Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I can't help but wonder what my so-called moderate colleagues on the other side of the aisle are waiting for, with bated breath, from a CBO score.

You don't need a CBO score to know that $100 billion worth of amnesty, when our border is wide open, will cripple the State of Texas, cripple our country, and cause thousands of pounds of fentanyl to pour into our country.

You don't need a CBO score to know that a 900 percent increase in OSHA fines to go after small businesses and shut them down with tyrannical vaccine mandates is going to cripple jobs and small businesses across the country.

You don't need a CBO score to know that $500 billion of unicorn climate agenda energy policies are going to drive up heating costs, drive up the cost of gasoline, and cripple our economy. You don't need a CBO score to oppose that.

You don't need a CBO score to know that $300 billion of tax giveaways to basically blue State Yankees is going to somehow fix our country.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, my colleague just referenced the phrase ``any other environment'' that there would be some consequences. Well, this is not any other environment. This is the House of Representatives. We have constituents who elect us, send us to Washington to represent them, engage in debate, engage in often heated discussions with each other. This is not the same.

One of the fundamental problems we have as a Chamber right now is that it is being treated that way. It is being treated that way by the majority. Shutting down our ability to engage in actual debate; shutting down our ability to move about the Chamber wearing these masks; talking about right now with CMS and what is happening, as early as December 5, doctors in San Antonio, Texas, which I represent, being unable to perform their tasks as doctors, potentially resulting in loss of life and being able to carry out their livelihoods through vaccine mandates.

We have got untold harm occurring in South Texas with bodies in body trailers. We have got people dying. We have got actual consequences from these vaccine mandates causing people to lose their jobs, whether it is OSHA-related, private-sector jobs, military, defense, border patrol; all this happening as we head towards December 3 with a potential government shutdown. And this is what we are having an actual debate on the floor of the House for.

I have not seen this Chamber look like this since I have been in Congress where we are debating an issue and we have got 100 Members on the floor. We are down here usually giving speeches to an empty Chamber.

Now, look, let me be clear. I would not have posted that video. I would have told my staff I don't want to do that, if I knew what was in it, okay? But the video that was posted was an effort to make a point.

The SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE. The time of the gentleman has expired.

And we are now getting into the business of chilling debate and discussion about censuring our Members and going down the road of pulling each other off of committees. Where is this going to end? When Republicans are back in majority, where is that going to end?

When my colleague, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, in January called my former boss and my good friend, Ted Cruz, an attempted murderer, and I sent a letter to the leader saying, I am not asking for her to be stripped from committees but just to apologize, it was met with utter silence.

I called then and I call now for us to drop that down and actually engage in debate on the issues that matter, actually engage in debate on what is occurring right now in America where people are getting harmed with vaccine mandates, tyranny, and open borders.

Madam Speaker, had I been present, I would have voted NAY on Roll Call No. 339.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding.

I am interested to hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle

who designate themselves as moderates running around saying that they need a CBO score. Yet, we know this isn't paid for. We all know it is a lie.

But you know what you don't need a CBO score for? You don't need a CBO score to tell you that there is a 900 percent increase in OSHA fines because you are going to cause small businesses to go out of business because of mandates.

You don't need a CBO score to know that there is an amnesty provision in here right when our border is completely on fire to provide amnesty for 7 million.

You don't need a CBO score for the $500 billion of a unicorn energy strategy that is already crippling the country, causing gas prices and electric bills to go up while President Biden is across the Atlantic begging for oil and taking cold baths in Glasgow.

You don't need a CBO score for that, and you don't need to know what is in this garbage bill that is going to hurt the American people. Reject it resoundingly this evening.

Mr. Speaker, I object.

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

Madam Speaker, November 11, 2021 marks the 100th Anniversary of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. On this date, one hundred years ago, the first body of an unknown soldier was laid to rest in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The soldier died in World War I on the fields of France. He was brought home with honor. A representative for every American service man and woman who have served or will serve and have paid the ultimate price as ransom for our freedom.

The Unknowns buried in the graves adjacent to the Tomb are no less honored and no less remembered. They are the nameless who bear all names. They are the dead who will rest forever, guarded by the men and women of the watch, the Sentinels of the 3rd United States Army Infantry Regiment, also known as the Old Guard.

New York Congressman Hamilton Fish, Jr., a World War I veteran, proposed the legislation that authorized the construction of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The Major James Kerr Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution from Kerrville, Texas is honored to Commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on November 11, 2021. We unanimously pledge our devotion to the American soldier, both to those who currently serve and to those who have been involved in past armed conflict so that others might remain free. They are gone but will never be forgotten.

The Major James Kerr Chapter, NSDAR therefore asks that citizens remember on November 11, 2021 that the Unknowns who are buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns represent all men and women who have died in the service of their country.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak a little bit about the current state of affairs with respect to our relationship with China and our Nation's response to it. I do so at a time when I am yet again sitting in an empty House Chamber, as I often am when I am speaking here because we don't really have debate here on the floor of the House, even when it is on important topics.

We had votes today, for example, on 12 of what we call suspension bills. Tomorrow, we are likely to have votes on another, I don't know, five or six suspension bills while we wait with bated breath as to whether or not our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will produce the ever-waited-for legislation to further cripple our economy, spiral us into massive amounts of debt, raise inflation, pay people not to work, disrupt the supply chain. We are all waiting around while my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are literally fighting over which horrible bill they can unleash upon the American people.

It is really quite extraordinary if you think about it. The people's House, we are sitting here debating, oh, well, are we going to have a $1\1/2\ trillion disastrous bill or a $3 trillion disastrous bill? Are we going to play games and cut that $3 trillion bill in half by cutting the time in half with the same disastrous policies? But that is precisely what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are doing.

Meanwhile, China is preparing to kick our rear ends. We are all sitting here playing tiddlywinks, fumbling around, talking about climate change and diversity quotas and chief diversity officers, and China is actually preparing to kick our rear ends.

Recently, as many of my colleagues know, China tested a nuclear- capable hypersonic glide vehicle, carried on a rocket, that flew low- orbit space, circling the globe before speeding toward its target, only missing by about 24 miles, a test that was reported to have ``stunned'' the United States military.

Well, that is concerning both because of the capabilities of the Chinese and the fact that our U.S. military was stunned. Both of those two things are concerning.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Milley, interrupting no doubt a particularly enthralling session of diversity, equity, and inclusion over at the Department of Defense at the Pentagon, bolted out from that really important session and said in an interview that the Chinese military was expanding rapidly, and the recent missile test is close to a Sputnik moment.

Indeed, this test comes after recent revelations that China has constructed and is making significant progress in developing at least 250 new missile silos at as many as three locations across China, fueling a rapid nuclear buildup.

In the wake of Biden's disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, China is increasingly willing to increase hostilities toward Taiwan. Just last week, Taiwan's President said the threat from China is growing every day. She said: ``When authoritarian regimes demonstrate expansionist tendencies, democratic countries should come together to stand against them. Taiwan is on the front lines.'' This is a nation of 23 million people opposed to communism.

