Floor Statements

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

Mr. Speaker, I echo my distinguished colleague in thanking the Office of Law Revision Counsel. They have done a great job on this one. They are nonpartisan, as he says, but that is not even the best thing about it. They are experts. They are professional, and they are discerning when it comes to making technical corrections.

Mr. Speaker, I urge everybody to support the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Baumgartner has stated the matter well. I urge everyone to support the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Offered By: Mr. Raskin

Amendment No. 1: Strike all after the enacting clause and

insert the following:

Mr. Speaker, I rise to celebrate 2026 NBA champion Josh Hart.

Josh just helped lead the New York Knicks to their first NBA championship since 1973. An outstanding shooting guard and rebounder, he is an essential force on the Knicks and, many say, the beating ``Hart'' of the team.

There might not be a lot of Knicks fans in Maryland, but there are a lot of Josh Hart fans. Josh's basketball career started in Montgomery County, Maryland, at the great Wheaton High School and at Sidwell Friends in Washington, D.C.

Josh excelled off the court as a passionate student and an active citizen. He promised his dad that he would become an Eagle Scout. After a lot of hard work, he did Troop 1038 in Rockville proud by earning the Eagle Scout rank.

I also recognize Josh's parents, my constituents, Moses and Pat; Josh's siblings, Moses, Joseph, and Aimee; Josh's wife, Shannon; and their twin sons.

From the Eagle Scouts to the NBA, Josh has made the Eighth District of Maryland proud. We are happy for New York and the Knicks, but we send special appreciation to Josh Hart from his home in Maryland. I congratulate him.

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

Mr. Speaker, when we first met on the majority's confusion and disarray over FISA at 1:30 in the morning on April 17, we pointed out that the majority's language departed so sharply from the requirements of the Fourth Amendment in the Constitution that, for the very first time, it would have authorized the government to use 702 to specifically and deliberately target and spy on the communications of American citizens.

That midnight maneuver quickly collapsed as support melted away all across the body. On unanimous consent, we agreed to a 1-week extension to give the House leadership a chance to discuss and negotiate necessary reforms with their own Members who had been ignored and bypassed in the process, as well as with us.

Speaker Johnson never once invited us to the table. He never got in touch with us.

One week later, congressional Republicans again failed to pass their own bill. I stood in this spot, and we agreed to a one-time 45-day extension as a gesture of legislative good faith to give the leadership a chance to meet with their own members who had been bypassed and with the Democratic side of the aisle, which had been completely bypassed, and to engage in good-faith negotiations for serious FISA legislation.

That means legislation that meets both the requirements of the Constitution for the privacy rights of the people and the needs of our foreign policy and national security. Again, we never heard from the Speaker. We never heard from his staff. They never came to talk to us.

Now, we are here to consider a bill drafted, it looks like, at 4:33 p.m., about 1 hour ago, just to kick the can down the road one more time.

For months, we have offered to work in good faith with our friends across the aisle, our colleagues in the Senate, and intelligence community to reauthorize 702 in a manner that preserves the necessary authority while protecting essential constitutional values and the privacy rights of the people.

Despite this, again, Speaker Johnson has never once invited Democrats to the table.

I know Speaker Johnson. We served together on the Committee on the Judiciary. We used to speak and interact freely, but he has completely vanished in this process.

We have an incredible shrinking Constitution under Donald Trump, and now we have an incredibly shrinking Speaker under Donald Trump.

Look, our touchstone has been a fundamental principle at the core of the Fourth Amendment. A judge must come between the Federal Government and the private communications of American citizens. That is the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The FBI has abused this powerful surveillance authority for decades.

The FISA court has recently raised serious questions today about how section 702 is operating. Instead of implementing the modest self- administered guardrails Congress required as part of our 2024 reauthorization, the FBI appears to have been actively circumventing and violating those guardrails.

We cannot trust Kash Patel not to violate FISA when he readily admits he queried some government databases to dig up dirt on journalists who dared to report about him and the government services he has made available to his girlfriend.

Believe it or not, the administration's invitation to trust Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard, which the majority of this body was not interested in, has now gotten even less enticing. Today, President Trump just appointed Bill Pulte as Acting Director of National Intelligence, making it even more obvious that he intends to use FISA to investigate, harass, and persecute his political opponents.

Director Pulte has no national security experience, zero, zilch, none. He is famous in America for only three things:

One, he vowed to engage in fisticuffs with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent when he was at Donald Trump, Jr.'s club in Georgetown, the Executive Branch.

Two, he brought Palantir into the Federal Housing Finance Agency, where he was director, to help him scour through American's personal financial data, looking for dirt on Trump's designated political enemies.

Finally, he then used this AI-enabled technology to create personal mortgage dossiers on Adam Schiff, Leticia James, and Lisa Cook, who he then referred to the Department of Justice for felony criminal prosecutions. He engaged in criminal referrals. All three of these attempted prosecutions, fortunately, collapsed either at the Department of Justice or in Federal court because they were so flimsy.

That is what he spends his time doing, trying to dig up dirt through this AI-enabled technology on American citizens, including elected officials.

So if you thought our civil liberties were safe with Tulsi Gabbard as the backstop, which was the last proposal, you will love the idea of Bill Pulte being the guardian of our privacy and the protector of our civil liberties.

Bill Pulte's appointment, which has been derided not just in our party but by Senators Thune, Tillis, and Cassidy, just to name a few, confirms our worst fears of the President's plans to abuse FISA section 702 for the purposes of domestic political surveillance, harassment, intimidation, and persecution.

Indeed, we know the FBI is currently abusing FISA based on the FISC opinion from March that remains inexplicably classified. Instead of implementing in good faith the modest reforms we passed 2 years ago, the FBI created a system to review Americans' data in violation of the minimal, self-administered, self-policing guardrails we required.

We can say with some confidence that the FBI has no idea how many U.S. person queries they ran last year, how many times they spied on the communications of American citizens, and we should be able to explain these serious deficiencies to our constituents.

Mr. Speaker, if we allow the President to turn FISA into an instrument of domestic political control, we will be ignoring everything we have already learned about the long history of abuse of this program, which my friend Mr. Jordan has helped to bring to light: past improper searches swept in Members of Congress and staff of both parties, campaign activists and donors, and Black Lives Matter activists.

President Trump certainly believes FISA provides the technology, methodology, and opportunity to spy on political opponents. On April 10, 2024, he posted: ``Kill FISA, it was illegally used against me, and many others. They spied on my campaign.''

``Kill FISA,'' he said. These allegations may or may not be true, but the President is certainly right that this program has been badly abused in the past.

The majority, yet, still shows no evidence of seeking to impose a judicial warrant requirement for queries of U.S. citizens. They have shown no interest in building a probable cause requirement into the statute. We have seen no evidence that they want to impose any judicial oversight at all, although that

was the Framers' major commitment, that they wanted to make sure that there would be a judicial magistrate interposed between the government and the rights of the people.

That is the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. We need to stand by that, and we need a real process to make sure that we come up with real legislation that honors it.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I don't know what personality potshots the distinguished gentleman is referring to. Of course, that is against the rules of the House, and if you think you have an objection, you should go ahead and object based on personalities. I haven't heard a single one mentioned.

In any event, when section 702 of FISA sunsets on June 12, if that is the will of the majority, the government surveillance activities will continue unchanged. Everything that has already been authorized and certified is already in motion, and current FISA authorizations will continue unaffected, at least through March 17, 2027.

In any event, I know that the gentleman said that we are approaching the 250th anniversary of the country. Yes, that is something we have known about for 250 years, and the majority has known for many months about this deadline and can't seem to get it together.

We don't have the opportunity to help them because they will not reach out to us and talk to us about it. I restate our commitment to try to help them get through this, but we are not going to continue to kick the can down the road with them indefinitely.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Massie), the very distinguished gentleman and a great champion of the Constitution and civil liberties.

Mr. Speaker, we thank you for your trenchant remarks, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me just say, we gave the majority an extra week. We supported that unanimous consent. Everybody Member of this body supported that. They never consulted us. They never talked to us, despite all kinds of promises to do so.

I had GOP colleagues telling me, on the Judiciary Committee, they were never consulted. Nobody ever talked to them about it.

Then we gave them 45 days. They said they just needed 45 days, and they would definitely talk to us. We would be able to meet. After 1\1/ 2\ months, we heard nothing from them.

