment created that the government is not supposed to go through to get into your personal business, to get into your homes, to look at your information, and to breach the privacy that you are guaranteed to not have the Fourth Amendment break.

I rise in opposition to this. We should move forward and actually try to get actual debate on this. But I do not accept what the Senate is doing to step over what the House did earlier. The Senate should take up that bill and pass it.

Mr. Speaker, the reason I asked for the gentleman to yield to me is precisely the response we just heard.

Do you know what really the problem is, Mr. Speaker?

People want to get home to fundraisers. People want to get home to dinners. People want to go back to their districts and go on trips. They have codels.

Meanwhile, the American people are wondering: What on Earth is happening in this town?

Mr. Speaker, the American people are wondering: What on Earth is happening when they look at this body and see what we failed to do.

We are continuing every single day to drive this entire country into bankruptcy: $40-trillion debt, government spying on the people, failure to stop government spying on the people, kill switches in cars, and failure to stop sugar drinks going to children on the SNAP program voted by both sides of the aisle.

We go home, and the American people say: What are you doing?

Well, here we sit, and the response here is: Please let us get on our flights so we can go home and be away for 10 days while the country suffers because this body doesn't do its job.

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1189 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

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

Madam Speaker, last night, the Rules Committee met and produced a rule providing for consideration of four pieces of legislation.

The rule provides for consideration of H. Res. 1182, expressing support for rural communities across the United States, under a closed rule, with 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce or their respective designees.

The rule further provides for consideration of H.R. 4690, the Reliable Federal Infrastructure Act, under a closed rule, with 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce or their respective designees and provides for one motion to recommit.

The rule also provides for consideration of H.R. 5587, the HEATS Act, under a closed rule with 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Natural Resources or their respective designees and provides for one motion to recommit.

The rule also provides for consideration of H.R. 1897, the ESA Amendments Act, under a closed rule with 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Natural Resources or their respective designees and provides for one motion to recommit.

Now, Madam Speaker, as the House of Representatives works to deliver on critical issues for the American people, we urge our colleagues to pass this suite of bills that I just described.

As I already talked about, we have a resolution to support our Nation's rural communities. We have legislation to unlock geothermal energy. We have legislation to repeal burdensome energy mandates on Federal buildings, and we have a fix to the Endangered Species Act.

Now, I anticipate some of the arguments my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will make, and I would just note something that is critically important, this is going to raise issues about why we are bringing up a resolution, for example, with regard to support for our rural communities.

The fact is, if you look at what has been happening over the last 16 months, you will see that the Republican House of Representatives has led on numerous issues, issue after issue, month after month.

We started this Congress by passing legislation, the Laken Riley Act, to ensure that we can have adequate and full enforcement by ICE and by our Border Patrol men and women who are securing our country, by improving that law to ensure that people can be adequately removed.

Importantly, it included the sue act which will allow States, such as my home State of Texas, to be able to defend our homes by suing the Federal Government when it fails to secure the border, as occurred under the previous President and the previous Secretary of Homeland Security.

Fast-forward to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a piece of legislation that made permanent tax rates so that we can have growth and economic opportunity for the American people, lower taxes for millions of Americans to ensure that we can actually grow this economy and compete worldwide.

We had legislation in that bill that removed some of the onerous subsidies that were undermining reliable energy in Texas and around the country with the green new scam subsidies that were making energy more expensive for the American people.

We had reforms to our programs, whether it was Medicaid or whether we are talking about food stamps. By the way, those reforms are probably going to make it easier for us to move a farm bill in the coming weeks.

We had significant resources that were put aside for our defense, to modernize our military after it languished under the previous administration, and we had language that is enabling us to fund ICE and Border Patrol right now, which brings me to my final point.

What we have been able to pass has been hitting a wall, a wall in the Senate, of Democrats who refuse to do the job the American people sent us here to do. We had over 40 days of shutdown in the fall, 40 days where we had to deal with the lack of pay and resources for the people who defend our country, including TSA at airports. We are currently in over 60 days of shutdown of

our Homeland Security operations, which we are using funds that we had the foresight to put forward to be able to use to backfill in order to keep operations going to fund Border Patrol and ICE, to fund TSA, to fund the Coast Guard, and to fund FEMA when our colleagues on the other side of the aisle refused to do it. This is what we are dealing with every single day in the United States Congress.

Consequently, yes, we are going to be able to tell the American people and have a resolution for the people in rural communities, that we are passing legislation that benefits them, that enables them to have more affordable energy, that enables them to be able to have lower taxes, and to be able to provide better homes for their families.

What we aren't going to do is allow Democrats to be able to get past or allow them to get away with shutting down our ability to do our job in this country, and that is precisely what they have been doing.

We are going to move legislation this week that is going to provide greater energy resources by harnessing energy and thermal sources. We are eliminating permitting restrictions and making it easier to do that.

We are going to put forward the Reliable Federal Infrastructure Act, where we have got barriers to our ability to have reliable energy to provide energy for our Federal buildings, and the ESA Amendments Act, which makes dramatically needed and necessary improvements to the Endangered Species Act, which has been standing in the way of our ability to provide energy and to provide greater freedom for the American people.

