Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise, with Congressman Eric Swalwell, to honor the remarkable life of my constituent, Jayne Harper Plank, who passed away on February 23, 2023. Jayne dedicated her life to civic service, philanthropy, and historic preservation, and she will be greatly missed by her beloved family, her many friends, and our entire community.

Jayne grew up in Washington, D.C. and graduated from George Washington University. She served on the Kensington Town Council for 7 years and in 1974 became the first woman elected mayor of Kensington, ultimately serving 4 terms.

In honor of her extraordinary civic service to the town, the renovated Kensington Cabin, originally built in 1934, was renamed the Mayor Jayne H. Plank Kensington Cabin.

In 1982, President Reagan appointed Jayne as the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs at the State Department, a position she held for 5 years. Jayne served as a liaison to governors, mayors, county officials and state legislators on the administration's policies. She also worked as a cryptologic linguist for the National Security Agency.

Jayne was active in historic preservation, philanthropic and civic organizations. She was the first woman elected President of the Maryland Municipal League and the first woman to serve as the State of Maryland's representative to the National League of Cities.

Jayne was also appointed to the Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission and served on the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority, the Board of Trustees of Tudor House in Georgetown, and the Maryland Historical Society. She was active with the Women's Leadership Group of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington and the Citizen's Association of Georgetown. In 2016, Sister Cities International recognized Jayne for her work building strong international relationships.

Jayne was the beloved wife of the late William H. Plank, Sr. She is survived by her loving family, including her sons William Plank, Stuart Plank, John Scott Plank, Colin Harper Plank and Kevin Audette Plank; her grandchildren, Jack, Casey, Eve, Jesse, Campbell, Talya, Aitan, James and Katherine; and sisters Peggy Defranceaux and Donna Miller.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in honoring the remarkable life and legacy of my trailblazing constituent, Jayne Harper Plank.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to H.J. Res. 26, the second episode in the new miniseries where the House majority asks the United States Congress to act as a super city council of 535 members to make decisions for the people of Washington, D.C., which is a real city with a real city council and Mayor and which some of my colleagues apparently have never visited or had any real interaction with.

The people in Washington, D.C., want to make their decisions about democratic self-government for themselves. They don't want the Representatives of other Americans to come and make decisions for them.

President Biden was here this week for his great State of the Union Address, and, Mr. Speaker, when you could hear him over the heckling, he talked about the great progress we are making as a nation economically with 12 million new jobs.

In terms of support for Americans in their healthcare with the dramatic reduction in healthcare prescription drug costs, we have cut to $35 a month what people have to spend on their insulin shots if they have diabetes.

We just passed a record investment in climate preparedness to deal with the extreme climate emergency and all of the extreme weather events that people in the United States are experiencing across the country.

That is a national agenda. That is a real national agenda.

Now, my friends across the aisle want to spend this week instead superintending and reviewing the bills that are being passed by the D.C. Council for 713,000 American citizens who live in Washington, D.C.

Yesterday, it was about voting rights. Today, it is about criminal justice reform. I am sure down the road, just as in the past, it is going to be their gun safety laws, and it is going to be their laws allowing for Medicaid funded abortions for poor women. Then they will go after their LGBTQ laws and so on. There will be a parade of attacks on local democratic self-government in Washington, D.C.

Now, I believe that the people of Washington should be treated like all other American citizens. Right now what they have asked for is admission to the Union as a State.

Now, most of the Members of this body represent States that were admitted after the original 13. Thirty-seven States came in afterwards with Congress' exercise of its Article IV powers to admit new States. That was very much the design of the Constitution and the Founders' plan. Go back and read some Thomas Jefferson about that.

We were not set up as a country where certain people would make decisions for other people but people, instead, would be able to govern themselves. In fact, the basis of our attack on British rule over America was our rejecting the idea of virtual representation: that some people could make decisions for other people. No. The whole premise of American democracy is that people make decisions for themselves.

So the 713,000 taxpaying, draftable citizens of Washington, D.C.-- whose population has participated in every war America has ever fought from the point of the American Revolution to the Civil War and all the way up through the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq--those people are asking for admission to the Union.

This House of Representatives in the 117th and the 116th Congresses voted to give it to them. It didn't quite make it through the Senate, which is always slower on these things, but that is the trajectory that the people of D.C. are on.

Instead of trying to join President Biden and all of the great national economic progress, infrastructure progress, and healthcare progress we are making, the House majority decides instead to usurp the role of the D.C. Council and to begin to micromanage their government and finger paint all over their laws. That is what they are doing today.

Now, we don't have time to compare the laws of D.C. with the laws of each of the other States, but I just want my colleagues to be on notice that I have got the laws of the other States, and I can do those direct head-to-head comparisons.

I don't think we should go down this road. I don't think it is a healthy thing for us to be doing as a Congress because we should be respecting the democratic self-government rights of the people of Washington, D.C.

Nobody is more interested in public safety in Washington than the people of Washington.

Nobody is more interested in the processes of democratic self- government in Washington than the people of Washington.

Nobody is more interested in their healthcare policies and in their housing policies than them.

I invite any of my colleagues who have actually been to a meeting of the D.C. Council or their local advisory neighborhood commission to rise and tell us about the experience.

But if they haven't, then they should leave democratic self- government and local self-government of Washington to the people of Washington, D.C.

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

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Georgia says he is in favor of the resolution because he cares about Washington, D.C.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), someone else who cares about Washington, D.C.

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues have put some stuff on the floor, and I will answer it.

The distinguished gentleman from Georgia invoked a couple of crimes in Washington, D.C., including one in the Metro. He didn't talk about the hundreds of crimes that were committed here at the Capitol, in Congress, in Washington, D.C., because he viewed

the events of January 6 as akin to a ``normal tourist visit.''

Now he dares to lecture the people of Washington, D.C., about keeping Washington, D.C., safe. He seeks to associate Washington, D.C., with crime. Indeed, he and his colleagues constantly try to link images of crime to what they call Democrat-controlled cities.

I did some research last night just to clarify matters. The seven States with the highest murder rates in 2020 all were States that were majority for Donald Trump in the 2020 election. The murder rate in the States that voted for Trump was higher in aggregate than the murder rate in the States that voted for Biden in each year from 2000 to 2020. I invite the gentleman not to lecture the people of Washington, D.C., about crime rates because the murder rate is worse in the red States than it is in the blue States.

Five of the ten cities with the highest murder rate through the first half of last year were in States that voted for Donald Trump in 2020. All those cities have higher murder rates than Washington, D.C. Among the top 10 is a city in the State represented by the sponsor of the disapproval resolution, Mr. Clyde.

Now, the Speaker rose to talk about both yesterday's resolution and today's resolution. He also gave the people of Washington, D.C., a lecture about diluting the vote when he rejects their admission to the Union as a State.

In other words, he is trying to squelch and nullify their statehood drive that would give them real political equality in the country, and then he says the people of Washington, D.C., are diluting the vote. Well, he is blockading the vote. He is preventing the vote for people in Washington, D.C.

Then he joins the chorus denouncing crime in Washington, D.C., which is suddenly of concern to them. I had not heard them mention that before. Well, it turns out that Bakersfield, California, has one of the highest crime rates in America, recently described as one of the top 10 deadliest cities in America for its size, and its crime rate is higher than that of Washington, D.C.

However, we are going to take this opportunity to kick around the people of Washington, D.C. Why? Because they are vulnerable, because they don't have voting representation in the House, and they have no voting representation or voice in the U.S. Senate. That is a scandal from the standpoint of democracy.

Instead of trying to solve that problem, my colleagues, instead, want to use the people of Washington, D.C., as a whipping post, as a pinata, something to kick around. I just think that that is outrageous, and it is wrong.

On January 6, when we were attacked at the Capitol and in this Chamber, there were hundreds of residents of Washington, D.C., who work for the Capitol Police, who work for the Metropolitan Police Department, who work for other police forces who came here to defend us. They came to defend the Congress that they are excluded from. You talk about patriotism, that is patriotism.

These people have a real grievance, a valid grievance, not an imaginary, fake, counterfeit grievance like a Presidential election which they still claim Donald Trump won, even though their arguments were rejected in more than 60 Federal and State courts.

Trump lost that election by more than 7 million votes, 306-232 in the electoral college. I am glad they are nodding over on that side of the aisle because these facts are indisputable, yet, still, they indulge the follies and the fantasies and the pathologies of Donald Trump.

That is what they do instead. They try to kick around the people of Washington, D.C., who defended us as patriots on that day.

There are veterans in Washington, D.C., and we will submit these for the Record, who have demanded their voting rights and demanded admission as a State. Yet, they dare to lecture the people of Washington, D.C., about what to do with their democratic rights.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

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

The gentlewoman from the District of Columbia has just made a very powerful point, which is that on a whole range of offenses under the newly revised D.C. act that they want to overthrow, the criminal law is tougher in Washington, D.C., than it is in the distinguished chairman's home State of Kentucky.

On carjacking, on first degree murder, on involuntary manslaughter, the people of D.C. have chosen tougher penalties, but the gentlewoman didn't arrive to denounce Kentucky as soft on crime or weak on crime and say the whole United States Congress has to turn itself into a superlegislature for Kentucky and strike their laws down. That is up to the people of Kentucky. They don't even have a carjacking statute. You have to use armed robbery there, which gets you up to 20 years in prison. In the District of Columbia, they have a specific carjacking statute that could get you 24 years in prison.

That is the beauty of the Federal system, which I thought our colleagues supported, the idea that people decide at the local level whether they want tougher laws, as in the District of Columbia, or weaker laws, as in Kentucky. That is up to the people of the States to go offense by offense.

I am afraid that my friend and colleague, Ms. Norton, is taking them a bit too seriously because they are not really interested in scrutinizing the actual criminal justice policy. They just want to kick the people of Washington, D.C., around. They want to lord it over them.

We have President Biden here this week inviting both parties to work together for a continued acceleration of this great economic rebound we are in with 12 million new jobs, with us finally addressing climate change, with us finally getting prescription drug benefits to the people of America. He invited us to participate in a bipartisan national renewal, and what does the majority come back with? They want 535 Members of the United States Congress to act like a super-city council lording over the people of Washington, D.C.

It is unjust and unfair to the people of Washington, and it is beneath our dignity as a democratic Congress to be acting in this way.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. If you google carjacking in Kentucky, what will come up is, just a few months ago, two people were carjacked in different incidents at gunpoint in Louisville, which I think is in the State of Kentucky. Since we are talking about State laws, that is what should be relevant. Carjacking is, obviously, a problem across the country.

The conceit of the other side seems to be that they care more about crime and public safety in Washington, D.C., than people who live in Washington, D.C. We just got lectures from two different Members from New York about the terrible conditions in New York. Well, if that is what their concern is, then they should run for the New York State Legislature and change the laws that are involved if they can persuade their fellow citizens that they have it right. If they can't, then maybe they should reconsider what their agenda is.

In any event, if you want to micromanage the laws of Washington, D.C., and rewrite this 275-page act that was passed to revise the criminal code, which they hadn't revised in a century, with the input of Federal and local judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and the D.C. Council, then move to Washington, D.C., and run for D.C. Council.

These resolutions of disapproval come to the House floor without the benefit of a single hearing in the Oversight Committee.

They have not had a hearing where the Members of Congress could be heard on this, where we could have a single witness, where we could have a single fact introduced, much less have the members of the D.C. Council--who sent a letter petitioning for respect for democratic self- government in D.C.--had the right to be heard, much less if the Mayor had the right to be heard.

They keep invoking the name of the Mayor of the District of Columbia who said she does not want Congress to be overturning the laws of the District of Columbia, even if she opposes those laws.

