Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, America's energy independence is vital for our national security and economic prosperity. Hydroelectric power plays a crucial role in that energy grid. It provides nearly a third of our Nation's renewable electricity and is one of the cleanest, most reliable energy sources available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Instead of expanding this proven resource, we are watching it get torn down, including four dams in my district on the Klamath River. They are gone now. Hydroelectric power was paid for and is CO2-free, if we are worried about CO2. It is a beautiful thing, and they are gone because of some environment ruling.

Removal of these dams took out a significant hydropower source and reduced clean energy production, further limiting our ability to strengthen the grid. They are even targeting more of them, including one called Lake Pillsbury in Mendocino, as well as some Snake River dams up in Washington.

We are going to take all of this hydropower at the same time as they want to expand the use of electricity for automobiles, take out gas stoves and have more electric stoves. It is just one thing after another to stretch the grid, and we are taking it out.

The policies do not make a lot of sense. We need to have streamlined permitting so we can have more power plants like this and keep the ones we have. We need to renew the permits we have so we can keep them around. Instead, after the removal of the dams, we get dead fish.

Mr. Speaker, the Birthright Citizenship Act is a necessary step to restore integrity to our immigration system. The 14th Amendment was never intended to grant citizenship to children of individuals who enter or remain in the country illegally. The purpose of the 14th Amendment was to guarantee full rights to freed slaves, not to fuel illegal immigration or exploit U.S. citizenship through birth tourism.

Today, 1 in 10 births in the U.S. is to an illegal mother, and nearly 400,000 of these mothers come across the border illegally every year to give birth. The drafters of the 14th Amendment couldn't have imagined that is how it would be twisted to make that somehow legal.

The loophole also fuels a global birth tourism industry, further undermining the integrity of our laws. Citizenship is one of America's most precious privileges. By closing these loopholes, this legislation prioritizes the rule of law and the interests of American citizens.

It is about fairness. It is not denying opportunity but ensuring our laws are respected and applied consistently. Let's take this vital step to protect the value of U.S. citizenship.

Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas for his hard work for a long time on this to create a bipartisan bill that is intended to succeed.

The area that I represent in far northern California is one that has seen so much fire and so much destruction over the years. The Fix Our Forests Act is an important step and a meaningful step in having this not occur anymore. So I am really pleased that the effort can be bipartisan, and Chairman Westerman is able to advance this cause.

Indeed, this is what one of my cities looked like, Paradise, California. It has already been 6 years, 85 lives lost, 300 towns affected in my district, 2 of them almost completely gone, Greenville, Canyondam, and a third one called Doyle. The fire burned right through that as well.

We are getting tired of this. We are getting really tired of it.

Now, with the tragedy in southern California, I guess that underlines it since it is getting a lot more national press. That is unfortunate.

What I appreciate in this bill is that it is common sense, and it will help with these disasters and keep our power grid more reliable. With the legislation we will have more clearing around the power lines, a bill I was able to pass a while back that we are adding to this bill.

Also, I am pleased to have a provision in here that advances more grazing. Of course, grazing is a very cost-effective way of keeping the fuels down around fire zones, and you can actually get paid for it by those doing the grazing.

So, Mr. Chair, when you see what success looks like, this is a managed forest here. It is thinned out, and it offers a much better opportunity to put fire out and stop fire or at least have it

burn through slowly and much cooler. When you don't manage the lands such--as so much U.S. Forest Service land looks this way--this is a tinderbox. It will burn completely down. We may not see any growth for 50 years after that.

Let's go with success. What Mr. McClintock was talking about in the Tahoe area, and even in a small town near Paradise called Magalia, where a private concern had done some of the work, and one-half of Magalia did not burn because of the work that was done adjacent to it.

We know these processes work. Why can't we advance them?

Why do we have to continue to have the destruction of the environment, waterways, and everything?

Let's pass this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to point out again, President Trump is leading the way to make America prosperous and even more free than what we have been the last 4 years.

President Trump, as part of his package of executive orders, has withdrawn us, once again, from the calamity that is the Paris accords. Our Governor, Gavin Newsom, in California, keeps pushing us down this path, taking away our cars, taking away our gas stoves, leaf blowers, light bulbs, you name it, in this endless effort to somehow chase down carbon dioxide.

Well, let me show you. Carbon dioxide, I will remind you once again, is a tiny portion of our atmosphere. When I ask the average person--it is kind of interesting--how much CO2 is there in the atmosphere? What percentage is in the atmosphere?

Most people just tend to believe--they don't really know. They have got their lives and they are busy, but they think, wow, it must be 20 percent, 50 percent. A lot of it is because of the hype of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and the so-called scientists and the media trying to corral us into being scared of CO2 production.

In our past years, past decades, past centuries, it has been much higher than what it is right now. Let me give you what the representation actually is. Right here, see this chart? Mr. Speaker, 78 percent of our atmosphere is nitrogen, and 21 percent is oxygen. We have over here a few trace gases here that includes krypton and a few things like that and water vapor.

Here, the third place one is argon, right here in green, 0.93 percent. Way over here in fourth place is CO2 at 0.04 percent. Most people have been hyped into believing it is half the atmosphere, 20 percent of the atmosphere, as I said.

Fear is the effort that is being put upon people. Climate action now, oh my gosh, it is going to be the end of us by Al Gore, by all the people taking their private jets to Davos and having these climate meetings. Yet, the U.S.--whether it is part of the Paris accords or it is just how we do things--when we improve our technology, improve our engines, we improve everything that we do if we are allowed to. If we are allowed to focus on that, we are one of two countries that actually has seen our curve go down a little bit on CO2 production. It is us and Japan. We are the only ones in the Paris accord of all the Western countries doing that.

Now, let's take a look at what China is doing. China is ever- increasing their amount of CO2, more and more coal-fired power plants with very little scrubber activity on them, if at all, on the output from those plants.

China is nearly triple the CO2 production than what the United States is. We are number two. We are a highly industrialized country, but we are already bending the curve downward, aren't we? We don't get credit for that. Let's, instead, export all our jobs, our economy, our manufacturing to China, to India, places like that.

India is on the rise as well. They are a smaller country industrially, but they are on the rise.

Why would we do that? Why would we exchange our economy and the way we do things in a much cleaner and efficient way to send it over there because, A, it can be cheaper, easier to get by the environmental regulations and the ridiculousness of chasing this CO2.

Carbon dioxide is an essential building block of life. Plants and trees need it. If we were too successful at dropping CO2 below whatever established standard they want, which is out in the air--it is interesting when I am in committees here, people don't even know. The experts that sit on panels say we need to do more to reduce CO2. They don't even know what the baseline number is. I asked them. They think it is 7, 8, 9 percent. They don't even know. They don't know what the start is, let alone what the target is.

Are we going to continue to let other countries produce the things we need and trade our economy and jobs for that versus as efficiently and as well as we do it here? What does that mean?

Well, in my district, they have already torn out hydroelectric dams. Do you know what hydroelectric dams provide? They provide CO2-free power. Oh, let's tear them out because of a fish deal that isn't even going to work out. Let's not build more hydroelectric dams.

We could add to Mount Shasta here 600,000 more acre-feet for all Californians, including those talking about the issues in southern California where they ran out of water, and they are not tending to the foliage there that is helping drive that. No. No. No. We can't have conditions on aid. No, we are helping people down there. That is a different story.

Management of forests, it helps have stronger forests, which are better CO2 sinks, you know, a managed forest here versus the one that is going to be the next fire. More CO2 is released from the fires in southern California and the million-acre fires in my district than what 5 years of cars driving in southern California produces, let alone a volcanic eruption and how much CO2 comes out of that.

We are chasing the wrong thing here. I believe, instead, let's not make CO2 the enemy. Let's follow President Trump and get out of the Paris accords and bring our economy back to this country.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good colleague from California for leading this charge and being that strong voice.

Mr. Speaker, we seem to have a common California problem on a lot of issues. I will remind people that California is a sanctuary State and some of the first sanctuary cities emanated from California leading to this problem.

Governor Gavin Newsom and the rest of the State is actually defying Federal law on enforcing borders and turning over criminal illegal aliens when they capture them and detain them. Lives are being lost because of that.

Let me go back in time a little bit so they are not forgotten.

Jamiel Shaw, II, a 17-year-old high school student and a promising athlete was shot and killed in March 2008 near his home in Los Angeles. His assailant, an undocumented immigrant or illegal alien, whatever you want to call it, was a member of the 18th Street Gang and had been released from jail just a day before this shooting.

Later, he was finally convicted in 2012 and sentenced to death, then commuted by Gavin Newsom.

Shaw's death led to increasing scrutiny of these policies and hopefully results here today.

Let me remind you of Kate Steinle. That one gripped the Nation as well. She was killed on a pier in San Francisco when an illegal immigrant, who shouldn't have been there, got ahold of a gun and discharged it and shot poor Kate Steinle. This man was acquitted of murder and manslaughter and only put away on a felon in possession of a firearm. This became a focal point in discussions of sanctuary cities, as well.

We have an opportunity here to not have this happen again and again. We know well, unfortunately, the story of Laken Riley because that is fresher in our minds. We can't go back and forget about people like Jamiel Shaw, whose father I met who was grieving at the time and is still grieving now; Kate Steinle, and so many other names that we are not naming here yet today. We need to do better.

Mr. Speaker, today marks 52 years since that fateful Roe v. Wade decision, a decision that has tragically ended countless unborn lives. The Supreme Court, not too long ago, did find that it was unconstitutionally put in place, not legislated, but done by the stroke of a pen at a court.

