Floor Statements

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this bipartisan legislation, which will help ensure that Americans have access to bankruptcy relief when financial disaster strikes and they need it.

The legislation would increase compensation for chapter 7 trustees for the first time in more than 30 years, extend vital temporary bankruptcy judgeships, and ensure that our bankruptcy system continues to be self-funded and poses no cost to the American taxpayer.

Chapter 7 proceedings are designed for people who are most in need of financial relief. In chapter 7 bankruptcy, an individual debtor who has fallen on hard times, rather than go to debtor prison, which was the old-school method, can settle his or her debts, pay off back taxes, stop further collection actions, and secure a fresh start.

The process is means-tested, so it is available only for those who really need it, and it often comes with credit counseling and debtor education courses that can help our constituents achieve financial literacy and avoid bankruptcy a second time.

Nationwide, this process is overseen by trustees who help to distribute millions of dollars annually to local, State, and Federal Government agencies and private creditors of all types. In 1994, Congress set the pay for trustees at $60 per case, and we have not revisited that $60 pay rate in the decades since.

This bill would increase that paltry amount at long last. By doubling their fee to $120, we help to ensure that debtors will have the assistance they need to navigate the complicated and convoluted world of bankruptcy proceedings.

The bill also extends 29 temporary bankruptcy judgeships that are set to expire. In my State of Maryland alone, we are on track to lose three out of seven temporary judgeships. That is nearly half of our entire bankruptcy bench. We cannot afford to lose these judges at the very moment that bankruptcy filings are rising everywhere, up 30 percent in our State alone over the last couple of years.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly support this bill to increase the access and opportunity provided to all Americans under the bankruptcy system. I ask all of our colleagues to read it and to support it.

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

Mr. Speaker, again, I restate my strong support for this bipartisan legislation, and 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. 6719, the Combating Online Predators Act, and I echo my distinguished colleague in noting that sextortion is a serious and rising threat faced by countless unsuspecting teens all over America when they use the internet and social media.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC, operates a Cyber Tip Line to receive reports of suspected child exploitation. The Cyber Tip Line has received many more reports of sextortion of minors in recent years, amounting to tens of thousands of potential victims. These crimes have deadly consequences.

NCMEC has identified 36 teens who took their own lives after being subjected to harsh and incessant harassment from callous perpetrators of sextortion. The problem is everywhere.

Last May, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland announced the guilty plea of a man who had coerced at least 108 different girls to send him pictures and videos of themselves engaged in sexual conduct. The victims ranged in age from 5 to 17 years old and lived all over the U.S. and even around the world, from Tennessee and Massachusetts to Australia and the United Kingdom.

When the man asked for access to the social media account of an 11- year-old, he wrote: ``Add me back or I'll post all your vids online and in servers. I have everything saved.''

When some victims said they did not want to send him any more images, he threatened to post the images online, come to their house, or tell their parents. The man victimized a 12-year-old, her friend, and her 5- year-old sister through Snapchat.

Investigators obtained an IP address linked to the Snapchat account, which eventually led them to the perpetrator's house, where they recovered a laptop, two hard drives, and four iPhones containing evidence of the coercive treatment of more than 100 different girls. In this case, the man pled guilty to an existing crime of producing child sex abuse material.

Prosecutors have said the existing statutes do not always fully address the scope or severity of the conduct involved in these terrible cases. This bill would close that gap and ensure that more of these criminals are held accountable.

I hope we continue to work with our colleagues in a bipartisan way to strengthen and improve our laws to address these new and dangerous crimes and to keep our children safe online.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage all of my colleagues to support H.R. 6719, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, to close, I strongly support H.R. 6719, the Combating Online Predators Act. I encourage all of our colleagues to support it, and I praise the gentlewoman for her leadership on this legislation.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I am rising in strong support of H.R. 6715, the Child Predators Accountability Act of 2025.

Mr. Speaker, the decision that the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina references out of the Seventh Circuit, United States v. Howard, threatens to significantly limit prosecutors' ability to hold some of the worst child predators to account legally. The question may appear to be technical, but the human consequences are grave and brutally simple.

Title 18 of the United States Code, section 2251(a), criminalizes the production of child sex abuse material. For decades, prosecutors have used the law to target predators who prey on children or who produce ghastly images of child sex abuse, but the Seventh Circuit's ruling in the Howard case in 2020 jeopardized prosecutors' ability to go after these dangerous people until they actually abuse the child and create an image of the abuse.

The Howard decision narrowed the scope of section 2251(a), holding that the mere physical presence of the minor in a visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct does not automatically violate the statute. To obtain a conviction for production of CSAM in the Seventh Circuit, the child in the photo, video, or image must themselves be engaged in the explicit conduct.

This is an absurd reading that we can and must legislatively resolve. The Howard ruling undermines the ability to prosecute common scenarios involving the surreptitious recording of kids; for example, when criminals plant concealed cameras in bathrooms, locker rooms, and bedrooms to record sexually explicit images of children who are unaware that they are even being filmed.

Criminals who record themselves sexually violating very young children, such as infants and toddlers, who are too young to understand that they are being filmed in sexually explicit scenarios could also conceivably avoid prosecution under the pinched reasoning of the Howard decision.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 6715 would make clear that even the passive use of a child in the production of child sex abuse materials is a crime, and it will eliminate any confusion caused by the Seventh Circuit's ruling in Howard.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support the legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Mrs. McBath), my good friend who is the ranking member on the Crime and Federal Government Surveillance Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, we seem to have the bipartisan convergence that we need to reverse the error of the interpretation that is in the Howard decision to make sure we can always hold accountable the perpetrators of this seriously corrosive crime.

H.R. 6715 strives to right this wrong, and I am proud that we are acting in a bipartisan way to do that. I urge my colleagues to support the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

I rise in support of H.R. 6732, the CSAFE Act, which creates a new crime to prohibit people from compelling children into physically harming themselves or animals.