We have been begging them to sit down, because I believe there is a robust, bipartisan majority in this House to support the needed reforms and making sure that we interpose the voice of a judge before the personal communications of American citizens are invaded by the Government.

I think that we have got a vast majority on that side, but nobody from leadership seems to be talking to anybody who is concerned about this.

Now they say: Oh, well, just give us another week.

No, we are not interested in that. We have given you lots of time. You are not consulting us. You are not negotiating in good faith. So maybe the threat that we are not going to support you will finally get you guys serious about it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Himes), the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee.

Mr. Speaker, can you tell us how much time we have remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

Mr. Speaker, my friend, the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee, flippantly says: What is another 3 weeks after we have kicked the can down the road this far?

Where is the passionate, stalwart defender of American civil liberties and right to privacy we have come to admire and esteem? The Fourth Amendment protects the rights of all Americans. It does not have a ``unless it is just for another 3 weeks'' exception.

Congress must act to protect the rights of Americans. We agreed to 1 week. We agreed to 45 days. Enough of this disorganization and chaos. If there is a serious proposal on the table, we are all ears. We will sit down, and we will work on this. We want to reauthorize section 702, and we want to make it safe for the constitutional rights and liberties of the people.

We also know, Mr. Speaker, that section 702 explicitly allows any current authorizations to continue until their expiration dates, even if the statute sunsets. Therefore, there is no reason we cannot protect both the Fourth Amendment rights of the people and the authorities that keep us safe.

If Speaker Johnson will just allow us to do so, I believe that the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees can come together and get this done.

Again, Mr. Speaker, I believe there is a robust, bipartisan majority. I think it is ridiculous that we even need to say it, but I do believe there is a robust bipartisan majority that will stand with the Constitution, that will make sure we are interposing the proper independent judicial magistrate between the government and searches of the private rights and the persons and things protected by the Fourth Amendment.

We need to protect the rights of the people and the Constitution. We can do that. We need to protect our national security with section 702. We can do that. We can harmonize them. All it takes is old-fashioned legislative deliberation and compromise.

I am certain we can do it, but we haven't had any effort by the GOP leadership to look to this body, both Republicans and Democrats. Where do they look? They look to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

But we are an Article I for a reason. We are the legislating branch, not the President. We have got the power to declare war. The President has forgotten that. We have got the power to appropriate. We have got the power to tax, and we have got the power to pass this legislation on section 702.

We don't have to wait on hand and foot for the White House to tell us what to do. Let's just sit down. Let's hammer out a great legislative compromise that will take us not for another 7 days or 42 days or 45 days. How about we do it for the next 5 years? If we build a search warrant requirement into it, I bet we could do it for the next 10 years.

Let's live up to our constitutional responsibilities and legislate together.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I can understand why our colleagues talking about deranged Trump syndrome don't want us talking about the actual President himself. He just said, ``I don't think about Americans' financial situation,'' and, ``not even a little bit.'' Well, no kidding. Our let-them-eat-crypto President, who has pocketed a cool $5 billion since he was inaugurated, spends a lot of time thinking about his own financial security and the bankrolling of his MAGA foot soldiers, whom he pardoned en masse and released from jail last year.

He wants you to pay for not only a $1 billion golden ballroom because he bulldozed the White House, but a $1.776 billion political slush fund, under his exclusive control, to pay out to his favorite convicted criminals, anti-democracy rioters, and cop-beating insurrectionists, 96 of whom have already committed new crimes since he let them out of jail, including child sexual assault, domestic violence, home invasion, and first degree criminal assault. He wants to turn this street- fighting mob into a permanent private militia of MAGA millionaires.

His Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, cooked up a collusive plan with the plaintiff President to cancel out all criminal, civil, and tax liability for himself and the rest of the Trump family and their businesses for all time--in all caps, they wrote ``forever''--for any crimes they have committed up until this point. Nothing like this has ever happened before in American history.

Now, they want to hand DHS another $70 billion after the $170 billion they got last year-- The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.

--despite the fact that DHS still has $100 billion sitting around unspent, and despite the fact they have done nothing, zero, to reform the King Kong police practices that left two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, dead, lying in their own blood in the streets of Minneapolis. Vote ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise to remember the great Colman McCarthy, who recently passed away at the age of 87. For decades, Colman McCarthy cut a singular figure in Washington, D.C., known for both riding his three-speed Raleigh bicycle to work every day and for putting his sharp writing to good use challenging militarism, fascism, materialism, capital punishment, the war complex, and mindless overconsumption. Above all, he was a beloved colleague, active citizen, faithful friend, devoted husband, father, grandfather and irrepressible teacher who dedicated his life to education for peace and justice.

Colman was born on Long Island, New York to a family of Irish immigrants. All he wanted to do when he graduated high school was write and play golf. He had just graduated from a small Jesuit college in Alabama with the intention of joining the PGA Tour when he made a small detour at a Trappist monastery in Georgia. He ended up staying there for five years, where he devoured great volumes of literature and wrote stacks of journals. Though he had taken vows as a lay brother, Colman could never quite cut ties with the outside world and would jump at every opportunity to donate blood at the town's Red Cross, where he could devour the newspapers and magazines. One day, the abbot gave Colman $50 and an old suit and drove him directly to the airport.

Soon after landing in New York, Colman got a job as a sports journalist. It turned out he was much better at playing golf than he was at writing about it. He somehow still found his way to Washington, D.C. after he wrote a mildly critical piece about Sean Shriver, then the Director of the U.S. Peace Corps. Shriver hired Colman as a speechwriter because, he said, there were too many ``yes men'' surrounding him. Colman's career returned to journalism when in 1969 he became a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, where he set his golden pen to opposing the Vietnam War and corruption. In 1985, he tired of simply writing about peace and founded the Center for Teaching Peace with his beloved wife, Mavourneen.

Over the next several decades, he taught free classes about peacemaking to hundreds of students at the Georgetown Law Center, Woodrow Wilson High School, and the School Without Walls before settling in at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School in Maryland's beautiful 8th District. He did not believe in grades, as he was convinced they were ``academic violence,'' and perhaps it was this unshakeable conviction and his mad love for knowledge that made him so beloved and his classes so sought-after by his many students.

Colman opened every class he taught on peacemaking with the same routine. He would pull out a $100 bill from his wallet and tell the assembled students that it would be theirs if they could answer every single one of his questions correctly, questions like: Who was Robert E. Lee? Who was Napoleon Bonaparte? Easy enough. But then the questions would get harder. Who was Dorothy Day? What about Emily Greene Balch? Jody Williams? Jeannette Rankin?

The $100 bill would go back into Colman's wallet. But he never used this long-practiced routine to embarrass or shame his students, young people whom he treated seriously and respectfully. He instead used the bit to make a point about our education system. Students have ``been well taught about men who break the peace,'' he wrote, ``but know little or nothing about women who make the peace.'' He would then offer his students singular opportunities to meet legendary Nobel Peace Prize winners like Adolfo Perez Esquivel and the singer-songwriter Joan Baez, before introducing them anew to Lily Flores, the custodial worker at Bethesda Chevy Chase who shared her experience fleeing violence in El Salvador to build a new life in the United States.

Colman inspired an untold number of his students to channel their careers into politics for social good. Many of them have become social workers or public interest lawyers. A few of his students have run for Congress, like my great friend from Massachusetts, Representative Jim McGovern. He was cherished by his friends and family alike.

Colman met the love of his life, Mavourneen ``May'' Deegan Colman, in 1967. She passed away in 2021. She not only shared his values but put up with his various vegan diets and his commitment to freeganism with good humor. They had three sons, John, James, and Edward and treasured their six grandchildren.

His radiant legacy lives on within his family and also among his many students, who will recall the only homework assignment he ever gave; at the end of his lessons, he would command his class to ``tell someone that you love them today.'' We in Congress and the country would do well to remember it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the extraordinary Colman McCarthy, an accomplished writer, philosopher of nonviolence, Catholic activist, educator, golfer, and runner, who cut a singular figure in Montgomery County, Maryland, and in the Washington, D.C., area.

Colman spent his life and his career challenging war, militarism, and what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex, writing every week a column that was beloved by thousands of people.

But Colman was not always a famed peace activist. He nearly became a PGA champion and also a Trappist monk before finding his life's work as an educator for peace.

Students who took his classes at BCC High School remember him coming to school on his Raleigh three-speed bicycle and the only homework assignment he ever gave his students: to tell someone that you love them that day.

