Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, back in high school when I was a senior at a pregame warm-up at Carthage, I had my hands under the center about to take a snap, throw a pass--the manager had my helmet--I am looking at the split end, and the manager yelled, Louie, and I looked up in time to have my nose splattered all over my face.

That is what this warning will be. It is not going to stop violence. It is just going to say, look, we have got more violence.

Let's talk about what it really is. The truth is, these cities with the most violence in America--and there are already 1,400 warning systems that will already take care of this, but, apparently, we need more help in the big cities controlled by Democrats.

We are not going to lower the crime rate. I have spent much of my adult life in courtrooms dealing with crime. I am familiar with what causes it, what happens. My heart has gone out repeatedly to victims, but you have got to reduce crime.

How can we do that? We have brought up repeatedly in committee over the years, 17 and a half years I have been here, look, let's go to the heart of what is causing the crime.

I saw a recent report that said fatherlessness definitely is affecting the crime. It definitely is affecting the violence. It is increasing the violence.

We have always had guns, but we haven't had mass shootings like this, mass killings. The culture has changed. Then we see this administration is going to help deal with problems around the world by giving grants to groups that will promote atheism and humanism. As if we are not doing enough damage. Because as Adam said, this Constitution was meant for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the governing of any other.

If we want to deal with shooters, don't take away guns from law- abiding people. Look where the mass shootings are. They like to go where there is nobody law-abiding that has a gun.

And what about the border? The border has drugs pouring across, drugs that have added tens of billions a year to the drug cartels that engage in violence and are now located in cities all over America.

So I would just submit, you know, this is going to be, if it is passed--and the Democrats have the majority. They have the White House. They have the Senate. If it passes, you know, it is going to be in the big cities.

They are not going to reduce their crime. So I would suggest if they are going to be going 24/7, at least get some nice music on there so maybe that will be soothing. Maybe some good Paul Williams songs, because it is not going to stop crime. Maybe some good music will make people feel better.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to section 3(s) of House Resolution 8, the yeas and nays are ordered.

Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further proceedings on this question are postponed.

Amendment No. 81 Offered by Ms. Speier

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

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

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

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to section 3(s) of House Resolution 8, the yeas and nays are ordered.

Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further proceedings on this question are postponed.

Amendment No. 391 Offered by Mr. Keating

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

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Rutherford), my friend.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments. I know my friend mentioned he had been a sheriff. He has great expertise in knowing what he is talking about, and I appreciate his insights as a lawman.

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure and honor to yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Arrington), ambassador from Texas Tech University, where their slogan is ``Guns Up,'' not because they are violent, but I have always taken it to mean they were ready to preserve and protect if the need arose.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the wise observations of my friend from Texas. I couldn't have asked for a better lead-in to the thoughts that I have on this very issue. Mr. Arrington had some great insights.

I have an article here from, of all things, ABC News. Above the name of the author, Bill Hutchinson, is a quote from a police official saying: ``It is worse than a war zone around here lately.''

The article says: ``At least 12 major U.S. cities have broken annual homicide records in 2021--and there is still 3 weeks to go in the year.'' This is from December 8, 2021. This article became more relevant because of the horrors that occurred in Uvalde.

Another quote, from Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney: ``It is terrible to every morning get up and have to go look at the numbers and then look at the news and see the stories. It is just crazy. It is just crazy, and this needs to stop.'' He said that after the city surpassed its annual homicide record of 500, which had stood since 1990.

``Philadelphia, a city of roughly 1.5 million people, has had more homicides this year''--this is 2021--``(521 as of December 6) than the Nation's two largest cities, New York (443 as of December 5) and Los Angeles (352 as of November 27). That is an increase of 13 percent from 2020, a year that nearly broke the 1990 record.''

The article goes on and talks about all these shootings in our major cities. In fact, these aren't considered mass shootings. They don't meet that definition as commonly used.

From worldpopulationreview.com, the top 10 cities in the United States with the highest murder rates--and that is murders per 100,000 people--number one is St. Louis; number two, Baltimore; number three, New Orleans; number four, Detroit; number five, Cleveland; number six, Las Vegas; number seven, Kansas City; number eight, Memphis; number nine, Newark; and number 10, Chicago.

Now, all of those cities have Democrat mayors. Las Vegas has an independent who was a Democrat until 2009 when he announced now being an Independent.

We also, in 2021, had 16 cities hit record-high homicide rates. Again, rates normally are calculated in murders per 100,000 people. Rochester, New York, had 80. Philadelphia had 524. Louisville, Kentucky, had 179. Baton Rouge had 115. That was an unofficial number but, apparently, accurate or close to accurate. Austin had 88. Indianapolis had 258. St. Paul had 35. Portland, Oregon, had 84. Albuquerque had 107. Tucson had 92. Columbus had 179. Jackson, Mississippi, had 129. Atlanta, Georgia, had 150. New Haven, Connecticut, had 25, which is a tremendous number for a small city. Macon, Georgia, had 52. Milwaukee had 190.

Additional cities with high homicide rates, naturally, Chicago had 797 homicides in 1 year, yet Mayor Lightfoot, prominent Democrat that she is, doesn't want to get to the root causes of that.

Black lives matter. There is absolutely an inordinate number of Black lives that are taken in these Democrat-controlled cities.

New York, New York had 481. It is just tragic what has gone on. So what is different? We have had guns in America. In fact, not only have we had them from our founding, if it were not for guns in America we would not have had a founding, starting perhaps with Lexington Green.

People in America had guns and they defended themselves and they defended their liberty. That is how we came to have what I believe is the greatest country in the history of the world. I know there are a lot of schools that are teaching how terrible this country is, but I hear over and over from people that come here to the United States from other countries, and they say: You have got to protect your freedom because if you lose your liberty, your freedom here in America, there will be nowhere else in the world anyone can go to be free.

Historically, countries don't go fight for other people's freedom, yet, this country has. We fought the bloodiest war with the biggest loss of life here on our own soil for the freedom of people who were slaves. Yes, I know States' rights were a big part, but let's face it, slavery was at the bottom of it all.

Countries don't do that. This one did. You even had the Founders do something that Founders don't do historically. They condemned themselves in their own founding documents by saying all men are created equal, they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.

Thomas Jefferson himself put the grievance in the declaration. There was disagreement on it. Here he was a slave owner, yet, the most offensive, longest paragraph of the grievances was because King George had allowed slavery to ever start. The problem, or the wrong, that was being done through that institution, it was wrong. Yes, I know it has always been here on Earth.

As I understand, there may be 40 million or more people in slavery right now today in our modern world, but it doesn't make it right anywhere and it needs to stop. This country had people who were Founders that condemned themselves by putting that language in there because they knew what was right.

This is an unusual country. I know Solomon's Israel was an absolutely amazing place, supposedly the wisest man to ever live. Of course, he had so many wives and that creates problems. More opportunities. More liberty here than anywhere. Yet, we have spent the week hearing over and over about the need for gun control.

The first time I was asked if I supported gun control years ago, I said: Well, of course I do. We were taught in the Army that the most effective gun control back then was--I believe there were eight steady hold factors--which was the best way to control your gun while firing-- the steady hold factors were taught.