Coercing kids online to hurt themselves or others is spreading harm that all of us need to take seriously. We have seen an alarming rise in episodes of this in recent years, and it has become clear that there is no Federal statute that effectively addresses this extreme misconduct.

Violent online groups have emerged on popular platforms geared toward children and teenagers. These groups, and individuals acting alone, encourage kids to commit horrifying acts, including cutting themselves, creating child sex abuse material, sexually exploiting other children, harming animals, swatting, doxing, and, in the most extreme cases, taking their own lives.

This happened to Jay Taylor, a 13-year-old who was struggling with an eating disorder, gender identity problems, and a sense of isolation. He found a connection on the online platform Discord. Members of 764, an online network that targets and exploits vulnerable young people, got their hooks into him and devastatingly coerced Jay into taking his own life while live-streaming.

The FBI agents who worked on his case repeatedly encountered roadblocks while attempting to get prosecutors to file charges in the case, with one U.S. attorney telling the agents that it simply was not possible to do anything.

The bill before us now, the CSAFE Act, seeks to address the shortcomings in existing Federal criminal law when it comes to investigating cases and prosecuting criminals who coerce and extort children online.

I thank the chairman for working with me to address some of the constitutional concerns I raised at our committee's markup of this legislation back in December of last year. I am very pleased to support this bill today, which I think is legally seaworthy and will survive any constitutional challenges.

Madam Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support the legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Mrs. McBath).

I have no further speakers, Madam Speaker. I will just restate my strong support for this legislation. I thank the distinguished gentleman from Arizona for bringing it forward. It is certainly a lot more fun to be with him on legislation than against him on legislation, and I am delighted we were able to work on this bipartisan bill together.

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

Mr. Speaker, many of us in Congress are calling for the immediate release of Mr. Ekrem Imamoglu, who is the mayor of Istanbul, Turkiye.

Istanbul is Turkiye's largest city. It is one of the world's great cities where 16 million people live and stand strong for democracy. They elected Mr. Imamoglu as their mayor three different times, and he is focused on improving public infrastructure and serving nutrition and health to the millions of kids who live in that city.

He was detained in March 2025, along with 106 other leaders in Istanbul. The Turkish Government has now seized his family business, suspended his Twitter account, revoked his college diploma, and banned any public images or posters of him.

I want to tell Mayor Imamoglu that he has many people in the United States Congress closely following this outrage against democracy and the rule of law. We are wishing his family happy holidays, and we are working and demanding to see that he be released.

Mr. Speaker, why did the Framers vest the power to declare war in Congress alone? It was because the kings were constantly plunging their entire nations into wars of vanity, of conceit, of caprice, of mere whimsy.

They didn't trust one man to be able to take the entire country to war. They wanted that question proposed in the representatives of the people because it is our sons and daughters who will go fight, and it is the whole country's treasure that will be put at risk.

Now, Donald Trump, buffeted by dozens of election losses all across the country from Virginia to New York to New Jersey to California to Mississippi and Georgia, sinking in the polls like a stone because of his catastrophic unconstitutional tariffs and his complete destruction of the healthcare system of the country, now wants to turn the metaphorical war on drugs into an actual, physical war on drugs.

Well, Donald Trump's real interests in supporting dictators and big- time drug dealers were made clear with a series of Presidential pardons of major drug dealers, including the former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez. The guy was sentenced to 45 years in prison for bringing 40 tons--I am sorry--400 tons of cocaine into the country. Eight hundred thousand pounds of cocaine he brought into our country, and President Hernandez says: I am going to stuff the cocaine up the noses of the gringos.

President Trump pardoned him without any explanation. We eagerly await an explanation from someone on that side because they have blown up 26 vessels on the high seas which have at most, if each one has 2 tons of cocaine in it, 52 tons, and he pardoned this guy who brought in 800,000 pounds of cocaine to stuff up the noses of the gringos.

Mr. Speaker, I urgently commend to our colleagues across the aisle the speech that President Lincoln, the founder of their party, made about the Mexican-American War. He stood in this Chamber and said: On something as important and as grave as going to war, we want to know exactly what the rationale is, exactly why we are doing it.

He got the nickname Spotty because he said he wanted to know the exact spot where American blood was shed.

Well, there is a real accounting to be done in terms of what is the factual predicate for this war that Donald Trump wants.

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

Madam Speaker, the bill would subject doctors, nurses, other medical providers, and even parents to up to 10 years' incarceration in Federal prison and up to $250,000 in criminal fines for providing gender- affirming healthcare like hormone therapy to minors.

They want to criminalize more than a dozen different evidence-based medical treatments and procedures that are presently being recommended and used for gender dysphoria including the prescription of puberty blockers, which are commonly used by families for young people who are not trans but who face all the medical and social problems associated with early-onset puberty.

The gentlewoman's bill would engineer a massive invasion of the privacy rights of families engaged in medical decisionmaking in America. I thought a belief that families should be able to make their own decisions for their own children was something that united Liberals and Conservatives.

These are hard and often agonizing decisions that loving American families in our country face. Our colleagues now want to invite the Federal Government to come barging into the family dining room and in the doctor's exam room like a raging bull in a china shop.

Does anyone believe the Freedom Caucus and President Trump love America's children more than their own parents do or that they can make better decisions for tens of thousands of American children than their own parents? I can't understand the logic of it.

At a time of skyrocketing healthcare costs--which our colleagues will do nothing about except perhaps a handful of them who have crossed over to join us today in a discharge petition--at a time of skyrocketing healthcare costs, grocery prices, and housing, not to mention the recent news of escalating unemployment higher than the last 4 years, does anybody think that what the American people need right now and are looking for is a Federal law authorizing FBI agents and government prosecutors to investigate doctors, nurses, hospitals, and parents for providing AMA-recommended medical care to children?

