Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, National Police Week is our opportunity

to slow down a little bit and recognize those officers that put it on the line for us each day, each week, each month, and each year.

They face a lot of obstacles that they encounter in their efforts just to keep us safe and keep criminals off the street and hopefully prosecuted.

When I first entered into the political realm as a candidate, I met a deputy one time who was so frustrated with the state of the criminal justice system at that point.

He told me that he was aggravated that those that he arrested would beat him home from being released before he could even get the paperwork done.

As we see the situation with prosecutors not prosecuting and with a revolving door in our jail system, we really need to dig deep and not only thank our officers but also pass legislation that supports them in their efforts to do what we ask them to keep the streets safe and not have ridiculous defund the police efforts happening in some of these blue cities. Indeed, they are feeling the regret of defunding them at this time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and public service career of Sutter County Sheriff Roy Whiteaker who recently passed away at the age of 84 years old.

Roy was born in Calico Rock, Arkansas, to Corbin and Irene Whiteaker. From a young age, Roy displayed a strong sense of duty and integrity, traits that would guide him throughout his life and career.

Roy would join the United States Army in 1959, where he would become a military policeman beginning his law enforcement career. While in the Army, Roy was stationed in Panama for nearly three years, where he would marry his wife.

The young family would then move to Yuba City in 1962, where Roy would continue his law enforcement career with the City of Yuba City Police Department, being hired as the City's first narcotics Detective. He would also be instrumental in helping to organize the first Yuba- Sutter Narcotics Task Force.

Roy would then run for Sutter County Sheriff serving from 1971 to 1990; when he was first

elected as Sheriff, he was reportedly the youngest Sheriff ever elected in California at that time.

During his tenure, Sheriff Whiteaker would oversee many high-profile cases such as the arrest of Juan Corona, who was convicted of murder after 25 bodies were found buried in Sutter County orchards; as well as in 1989 when the Sutter County Sheriff Office seized $4.25 million worth of illegal drugs, or what would be $11 million today accounting for inflation.

Current Sutter County Sheriff Brandon Barnes was quoted as saying, ``Roy was a tremendous leader and he served as a mentor to so many, including myself. He will he missed but never forgotten.'' The impact of Sheriff Whiteaker cannot be understated, he helped mold and influence the Sutter County Sheriff's Office into the force that it is today.

Roy is survived by his loving wife Gladys, along with his two children Janet Tracy, and Jim Whiteaker, as well as many grandchildren. On behalf of the people of Northern California, I thank Sheriff Roy Whiteaker for his service to the Sutter County community. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him. Rest in Peace.

Mr. Speaker, what we are seeing on college campuses throughout the country isn't First Amendment-protected protesting or free speech. It is vandalism, assault, breaking and entering, and anti- Semitism.

We have seen pro-Hamas sympathizers set up no-go zones for Jewish students and faculty, physically blocking them from entering their universities, where they have units and where they have paid their dues, the whole works.

We have seen pro-Hamas sympathizers send a UCLA student to the emergency room after beating her unconscious just because she is Jewish. What is this, 1939?

We have seen pro-Hamas sympathizers break into and occupy university buildings, break windows, spray-paint, and rename a building ``Intifada Hall,'' as seen on Humboldt's campus up in northern California.

We have seen pro-Hamas sympathizers assault police officers and even take a Columbia University janitor as a hostage.

The law is clear: Destroying property, blocking traffic, assault, and taking a hostage are illegal. Elite university students at Yale, Columbia, and UCLA should know better.

Furthermore, history has made it clear: If your group is creating no- go zones for Jewish people or actively attacking students who disagree with you or students just because they are Jewish, you are in the wrong.

These are not protesters.

Mr. Speaker, last month, a colleague and good friend, Congresswoman Jill Tokuda, and myself toured my district. This is post fire devastation of the 2018 Camp fire and how our recovery efforts are going 5 years later.

It is a solemn connection Representative Tokuda and I share, as last August her district suffered the catastrophic Lahaina fire.

Here we are checking out Lahaina, and here she is with me in Paradise, California.

The Lahaina fire replaced the Camp fire as the deadliest one in the United States since at least 1910.

Through the Bipartisan Policy Center, we were also able to visit her district as well at no expense to the taxpayers. Through bipartisanship, we worked across the aisle together and discussed finding solutions that work in multiple regions of the country for something that has plagued both our districts so viciously: wildfire.