Madam Speaker, the Republican leadership and the Republican Conference in this House of Representatives have been fighting to deliver for the American people, and we have been obstructed by two things: our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and Democrats in the Senate who are using an artificial 60-vote threshold to deny the American people the ability for us to have the changes that they sent us here to Washington to do.

We are going to continue to go down this road. This week is another step in going down this road, and that is why I am going to be urging my colleagues to support this rule and to support the legislation that we put forward under the rule.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, I note my colleague invoked that we could be down here debating, for example, immigration. Well, this Republican House has stood up to defend our borders and defend this President and defend this administration's active enforcement of our laws at the border of the United States in the face of willful resistance by Democrats who refuse to fund it.

That is the actual truth. We know this because we are now in day 63 or something to that effect or higher than 60 days of a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security after enduring over 40 days shutdown in the fall.

Republicans are having to move money around in order to pay our men and women in Border Patrol and ICE so that they can do their job and be able to fund TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle say we keep offering amendments and bills to fund it. No. They have rejected our bills to fund the entirety of the Department of Homeland Security because they are trying to keep it hostage for political purposes.

This Republican Congress, as I said, passed the Laken Riley Act. This Republican Congress, as I said, passed funds in the big, beautiful bill last summer to ensure that we can secure the border of the United States. This Republican Congress has been backing up the President and Department of Homeland Security in doing the job that Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas would not do.

Now, we see the ramifications of this in continuation as we see Americans losing their lives while people are in our country who should not be. There was a woman in Florida, a mother, who walked out of the convenience store because her car was being destroyed by a Haitian who had come here and was operating under a temporary program. This individual bludgeoned this American to death, this mother, with a hammer in front of the convenience store, and I am met with utter silence from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I am met with utter silence while we tried to ensure that we fund the men and women responsible for securing us against these individuals.

Now we are having to figure out how to backdoor find a way to fund these important, core constitutional responsibilities in defending the United States of America because our Democratic colleagues refuse to do it. They refuse and are willing to create chaos for the American people and endanger the American people for crass political purposes.

The American people observe this. They know this. They see what we are doing and, yes, we are going to move important legislation this week, critical legislation this week to do what our Democratic colleagues also do not want to do: free up the American entrepreneur to produce energy for the American people. We are getting barriers and regulations out of the way. We are getting barriers and regulations, obstacles that stand in the way of people who actually know how to produce energy.

As a Texan, I know what that looks like. I have had to fight and deal with the abuse of the Endangered Species Act to prevent the ability of us to be able to have frac sand and to be able to go out and produce the energy and the oil and gas that we need, that right now is providing the independence that gives us the freedom to not be reliant on people around the world.

That is what we are doing this week. That is what we have been doing for the last 16 months. There is one obstacle for the American people's prosperity, and that is the Democratic Party.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, I note that there are three pieces of legislation that are coming to the floor that will make meaningful differences for the American people.

The Harnessing Energy At Thermal Sources Act is adding to a laundry list of things that we have done over the last 15 or 16 months to try to free up energy production in the United States. It amends the Geothermal Steam Act to streamline the permitting processes. A constant theme is the barriers to the American people being able to go out through their entrepreneurial spirit and produce energy that is affordable. In many instances, it makes dramatic improvements in terms of its cleanliness.

Currently, geothermal operators on non-Federal land that produces any quantity of Federal resources, like federally owned mineral estates, must comply with permitting, even if the Federal share of the mineral estate is trivial.

This would alleviate that burden and others by clarifying that the geothermal exploration or production on non-Federal lands is not subject to NEPA, the ESA, or the National Historic Preservation Act permitting processes. It doesn't change anything specific to our ability to produce them and the royalty structures, and it keeps in place important safeguards while allowing geothermal to be built out.

Madam Speaker, these are important, important changes for the people out there trying to produce them. We act like this is trivial. We act like this isn't a big deal for the ability of the American people to have affordable energy and for our business leaders to be able to go out and produce alternative energy sources.

The Reliable Federal Infrastructure Act repeals a 2007 mandate that Federal buildings reduce their use of fossil fuels by 2030 by, I think, 90 percent. These mandates came at a time when we thought that the United States would run out of oil.

Obviously, we had the shale revolution. We have the ability to be able to produce significant cleaner energy in the production of natural gas. We need reliable energy to be able to keep our buildings operating.

An overreliance on subsidized, unreliable wind and solar, including in my home State of Texas, has created difficulties with having reliability on the grid and, in many instances, has not produced any of the so-called improvements in terms of green energy that were promised.

We want to reduce those barriers, reduce the burdens, and be able to ensure that we are able to proceed.

Madam Speaker, the final point is the ESA Amendments Act of 2025. The ESA Amendments Act of 2025 makes the first major reform to the broken Endangered Species Act.

Again, as I mentioned before, working with businesses in Texas, we have had numerous issues where that has been a major barrier to our ability to be able to get energy in production.

In the 50 years since the ESA was signed, only 3 percent of the listed species have ever recovered. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't be working and finding ways to make sure that we can protect certain species, but we often are listing certain species that aren't going to have a chance of recovery and that are actually used as a weapon and a tool of the left to stop the ability of us to be able to produce affordable energy for the American people.

The American people sit at home wondering why they can't afford goods and services, can't afford cars, can't afford energy, can't afford to be able to pay for their families. It is almost always tied back to the regulatory state and the burdens placed upon them by this body and by bureaucrats in this town.