The politicians that have brought America to a point of crisis in healthcare coverage for millions of Americans--and can't seem to do anything about it--cannot be trusted to make the most intimate and fundamental decisions for the physical, mental, and emotional well- being of America's children. Let us leave it to people's parents. Let us leave it to the families.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Takano), the chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus.

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

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

Madam Speaker, at a time when our colleagues are perfectly content to see millions of Americans lose their health insurance, when they do nothing to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits that millions of Americans are depending on, at a time when they are happy to throw millions of people off of Medicaid coverage, they decide to change the subject in order to vilify and demonize a small minority.

That is a time-honored tactic in the authoritarian playbook, to pick a small minority of citizens--here, we are talking about around 2 million people who are transgender in America--and scapegoat them, dehumanize them, demonize them, satanize them, take away their basic freedoms, and even deny their very existence.

It is happening to gay people right now in Putin's Russia and in Orban's Hungary. It is happening to Uyghurs and Tibetans in China. It is happening to Christians and free-thinkers in Pakistan. It is happening to Muslims in India. Now, it is happening to trans people in America when they are happy to attack them, vilify them, and try to destroy their community. If they purport to be acting in the name of the trans community, why is it that the trans community opposes their legislation so strongly?

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Krishnamoorthi).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici).

Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 20 seconds to the gentlewoman from Oregon.

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

Madam Speaker, we know that the proponents of this legislation are certainly not speaking for the families that have to deal with this problem because all of them are lobbying against this. They are saying that the last thing we want at this point is to send the FBI and Federal prosecutors in to deal with the problem. Let them deal with it. Well, perhaps they are speaking from medical authority? No, not at all.

Look at the letter that was just sent to Members of Congress. ``We, the undersigned medical professional organizations, write in strong opposition to H.R. 3492 and H.R. 498. These bills would criminalize and dismantle healthcare for transgender young people and as such represent a direct threat to patient welfare. We urge you to reject these extreme proposals.''

Look who signed this: American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American College of Physicians, American Psychiatric Association, and so on.

The leading medical authorities in the country are saying: Hey, we can work this out at the State level.

The gentleman referred to California. There are States that are regulating in the field as they regulate lots of different kinds of medical treatments and procedures. Suddenly, we are going to turn the United States Congress into a super-medical licensing board for the entire country?

This is why our colleague from the other side of the aisle, Mr. Roy, raised the question of whether this is even constitutional. Where is the Federal jurisdictional nexus for us to be overriding State medical boards in order to bulldoze into people's living rooms and their kitchen tables to usurp the family decisionmaking process of Americans across the country?

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Salinas).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Dexter), who is both a mom and a doctor.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Frost).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Ramirez).

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

Every major medical and mental health association in the United States of America, representing 1.3 million doctors--the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association--all reject this legislation that is being advanced here. They all support gender-affirming care according to the most up-to-date science and medicine.

So if they are not speaking for the transgender community, which certainly they are not; if they are not speaking for all of the families and parents who are involved, which certainly they are not; if they are not speaking for the medical community and the scientific community, who indeed are they speaking for?

They describe the position that these medical associations have as satanic. I mean, are they looking for an exorcism to deal with the reality of lives for millions of people in the country?

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hoyle).

Madam Speaker, we are invited to believe that the United States Congress is not only more competent to make medical decisions for America's children than their own parents, but that the United States Congress is more competent than all 50 State legislatures to run medical practices within their States.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Schrier), who is both a mom and a pediatrician.

Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 10 seconds to the gentlewoman from Washington.

Madam Speaker, it is outrageous for the government to commandeer those decisions.

Madam Speaker, I strongly oppose this bill, and I encourage my colleagues to all vote ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Vermont (Ms. Balint).

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

Madam Speaker, we obviously disagree vehemently on this bill, but this may be the last time that I get to share the floor with the distinguished gentlewoman from Georgia. I thank her for her hard work and her thoughtful comments in CNN news recently which moved me when she said: ``I would like to say, humbly, I am sorry for taking part in the toxic politics. It is very bad for our country. It has been something I thought about a lot, especially since Charlie Kirk was assassinated.''

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman and wish her and her family all the best in her future.

Having said that, on the gentlewoman's bill, Madam Speaker, there are lots of people in the country who are not getting their kids vaccinated for different reasons and for different kinds of illnesses. A lot of people in the country reject that and oppose that, and perhaps the vast majority do.

Does that mean we should come forward with a bill to the United States Congress to say that we are going to put in jail any parents who don't vaccinate their children because we think they are making the wrong decision for their children?

In other words, we know better than the parents do, and we know better than the doctors do. We know better than the medical associations do, and we know better than all of the States do.

Madam Speaker, I think that would be an absurd abuse of our power and, as the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) has been saying, a very questionable deployment of Federal power, given the fact that the United States Congress has limited powers that are supposed to deal with actual national and Federal issues, which is why medical care has always been left to the States to deal with.

This is like a bulldozer going into everybody's house if you happen to be dealing with this particular kind of medical crisis. You don't have to agree with any particular decision that any particular family or set of parents have made. All you have to do is respect their right to make decisions with and for their own children. That is all that we are talking about.

Do you know who is on this side and opposed to this legislation? Medical associations, like the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychological Association, representing more than a million doctors in the country, are saying: No, don't let the politicians start finger painting all over the protocols for dealing with an actual medical problem that millions of people have had to deal with in our country.

We will stand with the families. We will stand with the doctors. We will stand with the medical associations. We will stand with the States. We have got enough real work on our hands.

Let's just try to get medical care and medical attention to the people of America. Millions of people are losing their access to health insurance and to Medicaid. Why don't we try to deal with that before we barge into the doctors' offices, and the living rooms and kitchen tables of America to try to take over what is a fundamentally private and personal decision that we should be trusting families to make for themselves?