They don't teach that in the Army anymore, as I understand it. Kids have grown up around guns in America and we didn't have mass shootings. There is something going on here. I know I was condemned roundly this week, yesterday, talking about--we had friends across the aisle who made clear they didn't want to hear any more about prayer. They wanted to do something. They didn't seem to care if it was wrong. They wanted to do something.

Well, John Lott, Jr., had this article on May 26 in Newsweek. I am just touching on certain parts.

He said: ``Just as with so many of these attackers''--talking about the shooter in Uvalde--``the man who attacked Robb Elementary School picked

a place where people were banned from carrying concealed handguns. For example, the perpetrator of the Buffalo shooting from a couple of weeks ago wrote in his manifesto: `Areas where' carrying with a concealed weapon `are outlawed or prohibited may be good areas of attack.' ''

He put that in the manifesto in case people just were too dense to understand that it draws shooters if they know they have got soft targets.

John Lott says: ``Teachers and staff can carry concealed handguns in about 30 percent of Texas school districts, so we don't need to guess how the policy would work. Nineteen other States also allow concealed carry in schools. Since the year 2000, there has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting, let alone a mass public shooting, between 6 a.m. and midnight at a school that lets teachers carry guns.

``While there have not been any problems with armed teachers, the number of people killed at schools without concealed carry has increased significantly over the course of the last decade.

``Biden's speech Tuesday night contained one misleading or false statement after another. Instead of trying to bring the country together, it politicized the attack. When mentioning the Sandy Hook, Parkland, Santa Fe, and Oxford school shootings, Biden claimed that there were 900 instances of gunfire at schools over the last 10 years. But someone committing suicide in a car parking lot at 2 a.m., two gangs fighting over drug turf in a parking lot after school hours, and an accidental discharge in a firearms training class are not remotely similar to the sort of shooting that happened Tuesday. Even including lone suicides, accidental discharges, including those by police, and gang fights, the number--as compiled by my organization, the Crime Prevention Research Center, is about half of what Biden claims it is: 470.

``Since 1998, there have been a total of nine attacks similar to the Robb Elementary School shooting. Nine is nine too many. But once you adjust for population, there are many other countries, from Germany to Russia to Finland, that have comparable rates of school shootings.

``Biden says that we need commonsense gun laws, but what he proposes simply will not help. He doesn't seem to realize that over 92 percent of violent crime in America has nothing to do with guns. Focusing on so-called `assault weapons' is not only not going to stop mass public shootings, but it won't make a difference in reducing murders at large.

Madam Speaker, one murder is too many.

``Only a small share of murders are committed with rifles, let alone `assault rifles,' and that share has grown even smaller over time. The percentage of firearm murders committed with rifles was 4.8 percent prior to the Federal `assault weapons' ban that took effect in September 1994.

``When the ban was in effect, from 1995 to 2004, the figure stood at 4.9 percent.'' Up a tenth of a percent with the so-called assault weapons ban in effect. ``And since 2004, it's been even lower. Based on these numbers, it's hard to argue that the ban did anything at all.

`` `When we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down. When the law expired, mass shootings tripled,' Biden claimed. In fact, there was no drop in the number of attacks with `assault weapons,' and virtually no change in total mass shootings, during the 1994 to 2004 ban.''

We know from the rules of the House--I can't say anybody lied, including the President, but whoever is putting those words in his teleprompter sure was because that just didn't happen, it misrepresented the truth--I am sure not intentionally.

``Biden asked Americans why people need `assault weapons' to hunt deer. But, in reality, many so-called `assault weapons' are nothing more than small-game hunting rifles. The AR-15 platform has just been made to cosmetically resemble a military-grade weapon.''

For people that know weapons, it fires a .223 round. It is just 3/ 1000ths bigger around than a .22.

We were taught in military science--and I had an Army scholarship at Texas A&M--that Vietnam had gone to the M-16, now the M-4, same basic gun. It fires the same size round--or in the metric system, 556. We were taught that, gee, it is a higher speed, but the rounds are lighter weight, therefore, our military can carry more of them. We were also taught it certainly is not more lethal than what was being used before with the 7.62 round.

John Lott says, ``The Uvalde tragedy will inevitably lead to a push for so-called `red flag' laws or extreme risk protection orders. You would never know this from the media coverage, but the Federal Government and every State already have laws on the books that deal with people who are a danger to themselves or to others. These laws are commonly known as `Baker Act' statutes, though they go by different names in different States. They typically allow police, doctors, and family members to have someone held for a mental health examination based upon a simple reasonableness test--effectively amounting to an educated guess.''

Further down: ``When faced with legal bills that can easily amount to $10,000 for a hearing, few people find that it makes sense to fight `red flag' laws just to keep their guns. Judges will thus initially confiscate a person's gun on the basis of a written complaint and `reasonable suspicion.' When hearings take place weeks later, courts overturn a third of the initial orders. But since few defendants have legal representation, the actual error rate is undoubtedly much higher.

``When people pose a clear danger to themselves or to others, they should be confined to a mental health facility. If someone is really suicidal, simply taking away his gun won't solve the problem anyway. If anything, `red flag' laws harm people who need genuine help; absent such laws, a person contemplating suicide might speak to a friend or family member and be dissuaded from that tragic course of action.

``It is well past time that we address these mass public shootings. But let's come up with proposals that matter--starting with eliminating `gun-free zones'.''

It also is worth noting, although some say assault weapon bans would reduce mass shootings and they think an assault weapon would be an automatic weapon--you hear that over and over, Madam Speaker. Actually, automatic weapons are already illegal and unavailable to the general public. Assault weapons are only available to the military. Though you have people who are vying for gigs on CNN or MSNBC who may say otherwise, but people who actually are not don't have an ulterior motive. They know an AR-15 is most often used as a defensive weapon.

I have heard why more people like an AR-15 with such a small round as a defensive weapon at home is people who don't fire weapons often end up twitching before the gun is fired which is extremely harmful to the accuracy. The AR-15, because the round is so small, it doesn't have much of a kick at all, and so people who are not used to using guns actually can be more accurate and find it more helpful.

We have people here saying that you shouldn't have more than five rounds. Yet, if you have multiple people coming into your home threatening your family, Madam Speaker, and they will each have guns most likely, then you need that.

Of course, I had a guy last time, some years back, when there was talk by Democrats about eliminating or making illegal multiple rounds in a magazine, and I had a guy over in the Rayburn Building who told me, I know you all are looking at banning multiple rounds in magazines. I am from Georgia. We don't want that because we find that, generally speaking, it takes over 50 rounds to bring down a drone.

I thought he was kidding, but he didn't smile. So that was news to me. That is the only time I have heard that request for multiple rounds in a magazine.

But the ``Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994 to 2003,'' the Department of Justice concluded this: ``Should it be renewed, the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement. Assault weapons were rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban.''

According to recent data from the FBI between 2015 and 2019, you were twice as likely to be killed by hands or feet than you are to be killed by a rifle.

That is really amazing and shocking.

Our society, if you go back to a Supreme Court case in the late 1800s, they reviewed pages and pages of evidence and said that they didn't think there was any question that the United States was a Christian nation--not that everybody in the United States was a Christian, of course not, never has been. But that Christian and Judeo- Christian principles had a major effect on our founding and on the country up through those times.