I hope his memory remains an eternal blessing to our community and a source of joy and comfort to his three sons, John, James, and Edward; his six beloved grandchildren; and to all of his many students, friends, and admirers, among whom I count myself.

A link honoring the life and career of Colman McCarthy can be found at: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/business/media/colman-mccarthy- dead.html.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Harris for his thoughtful remarks.

I rise to support and will vote for H.R. 5625, the Cashless Bail Reporting Act, because it would simply direct the Attorney General to publish a list of State and local jurisdictions that permit cashless bail.

This is already publicly available information. I just googled it. The answer seemed to come up, but it would be good to have some, perhaps, professional refinement and certification that these are actually the numbers.

Mr. Speaker, National Police Week is typically an opportunity for us to bring meaningful legislation forward that will support law enforcement and help them to perform their critical, lifesaving duties because Congress wants to support and honor their work. I am not quite sure that we are living up to this high calling in this National Police Week.

This bill, for example, is unobjectionable, but it doesn't do much work at all. It is hard to see how issuing a report advances community safety or justice.

Given the strangely hostile rhetoric that we are hearing from our colleagues about cashless bail, I thought I would take a moment to talk about what bail is and what it is not.

As the gentleman correctly states, bail is not a mechanism for punishment. In America, everybody is innocent until proven guilty. Whether you are the President, the Pope, or a pauper, you are considered to be innocent and presumed to be innocent until you have been proven guilty in a court of law, observing due process, by a jury of your peers, beyond a reasonable doubt, and with the prosecution satisfying every element of the burden of proof.

People have a right to their freedom while they are preparing to stand trial, among other reasons, to get ready for trial, unless they are a flight risk or unless they pose a danger to themselves or to other people.

That is basically the rule, as I understand it. In fact, that is the rule we have been using in the Federal system for more than 60 years. We have a cashless bail system under Congress in the Federal courts. There are 94 Federal district courts all across America, operating in red States, blue States, purple States, and everything in between. They all use a cashless bail system.

Mr. Speaker, when a person is brought forward on an arraignment before the court, those of us who have practiced law or have been prosecutors know this process in a very familiar way. The court asks one simple question, which is: Is this person a flight risk, or do they pose a danger to themselves?

They could be the richest person in the world, but if they are a flight risk, as, for example, some of the Epstein defendants clearly are--these are globetrotting criminal defendants--it shouldn't make any difference how much money you have to pay for bail. The money should be irrelevant to it.

Conversely, if you are not a flight risk, if you are not a danger to the community, but you are a pauper and have no money, you should not be held simply because you can't pay $5,000, or whatever the bail is.

Somebody might be able to put up $1 million or $1 billion, but if they are going to abscond, if they are going to run away, they should be held. That is the Federal system. Money doesn't enter into it.

To my knowledge, I don't think there are any bills out there--my staff will correct me--that seek to overthrow the Federal bail system, which is a cashless system.

I don't know of a single candidate in America who is running for Congress on the premise that we need to overthrow the cashless Federal bail system, which is working great everywhere.

Mr. Speaker, cash bail is a billion-dollar, for-profit industry. Who makes money off of that? The bail bondsmen make money off of it, and they are very politically active. They don't want to see any change. They don't want to see the Federal system being adopted by States and jurisdictions around the country.

A cash bail system asks a different question. It doesn't focus on: Are you dangerous or a flight risk? It focuses on: Can you pay? Can you pay?

From the standpoint of the Federal system, that is an irrational, arbitrary issue that just confuses the question of why a person, who is presumed to be innocent but is now facing serious criminal charges, should be held in jail during the pendency of their trial or waiting for their trial to take place.

Mr. Speaker, I don't know why I am surprised that there are Members of Congress who are demonizing jurisdictions simply because they prefer to employ a policy that exactly mirrors Federal law. To say that that is somehow soft on crime strikes me as just bizarre, unless the entire Federal system is soft on crime because of the system that we have used.

I am not, in any way, afraid of or intolerant of this debate. I think we should have the debate. To the extent that this bill is just asking DOJ to compile information that is already publicly available, it is fine with me. I am going to vote for it.

Nothing currently prevents the Attorney General from compiling and publishing this information right now. Due to the miracles of artificial intelligence, it seems to be pretty quickly readily available. I think I got it in less than 1 second.

This bill could help to officially coordinate the collection of this information and ensure that it is reported accurately, so I plan to vote for it.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Mrs. McBath), the very distinguished ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance under the Judiciary Committee.

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

I thank the gentleman for his thoughtful remarks there. We certainly don't want to see anybody being released without regard to whether or not they pose a danger to the community or whether they will abscond and disappear.

A good example of that happening recently was when President Trump en masse pardoned more than 1,500 convicted felons who were Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, rioters, and insurrectionists who assaulted 150 police officers right here on the Capitol campus. Departing from the traditional process of examining each case individually, which is what the Department of Justice has done in the pardon office, he just pardoned all of them. So he didn't look to see which ones had been convicted before of domestic violence, armed robbery, or other forms of felony crimes.

Some of them had no criminal record. Some of them had serious, violent criminal records. All of them were released. And what do you know, dozens of them have since reoffended since that terrible process took place.

One guy recently, Andrew Paul Johnson in Georgia, was released by Donald Trump, pardoned by him. He got out of jail and went and sexually assaulted two 12-year-olds. When they and their families were about to go to the police to report the crimes, he said: Well, I am about to get millions of dollars from Donald Trump because I am a J6er. I will split the money with you if you don't go in. Thankfully, they went and reported him to the police. He was prosecuted, and he was just sentenced to life in prison. Those two kids' lives are irrevocably altered because of the process that took place, which was no process, which is I am just going to go ahead and release everybody.

We have had other J6ers who were pardoned by Donald Trump who have since been convicted of offenses including domestic violence, violent assault, home invasion, and so on.

So I could not agree more with the point that people should not be getting out of jail or prison without any regard to the danger that they pose to the community.

Now, how does this all relate to bail? Well, I hope we agree that nobody should be getting out of jail without regard or without the court taking an analysis of whether they are a flight risk or whether they pose a danger to the community. That is what the focus should be.

So certain jurisdictions have said, including the Federal system, that is all we need to know. You could be the richest person in the world. You could be worth a billion dollars. It doesn't make any difference. If you are a flight risk, if you are a community danger, we are not going to let you out.

Conversely, you might be the poorest person in the world, but if you pose no flight risk, if you pose no danger, then you should be allowed to be released because that is the constitutional presumption, the presumption of innocence.

So the injection of a financial payment into the process just confuses the issue.

Now, I am not saying every State has to follow what the Federal courts do and what we have done for more than 60 years. That is up to them. That is a question of federalism.

That is why I am trying to prefigure where this whole inquiry leads. It looks like it is leading to an attack on the States who want to do it the way the Federal system has done it for more than a half century. I am just raising the point that I think we should look very carefully before we go down that road and we impose a different view on the States in some kind of straitjacket as to their criminal justice policies that we don't accept for ourselves because the current system is working great here.

So I agree with the prior speaker. We don't want people getting out of jail for any reason, whether it is bail or parole or a pardon from the President, without due consideration of what the effects are going to be on the community.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I would say I want to thank the gentleman for his bill. I am going to vote for his bill. More information always better. I have got no problem with that.

The only thing I reject is the insinuation that the States that do it differently from the Federal system are somehow better than the States that do it in accord with the Federal system. We have had cashless bail at the Federal level for many decades, and our system zeros in on the critical criteria of whether or not this criminally charged suspect poses a flight risk or a danger to the community.

I hope that we can continue the conversation about what we can really do to advance and enhance community safety.

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to the Keeping Violent Offenders Off Our Streets Act, which is a truly strange bill. The bill, first of all, refers to violent offenders, but it is unclear exactly why. It applies to all offenders. In any event, it would redefine the business of insurance to include the posting of monetary bail, criminal bail bonds, and Federal immigration bail bonds.

It would accomplish this dramatic reclassification for the purposes of prosecuting and punishing community bail funds as a form of criminal insurance fraud. Only in surreal MAGA Washington would someone think to change the definition of insurance fraud to include the posting of bail and bail bonds. I can't even begin to reconstruct the giant mental leaps that must have been used to get to this fallacy.

This week is National Police Week, and as we do every year, we recognize and honor the men and women who put their lives on the line for us to protect our communities. Our colleagues have vaguely and inscrutably billed this legislation as pro-police, although they have yet to show how it would support the police or address the articulated needs of police officers anywhere in the country.