As my colleague Representative Tokuda and the residents of Lahaina go through their own recovery and rebuilding process, it is important to share the lessons that we learned in northern California in recovering from a major disaster and navigating the FEMA process. I hope these lessons can be learned for the benefit of her district, mine, and others going forward as necessary.

Mr. Speaker, time and again around this facility, we will be in committee, and we will be having conversations, and what seems to be the biggest focus for a lot of the Democrats around here is climate change.

I ask them: What is the target here? What is the issue?

It seems to boil down to carbon dioxide, and they never seem to know what the actual composition of our atmosphere is of the carbon dioxide that we have. They don't know.

Yet, we have all these goals they want to set for how many electric cars we are going to have by what year, or what power plants, or getting rid of your leaf blower or your barbecue.

What it really boils down to is that CO2 is only 0.04 percent of our atmosphere, and it is very beneficial to plants. Without it, we would not have plants, and without plants, we would not have us.

The hypocrisy of people is that they are trying to ratchet down CO2 and put our American economy in peril. Exporting our economy and exporting our jobs to the Pacific Rim, to China, is going to be the result of this fallacy of the religion of climate change.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 12 o'clock and 19 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Saturday, April 20, 2024, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, we have this gigantic problem with our sieve of a border. We hear all these ideas of how we can spend lots of money or the White House can't do anything about it.

Well, I remind you that President Trump had many pieces in place that were actually working and bringing the numbers down on illegal immigration into this country. All we have to do is put these pieces right back in place.

President Biden, by executive action, could put these eight ideas right back in place and not have to do anything with new expenditures or new legislation. We have the laws; we have the ability. He just needs to act.

To hear the President saying: I don't know if I have the authority. That is bogus. He has the authority. If he wants to take action, he can. These eight items right here on this poster could be something he could sign executive orders right away and stop a massive percentage of what is wrong with our border. It would make our country secure again, save money, save the wear and tear on our social programs and make the citizens of our country feel like their citizenship actually means something once again.

I urge President Biden to take these steps and put us back on the correct track.

Mr. Speaker, we witnessed the egregious overreach of government during the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in the infringement of Americans' rights and devastating consequences for our economy and unprecedented government spending.

From the outset of the pandemic, we witnessed unprecedented government actions that trampled upon our basic freedoms and liberties: social shutdowns, mandated mask wearing, and vaccine mandates were imposed with little regard for individual autonomy, constitutional rights, or people's personal health issues.

These heavy-handed measures not only eroded the fabric of our society but also inflicted severe economic harm on businesses and families across the Nation.

Those of us with an ounce of common sense suspected from the beginning that COVID was little more than the

flu and that the government's actions bordered on martial law.

We were told it would take 2 weeks to flatten the curve. Well, were we played or how did that really turn out when it became 3-plus years?

Instead of allowing citizens medical freedom, they forced the jab onto all of us, encouraging employers to threaten employees with termination if they didn't comply and keeping kids out of college. In order to return to their classes, they had to take the jab.

One of the common controversies came from ivermectin, which we now know, and many knew at the time, works as a very effective early treatment for COVID-19. How many people were harmed because they weren't allowed this early treatment because it was politicized?

Indeed, recently, the FDA finally had to walk back an early-on smart- aleck tweet they made trying to compare real ivermectin that is prescribed for people and formulated for people to something that would be comparable for livestock. After having suffered that embarrassment, they had to walk it back.

In the meantime, how many lives were lost because this early treatment was not available? Instead, they were forced into other types of treatment or flat out being ignored when doctors and hospitals said: Well, come back to us when it is really bad, then we will check you in.

Americans should have the right to make their own informed decisions with doctors they trust, including the choice to use alternatives such as ivermectin, especially in early treatment.

It is very troubling that the government actively suppressed information about treatments for COVID-19, including ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and other materials that were available, while promoting instead a one-size-fits all approach centered around vaccines. Safe and effective, we were told.

In fact, the FDA's censorship of information about ivermectin has had real-world consequences for medical professionals who dared to speak out. Again, what you see is that the FDA had to walk back their lies and their deception about this. They also were browbeating hospitals and doctors into selling the same thing. We see that even in my own local area where people were asking legitimate questions about ivermectin and were made fun of: Oh, this is just horse paste. You don't want to do that.