I would agree with President Obama when he said we are not a Christian nation. I think the Supreme Court was right back in the late 1800s, and I think President Obama was right when he said that we are not now.

So what is the answer?

What is amazing to me is we have people deeply concerned--and I have friends across the aisle, I know their heart, and I know how desperately concerned they are about these shootings, and they want to stop them.

But if you look at the data, Madam Speaker, and you look at the cold, hard facts, the number one State in the Nation for gun control laws is California.

This article is from AWR Hawkins from June 5, 2022:

``An FBI report on active shooter incidents in 2021 shows that California was the number one State for such incidents, with six incidents total.

California is also number one for gun law strength, the Mike Bloomberg-affiliated Everytown for Gun Safety noted.

According to the FBI, there were 61 `active shooter incidents' across the country in 2021 and 12 of the incidents met the definition `of mass killing'.''

Madam Speaker, California--where our Speaker is from--led the Nation with six of those 12 active shooter incidents:

California has universal background checks, an assault

weapons ban, a high-capacity magazine ban, a 10-day waiting

period on gun purchases, they have got the red flag laws, gun

registration requirements, good cause requirements for

concealed carry, a ban on carrying a gun on a college campus

for self-defense, a ban on K-12 teachers being armed on

campus, a background check requirement for ammunition

purchases, and a limit on the number of guns a law-abiding

citizen can purchase in a given month, among other controls.

Additionally, ammunition purchases are only allowed if made

through a State-approved vendor.

Yet, as a friend mentioned at the beginning of our hour here, Madam Speaker, you have got more shootings in Mexico.

As this article from ``American Wire'' by Melissa Fine indicates that: ``According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, retailer surveys revealed a 58 percent increase in gun sales to African Americans, a 49 percent increase among Hispanic Americans, and firearm sales to Asian Americans jumped by 43 percent.''

According to this article there is a guy named Juan Ramireo, who immigrated from Mexico as a teenager, said: ``As a Mexican immigrant, I feel that people are waking up.''

Ramireo, who legally immigrated to the United States when he was 13, said, The Second Amendment is a large reason why people feel safer here in the U.S. and in their homes at night. He said that as a kid--of course, living in Mexico--he knew what it was like to feel helpless. Nobody wants that feeling.

He said, ``I saw my mom and grandmother go through several struggles and feelings of fear in our small Mexican town. It was difficult. But after moving here to the U.S., it's a new world. I go to bed with no worry about defending myself and my family.''

That is because he and his family have guns.

So what makes a difference?

We heard in our hearing in the Judiciary Committee from some Democrats that they didn't want to attribute any effect to social media. They didn't want us to attribute any effect to violent video games or to Hollywood or to mental illness or to godlessness or to fatherlessness or to drug use.

Yet we need to talk about these things. We really need to talk about these things.

We were told that they didn't want to hear anything more about prayers. And I know some media has made a big deal of that. But the fact is before prayers were eliminated in schools we didn't have the kind of mass shootings we do today.

I read a quote from a man named A.A. Hodge who was the principal of the Princeton Seminary and a professor of systematic theology back before the turn of the century of 1900. In fact, it was a few months before his death in 1886. Jim Garlow had quoted Reverend Hodge.

He warned a few months before his death, ``I am as sure as I am of the fact of Christ's reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.''

George Orwell commented, ``Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.'' He said, ``The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.''

I am getting a lot of hate.

``The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.''

We are getting a lot of that in this country: eliminate our history, lie about our history, and tear down our history and our statues.

When the truth is you learn from good history and you learn from bad history, Madam Speaker, and if you don't get all of it or you get inaccurate history, you don't learn anything accurate.

Orwell said, ``Free speech is my right to say what you don't want to hear.''

He said, ``In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.''

But as he talked about history and the ministry of truth that rewrote history every day like a disinformation board, he said, ``The past was erased, the erasure forgotten, and the lie became the truth.''

We have seen a lot of that and not from Republicans.

Orwell said, ``So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.''

He said, ``Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.''

He said, ``Whoever controls the image and information of the past determines what and how future generations will think; whoever controls the information and images of the present determines how those same people will view the past.

``He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past.''

Orwell defined journalism as ``printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.''

We have got a lot of public relations in this town.

From the Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had an interesting quote. He said, ``Remember Lenin's words: `An oppressed class which did not aspire to possess arms and learn how to handle them would deserve only to be treated as slaves.' ''

That is Lenin. And the system he created in the Soviet Union resulted in the second most murders by a government in the history of the world, second only to Mao Tse Tung in China.

Whitaker Chambers--I waited too many years to read his book, Witness. But he says--because he did a lot of analysis. He was an atheist. He had had a troubled family life and loved the idea of communism; but eventually saw what communism really was and decided he didn't want any of it; eventually became a Christian.

But he said: `` . . . the moment man indulged his freedom to the point where he was also free from God, it led him into tragedy, evil and often the exact opposite of what he had intended. In human terms, there was no solution for the problem of evil.''

He said: `` . . . the crisis of the Western world exists to the degree it is indifferent to God. It exists to the degree

in which the Western world actually shares communism's materialist vision, is so dazzled by the logic of the materialist interpretation of history, politics, and economics, that it fails to grasp that, for it, the only possible answer to the Communist challenge is to choose either faith in God or faith in man.''

Well, what Lenin had to say about that issue, he said, ``Every religious idea of God, even flirting with the idea of God, is unutterable vileness.'' And that came after Dostoyevsky analyzed what this crazy guy named Marx had to say. And Dostoyevsky took great issue with it. And at one point, he said: ``The problem''--Dostoyevsky--``The problem of communism is not an economic problem.'' Of course, some of us know it is an economic problem. But his point is it is not the biggest problem.

He said, ``The problem of communism is the problem of atheism.''

And back during the summer I was an exchange student to the real Soviet Union in the seventies, it was nauseating to walk into a church, and where you would have seen a gorgeous stained glass window of Jesus--I remember one came in, and I have seen a picture depicting Jesus surrounded by the children where he--the quote was: ``Suffer the little children to come unto me,'' except it was Lenin sitting there with the children around him. They had destroyed the stained glass window of Jesus and had Lenin; which goes back to what Dostoyevsky had to say, the problem of communism, socialism, progressivism, the big problem is ultimately government has got to be God; and that doesn't work out well.

Natan Sharansky, an amazing man, he said: ``A lack of moral clarity . . . is why people living in free societies cannot distinguish between religious fundamentalists in democratic states and religious terrorists in fundamentalist states. That is why people living in free societies can come to see their fellow citizens as their enemy and foreign dictators as their friends.'' A lack of moral clarity. And that is not being taught in too many of our schools.

Ronald Reagan told the Alabama Legislature in 1982: ``To those who cite the First Amendment as reason for excluding God from more and more of our institutions and everyday life, may I just say: The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny.''

John Adams said, ``The general principles on which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.'' He wrote this to Thomas Jefferson toward the end of his life.

Adams said, ``I will avow, that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable, as the existence and attributes of God.''

And I have gotten mail before saying, How dare you bring these things up on the House floor? Because people are not taught our history. The fact is, the Bible has been quoted more times--many, many times more than any other book throughout our history, but it is quoted less and less these days. We have got our work cut out for us.