What we have been trying to do for the last 16 months is unwind even just a fraction of those burdens. Yet we are met with constant resistance by our colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

I know that we talk about gas prices and how they are at a point right now where we all want them to go down as we are dealing with the conflict with Iran, but they were $6 a gallon nationally under the previous administration. Now they are somewhere around $4 a gallon, and we want them to go down. We certainly can do that.

The best way to do that is to have massive production of oil and gas in the United States. We have tankers that are coming to the United States to get oil and gas. We have the ability to produce oil and gas if we get the regulatory climate such that they can do it, and that is what we are trying to do with this legislation.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire as to how much time each side has remaining.

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

Madam Speaker, I would note to my colleague from Colorado that the previous administration racked up a rather undistinguished list of antireliable energy policies and results. President Biden closed the Keystone XL pipeline on day one and rejoined the Paris Climate Accords, handicapping our industry.

In the final days of the administration, he used the stroke of a pen to grow a national monument by 85 percent and closed off thousands of acres to reliable energy production.

He closed off the Gulf of America to new oil and gas leasing. It is a decision thankfully reversed in the Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer. He singlehandedly paused the exportation of liquefied natural gas, recognizing that LNG has the ability to free up the rest of the world from reliance on numerous of our enemies around the globe, and to create wealth and jobs and opportunities in the United States.

Biden's Department of Commerce sought to limit how fast boats could go in certain waters because of the Endangered Species Act. NOAA also abused the Endangered Species Act to deny oil leases.

Meanwhile, we have bills on the floor this week to try to reverse those issues. We have been dedicated to passing energy reform for the last 16 months. Just last week, we sent a number of bills to reform the Clean Air Act. There is issue after issue, some of which are recounted in the resolution the gentleman seems so hung up on spending time worrying about, when we have bill after bill that we are passing, some of which have become law and passed through the Senate and gotten to the President, but many of which are hung up by a Democratic Senate obstructionist that has the inability to actually move anything because of an artificial 60-vote threshold.

That is the simple reality. We are being hamstrung by resistance to our ability to deliver on the things that the American people sent us here to deliver upon.

The gentleman brought up the issue with respect to, I suppose, the motion to recommit that would be offered and that was offered as an amendment last night in committee. I wholly recognize that, yes, I opposed that amendment and have opposed it before because I do not believe that we should fund a Department of Homeland Security specifically isolating and pulling out Border Patrol and ICE. I just don't believe we should do that. I think it is wrong. I think we are setting a bad precedent. I think we are setting up a structure in which we are going to start saying we are going to have X pieces of these important--by the way, these are core functions that defend our way of life, defend our community, and defend our country. We can have debates about their policies. I understand that my colleagues want to add riders and want to add changes and impact policies attached to the funding, but we are setting a terrible precedent by going down the road of saying we are going to carve out and say that we are not going to fund Border Patrol and ICE, which is the resistance. The American people understand that, because we have an obligation to fund all of the Department of Homeland Security. I believe that, and I think that is something that we should do. Whether we do that this way or whether we have to backdoor it through reconciliation, I am not sure I care. I think we should do it through appropriations, but I don't believe we ought to isolate it. We will see what the Senate does. We will see what the House does.

I am going to continue to stand up on the principle that Border Patrol and ICE should be funded fully through the appropriations process as the entire Department of Homeland Security should, whether it is FEMA, TSA, and every other function like Coast Guard, but that we should do it together: debate the policy, offer amendments on it, and move on.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I would note that the reason that the former President's name comes up is because the lingering impacts of the previous administration continue. I mean, I already mentioned you have got the mother in Florida, but I can mention dozens and hundreds of examples of American citizens that have died as a result of people who were let in under the previous administration's policies, people who have died here today in America, policies we are trying to reverse and that we are trying to enforce against.

The lingering effects are fairly profound. I can assure you that the American citizens getting killed at the hands of criminals allowed into our country by the previous administration do not take solace in the fact that we now have a new administration, yet that administration is being hamstrung by virtue of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle's unwillingness to fund the very entities that try to stop the danger and the attacks on the American people.

That is what this is all about. That is what this all boils down to.

Again, I can assure you that the people I represent, the people I talk to across the State of Texas, are thrilled with tax cuts. They are thrilled with regulatory relief. They are thrilled with our actions in Venezuela. They are thrilled that we are reestablishing our strength in the Western Hemisphere and around the globe. They are thrilled that we are standing up to the cartels. They are thrilled that we designated the cartels as terrorists. They are thrilled that we stopped the flow at the border. They are thrilled that we have been enforcing the law and removing dangerous aliens. They are thrilled that our military has the highest recruitment and the highest enlistment in a generation because people actually believe in our country again. They are thrilled in the direction that this administration and this Congress wants to go, and they recognize that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are throwing up barrier after barrier

after barrier to be able to carry out the fundamental function of government, which is to defend the United States, defend our border, and do our job.

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 yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would note that we are talking about rural America. Last summer, when we passed the largest tax savings for the American people in history, it included significant savings with respect to the death tax that cripples American farmers, and not a single one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle supported that.

We advanced that legislation. We advanced that tax reduction so that American farmers can pass down their farms to the next generation without having to give it up because of the burden of Federal Government.