This week, thousands of people across the country are coming together in Washington for the March for Life, showing their unwavering commitment to standing up for the unborn and pushing for a culture that values and protects life.

Every life is precious. It is our duty to defend those who can't speak for themselves, even though there are those that would say it is just a clump of cells. Well, those clumps of cells always, always, every time develop into a human, not a puppy, not a waffle, always a human. For people to try and deny that science is ridiculous.

That is why I am honored to receive the A+ rating by the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life Scorecard for the 118th Congress, a recognition of my own dedication, but that of so many of my colleagues, as well, that we all back each other up on.

Protecting life doesn't stop there. We need to make sure that mothers have the information they need and the support they need so they can make informed decisions, rather than glossed over by abortionists.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding the time. I appreciate it a lot.

If viewers watch this channel a whole lot, they might see me on the floor talking about forestry and water, whether it is California or the whole West. I know it greatly affects my colleague from Utah, too. The forest fires and lack of forest management is appalling.

Why do we have to suffer this year after year when we know what actually works? When the Forest Services should be doing its job and treating more acres in a timeline that is much more rapid, when we want to say increase the pace and scale of doing so. It just doesn't happen.

We know they face lawsuits all the time. At some point we have to beat the lawsuits, let them come, but get the work done. Be bold. Be strong. Take them on. At some point it has got to be proven that what we are doing is the right thing, even though there is a liberal judge in San Francisco or somewhere that is trying to say that we have to restudy once again for a salamander or something like that.

When we have the kind of destruction that we see time and time again in our forests, especially in the Western States, then we will just keep suffering it. There is no reason for that. We have been working on the Fix Our Forests Act this week. My colleague and chairman of the Committee on Natural Resources, Mr. Westerman, has been working a long time on this. It is a very practical bipartisan plan to tackle the wildfire crisis and finally start managing the forest correctly. We see the destruction.

One fire in my district called the Dixie fire 3 years ago was a million acres. Several other fires were in the six-digit number such as the North Complex. The Camp fire was several hundred thousand acres but also took 85 lives in the town of Paradise.

What we see is the destruction in Los Angeles. It is unspeakable what is going on down there. Unfortunately, I have already lived that in 3\1/2\ communities of mine in the North State that were almost completely lost in fires the last few years.

It is heartbreaking, and it is mostly avoidable. We are going to have fires. They are going to happen. If we have managed lands, it is much easier to put fire out and control it.

When we look at the picture here, a managed forest is a better forest. It is better for the forest health itself. It is better for the wildlife in it. It is much easier to control fire and put fire out with the way fires behave. When we see this managed forest here on the far side of the poster, this is thin. This is how forest used to look 120 years ago.

We have let them fill in too much because we have had the stance of putting out all fires or at least we did for a while. The forest became built up like this. It is very dense. It is hard for the wildlife to even get through there. The old standard was could a cowboy ride a horse through there like the first explorers who came to the West. They can't now.

This is a tinderbox. Trees compete for very limited water supply, especially in a drought period. When they compete for limited water, it harms the tree. The tree struggles, and then it becomes weak. It becomes susceptible to insects waiting to take advantage. They know a weak tree.

A tree's self-defense mechanism is the sap that it produces when it is healthy. When that sap is there, if a borer tries to bore into that tree, the sap tends to push that insect out. It works pretty well. If the tree is weak, it doesn't make as much of that sap. The tree gets killed over time.

There is an area in eastern-central California, east of Fresno. We have gone camping up there before. This area all looks green. If we look at that area, about every other tree is gray. If lightning ever hits that, if something happens there, it will be yet the next fire. They keep happening.

The Park fire that happened in Chico, California, near my home, 400,000 acres. It blew from that area east of Chico all the way up to basically right near Lassen Volcanic National Park. We can't get used to these six-digit numbers for fires. The amount of resources it takes, the amount of firefighters, and the amount of people who put themselves in a dangerous way to do this is unnecessary.

Let's defeat these environmental lawsuits. Let's defeat these naysayers because this makes sense here. This doesn't. We keep losing this. We see the issue. Let's take southern California since that is the topic right now and for good reason. We have to manage these grasslands and these brushlands that are around. They are not forested per se. That is a little farther east of L.A. and those areas. It is the same thing. If this brush is managed, then they have a better chance, when the Santa Ana winds come up every year, of being able to control or stop the fire. It won't be perfect every time, but it gives them a fighting chance.

They had been doing it. For some reason this year they suspended that work. There were budgets cuts. What are they spending the money on? That has been a hot topic of giving California money and yet it seems they are not helping themselves.

That is my home State, and I have been frustrated for a long time. They spend a lot of money on a lot of other things. They want more Federal money. They are still wasting money on the high-speed rail. They want to give more money to illegal immigration and benefits for that. The State is trying to set aside $50 million to fight Trump. What is that all about?

They want to ask for money here and say we are putting conditions on them. They are not acting properly. They not acting in a way that is responsible when they should be focused on things that are keeping the public safe. The water supply that ran out in the area by the Pacific Palisades didn't need to run out. Maybe they should upgrade their fire hydrant systems with larger lines that can hold more water at a time, but they are not doing that.

The lake that was nearby was empty for almost a full year. When we see the work that needs to be done not getting done, what is everyone supposed to do? What are the other 49 States supposed to say? Oh, keep doing what they are doing; we will give them money. All the complaining around here is about conditions.

When you don't do that, this is what you get. We have seen it in vivid colors and coverage here. Thankfully, the wind had subsided somewhat in southern California. They are getting their water around it somewhat, but the

wind can come back. Who knows what it will hit next.

When we talk about what we need to do in the Fix Our Forests Act, we need to pass this legislation. I can't believe the arguments on that side of the aisle against it. It doesn't make any sense because we need to manage these lands.

The Federal Government is in charge through the Forest Service of 193 million acres. Their ambitious goal is to treat 2 million per year. That is 1 percent per year. If we do the math, that takes 100 years to get over all that. Although this is the city situation, it doesn't look that much different when I was in my home district next to a town named Canyondam which had that same orange glow 5 minutes before the town of Canyondam disappeared. There is no reason for this.

The Fix Our Forests Act would be a very important step in managing forests in a way that is successful. In only 2 days, President Trump has been leading the charge on the executive orders. He is not playing around with the climate change game. He is not playing all that. Instead, he wants to move toward water supply for California, move toward forest management. We will be working with him on that more. He gets it.

This is him in Paradise, California, saying: Why aren't they managing these lands? Governor Newsom stands there empty-handed 6 years later after that fire with empty promises and with very little land having been managed the way it should.

I am really glad we have President Trump, who understands this and is going to do everything he can to help. We will help supply him the legislation, such as the Fix Our Forests Act with the things it does.

Particularly, it expands the clearance zone for hazardous trees around power lines, a bill I have been carrying personally as one of the fires in my district, known as the Carr fire, was caused by that, as were two others, the power lines and things.

It directs the Forest Service to expand the use of livestock grazing. There is a concept. We know it works, and it works all through the West. They try to shut that down and say you don't get the permit for that, that it might affect the species. It actually has been found to help species when the cattle keep the noxious weeds and such down.

They have made it more and more difficult to keep those grazing permits and grazing abilities there, including a very heinous one going on in a northern California park right now where they are kicking the growers and the cattle people off the land after many years.

We are also talking about looking at having a Western headquarters for the Forest Service instead of in Washington, D.C. They need to be based where the forests mostly are, where the problem usually is. The idea is to migrate the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture, USDA. Why don't we put them where the issue is, especially the Forest Service? That is an idea that is in this bill, as well.

It will take advantage of local expertise, people who actually know and live with the conditions. They know the wind patterns and what things look like, instead of a fire team maybe coming from somewhere else and maybe not making the right call on how they should treat the area.

The Fix Our Forests Act is a giant step in the right direction. I support it wholeheartedly and ask my colleagues to jump in on it to have it be a bipartisan effort. There is nothing wrong with this bill. Let's do it.

Mr. Speaker, on his first day in office, President Trump wasted no time in addressing California's water crisis by signing the memorandum titled ``Putting People Over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California.'' We are very pleased with the President's strong actions on that and many fronts yesterday. We look forward to working with his administration on that.

Now, it did say ``southern California.'' As a Representative of northern California, I was like, what are you doing, Doug? We want people to understand that, due to stories like this--this is Lake Shasta up in Shasta County, just north of Redding. It holds 4\1/2\ million acre-feet of water when full. It is part of the Federal project known as the CVP, the Central Valley Project, built in the 1930s.

We have an opportunity to raise it 18 feet, add 600,000 more--that is a different story for a different day right now--as well as the other projects we have around the State that hold a lot of water; Lake Oroville, right near my home, 3\1/2\ million acre-feet.

The President wanting to have water that is already available, useful for other Californians, instead of being lost or not stored to begin with, I appreciate that directive. You know

what, we have plenty of water in California that falls on the Sierras in rain and snowpack, if we would capture it.

Instead, we have this situation year after year. This poster is a bit dated, but it is the same thing year after year. It shows how much water is being lost out through the Bay Delta. We have this massive flow, in this particular timeline, 7 million acre-feet came in. We are losing 6\1/2\ million acre-feet because we are just letting it go out.

It is not helping the delta smelt you have heard about. The delta smelt, they can't find it anymore. They do trolls, and they can't find it. It is gone. Even with all the extra water that has been pushed out since 1992, it never did help the smelt. Maybe too much water actually drowns the fish or something. I don't know.