Well, that is a principled position in favor of democratic self- government. I dare say, most of the Members of this body would say even if they disagreed with a law passed by their State legislature in their State and signed by the Governor that Congress should not selectively overturn that law. But that is precisely what they are proposing to do to the people of the District of Columbia.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

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

Mr. Speaker, if we were actually to pass this resolution of disapproval against Washington, D.C., at this point, I wonder what my colleagues think we do at that point.

Sitting as the super council for the District of Columbia, would we rewrite the law?

In other words, would we then conduct hearings on each of the offenses that the gentlewoman has just invoked?

Are we going to have hearings about involuntary manslaughter and first degree murder and carjacking and so on in the District of Columbia?

They don't even want to have a hearing on their disapproval resolution, much less do we want to have a hearing on each of these bills and take over the governance of the District of Columbia.

Let's respect the Home Rule Act that was adopted in 1973. Home rule operates here just like it operates in all of our States, which is local matters are decided locally. Let's leave it at that.

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

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

I want to correct just a few of the major distortions that we just heard from the distinguished gentleman from Louisiana.

First of all, carjacking, as I understand it from this act, and I am willing to stand corrected, is not legal in the District of Columbia. On the contrary, it could be punished by up to 24 years.

I think the gentleman from Louisiana misunderstood my colloquy with the chairman of the committee because it is in Kentucky where carjacking is not a statutory offense.

If you were to charge the people who were committing carjackings recently in Louisville, you would have to charge them under armed robbery because there is not a carjacking statute.

Washington, D.C., has one, and it has a penalty of up to 24 years, which is more than you could get in Kentucky for armed robbery.

The second point is he said that crime was out of control in Washington, D.C. Well, the crime rate is higher in Bakersfield, California, which is represented by the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

A major city, New Orleans, in the gentleman's home State, in this quote from FOX News ``New Orleans closes 2022 with sky-high homicide rate not seen in decades: `Horrific'.'' New Orleans was given the grim distinction of murder capital of the U.S. in September.

But we don't need to have some kind of race to the bottom Olympics in terms of which State or which city has the worst crime rate.

We should get together to deal with the problem of gun violence, which is why I invite our colleagues to join us and more than 90 percent of the American people who support a universal violent criminal background check, but they oppose it.

They are locked in the stranglehold of the NRA, and they won't back this, despite the fact that all the police unions they cited today about D.C. support a universal violent criminal background check.

Why don't they do something about semiautomatic assault weapons on the streets of our cities and towns across America?

They won't do it. No, they would rather use crime simply as a political club to try to take away other people's democratic rights.

Mr. Speaker, it is scandalous, the way the majority purports to stand up for local self-government and home rule when they want to trample all of the democratic rights of the people of Washington, D.C.

Let's not sit as a super city council of 535 Members doing the municipal minutiae of the people of Washington. Let them govern themselves.

We should be on the pathway to statehood for them, but at the very least, respect their right to home rule. Nobody cares more about public safety in D.C. than the people of D.C.

Nobody cares more about the condition of their communities than the

people who live in them. That is a basic precept of democratic ideals.

I hope my colleagues will respect that, and I hope everyone will vote to reject this continuing series of disapproval resolutions against the people of Washington.

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 in strong opposition to H.J. Res. 24, which seeks to nullify the duly enacted laws of the District of Columbia and violates the principle of local, democratic self-government, which is at the heart of the home rule charter for Washington, D.C., and also violates the equal protection and democratic principles that animate our Constitution.

I would like to begin just by observing a striking juxtaposition in contrast between the address we heard last night, the State of the Union Address from the President, and the lecture that we just received now from the floor leader.

President Biden appeared here with a message of unity under the powerful economic growth that we are experiencing as a country--12 million new jobs added, record progress that we are making on climate change, massive investment in the American people in the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Act, the $1.2 trillion investment in the roads, highways, bridges, ports, and airports.

We are dramatically reducing healthcare costs for people in the Medicare program, reducing to $35 a month what diabetics have to pay for their insulin shots.

We are making progress for America. So, what do our good friends across the aisle come back with today, the day after this great statement of national purpose and progress? They want us to become the supercouncil for the District of Columbia and begin to micromanage the bills that are being passed by the representatives locally of 713,000 people.

With no national agenda, with no plans for getting on board with American progress, what do they have? Well, they are going to bring us a whole series of these disapproval resolutions for the people of Washington, D.C.

They don't want to vote in Washington, D.C. They don't want to live in D.C. They can move to D.C. and run for D.C. Council if that is their interest, but no, they just want to lord it over the people of Washington.

They don't like the District of Columbia's voting rules, and they don't like the criminal justice reform they just engaged in for a period of a decade with judges and lawyers, the D.C. Bar, and the people participating. They don't have a hearing on any of it. They just want to decree that they are going to strike it down.

Just you wait, they will be coming back with gun safety laws that will appear in Congress from the people in D.C. because there is that part of the home rule charter that gives us this opportunity if we want to micromanage their policies.

We will see gun safety laws; we will see abortion legislation; we will see equal rights for the LGBTQ population--all of these things the Republican minority used to do a long time ago. They have brought back the worst possible instincts.

They don't want to have a hearing on it. We didn't have a single hearing in the Oversight and Accountability Committee about any of this legislation. None of it.

Did they go to the D.C. Council when it was debated? No, they didn't do that.

Did they invite the Mayor or the D.C. Council to come here? No, they didn't do that.

They just decided they are going to slap around the local population. None of us would accept it for the localities that we represent.

Now, it so happens that people in Washington, D.C., are not just a locality and municipality. The people in Washington are involved right now in a petition for statehood admission to the Union.

In fact, in the 116th Congress and the 117th Congress, this body voted to approve their petition for statehood, but our friends across the aisle opposed that.

It passed the House. If the Senate had approved it, well, then the people of D.C., or whatever their local system is, would be able to decide these things on their own, just like the people in New York City or Albany or any other town in New York would be able to decide for themselves.

I thought that our friends over there were interested in local self- government. I thought they supported home rule, but apparently not when it comes to the people of Washington, D.C.

We reject this throwback attempt at micromanaging the affairs of the people of Washington. They don't need lectures about voting rights. They need voting rights. They are the only population of taxpaying, draftable American citizens in the country who don't have equal voting rights in Congress.

When January 6 came and people stormed this Chamber and waged violence against the Capitol Police, against the Metropolitan Police Department, against hundreds of people who live in Washington, as well as in Maryland and Virginia, the people of Washington stood with democracy. They stood with Congress.

They have a legitimate grievance, not a phony, counterfeit grievance. They are not claiming to have won an election they didn't win. All they are asking for is equal rights.

Let's grant them their statehood. If you can't stomach the idea that they would be a State, at least allow them their home rule rights to decide for themselves who is going to vote in Washington, D.C., what their criminal laws are going to be, what their laws on abortion are going to be, and what their civil rights and civil liberties practices are going to be in the District of Columbia.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to make a couple of corrections.

First of all, the D.C. legislation that would be disapproved by this resolution allows only for voting in local elections--school board elections, Advisory Neighborhood Commission elections, council elections. It does not allow voting in Federal elections for noncitizens.

The Constitution, contrary to what the gentlewoman said, permits noncitizen voting at the local level, and there are a number of jurisdictions that do that.

Mr. Speaker, yield 5 minutes to the very distinguished gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

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

Mr. Speaker, I was just reviewing some materials that showed that both the States that the gentlewoman from Colorado and the gentleman from New York represent had noncitizen voting in the 18th, 19th, and, in the case of Colorado, up to the 20th century. So I think if they are talking about giving away the sacred right to vote, their States have done that before.

It has got a kind of interesting history to it. To me, it is basically irrelevant because it is not our decision to be making. It is up to the people of D.C., just like it is up to the voters of Colorado and it is up to the voters in New York.

But the history of it is intriguing because when the country started--as I am sure the gentlewoman is aware--there were race qualifications for voting and there were gender qualifications for voting. It was only through social struggle that these were removed. But at the beginning of the Republic, all that mattered was the property qualification--the wealth and property qualification--for White men. If you were a White man, regardless of your citizenship status, you had the right to vote.

That lasted basically up to the Civil War. But it became a bone of contention between the North and the South because the Northern States were continuing to defend alien suffrage and the Southern States opposed it. In fact, Mr. Speaker, if you look at Article I of the Confederate Constitution, the very first thing it does, it says that you must be a citizen of the Confederacy in order to vote there.

They didn't want noncitizens voting.

Why?

Because the immigrants were overwhelmingly antislavery.

It was very clear in the debates in Congress about this that the Southern States wanted to get rid of it, which is why the Confederacy banned it. After the Civil War, noncitizen voting spread around the country.

But the point is that when we are talking about local noncitizen voting--who is going to vote in your school board or town council elections--that should be decided locally.

My colleagues who are the ones determined not to make the District of Columbia a State should be the first ones to say that if it is just a local government, then let them decide on who is going to vote on matters of garbage collection and who their teachers are going to be. The jurisdictions that have done this, like Los Angeles, have wanted to make sure that parents in local public schools get the right to vote regardless of their citizenship status.

Most of the noncitizens, of course, are lawful residents, people with green cards, and permanent residents, and they want them to be engaged and involved.

In any event, if my friends really support home rule and local self- determination, they will allow the people of Washington, D.C., to decide.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Ocasio-Cortez).

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 just to respond to the gentleman before he goes, perhaps.

When I said that they were returning to their worst possible instincts, that was actually a bipartisan comment because in the old days it was Democrats, racist Dixiecrats on the House District Committee who lorded over the District of Columbia and denied the people of Washington their rights. They are returning us to those days where Congress will micromanage the affairs of Washington, D.C., and not allow the people their own self-government.

He said you don't need to be a Republican or a Democrat to understand the issue. It would actually help to know your Abraham Lincoln because, of course, Lincoln was a major defender of noncitizen voting to the extent you guys want to act like a super D.C. Council and get into the merits of it.

In fact, when he was elected, his Southern opponents said he was elected on the strength of the noncitizen vote in New York, as a matter of fact, and in Illinois and other States where they had so-called declarant alien suffrage, which means if you are on the pathway to citizenship you are allowed to vote, which is a policy that makes a lot of sense, but different jurisdictions have different policies according to home rule and self-government.

When Lincoln was here, his major legislative initiative, interestingly enough, was to abolish the slave traffic in the District of Columbia because he felt that freedom and democracy should obtain in the Nation's Capital. That is something that our colleagues should also think about in terms of defining an agenda of their party. I know they are careening from this issue to that issue, but if you are thinking about D.C., think about what Abraham Lincoln did.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

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

Mr. Speaker, the distinguished gentlewoman from Colorado boasts that her State is number one in auto thefts, number one in bank robberies, and number two in fentanyl, as I understand it. It sounds like they have got their hands full with their own problems, and I don't know that they should be spending their time dictating to the people of Washington, D.C., what their voting rights policy is going to be.

Now both the gentlewoman from Colorado and the gentleman from New York invite the question of would it actually be administratively possible for a jurisdiction to have two separate voting lists for those who are eligible to vote just in local elections and those who are eligible to vote in both local and Federal elections?

Well, that is a great question that you could have posed at a hearing within the Oversight Committee if we had one, but we didn't have it. I actually happen to have researched this question, and there are a number of jurisdictions around the country which permit noncitizen voting at the local level, and they have one list for that. If you are a noncitizen when you enter, your name is checked off that list, and you get one ballot which is just for your school board elections and the local elections. Then if you are a citizen, you get a complete ballot that includes local, State, and Federal elections, so there actually is an answer, and it is working in multiple jurisdictions around the country, including several in my home State of Maryland. I think the same thing used to be able to work in New York State as well; so that is something that would be easily researchable, and it is something also that we could have answered if we had followed regular order and actually had so much as one hearing on this subject before deciding to jump in like King Kong and squash the people of Washington,

Mr. Speaker, I should say that none of those jurisdictions have been overrun with fentanyl or illegal aliens. All of those jurisdictions are functioning democratic self-governmental units, just as the jurisdictions in New York and Colorado that had the same practice were.

