Laura Friedman

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of my bill to designate the United States Postal Service facility on San Fernando Road in Glendale, California, as the Paul Ignatius Post Office.

Let me start by thanking my colleagues for bringing this legislation to the floor and giving us the opportunity to come together, set aside our differences, and honor a truly outstanding American.

Paul Ignatius was born in Glendale in 1920 to Armenian immigrant parents who escaped horrific persecution and genocide overseas. They put down roots on San Fernando Road, the same street where, as a young man, Paul clerked at the post office that will carry his name should this bill pass.

Paul went on to answer the call in World War II as a naval officer and served 8 years across two Presidential administrations as Assistant Secretary of the Army, Under Secretary of the Army, Assistant Secretary of Defense, and, ultimately, as Secretary of the Navy.

He earned too many awards to list here today, but they include the Army, Navy, and Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Awards. The Navy named a guided-missile destroyer after him, the USS Paul Ignatius.

After serving our Nation in the military, he went home and kept giving back to his community well past his 100th birthday. Sadly, he passed away last fall at the age of 104.

As we approach our Nation's 250th anniversary, I keep coming back to his story, the son of Armenian immigrants who fled persecution and built a new life in this country, who answered the call to serve under Presidents of both parties, and who went home and continued giving back to their community until the very end.

He is the kind of American we should all aspire to be.

There is a reason this legislation has brought together the California delegation, Democrats, Republicans, and an Independent, because there is nothing partisan about honoring a patriot like Paul Ignatius. It is simply the right thing for us all to do.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues again for their support, and I urge passage of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow marks the 111th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the systematic murder of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire. For more than a century, that truth was denied.

I represent California's 30th District, home to the largest Armenian- American community outside of Armenia. For my constituents, this anniversary is not history. It is living memory. It is their friends and family.

Unfortunately, aggression against Armenians is happening again. More than 120,000 Armenians have been ethnically cleansed from Artsakh, their ancestral homeland, and 23 prisoners remain unjustly detained in Azerbaijan. Sacred cultural and religious sites are being destroyed. These are sites that I had the honor of visiting several years ago.

Today, I recommit to fighting to demand the release of every Armenian prisoner of war, the end of military aid to Azerbaijan, and the right of displaced Artsakh families to return home to their lands. I will fight to protect Armenia from ongoing threats from Turkiye and Azerbaijan.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to mark this solemn occasion.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member Morelle for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this so-called SAVE Act, a bill that is a modern-day poll tax targeting American women and low- income Americans.

This bill bans voter ID. It bans using driver's licenses as a voter ID unless they are backed by additional proof of citizenship, a requirement that excludes nearly all driver's licenses and REAL IDs issued today.

For women who have changed their names, often through marriage, this means showing a passport or a birth certificate that may not match their legal name. That would have meant that my grandmother, who had long since lost her birth certificate, would have been ineligible to vote under this bill.

In California alone, that would include more than 7 million women. This would force those women to pay $130 just to get the passport they need to vote. With nearly a third of Californians lacking passports, this bill would cost them more than $1.25 billion statewide.

If you have to pay to vote, that is called a poll tax, plain and simple. It is also unnecessary red tape for people just trying to cast a ballot.

This is a bill in search of a problem. We have enough trouble getting American citizens to vote.