We don't need to flush that much water through the delta even to keep saltwater intrusion from coming back up and affecting some of the Delta. We need to be trapping that water. We need to be saving that water for the San Luis Reservoir and for crops which would be helpful in the San Joaquin Valley.

Also, when we talked about southern California--my colleague just talked about the horrendous fires down there. This is a reservoir right near the Pacific Palisades, which burned to the ground. This reservoir had that been full, would have had enough water to last several days instead of just a few hours that their hydrant system had.

That is what it looks like full, more or less. That is what it looks like empty. It was empty. It had been empty for nearly a year. What kind of management or planning is that where they don't need to tell the fire department it wasn't full at the time?

They are supposed to be doing some kind of repair on it. It probably could have been done in a couple of weeks. Instead, they are putting it out for bid and this or that. Probably, their local staff could have done it, they say. We lost that opportunity to trap water. Get this: It holds about 40 acre-feet. I just showed you how many hundreds of thousands of acre-feet go out through the delta. You could fill that up in minutes if you could somehow channel the delta into that. Yet, this is what you get.

Instead, we would have the opportunity to have those reservoirs full, and have southern California have what it needs. Also, let's not forget the San Joaquin Valley, which President Trump knows a lot about. They grow these amazing crops. So many of them come from down there, as well as my part of northern California, to feed the United States and even the world.

These products--when we show you these percentages here--these are percentages of crops that come from California that Americans use; not just Californians. If we don't grow them in California with all this abundant water we have, then where is this stuff going to come from? Where is this food going to come from? We are going to have to import it or do without it. We think, well maybe we don't have mandarins anymore, maybe we don't have avocados anymore. We will just eat something else. Why?

We need to have these choices, and we have the ability to grow them because we have plenty of water when we trap it. Even in drought years, there is still enough water that comes down.

With that, the management of water supply is also tied back to fire management. Unfortunately, what my colleague was talking about, the horrific fires in southern California, this is some of the brush that grows on the hills above those areas. It is a pretty arid climate down there. We know that.

If we are smart about it, we can actually be removing this brush, and make it so that if fire does happen, it is just burning weeds at a slow pace instead of being driven by the Santa Ana winds at a high rate of speed, 80 miles an hour. You can't beat that. Firefighters can't beat that.

They do their best efforts. They have got to try and at least make a line of defense at the city, but when it is flowing over the top of them like fire does and like happens in my district all the time, it is humanly not possible.

This is how we stay ahead of it; removing this brush in the timber areas, like in my district where fire burned 1 million acres one time. We can be removing brush. We can be removing dead trees and small trees. We are still leaving the forest, but it is a thin forest. It is a managed forest.

Instead of empty promises being made--empty-handed like Gavin Newsom time and time again saying: Oh, we are going to do something about the water. We are going to do something about the fuel in the forests. No, he isn't. He is dragging his feet on seeing the water supply built in California.

He needs to be directing his people on the water commission, directing people on the water control board to make things happen to build these projects as expeditiously as possible instead of just trying to slow down the lawsuits. We need to do this to scale. We need to do this with speed. We are tired of the empty talk from the Governor.

President Trump is leading the way on his first day, showing the path forward on helping our water supply, on helping our forests, helping the people in our State at home and our country to have what they need.

No more empty promises. No more nonsense. Gavin Newsom needs to get out of the way. Let President Trump--instead of putting aside $50 million in the legislature, which is what they are talking about to fight Trump, and they want to tie that to State aid for southern California for fires.

Talk about conditions--we hear about conditions a lot around here. Oh, no, conditions. You are making conditions on the State legislature to tie $50 million to fight Trump with lawsuits for State aid.

Mr. Speaker, on day 1, President Trump took bold action to revoke the unrealistic Biden mandate that aimed for 50 percent of all new cars to be electric by 2030, only 4\1/2\ model years from now.

This decision protects Americans and industries from being sacrificed on the alter of radical environmentalism. Automakers can now focus on innovation and consumer desires, rather than being forced into a one- size-fits-all EV agenda that stifles competition and choices for real people.

Gavin Newsom's California has been a cheerleader for these extreme policies, pushing mandates that hurt working families and drive up costs to meet their California goals.

President Trump's move rejects that failed approach, puts common sense back in the driver's seat. That is part of a broader effort to restore energy independence, roll back harmful regulations, and ensure America isn't crippled by radical climate agendas.

Today's actions are putting the needs of Americans ahead of an out- of-touch environmental elite. Instead of empty-handed promises by Gavin Newsom, we have President Trump who is focused on a forward-moving approach on real solutions, leading the way to support our economy, our workers, and our future.

Mr. Speaker, California had at least one piece of welcome news. The typically out-of-control California Air Resources Board has decided to pull back on some really overreaching truck and train regulations.

CARB, as it is known, an unelected body appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom, has decided to withdraw a Clean Air Act waiver to the EPA for both the Advanced Clean Fleet and In-Use Locomotive Regulation rules.

The Advanced Clean Fleet and locomotive rules were unrealistic from the start. The technology doesn't even exist on a market basis to run these trucks and trains, so maybe California should just be an island unto its own without these delivery devices.

It would have placed an unnecessary financial burden on the businesses, the consumers, and the economy as a whole in my home State.

President Trump has long been outspoken against regulatory overreach such as this. It is encouraging to see California finally getting a clue on that and beginning to follow that kind of thinking.

Governor Newsom's appointees at CARB have been responsible for pushing many of these costly mandates in some of our other States. Even this Congress sometimes looks at emulating those to the detriment of consumers, like taking away their stoves, taking away their cars, the whole works.

Mr. Speaker, it is time they start considering the real-world impact. At least this go around, maybe because of pressure coming from here, they pulled back and got this one right.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the topic of this Special Order.

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

Mr. Speaker, we see it every year, especially in the West. When fire season hits, it can be very devastating. Some years were better than others. In the northern part of the State that I represent and some of my colleagues in surrounding States, we got hit pretty hard in the forested areas, some of the grassland areas, et cetera.

As you know right now, southern California, the Los Angeles area, is taking it really badly with the annual Santa Ana winds. It is an extraordinary amount of wind and strength of the winds, driving the fire to a point that hasn't been seen in at least 60 years in that area. It is devastating towns and causing unmeasurable damage so far.

The fires are still raging. It is by the grace of God that maybe the wind will stop. Maybe it will shift somewhat and give the firefighters a better chance to get ahead of it. We know they are valiantly fighting. As it is right now firefighters are coming from all over the State and neighboring States as well, to weigh in on that with the aircraft, the equipment, and the firefighters on the ground to make the stand.

It is going to be extremely difficult until the winds die down. We pray for rain to help them out as well. It is not unfamiliar for me in my northern California district with several large fires in the last 6 years. We have had the Paradise, California, fire known as the Camp fire, which burned many acres. Importantly, 90 percent of the town was burned down, and 85 people lost their lives with that.

Other towns in my own district were consumed as well in later fires in Greenville and Canyondam. In a little town called Doyle, it blew right through part of that. It happens year after year.

It really boils down to: What are we doing for preparedness? What are we doing to treat the lands and have the conditions that we need to be more successful? You are not going to prevent fire completely. You are going to have it. When one occurs, you need to be able to have a fighting chance, and our firefighters have the ability to do that.

Mr. Speaker, joining me today during this Special Order is my colleague from Oregon (Mr. Bentz). We share that Oregon-California border, and we frequently encounter many of the same issues on fire, on forestry, on water and water issues

Mr. Speaker, to tell his story about what has been going on in Oregon, I yield to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Bentz).

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Bentz' perspective on that as a neighbor, and our constituents year after year suffer some of these same issues. You were showing that poster of our forested areas in the north and in the forests in the west you have the opportunity to manage those lands to be much more fire resilient.

Again, you are not going to completely prevent fire, but you can have fire where it can be a lot more manageable or simpler to put out when it is not raging so much.

You have here an example, on the right of this, of an unmanaged forest. You see how crowded, how dense that is? That means you have more trees, dense trees, and the trees are competing with the limited water supply. They are then weaker; they are more prone to have insects come and drill and kill the trees and just make it a tinderbox.

Over here, this is managed land. If you look at old photographs from before we started putting all the fires out Smokey Bear style 100 years ago, forested lands were a lot more--had a lot more open space in it, meadow areas, and a lot more gaps between the trees because there was more of a natural effect of natural fire going through and taking out a lot of the lower brush, the pine needles and all that, and the big trees with their thicker bark stand and go on.

You had lots of fire back then too, before man intervening, but there was a balance of nature of that. We started with the Smokey Bear program and put out all fires, which is good, but we stopped doing the management in between that nature would do, thinning forests, removing brush because up until the first few decades of the Smokey Bear program and putting out the fires program we were still managing the forests. We were utilizing those wood products. What nature might have burned out we were taking out, and that is where our wood and paper products were coming from.

In about the 1970s when the Endangered Species Act's efforts were kicking in more so then it got a lot harder to get timber permits. It got more difficult to do anything in the forests especially on Federal lands where environmental organizations were trying to basically shut them down and add more and more monuments, for example, or wilderness areas that are basically no-touch zones.

Here is another example of a forested area. This part on the right is an area that had burned out a long time ago on public land. Over here, the fire affected this private land as the government's fire basically spreads into everybody's land. What you see there is that the private parties got back to cleaning up their land and planting it back. You see those trees that are, oh, maybe 15 years old, I will guess, they are coming back. That forest is coming back.

The Federal land that is not being managed is still the same as it was. You see dead snags. You see brush coming in. You see this is going to be a fire zone when all the brush burns the next time there is a fire in that area.