This really isn't about noncitizen voting, Mr. Speaker. This is about democratic self-government and allowing local jurisdictions to make home rule decisions for themselves because this isn't the end of it. It is just the beginning.

Tomorrow, I think we are going to be considering a resolution of disapproval for the District of Columbia's criminal justice reform that they have engaged in over the last 9 or 10 years involving Federal judges, local judges, council members, the D.C. Bar, and so on. We didn't know anything about that. We didn't have a hearing. Yet, someone is going to pick something out.

What the good chairman of our committee talked about in the Rules Committee was a carjacking law where I guess the minimum sentence changed. Well, we looked up Kentucky. Kentucky doesn't even have a carjacking law. You would have to use armed robbery, which can only get you 20 years. The District of Columbia would treat carjacking with up to a 24-year sentence.

These are the kinds of measurements we are going to have to go through with everybody's State and everybody's jurisdiction if we are really going to turn ourselves into the super-D.C. Council and try to get to know the people of Washington and what their concerns are and what they are into.

The whole reason we went to home rule in 1973 was so that Congress could spend its time on national policy issues, the kind that President Biden was talking about last night. We just added 12 million new jobs to the American economy. We passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan to invest in the ports, airports, bridges, roads, and highways all across America, not just in the District of Columbia, no insult intended. That is a very tiny part of the jurisdiction of Congress, and they want to turn us basically into an appellate legislative division over the District of Columbia.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

This legislation promises to be the first of many. I think tomorrow criminal justice reform comes up. I know that the MAGA wing of the Republican Party doesn't like Medicaid-funded abortions in Washington, D.C. They don't like the stricter gun safety laws that the people of Washington, D.C., have passed. They don't like their progressive legislation protective of the LGBTQ community and so on.

We are headed now for a mini culture war between the dominant MAGA wing of the Republican Conference today and the people of the District of Columbia, who find themselves in an odd situation because they want to be admitted to the Union the way 37 States have been admitted to the Union after the original 13 were.

That means, by the way, that three-quarters of the States, nearly 75 percent of the States, came in after the original 13. They appealed to Congress to use our powers under Article IV of the Constitution to admit new States. They had exercised their powers under the First Amendment, under the Ninth Amendment, and under the 10th Amendment to organize a new statehood constitution and to petition for admission to the Union.

Our muscle memory is weak here because it hasn't happened since Hawaii and Alaska, but Thomas Jefferson thought that this was the destiny of communities under the United States of America. We would not be a colonial power that would continue to lord over people perpetually. On the contrary, when he talked about the Northwest Ordinance, he said as sufficient population formed and as commitment to democratic principles were realized, these new communities would be admitted as States.

I think, as a matter of basic civic respect and self-respect, we owe the people of Washington our attention when they are asking for admission to the Union. These are people who pay more per capita in Federal taxes than anybody in the country, more in hard dollars, I believe, than the people of 18 or 20 States. They have served in every war that America has ever fought. They are subject to the military draft.

It is just that when Eleanor Holmes Norton, the distinguished professor of constitutional law from Georgetown University, comes to this floor, she comes as a nonvoting Delegate. There is no representation and no voice over in the Senate. That is an offense to basic democratic principles that we teach children in second grade.

We should be passing statehood again in the 118th Congress the way we passed it in the 117th, the way we passed it in the 116th, and we should get the Senate to focus on it. Short of that, the very last thing we should be doing is rolling back the limited rights the people of Washington have to exercise home rule powers.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose this resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call on the Iranian government to immediately release Matin Gorji. On January 8, 2023, Iranian authorities searched Mr. Gorji's home and arrested him simply because he is a member of the Baha'i faith. According to Mr. Gorji's family, the authorities who searched his home physically abused him and, upon arrest, refused to allow him to take his medication for his liver condition with him. His mother was told he faces a sentence of at least 2 years, yet the specific nature of his charges is unknown.

Sadly, Mr. Gorji is just one of many members of the Baha'i community subjected to harsh persecution in Iran. Since 1979, Iranian authorities have killed or executed more than 200 Baha'i leaders, thousands more have been arrested and interrogated, and more than 10,000 have been dismissed from government and university jobs. In its most recent report, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom reported that Iran continues to persecute people of the Baha'i faith, closing their businesses, denying them access to an education, demolishing their

homes without warning, auctioning off their property, and blocking their access to bury their deceased in a place of their choosing, instead requiring them to use a mass grave site.

In its 2021 Report to Congress on International Religious Freedom, the United States Department of State reported that government officials continue to disseminate anti-Baha'i messaging using both traditional and social media. Further, the community is so stigmatized that private sector employers often refuse to hire those of the Baha'i or dismiss them from their jobs.

Today, I call on my House colleagues to stand with Matin Gorji and every member of the Baha'i community in Iran. I call on the Iranian government to immediately release not only Mr. Gorji, but every prisoner of conscience in Iran who is incarcerated simply for their beliefs. It is time to end this egregious repression of religious minorities.

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

We strongly oppose this bill, which is an assault on all the progress we have made over the last several years in telework policy. Telework has strengthened private and public workplaces across the land, enhanced productivity, increased efficiency, improved the morale and satisfaction of the workforce, reduced traffic congestion, and made positive environmental changes.

When the chairman says it is time to return to work, I believe this is a misnomer because people who participate in telework are working. They are already working, and so they don't need to return to work.

This bill would take a sledgehammer to Federal telework policy and law, which the sponsors seem completely oblivious to, and you can hardly blame them because the leadership brings this measure forward without the benefit of even a single hearing in the Oversight Committee, which means Congress has not heard from the Office of Personnel Management or any of the Federal agency chiefs, and it has not heard from any Federal workers or their collective bargaining representatives. It hasn't heard from any of the stakeholders other than secondhand, I guess,

through hearsay the Mayor of Washington, D.C., who not surprisingly seems to be resistant, at least according to that report, to telework policy.

This is an arbitrary effort to roll back all of the progress that has been made under legislation and administrative rules over the last decade without any participation at all of the key stakeholders.

The bill falsely equates the development of telework as part of a balanced Federal workplace policy by OPM and the agencies with the sudden and near complete shift to virtual work in certain sectors because of the pandemic. Those are two completely different things.

This conflation produces nothing but confusion, and the bill is a wrecking ball against telework policy, which has been a critical success in so many workplaces.

Colleagues, the workplace is changing because of extraordinary new technology and a new focus on productivity and efficiency as opposed to industrial-age assembly-line seating and command-and-control work relations.

Before the pandemic, hybrid and remote work were already growing far more prevalent across professions, particularly for jobs performed in an office setting. The pandemic accelerated these dynamics not only in the Federal workplace but even more dramatically in the private sector.

From fiscal year 2019 to 2020, as we entered the pandemic, Federal telework doubled from roughly 500,000 people to more than a million. Practically overnight, traditional barriers to telework, such as technological obstacles and management resistance, began to disappear. Federal agencies implemented sweeping new guidelines as an essential tool for the continuity of government operations.

The pandemic, of course, will not last forever. Indeed, the President announced that he plans to end the public health emergency on May 11. The Federal Government will not maintain a pandemic-level telework posture in perpetuity, but we cannot ignore the lessons that we have learned over the last several years.

As OPM put it in its 2021 annual report on the status of telework, ``there is no going back.'' Enhanced demand in the national workforce and among Federal employees will continue as workers and supervisors report greatly enhanced productivity and focus from flexible work practices that reduce time wasted in endless in-person meetings, watercooler gossip sessions, and the proverbial BS sessions that overcome so many people's offices.

According to a survey by The Conference Board, 82 percent of companies are going to offer hybrid work options to employees going forward, and the number of private companies willing to let at least some portion of their workforce go fully remote has tripled to an astonishing 36 percent.

In another survey, 63 percent of employees rated the value of 2 to 3 days being able to work from home as equivalent to a pay raise.

To remain competitive with the private sector with which we compete, the Federal Government must offer reasonable telework options. OPM says it will, observing that we must appreciate the sea change in the American labor market.

Telework saves money, helps the government recruit top talent, reduces traffic gridlock, makes environmental sense, and ensures a continuity of operations at agencies that Americans rely on every single day. It is a lifeline for people who have disabilities or are immunocompromised, and it offers dramatically expanded opportunities for people living in more rural areas to enter and sustain a career in the Federal service.

We cannot enter a time machine and simply wish away the utility of telework in recruiting and retaining new generations of Federal workers. We should embrace telework as part of a balanced workplace policy to promote employee satisfaction and overall mission outcome.

OPM Director Kiran Ahuja offers a clear-eyed vision for the future in her annual report saying, ``Federal agencies must continue to embrace workplace flexibilities, such as telework, to remain competitive for top talent. Decisions about telework, however, must be driven by delivery of mission. We all work for the American public, and how we best serve them needs to be the paramount consideration.''

That means telework does not make sense for every worker in every office or every activity. If you are guarding the Capitol, obviously you need to be present. If you are researching groups that were involved in the insurrection against the Capitol, you might be able to work part of that time virtually. Processing paper tax returns at the IRS may indeed require in-person work.

I will note that although people are blaming the problems with IRS responsiveness on telework, that does not make sense to me. Telephone work is something that can be done from the office, home office, or somewhere else, which is why we have been, on our side of the aisle, invested in increasing staff at the IRS because our constituents are so frustrated with being left on the phone and not getting answers returned about when they will be getting their IRS refund.

In the Inflation Reduction Act, we added 5,000 new positions for people on the phones to respond to our constituents. I know that some of our colleagues across the aisle have opposed additional funding for IRS positions, and that is surely a far more likely culprit than whatever telework policies are in place over at the IRS.

The Biden administration's telework guidance seeks to strike a balance between getting people who need to be in person back in the office safely and helping agencies design their post-pandemic telework plans to build off the prior successes of this policy.

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

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

I will tell you a story about a couple that both work for the Federal Government. Earlier this month, the spouse of an Army servicemember, seeking approval to go work overseas for the State Department, contacted the Oversight Committee because she was being forced to decide between quitting her very successful Federal career for the State Department or returning to Washington, D.C., to continue her Federal service without her husband and her two children.

Her agency was fighting desperately to maintain her expertise and was perfectly fine with her performing her duties from overseas with her husband, who is in the Army who was being relocated over there.

Luckily, we were able to help make sure that her overseas telework request was approved.

Now, is that someone who is not really working? Do we want to tell her to get back to work?

Her situation is common for thousands of families in the Federal workforce where you have one member who is in the military who is being relocated, the other who might be working at a site in Washington who is now able to work out the terms of service under the telework policy, but that is precisely an element of the policy that will be crushed by the legislation that has been brought forward without the benefit of a single hearing in the Oversight and Accountability Committee.

Despite the fact that our colleagues have said that they will only bring legislation to the floor after there has been a hearing--and we are just a few weeks into the session--this legislation comes forward without hearing from anybody like this constituent who was being put in such a tough posture or the Directors of the agencies or the head of the Office of Personnel Management who is in charge of actually supervising and coordinating overall telework policy and making the annual report to Congress.

Telework is a vital tool for the government to recruit and retain and grow the talented workforce we need to make the Federal Government work. It ensures that Federal workers can serve the Nation even during disasters. Again, it was the preexisting telework policy that established the infrastructure that made for such a relatively smooth transition when we got into the pandemic.