But it appears the Supreme Court is starting to understand, for them to become oligarchs, monarchs, and rule from Mt. Olympus across the street here, is not the best way to decide things better left for the legislature, after a great debate. And that is what we need to do.

And we really need to look at what is different now than when we didn't have mass shootings like we do now. And I think we will come to the things that Natan Sharansky, Whitaker Chambers, Dostoyevsky, John Adams, Ronald Reagan, and so many of our founders understood.

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

Madam Speaker, it has been difficult in debate last week and even today to be told that we have no courage. We were told in debate last week: We don't want to hear anymore about social media, violent video games, Hollywood, mental illness. And

they sure don't want to hear any more about prayers. They are disgusted hearing about prayers. They don't want to hear any more about fatherlessness and drug use.

Maybe if we heard more prayers from leaders of this country instead of taking God's name in vain, we wouldn't have the mass killings like we didn't have before prayer was eliminated from school.

It is not like we are not willing to consider the best way to stop mass shootings, but if you look at the plans being proposed in these bills, you can find these things in cities controlled by Democrats.

If you look at the 16 cities that were hit with record homicide rates, they all had Democrats at the top controlling things: Philadelphia, 524 murders last year; Austin, Texas, had a record 88; Indianapolis, 258; Albuquerque, 107; Columbus, Ohio, 179; Jackson, Mississippi, 129; and Atlanta, Georgia, 150.

If you look at the Speaker's own State--as this article by AWR Hawkins said this week, an FBI report on active shooter incidents in 2021 shows California was the number one State for such incidents, with 6 incidents out of the 12 that met the definition of mass killing.

In California, universal background checks, assault weapons ban, high-capacity magazine ban, 10-day waiting period on gun purchases, red flag laws, gun registration requirements, good cause requirement for concealed carry--and what is the response we got in debate last week about? You ought to have due process. We are told: Oh, they get due process. Look at the bill.

What the Democrats call due process is just like the January 6th Committee. It is not due process. It is not bipartisan. They have only one side that is heard at the hearing. The people, when they want to take away your gun, they don't get to be there. The husband can rush in and claim the battered wife is a threat. That is enough to get her eliminated from being able to use a weapon or have a weapon.

These are not the ways to fix things. For people who are okay with late-term abortions and ripping the arms and legs off of children that feel the pain and then crushing the skulls, it is desensitizing.

Madam Speaker, it is not well received.

Mr. Speaker, this is truly an interesting time, which takes me back to the alleged Chinese curse that may you live in interesting times. Well, we are living in interesting times.

Growing up hearing the term ``pot calling the kettle black,'' it is a colloquialism. Another term, and I brought this up years ago here on the House floor, about gaslighting, we certainly seem to be experiencing some of that these days and have for some time.

But to have the Secretary of Homeland Security, who seems to be an intelligent person, come and testify under oath with a straight face that the border is secure and not be satisfied with that but refer to the Trump administration as having dismantled the immigration system, the ability to secure the border, when exactly the opposite is what was occurring and exactly the opposite of what is occurring now.

It is not secured. All you have to do is go look. I mean, it is incredible, but it is said so often, including by people on the committee of oversight for Border Patrol, the Judiciary Committee.

Having spent so much time down on the border, I like to be there late at night when there is an awful lot of movement normally across the border illegally, but I experienced under the most closed administration, the least forthcoming administration since I have been in Congress since January 2005. In fact, they zoomed up Border Patrol cars to prevent me from getting to the border to see how bad it was.

I was able to go around one night and get back to the border through the local park down south of McAllen, but that was no thanks to the Border Patrol that, in the past, most of them knew that I was their friend and asserted on their behalves because they were not being treated fairly and properly, especially during the Obama administration.

But it is important for any Member of Congress to be able to get to the border unimpeded. Now Secretary Mayorkas says he looked into it and couldn't find anyone who had ever directed that a Member of Congress, me in particular, was not to be allowed to get to the border.

So, I look forward to using his testimony under oath and seeing who now will try to prevent me from getting to the border.

They will let you go as long as you give them time to set up a dog- and-pony show and have time to restrict the area that they are going to allow you to see, but that is not the way you do oversight.

When I was a judge, I would just show up at a prison, a jail, a halfway house, different places. If I was going to send somebody to a place, I wanted to be able to see how they were being treated without warning.

I still think that is a good idea. Of course, we know the Washington, D.C., jail out east of town where so many January 6 defendants were being held, they wouldn't let us in, not to visit, not for any reason. It really has been astounding.

Marjorie Taylor Greene and I were finally allowed to get in there, and we hope to do that again soon because we are hearing more stories of abuse.

I got a letter in response from the U.S. marshal whom I asked to go do a health and safety visit regarding Ryan Nichols. As I understand the letter, they called over and got information from people who had deceived some of us before, and the U.S. marshal seemed quite satisfied with that without bothering to see for himself.

It is rather unfortunate because the U.S. marshal did an inspection last September or October, I believe it was October, and found that hundreds of the inmates were not being properly treated and needed to be transferred out. So, hopefully, the U.S. marshal will get back to doing the job of the U.S. marshal.

The law, the Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court for a couple of centuries, has made clear you are not allowed to punish people in pretrial confinement.

Just as the FISA court has shown no pride and no protection of their court and authority, they have demonstrated that they don't mind being lied to by lawyers. They don't mind having fraud upon the court because it is a secret star chamber.

I had hoped that when FISA judges found out they had been manipulated and lied to that they would have enough integrity that they would be upset about being lied to. But, apparently, because of the lack of contempt, the lack of show cause hearings as to why contempt was not appropriate, the lack of prosecution by the Department of Justice going after people within the justice system, I have come to the conclusion-- I hoped we could save the FISA court, but apparently, it does not appear that that is going to be possible.

Our Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has not had enough concern about lies being perpetuated, fraud being perpetuated on the FISA court, that he, as far as we know, has not done anything about that because certainly no one is punished, not even for perpetuating lies in order to spy on the campaign and even the Presidency after the person they were spying on and trying to prevent from winning the election won the election.

It is a very disturbing time for those of us who have spent much of our adult lives in the State and Federal justice system trying to see that justice was done. It is a very disturbing time.

Going back to the term ``gaslighting,'' we are told that we are crazy. We are making stuff up. I know with regard to the 2020 election, people continued to repeat the untruth that

there was no fraud in the 2020 election when most every election that has ever been did have fraud, did have improprieties. It is just a question of how much.

But it is John Fund that wrote a book on election fraud, quite good, some years back. As pointed out before, the biggest fraud about elections is saying there is no fraud in elections.

When Congress made the inappropriate step of mandating electronic voting back after the unfortunate situation in Florida, where even though fifth graders were shown to be able to utilize the butterfly ballots quite effectively, we had Democrat voters that were not able to figure them out. Perhaps another visit to fifth grade might have helped them before they voted.

That is why we were told we had to upend our election system in the United States and go to electronic voting. Many of us are hoping we will get back to paper ballots because we have seen, although people were gaslighting and saying: ``Oh, no, no. These machines do not connect to the internet.'' Then we find out that when there was a problem with a voting machine, they would contact one of the hired guys that would use their iPad, get on the internet, and fix a voting machine without actually being in its presence.