Medical experts were contradicting themselves time and time again since the beginning of the pandemic. We were told to lock down for 2 weeks, right? Then it was masks, and then it was double masks. Then it was something called social distancing. For a while, they thought ventilators were going to be the issue for that, so they hurried manufacturers into making ventilators, and then they found out maybe those were harmful.

Before Trump left office, we had top officials saying: Oh, I will never take it if it is Trump's medicine. Then immediately after they were forcing it on people when Biden took over. Interesting how that works.

Commonplace therapeutics with decades of human usage and proven success--including ivermectin, which won a Nobel Prize in 2015 for its lifesaving qualities--again, as I mentioned, were branded as unsafe horse medication.

Treatment methods should be a topic of debate or discussion and, indeed, the experts should be allowed to bring this forward that have all people's best interests in mind. If a treatment works, then it should be distributed as widely as possible or at least allowed, whether it is a vaccine, a dosage of ivermectin, or an infusion of monoclonal antibodies.

The politicization of differing treatments hurt Americans by restricting their ability to receive lifesaving medications, especially early treatment, when it probably could have saved thousands of lives.

As we stand today, there are multiple options that have been proven effective in treating the virus, but we hear the same old saw about the latest iteration of vaccine being forced upon people and making billions for pharmaceutical companies.

We should be able to choose what we want. If you want to take therapeutics, you should have the ability to take them. In a lawsuit filed in Texas, three doctors claimed that the FDA's actions interfered with their medical practices and harmed their reputations. Pharmacists have refused to fill ivermectin prescriptions for patients, and doctors have faced professional repercussions for simply advocating for the use of ivermectin.

There is much more, but when these people ask for forgiveness for lying to us like that, no way. There needs to be prosecution.

Mr. Speaker, the United States is now the number one importer of wood products. It had been China up until recently when they finally slowed down their building.

This shouldn't even be possible or happening.

As you see, Mr. Speaker, California, the West Coast, and Western States have massively overcrowded forests due to the inattention of the U.S. Forest Service not keeping up the pace and scale to keep up with the amount of board feet that are growing each year.

Take a look across a lot of rural America, Mr. Speaker, and you will see that these areas are, indeed, too overcrowded with trees. A healthy forest might have 50 to 70 adult trees per acre. We see a situation where there are 500 to 1,000 trees of all sizes.

For a healthy and resilient forest, each tree needs enough nutrients, water, and sunlight to thrive, but when the trees grow too close together, they compete for these resources, are weakened, and then are susceptible to insects and other damage.

You can see on the far side of this poster, Mr. Speaker, a dense forest that is going to be very fire-prone and very likely to be attacked by bugs or go through a drought period and become unhealthy.

A thin forest like this is what we need the Forest Service to be doing. It survives fire and is much healthier for much longer. This is what we need.

Mr. Speaker, as we contemplate and navigate our way through these hard times, the difficult economy with, indeed, Bidenomics working the way it has been the last couple years for us in this country, we have to get to what is the root cause and what is the route out of this? It really comes down to getting back to our roots, getting back to the source of our economy. Where does the economy come from, and how do we make things reasonably priced again and affordable for our countrymen?

If you look here, they are all tied together when you get right down to it. Cost of electricity up over 28 percent, food over 20 percent, residential rent nearly 20 percent. What are the building blocks that help us to thrive and help us get back out of this mess?

Well, I will start. There are a few items that I work quite a bit on in my committee work, back at home and here in D.C., as well. Forestry is right at the beginning of that. What do you get from good forestry: Healthy forests and an economy that comes from our rural areas of the country that are suffering so much due to shutdowns, regulations, and inactivity by the U.S. Forest Service.

You see here a forest, how it looks when it has been treated properly, when it has been thinned on this side of the poster here. That is a healthy forest. That is one that will withstand fire. It is good for the wildlife population. It is good for the trees themselves. They won't have to compete for limited soil and water resources, especially through a drought period.

This side here is a tinderbox that is going to go up and it is going to be devastating as so much has happened in the West over these last years. A million-acre fire happened in my district. There are many six- digit fires all over the western States. This does not work for very long. It is not good for wildlife when it is green, and certainly not for when it is caught in the middle of a forest fire.