I have to say that denials of telework for the spouses of military personnel are still common, and they are consequential, and they would be pervasive if the legislation passed. I hope that all our colleagues will reject this and at the very least send it back to the Oversight Committee for some real hearings so we can talk about what this really means.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to address two points. One, let's grab the bull by the horns with this IRS point. The President's budget included $80 billion to increase staffing and to update technology at the IRS so our constituents can get their calls returned. If you are waiting for your IRS tax refund, that is something that you have planned on. That is part of your family budget. If it is stuck somehow, it is extremely frustrating for people not to be able to get through.

Now they, bizarrely to my mind, blame telework for this, and they oppose the $80 billion. I think they say that will create 75,000 or 100,000 new IRS agents who will be chasing working-class people around the country.

On the contrary, we have a report showing the $80 billion will produce $200 billion in new revenue and it is rich people who are the ones who are being protected by the refusal of my colleagues to invest in the IRS.

Telework is a complete distraction. It is an absolute red herring. It has nothing to do with whether or not you want to invest in the IRS or not.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Mfume), my colleague.

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

Mr. Speaker, they complain about delays at the IRS and then they oppose funding to assist the overwhelmed workforce at the IRS, which is staggering under the weight of all of these obligations.

This is the first time I have heard that telework was the source of the problem, but apparently, that is what it is this week. Of course, we haven't had a real hearing so we have had no witnesses on it; somebody has apparently just dreamed that up.

It has just been linked to the debt ceiling. Interesting that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle has voted to lift the debt ceiling three different times under Donald Trump, who increased the debt of the United States single-handedly by more than 20 percent. All of the debt of the United States under one President. More than 20 percent.

Mr. Speaker, let's get back to the issue at hand.

Members of Congress make very strange opponents of telework policy, not because we don't work hard, because I think we do work hard, but we use telework all the time.

Members of Congress might be in their district office working. They might be at a town hall meeting working. They might be here on the floor. They might be in a committee meeting, a subcommittee meeting. They might be meeting with constituents somewhere else.

And I dare say the vast majority, if not all of us, engage in telework. We wouldn't say to them, ``Get back to work and stop teleworking.'' We understand that that is part of an overall telework policy.

If people have employees who they think are abusing telework, well, they have got a problem with that employee or they have a problem with their supervisor. But to my experience and knowledge, as someone who, I admit, may have been a little curmudgeonly, in the way we are hearing some of the Members are today, when the COVID-19 crisis started, the employees who are super productive at work will be super productive at home.

In my case, that is almost all of them. In fact, I think it is all of them. If you have an employee who blows off their assignments at work and doesn't turn them in, they will do the same thing if they are working from home. That is a question of supervision. The real issue is, why all of a sudden they want to turn against a decade of progress on telework policy and start affixing to it all of these other problems.

For that, I don't understand, other than people seem to want to blame the Federal workers for everything. Those workers belong to all of our districts. They are all across the country. Eighty percent of Federal workers are not in Washington, D.C., Maryland, or Virginia. They are all over the country, working everywhere from military bases to Indian reservations to public health service. You name it.

These are our people. These are American citizens, and they deserve something a lot more than the implied contempt of suggesting that if they use telework, they are not really working.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly).

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

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

The gentlewoman makes an interesting argument. Of course, if physical presence in Washington is necessary, then that agency never should have been stripped from Washington and relocated in Colorado in the first place.

One could say that entire workforce is calling in or not really working because the entire office has a telework policy.

Obviously, she has carved out an exception for that. She thinks they can be effective, even though they are not in Washington, D.C.

Look, Mr. Speaker, this has been not just a closed rule but a closed process. There was no hearing in the Oversight and Accountability Committee. Despite the fact that those hearings have been promised, there has been no hearing about it.

Let me tell you one of the things we would learn if we actually had a hearing about it. The bill contemplates rolling the clock back to 2019 for every Federal agency. Well, what would that mean for one small agency, the Federal Communications Commission, which has decided upon a plan to reduce its leased office space with a savings of

$119 million precisely because of the existence of telework, saying we don't need all that space?

Now, since we rolled the clock back and presumptively say you can't do that, we are going to be costing the taxpayers $119 million a year because they have to go back to their prepandemic plan simply because we have this one-size-fits-all, categorical, cookie-cutter approach undertaken without any hearings.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office similarly would be forced to abandon its $12.5 million a year in savings in leasing costs made possible because of reduced consumption of office space by telework.

Do we really want to say that we hate telework so much, that we distrust our own workers so much, even though the studies show that it is yielding benefits in office productivity, that we are going to force the taxpayers to pay more money for more expensive office space in downtown Washington, D.C.?

We haven't even looked at the question because there was no hearing because there was just a rush to get this to the floor so we could tell workers who are already at work to get back to work.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, some of my colleagues seem to betray no understanding at all of what Federal telework policy is.

To say that the workforce is not going to the office and it is time to get back to work simply suggests they don't know that every agency, every commission, every department makes its own decisions about this as part of the complete workplace policy, going job classification by job classification, defining when it makes sense and when it doesn't make sense.

That is the way that it works, but they want to have a broad-brush, one-size-fits-all, straitjacket policy where they just decapitate a decade of progress, using the pandemic or the end of the pandemic as the excuse for doing that.

To repeat: This is not a Washington problem. The vast majority of the Federal workforce is spread out across the country.

The hardworking people we see in front of us today who work for the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and for the House are just a small example of the workforce located in Washington, which is a tiny minority of the Federal workforce which is all over America.

That flexibility has been given to Federal workforce supervisors all over the country to deal with. They would clearly try to elevate what I think is a frivolous talking point over the cost savings that have been created because of telework policies. They would elevate it over the increased job performance and job satisfaction that is being demonstrated in studies around the country. They would elevate it over the clear success of telework within the private sector.

Oftentimes, my colleagues will say we have to be more like the private sector. It is the private sector that has been leading the way here. The Federal workforce has been very much in the rear guard doing it.

In any event, remember that they are conflating two completely different things. One is the Federal telework policy that has evolved over the last decade, and the other is the pandemic.

It is true that the pandemic response was made far more efficient because there was an infrastructure in place in order to make telework possible. Those pandemic policies can be reversed without destroying all the policies that have developed over the last decade.

There are an incredible number of unintended consequences that are exacerbated by the fact we have not had a single hearing on this question, which is of fundamental importance to hundreds of thousands and millions of people across the country.

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

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

The title of this bill, the SHOW UP Act, consists of the Stopping Home Office Work's Unproductive Problems Act. I understand that in Washington--this really is a Washington problem--there is always a search for the perfect acronym over the actual meaning of the language, but this title does some real violence to the English language.

I don't know what an ``unproductive problem'' is. I certainly don't know what a ``productive problem'' is. I wonder whether the person who wrote that was working on telework or wrote it at the office. To me, it makes no difference. Somebody should have said that doesn't really make any sense for a title for Federal legislation.

In any event, the point is that Members of Congress, as everyone should know, are able to be very effective, often being in two places at the same time. You might be at your district office, or you might be at a townhall meeting in your district, but you call into a meeting with your chief of staff and your legislative staff, or you call in to have a meeting with subcommittee staff or what have you. I don't understand the sudden effort to demonize technology and all the advances that we have made.

I don't take this to be serious legislation. There was no hearing on it. There seems to be no effort to convince anyone that it is serious. I hope we can do better in the days ahead.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 159, the Chance to Compete Act.

The bipartisan Chance to Compete Act was introduced by Representative Foxx, who I see is here with us, and Representative Connolly. I thank them both for their hard work on it.

The bill aims to make evaluations more useful in assessing the skills of candidates for Federal positions and to alleviate inefficiencies that have long hampered the hiring process.

The bill turns away from current reliance on self-assessment and attainment of educational degrees to determine candidate qualifications in the hiring process. Instead, subject matter experts and agencies would design assessments that test specific knowledge for a position for which the agency is hiring.

This overhaul would better match qualified applicants with positions and expand opportunities to candidates with more diverse professional and educational backgrounds.

The Chance to Compete Act aligns with the Office of Personnel Management's guidance of last May to facilitate an executive order to modernize the process of hiring Federal job candidates.

Establishing hiring methods that are more skills-based will improve agency managers' ability to hire people who possess the knowledge and experience to do the job and to hire from a wider array of qualified applicants.

The bill also directs OPM to create an online platform for sharing candidate assessments between agencies and maintain a portal for hiring managers to find candidates who have already demonstrated their qualifications for certain positions but were not yet hired.

Under this legislation, agencies may assemble talent teams to support this assessment of candidates in the hiring process. The OPM Director would be required to submit annual progress reports to Congress on use of the new assessments. After 5 years, the GAO would conduct a study of the implementation of the Federal job assessment reforms and their impacts on the hiring process.

This bill streamlines the hiring process for agencies and will shorten the time it takes to bring new, well-qualified employees on board.

I thank Dr. Foxx for her leadership in introducing it. The bill is the result of constructive collaboration by several members of our committee from both sides of the aisle, including Mr. Connolly.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to join me in supporting this bipartisan measure, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I urge everyone to support passage of this bipartisan legislation. It is an auspicious way for us to begin on the Oversight Committee. I salute the chairman for his wisdom in bringing this forward, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I do indeed support this significant, commonsense, and bipartisan legislation. I thank the chairman again, and I thank Representatives Palmer and Connolly for their hard work on it.

The Settlement Agreement Information Database Act will create a database of settlement agreements entered into by Federal agencies relating to alleged violations of Federal civil or criminal law. The OMB will manage the database and set deadlines for submission.

The heads of executive agencies will be required to submit details about the

types of settlement agreements they have entered into, the parties who are actually involved in them, the specific violations, and the dates upon which such settlement agreements were made. All information about the settlement agreements would remain public until 5 years after they terminate.

The information in the agreements would remain subject to the Freedom of Information Act, but if the head of the agency decided to keep an entire agreement confidential, he or she would be required to provide a specific explanation of that action.

This legislation will substantially improve the transparency surrounding so many settlement agreements, which in the past have been very difficult for the public to access or even to find. Transparency is, of course, central to the rule of law.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), my colleague.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would say, in closing, that I was moved by what Mr. Palmer had to say, that democracy is based on consent, and consent is based on access, but there is no access if you don't have transparency.

I think about something that James Madison said: ``And a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives.'' So people need to have knowledge of everything that our government is doing. We don't want government entities entering into secret, sweetheart settlements with different litigants. It has got to be open to the whole public.

Mr. Speaker, I thank him and I thank the chairman for bringing this forward, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1372 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

General Leave

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

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

Madam Speaker, yesterday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 1372, providing for consideration of H.R. 8873, the Presidential Election Reform Act, under a closed rule.

The rule provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on House Administration, as well as one motion to recommit.

This bipartisan legislation, brought forward by Ms. Lofgren and Ms. Cheney of Wyoming, is the product of more than 2 years of work by the Committee on House Administration and more than a year and a half of deliberations and investigation by the January 6th Select Committee.

The electoral college, of course, has been with us from the beginning of the Republic. In a sense, this is legislation America has been working on since 1887, for the last 135 years, because that was the last time that Congress legislated to try to lend statutory coherence and legislative direction to the provisions of the Constitution governing the electoral college.

The electoral college, as you know, Madam Speaker, is a Byzantine, complex, and multifaceted institution, but it is clear, in the wake of the debacle of January 6, 2021, that we must modernize it, update it, and make it work as well as possible for as long as we have it.

That is why both supporters of the electoral college system and those who would replace it with a national popular vote for President, and that is a camp I am in, a camp that represents around two-thirds of the American people, are strongly supporting this legislation and should be supporting this legislation in order to clarify the mechanisms of our Presidential election process.