That is using the internet. Yet, we were gaslighted and told even though it was going on, it wasn't going on.

Just to remind people who are not familiar with the term ``gaslighting,'' I thought the 1944 movie with Ingrid Bergman is a great movie. I have watched it more than once. Her husband was making her think she was going crazy or was crazy when she wasn't at all. He was being evil. This from Medical News Today says: ``Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse where a person or group makes someone question their sanity, perception of reality, or memories. People experiencing gaslighting often feel confused, anxious, and unable to trust themselves.''

``The term `gaslighting' derives from the 1938 play and 1944 film ``Gaslight,'' in which a husband manipulates his wife into thinking she has a mental illness by dimming their gas-fueled lights and telling her she is hallucinating.''

The article goes on to give different examples. It says that gaslighting often develops gradually, making it difficult for a person to detect.

According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, techniques a person may use to gaslight someone include countering. Countering describes a person questioning someone's memories. They may say things such as: ``You never remember things accurately'' or ``Are you sure? You have a bad memory.''

Another technique is withholding. When someone withholds, they refuse to engage in a conversation. A person using this technique may pretend not to understand someone so that they do not have to respond to them. For example, they might say: ``I do not know what you are talking about'' or ``You are just trying to confuse me.'' I would submit that withholding can include when being asked for information, for evidence, that being withheld and in return being told: ``No, there is nothing there.''

It comes to mind back when Jeff Sessions was the Attorney General, some of us had concerns about a matter that needed to be investigated, and we knew that there was a person of integrity who had a notebook full of documentation, many of which documents could quite easily constitute an offense under Federal law. That was pointed out that, gee, this needs to be investigated; this person needs to be talked to.

Eventually, this incredibly competent person was contacted by an FBI agent, after the Secretary of the Department of Justice asked them to take a look. The FBI contacted her and told her to come for a visit and under no circumstances was she to bring her notebook that contained valuable evidence of apparent wrongdoing. When she arrived, she was grilled for 2 hours. She did as she was instructed by the FBI and didn't bring her notebook of documents.

Then when Secretary Sessions asked about the matter, he was told: ``Yeah, we looked into it. We talked to her. She didn't have anything.'' Well, that is a form of gaslighting. You direct a witness not to bring the documentation she has and then tell your boss: ``Yeah, we talked to her. She didn't have anything.'' Well, you told her not to bring the evidence.

So these kinds of things, unfortunately, still go on. I can't help but suspect that when Bill Barr said there was no fraud in the election, he was relying on people, like Jeff Sessions did, when he was lied to, because obviously Bill Barr didn't go out and do an investigation personally; he relied on people perhaps he should not have relied on.

How do we know that anybody at the FBI would lie? Well, we found out it was even done before a Federal judge or Federal judges. The other shoe is yet to drop on all of that.

But something has got to be done. We can't have a star chamber system where judges are lied to. Clearly, when the judges don't care--they have got lifetime appointments--that is one thing. But then when their adjudications, their hearings, are in secret, they have a layer of anonymity that protects them from being judged and ridiculed for either stupidity, naivety, or just dishonesty. Whatever it is, it is not right. That is why our court system was required to be public originally.

But as we see these fundamental foundational principles being removed in the last decades, recent decades, it ought to be a warning, it ought to be a red light flashing, bells going off, ``Danger, danger, Will Robinson.'' This is serious stuff, and it needs to be looked into.

According to this article, trivializing is another technique. This occurs when a person belittles or disregards the other person's feelings. They may accuse them of being too sensitive or of overreacting when they have valid concerns and feelings like, say, about an election.

Some of us who in this Chamber objected to electors exactly--well, almost exactly--like our Democrat friends did on January 6, 2001, January 6 of 2005, and 11 times on January 6 of 2017, so some of us felt like our Democrat friends understand there is nothing unconstitutional or criminal or illegal about coming into this Chamber and objecting.

Now, the difference was, the Democrats in 2017, January 6, 2017, as I recall, they didn't have a Senator to join the objection, which made them illegitimate. On some objections in 2021, we did have Senators; some we didn't. At least we had Senators join on some.

But we thought surely the Democrats, since they objected every time a Republican won since 2000, they would understand or would believe the legitimacy of raising an objection, yet they convinced so much of the American public that anybody that objected was guilty of sedition, treason, all kinds of crimes, which often is a mark--I have been a prosecutor and a felony judge. A lot of times when somebody who has done some activity accuses somebody else of having criminal intent when they do the same activity, it is evidence that they had criminal intent when they did that action.

Interestingly, I am still amazed that there are still people in this body that want to accuse those who objected--as Democrats have, like I say, in 2017, 11 times--accuse them of criminality. That is amazing. Perhaps that lends itself to being a form of gaslighting. We are crazy, we are criminal, because we did what they have done every time a Republican won in the last 20 years.

Another technique is denial. Denial involves a person pretending to forget events or how they occurred. Like when somebody says: ``No, we never do that; we never did that.'' Well, do you think we are crazy? It is in the Record. There is video. You can go online and find the video of it occurring.

There were objections by Democrats, which sure sounded to be spurious. But the meme that was going around was saying, What is the difference between criminal conspiracy and truth? The answer was: About 6 months. Well, that is inaccurate, because it has been about 18 months, and we are still discovering truth on some things that we are alleged to have been just crazy--a form of gaslighting--crazy, insurrectionist, criminal conspiracies. These people are insane that think there were any problems with the 2020 election.

The movie that Dinesh D'Souza and Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg had put together, worked on, ``2000 Mules,'' that is one technique of fraud that was utilized in the 2020 election. These are

things that ought to cause bipartisan research and effort to try to prevent if anybody is truly interested in having free and fair elections.

Another technique, according to this psychological article, is diverting. With this technique, a person changes the focus of a discussion and questions the other person's credibility instead. For example, they might say: ``That is just another crazy idea you got from your crazy friends.''

I keep hearing people making allegations against Clarence Thomas. I was speaking at an event where John Yoo also spoke. He clerked, as I understand, for Justice Clarence Thomas. I was quite pleased to hear him say what I believe is absolutely true, for anybody that cares to do their research, that Justice Clarence Thomas is one of the most intelligent judges to ever sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Yet, he is demeaned.

We had a hearing going on. A man named Mark Paoletta was testifying, and he mentioned that he believed the attacks on Justice Thomas were racist, because he is a Black person, an originalist regarding the Constitution, who appears to be conservative.

One of the Democrat members on the committee asked for any evidence whatsoever of any racist attacks on Clarence Thomas. The response was: ``Well, you just had a chairman call him an Uncle Tom. That is number one, but I have got tons more, even from this hearing.'' And he did, but he was cut off and not allowed to give further evidence of the racism being utilized against such a brilliant Justice on the Supreme Court because he happens to be Black and he happens to think for himself.

I mentioned this in our hearing, because I don't think people know his background. I was greatly intrigued and found it extremely interesting reading Clarence Thomas's autobiographical book ``My Grandfather's Son.''

He has been accused--I have heard him be accused many times of not being Black by people who don't know what it is to be poor and Black. Justice Thomas does. He lived with his mother, as I understood, I recall from the book, about 6 months in Atlanta, a horrendous time. But basically, he and his little brother were raised by their grandparents in Pin Point, Georgia, right on the coast.