The true aim of H.R. 6260, apparently, is to discourage and destroy not-for-profit bail funds that raise money for people who cannot afford to pay bail for themselves. These groups try to address the basic injustice that results when wealthy people can walk free while poor people are held in jail pending trial for no reason other than their inability to pay, which is why the Federal system, as I was arguing in our last bill, eliminates money from the equation entirely and says that the only question is whether a person presents a flight risk or danger to the community.

Now, my distinguished colleague, the author of the legislation, ties the beginning of these bail funds I think he said to 2020 with the killing of George Floyd.

Actually, the history of these funds goes back a lot further than that. It really begins during the period of abolitionism in the Civil War when various people were being jailed for either assisting enslaved people in the Underground Railroad or being arrested for their attempts to interfere with the fugitive slave law.

In any event, money was raised to get people out of jail for those purposes. That lasted through the Civil War, and it went into the Reconstruction period as well, because we know that the criminal justice system in the South was turned into an instrument of incarceration and domination and reimposing discipline on the freed slave population. That is what they were using the criminal justice system for, and so people throughout the country were raising money to try to get people out of jail to repurchase their hard-won freedom.

However, this process of communities raising money to pay bail has persisted all the way through the 20th century and into the 21st century. The ACLU did it. They created a bail fund for people swept up in the Palmer Raids, the Red Scare, and the obscenity prosecutions for people who couldn't afford to get themselves out of jail. It was critical to Reverend Martin Luther King and the SCLC, and John Lewis and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Bail was raised. Bail money was raised to get people out of jail for often pretextual and fraudulent arrests and incarceration throughout the South.

It has continued to be used since then. It was being used during the anti-Vietnam war movement when bail money was raised to get people out of jail, again, in mass, dragnet arrests without regard to what people themselves had done.

It is being used today in the LGBTQ community. It has been used, as the gentleman references, in Minneapolis where we saw exactly what ICE was doing when they shot dead in broad daylight at pointblank range U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti. If they are willing to kill people, then they are certainly willing to rough them up, beat them up, and arrest them falsely.

Yes, the people of Minneapolis, to their great credit, came together to create funds to bail people out of jail when they were mistreated by the police.

Should we twist the law of insurance fraud into unrecognizable knots in order to deter and destroy bail funds and to threaten people with felony convictions like people who go out and sell fraudulent insurance policies?

It is hard to see why we should do that.

By the way, it is not just those we would put on the liberal or progressive side of civil movements in American history because the exact same thing happens with anti-abortion protesters with the pro- life movement.

Mr. Speaker, you had better check with the pro-life movement before you vote for this legislation because they could get swept up with it too. They have raised a lot of money for people who are willing to put themselves in the way of a woman's reproductive clinic, a health clinic. They consider those killing places. Obviously, we have a profound disagreement about that. We believe that people have a constitutional right to their own healthcare.

In any event, set that aside. These people are sincerely motivated in what they are doing, and, yes, they have raised money to bail people out of jail when they get arrested for blockading abortion clinics.

Now, should we describe that as a form of insurance fraud so it can be regulated, and then if somebody misstates something on a form or on a bail statement and they don't properly record it or whatever, then suddenly the whole Orwellian dragnet of the Federal Government can come down on them?

By the way, what is the Federal interest in this anyway?

That is very hard to see. The original law creating a Federal crime around interstate insurance fraud was all based on the idea that the insurance has an interstate nexus because it is being sold across State lines, but the vast majority of protests take place in one town, in one city.

Where is the interstate nexus that would even give us jurisdiction to adopt this dramatic expansion of the law governing insurance fraud?

I would love the distinguished gentleman from Wisconsin to illuminate where is the interstate nexus or character that justifies this dramatic enlargement of law governing insurance fraud in the United States.

I understand that, for some reason inscrutable to me, they want to target basically the Federal system of bail during Police Week. I don't see what the connection is, but, in any event, this is a step way too far. I was willing to go with the Attorney General report out of deference to my friends.

We will support the Attorney General report so we can get a clearer picture of what is going on, but to change insurance fraud law and policy in America to target, when you think about it, a really noble and honorable practice used by both people on the left, people on the right, and people in between, to support those who either deliberately engage in civil disobedience or are falsely targeted by the police, strikes me as a very bizarre thing to do and a strange way to honor Law Enforcement Week.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, another gigantic, logical leap in this legislation just occurred to me, which is that the Republicans are blaming the bail funds for this or that person getting out of jail. They have skipped over a major step, which is the judges who are the ones who are actually deciding whether or not someone poses a flight risk or a danger to the community.

If there is a judge who is not doing their job, they shouldn't be on the court. They just shouldn't be there.

As we have seen in the Federal system, the vast majority, if not all, of the judges can act and behave responsibly with respect to the essential criteria for deciding on bail, which we know.

Really, what they are saying is: We like a for-profit system that benefits the bail bondsmen all over America. They make 10 percent--it might be 15 percent now, I am not sure--on all the bail posted. If you are a criminal defendant, and you have shown you are not a flight risk or a danger to the community, you are not done yet. In those cash jurisdictions, they want $10,000 from you.

If you don't have $10,000, you get it from a bail bondsman, but you owe the bail bondsman $1,000. The bail bondsman essentially takes out $11,000 in the loan and gives you $10,000. You give it to the State, and they pocket $1,000. This is extremely lucrative. There are a lot of very wealthy bail bondsmen and -women out there.

That means that it is the court that is responsible. It is not the people who raise the money. Now, they want to say: Well, it is only the rich people who should be able to make bail in the cash jurisdictions.

If you are arrested, if you are a pro-life protester and you do civil disobedience at an abortion clinic--that is your decision to make. I am not going to say it is your First Amendment right. It is not exactly a right, although you have been written into the FACE Act for these purposes. You decide to do it. You are willing to pay the consequences. If you don't have the money, it means your political supporters can't raise money for you.

If you are participating in a peace protest or a civil rights protest, but happen not to be rich enough to pay the bill yourself, they are trying to impede your ability to get money from other people by threatening these bail funds--which are a venerable part of American society--with insurance fraud charges. That is amazing.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Simon), my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California.

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

Mr. Speaker, it occurred to me to go back to check Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, what happened in their cases. In a cash bail system in Florida, Jeffrey Epstein was freed and allowed to go operate his dubious affairs before he was convicted. In the Federal system, there was no bail. He was denied bail because he was clearly a flight risk and a danger to the community.

The same thing with Ghislaine Maxwell, she offered to put up $30 million to get out of jail, and the Federal system said: We don't do that. We don't release people based on money. You are a flight risk, and you are a threat to the community.

That is the only thing that should count. It shouldn't be like an auction that you go to and whoever can put up the most money gets out of jail free, and then the poor people don't.

Now, they want to go beyond that to say poor people can't even pool their resources and get support from people in the community or other parts of the country because that could constitute insurance fraud. That strikes me as ridiculous.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Menefee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Mrs. McBath).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Georgia.

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

Mr. Speaker, let me address a few points that are still lingering out there. As I listened to the distinguished ranking member on the Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, and Mr.

Menefee, a couple other points occurred to me.

One is that our same colleagues who want to crack down on the ability of people to associate and raise money for the purposes of providing bail for people who can't afford it are also the ones who basically want to blow the doors off the hinges when it comes to campaign finance. They believe in an absolute deregulation of money going into the political system. Yet, when it comes to community groups, neighbors, and people across the country in sympathy or solidarity with people who may be caught up in the criminal justice system, through no fault of their own or through civil disobedience--you could say peace protestors, environmental protestors, pro-life protestors--they want to cut down on that form of association and that form of freedom of speech and assembly, which is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Moreover, we don't even know what Federal power is being purported to cover this exercise of Federal jurisdiction. They are pasting this onto the law against interstate insurance fraud, which is a categorical extension of Federal power when people engage in interstate insurance maneuvers and are defrauding somebody out of their money.

But now they want to apply that to money that is raised locally for purposes, like in Minneapolis, of defending people who are arrested in an anti-ICE protest, for example. Where is the Federal interest? Is it the Commerce Clause? It is certainly not the First Amendment because it cuts directly against the First Amendment. I don't think it is section 5 of the 14th Amendment.

What is the asserted basis of our constitutional authority to criminalize as insurance fraud people raising money locally to support local protestors? I just don't get that.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I oppose H.R. 6260 for the aforementioned reasons, but also because the bill does nothing to actually support law enforcement officers on Law Enforcement Week.