First of all, this legislation reaffirms that the Vice President's role at the count of the electoral college electors on January 6 is a ministerial role and does not include any substantive authority to count or reject or dismiss or nullify or vaporize electoral college votes sent in by the States, nor does the Vice President have any independent, substantive power to halt or delay the joint session or to return electoral college votes to the States.

We believe there was never any ambiguity about that. Former President Trump was told there was no ambiguity about it by his own Vice President, by his White House counsel, by the Attorney General of the United States, yet insisted that there was some kind of ambiguity and wiggle room for the Vice President to step outside of his assigned constitutional role and simply declare the electoral college votes of certain States, including Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, null and void and return them to the legislatures of those States for some undefined further action.

All of that is clearly outside the history of the electoral college and what is contemplated constitutionally. We clarify that in this legislation.

Moreover, the current provisions in the Electoral Count Act governing objections brought forward to the receipt of electoral college votes from particular States would be changed in this legislation.

Under the current rules, all it takes is a Member of the House and a Member of the Senate to bring an objection

to the receipt of electoral college votes from a State. That would be changed to a requirement, under this act, of one-third of the House and one-third of the Senate together raising an objection, obviously meaning that this could not be done for purely fanciful purposes. There would have to be a substantial body of Members in both Chambers who agree that there is a serious objection being made.

By the way, the Senate proposal differs slightly in that they are suggesting a one-fifth requirement on both sides as opposed to the one- third requirement that is being advanced in this legislation.

Furthermore, the rules in this statute define explicitly the constitutional grounds upon which an objection to electoral college votes can be made. These objections are limited to a very narrow set of discrete issues that are grounded in the constitutional text of the 12th Amendment or other parts of the Constitution, such as whether an elector has voted for two candidates from the elector's own State, which is clearly in violation of the 12th Amendment.

The rules also clarify the denominator, or the method of calculating the whole number of electors that have been cast for the purpose of winning a Presidential election.

Our counting rules would also clarify the applicable parliamentary procedure at the count, ensuring that strategic bad faith actors are unable to exploit procedural loopholes in an effort to delay or subvert the count.

Confusion has plagued electoral counts in Congress at different points in our history, almost since the beginning of the Republic. We are confident that under this bill, future counts will be far more orderly and ministerial in nature, even during controversial elections, and will act simply to certify the choice of the American people as expressed through the State elections, which is the full extent of Congress' counting role under the Constitution.

We want to make sure that Congress does not pretend to arrogate to itself the power to decide who is going to be the President. The role of Congress is simply to count the electoral college votes that have come in. Maybe if I get a moment later, I can get into a little more specificity about the grounds for objection.

There is also clarification of when a State's Presidential election can be extended in case of a truly catastrophic event. Today's Federal law allows a State legislature to appoint electors by itself if a State has had a failure to elect at its November election. That very vague provision is dangerous, dangerously unclear, and it was targeted by former President Trump's supporters in 2020.

Our legislation provides, instead, that voting in a State's Presidential election can only be extended if a State experiences a genuinely catastrophic event, which we define specifically with respect to natural disasters and terrorist attacks and like calamities. The event must also be widespread enough to potentially affect the outcome of the State's election. All of this is mediated judicially by appearance before a Federal court. Any extension may only cover the area that was directly affected by the event, and any extension cannot last longer than 5 days after election day.

We know that a provision like this is, unfortunately, necessary. The September 11 terror attacks on America occurred on primary election day in New York City, and Hurricane Sandy in 2012 very nearly derailed New York and New Jersey's Presidential elections that year. We are confident that our bill ensures that Federal law will account for unforeseen emergencies in future Presidential elections.

There are other provisions that I hope to get into in a little more detail, but I close, Madam Speaker, just by saying that this is an absolutely necessary and urgent update of the Electoral Count Act, which hasn't been touched since 1887.

We saw in January 2021 how some of the imperfections in the current process can be exploited by actors who are determined to derail the electoral college counting process or, indeed, overthrow the whole election. We want to do whatever we can, within the confines of the electoral college system, in this legislation to improve the situation and to prepare for the next Presidential election.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, I was delighted to hear my friend offer those comments. I am afraid I don't really understand his objection to this legislation. He says we are trying to ram this through. After 135 years of doing nothing about the Electoral Count Act, I guess you have to be a true conservative to see 135 years as moving too quickly in reforming the provisions of this very opaque, and in places, vague and inscrutable language.

But in any event, the gentleman from Pennsylvania argues there have been times that Members of both parties have raised objections in the past. That is absolutely right. Both Republicans and Democrats have made objections on the floor in the past. Obviously, none of the objections attributed to those on our side had anything to do with a violent assault on the institutions of the country or an attempt to get the Vice President to step outside of his constitutional role, or other efforts to conduct what has been called a political coup in the country.

In any event, the gentleman is correct that there have been a lot of objections raised. If that is your problem, then you should be absolutely supporting this legislation because we are proposing to go from a situation where any single Member can raise an objection if he or she can get a Senator to join them, to a situation where you need a third of the entire House of Representatives and a third of the entire U.S. Senate before an objection can be raised. The objections can be raised only according to very specific constitutional criteria. They have to be grounded in the text of the Constitution.

For example, if a State has not been admitted yet, and yet is purporting to offer electors, that would be grounds for rejecting it and for adjusting the denominator. If there are attempts by electors to vote for two people from the same State, which is clearly in violation of the 12th Amendment, then that would be rejected.

Right now, anybody can object for any reason he or she wants. There were people in 2021 who were running around talking about precinct problems in particular States or claims of votes appearing in the middle of the night.

Now, there was nothing to any of those. More than 60 Federal and State courts rejected every claim of electoral fraud and corruption. But in any event, that is not the job of the House of Representatives to be out trying to police the counting of ballots in Pennsylvania or Arizona or Georgia, or any other State.

All we are supposed to do is take the certificate of ascertainment that is provided by the Governor based on the State legislature's determination of what the vote is in the casting of the electors from the State. So once that certificate of ascertainment comes in, our job is to accept it.

Now, if someone tries to not comply with what the will of the State really was--say, if a Governor says I disagree with how the people voted, I am not going to turn it in--then that person can be taken to court by one of the Presidential candidates, or both, or all of the Presidential candidates, and can be ordered to comply with the political will of the people of the State. If the Governor still refuses to do it, then the Court is empowered to give it to another appropriate official like the Secretary of State, who would then have the authority to file the certificate of ascertainment with the Congress of the United States and with the archivist.

So what we are trying to do is take, shall we say, an antique kind of instrument, the electoral college, and we are trying to bring it up to date, so it works for us in America in the 21st century. If your objection is it is too easy for people of any party to object, I think you totally should be supporting this legislation.

Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), the very distinguished chairman of the Committee on Rules, who I should say was very much with us on January 6. He was there that night. He was the last person at the dais before we were forced to evacuate from the Chamber.

Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

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

Madam Speaker, we are here to fortify the integrity of American Presidential elections, the process by which the people choose their own President. One can only regard with amazement the gentleman from Pennsylvania's casual assurance that the American people don't care about this. The American people don't care about solidifying the process by which we elect our own President? The American people don't care about whether or not a Presidential election is going to be stolen by a lot of backroom games and manipulation of the rules? I beg to differ. Even the Wall Street Journal today endorsed the legislation that we are bringing forward.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon), a very distinguished member of the Committee on Rules.

Madam Speaker, I just want to quickly point out the false equivalency just invoked by the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

On the one hand, you have people of both political parties pointing out the 100 percent documented interference of Vladimir Putin in our 2016 Presidential election, with millions and millions of dollars spent on his so-called Internet Research Agency to engage in cyber surveillance, cyber espionage, and cyber sabotage of our election. On the other side, we have a violent insurrection incited by the President of the United States, where 150 of our officers were wounded and injured, ending up with broken arms, legs, jaws, and necks; concussions; contusions; and traumatic brain injury.

Those are two very different things. One is an exercise of people's First Amendment right to speak. The other is a violent effort to overthrow the electoral process and the constitutional order of the United States.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff), my friend.

Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentleman.

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

Madam Speaker, to my dear friend from Pennsylvania, if you think that this legislation is an attack on President Trump, you simply haven't read the legislation because there is nothing in there attacking President Trump. This is about reforming the Electoral Count Act so it works for the American people.

As long as we are going to have the electoral college, we must update it and modernize it to make it work and to make sure that the will of the people is vindicated at every level--at the State level, with the Governor who has to provide the certificate of ascertainment; and then, when it comes here, we have to be able to receive it and not have the Presidential electoral process consumed by a bunch of ideological antics and tantrums.

My friend mobilizes a number of episodes of Democrats raising objections in the past. Of course, I could equal each one of those with Republicans raising objections in the past because this has become a fine bipartisan tradition in the history of the electoral college. But if you think it is too easy for people to get up and object, support our legislation because we are saying you can't make an objection until you get one-third of the House of Representatives to sign the objection to attest to its validity and its substance.

Then in order for it to be validated, you need not just a third of the House, you need a third of the Senate. You need bicameral adoption of the objection by a third of each body before it is even heard and then debated. So if you think that too much frivolous stuff is going on, well, then you should be supporting our legislation.

The rest of what you are saying is just complaint about political rhetoric, and I happen to like the political rhetoric pointing out that Vladimir Putin is an enemy of democracy not just in Ukraine but in the United States and all over the world. Maybe we disagree about that. I know that there are some cheerleaders for Vladimir Putin over on that side of the aisle.

In any event, remember this: Today, you can object for any reason at all, and one person can get up and do it if they can find one other person in the other Chamber, but under this legislation, under the Presidential Election Reform Act there will be a neatly cabined set of approved constitutional objections, all of them grounded in the text of the Constitution:

For example, if a State purports to submit more electoral college votes than they actually have.

For example, an elector in the Presidential election process constitutionally cannot hold another Federal office, so if they hold another Federal office that will be grounds for an objection.

For example, a President must be a natural-born citizen at least 35 years of age. So it would be a valid objection to claim that the candidate that a State is purporting to cast electors for is only 26 years old.

Also, under section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Federal office holders must not be guilty of insurrection or rebellion against the Union; something that was insisted upon by the radical Republicans after the Civil War. Therefore, that would be a legitimate ground for objection.

Presidents are limited to two terms in office, so that would be a legitimate ground for objection if a State purports to cast electors for someone who has already served two terms in office. Under Article II, section 1, clause 4, and the 12th Amendment, electors must vote on the same day throughout the Nation distinctly by ballot for President and Vice President, one of whom must not be an inhabitant of the elector's State.

In other words, we finally have provided real precision and definiteness as to what is a valid objection. That doesn't mean the objection is necessarily ratified bicamerally by concurrent majorities, which is what you need in order to uphold it, but it is not a free-for- all. You can't just start finger painting on it.

To the extent that the gentleman's only substantive objection I have heard is that in the past it has been too easy for Members of both parties to raise objections, then you should absolutely be supporting this legislation.

This is a thorough legislative project that reflects the common sense and the wisdom of people who are the real experts in this field.

Madam Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule and the previous question.

The text of the material previously referred to by Mr. Reschenthaler is as follows:

Amendment to House Resolution 1372

At the end of the resolution, add the following:

Sec 2. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution, the

House shall proceed to the consideration in the House of the

bill (H.R. 6592) to require the Secretary of Homeland

Security and the Secretary of Health and Human Services to

notify the relevant Federal, State, and local officials of a

jurisdiction before placing a covered alien in such

jurisdiction, and for other purposes. All points of order

against consideration of the bill are waived. The bill shall

be considered as read. All points of order against provisions

in the bill are waived. The previous question shall be

considered as ordered on the bill and on any amendment

thereto to final passage without intervening motion except:

(1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the

chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the

Judiciary; and (2) one motion to recommit.