Where is President Biden? Where is this Congress? Where are my Democratic colleagues? Wrestling around with their $2 or $3 trillion spendathons but not doing anything to help us figure out how to send a signal to the world that we are going to stand alongside Taiwan and, more importantly, that we are going to be strong for America against a rising Chinese military.

Biden recently said the United States' commitment to Taiwan was ``rock solid,'' but China is calling his bluff. And why shouldn't they after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan?

By the way, it is thanks to Taiwan that the world was alerted to the coronavirus. On December 31, Taiwan's CDC reported warnings of the virus' human-to-human transmission to the World Health Organization in an email. This is back at the beginning of the pandemic.

January 3 of that year, CDC Director Robert Redfield sent an email to the director of the Chinese CDC, formally offering to send U.S. experts to China.

January 5, CDC Director Redfield sent another email to the Chinese CDC director, formally offering to send U.S. experts.

The WHO even helped China cover the threat.

On January 14, the World Health Organization tweeted: ``Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus.''

February 24, Nancy Pelosi encouraged individuals to come to San Francisco's Chinatown.

We can go on and on, but China got busy continuing their coverup, even kicking out journalists in 2020. And now what do we know? We now know that there was gain-of-function research going on; America was funding it. And now we see precisely what was going on in Wuhan, what was going on in China, and America's involvement with it.

The fact of the matter is, China is serious, and we are not.

Let's talk about coal for a minute. China's not taking part in the climate hysterics currently taking place in Glasgow and is not undercutting its own supply of reliable energy like we are. Why might that be? Because China knows they need reliable power to kick our rear ends while we sit around fumbling around with a President of the United States taking cold baths in Scotland.

According to Time, China is planning to build 43 new coal plants while we are rapidly decommissioning coal plants here at home--not advancing clean-burning natural gas, not moving nuclear power. No, no, no, we like to live out in unicorn land where we are going to have nothing but wind and solar powering up our entire grid. That has not been working out so well for us.

All so we can go down this fiction that we are going to drive down CO2 by allowing the Chinese to do whatever the hell they want to do while we undermine our own national security, our own energy policy, and drive people into energy poverty.

The Chinese are using that coal to produce the manufactured goods we consume in the United States, including 80 percent of our solar panels.

By the way, the rare earth materials we just gave up in Afghanistan by abandoning Bagram means we can't even compete on that stage even if you want to live in unicorn land where my colleagues on the other side of the aisle do, where you can have all your power come from solar and wind in the year 2021.

Literally, my colleagues are in a dispute and a fight about how crazy green can the infrastructure bill they want to advance or the reconciliation package they advance be.

Meanwhile, China leads the world in emissions, but they got 43 coal- fired plants tuned up. But what do all these geniuses over in Scotland do? Well, China has promised they won't build coal-fired plants in other parts of the world.

You literally can't make up how stupid a leadership of a country could possibly be than what we currently have in this country.

Let me see if I can come up with every possible way to weaken our country, every possible way to make this country exposed on the world stage. I don't think I can come up with a better plan than what the current administration and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and this body are doing.

I think it would be a great contest. What could they do that is worse than driving us into energy poverty, taking away our ability to compete on the worldwide stage, developing clean-burning natural gas, exporting that, instead of literally having the President of the United States currently begging OPEC to open up more oil and more energy supplies?

I am not even sure how you can put into words how unbelievably pathetic it is for the United States of America to be on the world stage begging for energy supplies when we sit on a bed of fossil fuels that we can use to power this world. We have all the technology in the world to develop nuclear power, yet we are not doing it.

Meanwhile, China is importing 800,000 barrels of Iranian crude per day. Well, isn't that great?

We have already talked about that the President is hanging out over in Scotland taking cold water baths, mumbling unintelligibly about antitrust and animals--I couldn't even understand the speech today-- while congressional Democrats are in a death fight over their trillions of dollars in spending.

Most troubling of all, our Department of Defense is in a race, but it is not in a race to beat China; it is not in a race to beat Iran or to stand next to Israel or make sure we have the strongest fighting force in the world. No, no, the brilliance of the brass over at the Pentagon and the Democratic leadership in the White House and in this body and in the Senate, it is in a race to train our soldiers the finer points of critical race theory and climate ideology. I mean, you really can't even make this stuff up.

It has been 64 days since President Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, and there still has been zero accountability for the President, Secretary Austin, NSA Advisor Jake Sullivan, and General Milley.

Do we ever talk in this body? How many times do we come down here and emote about whatever horror has gone on in the world? We do it all the time. Have we talked about the drone strike that killed 10 people, including 7 children, something that would largely qualify as a war crime? Where are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, coming down here and beating their chests about the horrors of war crimes? Oh, I remember what they were saying when President Bush was in office in the wake of 9/11. I remember all the protests. Where are the protests for this dead family?

Is this the robust, over-the-horizon counterterrorism strategy that they

like to hawk and talk about so much that the American people are supposed to trust?

There is an unknown number of American citizens--I can read reports of over 100, 200, 400--still stranded in Afghanistan. Thirteen marines were killed, as we know.

Madam Speaker, $85 billion worth of U.S. taxpayer-funded defense assets, the Taliban have some number of those--access to a biometric database of our Afghan allies, control of the over $800 million United States Embassy in Kabul. Bagram Airfield, here, go ahead, take it.

Now President Biden plans to send an additional $144 million to Afghanistan. For what?

But it is not only just abandoning Afghanistan; it is empowering the Taliban.

Now our other adversaries: Hamas praised the Taliban for causing the American downfall in Afghanistan and said: ``We congratulate the Muslim Afghan people for the defeat of the American occupation on all Afghan lands, and we congratulate the Taliban movement and its brave leadership.''

China capitalized on it, saying ``a lesson that Taiwan needs to learn.''

Where are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle? Do they care?

Iran is set to hold a series of war drills with Russia and China. All of this is happening right now.

Again, my Democratic colleagues are talking about socialism and race division and gender equality. They don't even like the word ``equality'' anymore. It has to be ``equity.''

President Biden is appeasing Iran and walking away from Israel. Biden refuses to stand up to Iran, attempting to rejoin the failed Iran nuclear deal.

On October 8, the Biden administration lifted sanctions on two Iranian entities involved in military missile programs. Over the last 3 months, a report showed that China imported nearly 800,000 barrels of Iranian crude, like I mentioned before. And now we are refusing to stand by Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East.

The Biden administration wants to reopen the United States Consulate General in Jerusalem to provide separate diplomatic outreach to the Palestinians, directly undermining Jerusalem as Israel's eternal capital. Rejoining the Israel-hating United Nations Human Rights Council, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't care, and funneling millions of dollars into UNRWA that continues to undermine the very existence of Israel.

Now Congress, in its infinite wisdom--both sides of the aisle, by the way, my colleagues on my side of the aisle, two-thirds of whom are guilty of this as well--is saying we need to not only give the Pentagon their NDAA, National Defense Authorization Act, their authorization, we ought to give them another $25 billion of authorization.

We are not going to get anything out of Milley. We are not going to get anything out of Austin. We are not going to get the brass down here and say what in the world happened in Afghanistan, or can you explain what you are doing with all of your chief diversity officers and climate education? No, no, we are just going to throw them a whole bunch more money.