Why is it our friends, our colleagues in southern California have to be subjected to this because they also have management needs in their adjacent areas, part of the moonscape you see in southern California right here. Some of their challenges include--they are not so forested in the areas closest to the cities. They have more of this. They have more of the hilly areas with a lot of brush on it like that. They need fuels reduction projects too in the more arid southern California. Their forests are a little further east, a little higher up. They have attempted fuels reduction projects, but the environmental movement sometimes shuts them down.

Let me tell you about those a little bit. There is one that was under way along the Angeles Crest Highway corridor, one that was completed and did 1,800 acres. It took 2 years of analysis to approve the decision to complete that where a simple environmental review would have been done sooner and only affected a small amount of acreage.

A very noble project that would have helped would have been near the Eaton fire in southern California, which would have been initiated in August 2020. If you look at that project, it was clear--it isn't clear if it was actually approved or implemented because the effect was that there is very little brush clearing that got done there.

When you boil that down to what does that actually mean, it is that if you don't clear the brush, if you are held up due to environmental regulations and delayed permit periods, then you are going to be fire prone. The Santa Ana winds are going to come each year no matter what. In this case, they burned through that brush and came right up to the edge of town. We have seen that in Altadena where in one case here we have what is known as San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, and the Eaton fire has burned through that. This monument was recently expanded even more so. What happens with a national monument? As I mentioned a moment ago, it becomes almost hands off, don't touch, don't manage. No equipment can go out there and do fuel removals and very little other can happen in national monument or wilderness areas.

In the designation, it did acknowledge the risk of wildfire and the need to manage it. But what happens? Lawsuits, litigation, and the hands-off approach happens; as a result, the fire that started in that area is what fed into and consumed part of Altadena in southern California.

Now we will talk about the Pacific Palisades, which is the first one greatly affected as you have seen burning much of that community down.

They had a safety project there that maybe in and of itself would not have been the complete be-all and end-all for helping them. You still need the brush lands work to be done so that fire can't come rushing through in areas so rapidly. In the Pacific Palisades, they had a pole line that they were going to upgrade from wooden poles to steel poles and also upgrade the equipment, harden the lines so they are much less susceptible to fire or high winds. In which case, a lot of those winds in my area of northern California if you got a wind warning, then they shut down the power, a Public Safety Power Shutoff. It is like a Third World country. We have to shut off the power because the wind blows. It is a preemptive effort so that branches and things don't blow into the power lines and cause fire like we have seen happen at least a couple

times on big fires in northern California and other areas. When we prevent this work, we put ourselves at greater risk.

In Pacific Palisades they had a pole line they wanted to change out, as I said, with the harder system lines and steel poles, and they were prevented from doing so.

Let's see the plant one here. As the work was being done, somebody came along and claimed that they had an endangered species here. This is a variety of vetch, milk vetch, and they claim it is unique only to that area. It was somewhere around the area where they were changing the poles, and they made them stop the project and put back whatever vetch they may have been disturbing there in the process. That is the one unique to that area supposedly.

Here is when it grows all over the place in northern California either wild or as a crop. People use it for a cover crop to put nitrogen back in the soil. It is really hard to tell the difference, but it is something the environmental movement uses the slightest difference to make that something, oh, my gosh, we have to stop this because it is an endangered species. That is pretty dubious.

I can relate also a recent story when they are talking water storage and water projects, the Tellico Dam, which you may have heard of in the late 1960s, early 1970s that they were putting in place in Tennessee, part of the Tennessee Valley Authority, that it was going to provide massive benefits to the people of the area with hydroelectric power, stored water for water use, flood control, recreation, all the good things.

Somebody from a university was out there poking around, and they thought they found an endangered species that they dubbed the snail darter. For several years, it was the battle over the snail darter. Nobody could really prove anything.

Because the project was so important, after other efforts were exhausted, a bill was run through Congress in 1979 to make it where the Tellico Dam could be built. There was still ongoing litigation after that, but it got to operate.

Finally, what we have learned many years later is that the TVA was operating pretty well and that the biologists at that time somehow had information to remove the snail darter from endangered to threatened status in 1984. In 2022, it was removed from the endangered species list.

Here is the kicker. Just this month, a study revealed that the snail darter was not a distinct species. It wasn't a distinct species.

Look at these two different forms of the same plants. In this case, it is a weed because it is not helping anything. It is a crop in some areas with the vetch.

The snail darter was not a distinct species but actually an eastern population of what is known as the stargazing darter.

This really raises concerns about how genuine the efforts of the environmental left are, to make claims about species identification being so narrowly specific to a particular area.

This is what we and the folks in the Pacific Palisades get to suffer with on at least having that pole line able to be helpful and not furthering the fire with a hardened, newer pole line.

So many things are California problems, we hear time and time again. We have to ask what is going on with the leadership in our State.

I am sorry this has to be a problem for the other 49 States. What we do sometimes has to flow over to others and costs taxpayers of the rest of the country on these issues.

We hear a lot of talk here about conditions being placed on the aid for southern California. There are not conditions for what is happening right now. The firefighters are being sent. Every effort is being made to put the needs of getting the fire out and helping the people who are in immediate need to have the shelter and other things they need in order to get through this timeline.

I guess what we are talking about, and what Mr. Bentz, our Speaker, and others are talking about, is: What is the accountability, further down the line, on the many billions they are going to be seeking in order to rebuild?

It isn't unheard of to have conditions on other situations in the rebuilding phase. This is the emergency phase. Nobody questions immediate help for the emergency phase, and that is what is disingenuous about this argument that is going on. Nothing is being held back from getting through the emergency timeline here. We are going to get the fire out, and we are going to get the people who are displaced in at least a fairly comfortable situation until the slog that goes through rebuilding happens.

We have lived it right up in Paradise, California. We are grateful for much great help up there, but in Paradise, conditions had to be put on rebuilding homes out of resilient materials. The power lines are being undergrounded up there. There are trees that are being removed. The dead trees and damaged trees are being removed. The landscape will be different so that Paradise does not have the same issue in 40 years. We will have resilient homes that will stand up to fire. We will have the things in place that are going to make it resilient.

I think it is pretty fair to ask, if billions are going to be sent to anybody after a hurricane or after a flood, what are you doing in the flood zone about making sure you have strong levees or maybe not actually building in a particular floodplain that is highly vulnerable, and in these other zones?

It is reasonable to ask these questions. We are talking about 50 States' taxpayer dollars here.

``Oh, you are so insensitive to talk about costs and money,'' and this and that. No. We are getting through the emergency. We are helping people, and there will be help after, but it isn't unreasonable to say: What does it take to put things back in a way that is going to be stronger and more resilient going forward, especially when we are talking about many, many billions?

As I have said, they have done that in the other areas where I have been affected or my people have been affected. It is not unreasonable to say you need to have harder and more resilient areas that are going to be fire resistant. In this case, in southern California, we want them to have these things.

Let's talk about the water supply for a moment. We found out that, as we have heard time and again, the hydrants ran out of water. There are several pieces to that story. There are some realities, too, such as how much you can push through the fire hydrants for a fire that size. Yes, that is a reality. What happened?

Let's back up from that a little bit. They did have a 117-million- gallon reservoir that was empty. The Santa Ynez Reservoir had been emptied for the purpose of repairs. I guess that is okay. We need to repair things, but what is the timeline for that?

They emptied that 117-million-gallon reservoir last February. My understanding of it is that they waited a couple of months to start to put out a bid for the repairs that were needed on the cover of the reservoir. They don't want foreign things to get in there because it is a drinking water supply, as well. Then, they didn't really let out the contract, it is my understanding, until November.

They lost 9 months fooling around in order to do something that is so critically important. Water supply in southern California is a pretty big deal, and it took that long.

I am not sure that any repairs have even been started yet, from the photographs and such. Maybe they are doing some preliminaries. They say it is supposed to be ready by February, so we will see.

They had to draw on three 1-million-gallon water tanks to try to keep the Pacific Palisades hydrant system going. If you had the ability to have that 117-million-gallon source ready, that would have lasted a heck of a lot longer than the few hours the hydrant system did, just based on the 3 million gallons in the tanks there.

We want to talk water supply in California anyway. Gavin Newsom, the Governor, is not helping much. Indeed, his legions of regulators are stopping the water that needs to be stored in California and moved from the places where it is plentiful to the places where it is needed more so, such as the aqueduct system and storing water in the San Luis Reservoir.

There are two sets of pumps, a Federal set of pumps and a State set of pumps. The one the State of California governs is running 15 percent of capacity or so right now. Why isn't that running at full blast, topping off San Luis Reservoir, which the San Joaquin Valley and southern California can draw upon?

We have hundreds of thousands of acres of crops that have been idled because there is not enough water. We have enough water. Even in more drought-like years, the amount of water that runs out to the ocean is incredible. It would blow your mind what we are not taking advantage of.

This is a poster I had. It is a little bit older here, but it illustrates the basic issue that is more or less true every year. The amount of water that flows into the delta right here--this is the middle of the timeline--is about 7 million acre-feet.

Lake Oroville and Lake Shasta combined, when they are full, hold 8 million acre-feet, and the amount here in this illustration shows about 6 million of it went flowing out to the Pacific Ocean.

People ought to be angry over this, that we are not capturing more of that water and topping off here in the delta. The San Luis Reservoir would be just down from the delta a little bit.

Two years ago, remember, we had an amazing amount of rain in California in the Sierras, and we were able to top up everything. Tulare Lake was re-created once again. It is an area in the San Joaquin Valley that, in the past, had been kind of a lake. Because of farming and such, they have been able to recapture that, some of the richest land making some of the best crops in the world come from out there. That is how much water, rain, and snow we had, and it topped off just about all the dams and lakes everywhere.