Sec. 3. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the

consideration of H.R. 6592.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise today to observe the remarkable tenure of Ron Halber, who is recognizing his 25th year of service to the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington. Ron has served as the JCRC's Executive Director since 2001, and his passionate work in that role reflects his dedication to the DC-area Jewish community.

Ron has transformed the JCRC of Greater Washington, turning it into one of the nation's most robust Jewish community relations organizations. Under his leadership, the JCRC has advocated for numerous pieces of beneficial state and local legislation and has been able to vastly increase its programming in support of the organization's mission.

Ron is the deserving recipient of the 2006 Ted B. Farber Professional Excellence Award and the 2001 Professional of the Year Award from the Association of Community Government Affairs Directors. However, his career outside of JCRC has been just as remarkable as his career inside. He has long been involved in his community, serving as the political coordinator for the Montgomery County Democratic Party and, long before, as the community liaison for New York State Senator Martin Solomon.

Ron Halber's tenure has been beneficial for the State of Maryland, and I know that he will continue to serve the state as Executive Director of the JCRC. His dedication to Maryland's Jewish community and the greater Maryland community serves as an example for us all of what it means to be an American, committed to both pluralism and the common good. I hope that the House will join me in celebrating Mr. Halber's contributions.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding and for her very distinguished and passionate advocacy for civil liberties and civil rights. I thank her for her excellent management of this legislation. I also thank the floor leader on the minority side for his excellent words on the legislation, as well.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my bill, H.R. 4330, the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, or the PRESS Act, which I introduced with Congressmen Lieu and Yarmuth. It is a close successor to the bill that then-Congressman Mike Pence got passed in the House in the 110th Congress by a lopsided vote of 398-21.

Given that the bill passed unanimously in the Judiciary Committee earlier this year, I am very hopeful that this is the Congress in which we can get it done.

Our Founders insisted that the American people must have the means to acquire the truth about their own government, their society, and their world. Those ``who mean to be their own governors,'' said Madison, ``must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.''

Newspapers were critical, a form of continuing public education about government and about society. Thomas Jefferson said: ``If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.''

The great Tom Paine not only defended but demonstrated the power of the pen as the people's weapon against political tyranny. His sensationally successful pamphlet ``Common Sense'' argued the central importance of free speech and free press to the survival of political democracy.

In theory, the specific command in the First Amendment that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press was unnecessary because press freedom would already, by definition, be subsumed under the freedom of speech. The Framers insisted upon protecting the structurally distinctive role that the press plays as a watchdog institution in a representative democratic society.

Not everyone can go to congressional hearings or State legislative sessions or county council meetings late into the night. Not all of us can travel to Ukraine to uncover Russian war crimes against the people there or go to Afghanistan to see what it means to have theocratic tyranny oppressing the people. Not everyone can personally go get the Pentagon Papers or break the Watergate scandal or penetrate crime and drug trafficking rings or see with their own eyes how climate change is ravaging the Louisiana coast or Pakistan. As citizens of the United States, we are all equally implicated and affected by these developments, and we are all equally invested in obtaining the truth about them. This is why we need professional journalists and newspapers.

Yet, reporters in our country face violence, threats, intimidation, and even jail time just for doing their jobs, providing news and information.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that journalists in the United States faced unprecedented attacks in 2020. At least 110 reporters were arrested or criminally charged in relation to their reporting, and around 300 were assaulted in 2020 alone.

Many families in my State of Maryland are still reeling from the mass shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, which took the lives of five different journalists and injured several others in 2018.

Lots of reporters face harsh legal consequences just for reporting and then faithfully maintaining the confidentiality of sources.

One journalist who faced repercussions simply for doing his job I know well--Brian Karem, one of my constituents. In 1990 and 1991, he went to jail four different times to protect confidential sources while working as a TV reporter. The last time, he went to jail for nearly 2 weeks while the Supreme Court considered his case, and he was only spared a long sentence when his source moved from Texas to California and, no longer fearing for her life, came forward.

Now more than ever, we need to make good on the constitutional promise of a free press by establishing a Federal shield law to protect journalists against government overreach and prosecutorial abuses that may occur from one administration to the next.

The PRESS Act is an update of the Free Flow of Information Act that I introduced with the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, in the 115th Congress. It will prevent Federal law enforcement from being able to obtain information from covered journalists through their work devices and accounts, as well as their personal devices and accounts. It will also prevent government officials from conducting an end run around these prohibitions by precluding them from seeking third-party communications held by communications services, except in narrow and carefully cabined exceptional instances.

America favors shield laws to protect the media because our people know that the press is not the enemy of the people. The press is the people's best friend.

Forty-nine States and Washington, D.C., have already passed State shield laws or adopted some kind of reporter's privilege of their own. What better evidence could we have that the American people want a free and aggressive press to expose corruption and safeguard democracy?

Mr. Speaker, I fervently hope that my colleagues on both

sides of the aisle--indeed, every Member of the House of Representatives--will rise to support this bill, the successor to our 2017 bipartisan bill and the successor to the bill that then- Congressman, now-Vice President Mike Pence navigated to victory in the House on a vote of 398-21 15 years ago.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her indulgence.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1339 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

General Leave

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

Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 1339, providing for consideration of three measures: H.R. 302, H.R. 2988, and H.R. 8326, all under structured rules.

For H.R. 302, the rule provides 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, makes in order one amendment, and provides a motion to recommit.

For H.R. 2988 and H.R. 8326, the rule provides 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform for each bill, makes in order four amendments for H.R. 2988 and three amendments for H.R. 8326, and provides en bloc authority for both bills and motions to recommit for both bills.

The rule further provides the majority leader or his designee the ability this week to en bloc requested roll call votes on suspension bills considered from September 13 to September 16.

Lastly, the rule provides same-day authority through September 30 for a measure dealing with continuing appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2023.

Mr. Speaker, I rise proudly today in support of House Resolution 1339, the rule for three crucial bills, each of which will protect an essential institution in American Government and public life that came under serious attack in the previous administration: our Federal civil service, whistleblowers acting against public corruption, and the Census Bureau. All three bills were marked up and passed by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

H.R. 302, the Preventing a Patronage System Act, is a bipartisan bill led by Congressman Connolly of Virginia and Congressman Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. This legislation will insulate our civil service against partisan political interference and ensure that no future President can fire government experts and civil servants simply to replace them with their own political loyalists and sycophants.

The civil service system was created in the 19th century with the explicit purpose of ending the so-called spoils system and ensuring that Federal employees are hired, promoted, and fired based on their qualifications and performance, not their political party connections or the political favors and services they are willing to render to elected officials.

The merit-based Federal workforce exists to effectively implement Federal laws and programs passed by Congress and signed into law by the President and translate those laws and programs into concrete results and benefits for the American people. Professional civil servants, like scientists, engineers, meteorologists, statisticians, economic researchers, and policy analysts must be able to do their jobs and advise government officials and the public based on empirical methods, facts and data, not ideological filters and bars of political correctness, and without fear of retaliation and discharge for political reasons.

But the previous administration attempted to turn our civil service, Mr. Speaker, into a top-down political and ideological party machine, the kind that the original architects of civil service tried to dismantle in the 19th century. In October of 2020, the former President issued Executive Order 13957 to create Schedule F, a sweeping new employment category for career civil servants who work on public policy issues. Schedule F specifically targeted about 50,000 presently nonpartisan policy experts, many of them holding advanced degrees and having served for decades as policy experts across different administrations with Presidents from different political parties.

For these civil servants, Schedule F would have stripped away their rights, their merit-based legal protections, and their professional independence. Civil servants transferred into the new Schedule F could have been fired and replaced at any time for any political or ideological reason or for no reason at all given by a hostile administration. The 50,000 civil servants deemed to be involved in formulating policy could have been swept up in a Schedule F political purge and replaced with unqualified loyalists and flunkies, with potentially catastrophic consequences for national security, the continuity of

governance, and the evenhanded and effective enforcement of Federal laws and programs.

The President already has the opportunity to appoint more than 4,000 political appointees. But Schedule F sought to go much further in radically transforming the civil service into an instrument of the chosen political ends and designs of the President.

Thankfully, President Joe Biden rescinded the order in January 2021. However, several top Republicans have already expressed support for picking up right where the previous administration left off with a new Schedule F.

Our civil servants must be hired based on their merits and then evaluated based on their actual job performance in office, not their political party membership, not their ideological viewpoints, and not their political campaign activism. Indeed, there are already processes in place for evaluating Federal employees' actual job performance, which is why in 2021, more than 10,000 Federal employees were removed from their jobs for not living up to job expectations. That is how you deal with people who are not actually doing their jobs. This bill is precisely about ensuring that civil servants will be evaluated based on their job performance and not the partisan political goals or extracurricular demands of a particular administration.

As a member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, which considered this legislation carefully and reported it favorably and the proud Representative of tens of thousands of Federal workers in Maryland's beautiful Eighth District, I am proud to advance this bill and urge all of my colleagues to support its passage on a bipartisan basis. We have an urgent mandate to protect the historic merit-based civil service and the integrity of the Federal Government against anyone who would turn the clock back more than a century to allow Presidents to convert our Federal workforce in service of agreed-upon Federal laws and programs into an instrument of personal ambition, campaign reelection, or party patronage.

Now, turning to H.R. 2988, the bipartisan Whistleblower Protection Improvement Act of 2021, led by Chairwoman Maloney. This is another piece of critical legislation in defense of another critical democratic safeguard.

Whistleblowers are a great American institution and an important mechanism for guaranteeing the integrity of government. Our protection of whistleblowers reflects the fact that in our system of government, we have checks and balances all the way down. An individual Federal employee can hold even the most powerful government officials accountable to the rule of law, which binds all of us. Whistleblowers in American history have exposed self-dealing, bribery, kickbacks, sweetheart contracts, lost and stolen Federal property, national security failures, criminal coverups, other political corruption, war crimes, rape and sexual harassment in the military, major public health violations, episodes of environmental and toxic contamination, and the systematic waste or pilfering of taxpayer dollars.

This bill will improve current protections for whistleblowers by clearly prohibiting retaliatory investigations and other actions against Federal employees who share information with Congress, the House of Representatives, or the Senate, or with their supervisor. The bill limits the public disclosure of the identity of whistleblowers and extends whistleblower protections to new categories of Federal officers and employees, including Public Health Service workers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's commissioned officers.

The bill also contains provisions to ensure a timely and fair procedure for whistleblowers facing discrimination and retaliation. Currently, the backlog at the Merit Systems Protection Board means that some whistleblowers may wait years for a hearing to be scheduled on their claims. This bill grants whistleblowers access to a jury trial in Federal district court if the Merit Systems Protection Board does not render a timely decision in their case.

Whistleblowers are integral to government transparency and accountability in our country. I strongly support this bill to ensure whistleblowers can come forward without fear of reprisal or punishment.

The last bill before us, Mr. Speaker, H.R. 8326, the Ensuring a Fair and Accurate Census Act, also led by Chairwoman Maloney, will protect the Census Bureau against future efforts at political interference, and it will ensure the Bureau's independence in the performance of its essential duties.

The Census is a constitutional mandate and imperative. The U.S. Constitution requires an actual enumeration of the whole number of persons in the country for apportioning Representatives among the States and Congress. The Census is an expression of the original principle that democracy must rest on the Jeffersonian idea of the consent of the governed. And, therefore, we need to know everyone who is here and part of the sovereign people of the Nation. The Census determines congressional apportionment of House seats and the allocation of trillions of dollars of Federal spending. Even many businesses in the private sector rely on Census Bureau statistics to guide their decisions.