Again, to my Republican colleagues and to my constituents and to all Americans: This isn't done yet. Make sure your Senators and your Members of Congress know precisely how you feel about authorizing a massive defense authorization that gives more money to the Department of Defense with no accountability for Afghanistan and that drafts our daughters.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in the infinite wisdom of your leaders in Congress and in this administration, the plan is to have our 18-year- old girls--including my daughter, who is 10--have to go down and go sign up for Selective Service.

Most Americans I talk to don't want that. They sure as heck don't want that buried in a whatever-thousand-page bill of $800 billion of defense spending.

But respectfully, where are my colleagues on this side of the aisle on this? Two-thirds of this group voted for this bill because, Oh, we can't not support the Pentagon.

Well, why can't we not support the Pentagon when the Pentagon is not actually running a military designed to blow things up and kill people the way it needs to, in a world where China wants to do us harm, Iran wants to do us harm, Iran wants to do Israel harm, and we are going to focus on adding women to the draft without so much as a debate on this floor or in the Senate? We are going to include gun-grabbing, red flag laws to take guns away from our servicemen and women, causing them usually to go hide it, not go seek mental health, not go get the help they might need.

We are going to promote a radical Green New Deal agenda, including a sense of Congress that DOD should select electric or zero-emission models when purchasing new, noncombat vehicles; requiring the Secretary of Defense to submit to Congress their plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; praising the Intergovernmental Planet on Climate Change; creating a pilot program on the use of sustainable aviation fuel.

But they are promoting a woke agenda in the Department of Defense. Requiring the Department of Defense to hire and train gender advisors, including creating an Office of Countering Extremism, which would have the power to expel military members who engage in ``extremist activities or members of an extremist organization,'' codifying diversity, equity, and inclusion training requirements, subsidizing plan B for servicemembers. And now, the Defense Climate Adaptation Plan. You can't even make this stuff up.

China is sending missiles around the globe and we are responding with a Defense Climate Adaptation Plan. In what universe do the leaders of the greatest country in the history of the world do this? This new climate change plan ordered by President Joe Biden, released this last week would affect every level of command.

``Troops will be educated to improve their `climate literacy', according to the report. The topic should be taught to all during professional development training and at advanced courses.

``In order to properly respond, we need to have the knowledge, the tools and the ability to make climate-informed decisions at all echelons.''

We continue to fund in this NDAA, that my colleagues so readily supported, funding for a Department of Defense that engages in critical race theory training for servicemembers.

Last month, the Navy released a recommended reading list--I am sorry, this is last spring--to facilitate the growth and development of sailors. One of the books on the list is ``How to Be an Antiracist'', Kendi's bestseller advocating critical race theory. Separately, the Navy's Second Fleet created a book club for sailors and recommended reading ``White Fragility,'' a book that White people are inherently racist.

If you would like to take a perusal of the Department of Defense website, you can find the Chief Diversity Officer, Senior Advisor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the Director for the Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the Director for Disability Equal Opportunity Policy and Compliance, the Director of the Department of Defense Diversity and Inclusion, the commandant of the Department of Equity--I don't know even know what the acronym stands for.

In this so-called plan: Climate change is an existential threat to our Nation's security. We must act swiftly and boldly to take on this challenge and prepare for damage that cannot be avoided.

The Department of Defense intends to champion climate considerations inside and beyond the Department. That, at the Department of Defense.

The fact of the matter is, while China, Iran, perhaps the 5,000 terrorists that were released that we had housed in Afghanistan, dozens, hundreds of terrorist groups across the world, they know full well that this country is not remotely serious right now about defending ourselves, defending our allies, standing alongside Israel, standing alongside Taiwan, pushing back on China, ensuring our positioning in the Middle East is strong. Or, for example, securing the southern border of the United States, where we increasingly find individuals from state sponsors of terror from China coming into our southern border. It happens much more regularly than people understand or are comfortable with.

But no response from here. The response to the border, as we know, is to encourage more traffic, allow asylum to be abused, stop building the fence. There are parts of the fence sitting in a field rusting in Texas. We are paying contractors not to build the fence. But paying people not to do things is what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are particularly good at.

Let's borrow lots of money and print lots of money to pay people not to work.

Let's borrow lots of money, print lots of money to pay people not to build a fence.

Can I get into the not-doing-things business? Maybe my colleagues will be glad to have me not do Congress. Can I get paid to not do Congress, since we are in the not-doing-things business? It is absolutely absurd what we are doing on a daily basis endangering this country.

Secretary Mayorkas, President Biden, utterly refusing to enforce our laws of a border, failing to faithfully execute the laws, refusing to use Title 42, refusing to use the Migrant Protection Protocols.

Dead bodies keep piling up in South Texas. I have talked about it here before, again, to an empty Chamber. Steak dinners are much more important than the migrants who are dying in South Texas.

We talked about that, right? We have a body trailer that a sheriff had to haul in to put the bodies in the body trailer. Does anybody care? Does anybody care about the rape trees? Does anybody care about the stash houses where little girls get raped? Does anybody care about the cartels making tons of money--moving people, by the way, into our country who want to hurt us.

Rather than exporting the rule of law and building a strong relationship with Mexico and building a strong relationship with Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras--the rest of the Western Hemisphere-- to kick China's butt, we are retreating. We are importing lawlessness, importing people who aren't always wanting to do us good. And we are endangering our country in the process.

We are shutting down power plants. China is building power plants. Our President is literally sitting with a bunch of leaders who flew 40 some-odd private jets to hang out and preach about climate change, and they are not going to dent climate change. We got out of the Paris Agreement, and we outperformed the Paris Agreement. How? By burning clean, natural gas, exporting it and working to try to use technology and innovation around the world to have clean, abundant energy that empowers human flourishing.

There are billions around the planet right now that would die to be sitting in a room like this with air conditioning or heating and lighting. They are burning dung, wood, paper--whatever they can get. And we have all these holier-than-thou's running around preaching to people, taking cold water baths, seeking to truly decimate human life, undo human flourishing--all in the name of bowing down to the altar of a secular worship of a planet that they are actually harming with their absurdity. And in the process, endangering us through our national security.

While China builds coal-fired plants, while China builds missiles, we conduct classes on critical race theory and on climate change. That is what we are doing to our country.

As we look ahead next week, this body will not be meeting, and we will be celebrating Veterans Day. And every single one of us will, no doubt, go to an event, try to visit with veterans, thanking them for their service. But I have got to be honest with you. What do I tell those veterans when they come to me and say, Were the last 20 years worth it?

I would tell them it was worth it because they fought, and they stood up to defend this country to keep terrorists from attacking us on this soil. But they are asking a reasonable question when the President of the United States abandons Americans, abandons assets, empowers our enemy, empowers China, leaves our border open, destroys our economy, undermines our ability to produce clean burning energy, leaves a future for our children weaker against the world without the ability to have the kind of flourishing and prosperity that you deserve as Americans.