My colleague invoked the Founders, that they couldn't imagine we would be here having this discussion. I, in fact, think that the Founders would be quite pleased to see us on the floor reversing the regulatory state and reversing the burdens being placed on the American people that are limiting their ability to do what God gave them the ability to do.

That is what we are doing with respect to getting these barriers in the Endangered Species Act: the energy mandates on the Federal buildings, putting us into unreliable power rather than reliable power, and allowing ourselves to have geothermal production without barriers that stand in the way of the American people doing what they do best.

That is absolutely what the Founders would have envisioned us doing on the floor of the House of Representatives. I am proud to be doing that. I am proud of what we have been doing the last 16 months.

As I said before, the people whom I talk to when I go home to Texas are thrilled that our border is secure. They are thrilled our enlistments are up with our military. They are thrilled we are standing up to cartels. They are thrilled we are removing bad actors in this country.

They are thrilled we are removing the bureaucratic state. They are thrilled we are firing Federal bureaucrats. They are thrilled we held flat spending for discretionary spending for the last 3 years. They are thrilled that we have tried to make sure that we have money aside to be able to do what our Democratic colleagues refuse to do.

Today, I urge adoption of this rule, a rule to put forth legislation that will help the American people in the face of opposition from my colleagues here.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

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

part of an organization called the House Freedom Caucus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

arrows in defense of something bigger than ourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from California for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I would note the starting place here. In 2010, Haitians were granted temporary status--temporary--after a severe earthquake struck their country. Since then, thousands of foreign nationals from Haiti have remained in the United States due to the renewal of this flawed program. Over and over again, that which was supposed to be temporary has become, effectively, permanent.

I have heard a lot of numbers flying around here talking about the number of Haitians, 350,000, on TPS who will be taken out of healthcare. It is a fraction of that number that is actually in healthcare. Let's be honest.

My friend from Texas (Mr. Gill) noted earlier that 65 percent of the population is on welfare.

Mr. Speaker, 65 percent of the population that came in here under a temporary status is now living off of the taxpayer dollars of American taxpayers because we continue this flawed program.

Let's also talk about the reality that we have 91 percent of all Haiti TPS holders enter the country illegally, deliberately violating our immigration laws, and are now using TPS status to stay in the United States. This is not what this program was designed to do.

Now, I heard one of my colleagues a minute ago talk about Haitians fleeing danger. You know who else was fleeing danger? A mom, an innocent mom in Florida, just last week, who was brutally bludgeoned to death with a hammer outside a convenience store when her car was being beat up by a Haitian here because of Biden and on TPS. That woman, that mother, she was fleeing danger, the danger of a Haitian migrant here using this flawed TPS program that we are now going to allow to be made effectively permanent, undermining what the President is doing to try to stop the abuse of this program to continue to flood the United States with people that are living on the back of American taxpayers and endanger the American people.

How many more Americans do we need to see get murdered? How many more young girls on a subway in Charlotte? How many moms, like this mom in Florida, need to get bludgeoned to death because we refuse to do our job to ensure that the people that are coming to this country are coming here to become a part of our society, to follow our laws, to be a part of the melting pot that we so revere, rather than come here, trying to turn America into something that it is not, and exploit our goodwill to endanger the American people?

This is a flawed bill. It should not be supported by anyone in either party.

Mr. Speaker, let's be clear about why we are here. Our Democrat colleagues created a national crisis by purposely allowing millions of people into the United States in violation of our laws, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.

People like Jocelyn Nungaray whose mom I talked to today, who is watching what is happening here in realtime. It is people like Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, and tens of thousands of our children who died from fentanyl poisoning, all created by purposeful, political decisions by the previous administration and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

Now, we sit here today and my colleagues falsely claim that CBP and ICE are funded. The fact is, first, line staff are being mostly funded by virtue of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but it leaves out civilian and support staff. That is the truth, factual truth.

Today, we had a quote from one of them. It says: The Senate bill paid TSA, but thousands of CBP and ICE professional staff will not be paid. The last paid workday for me was February 13. Now Senate on paid vacation until April 13. That is a guarantee for 2 months no pay. Very likely we won't be paid until May if Speaker Johnson lets this bill pass.

That is existing staff, watching what we are doing in realtime.

Second, not one, not one of my Democratic colleagues voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act they are hiding behind right now saying that the staff is paid. Not one.

Last night, yes, there was a voice vote in the middle of the night. This comment that somehow there was massive votes in support of this bill is simply not true.

There was a voice vote. The only, and I mean the only, barrier to getting funding for our law enforcement personnel and Border Patrol and ICE who are standing on the line to defend our country are five to seven Democrats in the Senate who refused to let the bill move through while allowing it to be filibustered at a 60-vote threshold.

Sheridan Gorman is dead, a student at Loyola, who was killed by Jose Medina, who was illegally present in the United States, who came in in 2023, and this just happened. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle do not want ICE doing their job, do not want Border Patrol doing their job, and are right here today refusing to do the job of funding this fully.

Mr. Speaker, I stand with Speaker Johnson. I stand with my colleagues. We should stand with Border Patrol. We should stand with ICE, and we should defend the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Texas, and I don't want to take up too much time. It has been a great hour. We have had a lot of good conversation. I appreciate the remarks from the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Fine.) He and my friend from Arizona outlined very well a lot of the concerns in addition to what my friend from Texas has done.