Indeed, we have to do much more work in order to catch up on that because of what I mentioned. The cost of rent, when you have high costs of building inputs which can come from wood products that, just a couple years ago, were in short, and paper products. Remember the toilet paper shortage. Why in the world did we have that? We need to have our American forests be very active.

There are over 800 million acres of forest that have approximately 350 billion trees in this country, a total inventory of 13 trillion board-feet, annual growth of 300 billion board-feet, whether we harvest it or not. America's total wood use via lumber, paper, biomass, and firewood is approximately half of annual growth, 150 billion board- feet. We see we have an issue, don't we? If we are only harvesting and using half of what grows each year, that means these forests will get more and more dense every year.

We have the ability to do something about that. For some reason, I keep wondering why the U.S. is--recently surpassing China since their economy is slowing down--now the number one importer of wood products when we have the resource here that actually needs to be thinned, needs to be harvested, needs to be taken care of, and

not clear cut, not the whole works. That isn't what it is about. That is the first thing that the city folks want to say: Oh, you are going to cut all the trees. No.

We thin them out. This is what that looks like right here. Then that forest keeps on growing and is healthy. The next wave of harvest happens 30, 40, 50 years later, and it is a successful program instead of importing and sending the jobs somewhere else.

Now that China has receded somewhat--number one importer of wood. It doesn't make a lick of sense to me.

In the farm bill, we can address some of these issues coming up if we can be successful on passing what would be best in a 5-year farm bill soon and help with our forest health as well as the cost of housing and building new housing, building new apartments, whatever, for people.

That will get me to my next poster here having to do with food, which is another part of the building blocks.

I mentioned electricity. Those prices have gone up, food, and then housing.

Here, we have an example of the food that is grown in my home State of California, but it is important to the whole country. Many other States are key to food supply in the Midwest, the Southern States, and so many areas of the country.

I will point out what we have growing in California because we oftentimes have a water problem where the water supply, in tougher years, doesn't get to agriculture. The last 2 years, we have had an amazing water supply, amazing snowpack--indeed, above the 100-percent level of normal.

Our lakes are filling. We can keep after the people making the decisions to allow them to fill the last bit to top it off because we still have several reservoirs that have a lot of space in them. I want to see them all hit 100 percent so we can survive maybe the next drought or certainly allocate water to agriculture as well as the people in the urban areas who are seeing themselves having to ration water. They are going to be cut back to 42 gallons per day, in some cases, due to the extreme measures that people who are not planning water supply are going to cause them to do.

I don't know how that looks to my colleagues in L.A. County, Orange County, San Francisco County, having to tell people they are only going to get 42 gallons of water per day because of the mismanagement of water supply in our State.

We could be building more storage. We should be building more storage. We have the chance to build a place called Sites Reservoir, 1.5 million acre-feet of storage. We could raise Shasta Dam only 18 feet, which would yield 630,000 acre-feet more of water.

If we were actually filling the San Luis Reservoir the last 500,000 acre-feet of space it has right now--because they won't run the pumps because of some phony numbers they are using on fish and it affecting the fish by running the pumps. There are half a million acre-feet we are leaving on the table this year right now unless something changes dramatically soon on running the pumps down there in the delta.

The priority these days everywhere is fish and environmental water. People are being left behind on this. We are going to see the allocation of water to some of the San Joaquin districts and areas curtailed, again, in a high-water year, in a high-snowpack year--great water. We have been blessed. They are going to see only 30 or 35 percent of their normal allocation, and that means these crops aren't going to be grown.

As I pointed out, these crops are grown in California: 100 percent of the artichokes, celery, garlic, honeydew, kiwifruit, nectarines, olives, plums, shelled almonds, shelled pistachios, shelled walnuts, tomatoes. Basically, 100 percent of what America uses comes from California on a commercial basis. I know people grow patches of it here and there in their garden and stuff around the country, but commercially grown, that is what California represents.

Getting down to some that are not quite 100 percent: mandarins, avocados, grapes, carrots, broccoli.

These are at the 90 percent mark: strawberries, 89 percent; wild rice, 60 percent grown in California; horseradish, 30 percent, a lot of it up in my area of Tully Lake--except they are having their water taken away, except they are having their dams removed due to environmental stuff.

How are we going to get a handle on the high price of inflation? With the dams I just mentioned, electricity is up 20-something percent.