The previous administration's spectacular contempt for our constitutional system was on full display during its many efforts to interfere with the 2020 Census for purposes of political gain. The effort to complete a comprehensive and effective Census was undermined at every turn by efforts such as the unlawful plot to add the citizenship question to the short form, which was struck down by the Supreme Court, or the installation of a record-breaking number of highly partisan political appointees to the ranks of the Bureau's leadership. The reforms contained in the Ensuring a Fair and Accurate Census Act will safeguard the integrity of the Census count against this type of sinister political interference in the many years to come.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to hear my good friend from Pennsylvania make his presentation. I was surprised that he described these three bills as completely irrelevant, given that one is about protecting the integrity of the Federal civil service, a force of more than 2 million people who are doing the work of the American people in the National Park Service, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, and so on.

I don't know what is completely irrelevant about that. Nor do I understand what is completely irrelevant about protecting the rights and our encouragement of Federal workers to be whistleblowers when there is massive waste, fraud, abuse, or exploitation taking place with the taxpayers' money. That is an essential purpose of government.

We have a government that is an instrument of the will of the people, and we have a lot of public policies that are being enforced, but we want to make sure that they are being enforced correctly and that the people's taxpayer moneys are being respected.

The whistleblowers are helping us do that in blowing the whistle on hundreds of millions of dollars of waste, corruption, and abuse that have taken place. Why we would turn a blind eye to that and describe it as completely irrelevant is beyond me.

Of course, the Census is foundational to the workings of American democracy, and we want to prevent precisely the kind of political finger-pointing all over the Census Bureau and our laws that we saw in the last administration.

I am just curious whether the gentleman really believes that if the current President suggested that we take 40,000 or 50,000 Federal workers who presently have civil service protection and put them directly under his control for political appointment, he would think that is a good idea because our legislation will prevent any President in the future from doing that, including this Democratic President, any future Democratic Presidents, any future Republican Presidents or Independents or anyone else.

We don't think that is a good idea, and I can't believe that my good friend from Pennsylvania would just be agnostic as to that proposition.

Let me just say, finally, about the whole question of what is relevant and what is irrelevant, it seems like all we are hearing from the other side is embodied in the big statement coming out of the Senate from Senator Lindsey Graham, saying it is time for a national Federal ban on abortion that could even be exceeded by the States.

Now, originally, they said: Well, Roe v. Wade is settled precedent, and we accept that.

Then, they packed the Court with their Justices, who were determined, hellbent, on overturning Roe v. Wade, and they did it.

Then, we heard from our friends across the aisle: Well, this is a matter for the States. Let the States decide.

Now, we hear from our colleagues in Congress that, no, they want a national criminal ban on the right of women to make their own decisions about their health, their families, their careers, and their futures.

Then, they will even allow States to go beyond that to completely ban abortion, which is, of course, the essential pro-life position which we have heard from our colleagues across the aisle. That is what they are focused on.

Meantime, the President signed, this week, the Inflation Reduction Act, which will dramatically lower healthcare costs for tens of millions of Americans and, finally, overturn the Republican ban on the government negotiating in the Medicare program with Big Pharma for lower prescription drug prices.

We are actually making progress. They want to drag everyone into their insatiable efforts to ban the right to abortion in America.

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues tempt me to wander afield from what we have come here to talk about since they want to talk about seemingly everything else. So let me try to respond to a few of the points that have just been lobbed in our direction.

First, they seem to want to assign responsibility to the President of the United States for the inflation rate. But then, surely, they will assign responsibility to the President of the

United States for the unemployment rate, which now stands at around 3.5 percent, the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. You have got to go back a half century to find the kind of job situation that President Biden has brought to the United States of America.

Last week, we learned that payroll employment is up by 315,000 in the month of August alone. Since President Biden came into office, we have added 668,000 manufacturing jobs.

Now, it is true the President has been fighting inflation ever since he got into office. Why?

Well, the economy started to come roaring back--not just in America, but all over the world in the wake of the pandemic. So we saw a tremendous demand with broken supply chains. So what happens under the law of supply and demand? The prices go up. But, unlike our colleagues who seem to want to chortle about it and use it as a campaign talking point, President Biden and the Democrats have been acting to bring inflation down. Every single day.

Yesterday's Consumer Price Index data showed continued progress in bringing global inflation down here in the U.S. economy. Gas prices are down an average of $1.30 a gallon since the beginning of the summer. Price increases slowed at the grocery store this month. Still too high. But real wages went up again for a second month in a row, giving hardworking families more breathing room.

It is amazing to me that some of the time has been delegated to one of our distinguished colleagues who seem to want to blame these global economic conditions arising from COVID-19 and the pandemic and broken supply chains, as well as Vladimir Putin's filthy imperialist war in Ukraine, which fortunately, the people of Ukraine, with the support of a lot of people in this body--but not everybody--is starting to win. And we have seen dramatic reversal of fortune in that war as the democratic forces are beating Vladimir Putin and the autocrats in Russia.

But in any event, we just heard someone who wanted to blame all of these global economic conditions on an SEC regulation, which we are not here to discuss and, therefore, unfortunately, I can't address. I might agree with the gentleman, for all I know. It has nothing to do with the legislation before us, and it is hard for me to believe that that is the source of inflation around the world or the unemployment, which now is practically at the bottom level that we have ever seen in over a century.

But in any event, Mr. Speaker, back to the point at hand, I thought we were going to be distracted with Republican calls to ban abortion across the country. Well, the polls must be teaching them something because I am not hearing about abortion today.

For many years, all I heard from them was abortion is murder, and the millions of persons who are being murdered by abortion. They demanded the overthrow of Roe v. Wade, and they got their way.

Yesterday, Senator Lindsey Graham introduced legislation for a national criminal ban on abortion. But, of course, the so-called pro- life forces want to go further in the States and ban it completely. A lot of them don't even want to allow exceptions for rape or incest.

I thought our colleagues were going to explain what their position really is. I would invite them to do so as long as they don't want to talk about the legislation before us today.

Why don't they tell us what their position on abortion is, because America wants to know.

I think their position has changed somewhat. They are singing a somewhat different tune since the people of Kansas, by 20 points, destroyed their anti-choice agenda, and explained to them in numerical terms that the people of America are on the side of freedom and the rights of women and men and families to make their own decisions and not to have those decisions be made by Lindsey Graham, one Senator, who yesterday pronounced that he chose 15 weeks as the right point to criminalize abortion. He chose that himself.

What is their position now? America wants to know. What is their position?

Do they support a national criminal ban on abortion? Are they going to allow any exceptions for rape or incest? What is their position on it, if they don't want to talk about the legislation at hand?

Meantime, the Democrats continue to fight for lower drug prices, for a record, unprecedented, historic investment in renewable energy.

We are addressing the problems of the future. At the same time, we are defending the integrity of the Federal civil service and our workforce, which was compromised and abused in so many ways by the last administration.

We are defending the rights of whistleblowers to tell the truth about what is taking place in terms of political and public corruption and not to have to face retaliation from their supervisors. We are defending the institutions of democracy, including the Census, against all of the kinds of machinations and corruption and political abuse that we saw in the last administration.

We are glad that the Supreme Court struck down their last interference with the Census by trying to paste questions outside of the rule of law on the short form. This legislation is designed to protect the integrity of the Census along with the civil service, along with the whistleblowers.

But as long as my dear colleagues and friends don't want to talk about the legislation at hand, please clarify for America what their plan is to take away the health rights of American women and their families. Are they supporting the plan we heard yesterday announced by Lindsey Graham for a nationwide Federal criminal ban?

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

Mr. Speaker, the very distinguished gentleman from Kentucky purported to speak for what Americans are worried about. Undoubtedly, many Americans are worried about inflation, which is why this administration has been taking strong action not just to get jobs for everybody who wants a job and good jobs and union jobs for people, but also to bring inflation down.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a New York Times article titled ``U.S. Gas Prices Have Fallen for 91 Straight Days, a Relief for Consumers.''

[From the New York Times, Sept. 13, 2022]

U.S. Gas Prices Have Fallen for 91 Straight Days, a Relief for

Consumers

(By Isabella Simonetti)

The price of gasoline continues to fall steadily, easing

pressure on American consumers as the cost of filling a tank

continued to tumble from record levels reached earlier in the

summer.

Gas prices fell 10.6 percent in August, which helped

moderate still-sky-high inflation, Tuesday's Consumer Price

Index report showed.

The energy index, which tracks gasoline and electricity

among other energy sources, dropped 5 percent last month, as

electricity and natural gas prices rose.

After peaking at $5.02 in June, gasoline prices have

dropped for 91 straight days, and the national average stood

at just over $3.70 a gallon on Tuesday, data from AAA show.

But analysts point to a few reasons this streak of declines

is unlikely to continue.

Because they're determined by oil prices, gasoline prices

are also susceptible to a wide range of challenges, like

hurricanes that knock out drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and

efforts to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine by

curbing its ability to sell crude on the global market.

While gas prices are down, the overall energy index still

remains up 23.8 percent over the 12 months that ended in

August. Electricity prices alone jumped 15.8 percent,

representing the largest 12-month increase since August 1981,

the inflation report said. The jump in electricity prices is

largely attributable to the high cost of natural gas, said

Laura Rosner-Warburton, an economist at MacroPolicy

Perspectives.

As winter approaches, other fuel prices could influence

inflation data. The cost of heating a home with natural gas,

the most common source of home-heating fuel in the United

States, is expected to jump more than 25 percent from last

year, to $952 for the six months from October through March,

according to the National Energy Assistance Directors

Association.

``You would expect that a hard winter could create a

significant increase in demand in price of natural gas,''

said Bryan Benoit, U.S. national managing partner of energy

at Grant Thornton. ``And then of course all of this is

further exacerbated by what's going on with the war in the

Ukraine.''

I want to talk about some of the other things that Americans are worried about since my colleague purported to speak for Americans because I saw a poll recently saying that Americans are worried about the attack on democracy and voting rights.

Part of that may be the fact that some of our colleagues seem to be ambivalent about whether or not to denounce the rampant violence that was unleashed against this institution, this body, on January 6, 2021, when thousands of rioters came and attacked our officers, wounding and injuring more than 150 of them, breaking their jaws, their necks, lost fingers, strokes, heart attacks, concussions, and contusions. And, of course, the former President says that his mob actually greeted the police with hugs and kisses.

Some of our colleagues shamefully have followed the former President in trying to whitewash the worst episode of domestic mass insurrectionary violence ever unleashed on the Capitol of the United States with an attack on the Vice President, Mike Pence. We heard those words, ``Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence,'' bouncing off of the walls of the Capitol and against the Congress of the United States.

So, yes, people are worried about the state of our democracy with so many members of the GOP following Donald Trump in not only his terrible big lie, the first time we have ever seen that in American history, but also the big lie encompassing this mob violence and this insurrection against the Government of the United States.

Do you know what else Americans are worried about, Mr. Speaker? Americans are now worried about State politicians and Federal politicians trampling the rights of women. For more than a half century, women have had a right to make their most intimate procreative and reproductive decisions with their families, with their husbands, with their partners, with their ministers, and with their church leaders.

Then, they gerrymandered the Supreme Court. They kept Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court by not even giving him a hearing over on the Senate side.

Then, what do you know, Mr. Speaker? They followed what the RNC was asking for in all of their platforms for all of these years: Overturn Roe v. Wade. They overturned Roe v. Wade.

Then, we heard from our colleagues: Well, we just want the States to decide.

But, yesterday, Senator Lindsey Graham unveiled what the real plan is: a nationwide criminal ban on abortion, and if they can go further in the States, they will go further in the States.