The fact is you cannot win a war that you do not acknowledge exists. Let's be very clear: There is a war being waged against Western civilization, against the United States of America, and against the State of Texas where I live. It is happening in real time, and it has been going on now for decades. In fact, go all the way back to the 1991 memorandum that was put forward by the Muslim Brotherhood with a number of provisions in it. The one I want to highlight is this: ``In order for Islam and its movement to become `a part of the homeland' in which it lives, `stable' in its land, `rooted' in the spirits and minds of its people, `enabled' in the lives of its society and has firmly- established `organizations' . . . its movement must plan and struggle to obtain `the keys' and the tools of this process to carry out the grand mission as a `Civilization Jihadist' responsibility which lies on the shoulders of Muslims and--on top of them--the Muslim Brotherhood in this country.

``The process of settlement is a `Civilization-Jihadist Process' with all the word means.''

I can keep going. This is organized. There are 600 organizations operating in this country and in Texas trying to drive the Islamification of the United States of America in direct conflict with our laws, our Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence.

This has been brought onto this country by our own actions as a government. Since 9/11, some 5-million people have been granted the ability to come into our country from majority Muslim countries, in a post 9/11 world after we were attacked.

In real time in Texas, we have more mosques being built in Texas than any other State in the Union. The problem here is that people are going to hide behind the First Amendment to say this is something that is protected by carrying out your exercise of free expression of your religion and carrying out your rights under the First Amendment.

What I am here to tell you is that this, by what I just read and by every action that I have seen in concert with this memorandum, is a political ideology that is designed to attack and take over our civilization and to carry out the civilization Jihad that I just described.

Mr. Speaker, it is for this reason that we have this Sharia-Free America Caucus. It is for this reason that we are gathering to highlight for the American people what is happening right now in real time such that if you look at Paris and London and you think that is somehow acceptable, then you are misguided because they are losing their way. So much so that I have said repeatedly that we should be as concerned about a nuclearized United Kingdom and as concerned about nuclearized France as we are a nuclearized Iran. It is coming to the shores of the United States, and it is here.

Mr. Speaker, this past weekend in Austin, Texas, near where I live, we had a tragedy where an individual shot a bunch of Austonians, including several University of Texas students, at a bar on what we call West Sixth Street, in an area that I frequented often when I was in law school, a little less often these days. But it is an area that is a fairly normal place for people to go, not generally perceived as dangerous.

This past Saturday night, early Sunday morning, even as I believe I was returning home from the San Antonio Rodeo, or I had been there, I wake up in the morning to find out that there were three people who had been killed, one of whom was the shooter, and then later a fourth person would die, a third victim.

It was an unnecessary, senseless act. It is compounded by not just normal violence, but why this individual was here in the first place.

I think we have got to wrestle with some serious questions about who we allow into this country and why. The individual who killed these students--by the way, there were multiple others who were shot having surgeries. One young woman, a young student, was shot multiple times in her abdomen, and another young man who was shot in his head. It was not just the three dead victims. Other people were hurt. Other people were traumatized by it.

The individual who did it was wearing a ``Property of Allah'' sweatshirt, had a Koran in the back seat of the car that he had traveled in, was wearing an Iranian flag T-shirt under the ``Property of Allah'' sweatshirt.

What we know about him is that he came here from Senegal in 2000, overstayed his visa.

In 2006, he obtains LPR, or legal permanent residency status, under the Bush administration--I am going to be an equal opportunity basher of administrations who have failed to secure our border properly--and did so on the back of supposedly a marriage to an American citizen.

Fast forward to 2012, under Obama, he gets full citizenship, which Obama was handing out like candy, and then tries to get LPR status for two additional women, allegedly women he was marrying. I don't know whether in succession or at the same time. All I know is he was trying to do that.

Fast forward, he was arrested for a hit-and-run alleged in 2022.

My fundamental question is: Why are we importing people who are deeply at odds with the values of our country and Western civilization? Why are we doing that? Why have we done that exponentially in the wake of the attacks of 9/11/2001?

It doesn't make any sense. This is avoidable. This man didn't need to be in the United States who does not share our values and clearly was interested in serving his convictions for Iran and radical Islamism more than his commitment to this country, peace, and our rule of law.

I am going to have more to say about that, but related to this topic, I am proud to be the cofounder, alongside my friend and fellow Texan, Keith Self, a veteran, a great public servant, longtime public servant, a great friend, who shares my conviction--I won't speak for him, but shares my conviction for ensuring we defend our values, our Western civilization, the rule of law in our country; that we stand up against the Islamist movement, putting sharia law forward in direct conflict with our laws.

I know my friend has a limited time, so I would like to yield some time to him to speak on this subject that concerns us both so greatly.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my good friend from Texas (Mr. Self).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend who has very well laid out the extraordinary problem we have as a country if we allow sharia law to take root. People say, well, yeah, just dismiss it. It is not a big deal. This is just a problem in Europe. You hear that all the time. Is that right?

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, the fact is that it is a real problem here. It is not just Dearborn, Michigan, where some people get some headlines. It is not just New York City, where you now have Mayor Mamdani and prayer calls in the middle of Manhattan. We have--and I will let the gentleman expand upon it--300-plus mosques, and more mosques being built every year in the State of Texas than any other State in the Union.