They tear down hydroelectric dams and say they are going to replace them with high-cost solar or wind that has to be massively subsidized; otherwise, no one would ever be able to afford it. They take out the hydroelectric dams. That is not going to make electricity any cheaper.

Let's talk about food. If you don't build the water, allocate the water, and back people off on the regulations, such as making them electrify every aspect of agriculture and even the equipment--they are coming after the locomotives that transport all this and the trucks that transport it. All that does is drive up the cost of food.

As I mentioned also with housing, if we can't cut the timber, if we can't provide for low-cost timber that comes from this country instead of somewhere else--it still baffles me that we are the number one importer of wood products--then housing is not going to get any cheaper either. That is tied into a lot of other regulations, available land use, and things like that.

All of these things work together to drive up the costs for regular Americans who are struggling these days. They don't have the same options of freedom of movement, their freedom of time, where they might want to send their kids to school, or go on a vacation once in a while, tourism.

All those things are dramatically curtailed because of government regulations, lack of government foresight on energy, where our energy is going to come from, what our energy policy is. Every time you don't allow a pipeline to happen means it is going to have to be coming from somewhere else, imported oil and gas. Yes, we are going to continue to use oil and gas in this country for a long time. The rest of the world is going to be.

If we want to be competitive, we are putting ourselves down a really steep rathole if we are not going to continue to allow oil and gas to power certain aspects of our economy, of our mobility, et cetera.

We are not going to electrify everything at the same time we are pulling out hydroelectric dams because of the environment. We are precariously on the edge of whether we are going to allow the nuclear power plant to continue to run in California past just another a few years.

Are we going to build more nuclear power in this country? If you are worried about CO2, it is a great way to go, as are the hydroelectric dams. I am not worried about CO2 because it only represents 0.04 percent of our atmosphere. It is a rounding error, and it has been hyped a lot in order to make climate change scare the heck out of everybody when it really isn't that kind of a factor.

There are other things we can do cleaner, cleaner running engines and things like that, less methane. Those are good things to work at, but CO2 is not the problem. CO2 is basically sucked up by these plants that we grow in agriculture and the forest photograph I showed you a minute ago. They are out there enjoying CO2 and giving us oxygen back if we would just be a little smarter about it.

At the end of it, one of the important things we need to do this year, this spring, really, is move the farm bill because it is important as far as forestry goes. It is important, as far as this food supply goes, to have stability in the ag economy. A big portion of it is the SNAP program, which is important to help keep low-cost food on the table for many Americans who are on the low side of the income scale or going through tough times themselves. We need to pass that in order to have the SNAP program stay viable and stay modernized as things change.

Moving forward with the farm bill, it is going to be very important in the short term to get a 5-year bill and not just another extension, which doesn't really allow us to change or upgrade what the pieces of the farm bill are, like crop insurance.

Some of these crops need to have more ability to access crop insurance. If you have crop insurance, then there

is less need to have a bailout for a disaster because it is being taken care of upfront, as well as a promotion of products, some of that through MAP funds and other programs to promote some of these products that we export.

We do need to have an export economy. We have a giant negative economy with import-export with China and others, and agriculture has been one of our mainstays to have anywhere close to balance on foreign trade, so it is a good thing for us.

Instead, what do we get? We get things such as the Inflation Reduction Act, which is a joke in its name. It didn't reduce inflation. Inflation is still going up.

It is still part of our everyday worry we have here, and that is what we get is more government spending. Instead, unleash the economy by allowing people to log timber, grow food, and produce energy as I am talking about here.

We need to be able to make a difference to help these producers and then help the consumers. We need to produce more fertilizer in this country. We need to mine more minerals in this country. They are important to all of these sectors and producing energy.

If we want to have more gadgets, more equipment that uses electricity, then why aren't we mining the products here instead of making it a problem for some Third World country that doesn't have near the labor protections or environmental protections that we have here?

If we do all of these things, it makes things more affordable, brings the jobs home, and makes us more accountable as a country. Instead, we are losing ground on the world stage in many aspects. Why are we a net agriculture importer when we have so much plenty in this country?

We are less independent. We are less resilient. We are less competitive due to these policies that are associated with Bidenomics. In the face of declining farm income and these other challenges, it is essential that we prioritize farm and ranch families with the farm bill, with what we consume here.