I don't know what the result is going to be in Virginia tonight, but I know one thing: there are a lot of American people awakening to the absolute disaster that is being inflicted on this country by a radical leftist regime, whether it is in this body, in the Senate, in this administration, or in the Capitol building designed by Jefferson in Richmond, Virginia. Or in the halls of the school board in Loudoun County, sitting on their hands, allowing another little girl to get sexually assaulted because they wouldn't actually address the fact that a girl had been assaulted and they knew it and they did nothing about it.

And then the Democratic candidate in Virginia says parents have no place on the school board. But guess what? The American people think they do, and they are right. The American people know we should have parents on the school boards, parents in the classrooms impacting what their kids are learning. And they don't want to turn it over to leftist radicals who want to remake our country, teach their kids that up is down and down is up. But that is what is happening.

The American people are waking up around this country. They are awakening in Virginia. They are awakening in Texas. They are awakening where they are kicking out people from their school boards. And they are awakening to an administration that wants to destroy our ability to compete and beat China.

We are not going to do that. We are going to beat China. We are going to stand with Israel. We are going to have clean burning energy. We are going to be able to power our homes. We are going to be able to teach our kids what they ought to learn. We are going to stand up if there are men and women. We are going to stand up for the greatness of this country. We are going to provide the opportunity for them, not by lecturing them, not by mandating to them, not by telling them they have got to go get a vaccine, not by shutting down businesses, not by walking away, but by boldly carrying forward the America that we know through the consent of the governed doing that which we can do as Americans, without begging for permission from a government that wants to weaken our country rather than advancing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleagues' tribute to Mr. Trumka. Whether or not we always agree with every issue, it is always great to see a life that is being honored here on the floor of the House of Representatives. I appreciate that.

I appreciate his sentiments about staff and the hard work the staff carries out each and every day here on the floor of the House of Representatives, as well as in each of our offices. I join my colleague in each of those things.

Madam Speaker, I would note that in the context of supporting workers, supporting the people across this country who are indeed engaging right now in many respects in saying no and striking and deciding that they are not

going to participate, I would say a lot of that has to do, unfortunately, with the mandates that have been pressed on workers by the efforts of the President of the United States, President Biden, and an illegal and unconstitutional requirement that employers vaccinate their workers, or those workers might be forced to lose their job.

This has very real consequences. We have seen thousands of workers across this country protesting. Police members walking out. Firefighters walking out. Teachers walking out. People in industries and airlines and places across the country walking out. Nurses. Nurses, who were serving this country on the front lines during the pandemic last year when we didn't know all that was going on, and now they are being forced to decide to quit because of an unconscionable, illegal, unnecessary, unconstitutional mandate by the President of the United States. The government is forcing its citizens to make these tough choices.

Madam Speaker, I have a dear friend who lives in Alabama, and she said to me: I had a long talk with a doctor, and he is not anti-vax by any stretch, he has had this vaccine. He is concerned. I am concerned. This is from my friend: I have been a decade-plus living with multiple sclerosis, and I am not in any way anxious to provoke an immune response by getting the vaccination.

But now she is being forced to decide whether or not she can continue to teach. She just wants to teach. And now the university for which she works is saying she must get vaccinated or you are going to lose your job. Now, you say, well, just go seek an accommodation.

Listen to what the geniuses at the university at which she works sent out as their accommodation. To be eligible for possible exception, you must first establish that your refusal to be vaccinated is based upon a sincere belief that it is religious in nature. A refusal to be vaccinated does not qualify for an exception if it is based upon personal preference, concerns about the possible effects of the vaccine--I want to pause for a second--concerns about the possible effects of the vaccine does not qualify for an exception.

Yet, my friend, may now seek a religious exception because she has religious concerns about it. But she also has very real concerns as an MS survivor, someone dealing and living with MS. She is having to make a call about what is in her best interest. She is a mother of three children. Two of her children have had issues and reactions, arguably, attached to different vaccinations in the past.

And never before in the history of the United States of America has the Federal Government gone out and issued an edict from Washington demanding that the American people get vaccinated. Think about that. Never before in our history. It hasn't happened. Yes, it can happen in our military, although we should be careful about it. Nobody should get dishonorably discharged. Nobody should get discharged.

It has happened at places where the Federal Government has a direct impact on the employment of an individual. But all of these decisions have been left to local and State governments, local schools, local hospitals.

But no, no, President Biden in his infinite wisdom, such as that may be, has suggested now by mandate that everybody get vaccinated and every business must vaccinate their employees.

The fact of the matter is, we are now almost 600 days in to the 15 days to slow the spread. The government lying to its citizens, continuing to move the goalpost of normalcy, moving it further away.

Now the President wants a 97 percent vaccination rate, which he completely made up and pulled out of thin air, which is pretty much the entire definition of his entire incompetent, absurd Presidency.

The government of this country derives its just powers from the governed. The government of this country derives its power from the consent of the governed. And, thankfully, brave Americans across this country are standing up every day and telling this President to pound sand. They happen to be using a different colloquialism.

Southwest Airlines pilots spoke out and they just scrapped the plan to put unvaccinated employees out of work.

In-N-Out Burger. ``We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government.'' God bless them. Go get an In-and-Out burger.

General Electric employees of Greenville, South Carolina, walk out over a vaccination mandate.

A New York hospital stopped delivering babies as workers quit over a vaccine mandate.

Washington State employees quit, 1,900 of them fired over a vaccine mandate.

A trooper tells Governor Inslee in Washington to kiss my--fill in the blank--in the final sign-off before a vaccine mandate.

Seattle first responders.

Parents in California protest student vaccine mandates.

Vaccine opponents protest outside Stormont Vail following hospital's shot requirement.

A Wyoming teenager was arrested after refusing to wear a mask on school grounds, family says.

Well, God bless these individuals across this country who are telling this President to pound sand, and telling any Governor, or any member of the government in their State or local community exercising tyranny over their freedom as Americans to make the choices that they think are correct in their lives to pound sand.

But why are we in this position, Madam Speaker?

As I sit here, with rapt attention from all of the Members of Congress who are in here having a robust debate about the future of our country, as opposed to being out, say, having steak dinners with whoever the heck they are having dinners with in this town, and I ask: Why are we in this position? Why are we here?

Last week we discovered with very clear terms that Dr. Fauci misled Americans during questioning from Rand Paul in two different Health Committee hearings.

Dr. Fauci said on May 11, 2021: ``With all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect,'' speaking to Dr. Paul. ``The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.''

Later, ``However, I will repeat again, the NIH and NIAID categorically has not funded gain-of-function research to be conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.''

In a July 11, 2021 hearing, Fauci said: ``Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement. This paper''--that you are referring to--``was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function.''

But what do we now know?

We know that NIH did, in fact, fund gain of function research at the Wuhan lab. EcoHealth Alliance ``manipulated a coronavirus to generate up to 10,000 times the viral load, violating provisions of its National Institutes of Health contract that forbade unregulated research that could make a disease significantly more dangerous or transmissible.''

That quote was in the rightwing conspiracy media paper Roll Call.

My Republican colleagues on the Oversight and Reform Committee received a letter from NIH that confirmed that EcoHealth Alliance, which received money from NIAID, violated the terms of their NIH grant because they made the virus more deadly to humanized mice.