We have EPIC City, which you can comment about, in your own backyard. We have a massive Islamic center in Houston, a massive Islamic center north of Austin, and an Islamic center in West Campus.

You say: Chip, why is that a problem?

People can believe what they want to believe. They can build these things.

These entities are expressly putting out and advancing Islamism consistent with the plan laid out by the Muslim Brotherhood in accordance with some 600 organizations designed to do it, to put a footprint here that is ideological and political and designed to take over our country.

Would the gentleman agree?

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Is the gentleman familiar with areas in and around the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, even nearby his own district in places like Richardson, in places like Arlington, and a little farther away in other areas, that some of our Texas women in particular, and generally, believe to be no-go zones? There are areas where they are increasingly feeling uncomfortable as if they are somehow immersed in the Middle East, in areas that do not share our values of equality, of treating people respectfully the same as peers, and where some of our women feel uncomfortable?

Is the gentleman familiar that that is the case, in fact, in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, from what we understand?

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

One last point, because I get it thrown in my face quite frequently that our Founders would be appalled that we are raising these issues and questioning people's ability to carry out and practice their faith.

I know that the gentleman is a student of our history and the Constitution, and he is a student of military history. I am confident that he is well apprised of the engagement that Thomas Jefferson had with respect to the Barbary pirates and the Barbary wars.

When posed with the question that Jefferson posed: Well, why do you make war with us?

The response was, as the gentleman knows: Well, we are commanded to in the Koran.

To which Jefferson was fairly appalled, as you would expect him to be, Mr. Speaker. We had to carry out wars to make sure our shipping lanes were open and so forth.

I know the gentleman, who is a student of history, understands that that conflict was very clear and present even among our leaders as they were founding this Nation and the enlightenment that led to the First Amendment which we cherish, but the recognition of the direct conflict that the Islamic faith had, especially with respect to sharia law being carried out against our values and Western civilization?

Does the gentleman agree?

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I know the gentleman has to go to another engagement. I thank him for his leadership in working with me and cofounding the Sharia-Free America Caucus.

Do we now have 46?

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

We have 46 strong and growing.

I would invite colleagues on either side of the aisle to join. We should all be united in having a sharia-free America. It is inconsistent with our values.

I appreciate his leadership, I appreciate his public service, I appreciate his friendship, and I wish him well this evening.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I would just note that in addition to what we just talked about, there is this view that Europe is unique. Right now there are some 50 million Muslims who have now moved into Europe.

We now have got France approaching 10 percent of its population. We have the United Kingdom at 7 percent-plus of its population. In the United Kingdom we have 85 courts carrying out sharia law alongside the civilian courts. In Germany they have 7 to 8 percent of the population. Spain and Italy, and a good chunk of Western Europe, is now approaching 10 percent-plus Muslim.

The question now is: As we are having a battle with Iran to take out their nuclear capability, at what point are we going to be concerned about a nuclear France or a nuclear United Kingdom?

People say: Well, Chip, that is awfully controversial.

Is it? Is it really that controversial?

We have majority Muslim countries that are refusing to send their kids to schools in the United Kingdom because they believe that the schools there are teaching a radicalized Islam that is more radical than they have at home.

This is purposeful. This is being driven by the Muslim Brotherhood. This is not just happening in Europe. It is happening here, and but for an ocean, we would be Europe now. However, after the massively open borders under the Biden-Mayorkas regime, with the increasing shrinking of the globe, and with totally irresponsible wide-open borders and totally irresponsible ``legal'' immigration policies by this country, we are importing people who hate us and hate our values.

Why would we do that?

Someone explain to me why we would do that.

In the 25 years since 9/11 we have imported millions of people from countries that are diametrically opposed to our values.

Why? Why would we do that, and why would we continue?

I don't care what it is. I don't care if it is H-1B, and I don't care if it is tourist visas that people tend to overstay and we never enforce. We have massive and rampant abuse of our so-called legal immigration system, and I am sick and tired of hearing colleagues and, frankly, the administration, Republicans, generally Governors, who say: Oh, we love legal immigration. You just have to stop the illegal immigration.

Of course, we should stop the illegal immigration. It is the basic duty of government.

However, why would you continue massive, widespread legal immigration from countries that very heavily and largely oppose our way of life and want to transform it?

They do not wish to melt into the pot. They wish to take over the country and change it.

Stop doing that. This is common sense. But common sense was thrown out the window years ago.

Everybody lives in this touchy-feely nonsense bull that they were taught in school to say: Well, you know, you just have to open your doors to everybody. Have your porch open and have everybody come in.

Hold on.

Why would you let people in who want to undo what you have?

We have to have people who wish to come here to achieve the American Dream, who want to learn our language, conform with our laws and our

society, conform with our customs, conform with our heritage, celebrate and venerate our heritage, support In God We Trust, and accept our values.

We have Moses sitting right here overlooking the House Chamber. I am guessing that ``Mr. Property of Allah'' here, who shot up people in my town and killed students from the University of Texas and the Texas Tech student, would not be too excited about Moses overseeing our Chamber.