Then, we had a similar amount in 2023, yet the San Luis Reservoir did not get filled for the 2023-2024 season. It got barely over halfway full because they couldn't run the pumps. Why? It was because of a fish situation they had in the delta. The crazy thing is that the fish that they are trying to save actually had come in in a heavier population than normal, so in the process of pumping moving water, they trapped a little higher number of fish than normal, too, because there were more fish to begin with. So with that, they said you have already exceeded the quota of fish you can take for this year.

They ratcheted the pumps down, and they weren't able to top off the San Luis Reservoir or deliver water to the San Joaquin Valley or to the aqueduct that would have helped maybe top off some more of the reservoirs in southern California.

Santa Ynez Reservoir is one we have heard about, and I have spoken about it a little bit. This is the picture of that. This is more or less full. Over here is what it looks like empty. It kind of reminds you of a stadium or a racetrack or something. When they have the ability through the aqueduct to bring that water from somewhere else and fill that up, the poster I just showed you, Mr. Speaker, the amount of water flowing out to the Pacific would fill that in a matter of minutes if you somehow harnessed all that and dropped it in there. It would have to come down through aqueducts and other means, or they even have wells, as I understand, that can fill that if they don't have the upper lakes above that the ability to fill that.

What it boils down to is that our leaders in California, starting with the Governor, have not been pushing in the direction that would give us the water supply we need that would help everybody and help with the crops.

Instead, as I mentioned, it comes down to fish in the delta. It comes down to the delta smelt, which so many of you have probably heard of around the country.

Why do you even know about that, Mr. Speaker? It is because, time and time again, we talk about the water woes of California.

So many people in this country enjoy the crops that are grown in California. You can see here, Mr. Speaker, walnuts, for example, just about 100 percent of what Americans consume is grown in California, and almonds, tomatoes, mandarins at about 96 percent, and avocados. We are heavy in avocados, and probably in this area, we are talking not far from the fires. Grapes, wine grapes, so much of it comes from our home State. Americans enjoy these products, like olive oil and table olives.

If it is not grown in these areas, then where do you want it to be grown? Where do you want it to come from?

A mismanaged water supply means it doesn't happen in California, which means 90-something percent or above of all those crops coming from there will have to come from a foreign country, if at all.

That means people's choices have changed. It means their diets have changed. That is why California's water is important to everybody. That is why the management of it is important. That is why the management of these forested lands and grasslands are important. It is because these have an effect, too. They have an effect on air quality.

When we had a huge fire in my district known as the Dixie fire a couple of years ago, it ended up being a 1-million-acre forest fire and consumed a couple of towns, which I mentioned to you, Mr. Speaker.

That smoke plume was big enough and dense enough that it was actually able to rise up, come all across the country, and affect the East Coast. People in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York were actually told not to go outside or do exercises on those days for health reasons.

Mr. Speaker, remember the fires from Canada about 1 year ago? They affected people in the same way. The Canadian ones were not that far from here. This one came all the way from California.

Our water supply would help L.A. and others to be able to have a better chance of fighting fires by keeping all their reservoirs full.

Governor Newsom wanted to claim that all the reservoirs were full. They sure aren't all full up north, are they? That is where the water comes from, by and large.

This effect we are talking about is important to all Americans, especially if you want to keep the food products that you are used to coming and if you want to have the air quality not affect the East Coast from giant fires. It is also just the idea of why we would have our fellow Americans suffering from this needlessly because of a lack of leadership that is coming, in this case, from Sacramento, as they kowtow much more to the environmental groups to keep their records at 100 percent rather than doing forest management and brush management, which I showed you here, and kowtowing to where they found a variety of vetch that is indistinguishable from the vetch that grows everywhere else.

I face that in my home county, too. They are looking for things in order to stop people from being able to build homes on the foothills. They look for the species of the day to do that.

It is basically trying to distinguish different subspecies that they are so infinitesimally able to distinguish that it really turns into a game. We saw that with the snail darter, and we are finding it out with more and more things.

A fuels reduction project would be tremendously helpful. We need much more green light. We need the Forest Service, which manages or has under its purview 193 million acres nationwide.

When they came up with the plan about 3 or 4 years ago that said we want to manage 20 million acres over 10 years, that is 2 million acres a year, and 2 million is about 1 percent of their 193 million. That means it would take 100 years to get over all the lands.

Well, the trees grow a lot faster than a 100-year cycle, especially the small trees and the understory I was talking about that creates the fire-prone areas. A dense forest is one that is going to be a tinderbox, and we see it and experience it all the time.

It takes leadership on that, and it takes having the public understand. When we talk about forest management, people are scared to death by a handful of environmental groups: You guys are going to clear cut everything from here to Oregon or wherever.

That is not the case. This isn't the 1880s, the bad days, when they kind of came and plundered the West, seeking wealth, and all that.

We have rules. We have regulations. We have smart people that manage these and want to take care of their assets. These are family operations in

many cases. They go on generation after generation. Yet, they are having that taken away--farming, ranching, timbering, mining.

I will talk about mining for a moment.

California is trying to push these mandates instead of focusing on the stuff people need, such as highways that flow and water being stored.

Let's look at the dam there. We have an opportunity when we are talking about water supply here. This is Shasta Dam in my district in northern California. It is a Federal project. I think we have an opportunity in this Trump administration coming up to resume some of the work that President Trump led during his first term to talk about a possible raise of Shasta Dam.

This dam was actually designed to be much taller when it was built back in the late 1930s, and it would be pretty simple to add 18 more feet to that. That is the plan that is being looked at. It is called a quick and dirty 18 feet. There is nothing quick about any of this process.

That would add 630,000 more acre-feet. Can you imagine that?

Mr. Speaker, that Santa Ynez reservoir poster I showed--instead of gallons, you put it in acre-feet--holds about 40 acre-feet, okay? This would add 630,000 more acre-feet to this dam that already holds 4.5 million acre-feet.

This is a key to the State water supply right here, Shasta and then Lake Oroville, right in my backyard at home, which is another 3.5 million acre-feet. We wouldn't have that much if we didn't have the vision to build those in the 1930s and 1960s under Democratic leadership. President Roosevelt and Governor Pat Brown had the vision for it. What is going on now?

Everything is all about going into a shell and living in a cave under some environmental interpretation. Where is the leadership?

We also have the opportunity in the western part of my district to build Sites Reservoir in Colusa County. It would hold about 1.5 million acre-feet. Imagine 1.5 million more acre-feet, plus 600,000 more acre- feet from Lake Shasta, 2.1 million acre-feet of water we are losing and already have available to us. We are just losing it out to the Pacific.

The poster showed how much water is going out to the ocean that isn't being used for human purposes. Do you know what? That water flowing to the delta isn't even helping the delta. The delta smelt is basically extinct, and they do what they call trawls. They look for it. They try and capture and do counts on them.

We have put so much more water through there. Starting in 1992, legislation here caused 800,000 acre-feet to be taken away from farming and ranching at that point and push more through the delta. Those numbers have completely gone up since then. The State water board is contemplating even more being pushed out to the delta, freshwater being turned into saltwater.

Some people say: Well, you can do desal. Desalination? Great. You can. It works in some places, but it is really expensive. It consumes a lot of power. It consumes an amazing amount of power, the electricity to separate the salt from the water. Just a few minutes ago, if you were upstream, you would have captured it while it was still freshwater. You would have it available without that extreme expense.

Well, you can still desal in California anyway. You guys have a lot of money and the know-how.

Well, a group called Poseidon tried for 20 years in southern California, I think in Huntington Beach, one of the beach towns. They fought and fought and fought to work through a process and to get permits. Every time they would get something thrown at them, they would try again and say: Okay, if we mitigate for this and we take care of that, we can move forward with the project. Then they would come up with something else.

After 20 years and many millions of dollars to build that desal plant, ultimately the California Coastal Commission, yet another layer of bureaucracy and people who say ``no'' to what you might want to do on the coast, ruled against them, and that is it. They are out. There will be no desal plant in southern California.

Somebody please tell me, what is the solution going to be to add more water supply for California? Well, conservation. Conservation is great. Use less when you can. People are using so much less that they don't have yards anymore. They get yelled at if they wash their car. There are golf courses shutting down.

We don't really have to resort to Third World ways of doing that either because we have so much supply that comes, even in the lighter years, from the other areas if we just save it, distribute it, and wisely use it. We can still do the environmental things we need to do.

The delta doesn't need nearly the amount of water flowing through it to flush the salt. They don't want the salt to intrude too far up and get into other areas where people draw water or it might affect fish.

Even the effluent is something we need to work on, too. A lot of the cities around the delta have sewer treatment systems that sometimes don't keep up. They are not treating it down to really clean water and sometimes there is an emergency, it overflows, and it goes untreated straight into the delta. Good water from other areas has to go flush through there and clean that up.

Why? Why do we have to do it this way? Is it to keep some people's environmental scorecard at 100 percent because they don't want more development; they don't want cutting trees; they don't want building water supply; and they don't want us to add lanes to the highway?

Instead, we get things like high-speed rail. They are still pushing high-speed rail in California, a project that was initially passed narrowly on the ballot to use $9 billion of taxpayer bond money to help develop what would be a $33 billion rail project to make a fast train from SF to L.A.

Within a year, they raised that number to $42 billion. I remember because I was there in the legislature. Then, 2 years after that, they said it is not going to be $33 billion, and it is not going to be $42 billion. It is going to be $98.5 billion. This is 2011 numbers.