Because they were on the coast, he pointed out, they had food, they could get greens that were called poke sallet. I don't like them, but they could always go out and pick poke sallet growing wild. Because they were right there on the coast, they could get fish or different type things, whether it was mussels or clams or fish, whatever, they were able to get a lot of food.

He was so smart, so intelligent, he got a scholarship to Holy Cross and then ultimately decided he wanted to go to law school, applied to Harvard. But I think it was half a day he was at Harvard, and as he thinks of himself, he was an angry, Black, radical, liberal, and he felt like Harvard was too conservative.

He felt like Harvard was too conservative, so he left and applied for Yale, and he liked Yale better because it was much more liberal, he felt like.

But he began to notice that liberals seemed to look down on him, that they didn't want to talk to him about anything but sports or oppression of Blacks in America, and he noticed that the two or three conservatives in the school were interested in his opinions on all kinds of things and would talk to him about things, and he began to notice and appreciate that.

In a discussion with one of the few conservatives that were talking about seatbelts, helmets, whether they should or shouldn't be mandatory, and he expressed the opinion that, gee, he felt like they just ought to have a law passed that required everybody to wear a seatbelt and everybody on a motorcycle to wear a helmet.

And the conservative, giving a more libertarian question, said, in effect, you have seen government used to oppress Blacks in America, why in the world would you ever want to give the government any more control over your life? That set him thinking. Eventually he began to realize, you know what, it is not a good idea to continue to give the government more and more power because it can be abused.

This is a man who thought for himself. But he also knew how intelligent he was, and it had to be a bit insulting to have people act like, gee, if it weren't for us liberals, you, as a much less intelligent Black, would never have even gotten to be in the school with me, whereas he knew the truth. He was there because he was a brilliant person, and he has not gotten credit for his consistency, for his intellect, for his integrity. It is constantly being demeaned, and they try to gaslight him. It hasn't worked.

Another technique is stereotyping. An article in American Sociological Review states that ``a person using gaslighting techniques may intentionally use negative stereotypes of a person's gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, or age to manipulate them. For example, they may tell a female that people will think she is irrational or crazy if she seeks help for abuse.''

As an assistant DA, I saw that, and it was amazing to me. I was a bit naive, but to see a woman bruised and battered, clearly beat up, we wanted to see her husband put in jail. Nobody should ever treat anybody--male, female, anybody--the way that some of these battered women got treated. And yet they would be gaslighted to the point that after the bruises and the abrasions went away, they would come back and say, ``I don't want to press charges.''

In one particular case, I said, ``This is not your choice. Under the law, we have the right to go after your husband because he clearly abused you, and it is going to keep continuing. We asked you when you came in, you know, do you promise you will not back off this time, you will let us go after your husband for this kind of abuse?'' And she had said, ``Absolutely,'' with her face all swollen, black and blue, scraped. It was horrendous.

And yet he worked on her psychologically. She eventually comes back and says, ``I want to withdraw the charges.'' We said, ``We have got the pictures. We are going to go ahead and press charges this time.'' ``Well, if you do, I am going to say that I was trying to kill him and he was just defending himself.'' The psychological abuse had worked, and it was just so heartbreaking. Usually they had been gaslighted to the point they thought they deserved it. Nobody deserved that. But we are seeing these same techniques being used today.

At this time, I yield to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko), my friend, for such time as she may utilize.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Arizona so much. I miss her on the Judiciary Committee because of the very type of insights that we just heard from her. I am grateful for her service, her intellect, her insights, and especially her pugnacious nature that did not cause her to back down, that caused her to stand up after being a victim herself.

I was approached by a lady in a store in Longview, Texas, an adjoining county to where I was a district judge, and she asked if I remembered her. I didn't. She never testified in court, but she said she was there in the courtroom when I sentenced her husband. She said she and her daughter had been abused year after year, and her husband had been arrested different times, but he was such a smooth salesman that he always convinced judges to give him a slap on the wrist and probation and be on his way. She said that I was the first judge in all those years to be able to see through her husband's great salesmanship and send him to prison.

There are a lot of things that aren't pleasant about being a judge or a justice, been that, too, but to have somebody say, ``You gave my daughter and me our lives, and we are doing great, and she is doing great, and she is going to go to a great college now,'' but you have got to be able to see through gaslighting. You have got to be able to see through lies and get to the facts.

Now, we are being told about what a terrible shortage of baby formula there is in this country; and there is. You go in the stores, the shelves have a tremendous shortage. We hear different excuses. But if you had a businessman like President Trump in the White House, when he would see a shortage of something that was needed, he would find out where the problem is. He would call the people that could do something about it, ``Hey, we have got to do something about this,'' and they would figure out a way to get something done about it, find out where the holdup was, where the problem was.

But, instead, when there seems to be a shortage or a problem, Republicans say, ``Hey, why aren't we doing something about the baby formula?'' This gaslighting technique is used. And then we find out not only is there a shortage in the store, but you just shipped truckloads of baby formula to the border, which acts as a draw to more illegal immigration, especially women with babies or parents with babies to come across and get the baby formula that is not being allowed to go to Americans and American citizens or people who are legally here.

The thought comes of the flights. Every week we are in session, flight up here, flight back, we sit through the same presentation over and over again by the flight attendants. Sometimes they do it live, sometimes they are just going through the motions and there is a tape playing, but they make very clear, if we have a problem like the fuselage depressurizing, the oxygen mask will drop down, and adults are to put the mask on themselves before they put it on the child, and the reason is rather simple, because if you are trying to put your child's mask on and you don't have oxygen, there is a good chance you will pass out, and then both you and your child will die. You get that on yourself, and then you will have the oxygen you need to think clearly, to make sure your child or children or those dependent upon you can get what they need.

When someone is determined not to provide help to Americans that you are sending all over the world, or you are sending as a lure to people to come in illegally--which we heard during our committee hearing: Yes, we do want to make these people into voters that are flooding in illegally. That was quite a revelation; although, we had suspected that for some time. But there are consequences to not taking care of the greatest, most philanthropic country in the history of the world that has done more for other people, other nations.

Yes, we have had our own problems, but no one has fought racism like was fought here. The most loss of life ever in any war was in the Civil War; over half a million people died over this issue of slavery. There is no country that has ever fought to end slavery, to end racism the way this country has. I thought we had made tremendous progress.

That was one of the things about the United States Army--I was at the Home of the Infantry--you just wanted to make sure that the person next to you was going to be helpful. You weren't concerned about their race or anything like that, you just wanted to make sure that you were going to work together. It was quite a good microcosm. Even though the 4 years I was in, it was not a pleasant time to be in the military. We were sometimes ordered not to wear our uniform off-post because there were people that hated us for wearing a uniform. That was post-Vietnam.

With regard to the baby formula, if you keep drawing people into this country--and now we are told we need to pay people to have abortions-- you keep taking those actions, you will destroy this Nation. And once this most philanthropic country in the history of the world is destroyed or converted into some dictatorial Orwellian society, all these countries that we have been able to help, since particularly 1789 when the Constitution was ratified, that help is not going to be there.