For this reason, at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to the Committee on the Judiciary.

If the Republican House rules permitted, I would have offered the motion with a very significant amendment to the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record immediately prior to the motion to recommit.

My amendment would bring not just rhetorical support, but real support to police officers, specifically, the police officers who defended this Chamber, this Capitol, this Congress, all the Members of Congress, the Vice President, and our democracy during the January 6th attack by creating the January 6th Law Enforcement Heroes Compensation Fund, to provide compensation for any injuries inflicted on our officers that day, as well as any corresponding economic losses.

These are people who serve with us every day. You see them every day, and you may know some of them. More than 140 of them from the Capitol Police, from the Metropolitan Police Department, and several other regional police departments, including the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland were wounded, injured, and hospitalized as a result of the mob attack on our country, where our officers fought valiantly for hours against atrocious violence that one of the officers likened to medieval battle.

Many officers were forced out of policing by the injuries inflicted on that day. Many suffered grievous physical and emotional injuries, including posttraumatic stress, for which they are still being treated and for which they may never fully recover.

One of them I know, Sergeant Gonell, suffered a crushed right foot and a destroyed rotator cuff. Because he could barely lift his arm and he could barely walk, he was forced out of his dream job of being a Capitol Police officer.

He became a Capitol officer because his high school class from Long Island, New York, came and visited the Capitol, and he saw what the officers were doing. He said: One day I am going to do what those officers do, and I am going to protect the Congress of the United States.

In the middle of his career, he was so disabled by the attack that he had to leave it, despite wanting to stay, but he simply could no longer live up to the physical expectations of the job. Now, his family is living on a fraction of the salary that he had before.

We could tell you lots of stories like this. Some of the officers, like Officer Brian Sicknick, who died on January 7, gave the ultimate sacrifice, the last full measure of devotion to this body.

Several took their own lives after this brutal and nightmarish convulsion, an attack incited by the President of the United States as determined by the House of Representatives.

Some of these people are disfigured and disabled for life, but all of them--and their politics are irrelevant. Some of them are Republicans. Some are Independents. Some are Democrats. All of the officers responded on January 6 like heroes, and they deserve our eternal thanks. They deserve more than that. They deserve the actual commitment of this body to help them.

The Trump administration wrote a check for nearly $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt, even though two separate investigations determined that our police officers acted responsibly, lawfully, and reasonably to defend this Chamber and the people who worked in it on that day, yet they gave them nearly $5 million.

Do you know what they have given to the families of the police officers injured and wounded, whose lives were irrevocably changed on that day? Zero. Nothing.

It is time for us to pass this legislation and show that our commitment is real to the police officers who work with us right here every day. That is what we need to be doing, and I urge everybody to support the January 6th Law Enforcement Heroes Compensation Fund.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record the text of this amendment immediately prior to the vote on the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I hope my colleagues will join me in voting for the motion to recommit so we can move forward with this absolutely essential legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, Federal monitorships are a critical tool for Federal courts and Federal judges. Monitors ensure compliance with court orders, settlement agreements, and consent decrees, all to remedy entrenched, systemic violations of Federal law in matters of school desegregation, prison conditions, civil rights, policing, detention, disability rights in education, the environment, and antitrust law.

This bill appears to have been written as part of an attempt to undermine Federal monitorships, but, indeed, focused on one very special monitorship in particular.

The bill targets the ongoing Federal monitorship of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona, which, as the gentleman just discussed, was put in place after a Federal judge determined that the office, under the notorious tenure of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, had displayed a pattern and practice of using race and ethnicity, rather than objective evidence of criminality, to target people for criminal investigation and detention and for a profusion of illegal stops, seizures, and frisks, in violation of fundamental rights protected by the U.S. Constitution. One expert called it the worst pattern of racial profiling by a law enforcement agency in the history of the United States.

Following this ruling, the Federal district judge placed the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office under supervision by a court-appointed monitor to ensure that it would take the steps necessary to correct its structural violations of the law and violations of the rights of the people.

For years after the initial court order, Sheriff Arpaio proudly and gleefully violated a succession of court orders, refusing to end his office's practice of rampant, unlawful racial and ethnic profiling, which eventually led Federal judges to find him in civil contempt, in criminal contempt, and then, finally, in need of a Presidential pardon, which, of course, he got from the king of pardons when he took the White House.

As a result of all of this defiance and contempt, the court had to issue subsequent orders each time to more specifically articulate and delineate the steps that the sheriff's office needed to take to come into compliance with the law.

Recently, our colleagues held a field hearing in Phoenix, the gentleman's hometown, where they took issue with the fact that the sheriff's office is still under a Federal monitorship more than 10 years later in his home State. They did not take issue with the fact that the office has gone for more than 10 years without fully and meaningfully complying with the court order.

The monitor is in place only because the sheriff's office has failed to remedy its egregious and systemic violations of the law, despite multiple court orders directing them to do so. More than a decade later, and even under a new

sheriff, data reveal that racial disparities in the sheriff's office's arrest rates persist to this day.

Mr. Speaker, Democrats are open to having a serious, nationwide policy discussion about ways to strengthen and improve the Federal monitorship process. Democrats are always up for that, but the bill before us today is focused on one case, one monitor, and, therefore, ignores the entire dynamics of monitorship nationwide. They haven't even pretended to claim that whatever is taking place in that district that they don't like is reflective of what is going on in the rest of the country.

I heard the gentleman say that this is some kind of codification of recommendations made by Attorney General Merrick Garland and Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta in a 2021 DOJ memo on monitors, which they like, but that is not the full story.

The bill, as opposed to the memo, scoops up the points that they like within the memo, like a kid scooping up Easter eggs in the backyard, but then discards the rest. The bill includes some of the recommendations, changes others, and simply excludes others.

Critically, Attorney General Garland said that at the end of a 5-year period there should be an analysis of how well the monitorship is going, should it be terminated, or should it be continued based on the facts.

Well, the gentleman's bill takes that 5-year number but says we are just going to cut it off after 5 years. We are not going to do an analysis of it. We are not going to assess the situation. We are not going to see whether the monitor is needed to go forward. We are just going to take the 5-year number and say it is over. So that person is gone, and if you need a new one, bring somebody else in. All of that institutional knowledge, everything they understand, is out the window.

Now, I understand that would accomplish the gentleman's objective, which is they want to terminate the monitor out in Maricopa County. They don't like that monitor. That is not really how we should be legislating Department of Justice policy for the entire country. Far from making this a more efficient process, the various requirements put in would delay, prolong, and confuse as a new monitor and a new judge would have to attempt to get up to speed on the complicated history of the case and the progress completed by the party prior to this new abrupt appointment.

They would have to review years' worth of briefs, orders, reports, motions, replies, pleadings, and so on. Together, these provisions could incentivize a reluctant party to simply run out the clock until a more indulgent monitor and judge are appointed to the case.

The retroactive application of the bill is, of course, curious. The Garland memo warned against retroactivity, noting that because existing consent decrees and monitorships are the product of extensive negotiations with approval by the Federal court, the specific recommendations should apply only to consent decrees and monitorships used in future cases.

But the whole trick here is to make this apply retroactively to get at the guy that Republicans don't like, and of course, that is not up to us. Congress doesn't go out and decide specific cases. If Republicans have got a problem with what the monitor is doing, bring it to the judge in that case, but don't change Federal law and make a Federal case out of it.

Look, if the majority is serious about improving the appointment and use of Federal monitors, and I am sure they are, then I urge them to work with us to do a nationwide study. Let's craft a bill fully reflecting the recommendations of the Attorney General. Let's invite Attorney General Garland to come in and testify about it. He is a constituent of mine. I am happy to write him and have him come in and testify about what should be done, rather than rushing through this last-minute, case-specific, makeshift legislation.

I urge all my colleagues to oppose this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

The gentleman asks why Members of the minority didn't come to his hearing in Arizona, and because he asked, I am afraid I am going to have to tell you the truth. We don't think it was a serious hearing. It was about one monitor in one case to target one guy in the context of the gentleman's exciting campaign for Governor of Arizona. I understand the gentleman prefers to be in Arizona. Well, we prefer to be in our districts, too. I will happily leave my district for a serious substantive hearing, but I am not going to be part of a witch hunt or attack against one particular monitor.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Mrs. McBath).

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

Just to restate for everybody where we are. The monitor serves at the discretion and the pleasure of the judge. If the judge thinks the monitor is doing a bad job or feathering his nest or taking money, the judge would get rid of the monitor immediately. That is up to the judge.