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Peter and Cora Weiss's lifelong passionate dedication to peace, social justice and civil rights for all. I would like to ask for unanimous consent that two articles summarizing the remarkable lives of Peter and Cora Weiss. We just lost both of these fighters for human freedom and progress, and we are all poorer for it.

In 1938, Peter fled Austria to escape Nazi persecution. Just a few years later he enlisted in the U.S. Army to fight in World War II. Meantime, Cora volunteered with her mother to roll bandages for the Red Cross. They were deeply involved in defending freedom against fascism.

As citizen activists, Peter and Cora became leaders of the national movement to stop the Vietnam War and halt the global nuclear arms race. Cora organized demonstrations in Central Park and Washington, D.C. that mobilized millions of Americans to demand an end to the Vietnam War and an end to nuclear testing. With his powerful knowledge of international institutions and the U.S. Constitution, Peter redefined international human rights law in the United States and abroad.

Cora and Peter Weiss were champions of free speech and social justice but in Cora's own words, she ``wasn't making a revolution.'' She ``was just working hard and long.''

May we all work so hard and so long to achieve peace and justice in our own time.

I include in the Record the following article honoring Peter Weiss from the Vineyard Gazette.

Peter Weiss, a trailblazing attorney and a tireless

advocate for human rights, international law and the

abolition of nuclear weapons, died Nov. 3 at the age of 99,

one month shy of his 100th birthday. The cause was old age.

Born in Vienna, Austria, Peter led a life defined by

resilience, hope, intellect and a profound commitment to

justice and peace.

Fleeing Austria in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution, Peter

and his family spent three years in France before finding

refuge in New York City. This early experience of injustice

and displacement contributed to his lifelong dedication to

defending human rights and holding those who violate them

accountable through the rule of law.

Peter served in the U.S. Army during WWII at a top-secret

prisoner of war camp outside Washington, D.C. where German-

speaking Jewish soldiers hosted and interrogated Nazi POWs.

After the war he was stationed in Berlin, working to

dismantle Nazi-aligned industrial cartels. Following his

service, Peter finished his undergraduate education at St.

John's College in Annapolis in 1949, where his study

of the Great Books had a profound influence on his life and

work. He earned his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1952

and set off on a long professional legal career that included

countless hours of pro bono work.

Peter joined Langner & Parry, an intellectual property law

firm in New York City, in 1955. In 1969 he was a founding

partner of a successful international trademark firm, Weiss,

Dawid, Fross & Lehrman. He represented a wide variety of

clients, from Bozo the Clown and Laurel and Hardy to Chanel

and Budweiser. He retired from trademark law at the age of

80.

With his education and a moral compass as strong as any, he

never wavered in his belief that the rule of law should

prevail.

``I have a friend who likes to needle me by saying `law is

the dead hand of the past laid upon the present,' '' Peter

once told a group of law students, ``to which I usually

reply, `law is the burning vision of the future leading us

onward.' Of course, we are both wrong. But I still prefer my

version.''

Throughout his professional career, Peter was involved in a

wide range of political activities and movements. He was the

chair, president or vice president of many organizations that

he served or created. These include the American Committee on

Africa, Center for Constitutional Rights, Institute for

Policy Studies, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy,

International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms,

and New Jewish Narrative (formerly Americans for Peace now).

In addition to his work to abolish nuclear weapons, he

supported decolonization in Africa, and years later helped to

write the constitution for the newly independent nation of

Eritrea. He also supported the U.S. civil rights movement, an

end to the American war in Vietnam, the dictatorship in

Chile, and the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank,

to name a few.

Peter was a visionary leader in the fight against nuclear

arms, which he saw as the ultimate threat to the human race.

He co-founded the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy in 1981

and served as the founding president of the International

Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms in 1988. In 1996,

he and his colleagues brought a case before the International

Court of Justice where half the justices sided with their

position that the threat or use of nuclear weapons was a

violation of international law (https://www.armscontrol.org/ act/20160907/news/world-court-delivers-opinion-legality- nuclear-weapons-use).

One of Peter's most well-known and groundbreaking cases was

in the field of human rights. Peter, together with Rhonda

Copelon, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights,

rediscovered the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), an obscure

commerce law from 1789 that gives federal courts jurisdiction

over international tort claims brought by non-U.S. citizens.

The legal team successfully used the ATS to win a landmark

case in the 2nd District Court of Appeals, Filartiga v. Pena-

Irala.

The 1980 decision found a Paraguayan official living in the

U.S. accountable for the torture of the son of an opposition

leader in Paraguay. This groundbreaking precedent established

that people who violated international human rights law could

be held accountable in the United States.

In spite of on-going crimes against humanity, Peter was

never a cynic. He loved to mentor young people considering a

career in law, reminding them to use their knowledge and

skills for social justice. His life was driven by many

passions in addition to the law and the truth.

He loved language--reading novels and poetry, the Sunday

New York Times crossword puzzle and writing. Peter never

missed giving a toast and wrote one for every occasion. He

had a well-known dry sense of humor. As he wrote about

himself years ago, his hobbies were ``playing tennis and

suing the president.'' For example, he sued Richard Nixon

over the U.S. secret bombing of Laos during the Vietnam War.

He wrote short form poetry where his humor found a home. He

loved opera and classical music, like his mother Paula, who

lived to be 104, and also exposed his children to the

Beatles, Richie Havens, Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger,

and jazz greats like Duke Ellington and Mose Allison. He

loved art, films, and theatre.

Peter was a devoted husband to Cora, a dedicated feminist

and noted advocate for peace education and the abolition of

war. Their partnership of 69 years exemplified a shared

mission of advancing peace and justice around the world. They

did everything together, from inspiring countless individuals

to take up the cause of social justice, to watching the

sunset every summer on Martha's Vineyard.