Having heard from people and countries, especially legislatures and parliamentarians in other countries that we consider to be free, they privately will say--and have--you have got to protect America's freedom. We see you losing it. And when you lose your freedom in America, there will be no place else to go to have freedom. You are the one that has secured it for the places that have it. This is so important.

So when our judiciary and our executive Department of Justice abuses people and abuses the system, and uses lies instead of truth, and uses technology to spy on its citizens, we are in big trouble.

I know when I first got here in January of 2005, Republicans were in the majority but when it came to civil rights, we had a lot of friends on the other side of the aisle that felt the same way. There were some on our side who wanted to protect all the power we could give to the Department of Justice, but again, there were people on both sides of the aisle that said this is a threat to our democratic Republic. We can't give them this much power.

Over the years, after Democrats took the majority in January of 2007 through January of 2011 and then got it back, we are not getting the kind of help we did those first 2 years with dealing with the abuses within our own ministry of truth. Because the DOJ really, using Orwellian terms from 1984, and as I have said before, what we are seeing is, the only thing Orwell got wrong was the year. It wasn't 1984, it's now. And it's not called the ministry of truth or the ministry of love.

The ministry of love, of course in 1984, people will remember, that was the entity that took people into custody, knocked down doors. They used techniques like our current DOJ does to intimidate people, to use much more power than they ever need just to intimidate--like 1984, like a totalitarian government.

I bring that up because I remember in the 1980s--and I had so much respect for the FBI agents I knew, and I had seen numerous times. I didn't do a lot of criminal work during the 10 years that I was a civil trial lawyer, but they would contact a soon-to-be defendant saying, we got an indictment, we got a warrant. You can either report to the jail at 10 a.m. tomorrow or we will come get you, and you would much rather come in on your own. If they had a lawyer, they would call the lawyer: Have your client come in at 9 or 10 a.m.

Not now. Oh, no. Oh, no. The Justice Department wants to come in and knock down your door because it is a lot more fun. They have got the battering ram. And it is a lot more fun to get people in their underwear or maybe

in their pajamas that are in bed, because you get to scare them. It is easier to intimidate them.

What happened to those days when it didn't matter whether the assistant U.S. attorney or the FBI agents voted Democrat or Republican? They were going to make sure they didn't abuse their power. I am not seeing that kind of concern like I used to see from people in the Department of Justice.

I know there are some that feel that way but, yet they are being gaslit if they try to report or be whistleblowers, and their careers are destroyed. Kind of like Director Mueller destroyed the career of the FBI agent that was the whistleblower and reported the unethical and, I would say, illegal conduct by the FBI in trying to persecute during the prosecution of Ted Stevens when they abused the system and convicted an innocent man.

Yeah, the Mueller way. You promote the one that engaged in the fraud, and you punish the one who reported the fraud within the FBI.

We have just seen it grow worse and worse as Mueller's dear friend, James Comey, took over. The abuses grew. And then Christopher Wray was appointed to clean up the FBI. It appears to me his way of cleaning things up is just to sweep it under the rug. If somebody lies to the FISA court, commits a crime, whereas if it were a conservative, they would put him under the prison rather than punish him, would just let him go get a higher paying job somewhere else.

That is not punishment. It is not deterrent. And it is doing massive damage to this country.

So we have the ministry of truth now called the disinformation board that has been created. This is being led and created by people who have been champions of disinformation, champions of gaslighting, who want to convince America: If you think there is a problem, if you think there is abuse in the FISA court, if you think there was any impropriety in elections, then we need to come after you and charge you with disinformation.

For those who have not read 1984, or don't remember, the ministry of truth, in this case now called the disinformation board, they were charged with rewriting history every day. As Orwell pointed out through, I believe his name was Winston, one day they might say, well, this government did not invent the airplane but all of the good changes that have made it more effective, more efficient, faster, those came by our great, Big Brother Government.

Then eventually, you would get to the point where you would just forget all of that and say, Big Brother Government created the airplane, has had everything to do with making it effective, and just take credit for everything good and then blame anybody else for anything bad.

So that seems like where we are going. We could call it the gaslighting board, but it is called the disinformation board. And it is headed by a person who, herself, has been quite guilty of disinformation, yet she is going to be in charge of coming up with disinformation for the future, apparently. We can expect problems ahead for sure.

Now, this article from yesterday, May 12, from the New York Post, Nina Jankowicz says, ``Verified Twitter users should edit others' tweets.''

I mean, we are right out of 1984, going back to the days of the 1950s when some songwriter wrote, If your mommy is a commie, well you gotta turn her in.

This is where it appears the disinformation board wants to go. Yeah, kids, turn in your parents if you find out that they have said anything privately at home that is inconsistent with the new truth that the disinformation board has come up with.

This is dangerous stuff. It cannot be overstated. We have got to stop the disinformation board. The solution to misinformation is more freedom so that people that have accurate information can come out with it. But when the government puts its finger on the scales of justice, on the balance, then you can be assured you are going to get less truth and less justice because it is not going to be fair.

I mentioned before that I was an exchange student for the summer to the old Soviet Union. From what I understood, it was the Soviet government, it was the Communist Party that put out all this misinformation. They would lie about things. They would cover up. I still wonder how many cosmonauts may have died during their space program, but they never came out truthfully with what all happened.

I was with a couple of Soviet college students, who I liked a great deal; they were wonderful people. We were looking at an exhibit about some of the space program things. Gagarin was the first human ever in space, and there were some entries about Gagarin and the world hero that he was. Up to that point, I felt like, well, these are college students who would be the most likely to get upset if they were lied to. And it said something about Gagarin being killed by testing a new experimental plane. My Soviet male, college friend, who spoke terrific English, said, Yeah, well, we know that is not true. I was intrigued. I never heard them indicate that they knew they were being lied to by the Soviet government.

The other Soviet college student said, Yeah, there is no way that happened. And I said, You don't believe he was killed testing a plane as a test pilot?

They both chimed in that, no, there is no way. He was the greatest hero in the history of the world, the first man in space. There is no way the Soviet government would allow him to get into a plane by himself that wasn't safe. That didn't happen. It was too important. He was too important as a hero, as someone that made us admire our government. They wouldn't let him die like that.

Well, I don't know whether he died as a test pilot or not, but I was intrigued that they believed to their core that the Soviet government lied to them. Why? Because the Soviet government constantly lied to them.

They wouldn't make up lies. In fact, remember, this was 1973. I found it interesting, in Pravda, they were reporting some things about Watergate emerging back in the U.S., and because it really was like a disinformation board or ministry of truth, whichever one you want to call it, they made everything about the Soviet Union. Everything was centered on the Soviet Union.

So their take on Watergate was that because Richard Nixon came to the Soviet Union, the first President ever to do so, that is why the Democrats came after him and were wanting to throw him out of office or put him in jail, because he made friends with the Soviets.

That was their take in order to make it all about the Soviet Union. Of course, we know crimes were committed, and the coverup was the worst of it.

But this is where we are headed, and it is a very dangerous time. We do not need a disinformation board. We need people being able to stand up and speak up without intimidation because they are conservative Black or because they are abused or whatever. They need to be able to speak up and bring evidence forward, or at least have an investigation to get to the bottom of things without being belittled, without being gaslit. That will do more to secure our freedom for the future.