I mentioned crop insurance, which is extremely important. Additionally, the farm safety net is important, which is part of that farm bill.

The input costs I mentioned, water allocations, all the above are important to work our way through instead of ignoring them and thinking that the priorities seemed to be reset around here. They have nothing to do with helping Americans in their everyday lives.

It is a steep road here, but we can get back to a little bit of common sense. I had the chance to speak to the President right on this floor about water supply, about our timber situation, our forest situation here, and he listened. I just hope his Cabinet, his people who surround him, will pay more attention to what we are dealing with and how negatively, when these things aren't paid attention to and solved, how much it hurts the American people, how much it costs them, how much it costs them options for their family to do other things other than just trying to get by.

It doesn't have to be this way. This inflation we have had the last 3 years--we came out of COVID, yes, but our economy should be thriving much better than what it is and not have these ridiculous regulations and things that limit us so much and advantage our competitors around the world--China, the Pacific Rim, and others--especially at such a perilous time with such unrest in the world, with the wars that are breaking out.

We need to be strong. We need to be self-sufficient.

Mr. Speaker, this week, the United States Congress' Joint Economic Committee released a report based on the consumer price index for March.

They found that in my home State of California, the average household is paying $1,222 more per month to purchase the same goods and services since January 2021. Cumulatively, the average California household has spent $26,929 more due to inflation in that same period of time.

Compared to January 2021, the average household in California spent $173 more per month on food. This is $25 more each month than just 1 year ago, a cumulative of $3,900 more in food costs since January 2021.

The average household in California is spending $161 per month more in energy costs and $5,000 more out of their pockets since that period of time in January 2021.

Shelter and housing has gone up $4,600 more since January 2021.

What is the root cause of this? There are a couple of basic features. The cost of energy drives everything, and government spending has inflated. We have to stop.

Mr. Speaker, we will soon be heading into fire season, unfortunately, in the West. What does that mean? Each year, hundreds of thousands, even millions, of acres of forestland are lost due to wildfire due to the nonmanagement of these lands.

The U.S. Forest Service needs to increase its pace and scale dramatically to get the work done out there that will make a forest safer and also use the product that we grow in this country. Since China is now buying a little less materials these days, the U.S. has gone from number two to number one as a wood importer.

Why in the heck are we importing wood products when we have the timber in our Western lands, which we have to instead watch burn year after year?

We could be putting jobs back in this country in these rural communities that have been boarded up in so many cases.

We are losing lumber mills every day because the Forest Service is not acting quickly enough or with the pace and scale that needs to be done. We need to have the jobs and harvest here and the healthy forests and much less wildfire that comes with all that.

It is a win-win-win. Let's get to work.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life, service, and career of Tom Dauterman of Chico, California who passed away peacefully after a three-year battle with cancer on February 26, 2024.

Tom was born on July 19, 1942, in Los Angeles, California. His family moved to Durham, California in 1948, where he attended school, and he graduated as a member of the class of 1960. He worked as a carpenter with his father building houses after high school.

On November 30, 1963, Tom married the love of his life, Sue Mathews, and they began their life together, making their home in Chico.

Tom left his job with PG&E and established Thomas Welding in his garage in Chico in 1972. Thomas Hydraulics followed in 1974 as well as Thomas Manufacturing in 1996. What was once Tom's small business idea now stands as one of the largest machine shops north of Sacramento.

Tom served the Chico community with excellence, teaching and mentoring many and never hesitated to share his time and knowledge with those he encountered. His encouragement and support of welding and agriculture programs in local high schools has impacted countless students in our local community.

He was a true engineer as well as a builder; taking on many projects, which included innovating and developing agricultural equipment.

Throughout the years Tom enjoyed vacations with friends, and attending classic car, boat, and air shows. Most recently he looked forward to his weekly visits to Hotel Diamond for coffee, lunch bunch, and tea at three. Tom also enjoyed spending time at Lake Almanor and hosted an annual 4th of July celebration for 19 years.

His love for the community of Chico drove Tom to be a faithful supporter of the Boys and Girls Club as well as the Salvation Army and additionally many other community organizations. Tom was also a 35-year member of Chico Rotary, as well as a Chico Elks Lodge member for 53 years.