The number is now somewhere around $130 billion. They have spent maybe $15 billion or $20 billion or somewhere in there. Now they are seeking more Federal money, about $6 billion to $8 billion more Federal, of your 50-State taxpayer money, in this boondoggle.

It was supposed to be completed in 2020. They only have a few bridges built and no track laid. They are building it in the central part of the State from a place called Merced to an almond orchard, somewhere around Bakersfield. I think it is near Wasco or Shafter. Can you imagine the ridership between those two areas? It is ridiculous.

Yet, people say: Well, we should just give a blank check to California. Not when they make decisions like this. We want to ensure that, if California is going to be moving forward on that, that they are going to do much more.

This is a picture of Gavin Newsom at Paradise, where I was with he and President Trump just a few days after the fire in Paradise. Trump warned him then: Look, man, you have to get out and do the management of the forest. You have to get this stuff off the forest floor.

He said raking it. Then they made fun of him for saying raking.

Well, there are actually tools called rakes that they use in forestry to move this material.

Here you have Trump saying: What the heck? Pointing the way here.

You have Newsom, empty-handed, saying: Well, I don't know, man. We have got to try.

It is 6 years later, and he has done very little to help California to be more fire safe. A fire a couple of years after that in a different part of Butte County ended up being called the north complex--because several fires burned together, and they call that a complex.

We had grant money waiting to go to help local folks do a thinning and planning around some of the little communities there and make those areas a little more fire safe and make fire spread slower.

What happened? After 1\1/2\ years' worth of fooling around, fighting permits, the fire broke out anyway and burned the whole place down, and the grant money didn't get used. This is what goes on.

Governor Newsom is not doing much to help these water projects move along with any kind of speed. He feigned it a little bit on the Sites one year saying: Well, we are going to

make the lawsuits end--end the lawsuits faster on it.

I guess we should be thankful, but he is not directing this commission, his water boards, to do much to really, really help, whether that is in the north on our water storage or in the south on the infrastructure there.

Actually, he was blaming the locals on the conditions, whether it was Santa Ynez reservoir or the hydrants. He said: Oh, that is a local thing. That is a local thing.

Yet, he wants to come down there and start talking about the vision for a new L.A., L.A. 2.0, or Los Angeles 2028. They are going to have the Olympics there in 2028, I think.

He is already giddy about how they are going to change L.A. into something else. Is this going to become a new planned community of 15- minute cities and people having limitations on how they are going to live there? Is that what you want?

It seems to be where they are going because he is actually giddy about it. You should see the recordings. He was doing a little dance and stuff like, yeah, we have got a new plan for this. We are going to bring everybody.

It is appalling. People are angry. They are angry at this leadership.

How they can have a situation where that Santa Ynez reservoir was empty and the L.A. Fire Department wasn't even aware of that and didn't know they would not have that kind of water supply for a period of time that they maybe would have counted on? The dots aren't connecting here.

Since the State regulates so much of this, then what is the State doing to ensure, since they have a lot of fires in L.A. and have the Santa Anna winds every year, that they are doing everything they can to make sure it is not vulnerable?

Are we doing everything we can to help streamline permits to build up the infrastructure even more? They aren't. They throw more out. They find more species every day, every week, to throw up a roadblock. The leadership there happily seems to acquiesce to that.

When we talk about what we are going to do, there absolutely has to be accountability for it.

I am grateful for the amount of emergency help that has helped so many Californians in fire-prone situations in other areas, and it isn't their fault.

The U.S. Forest Service has a lot to be questioned about on how they manage lands because their Forest Service lands are adjacent to many of these towns. Indeed, the towns grew up as logging towns, and they used to be able to go out to those areas and manage and use those and cut trees for the Nation's wood and paper product supply needs.

That all started shutting down in the 1970s due to the spotted owl and whatever other species du jour they can come up with to do that, or water quality issues. Oh, my gosh, they are going to affect the water quality.

We already know how to do that. We don't cut trees near the creeks anymore. We don't do much near the creeks and the rivers. We stay away. They know how to do that prescription. It still takes forever to get a permit to do any of these things.

As the State moves toward more mandates on electric cars, on electric stoves, and electric trains and trucks--thankfully, a mandate got pushed off a little bit on trains and trucks because I don't know how people were going to get their supplies and get provisions if nobody can ship it in because of vehicles that don't even exist at the level of emissions that they are talking about.

Just let attrition do its job. Let everybody replace the trucks with new trucks over time, and maybe even us farmers could buy the ones that are only 10 years old that are still nice, running trucks when we only use a few thousand miles a year. No, we don't even get exemptions for that.

It is one thing after another to try and do business, to try to be a farmer, to be a rancher, to be a miner, or anything in the State of California and so much of the West.

I hope this place doesn't emulate some of the regulations that California has coming along, like one called the PRO Act, which means you basically have to be in a union in order to work. You can't be a self-employed contractor.

These are the things that come from California that they are trying to push here. Thankfully, we are going to have a change in direction here in leadership coming from the White House.

If we are going to be more successful, we have to consider the Endangered Species Act working the way it was intended, the way Congress passed it back in the early 1970s.

I don't think the weapon that has turned into would have even passed in Congress because nobody would have wanted to have been responsible for what you see now, with people being sued to death if they have a stocked pond on their land. Somehow that can be interpreted as you have now changed the waterways and you have changed the ability for a species to be there, like the raise of Shasta Dam.

They are going to find a species there to keep it from being raised. It is an existing dam which already had plans on the books to make it taller to begin with, except the war came along, and they kind of put off raising it more. They will find a species to try and stop it from being raised a mere 18 feet and adding 600,000 acre-feet.

Endangered Species Act will be used to try and stop the type of timber management that is needed so badly in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and every other area.

One of the counties that I have part of the forest in that is known as the Mendocino National Forest on the western part of my district and flows into the coastal area, 97 percent of that national forest has burned over about a 20-year or 25-year period.

What a stellar track record. Yes, 97 percent of this particular forest that we are supposed to manage has burned over this period of time. That is worse than an F grade. It is astounding that the citizens are putting up with this.

What I see happening in southern California is they are pushing back on the leadership that has gotten us into this situation. We are going to be there for them. We are going to be there right now as we are, as the firefighters--not me, not us, but we are making sure that things are going to be provided so they can get through this immediate emergency, get the fire out, get people stabilized, and then go forward in the rebuild process.

There is nothing wrong with asking for accountability on how we keep out of the situation in the rebuild, as they did in Paradise, as they do just about everywhere else to improve so we don't subject the next generations to the same danger.

Why would you do that? So you don't have cockamamie ideas like Governor Newsom and others have on re-envisioning L.A. and all that.

What does that mean? Does that mean people are going to have choices? Does it mean they are going to have freedoms? Is there going to be some mandate there on how they are forced to live and how they are supposed to stay in tight communities, things like that?

I do have a degree of anger over this as well because I have been watching it long enough as a legislator, as a private citizen, and watching this happen to my neighbors, watching this happen to the taxpayers of the U.S., but of California. So many people are leaving the State that were in business or have a retirement. They are not going to stay and pay for this anymore. They are angry, too.

Leadership is important. Competence is important. Having the fire systems ready at the go, and if it isn't ready enough, if it isn't big enough, then we talk about: Well, how do we make them better? How do we make them bigger. How do we have more capacity for the hydrants? How do we have more water waiting for us? How is the fire department not allowed to know that the people running Santa Ynez Reservoir have had it empty for nearly a year and that they might draw upon that?

Mr. Speaker, three million gallons in three tanks versus 117 million just up the hill. That would have stretched a few hours' worth of firefighting ability to several days out of that 117 million if it had been there and available.

Being able to fill that 117-million-gallon reservoir over and over again with the aqueduct, with the water that could come from the north--no. Instead, it is running out to the ocean. No. We can't build the reservoirs we need to add to the water supply that

everybody needs, people need, SoCal needs. The crops in San Joaquin Valley that I showed you are so important to people all across the whole country. There are people in my neighborhood that need it.

Again, there is plenty of water. There is plenty of know-how. The loggers, the timber people, so many of them are unemployed and have the know-how that could be managing the forest in a way that is ecologically sound and correct. They are not allowed to do it.

Do you know we have to fight every year for something called SRS, the Secure Rural Schools fund that costs taxpayers? I am blessed that there is not pushback on that. We used to have a timber industry that the receipts from the timber we would cut would go for these local--the money stayed locally, the timber receipts, at least a portion, for counties to pay for schools and roads. That is why it is called the Secure Rural Schools. It pays for the county roads, at least in part, and the local schools.

With the spotted owl and the environmental movement taking the ESA and weaponizing it in the early seventies, late seventies, and the eighties, those timber industries died off. The number of mills we used to have in California--which are an important partner in all this. We need to have those wood mills, so if we finally do get around to logging this product and what people need that we will have the infrastructure to actually do something with it.

Instead, since those receipts are gone and since that economy is gone, my constituents, my county supervisors, and other locals have to come here hat in hand to D.C., can you be sure the Secure Rural Schools fund stays in the next appropriation bill or whichever mechanism we are working on at that time. Would you put that in there for us?

Geri Byrne, a good friend, is heading up the Rural Counties of California. She has been an important partner on that, and I would hate to have to look her in the eye and say: We will try. We think we can get it done. We will probably get it done.

Will we get it done in time? We have to get it done before March, otherwise the counties are going to be upside down on that fund that they need to get through that year.

Wouldn't we rather have the receipts come from the forest? Wouldn't you rather have people doing the work, to produce the timber and wood products and paper products that you need from America and not have to have these good folks come hat in hand and beg for another taxpayer fund? I know what side I am on.