If you have got a problem with a particular monitor, bring a motion before the judge to change the situation. Instead, the gentleman wants to make a Federal law out of it. I appreciate it is his last few months in Congress, and he wants to try to accomplish something in that particular case, but it really doesn't relate to the rest of the country.

There has been no study done of monitorships generally, except for what Attorney General Garland did, and his bill departs radically from what Attorney General Garland was talking about.

Just take, for example, this 5-year idea. The idea is, look, the judge can review the monitor at any point in the course of the monitorship. But there should be, Attorney General Garland said, a 5- year review where they look and see how it is going and is the jurisdiction complying or not.

If they are not complying, as is taking place in Maricopa County, why not? What needs to be done? Is the monitor actually showing up at work and being a zealous individual about it or not? That can happen right now.

But in any event, Attorney General Garland says, have a 5-year review. Their bill says terminate the monitor, regardless of whether or not that person is doing a good job, after 5 years. They could be doing the best job in the world, but no, they want to start all over again and take all of the time and energy required in getting somebody else up to date on the case.

It is just not serious legislation, which is perhaps why there is not a counterpart over on the Senate side; there is no companion.

So good luck to the gentleman about actually getting this done before the election in November. Perhaps people will be impressed by catalyzing all of this attention to one case, but it tells us nothing about what is happening in the rest of the country.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Landsman).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio.

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

The gentleman says that if we had come, it would have been serious. I applaud the implicit concession it wasn't serious. But in any event, it would not have been relevant because studying what goes on in one office is not relevant.

Now, if you want to take the Attorney General's handiwork and turn it into law, we could do it, but that is not what the gentleman is proposing to do. He has changed it and contorted it in a lot of different ways in order to fit his particular case.

In any event, I don't think we should rely exclusively on the executive branch. I think we should have our own serious hearings with the whole committee. Only two Republicans joined that trip to Phoenix, Arizona, although there was another Republican Member who I think was a key witness there. I think Mrs. Lesko testified before the committee, increasing the sense of the closed circle that they have there.

In any event, why don't we look at this as a serious national problem? In any event, of the top 25 things Americans are thinking about, I can guarantee you that is not one of them. One of them, though, is the billion dollars that the administration is asking for, for the big, wretched ballroom that they want to build over at the White House since they bulldozed the East Wing of the White House.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Boyle), the ranking member on the Budget Committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, the President has repeatedly claimed that the ballroom would actually be entirely funded by private sources. Leaving aside the legality of that proposition, now they are asking the American taxpayers for $1 billion for the ballroom when the cost of it would have been zero had he not gone ahead and bulldozed the White House without the permission or consent of Congress which has control over all Federal buildings and property.

It is up to us, not the President, and yet he thinks that the White House is like a personal vacation home. He bulldozed it, and now they are asking us for $1 billion.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished ranking member of the Budget Committee for coming here to talk about this very serious issue. I am very glad he is moving to recommit so we can have some serious legislative investigation into that outrageous proposal. I want to link it to the bill from the gentleman from Arizona. That is because if you think about it, Mr. Speaker, neither of the agendas being proposed have anything to do with the national common good. The ballroom, the gilded ballroom for Donald Trump and his family and friends, has nothing to do with what is going to advance the well-being of the American people.

Similarly, this bill is all about picking a fight with or retaliating against one monitor they are upset with about one case. They might be right or they might be wrong. It sounds to me like they are wrong, but, in any event, those merits have nothing to do with the rest of the country and what the rest of us are dealing with.

However, on the Republican side of the aisle, now it is all about I want my thing; I want to get my thing before the whole ship goes down.

We know Donald Trump's numbers are sinking like a stone across the country making him the most unpopular President in American history, so everybody wants to get a little piece of the action for whatever they can. No one is thinking about the public interest.

Who is thinking about getting healthcare to all the American people?

Who is thinking about lowering the cost of groceries for the American people?

Who is thinking about getting housing to the American people so young people can afford a place to go live?

None of it. The President said he was going to lower inflation on day one. Inflation is soaring. Now the cost of gasoline is up $1.50 across the country because of his illegal, unconstitutional war he has waged against us.

They want us to be spending our time talking about one Federal monitor under the supervision of one Federal judge in Maricopa County, Arizona.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining.

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

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman really wants to save the taxpayers money, then why not encourage the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department actually to implement the reforms that have been required by the court for more than one decade and finally redeem itself from the shameful legacy of entrenched racial and ethnic discrimination conducted by Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

I have not heard one word in utterance of criticism of Sheriff Arpaio by the distinguished gentleman from Arizona.

Is he here to say that Sheriff Arpaio did nothing wrong and that all of those court judgments are wrong and the court orders are wrong, that there never should have been a monitor in the first place?

Or is he saying: Oh, well, yes, he made some egregious systemic structural errors, but actually the process was completed and everything is fine now, but the monitor doesn't see it and the court doesn't see it.

In any event, why are we litigating this case from Phoenix, Arizona?

That just makes no sense. Congress is not allowed to adjudicate cases. We govern the interests of the whole country.

The gentleman keeps going back to the Attorney General's statement. This is the first time I ever heard him refer in any kind of positive way to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Great. Terrific.

Does Attorney General Garland support this legislation?

He hasn't mentioned it to me. I haven't heard anything from him about it.

Did the Deputy Attorney General who worked on their report endorse this legislation?

I haven't heard anything about it. Ms. Gupta didn't get in touch with me.

Did they go and testify out in Arizona?

Or did they just want to use that as a fig leaf for this effort to go and get this monitor that they don't like?

Mr. Speaker, that is not serious legislative policy.

That is kind of like a drive-by hit on Congress on your way out, like: Oh, I am going to go after this one guy. We can't govern on that basis.

How come there is no U.S. Senator who is introducing this legislation targeted at Maricopa County?

If it is all about that one case, why don't we tell the people we know there--and I don't know anybody there--but why don't we tell the people we know there to comply with the law?

I think that the average is around 5 years for a court monitor. Some of them have gone 15 or 20 when you have a real case of obstructionism, defiance, and intransigence. This one has gone on for more than a decade, which doesn't speak well for what is happening in that office.

In any event, most of the monitors are gone within several years because compliance is accomplished. The gentleman doesn't seem to recognize that the whole purpose of having a monitor is to see that the government will comply with the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the rights of the people. That is what is at stake here.

Are we going to just stampede in there and squash one monitor at the behest of one Congressman and one hearing taking place in one city without any serious legislative analysis of what is going on? I doubt very seriously the House of Representatives will do that. I know the Senate will not do that.

This seems to me to be a completely hopeless exercise in vain and a complete distraction from the real issues of the country, like the illegal, unconstitutional war Donald Trump has unleashed in the world, costing us more than a billion dollars a day; like the billion dollars they want from us now for the gilded ballroom of his dreams and visions; like the ruinous effects of their illegal, unconstitutional tariffs on American businesses, small businesses, and consumers across the country; and their continuing coverup of the Epstein files and their refusal to deal seriously with that situation.

They want us to talk about Maricopa County. No, thanks, Mr. Speaker. No, I am not interested in that. I don't think there is going to be anybody voting for this silly legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose and to deplore this partisan resolution. As you just heard, H. Con. Res. 96 is another tiresome and loathsome exercise in partisan MAGA polemics.

Unlike H. Res. 1252, which was honestly written to honor law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty, and which received an overwhelming bipartisan vote in the House just a few hours ago, this nonbinding rhetorical resolution desecrates the solemnity and abandons the nonpartisanship of Police Week by scrawling a bunch of false and inflammatory anti-Democratic and pro-Trump graffiti on what has always been, until now, a simple nonpartisan resolution expressing the national consensus supporting law enforcement.

It is not difficult to write these resolutions in a way that garners widespread bipartisan support. Last year, Congress passed H. Con. Res. 30, a bipartisan resolution expressing our mutual common support for local law enforcement. The year before that, together we passed H. Res. 1213, condemning calls to defund the police and violence against law enforcement officers.

We have always strived for bipartisanship in these resolutions on Police Week to show that the whole community is together. But just as 21 Republicans voted against the Congressional Gold Medal for officers who defended this Capitol and this Chamber against rioters and insurrectionists on January 6, 2021, now, the Republicans bring forward a resolution designed not to unify but to divide.