In a September letter to me, Dr. Fauci said that because the research at Wuhan was not anticipated to be gain of function, it was approved.

But why then did the Defense Advance Research Project Agency, known in this town as DARPA, reject similar research due to gain of function concerns?

The NIH had a definition of gain of function on its web page which was available as recently as October 19, just a couple of days ago, it has now been changed entirely.

Why would it be changed?

Why would the NIH change their gain of function web pages this week?

Could it be that Dr. Fauci was caught last week in his exchange by Dr. Rand Paul, my friend, the Senator?

Now they don't even say gain-of-function research on the website. They took it off. It now says EPPP research. Now it says instead of-- the term gain-of-function research describes a type of research that modifies the biological

agent so that it confers a new or enhanced activity to that agent.

It now says, on limited occasions, when justified by compelling public health need and conducted in very high biosecurity laboratories, NIH has supported certain research that may be reasonably anticipated to create transfer or use-- Come on.

Madam Speaker, do you want to know why the American people don't believe their government?

They shouldn't. They shouldn't, Madam Speaker. They shouldn't believe the lies that are coming out of our national health leaders that are endangering the American people as Dr. Fauci's lies have been doing for the better part of 18 months.

Why trust an NIH that is by definition not being truthful?

Even if Dr. Fauci wants to hide behind the technicalities of the definitions of gain of function, why couldn't he with an ounce of humility--and even an ounce of humility--go before the Senate committee and say: Do you know what, Senator Paul? I am troubled by how much funding has been going into these research efforts at the Wuhan Institute. Do you know what, Dr. Paul? I have got concerns because I didn't know for sure what EcoHealth Alliance was doing.

But here is the problem with that. An NIH spokesperson told Vanity Fair that Dr. Fauci was ``entirely truthful'' in his statements to Congress.

Oh, thank you, NIH spokesperson.

And that he did not have the progress report that detailed the controversial research at the time he testified in July. Okay, pause.

At this point I would at least expect the good Dr. Fauci to have the humility to say: Hey, this is troubling. I don't know that our research led to COVID-19, but I know that we have been funding now, I know now we have been funding research that is in the ZIP Code of gain of function.

DARPA wouldn't even do it. The arrogance of this guy is that he is never going to admit that. He doesn't want to admit that he is wrong. He doesn't want to admit that NIH is neck-deep in this stuff because it is just straight up arrogance. That is why the American people have had it and they don't believe him. They don't believe NIH.

But it goes on further. EcoHealth Alliance appeared to contradict that claim. It said in a statement: ``These data were reported as soon as we were made aware, in our year 4 report in April 2018.''

Now, let me be clear, as a former Federal prosecutor, I don't know the facts. I don't know if EcoHealth presented that data in 2018. We will look into it. That is my job here. But I can promise you one thing, Madam Speaker, my Democratic colleagues on the other side of the aisle aren't going to look into it because they don't care because this has never been about health. This has never been about truth. This has always been about power.

Well, rather than just focusing on the NIH, why don't we take a minute to focus on the CDC, another one of these august national health organizations to which we are supposed to bow down and say, please tell me what I must do for my own health and the well-being of my family?

After facing backlash for saying the Federal Government was looking into a vaccine mandate, Centers for Disease Control Director Walensky took to Twitter to say that there would be no Federal vaccine mandate on July 30, 2021. I guess President Biden didn't get the memo? Oh. It is not a Federal vaccine mandate. I am just saying businesses or you are a contractor with the Federal Government, then you must do it if you have over 100 employees.

Well, tell all that to my friends and the people around this country who are right now facing the decision of giving up their livelihood and not having a paycheck because they want to make the best decision for themselves or their families.

My friend with MS who doesn't want to get a jab and wants to teach is being told she cannot because President Biden and the Federal Government is holding Federal contracts over the head of a State university which is too gutless and cowardly to tell the Federal Government to pound sand. That State--a southern State--should be absolutely ashamed of itself. That State should be telling the Federal Government to go straight to you know where.

The CDC takes an absurd all-or-nothing approach to the vaccine. For example, if a teenager recovers from a COVID-19 infection and is immune and this teenager receives one vaccine causing hospitalization for myocarditis, the Centers for Disease Control suggests getting a second dose of the vaccine once the heart has recovered.

Do you know what, Madam Speaker?

The CDC director can go straight to hell. If that is my son or daughter, no way. No way.

The CDC should be ashamed of itself for doing this, absolutely ashamed of itself. Go talk to the parents of those who have died. Go talk to the families of the moms who aren't here.

I am not sitting here suggesting that I know in my infinite wisdom what is best for every American in terms of getting a shot. I don't know. I am not a doctor. But what I am is a Congressman, and a Representative who swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States that I would stand up to secure the blessings of liberty so that every American can make the decision for himself or herself as to whether or not they take any medicine.

Again, never in the history of the United States have we had a Federal mandate from a President who doesn't, frankly, know east from west come down here and tell us that we have got to take a shot.

The CDC refuses to talk about natural immunity.

Why?

Why will the CDC not talk about natural immunity?

In fact, they point to an inconclusive study that prompted the director to say: ``If you have had COVID-19 before, please still get vaccinated.''

There are at least 89 studies that affirm natural immunity is effective and long-lasting from a prior infection, yet our public health experts are uninterested. I have to go to studies in Israel. I have to go look at studies in the United Kingdom in order to get facts about natural immunity.

Now, why would that be?

Surely it is not because anybody is self-interested or financially interested in how much these pharmaceutical companies are making throwing vaccines at every American.

A U.K. office for national statistics report published Monday found those who catch the delta variant are around 71 percent less likely to test positive again, 4 points higher than double vaccinated individuals.

I am not saying you want to go catch the virus, Madam Speaker, but if you have had the virus, then you may not want to get the vaccine. And yet our scientists, scientists whom we now know to be less than truthful, refuse to acknowledge the benefits of natural immunity.

What about the FDA?

Can we trust the FDA?

The FDA still has an image of a horse tagged with a web page saying: ``Why you should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19.''

Doctors have been denied ivermectin and have not been able to get access to this treatment which has proven effective, at least to some, in treating COVID.

Again, what happened to right-to-try?

What happened to the ability to go to the doctor of your choice, Madam Speaker?

Dr. Pierre Kory conducted an analysis of randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin used against COVID and found statistically significant reductions of mortality. Our FDA and CDC are preventing patients from receiving ivermectin. Now, I got a prescription for ivermectin. So did my wife. We each went to go get it filled. It is not horse medicine. I didn't roll down to Tractor Supply Company, which I go to often, to go get supplies for the land on which I live. And, yes, I have seen the ivermectin in the cabinet at Tractor Supply Company. No, this was a prescription for pills of ivermectin that we wanted to have on supply in case we thought we needed it.

So we go down to get it filled at a pharmacy, CVS, and the first time my wife went down there they whispered in the back. They said, oh, we can't do that. We can't fill that prescription.

Well, finally one person came in and overrode and said, look, do they have a prescription? Oh, yeah. Well, then, go ahead and fill it.