We are held up by leaders, whether it is at my State level or some back here in D.C. in these agencies that are just completely thinking about something else. The urgency to get things done, the urgency to get permits done, they don't seem to care how long it takes to get a permit done. There are people out there waiting, people waiting to do whatever the construction project is, whatever the clearance project is.

It makes you wonder.

That is why I am excited about this DOGE group that Elon Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy are working on to say what parts of government are working and what parts aren't. Where do we fund? Where do we not fund?

Because taxpayers have every right to ask those questions as well. We are talking about this situation here, taxpayers have a right to know: Are they going to do better next time? Yet, the mantra seems to be like, oh, you are placing conditions. Conditions is the dirty word of the week on this. It is all rehearsed. It is all coming out on the same memo.

Let's think of another word. Guardrails. Is that good enough? Put guardrails on it. It doesn't matter the euphemism. You need to be sure that Federal taxpayers are going to see at the end of the day the wise use of that so we are not back here in 40 years doing the same thing over again.

That is so hard-hearted and cold. No, it is not. We are going to help those folks. I am grateful for the help we have had in the north. I know the folks in southern California, once they get their feet under them, will be too. I think they want the freedom to be able to reestablish themselves in little towns like Altadena. A lot of nice, regular folks there. This isn't the rich elite. These are more regular folks. They just want a chance to maybe get back to how they were, and I hope we can help them do that. I hope we can somehow get them back to where they were. Maybe it will be with more resilient homes next time made out of different materials. That is good.

We also need to help them with the brush clearing on the mountains above there that are being stopped by regulations or the funding getting pulled back by Newsom. Mr. Speaker, $100 million, I think, got pulled back and part of that would have been the brush clearing that is so badly needed, which creates a buffer when the Santa Ana winds blow fire toward you. If you don't have that brush there, you have got a much greater chance of stopping the fire before it hits the houses there.

So the people in Altadena would like to have that help, I am sure. They would like to have people that are accountable to bring the leadership that is needed to have that readiness.

We assume, as citizens, that things are ready. We assume our police force is ready, the fire department is ready, the infrastructure is ready, the water is being stored. I guess we assume that because we assume we have smart people in those positions that are thinking ahead. We are doing our day-to-day jobs in this Republic. We are not a democracy; we are a Republic. We elect these people that are supposed to be thinking about that stuff.

Certainly, I come down here and rant about this on the floor and whenever I can in committee, and others always want to talk about something else, like the mass inflow of illegal immigrants that cost California so much money.

California is spending money on a whole lot of things. I mentioned the high-speed rail. We are spending money on a whole lot of things that aren't helping its citizens and, indeed, helping someone else-- some that are here illegally, giving benefits that are outrageous.

Well, why should the Federal taxpayer basically help subsidize that? California, during the COVID era, drew about $20 billion from the Federal Government to help supplement unemployment benefits and after a period of time when it was clear, they weren't going to pay it back. California, instead of paying it back, has now decided to sack employers by doubling the unemployment insurance amount they have to contribute as part of the pay package for their employees. It went from 0.6 to 1.2, I believe. That is going to cost the employers. Ultimately, it is going to cost the employees themselves, because there is less ability to give raises. All of that is because California blew the $20 billion on something else instead of the maintenance obligation of paying it back to the Federal Government on that unemployment fund.

Is this good? Is this an accountable record that people say: Oh, yeah, just give them money willy-nilly. Not a chance. Not a chance.

So we can demand accountability and not be bad people for it. We are looking for solutions that are long-term and we will help those folks. Our hearts are with you in southern California because I know at the end of this, instead of the rhetoric you are hearing that might be getting you wound up, you would like accountability as well.

You are already angry at some of the folks down there. You are angry at some of the folks in Sacramento that are putting--you are probably angry that the Democrat-controlled legislature is putting, as a requirement, as a condition for some of the State aid that should be going to southern California, the $50-million package of lawsuit money they want to use to fight Trump. That is tied together in a package right now in the State legislature.

So they are pointing at us for talking about accountability. We don't even have a package put together quite yet as we still have to assess all the damages postfire. We are doing everything we can to help during the fire with what people need, but postfire, you then have to assess that. That takes a little bit of time, and we need accountability.

I hope people demand accountability to the people that put them in this place to begin with in California and at the local level.

We are with you on this. We are with you on that accountability. We will be there to help the right way.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about the Endangered Species Act. Indeed, it was designed back in the early seventies and passed with bipartisanship. It was signed by Richard Nixon to protect endangered species.

What we see with its implementation in my home State of California and many other areas around this country, especially in the West, is significant misinterpretation of it.

Indeed, it has been weaponized to stop many things that would be good for people, even for the environment. We are talking about forestry, forestry practices that would make our lands safer and less fire prone. We are talking about the water supply that would help valley farmers. It would help urban areas, and it certainly would help the situation in Los Angeles right now.

What I have depicted here is a brush clearing project that was just above Pacific Palisades and other areas in L.A. that they actually had underway for a while until a national monument was declared above an area called Altadena. It stopped the ability to keep clearing brush. With national monuments, you are not allowed to go in there and do anything because it has to be left pristine and preserved. That ties in with the endangered species as well.

We see the results. Instead of clearing this brush, we get results like this. This is happening right now in southern California, tragically, needlessly. We will continue to see this.

I have seen it in my district. I have lost 3\1/2\ of my small towns in my district in the last 6 years, including the Paradise fire which took 85 lives, 90 percent of the town, Greenville, Canyondam, and a smaller town called Doyle that was burned on the east side. Again, the Endangered Species Act being manipulated and weaponized against doing the work we need to do is partly at fault.

For example, when we talk about water in California, let's look at the delta smelt for a moment. The water supply we should be building in California is impeded because the water has to be shipped out to the Pacific Ocean, supposedly to help the delta smelt. The water increases have happened since 1992. The legislation here increased another 800,000 acre-feet per year. Then it is built up from there to, hopefully, or somehow help the delta smelt.

This is Shasta Dam in northern California which we are trying to get filled right now but is going to be less useful for people as more of this water is dumped out to the delta.

What does that mean for southern California? Well, for example, let's take a look at this. This is the Santa Ynez Reservoir which currently is empty, supposedly for rehab and some maintenance. This is what it is supposed to look like full. That is what it looks like right now. It seems people in southern California who are supposed to be in charge didn't even know it was empty. This holds approximately 40 acre-feet when it is full, which is 117 million gallons.

When full, the Shasta Dam here holds 4\1/2\ acre-feet. We have been discussing a raise of Shasta Dam. It would be easy to raise it 18 feet. That would cause about 630,000 more acre-feet to be available to be stored in California.

With that, can you imagine what 600,000 acre-feet could do to help? It could fill this in minutes with the amount of water going out to the Pacific Ocean. The Endangered Species Act is being used as a weapon against raising an existing dam that was built in the thirties there that would do that. They will find a species of the week to do that. In this case I believe it is a salamander.

Let's go back in time a little bit. You have probably heard of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Tellico Dam. That project was an idea that came about in the late sixties, and the construction was going to happen pretty soon after that. What they did is some biologists, I think from the University of Tennessee, were out on a hike and discovered, he thought, she thought, whoever it was, that there was something called a snail darter in the river there.

Starting in about 1973, or soon after the ESA was put in place, it was listed in 1975 as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, leading to a legal battle that took a long time and was finally settled. It went to the Supreme Court and was finally settled by legislation passed in Congress in 1979, which exempted the Tellico Dam from the ESA protections and allowed the giant project. It was going to make so much hydroelectric power, store water, and be available for agriculture and people. They actually got it done.

Instead, the biologists took this so-called snail darter and moved populations to other rivers in the area. The species was then reclassified downward from endangered to threatened in 1984. Finally, in 2022, it was removed from the list.

Interestingly, when we talk about the weaponization of ESA, a study that was just released revealed that the snail darter isn't an actual distinct

species but is actually just another population of one called the stargazing darter. This raises concern about a specie's identification when really what it is being used for is a weapon.

This is what the snail darter actually looks like because it doesn't exist as its own.

This is what they are doing in southern California. I just showed you the picture of the fires. There is a project near Pacific Palisades that was going to remove some vulnerable power pole lines that were made of wood and some lower hanging wires and other equipment with some stronger, more fire-resistant ones. They started on the project, but they discovered a species of vetch which is grown as a crop in many other areas, as a cover crop or what have you. They discovered one called, I think, Braunton's milkvetch. We grow cow vetch all the time in other areas. I have another picture in another speech.

When placed side by side, they are the same picture. These are weaponized to stop a project that could have been helpful in keeping Pacific Palisades from burning due to downed power lines. It probably wouldn't have been the key piece, but that has certainly happened in plenty of other areas around the State where downed power lines, due to the wind or branches and stuff blowing into them, have caused several fires, including the Camp fire in Paradise I mentioned that killed 85 people, and started a fire called the Dixie fire which burned a million acres.

Frequently, we have in northern California what we call public safety power shutoffs where people just have their power shut off because the wind might blow hard enough to blow branches into power lines somewhere. We sit without power like a Third World country.

This all traces back to the inability to do the forestry management where I was talking about water storage and to have a water supply for southern California.

What it boils down to is we need the leadership like President Trump is going to provide and what Gavin Newsom has been stopping as far as helping us with water storage and helping us get the water to the farmers and urban areas as needed.

Mr. Speaker, Governor Gavin Newsom's High-Speed Rail project has been a symbol of fiscal mismanagement, and now the Department of Government Efficiency here in D.C., known as DOGE, is stepping in to examine the situation, as well.