We have Republican proposals all over America to completely ban abortion from the moment of conception, which is the pro-life orthodoxy, which is life begins at conception.

We heard it in the Judiciary Committee. We have heard it in the Oversight and Reform Committee. We have been hearing it for years. But now they have fallen strangely and demurely silent. Why is that? Part of it is because of the good people of Kansas, who showed them just where America is on this.

America is a country committed to individual freedom and the rights of the people to make their own decisions and not having busybody, theocrat politicians in State capitals telling them how to make their own decisions about their careers, about their lives, about their families, and about their healthcare--and certainly not allowing Lindsey Graham to dictate to the women of America what their destiny will be.

They won't say a word about it. They will talk about an SEC regulation nobody heard of that we are not here to talk about today. They will blame Joe Biden for global inflation. They will blame Joe Biden for Vladimir Putin's filthy, imperialist invasion of Ukraine.

I hear them denouncing Joe Biden. They won't denounce Vladimir Putin for 1 second.

I would happily yield 1 minute if they would denounce Vladimir Putin, but they won't do it. We have heard people over on their side cheerleading for Vladimir Putin. I heard the gentlewoman from Georgia say: Russia wins.

Guess what? Russia doesn't win. The people of Ukraine are winning today, and the people of America are with the people of Ukraine. We are on the side of democrats, small d democrats, all over the world against the autocrats like Putin, against the theocrats like people who would dictate to the women of America their own health decisions.

We are against the tyrants, the bullies, and the despots. We are against Presidents who get into office and try to dictate the political decisionmaking of individual members of the workforce and try to push their ideological program into the government. We are for defending whistleblowers; we are for defending the Census; and we are for defending democratic institutions in America.

I am just shocked that I hear from my good friend from Pennsylvania, someone I like and someone I trust, that he actually is defending Putin against Biden and blaming Joe Biden for Putin's long-running plan to invade Ukraine. That is a remarkable thing to me, and I hope we can have that clarified.

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Kentucky spoke about what his constituents are interested in. Apparently, they are interested only in the question of inflation.

My constituents are interested in that and are satisfied about the fact that we have had more than 90 days of decline in gas prices and that this administration is fighting to reduce inflation, including with the Inflation Reduction Act, which dramatically reduces healthcare costs, saying that nobody will have to spend more than $35 a month on insulin--no diabetic in America--and no one in the Medicare program will have to spend more than $2,000 a year on prescription drugs, generally.

How is that for getting inflation down?

But that is not all they care about. They care about women's right to choose and the GOP assault on the freedoms of the people, something which our colleagues maintain their demure and uncharacteristic circumspect silence about today. They didn't want to talk about this new GOP plan to ban abortion all across America. That is what we heard yesterday from Senator Graham about his plan for America.

My constituents want freedom in America. They want democracy in voting rights. They don't want to see violence unleashed against the Capitol of the United States, against school boards, against State capitols, or any of the political violence we have seen from whatever source. I am happy to denounce all of it.

I wish my colleagues would denounce political violence when it comes to our very doors, when it enters this Chamber, rather than playing follow the leader with the former President who has disgraced himself as the first President in U.S. history to be impeached twice and continues to be embroiled in all the political corruption investigations all over the country, as it has been shown that he egged on armed protesters to come to try to attack this body, to drive Vice President Pence out of the body, and to drive us out of the body, as well, interfering with a Federal proceeding.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote on this rule and the previous question.

The material previously referred to by Mr. Reschenthaler is as follows:

Amendment to House Resolution 1339

At the end of the resolution, add the following:

Sec. 13. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution, the

House shall proceed to the consideration in the House of the

bill (H.R. 8589) to prohibit the Securities and Exchange

Commission from finalizing the proposed rule titled ``The

Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related

Disclosures for Investors''. All points of order against

consideration of the bill are waived. The bill shall be

considered as read. All points of order against provisions in

the bill are waived. The previous question shall be

considered as ordered on the bill and on any amendment

thereto to final passage without intervening motion except:

(1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the

chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on

Financial Services; and (2) one motion to recommit.

Sec. 14. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the

consideration of H.R. 8589.

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

Madam Speaker, Had I been present I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 363.

Members Recorded Pursuant to House Resolution 8, 117th Congress

Allred (Neguse)

Armstrong (Johnson (SD))

Barr (McHenry)

Barragan (Correa)

Bass (Correa)

Bentz (Obernolte)

Bergman (McClain)

Brown (MD) (Trone)

Buchanan (Waltz)

Carter (TX) (Nehls)

Castro (TX) (Neguse)

Cohen (Beyer)

Comer (Fleischmann)

Crist (Stevens)

Curtis (Owens)

Davis, Danny K. (Neguse)

Deutch (Stevens)

Dingell (Kuster)

Doggett (Beyer)

Doyle, Michael F. (Pallone)

Dunn (Cammack)

Evans (Neguse)

Fallon (Carl)

Gibbs (Bucshon)

Hartzler (Bacon)

Hern (Bice (OK))

Herrera Beutler (Moore (UT))

Jackson (Carl)

Jackson Lee (Cicilline)

Johnson (TX) (Jeffries)

Kahele (Correa)

Katko (Meijer)

Kelly (IL) (Kuster)

Khanna (Kim (NJ))

Kirkpatrick (Pallone)

LaHood (Miller (WV))

Lawrence (Stevens)

Lawson (FL) (Soto)

Leger Fernandez (Kuster)

Lieu (Beyer)

Lynch (Langevin)

McEachin (Jeffries)

Meeks (Jeffries)

Moore (WI) (Beyer)

Moulton (Stevens)

Neal (Beyer)

Newman (Beyer)

Panetta (Beyer)

Pappas (Kuster)

Pascrell (Pallone)

Payne (Pallone)

Pingree (Kuster)

Porter (Neguse)

Pressley (Neguse)

Rice (SC) (Meijer)

Ryan (Beyer)

Salazar (Cammack)

Sewell (Cicilline)

Sires (Pallone)

Smucker (Joyce (PA))

Stauber (Bacon)

Stewart (Owens)

Suozzi (Correa)

Swalwell (Correa)

Taylor (McHenry)

Timmons (Mace)

Trahan (Stevens)

Upton (Meijer)

Veasey (Neguse)

Wagner (McHenry)

Walorski (Baird)

Wasserman Schultz (Stevens)

Wilson (SC)

(Lamborn)

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the thoughtful and visionary leadership of Dr. Ronald A. Paul, the outgoing President of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Greater Washington. During the last two years of the pandemic, Ron's compassionate and energetic leadership enabled the JCRC to render essential service not just to the Jewish Community but to the broader community during an excruciatingly hard time for so many people. Dr. Paul has served the people of Montgomery County, Maryland and beyond with relentless energy and enormous distinction. I am proud to be his Congressman and his friend.

For decades, Dr. Paul has dedicated countless hours as a key member of numerous executive committees and boards of local and national non- profit organizations. He served as Chair of the United Jewish Endowment Fund, Chair of the Endowment for the Jewish Agency for Israel of North America and the boards of the Jewish Council for the Aging, and the Anti-Defamation League.

But these commitments are not even his full-time job. For over four decades, Dr. Paul has worked as a renowned obstetrician-gynecologist while serving our community in numerous volunteer and leadership roles. His comprehensive approach to health care and inspirational leadership are deserving of the highest recognition and praise. Ron has been named one of Washingtonian magazine's Top Doctors.

Additionally, Dr. Paul and his loving wife, Toni, have dedicated themselves to serving survivors of the Holocaust in our community, and I want to give special recognition to Toni for founding the local Cafe Europa, a nationwide social program for survivors that has grown around the world since it was founded two decades ago.

Holocaust remembrance and education have been near and dear to Ron during his term as JCRC President, along with community security, and education and public health advocacy. His dedication to Maryland's Jewish community serves as an example for us all of what it means to be an engaged American citizen. I hope that the House will join me in celebrating Dr. Paul's enduring contributions.

Madam Speaker, the blood bath continues. Gun violence has now become the number one cause of death of children in the United States. We have rates of gun violence and gun deaths 20 times higher than any other industrialized nations like France, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Israel. No other nation comes close to what we are seeing. That is 200 percent higher than our peer countries.

The American people want change and action, but the minority invites us to believe that the bloody carnage piling up around the country from Buffalo to Uvalde, from Newtown to Las Vegas is a necessary feature of our Second Amendment.

We are invited to believe that all of the lost sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters of America are the necessary collateral damage of their fidelity to the Second Amendment.

Our family members must be sacrificed to a completely false vision of the Second Amendment. It is a lie. It is a lie based on a totally bogus misreading of the Second Amendment and what the Supreme Court has actually said about it.

Read Justice Scalia in Heller v. District of Columbia. No, he says, the right to guns is not an unlimited right. No, he says, the Second Amendment right is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever, in any manner whatsoever, and for whatever purpose. No.

The Second Amendment is not the only right in the Bill of Rights that is not subject to reasonable regulation in the interest of public safety and public security. He specifically upheld reasonable gun safety regulations, including bans on carrying a concealed weapon, the possession of firearms by felons and other people who shouldn't have guns; laws forbidding carrying firearms in schools and government buildings; laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the sale and purchase of firearms.

Stop hiding behind the Second Amendment. Take responsibility for your irresponsible position.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in solidarity with the people of Bangladesh. I want to voice my support for human rights defenders, members of minority groups, and civil society in Bangladesh at this moment when the Bangladeshi government is persisting in threatening the basic human rights and civil liberties of its people. The Bangladeshi government, led by Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League, has earned widespread criticism for its deteriorating human rights record, and for its failure to protect the most vulnerable people living in Bangladesh- indigenous people, women, religious minorities, activists, and refugees.

Amnesty International tracks human rights abuses in Bangladesh and has noted their acceleration during the pandemic. Under the draconian Digital Security Act of 2018, Bangladeshi journalists and other human rights defenders are routinely persecuted for reporting on corruption or criticizing any of the government's policies. COVID-19 policies against public gatherings have been used to prevent political meetings, and to quell public protests against the government. Violence against women and indigenous activists has also intensified during the pandemic.

The Bangladeshi government employs a joint task force composed of members of police, military, and border guards called the Rapid Action Battalion, and it has consistently failed to address the excesses of these and other security forces. The Rapid Action Battalion and other Bangladeshi law enforcement entities are alleged to be responsible for more than 600 disappearances since 2009 and nearly 600 extrajudicial killings since 2018. These incidents reportedly target opposition party members, journalists, and human rights activists.

Last August, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, of which I am a member, hosted a briefing on the deeply disturbing uptick in enforced disappearances in Bangladesh. Representatives from Human Rights Watch and the Asian Human Rights Commission participated, as did Bangladeshi photojournalist and activist Shahidul Alam who had been unlawfully arrested after posting criticism of the Bangladeshi Government on Facebook, and the sister of disappeared opposition leader Sajedul Islam Sumon. These violent and illegal forced disappearances have chilling effects on free speech, political opposition, and civil society.

On International Human Rights Day last year, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced sanctions on the Rapid Action Battalion, citing how their actions undermine the rule of law and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. The United Nations reported that since the sanctions against the Rapid Action Battalion officials were announced in December, the Bangladeshi government has responded by launching a retaliatory campaign of intimidation and harassment. The homes of at least 10 relatives of people forcibly disappeared are reported to have been raided at night, and some relatives were forced to sign statements saying that their loved ones had not in fact been forcibly disappeared,

Today, I ask my colleagues to join me in standing with the people of Bangladesh, especially those bravest and most vulnerable, and urging the Bangladeshi government to take immediate action to respect the civil rights and safety of all the people of Bangladesh.