Tom will be missed not only by his family and friends but also by the greater Chico community who benefitted from his benevolence. Many projects and endeavors were accomplished with Tom's silent participation both financially and with hours of hard work. He was a true public servant. We forever will be grateful for the legacy he has left.

Mr. Speaker, in the D.C. newsroom for National Public Radio, which is a central hub for NPR's coverage of political news, it just came out that they have amongst their staff 87 registered Democrats in editorial positions and zero Republicans--87-0.

Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak was amazing at 56 games in a row, and Pete Rose in the seventies had 44 games in a row--87-0.

Should it matter what the political makeup of people are in these positions? You know, not really, I guess, in any real sense.

We are not talking reality in Washington, D.C., are we? We are not talking about a nonbiased media that covers this place, that covers what politicians do and the slant that people are going to hear when they are out there in their cars, their homes, or wherever, picking this up in the various forms of media.

What do we know about NPR? It receives funding from the taxpayer and tries at the same time to claim to be objective. It receives this funding via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which the CBP receives about $525 million of taxpayer dollars--about 50 percent of their funding. The other half comes from corporate donations, the same corporations that Democrats love to say evil things about, but oftentimes these days are doing bad things. It is pretty hard to figure out where they are coming from.

What we have seen in recent years in reporting is a strong bias against Republicans and conservatives coming out of NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting when they cover the political front here.

The bias against anything that is not a far-left view is clear. In fact, the bias of NPR is so clear that even a left-leaning editor in their organization--which is where this came out--is raising the alarm about the clear and consistent bias. This person is very concerned about it and is now being dismissed.

NPR has already issued many statements and articles dismissing the critique, including this morning, without any admission by NPR or acknowledgment of any wrongdoing or bias, and certainly they have no intent to reform or even reflect upon what this looks like and sounds like.

Let us remember that NPR embraced the Russiagate conspiracy theory without question, and they dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story without proper scrutiny.

All these things have been proven otherwise, haven't they?

They also have NPR actively working to dismiss and attack information about the true origins of the COVID-19 virus as well as the early treatments that could have probably helped or saved many lives. They dismissed ivermectin and other treatments, instead, calling it ``horse paste'' when as recently as 2015, it won a Nobel Prize for the amazing work that has been done with ivermectin.

In the last decade, NPR's own audience has shrunk and become more intensely leftwing, gradually pushing out conservative listeners with nonstop ideological programming, bias in reporting, and injecting far- left ideas into previously nonpolitical programs.

So it is not just that quirky little radio station you hear in a musty bookstore or at a used record store or something like that. It has taken a really hard twist to the left.

They claim to be neutral in a public platform to consider all things and consider all perspectives, but unfortunately, it isn't that way anymore.

They are desperately burning up their own credibility to try and keep up with the demands of the far left and its ranks that continue to shift farther and farther left.

That is what this person from their organization came out and said, for 25 years they have lost the American people with this shift. It is pretty sad.

So perhaps instead of calling it National Public Radio it should be called national progressive radio, the term Democrats on the far left use for themselves, although I have never really seen where the word ``progress'' fits in with some of the programs and ideals coming from the so-called progressives.

NPR being funded by taxpayer dollars is a serious betrayal of the public trust. The American taxpayer should no longer be subsidizing this propaganda which fails to even pretend to be unbiased anymore and is appealing to a smaller and smaller group of people, unfortunately. It is too bad because the idealism of it years ago when it was created looked a heck of a lot different and was indeed something everybody could find enjoyment in.

Mr. Speaker, we need to be unequivocally clear about one thing: Hamas is responsible for every single loss of life in Israel and Gaza since their barbaric attack on October 7.

Hamas, conducting a war from beneath the homes and kitchens of citizens, is putting civilians in danger, not this ridiculous assertion made against Israel, which is merely defending itself against these sources of attack.

There can be no cease-fire until Hamas surrenders, releases every hostage, and ceases firing at Israel and its innocent citizens.

It is shameful that the Biden White House and Senate majority Leader Schumer are walking back support of one of our greatest allies.

Meanwhile, there are increasingly concerning pro-Iran/Muslim Brotherhood influences inside our own State Department.

Israel has an undeniable right to defend themselves from their attackers.

The U.S. must continue to support military armaments, including the Iron Dome missile defense system, and never encourage our ally to surrender to the terrorists who want them dead and to not exist.