Look, we have to make choices. We have 53 million-ish people foreign born in the United States, almost 16 percent. It is the highest percentage of our population in history. In the 1920s--in 1924 specifically--Congress restricted immigration after a massive explosion of immigration in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

Now, let's also consider at the time that while there were differences in cultures--German, Czech, Italian, whatever-- predominantly, these were people who shared Western civilization values. They believed in our country, were going to schools that taught that our country was great, were going to schools that taught the Constitution, were going to schools that taught kids English.

At the time, we were trying to build a melting pot. Yet, even with that, we all recognized, whoa, whoa, whoa, maybe we need to pause immigration because we have had so many people come here, we need a little resettling to ensure that everybody here knows what being an American means.

For the better part of 40 years, we pretty much flatlined immigration, constrained it to negligible numbers. By the way, during that period, we ultimately were able to win a world war, ultimately have the baby boom post-World War II, and grew the economy.

Then sometime in the mid-1960s, we opened up the spigot, and we set forward now a 60-year march that has been a massive curve that has now exploded into the 21st century in which we have brought masses of population into our country, but now increasingly people who flatout do not share our values, and, worse, wish to eradicate our values and kill us.

Again, to my colleagues who like to yap on the House floor or on news media about how great legal immigration is, is this great? Is it?

Now, I want to say that I am not just making these numbers up. Since 2002, which astute observers of history will recognize was the year after 9/11, where 3,000 Americans were murdered by people who overstayed their visas, I would remind, all the friendly, oh, come join us melting pot folks who came over here on tourist visas that overstayed their visas and then flew airplanes into buildings.

Since then, the United States has issued 4.6 million green cards or lawful permanent status to nationals from Muslim-majority nations, allowing them to remain here indefinitely.

Now, I am sure there are some of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that will come down and say: Well, Chip, that is a good thing. Isn't that great, having people come here, diversity?

Well, is it?

There has been a 48 percent increase in green cards to these countries from 2002 to 2023 since 9/11: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mauritania, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Yemen.

I am doing that for the benefit of the stenographer.

Meanwhile, sharia is exploding. They say no, it is not. Yes, it is. We have story after story of how that is being meted out in communities around our country, not always formally, but certainly in the communities in direct contradiction to our Western values and our law.

We have actually had courts being propped up. For example, Governor Abbott in Texas had to go quash two courts that were being set up in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, which is why I am saying we should pause immigration.

I introduced legislation in November to do that. Let's just pause all immigration. We can allow tourist visas so long as we enforce visa overstays, but we shouldn't reopen the spigots on immigration until we have revamped our badly broken H-1B system, until we have revamped the entire visa system, until we vet people for sharia law or adherence to values inconsistent with ours, until we fix Plyler v. Doe, a wrongheaded Supreme Court opinion saying that we have to allow illegal aliens to be able to get educated here, until we fix our broken immigration system, which the next Democratic regime will exploit, as Secretary Noem testified to yesterday in the House committee, that that would assuredly occur if we do not codify changes to asylum, codify changes to parole, codify changes to catch and release, that it will happen, and we haven't done it.

By the way, the House hasn't even passed it this Congress. Why? Why haven't we passed it and sent it over to the Senate? Well, the Senate won't pass it. Well, we are hearing that about the SAVE America Act, too, right now, but why don't we just put more pressure on the Senate to do its job? Show up to work. Debate in the supposedly greatest deliberative body in the world in which they never actually deliberate.

When was the last time somebody saw a great speech on the floor of the Senate between two Senators, engaging in debate? The greatest deliberative body in the world? There is more deliberation in an average high school debate than the United States Senate.

I have offended a few Senators apparently by virtue of what a couple people said when I called it the nursing home and the Jell-O dispensary.

Well, forgive me. Not. Because you don't do anything. The Senate is nothing more in today's operation than the personnel office for the White House. That is it. By the way, it is not even doing that fully effectively.

Why haven't we passed the SAVE America Act in the Senate? Well, Chip, we don't have 60 votes. Does anybody know how the filibuster and the rules of the Senate actually work? Sixty votes is one mechanism for shutting off debate, but you actually have to have debate to turn off. Have the debate. Put it on the floor.

Oh, but they might offer amendments, and those amendments might be really tough votes for our Members. Well, hell's bells, you might have to vote on something in the United States Senate? Who could imagine the horror of running for office to become a vaunted United States Senator, and yet, oh, no, I might be forced to vote on something?

Heaven forbid that the United States Senate Republicans lock together, lock arms, have a strategy, and say, hey, why don't we just table all the amendments.

I serve on the Rules Committee here in the House. We get amendments every week, gamesmanship by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. They offer amendments to put us in a bad position, to run ads against us that we are somehow the Devil because we voted against puppies and children and whatever it is. Boo-hoo. Vote no, move on, put a message out, but the Senate won't do it because they are hiding.

The United States Senate is hiding behind a fake filibuster, a fake 60-vote threshold that is not real.

Put a bill on the floor of the Senate, allow it to be amended. Table the amendments, allow the speeches to go, make them sit there and speak, make them burn the clock, make them sit there for weeks on end, telling the American people how they oppose that only American citizens should vote in American elections, and that we should have voter ID to demonstrate you are who you are when you vote. Go sell that at home.

However, the Senate continues to hide, say we can't do that. We don't have 51 Senators. We don't want to upset the filibuster.