Originally projected to cost $33 billion back in 2008, the price tag has now ballooned closer to $130 billion.

Despite an initial completion date for 2020, now it is, at best, by about 2030, maybe even 2035. Zero passengers have ridden on it because it is not possible yet.

This boondoggle has already consumed $6.8 billion in Federal funds of all U.S. taxpayers. Now they are asking for $8 billion more, which is way short of $130 billion.

DOGE's analysis paints a grim picture of a project spiraling out of control with no end in sight.

Governor Newsom keeps funneling California tax dollars into this never-ending pit, ignoring needs like critical water infrastructure which could be helping all of our State, including southern California, if we could raise Shasta Dam and gain 600,000 new acre-feet.

We would have the ability to not be short-funded on the brush removal that needs to be happening in southern California, as well as the forestry management all over California. Instead of empty-handed promises by Governor Newsom, we need to have President Trump leading the way.

Mr. Speaker, California has had a lot of problems inflicted upon it, partly by nature and partly self-inflicted by governing.

As we bring resources and aid to southern California and reflect here on these horrific events happening with the fire down there in the Pacific Palisades and surrounding communities, it is very sobering but also points out the need for leadership and competency in preparing for it. It is really basic stuff.

The north part of the State has been through it many times, with the losses of communities. We all remember the Paradise fire. Eighty-five people lost their lives, and 90 percent of the town was consumed.

We have to do better in the preparation ahead of time before fire season on how we treat the lands and have the apparatus ready, instead of complications due to contracts, for example, with the Forest Service not being ready to have the equipment that would be there in the forests, and on and on.

I appreciate that, and we are going to do the best we can to move as quickly as possible for the folks in southern California and then ongoing to build up the infrastructure and the work that needs to be done.

As tonight's topic has been, when we are talking about protecting our citizens and our border, California, as well, under the direction of Gavin Newsom, has become a haven for illegal immigration. The taxpayers are footing the bill for an ever-expanding list of unbelievable benefits that are being given to illegal immigrants.

From healthcare to education, sex changes, homes, the whole works, California is pouring resources into supporting those here illegally while our own citizens, as we mentioned, are struggling with many things in burning communities, as well as the more day-to-day stuff: overcrowded schools, strained healthcare systems, and increasing public safety concerns with gangs, crime, and on and on.

We have sanctuary policies statewide, not just in cities, like we see around the country. This is a statewide sanctuary policy that protects illegal immigrants from ICE being able to pick them up when it is found that we have illegals in this country that could be processed federally and, hopefully, deported.

Cities across California are openly defying Federal immigration laws, creating safe havens for those who have broken the law. These sanctuary cities as well are not just a burden on our resources; they are a threat, as I said, to public safety. We have seen this firsthand, most recently in this country with the tragic loss and death of Laken Riley, and you will remember a few years ago in San Francisco on the wharf there, Kate Steinle was killed by a bullet from a gun that an illegal immigrant had found, taken, stolen, or whatever. Those lives are gone, and it is a tragedy for their families.

What are we going to do to avenge them? What are we going to do to make it right? These two innocent women lost their lives due to these violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants who are protected by these sanctuary policies.

Tomorrow, hopefully, we will take up the Preventing Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, introduced by my colleague Nancy Mace from South Carolina. This crucial bill aims to close the loopholes that would allow violent offenders to slip through the cracks and continue to pose a threat to our country.

It is high time we prioritize the safety and security of our citizens and the needs of our people, particularly women, who would be and have been the victims of these violent crimes.

In my home State, California's approach is not sustainable. We are overcrowded and overrun with crime, gangs, and broken services, as I mentioned.

Governor Newsom's policies are draining our resources and compromising public safety. His priorities are illegal aliens and all sorts of benefits for them, which we keep seeing on and on, again and again, as the State is running a deficit and spending on things like high-speed rail instead of helping on fire safety and having our water supply renewed for all those good reasons.

Instead of prioritizing the well-being of California, the State is offering a free pass again and again to those coming into the country illegally. We have become the State that is the magnet for all of it, away from the other States.

As we have said, it is high time to put a stop to this. Let's stand behind this legislation, the Preventing Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, and ensure that we are doing everything possible to protect our cities and the people who live within them, especially the women, as we think of Laken Riley, Kate Steinle, and too many others who have already paid the ultimate price.

We need to focus entirely on the needs of folks like that, and hopefully, there will be some sense of closure or satisfaction for their families to see that at least we have done the right thing ultimately.

With President Trump coming in, in just a few short days, I think we can finally get the momentum to do what we need to do with enforcing our border and allowing legal immigration, allowing people who we invite into the country.

We are still for immigration, just follow our rules, follow our laws, and pass a few reasonable tests in order to be part of the American Dream. We extend that. That is what the country was based on for so many years, and it has completely gone awry in the last 50.

Why does the Biden administration and my colleagues on the other side believe that this is good policy and keep getting away with it politically? Why is that seen as a good thing?

I think folks have really had their fill of it now because they are seeing it really showing up in their pocketbooks and their ability to afford a home, have a job, and not continue to get further and further behind, as this country has always aspired to have the next generation be just a little bit better off than the previous one.

Mr. Speaker, that is not happening now. You can lay policies such as this right at the feet of our poorest border, as well as bad energy policies and other things causing inflation.

With that, this is a very important thing we are working on this week, so we can assure the women of this country that we are behind them. We do have their backs on this violence, as well as the previous legislation mentioned, on women and girls in sports having a safe place to play and enjoy and excel without men somehow interfering on those fields, in those locker rooms.

It is common sense. I can't believe we are here at this point. We are battling back here in this Congress with Republican leadership doing so.

I appreciate Mr. Moore leading us here tonight, and I thank him for the time.

Madam Speaker, this morning I highlight a piece of legislation I intend to cosponsor that is sponsored by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Joyce), my good colleague. It is known as the Preserving Choice in Vehicle Purchases Act.

The bill aims to prevent the U.S. EPA from issuing Clean Air Act waivers that would enable State-level bans or restrictions on gas and diesel vehicles. This bill would ensure that Americans can select vehicles based on their individual needs and financial situations without undue government interference.

My home State of California is once again leading on the wrong things. The agency called the California Air Resources Board is intending to ban the sale of gas and diesel-powered cars, trucks, and SUVs by 2035, only 10 model years from now.

Now, who the heck is CARB, especially since this has far-reaching effects across the rest of the country? There are six or seven other States that are seeking to emulate what CARB is doing.

This regulation seeks to force a transition to electric vehicles regardless of their affordability, availability, or practicality for many residents and families. The Biden administration EPA has granted the necessary waiver very recently at the end of this era, allowing CARB to enforce this mandate at the State of California level, which sets a precedent that can lead to similar bans in other States across the country. Believe me, it will happen. Several other States are already looking at this.

You end up with the manufacturers having to produce two different types of vehicles for this State or that State, making them more expensive, and heaven knows the difficulty that is producing electric vehicles anyway.

Rural Americans and rural Californians face long commutes and rely heavily on reliable, affordable vehicles. I represent a very rural area. There are people who are afraid to take electric vehicles very far with the inability to know if they can charge them and make it back.

The mandate poses significant financial challenges, as EVs remain more expensive than their gas- and diesel-powered counterparts. They have more expensive tires, and they are harder to get parts for, among other things.

There is a very, very limited charging infrastructure. The fact that the Biden administration has put aside billions for charging stations and only built about seven or eight in the whole country over the last 3 years shows that it is very impractical.

EVs are an unviable option for many. The mandate would not only increase the cost of living for individuals and families but reduce transportation options for many rural residents and even urban residents that maybe have a car that is already paid for that they would soon see they wouldn't have the ability to keep. Additionally, part of the mandate is quietly eliminating fueling stations, making fuel more expensive, and making fuel harder to produce. In my home State of California and the country, when they ban the pipeline coming from Canada, it makes fuel harder to get. It is coming from all edges. Taxing people out of this is part of their goal.

Of course, the power grid of my home State, California, is already struggling to deliver electricity to meet existing energy demands, with the currently frequent blackouts and energy shortages. We have these blackouts in my part of the State, and we are starting to see them in southern California with the unfortunate massive suffering going on due to the wildfires. They have to preemptively shut off the power to particular areas if they think the wind is going to blow too hard and cause foliage to blow off trees, shrubs, and whatever onto the power lines and cause an outage or a blackout and, therefore, a fire along with it, as has happened many times in my district.

Mandating this shift to electric vehicles would place additional strain on the grid, leading to more outages and much higher energy costs. California has not demonstrated the capacity to expand the grid infrastructure. Indeed, they are tearing down dams in my district--and they have their eye on more--that make clean, CO2-free hydroelectric power. The grid gets even tighter due to this. This raises serious concerns about the feasibility of this mandate, yet they force it forward.

The practicality of converting to all these electric vehicles, as well as the appliances that California, Biden, and others are trying to do with electric stoves, water heaters, and all that, means where are the materials and the minerals going to come from to produce these electric appliances and vehicles.

We can't mine as it is. On average, it takes 29 years to build a copper mine in this country. Are we going to import it all? Are we going to have poor kids and slave labor in other countries continue to supply us so we can be pristine?

CARB's members are not actually directly accountable to the public. The resources board is appointed by the Governor. They don't have to answer to anybody, and they frequently don't. We have a direct threat to consumer choice.

Indeed, this is what Governor Newsom wants us to have, fires that burn out our vehicles. We need to have him stand aside and let President Trump lead the way on allowing us to have our vehicles.