So they filled the prescription. Then I go down to get the prescription filled that I got a few weeks later, and they wouldn't fill it. I went to another pharmacy, and they wouldn't fill it. Finally, I went to a third one, and we got it filled.

Why is that? Why is that?

The FDA has delayed the Merck COVID-19 pill likely until 2022. Now, some of my research has shown people out there questioning why we need the Merck pill, and maybe this is just another way to have another pharmaceutical company make a bunch of money on the back of COVID, but I also have a lot of smart doctors who are talking about the Merck pill as a potentially highly beneficial pill.

Well, why can't we just all agree to right-to-try?

We are in the middle of a pandemic where people are getting sick, and individuals can't go try this medicine because we are waiting on the FDA and all the geniuses to go through every possible scenario despite very positive returns on the initial tests?

Remdesivir was so effective in its phase 3 randomized control trial that researchers stopped accepting new participants, no COVID patient who received the drug died compared with eight deaths in the placebo group. When a drug shows to work this well, it is considered unethical to continue to give sick subjects a placebo. The government has even prepurchased 1.7 million treatment courses. The medication doesn't even require refrigeration and it's easy to ship. Yet practicing physicians right now with patients who might die can't give this drug to any sick patient because of regulatory barriers.

So we have mandates that you do stuff that may not even help in the slightest bit, Madam Speaker, and may, in fact, hurt you--mandates--and we have regulatory barriers preventing you from being able to figure out how to go take care of yourself or your loved ones.

Again, I am not saying whether I think that drug is particularly efficacious or not. I don't know. I am not a doctor. But what I am is someone who can read. What I am is someone who believes in freedom. And what I am is someone who believes, Madam Speaker, that you should be able to go to the doctor of your choice and make a decision for you and your family with the best information available and a right-to-try.

What about HHS as a whole?

Can we trust HHS?

After watching all the debacle that has been NIH, Dr. Fauci, and gain-of-function research; after watching what we have seen with the CDC and refusal to look at natural immunity; after looking at what we have seen with respect to the FDA and slow-walking drugs and access and hiding and obfuscating those drugs which may be beneficial to people; how about the HHS now limiting the State of Texas' ability to receive monoclonal antibody treatments?

I was on a conference call with HHS leadership saying, why are you cutting our supply in half?

Monoclonal antibody treatments are working.

I said, tell me what--tell me, give me the amount that is currently in inventory, give me the amount that can be produced on a weekly or a daily basis by the companies that can manufacture it, and then tell me what you believe the demand is and why you are standing in the way of the orders that we are putting in in Texas to try to take care of our folks or Florida or any other State?

They wouldn't and couldn't answer the question because it wasn't about the math. I pressed them. I asked a second question. I got back in queue on the whatever, Zoom call--or I think it was an audio conference call--I got back in and asked again, and they wouldn't answer because it wasn't about the math. It wasn't about the numbers. It was about going after Texas and Florida and saying, you are not going to get monoclonal antibody treatments.

The week of September 13, 2021, Texas received 23,640 doses. This week, Texas is receiving 11,400 doses, more than a 51 percent decrease.

There is no reason for the Federal Government to be standing in the way of a State being able to work with their doctors to meet demand to save lives. The only reason is the power play of people who are absolutely so arrogantly full of their own views of the world that they want to press them upon the American people, as does Dr. Fauci, as does CDC Director Walensky, as does the leadership at the FDA, HHS, generally.

These are the health experts, by the way, who also endorsed mass house arrest of Americans by locking down, the lockdowns. Remember 15 days to slow the spread? What a joke.

The lockdowns deteriorated people's mental health and inflicted more damage on women and girls.

Among adolescents aged 12 to 17, the average number of visits to an emergency room for suspected suicide attempts was 22 percent higher during 2020 and 39 percent higher during the winter of 2021 than the corresponding period the year before. During last winter, emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts were 50 percent higher.

Reporting also shows more than 400,000 fewer child welfare concerns were reported.

According to CDC data, overdose deaths killed a record number of Americans in 2020, almost 100,000 in 2020.

Don't get me started on the border. Don't get me started on fentanyl. Don't get me started on the incompetence of an administration that would allow people to get abused in the name of open borders, saying that it is somehow compassionate while little girls get sold into the sex trafficking trade and fentanyl pours into our communities and into the lives of our loved ones and our young people who are dying by the thousands.

Don't get me started about the empowered cartels. Don't get me started about the ranches getting overrun, the people getting abused, the dead bodies of migrants in south Texas.

It is all the same thing, and it is all the same power play by a Federal Government led by a President who wants to give lip service to doing something to help this country while playing woke politics and allowing the American people to get abused and harmed in the process.

Just as we have seen unfold in Loudoun County when a little girl, a ninth-grader, gets raped in a bathroom, and the father, upset, goes to the school board meeting and in the school board meeting dares to speak up and then is dragged down, bloodied, arrested because he was there to defend his little girl who got raped by a boy wearing a skirt in the bathroom of the high school he sent her to to get educated.

Then that school board, sweeping this all aside in the name of wokeness and political correctness, what do they do? They ignore it, and then he becomes the poster child for so-called domestic terrorism.

Then what happens? Another little girl gets abused by the same boy at a different high school in that district in Loudoun County, Virginia. Leftist wokeism running our schools with Virginia Democrats allowing it to happen because that is what is happening every single day in the Commonwealth of Virginia in Loudoun County.

This is the state of our country at the moment, bowing down to the altar of woke politics; of the power hungry, the elite who think they know what is best for you, the same people who walk in and say: Parents don't have a role in the classroom. Parents don't have a role in the schools. Parents don't have a say in what is going to be decided in the school boards.

Nothing could be more un-American. Nothing could be undermining the future of this country more than to separate parents from the education of their children.

Nothing could do more damage to our country than undermining faith in institutions because so-called medical professional experts are telling lies, distorting the truth; refusing to be humble, to come forward and say they don't know the answer; to be honest about what taxpayer dollars are going to fund, what kind of research in China; having the slightest bit of humility to say maybe we don't know all the answers, maybe we should allow parents, doctors, families to make decisions that are in the best interests of their children, the best interests of themselves.

Madam Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Madam Speaker, we have to make a decision about what we are going to do to carry this country forward. We have to decide whether or not we are going to give people information that they can believe in and trust and make sure that the institutions that are running this country, that are providing information for this country, can be relied upon.

The American people are waking up. The American people are waking up to the lies and the distortions that have been shoved into their faces by the media, by the schools, and by the very people who are supposed to be running our national healthcare institutions and providing information that you can rely upon.

The American people are waking up, and they are taking back their country. And the response shouldn't be, as it was from the Attorney General of the United States, to send the FBI in to go after parents in school boards. The response shouldn't be to sweep aside the concerns of a mom who wants to teach and has MS and doesn't want to get a vaccine and then has to choose and might get fired.

That should not be the response of a competent and respectful government. That should not be the response of a government that is limited in power and is supposed to derive its power from the consent of the governed.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas for holding this time with my colleagues to talk about what is going on at our southern border and talk about how important it is that we do something about it.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Arizona for his steadfast leadership on border issues. I know that the gentleman was squeezing in some time there, and I am happy to engage in colloquy or yield him some time to continue to talk about this important issue, if he would like.