His first trip to the Vineyard was to the once referenced

``Socialist Hill'' in Menemsha in 1956 on his honeymoon with

Cora. They stayed in the guest house of Leo and Gert Huberman

and shortly thereafter they bought the Captain Flander's

House across from Flander's Lane where they summered until

moving to Aquinnah, formerly known as Gay Head. They

purchased land communally with three other families and have

never missed a summer in 69 years. Drinking a dry martini

with Cora by his side and watching the sunset over the North

Shore was a favorite ritual they loved to share with their

family and many friends on the island.

Their daughter, Tamara Weiss, has been a Chilmark resident

for 30 years.

Peter's legacy is preserved not only in the legal

precedents he established and in his deep ties to his family

and many friends, but also in the vast archive of his

personal and professional papers housed at Tamiment Library

at New York University.

Peter is survived by his beloved wife, Cora, their three

children Judy, Tamara and Danny (Anne Stewart), grandchildren

Jules (Emily), Noah (Kelsey), Maria (Gabi), Catherine,

(Brianna) and Simon, his former son-in-law Gary, and a global

community of activists and legal professionals who carry

forward his vision of a more just and secure world. His

indomitable spirit, intellect and compassion will continue to

inspire generations to come.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be

made to organizations supporting human rights and nuclear

weapons abolition.

I also include in the Record the following article honoring Cora Weiss from Natalie Schachar of The New York Times:

Cora Weiss, who was active for more than half a century in

support of gender equality, international peace, the anti-

Vietnam War movement, civil rights and nuclear disarmament,

and who helped organize some of the most important mass

demonstrations of the 1960s, died on Monday in Manhattan. She

was 91.

Her death, at a hospital, was confirmed by her son, Daniel

Weiss.

In 1961, Ms. Weiss was raising her children in the

Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx when she was told about

Women Strike for Peace, a new group organizing demonstrations

against nuclear weapons testing. Would Ms. Weiss be

interested in joining the Riverdale chapter?

She was. With other women across the country, she soon

found herself reading up on the deadly ingredients of an

atomic bomb and sending off her children's baby teeth to be

tested for radioactive isotopes resulting from nuclear

fission.

Many of the teeth were found to have elevated levels of

strontium-90, a carcinogenic element associated with nuclear

testing that had also been detected in food. That finding

boosted the group's visibility, attracting attention to its

campaign to ban nuclear tests. By October 1963, President

John F. Kennedy had signed an agreement with Britain and the

Soviet Union to prohibit atomic testing in the atmosphere,

space and under water.

The rally concluded with some protesters burning flags and

police officers firing tear gas. Still, the day was hailed as

significant in helping to turn public opinion against the

war.

Soon after, Ms. Weiss flew to Hanoi to meet with the North

Vietnamese Women's Union, proposing to carry back mail from

prisoners of war. The trip led to the creation of the

Committee of Liaison With Families of Servicemen Detained in

North Vietnam. Ms. Weiss served as co-chairwoman of the

organization, which eventually ferried thousands of letters

and packages back and forth.

She also helped organize a major antinuclear demonstration

in Central Park in Manhattan on June 12, 1982, drawing a

crowd of about a million.

``She was courageous and brave and patriotic,'' Darren

Walker, the former president of the Ford Foundation, said in

an interview, ``and demonstrated that one can have love of

country and still challenge America to be better.''

For her part, Ms. Weiss told the Columbia Center for Oral

History in 2014, ``I wasn't making a revolution, I was just

working hard and long.''

Cora Rubin was born on Oct. 2, 1934, in Manhattan, the

daughter of Vera D. Rubin, an anthropologist specializing in

Caribbean studies whose work on marijuana use in Jamaica

landed her on an early cover of High Times, the magazine

about cannabis culture. Her father, Samuel Rubin, owned a

cosmetics company.

When Cora was young, the family moved to Croton-on-Hudson,

N.Y., in Westchester County. Raised in a liberal Jewish

household, she was exposed to animated political discussions

with guests like Eleanor Roosevelt, the first lady, who would

drop by to chat and help with fund-raising. (Ms. Roosevelt

would often spend time at her Hudson Valley retreat in Hyde

Park, N.Y.)

``We talked community politics, what was happening in

Croton, in the community,'' Ms. Weiss recalled.

``Antisemitism was rife, racism was rife, the war was rife.''

She became an activist early on, helping her mother roll

bandages for the Red Cross, taking coffee and doughnuts to

young men preparing to go to the front lines of World War II,

and knitting clothes for relief efforts. Those experiences

inspired her interest in bringing an end to war, she said.

After graduating from the Ethical Culture Fieldston School

in New York, she enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-

Madison. There, she met a newspaper editor leading an effort

to recall Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the crusading anti-

Communist who was attacking the loyalty of political

opponents. She helped set up the Madison headquarters for a

campaign called ``Joe Must Go'' and began going door to door

to gather signatures for a petition.

It was an early lesson in the frustrations of grass-roots

political organizing. Despite getting enough signatures, the

recall effort floundered when many were deemed illegible.

She met Peter Weiss, a lawyer, during her work as

chairwoman of the university's international speakers club,

recruiting social justice activists to talk on campus. As

head of the International Development Placement Association,

a precursor to the Peace Corps, Mr. Weiss had been invited to

speak. They married in 1956, the same year she graduated with

a bachelor's degree in cultural anthropology.

Mr. Weiss died in November at 99. In addition to their son,

Ms. Weiss is survived by two daughters, Judy and Tamara

Weiss; five grandchildren; and a brother, Reed Rubin.

A lifelong supporter of the United Nations, Ms. Weiss was

particularly proud of her work in helping to draft United

Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, which affirmed the

importance of the role of women in the peace process and in

protecting their security. It was unanimously adopted in

2000. Later in life, as president of the Hague Appeal for

Peace, a coalition of antiwar groups, she became involved in

global peace education.

``I've decided that it's the only sustainable thing,'' Ms.