Chip, you are going to risk the filibuster. False. Fake news. We are saying use the real filibuster. Speak. Invite Mr. Smith to come back to Washington. Allow Mr. Smith to come into the Chamber and show you what a real filibuster is because it isn't keeping the Senate in a quorum call while you go to fundraisers and State dinners or go parade in front of the screens on the committees, come down to the Senate floor, have a few votes, and then fly back out after 2\1/2\ days of work in a week.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was on the floor of the Senate for 3 months, 3

months. They were 25 votes shy of the then-cloture vote to shut off debate.

Right now, we are--I don't know--10 votes shy. Put it on the floor and see what happens. Let's see how many phone calls come into Senators' offices. After a week, after 2 weeks, after 3 weeks, you could pull it off the floor if you have got to move something important like DHS funding if Democrats stop blocking the funding of Coast Guard, FEMA, TSA. This is not rocket science stuff, y'all, but the Senate refuses to fight.

The American people demand that we actually preserve the integrity of our elections. The American people believe that only American citizens should vote in American elections. They believe you should have voter ID. The Senate should act. The House should codify President Trump's executive orders, send them to the Senate, and then the Senate can do another talking filibuster.

Mr. Speaker, they might have to show up on the Senate floor and force work. All of these things are related: wide-open borders, crime rates, organizations that are funding it, the advance of sharia law and the Islamist movement in the United States. All of it is tied to large networks of Marxists and Islamists that are trying to remake the United States of America and undermine everything about our history, heritage, our rule of law, the Constitution, the Declaration.

The question is: Are we going to continue to remain asleep, kowtowing to corporate America, telling everybody what to do for labor, earnings per share, and the bottom line so they can get better reports from Wall Street? Because that is what is happening.

You turn the management of affairs over to corporations, corporations that continue to buy up land, buy up ranches, buy up farms, often international corporations, almost often foreigners buying up American assets. Are we that slave to corporate America that we are willing to leave our doors wide open to the most dangerous individuals around that do not share our values?

A lot of people think that the sharia crisis is only in Europe and in foreign countries, and that it has not yet arrived here. That is false. It is alive, well, and growing. People are going to use the First Amendments incorrectly to hang us with it. They are going to pile weight upon the bow that is our system and it will crumble under its own weight while we fiddle while America burns because we don't want to say uncomfortable things that we can all see with our own eyes.

Why do you have to wait in line at the airport? Why can't you take a pocketknife in your pocket on the plane like we did for years? Why do you have to take your freaking shoes off? Was it because of some nice, Christian choir boys and girls from the local church in your community, or was it because of the rise of the Islamist movement around the world? Was it from the Pan Am bombings and all the various terrorist attacks of the 1980s and 1990s culminating in 2001 on 9/11?

Open your eyes and see what the world is. Recognize the enemy before you and stop inviting the enemy into your home, and then allowing your own rules to be used to promulgate your own destruction.

It is a radical, political ideology that is at odds with the Constitution, the Declaration, and the rule of law. We should act like it. We should tighten down our immigration laws. We should pause immigration. We should vet people for adherence to sharia law. We should ensure that our communities stay safe and recognize the war that is being waged against us and take action.

Mr. Speaker, I recognize that my good friend from Arizona is in the Chamber and is no doubt going to regale us with a tutorial on our debt crisis, the extent to which interest payments on the debt, the skyrocketing mountain of debt that is piling up as a result of mandatory spending, in particular, demographic changes, our lack of use of great medical technology, and other things that will allow us to save money and have a much better healthcare system and save our children from the scourge of debt and interest payments that I talked about.

Mr. Speaker, I suspect he will say something to those effects, and I think I have filibustered long enough.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert) for the purpose of a colloquy.

Mr. Speaker, can I say something and then I will turn it over to him because I have to go, but the gentleman and I poke each other and have a little fun. I am certainly prone to giving some speeches on immigration, board of security, and other things to come down to the floor. I think the floor should be used. I wish we had actual, real debate. I wish we had something other than Special Orders where you come down here and talk to an empty Chamber.

I think we should have 10, 20, or 30 of us down here for hours at a time debating serious issues. I think the American people would expect that. That is why I think the Senate ought to actually advance to debate. Don't be afraid of a real filibuster, but I will say as a compliment that the gentleman has done this for now over a decade. I can't remember how long he has been in Congress where he has been down to the floor and he gives those speeches. I don't mean that as a criticism because that message has been consistent.

By the way, the big, beautiful bill last year was nothing like I know what he wanted or I wanted. I wanted to go much further, but what we did get in terms of Medicaid reforms, what we did get in terms of spending reductions, $1.6 trillion in reductions and so forth, again, not what we wanted, would never have happened but for the groundwork being laid by people like my friend from Arizona, the speeches he gives on the floor regularly making the case for how debt, interest, and so forth is killing our country.

I am on Judiciary, Budget, and Rules.

I see it all.

Well, you do a great job of it. Keep pounding on the math. We have made slight progress with flat discretionary spending for 2 or 3 years and a little bit of work last year in the big, beautiful bill, but we barely dented the problem.

Mr. Speaker, the iceberg sits in front of us. We are on the Titanic. A few of us are pulling the wheel, but, hell, people on both sides of the aisle are pulling the wheel the other direction. Our kids and grandkids depend on us actually avoiding the frigging iceberg.

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