One thing that I noticed you were saying in the time from my friend from Texas, you were talking about being down at the border, being next to the fence, a fence that works, by the way, where it is up, and then there is a hole or an unfinished fence or where the fence ends.

I noticed that my friend from Arizona was recently standing next to a large pile of metal, steel. I wondered if he might describe for the American people what you were standing next to so they can understand what is actually happening.

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

I think there is a theme for this administration, and this administration's theme is paying people not to work. In this case, they are paying people not to build a fence, despite the fact that the taxpayers of this country have paid for a fence that would actually do the job of stopping the flow of people who want to come across this country and, in many cases, bringing fentanyl, bringing dangerous narcotics, harming the American people, and harming themselves. Yet, we can solve the problem but refuse to.

Would it surprise the gentleman from Arizona that one of the reasons that the Haitians got a different deal was they came up through Del Rio and they did so purposefully? Why did they target Del Rio, you might ask?

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are clearly sitting over here inquisitive, with their interest of what is happening at the border. While they continue to advance policies that create an open border, they don't seem to actually care about the open border because I haven't seen any of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle when I go down to the border.

In fact, the last one I remember going down to the border was my colleague from New York who went down wearing a pantsuit, standing outside of a fence doing a photo-op, crying about kids in cages--cages created by the Democratic administration, indeed, to try to deal with the fact that we had so many people coming in across the border. Yet, it was fake. It was staged. And then they lied about kids drinking out of toilets.

The actual reality on the ground at the border is dead migrants. I am sure my friend from Arizona knows of dead migrants in Arizona because we got dead migrants in Texas. So my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who pat themselves on the back for how compassionate they are about migrants and Brown people, go talk to the Brown people in south Texas about what they are seeing and what they are finding. Talk to the ranchers.

I would love to hear if you have similar experiences. The ranchers who find a migrant either dead or dying from the heat and exhaustion, seek to get them water, call 911 to get them help, try to help their fellow human being. They are dealing with that.

A hundred bodies in Brooks County, Texas, stacking up this year. Body trailers. The sheriff down there has to deal with this. $3,000 per body for autopsy. $5,000 per body for burial because they can't get the families.

Where are my colleagues? Where are our colleagues on the other side of the aisle? Going around trumpeting and talking about how their policies of open borders are great for migrants. Well, say that to the dead migrants.

I assume my colleague from Arizona has seen similar stories.

Yes.

No.

As my friend from Arizona knows full well, the cause of this is the purposeful and willful disregard for enforcing the laws of the United States at our border. Our laws actually require the enforcement of the law at the border.

The Secretary of Homeland Security is willfully disregarding, for example, as my friend knows, the Secure Fence Act, which among its provisions passed in this body on this floor is to guarantee that we have operational control of the border. That is law.

The Secretary of Homeland Security literally stood in Del Rio, looking at individuals standing in America, going back across the Rio Grande and buying tacos, bringing them back over and selling them to Haitians on American soil. He saw it with his own eyes. He turned to the cameras, and said: Our border is secure.

He looked at the American people and lied, just like the White House press secretary lied when she said Border Patrol agents were whipping Haitians when what they were doing was actually trying to do their job that the President of the United States and the Secretary of Homeland Security is purposefully, willfully trying to deny them the ability to do.

Would my friend agree?

We did.

Isn't it a perversion of our law for the administration to tell the world: Come to the United States. Claim asylum.

Let's be clear. This is what is happening almost explicitly. The administration is saying to the world: Come to the border of the United States. Claim asylum. We know and you know and every everybody knows well over 90 percent of you do not have a valid claim for asylum.

They are seeking economic benefit. They are seeking jobs. God bless them. I would, too. I have no problem with their desire to come here. But the rule of law matters.

You have an administration saying: Come on here. Claim asylum. What we will do is we will parole you. What does parole mean? Oh, well, you can just come in here and you can work. You can have a job. You can get benefits. And we will just pretend you are going to come back under notice to appear or notice to report. Or we are not going to parole you. We are just going to send you out, and say, notice to appear or notice to report. Oh, by the way, we might just release you and not give you a notice to appear or notice to report, and we just are going to let those numbers flow into the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, 1.7 million apprehensions this year; 300,000 or 400,000 got-aways this year; hundreds of dead migrants along the Rio Grande.

Where are my colleagues? Where are they? They have a duty under the Constitution, a sworn oath to uphold the Constitution to enforce the laws of the United States, and the administration. Here in Congress, this Chamber is MIA in holding the administration accountable to do their job, and I would like to know why.

Yes.

Yes.

What were those policies that President Trump and his administration put in place to actually secure the borders of the United States in 2019?

Right. You are not welcome to come here illegally, and you are not welcome to flout our laws. You are welcome to come here and follow our laws that we have in place for people who come here legally.

There is a waiting list, by the way.

What do you say to the people who are waiting?

Don't worry about it. Let all these other folks come in and just walk through or cross the Rio Grande endangering themselves, endangering Border Patrol, not providing resources to the Border Patrol to do their job, so they are the ones left hanging, dealing with COVID, not having resources, being alone at midnight with no cell signal, no ability to talk on the radio, and no ability to move their car up and down the Rio Grande River.

I have got a bill with my friend, Henry Cuellar, to have navigable roads and a fence along the river.

Why won't Speaker Pelosi bring that bipartisan bill to the floor of the United States House of Representatives?

It is for one reason and one reason only: Democrats want a political tool. They want the political reality of a wide-open border. There is zero other defense for what Democrats are doing, instead of actually doing what it takes to secure the border of the United States.

That is what happens. They get processed and released. And then, Mr. Speaker, when you have migrants who are coming in between the ports of entry and they come across ranches and ranchers come across them or they die in the desert, then they are left having to deal with the body. They are left having to go and have a coroner come and do the autopsy. They have to have, like the gentleman said, body trailers coming down there.

Mr. Speaker, you can't make this up. I just want to know: Do my Democrat colleagues think we are making this up?

They may not know because the Secretary of Homeland Security sure as heck isn't coming down and explaining this to us.

I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, we are not having a debate here on the floor of the House about anything at all much less our border.

Oh, we have time to have political show trials. We have time to have a subpoena by a sham commission in which you wouldn't even put on the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Speaker. You wouldn't even put on my friends, Kelly Armstrong, Jim Banks, no, we can't do that. So we are going to have a show trial, we are going to come out here, and we are going to have political theater.

But we are not going to do a doggone thing about migrants dying and Texans dying from fentanyl overdoses.

Why don't we talk about the danger of fentanyl?

Oh, no, we don't want to talk about that. Everybody over here has a steak dinner they have to go eat tonight.

Why don't we talk about the fact that there was a high-profile Texas Longhorns football player, today they put out a statement, the family, sadly--Jake Ehlinger, the brother of the former Longhorns quarterback Sam Ehlinger--in a statement Thursday the Ehlinger family says they learned Jake accidentally overdosed May 6 from what is believed to be the prescription antianxiety medication Xanax laced with fentanyl.