Weiss said. ``You can march, you can protest, you can make

phone calls, you can write letters. But education is the

closest thing, I think, to a sustainable form of social

change.''

Ash Wu contributed reporting.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the public service of Rev. Dr. Della J. Owens-Barber in advance of her fourth anniversary banquet as Senior Pastor at the Saint James Christian Church on December 7, 2025. Rev. Dr. Owens-Barber is a dedicated pastor, scholar, community leader, and advocate for spiritual and social transformation. Over the past decade, she has played a key role in the nationwide campaign to advance a powerful moral agenda to end poverty.

As National Security Director for Repairers of the Breach, Rev. Dr. Owens-Barber has been a steadfast leader of the Poor People's Campaign and has championed an agenda against poverty and inequality. At a recent Poor People Campaign's Moral March on Washington, D.C., she spoke on behalf of millions of Americans who are uninsured and underinsured. As a result of her unflinching leadership in the campaign to address the needs of poor Americans, she has been both praised for her determination and arrested for non-violent civil disobedience. She has been central to the outstanding work of both Repairers of the Breach and the Poor People's Campaign.

Rev. Dr. Owens-Barber is an accomplished leader in her ministry, developing robust programs that engage and empower senior citizens, organizing community food giveaways and promoting mental health awareness. She has also fostered intergenerational connection through worship, education and outreach.

Rev. Dr. Owens-Barber previously led a distinguished career in law enforcement, higher education, youth development and social justice leadership.

Rev. Dr. Owens-Barber earned advanced degrees in Criminal Justice and Theological Studies and a Doctor of Ministry. She continues to lead community service through the North Carolina Council of Churches where she serves on the Board of Directors, the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, and health advocacy networks. I am honored to recognize Rev. Dr. Della J. Owens-Barber on her fourth anniversary as Senior Pastor at the Saint James Christian Church and salute her for her passionate service to her community and our country.

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

I thank the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina for his leadership on this issue.

I am pleased that we are considering the bipartisan Trafficking Survivors Relief Act, which will provide relief to victims and survivors of human trafficking who have been unjustly criminalized as a result of their trafficking.

Victims and survivors of human trafficking have been waiting nearly a decade for us to make this relief available to them at the Federal level. The heroic survivors of the global Epstein trafficking conspiracy have raised the conscience of our Nation about the nightmarish consequences of human trafficking for the victims of it, and they strongly support this legislation, which is part of the long, overdue reckoning that America must have with all of the double standards and coverups that have affected women and girls who have been entered into the trafficking criminal underworld.

While we have found far too less opportunities to work together in this broken session of Congress, I am glad that the majority has finally chosen to bring this much-needed consensus reform forward to the floor to protect trafficking victims and survivors, and I look forward to its swift passage.

Mr. Speaker, human trafficking is a multibillion-dollar criminal industry that overtakes the will and the freedom of nearly 25 million people around the world every year. Traffickers exploit their victims by forcing them to provide labor, services, and commercial sex through violence, fear, coercion, and manipulation. While awful, their exploitation doesn't stop there. Traffickers often force their victims to commit other crimes, including prostitution, money laundering, fraud, drug trafficking, robbery, and theft.

This leads trafficking victims to be arrested and prosecuted without consideration of their status as victims themselves. They are often then made to serve prison sentences and left with criminal records that can stop them from finding employment, suitable housing, or qualifying to receive the treatment that they need to recover from trauma and rebuild their lives.

When they are unable to start fresh or move on because of the obstacles that they face as a consequence of the crimes that they were forced to commit, victims and survivors often return to their traffickers or fall victim to new predators. We cannot allow this cycle of trauma, criminal exploitation, and victimization to continue in the lives of so many untold victims.

While all but three States now allow trafficking survivors some form of criminal record relief, there is still no Federal pathway to clear criminal convictions or records in this situation. H.R. 4323 would correct this inequity by allowing human trafficking victims to petition to have their convictions vacated for certain offenses and to expunge their arrest records for other offenses if the offenses were committed only as a consequence of their trafficking.

This bill would also provide an avenue of relief for victims and survivors facing prosecution for certain Federal offenses relating to their victimization by establishing a human trafficking defense. The defense will also be available as a post-conviction remedy. To ensure that survivors have access to all of the remedies provided, this bill makes clear that a grantee may use grant funds from the Office of Justice Programs and Office on Violence Against Women for legal representation for post-conviction relief.

For far too long, we have closed our eyes to the true horrors of human trafficking and allowed victimization to fester simply by allowing survivors of human trafficking to be classified and treated as criminals. I am pleased to support this essential and thoughtful bipartisan bill, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I pick up on the words of the distinguished gentlewoman from Georgia, who is the ranking member of the Crime and Federal Government Surveillance Subcommittee on Committee on the Judiciary. To be forced into a human-trafficking network, like the Epstein network, is to suffer a double trauma. There is the original trauma of the exploitation and the abuse, and then there is the added trauma of being stigmatized yourself as being a criminal: a prostitute and someone forced to engage in other criminal activity by the trafficking network.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted that, on a bipartisan basis today, we are able to move forward to address this problem and to give some relief to the victims and the survivors of a human-trafficking network.

Again, I recognize the survivors from the Epstein global international child sex-trafficking conspiracy who have raised the conscience of the country and changed America's mind about the fundamental importance of our addressing this.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for working with us on bringing this legislation forward, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mrs. McBath for yielding, Mr. Roy for his leadership on this, and Mr. Biggs for his comments.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this bipartisan legislation. The Founders thought that Federal law would be strictly limited in two different ways: one, according to the subject matter; and two, according to number.

The subject matter of Federal criminal law requires that the conduct being proscribed be tethered to a particular Federal jurisdictional nexus, like interference with Federal interstate commerce or assault on a Federal officer in doing his or her duty, or seditious conspiracy against the Union, which is why the vast majority of crimes are prosecuted at the local level like assault, murder, armed robbery, theft, and so on.