The resolution before us invites us to endorse a tired, false, cliche-ridden partisan claim about defunding the police when, in fact, it is Democrats who have repeatedly promoted robust funding for law enforcement, while congressional Republicans, the Trump administration, and Elon Musk have cut funding for law enforcement and public safety programs that actually work as they slashed $500 million from State and local crime-fighting and victim assistance grants and programs under the DOGE and Elon Musk's crusade against the Federal Government.

The resolution also invites us to sign on to the demonstrably false claim that the Trump administration's focus on restoring law and order has contributed to a notable decline in homicide rates. The significant decline in violent crime in major cities over the past couple of years has nothing to do with the Trump Presidency as the resolution asserts and everything to do with the Democrats they denounce and the Biden Presidency's investment in State and local law enforcement.

In fact, homicides skyrocketed during the first Trump administration, and the historic nationwide decrease in violent crime began during the Biden administration and was the result of Democratic-led investments in public safety through both the American Rescue Plan, which House Republicans unanimously opposed, and the historic Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

Thanks to these sweeping investments in public safety and our common security, cities leveraged Federal funds and innovation to pursue a variety of effective programs to combat violent crime, with some cities recording the lowest murder rate since the 1960s, or even before that.

Madam Speaker, instead of restoring law and order, as the resolution claims, the current administration has systematically undermined law enforcement and jeopardized public safety without any objections from the party that claims to back the blue. The administration canceled millions in critical grant funding that supported State and local law enforcement. It reassigned more than 25,000 Federal agents tasked with fighting organized crime, terrorism, and human trafficking away from their missions in order to do immigration roundups.

The administration invaded American cities with a lawless paramilitary force, unleashing chaos and deadly violence on U.S. citizens, like Renee Good and Alex Pretti, under the pretense of fighting the worst of the worst. The administration stopped enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, announced that in its first week in office.

It fired dozens of experienced Justice Department lawyers and FBI agents just because they participated in the largest criminal investigation and prosecution in American history against the people who attacked this Chamber and the Capitol and the Congress and the Vice President on January 6, 2021.

This administration has also pardoned dozens of white-collar criminals and fraudsters, including the former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, an international narcotrafficker who brought 800,000 pounds of cocaine into America, saying he would shove it up the noses of the gringos, and he was going off to jail for decades when President Trump decided to pardon him for reasons unknown.

He has released people from prison from January 6 who went on to commit serious new crimes against our people, such as Mr. Johnson who got out because of his Trump pardon and went on and sexually assaulted two 12-year-old children and now has been sentenced to life in prison because of that. Those kids' lives have been irrevocably altered by the mass pardon of all of these people that included armed robbers,

violent felons, domestic abusers, you name it, and a lot of them are back at it right now.

Madam Speaker, the administration has repeatedly threatened to cut off funding for State and local law enforcement in numerous jurisdictions and attempted to commandeer State and local police officers and resources to do the Federal Government's job at State and local expense. All of this compromises public safety and is an insult to the officers who work to keep us safe.

Republicans in Congress have done nothing to put the brakes on Donald Trump's weak-on-crime agenda, and we were going to give him a chance. The fact that he has 34 Federal criminal counts that he is convicted of himself doesn't mean he had to be soft on crime, but he is soft on crime, and we are not going to help the Republicans pull the wool over America's eyes. We are not going to do that to salvage their leader who is sinking like a stone in public opinion polls for his illegal tariffs, his unconstitutional war, his soaring inflation, and runaway corruption throughout the government.

Donald Trump has a staph infection, and America can see it every day. House Republican appropriators recently rejected the Trump administration's proposal to increase ATF's budget by 4 percent and agent head count from 2,400 to 3,000 agents in the coming fiscal year. Instead, they want to cut ATF's budget by $285 million, which would leave ATF with even fewer resources to support State and local police as they work to prevent and investigate and prosecute gun crimes.

Meaningless polemics against leftist activists and progressive politicians have no place in a resolution purportedly meant to honor law enforcement. This is the first time that any majority has fallen into the political trap, but they can't help themselves because they are so desperate because of the plummeting poll numbers of Donald Trump and his administration.

Now that you raise it, it is worth noting that Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have actually voted to defund the police in the 119th Congress. H.R. 7640, the Shut Down Sanctuary Policies Act of 2026, would strip Federal funding from jurisdictions that have laws placing any limits on State and local law enforcement officers' involvement in Federal immigration matters despite the fact that immigration enforcement is the job of the Federal Government and not an unfunded mandate that can be put on the States and cities and localities.

All of this undermines public safety. I cannot support this resolution, which lies about Republicans and this administration's real record on crime and public safety. The observance of National Police Week and Peace Officers Memorial Day marks a time of solemn remembrance when our Nation should come together to honor the courage, sacrifice, and dedication of our law enforcement officers and personnel, and promote awareness of their service to our communities.

Let's stand united and reject this shameful effort to inject divisive partisan politics into this resolution and this week.

If you want something that can bring us together, please support the bill that I introduced today to create a fund to compensate the law enforcement officers who defended the Republic, this Capitol, the Congress, the Vice President against that violent attack on January 6, 2021. They continue to suffer the physical, medical, psychological effects of that atrocious attack.

The Trump administration wrote a check for nearly $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt despite the fact that there were two different investigations which determined that the police had acted reasonably, lawfully, and honorably. Yet, they just gave them a check for $5 million.

What do the families of the officers who defended our lives get? So far they have done nothing. We are introducing legislation to make that happen, and I hope everybody in this body who really believes that law enforcement should be stood by and should be defended in their work will get with us on this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Georgia (Mrs. McBath), who is the ranking member of the Crime and Federal Government Surveillance Subcommittee.

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

The worst Congress in modern American history cannot even write a resolution praising law enforcement that maintains bipartisan support-- something that every other Congress, Democratic or Republican, has been able to do--because they are so desperate to cover up their miserable record.

The Trump administration has done nothing more to improve public safety than it has done to lower the ruinous inflation they unleashed on us with their illegal tariffs or to open up the Strait of Hormuz, which was closed only because of the illegal war Trump has already spent $29 billion of our money on.

Well, our colleagues have some very fine rhetoric about how much they love public safety. So why don't we look at their fiscal year 2027 budget proposal. They won't fess up to the fact that

they just slashed $500 million out of local and State crime fighting and victim assistance grants, but let's talk about the future.

Well, what does their fiscal year 2027 budget proposal say? It proposes significant funding cuts for grant programs under the Office on Violence Against Women, including a $14 million cut to transitional housing grants and a $15 million cut to legal assistance grants to help survivors and their children.

They want to cut 62.1 percent, nearly a half a billion dollars from the discretionary budget request for COPS, which would translate into complete elimination of the anti-methamphetamine task forces, the anti- heroin task forces, the Community Policing Development Project, de- escalation training, and the dramatic reduction in STOP School Violence, and other crime-fighting projects.

So you are talking about defunding the police and defunding criminal justice. That is what their proposal is for next year.

They want to cut millions of dollars from successful programs to fund the Office on Violence Against Women, of course. For example, they want to cut millions from the Financial Assistance to Victims Program. They want to cut from consolidated youth-oriented programming, access to sexual assault nurse exams $12 million and on and on.

That is their budget.

They want to cut $538 million from the Byrne Discretionary Community Project Grants in the Department of Justice budget. They want to eliminate the Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative whose great successes they want to take credit for. They want to cut $50 million from that.

They want to cut $17 million in grants from the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes community policing program. And it goes on and on. You don't have to go and make up a bunch of mirages and ghosts about defunding the police. That is in their budget for next year. They want to dismantle one criminal justice program after another.

But of course, they want to increase the military budget to $1.5 trillion, which they all leapt up to support even before hearing about what specific military projects and arms projects were contained in it. They want $1.5 trillion for that budget as they continue to drive our budget deficit up to the heavens. They have added already more than $3.5 trillion to the debt. So it is fiscally irresponsible, and it is irresponsible from the standpoint of public safety.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I reserved the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I am prepared to keep going. I am not afraid to keep the debate going. Whatever the gentleman pleases.

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

The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, which they propose to slash and essentially dismantle, is responsible for advancing the practice of community policing at the State, local, territorial, and Tribal levels. The COPS Office awards grants to hire community policing professionals, that is something that they propose to gut.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I am prepared to close if the gentleman is prepared to close. He seems to be in a hurry.

Madam Speaker, how much time is remaining?