Well, do you know what, Mr. Speaker, and to all my colleagues who are not in this Chamber, that is a story that is happening every day in America across this country: 100,000 people dead, dead in this country because of wide-open borders, with China putting out this synthetic garbage and putting it into the system, and our children are dying. And the Democratic Party, the people leading this Chamber are MIA. They don't care about you, and they don't care about the American people. They only care about crass political use of the border to advance a racial identity agenda.

Mr. Speaker, some dude is cooking it in Mexico, they are shoving this stuff up from Mexico. There is a guy cooking the Xanax in the same place they have the fentanyl, and people are now getting those pills in the United States, they are dying, and we are just sitting here.

I have got the same Interstate 10 going right through San Antonio, the same Interstate 10 going through Boerne where we just stopped a car with nine immigrants in it, two bound up in the trunk. The car was being driven by a cartel employee, an American citizen, taking them to a stash house. That is the story of your current open border, Mr. Speaker. And, again, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are completely MIA.

They are recruiting.

I wonder if the gentleman might indulge, I had planned a couple of things that were border related, but I also have another topic that he might be interested in. I want to set the stage for something I hope is viewed positively because I believe right now what we are seeing is as Sam Adams put it:

You don't need a majority, but you need tireless minorities

being willing to set brushfires of freedom.

What we are seeing across the country are people willing to set brushfires of freedom.

A couple of different issues. Right now we have a President of the United States who has set forth an unconstitutional, unlawful, illegal, and tyrannical vaccine mandate that companies have to bow down to the altar of this White House and do what he says. And I say: No, they don't; and the Governor of Texas says: No, you don't.

Guess what, Mr. Speaker? Southwest Airlines decided to play footsie with this tyrannical order, and the pilots said, no; the employees of Southwest said, no; a lot of their customers said no; and people like me and others called them to task.

Guess what Southwest did, Mr. Speaker?

They backed off a bit. They have now said: We are not going to fire people; we will give them unpaid leave.

I said to Southwest: That is not good enough. You need to let them work. You need to let them carry out their livelihoods. But God bless us, that is a move in the right direction.

Delta Airlines said: Well, we are not necessarily going to do that mandate.

We have got In-N-Out Burger saying: Do you know what, Mr. President? We are not going to do that.

God bless these corporate entities that are saying: No. No. No. We are not going to bow down to whatever the President says because he doesn't have the power. He is not a king. You can't say that we are going to get vaccinated when we believe there is natural immunity or we believe there might be a myocardial issue for our kids, when we believe it is in our best interest to decide what we are going to do for our families. Under no circumstances are we going to bow down to what a dictator in the White House is trying to tell us to do, and I wonder if my friend from Arizona agrees.

Amen.

Yes. We need some cops in Austin, Texas, to fill the holes when those liberals in Austin decided to get rid of the cops. We need some more. Come on down.

Amen.

We have a few others: General Electric employees in Greenville, South Carolina, walked out over the vaccine mandate. A New York hospital will stop delivering babies as workers quit over a vaccine mandate. Nearly 1,900 Washington State employees quit or were fired over the vaccine mandate because they said no. And a trooper tells Governor Inslee to kiss his--fill in the blank--in his final signoff before a vaccine mandate, and they put their boots out on the steps in protest. Seattle first responders fired for vaccine noncompliance march on city hall to turn in their boots. Parents in California protest student COVID-19 vaccine mandate, keep kids home. A vaccine opponent protest outside a hospital following shot requirement for employees. And a Wyoming teenager--God bless that Wyoming teenager--was arrested after refusing to wear a mask on school grounds.

That is the America I know. That is the America that doesn't bow down to the tyranny of a federal government that has no constitutional power to tell them what to do and tell them how to live their lives. That is the America that is going to preserve a republic for our kids and grandkids worth passing down to them.

Amen.

Amen. We have got frontline doctors who are out there making sure that people can get access to ivermectin. We have got people who are working around all the barriers of these pharmaceutical companies that are saying: No, you can't get this stuff.

Americans want to take care of their loved ones despite a government saying they can't get the treatments that save lives.

I had a woman today break down in tears. She came up to me, and I hugged her. She was crying because her 52-year marriage to her husband--he passed away in August. He was fighting COVID, and he was beating COVID, but he couldn't get ivermectin. They couldn't get to it. They were denied access to it, and they couldn't get monoclonal antibody treatment. She said to me: If I had been able to get him to Florida, I would have saved his life, and I would still have my husband.

Now, I don't know the facts of that, but I hear that from thousands of Americans all the time. They are being denied the ability to get treatment and being denied the ability to get care because we have got a top-down dictatorship coming out of Washington trying to coerce and tell the American people what their healthcare should look like.

But it is not just healthcare. It is critical race theory. It is all of the garbage being taught in our schools about wokeness and telling people that we should be racist because that is what critical race theory is. It is racism, and it is nothing other than that. We have got American people, parents, going into school boards and saying: Enough. We are not having it anymore.

We have got Texas Carroll Independent School District; parents in Southlake recently fought back and won; Fort Worth Independent School District; Colleyville, Texas; New York, Clarkstown School Board; Georgia, Atlanta where parents are coming in, and they are saying enough. We believe in America, and we believe in the content of one's character and not the color of their skin. We don't want to listen to this garbage dividing us further by race.

I always notice that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle snicker when we say things about critical race theory. They laugh at it. But they never want to debate the actual substance of the garbage being taught. They never want to actually look at the curriculum, look at the books, and look at what is being taught.

The Virginia Department of Education administered a training to teachers that included a presentation instructing them to embrace critical race theory and engage in race conscious teaching and learning in order to--this is a quote--reengineer attitudes and belief systems.

That is what it is about. Its roots are in Marxist ideology, and we know it. It is clear. It is evident, and we see it in Loudoun County right now where we see what is unfolding in Loudoun County, which is all about critical race theory, parents getting angry, and then a school board stepping right over the rights of a dad to be able to go down and protest to the school board because his daughter was raped in a bathroom by a dude wearing a skirt. And they want to then go down and say, oh, well, we are just going to say this is domestic terrorism.

And what happens? The Attorney General of the United States gives the FBI the power to go after parents because parents are protesting against this stuff because they know the power is in the people. We the people.

And you know what? The American people are on to this stuff, and the American people are going to stop it because that is the way we do things in this country.

Well, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for his comments. I believe my time is winding down.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Well, I appreciate the Speaker for his indulgence. I appreciate my friend from Arizona.

I would just point out that what we learned today was highly troubling. What we saw with the Attorney General, what we learned today when we saw that the White House was colluding--we saw this in evidence in emails--colluding with the National Association of School Boards to include language in the memoranda that then got the Attorney General to go target parents with the FBI. We saw that. It was evidence. The AG admitted today in our committee, he said, because of that memo, I created this effort by the FBI. We saw that. It is happening. The American people are onto it.

The American people, if you are listening to me, you stand strong. You say no. Say no to vaccine mandates, say no to mask mandates, say no to all the nonsense coming out of this critical race theory garbage. Stand up for your kids. Go to school boards, turn over the school boards, and fight for freedom.

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