Federal law would also be limited, the Founders thought, according to number because the Federal criminal laws would be organized around certain

specific principles forbidding criminal conduct that is clearly harmful to everyone. As my colleagues have said, what we have seen is the endless proliferation of criminal offenses, some of them statutory, some of them regulatory, oftentimes in a kind of political reaction to a particular event that might have been criminal already under a more general category.

This legislation will allow us to get on top of the problem. It will direct the Department of Justice and other Federal agencies to compile a comprehensive report describing every Federal statutory and regulatory criminal offense carrying penalties. These have grown substantially over the last four decades, despite several previous attempts by the Office of Legal Policy at DOJ, the American Bar Association, and several scholars to determine exactly how many Federal offenses there are.

There is simply not a single comprehensive accounting of Federal criminal offenses to be found anywhere in the Federal Government, and that is a pretty remarkable statement in itself.

Through the bipartisan Count the Crimes to Cut Act of 2025, Congress and the people will finally get an inventory of all Federal statutory and regulatory criminal offenses. Thanks to this bill, we will know the specific elements of each offense, the potential criminal penalties, the mens rea requirement, and the number of prosecutions that have taken place each year for the preceding 15 years for every listed offense.

Now, what is the danger of having too many criminal offenses? Some people might just say, let's let sleeping dogs lie. What is the problem with having proliferation of offenses that may be opaque, inscrutable, obscure, and duplicative? One danger is the citizen doesn't know what kind of conduct and behavior is actually expected of him or her. That leaves the citizen in a state of confusion and potential anxiety.

The other major danger is that an unscrupulous executive will use this nearly endless arsenal of criminal offenses to target political foes or vulnerable communities. In a free society, anything that is not specifically prohibited is allowed to you. That is what it means to live in a free society. In an authoritarian society, anything that is not specifically allowed to the population is considered prohibited and a danger to the government.

Mr. Speaker, the proliferation of endless criminal offenses moves us down that spectrum from being a free society much closer to an authoritarian society. We all have a right to know exactly what the criminal law entails at the Federal level.

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

The terrorist atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel on October 7, which took the lives of more than 1,200 innocent civilians, and the subsequent war of mass destruction in Gaza, have been nothing less than a catastrophe for humanity.

More than 70,000 people have been killed to date, including an estimated 20,000 children. Hostages kidnapped by Hamas were abused, shackled in cages, and isolated in underground tunnels--in some cases, for more than 2 years. Many were killed there.

According to UNICEF, the Gaza Strip is now home to the world's highest concentration of child amputees. More than 80 percent of buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed in the violence.

The world breathed a sigh of relief that a tenuous cease-fire was finally reached and that all the living hostages were returned home. Alas, the cease-fire continues to be breached. Violence and suffering continue to afflict the people of the region, including escalating vigilante settler violence in the West Bank.

Getting to a just and lasting peace in the region will require the creative leadership and hard work of statesmen and stateswomen. It is past time to break out of the brutal and circular logic of terrorism and violence and war and instead address the underlying political problems destabilizing the region. We must stay united around these goals and committed to the continuation of a strong peace process.

Madam Speaker, in the meantime, we must all agree to the aim of this bill, which passed the House with bipartisan support in the last Congress. No one affiliated with Hamas, nor anyone involved in the horrific and lawless attacks of October 7, should be admissible to the United States or eligible for any immigration benefits whatsoever. That is an obvious point of political and moral consensus in our Chamber.

However, I am afraid this is another missed opportunity for us to work across the aisle in a bipartisan fashion because it departs dramatically from the Judiciary Committee's traditional practice. This bill is essentially what we call a visa sanctions bill. For decades, we have relied on pre-negotiated, bipartisan, and bicameral texts for every such visa sanctions bill. This legislation today departs from this bipartisan practice by directly amending the Immigration and Nationality Act, the INA, to impose visa sanctions.

To put into perspective just how anomalous this approach is, consider our response to the 9/11 attacks. In the aftermath of that catastrophe, we revised our immigration laws to overhaul significant parts of our immigration system, and we created the Department of Homeland Security. Even then, we did not amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to specifically reference the events of September 11 or to bar the individuals involved in the planning or commission of those outrageous terror attacks from entering or remaining in the United States.

The reason for that is plain. The laws that we have in place already bar noncitizens who engage in terrorism or are involved with terrorist organizations from entering the United States. For any of those noncitizens who happen to be here, our laws clearly allow us to remove them and prevent them from obtaining any immigration benefits.

These laws were designed to apply broadly to any individual or organization engaged in terrorism without having to specify them by reference to specific historical events or attacks.

Under sections 212(a)(3)(B) and 237(a)(4)(B) of the INA, any noncitizen who has engaged in any terrorist activity, provided any material support to terrorists, or is a member or representative of a terrorist group or organization that enforces or espouses terrorist activity is presently inadmissible to the United States and is presently deportable. Hamas has been designated as such a terrorist group since 1997.

We already plainly have the legal tools to keep any noncitizen involved with Hamas, as well as any noncitizen who was involved in the horrific terror attacks of October 7, out of this country forever or to deport them from the United States if they are already somehow here.

This approach is, alas, symptomatic of the syndrome we just discussed in the last bill of the proliferation of redundant legislation and redundant language simply to make a point.

The Judiciary Committee's standard visa sanctions language, which was carefully crafted with the majority and minority on both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, would allow us to achieve all the aims of this legislation without departing from negotiated sanctions language and amending the INA in an unprecedented and incongruous way.

Amending the INA to impose visa sanctions sets a strange and potentially self-defeating precedent where new statutory language becomes necessary every time a new terrorist group or event emerges.