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

Look, it is unfortunate that we have reached this place, Madam Speaker. Every prior Congress has been able to honor the police on Law Enforcement Week. Yet, they insisted on scribbling polemical, partisan graffiti, attacking Democrats and Progressives and so on, using a nonbinding ceremonial resolution to try to pick a political fight, which is not very wise given their miserable record in terms of crime fighting.

One of the first things they did was they said they were no longer going to enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Then they gutted anti-terrorism and counterintelligence programs in the Department of Justice. They pardoned 1,600 or 1,500 Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Klan members, violent rioters, and insurrectionists from January 6. Even his own Vice President urged him--or said he supposed the President was not going to pardon those who had committed violence, but he pardoned everybody.

Prior to Donald Trump, you know, the way the Presidents did it was there was a pardon office in the Department of Justice, and they would look at very specific requests and applications that came in for a pardon, and they would try to judge whether the person was truly reformed, truly rehabilitated.

Every President up until Trump insisted that they actually pay off their fines and pay restitution to their victims. But no, not President Trump. He said: I am going to take all of them together. I am going to pardon them en masse, 1,600 of them. Some of them were armed robbers, domestic felons, violent assaulters. Some maybe it was a first offense, but they were all mixed in together, and then they got their pardon, and they were forgiven for all of their fines and all of the restitution that they owed to their victims.

Then the President continued that rampage with all of the white- collar criminals and fraudsters and drug dealers he pardoned. Some of them owed tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. It was all forgiven. That money was, therefore, transferred from the victims of these crimes right back to the criminals. This is the person that they want to praise as being tough on crime and such a great law-and- order President.

We were willing to look--aside from the fact that he had 34 criminal convictions of his own and was an adjudicated sexual assailant under the civil law of New York--and say maybe he will actually invest in fighting crime. But no, it has been quite the opposite. He has been doing everything in his power to undermine criminal law enforcement. Now they want to take credit for what the mayors and Governors have been doing for several years now, which is causing a dramatic decrease in crime by investing in all of the programs that they have pulled the plug on.

They just slashed more than $500 million from Department of Justice grants going out to the States and the cities. You want to look for weak on crime? You want to look for defunding the police? Look no further. You found it in the Trump administration. Elon Musk and DOGE came right over to the Department of Justice and slashed $500 million from program moneys that were appropriated by Congress and programmed by the Department of Justice, and they said: Stop the delivery of this money. We are going to cut off these grants.

The reason they don't say anything about it is because they know it is true. We heard all about it in the Judiciary Committee. That is the real track record.

Now we see in their budget request for next year they want to continue to ravage the crime-fighting budget of the country.

Why did President Trump pardon the former President of Honduras who brought 400 tons of cocaine into America? Why? He brought in 800,000 pounds of cocaine. He said: We are going to shove it up the nostrils of the gringos. That is what he said. And Donald Trump pardoned him, saving him from decades in Federal prison.

How come they are not talking about that?

We wouldn't have brought any of it up if they had just come forward with

the same consensus, bipartisan resolution that we have always had. But no, they wanted to pick a partisan fight.

Well, they picked the wrong people, because we know what has actually been happening. We know who is standing strong for law and order and who is bringing us down into the mud of lawlessness and authoritarianism in the country.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

Madam Speaker, I am happy to yield to my colleague for a moment if he wants to respond about the pardon of the former President of Honduras, whether that is something that our colleagues on that side of the aisle support or not. I don't know if he is interested in responding to that.

Madam Speaker, I was just offering to yield if he wanted to respond to that question, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker, I reclaim my time.

We consider the safety of the people to be the highest law that there is, along with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Unfortunately, this administration has been trampling all of it. We saw what happened in Minneapolis where we had U.S. citizens shot down at pointblank range in broad daylight for exercising their First Amendment rights, the rights contained in the First Amendment of our Constitution, shot down in cold blood.

Then we saw their then-Attorney General, Ms. Bondi, come out and say that these people were engaged in acts of terror and had been threatening people, which was a lie, and she refused the opportunity to apologize for what she had done.

There will be a real investigation. There will be a real investigation of those homicides. There were only, up to that point, three homicides, three murders that took place in Minneapolis, in Minnesota, up until that point of the year, and two of them were committed by Federal agents, two of the three. Well, that is a pretty powerful statement about the law-and-order administration that they want to praise in this completely partisan resolution that they want to push through the House of Representatives today.

So the Constitution is under attack, right? They promulgate executive orders telling thousands of lawyers at different law firms they cannot enter Federal buildings, including Federal courthouses, which makes it difficult to practice law.

They have used their power of the Federal Communications Commission to force them to settle completely bogus, frivolous lawsuits that the President has brought against media companies. Then they have installed their minders, their little spies, into TV networks, like something out of Putin's Russia or Orban's Hungary.

They have been systematically undermining the free press in the country. They are attacking the Constitution, and they are attacking the Bill of Rights.

It is so bad that even their stacked-and-packed, gerrymandered Supreme Court has had to strike them down for things like their illegal, unconstitutional tariffs, their global trade war against the world, which has been ruinous for our economy, compounded only by his illegal, constitutional war on Iran where he usurped the power of Congress to declare war.

James Madison said it had to be the Representatives of the people to declare war, not a President, not a Vice President, not Tulsi Gabbard or their leaky chat group. No, it has got to be the Representatives of the people, because the kings were constantly plunging their people into wars of conceit and vanity and imperial plunder.

They have created lawlessness from the highest levels of the government all the way down to the streets, where they are pulling the plug on Federal grants to help State and local governments fight crime, while they pardon narcotraffickers, white-collar fraudsters, people scamming American citizens.

So we are going to have to try to restore real law and order in the country, and that begins at the top. That begins with the Presidency, and it begins with everybody who is in government.

I wish that we could just go ahead and honor law enforcement without all of the partisan graffiti they have scrawled all over the resolution. We would show just as before, you have an overwhelming vote when you do it the right way, and we honor the people who have served us.

I invite our friends to join us in honoring and standing by the men and women who defended us on January 6. One hundred fifty of them were wounded, injured, hospitalized, disfigured, and disabled. Some of them were disabled and forced out of police work because of the injuries inflicted by the mob that came here.

They have given nearly $5 million to Ashley Babbitt's family, despite the fact that two different investigations showed that the police had acted reasonably and lawfully in what they did.

How about millions of dollars to the families of the police officers who lost their lives as a result of that violence? Let's show for real that we are committed to law enforcement by standing by the police officers who defend us every single day.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Knott for those thoughtful remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz), the author of the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Florida.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida.

President Washington, in the summer of 1790, penned a letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. In it, he explained the key advantage that would set our new Republic apart from all prior nations.

Here in the United States, he assured the Jewish community: ``All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.'' Not liberty for some, but liberty for all.

To secure equal liberty, the President explained, we would establish and maintain a government that ``gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.'' We would require ``only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.''

That commitment to reciprocal basic decency and responsibility for everyone who lives here is sewn into the fabric of the American political culture.

The United States doesn't always live up to that promise, Mr. Speaker. All too often, there have been efforts to privilege some Americans over others, to create a hierarchy, to bully particular American communities because of their religion, their ethnicity, their skin color, or their national origin, for cynical and political gain.

Certainly, in the Jewish community, we know what it means to be treated sometimes as a scapegoat. We see that incidents of anti- Semitism across America remain at record highs today. We see an alarming rise in physical assaults motivated by anti-Semitism, 203 last year alone.

We know that three people were killed in anti-Semitic attacks last year, including two right here at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.

We know from the struggles of our history that we all must work together to counter racism and anti-Semitism which form the gateway to destruction of liberal democracy. We cannot pretend that systematic hatred and discrimination leaves anybody unaffected in the country.

In Congress, we have an obligation to confront bias and discrimination head-on, to foster what President Washington called ``an enlarged and liberal policy,'' one that moves our country from the intolerance of white supremacy to the tolerance and universal liberties that he described in that letter to the congregation in Newport.

That is why, Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution which observes ``one of the most effective ways to combat anti-Semitism and hate is through education and awareness of the contributions Jewish Americans have made to the United States through the arts, entertainment, science and technology, military, government, business, culinary traditions, and other fields.''

I thank the gentlewoman from Florida, again, for her leadership on this project. I urge my colleagues to support this resolution, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, President Washington closed that letter to the congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, this way. He said: ``May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabits; while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.''

I thank the gentlewoman from Florida for her resolution. I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for his

thoughtful remarks, and I encourage all my colleagues to vote for this resolution.

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