Nonetheless, we strongly support this legislation today, whose purpose is incontestable and essential. I hope we can both pass this bill and return to our bipartisan and bicameral practice for dealing with visa sanctions whenever the occasion presents itself.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, again, we restate our support for this bill and its purposes and only hope that we can return to the traditional visa sanctions method of dealing with particular events. In the meantime, I wonder if the gentleman would yield for a question.

I wonder how this legislation with the new language would apply to the case of Changpeng Zhao, the former CEO of the crypto firm Binance, who was prosecuted for and convicted of and sentenced to jail for taking money from a number of terrorist groups, among them Hamas, as part of his crypto venture. He was convicted of violating the Bank Secrecy Act and turning a blind eye to terrorists, including Hamas, cybercriminals, and child abusers.

I am wondering if the new language would cover Changpeng Zhao, who just

received a pardon from President Trump.

Madam Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I am prepared to close.

Madam Speaker, again, I strongly support this legislation. We need to be doing whatever we can to eliminate terrorist forces and those who are providing critical material support to terrorist forces all over the world, which is why I raised the case of Changpeng Zhao, who is the former CEO of the crypto firm Binance, who was recently pardoned by President Trump.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of S. 616, the Foundation of the Federal Bar Association Charter Amendments Act of 2025.

I was proud to lead this bill, along with our former colleague, Congressman Steve Chabot, in the 117th Congress when the bill passed the House by unanimous consent. Sadly, the bill stalled in the Senate at that time.

However, I am delighted to see that our colleagues across the Capitol were finally able to come to an agreement this Congress and move this important legislation.

S. 616 makes technical changes to the Foundation of the Federal Bar Association's charter that will give the foundation the flexibility it needs to advance its significant mission in this century.

The changes made would enable the foundation to swiftly meet the needs and priorities of the organization and improve the administration of Federal justice for all of our citizens.

It is critical for attorneys who practice in the Federal judiciary to have the professional support that they need to illuminate the legal issues that they are litigating on and to advance the interests of their clients.

The Foundation of the Federal Bar Association provides just that support, and it is crucial that the foundation be allowed to grow and to serve our people with flexibility.

I thank our colleagues Senator Kennedy and Senator Whitehouse for working together to get this bill finally across the finish line. I urge all of our colleagues to support it, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose this cynical and silly resolution. I am not a socialist myself, but a Tom Payne Democrat, a champion of strong democracy, universal freedom, and equal rights for everybody, but this resolution is ridiculous.

From its first paragraph, it promotes the fallacy that socialist ideology leads

to social collapse. In fact, many of our strongest democratic allies on Earth, including Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and Finland, lead strong, democratic socialist governments and thriving societies and economies. Yet, House Republicans base their entire resolution on this falsehood and advance a false equation between democratic socialism and Communist dictatorship, a preposterous assertion that contaminates the entire resolution.

The resolution even tries to conscript to these ideological deceptions the words of Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, enlightenment liberals who lived long before socialist ideology even existed and would detest the fanatical, theocratic politics of the MAGA movement and the plutocratic billionaires and plundering CEOs who are running these things behind the curtains.

Thomas Jefferson is quoted embarrassingly in this resolution for the proposition that to take property from one to give to another is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association. This is a bizarre argument, not only because Thomas Jefferson died in 1826, a decade before the word ``socialism'' even existed and was in common use, but it is also bizarre because Jefferson shamefully owned more than 600 enslaved people over the course of his lifetime. Whatever his many other virtues, and he had many, his entire livelihood was based on appropriating the labor of other people against their will and stealing their property that they should have had in their own bodies and in their own lives.

The resolution is completely disoriented. It plainly feeds into the decades-long Republican obsession with labeling the great programmatic achievements of American democracy as socialism, including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, public education, and public health measures in the Affordable Care Act.

By defining essential, democratic public programs as socialist, and in claiming that socialism inevitably leads to Stalinist communism and social collapse, these plutocrat Republicans are plainly working to undermine the living standards of the working-class majority of America and rip up the social fabric of the country.

Meantime, President Trump's heroes and best friends in the world are Communist dictators.

If House Republicans really want to oppose the promotion of socialist ideology, why don't they write a letter to President Trump and condemn his worship and admiration of Stalinist dictator Kim Jong-un of North Korea? He said they have a ``unique'' relationship and a very ``special friendship.''

Former KGB officer Vladimir Putin thinks that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe of the 21st century. Of him, Trump said, ``Putin, very smart,'' and, ``Will he become my new best friend?''

What about the chief of the Chinese Communist Party, President Xi? Trump described him as a ``brilliant man,'' and that he has ``the look, the brain, the whole thing.'' President Trump has no problem with the actual horrors of communism today, like the Chinese Government's massive human rights violations against the Uyghurs, Tibetans, and political dissenters in their country. ``He's a brilliant guy,'' and, ``He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.''

How about Vladimir Putin's persecution and poisoning of human rights and anticorruption activists like Alexei Navalny? Of him, Trump said: ``I don't know exactly what happened. . . . We haven't had any proof yet, but I will take a look.''

I am voting ``no'' on this pathetic, disorienting resolution, which is divorced from reality and drenched in rightwing ideology. It will only serve to accelerate MAGA's attempts to defund the essential social programs that are central to American democracy and that were built by the American people, like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, which they call socialism but which serve our people.

Mr. Speaker, Mohammed bin Salman's visit to Washington this week has been a disgrace to American democracy.

The President of the United States scolded a reporter as insubordinate and then tried to explain away bin Salman's central role in the grisly murder of Jamal Khashoggi, The Washington Post journalist, who was ambushed in Istanbul, strangled, drawn and quartered, and dismembered by bin Salman's 15-member security detail, according to U.S. intelligence.

Mr. Speaker, our Constitution overthrew kings. It opposes cruel and unusual punishment. It bans titles of nobility, and yet the President's foolish actions will embolden vicious monarchs, autocrats, and theocrats all over the world.

This warm welcome dishonors the Constitution and the American people. We must be doing a lot better than this.