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

Madam Speaker, it is with enormous pride that I recognize and congratulate the Tyler Junior College Lady Apaches on an outstanding basketball season in which they captured the National Junior College Athletic Association Division 1 Women's National Championship title.

Throughout the 2021-2022 season, the Lady Apaches developed a reputation with one of the top offenses in the country, averaging 78.8 points per game, making it apparent that the Lady Apaches were a force with which to be reckoned. Entering the NJCAA tournament with a season record of 23-8 and as the No. 17 seed, the Lady Apaches were underdogs in each of their five games in the tournament. However, they demonstrated their hard work and determination to earn a spot in the championship game.

The Lady Apaches demonstrated incredible focus and skill to clinch the National Championship over the Georgia Highlands Lady Chargers with a final score of 92-80. It is an esteemed honor to pay tribute to the team members and coaches of the 2021-2022 NJCAA Division 1 Women's Basketball National Champions: Veonce Powell (No. 1), Nassarine William (No. 3), Tia Morgan (No. 4), Nadechka Laccen (No. 5), Emari Sidney (No. 10), Shadiya Thomas (No. 12), Brianna Garrett (No. 13), Trinittee Alexander (No. 20), Taryn Wills (No. 21), Jasmine Payne (No. 22), Deborah Ogayemi (No. 23), Daijah Torns (No. 24), Head Coach Trenia Tillis-Hoard, Assistant Coach Chelsea Hudson, Assistant Coach Brianna Brooks, Student Assistant Coach Brynn Sultz, and Manager Keairra Grant.

This tribute goes out to all of the amazing athletic staff and support staff at Tyler Junior College including the Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Kevin Vest; Assistant Athletic Director Kelsi Weeks; Associate Athletic Director Chuck Smith; Administrative Assistant Jordan Jones; Head Athletic Trainer Eddy McGuire; Assistant Athletic Trainer Victoria Morris; Student Trainer Paige Arkfeld; Student Trainer Haven Bengi; Registrar Records/State Reports Coordinator Denny Yarbrough; Enrollment Support Services Specialist Erica Thurman, and all other personnel that contributed to this amazing championship season.

An athletic team cannot achieve any true level of excellence without unwavering support from its school leaders including President Dr. Juan E. Mejia; Provost Dr. Deana Sheppard; and Associate Vice Provost of Student Affairs Dr. Tim Drain. That is exactly the kind of support the Lady Apaches experienced from the entire community of Tyler and Smith County. That is why congratulations go to all the outstanding family, friends, and fans who contributed to the success of the Lady Apaches during this championship season.

The accomplishment of Deborah Ogayemi (forward) should be of particular note, who averaged 17 rebounds a game during the tournament and was voted the Tournament's Most Valuable Player. Joining her on the All-Tournament Team were teammates Shadiya Thomas (guard) and Taryn Wills (guard). Head Coach Trenia Tillis-Hoard is to be congratulated for receiving the Coach of the Tournament award.

This is not just a feat for the basketball team but for the entire college. This represents the 67th national championship in the school's history as a NJCAA Division 1 contender. Furthermore, The Lady Apaches were in the national tournament for the fifth time in six years and in the national championship game for the third time ever. This will be the first National Championship the Lady Apaches have won since their only other championship win in 2000. This speaks highly of the hard work and dedication of the men and women and the excellent coaching staff at Tyler Junior College.

It is with great pride that I join with all of east Texas in congratulating the Lady Apaches basketball team on their NJCAA Division 1 National Championship. May God continue to bless these consummate first-class competitors, along with their families, friends, and neighbors in east Texas. This outstanding accomplishment is now preserved, which will endure as long as there is a United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the general from Pennsylvania, for yielding.

This is so serious. While Homeland Security was having a hearing with Secretary Mayorkas, we were having a hearing in our Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee, and we were hearing from victims of human and sex trafficking and hearing about victims of human and sex trafficking.

Mr. Speaker, how callous does a person have to be to not be moved by young adults saying: My childhood was one of being constantly raped, constantly beaten, and constantly forced to do terrible things, that was my childhood because I had been sold into trafficking, human and sex trafficking.

Now, one said that she had used the same visa that others had used before--the very same visa. We are not checking visas very carefully. Homeland security, that is their job.

But another came across our southern border, and, of course, our Chairman Nadler really grilled in and focused on and had him say that the number one problem he had was homophobia of people in the U.S. But as I pointed out: You are being raped constantly over and over, it doesn't sound like homophobia is your big problem.

It is not having a Department of Homeland Security that is keeping the homeland secure.

This can't continue. For heaven's sake, we are losing this country, and as we are losing it, it is absolutely immoral to turn a blind eye to these children that are being sex trafficked because we won't secure our border, and we won't have an administration that will keep the oaths they made to defend, protect, serve this country, and serve the Constitution.

It is a sort of fiduciary duty they have to this country, to the people in this country; and by the relationship with our neighbors, to other countries around us like Mexico for heaven's sake. It is outrageous what is going on, and people's lives are being destroyed. As the country is being destroyed, lives are being destroyed.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for claiming this time tonight. It is a huge problem. If we don't get this fixed, we have no moral right to exist; and if America doesn't exist, then there is no freedom in the world.

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

Madam Speaker, there is so much going on these days, so much to comment on. At this time, I yield to the gentlewoman from Iowa (Mrs. Miller-Meeks), my friend, whenever she is ready.

Kevin McKee Is an Incredible Athlete

Madam Speaker, I notice the skill and adroitness of Mrs. Miller-Meeks making her way hurriedly around the rows, through the rows. She must have picked up something from such a great sled hockey player.

Madam Speaker, I want to turn my attention to some recent criticisms of an amazing man. I agree with some who have clerked at the Supreme Court, that Justice Clarence Thomas may be easily the most intelligent Justice on the Court. That fact actually turned him from his days at Yale Law School--actually he started at Harvard for, I think, a day or so, but he felt like Harvard was too conservative, so he dropped out and applied to Yale and was pleased it seemed more liberal in its thinking.

But Yale was able to take a brilliant person like that, and according to his book, he began to notice how liberals who were White seemed to look down on him with an arrogant view of Clarence Thomas that, gee, if it weren't for us liberals, a Black man like Clarence Thomas would not have even gotten into this school, when actually he had the raw intelligence to do that regardless and had done well everywhere he had been, including Holy Cross when he originally went there thinking he might be a priest at some point. Those are my recollections from his autobiography, a splendid read, ``My Grandfather's Son.''

That kind of arrogance, looking down on him like he couldn't do this on his own if it weren't for us liberals, turned him off. That, along with other issues, drove him to become quite conservative.

The clarity with which he sees issues is a real treasure for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now, just as when he was nominated to the Supreme Court, he has come under grave attacks from these same liberals that used to look down on him when he was a liberal, thinking he couldn't possibly be as smart as they were when, actually, he exceeded their level of intelligence.

That was what was called a soft form of discrimination. What he experienced in the hearings for his confirmation and since he has been on the U.S. Supreme Court, clearly, has not been soft discrimination. It has been overt, radical, mean-spirited, evil discrimination. Nothing soft about it. How dare that man come off the plantation and dare to have any point of view that was not provided to him by other liberals? The man thinks for himself, and he is brilliant.

These same liberals that are now coming after him seek not only to discriminate against him because he is a Black conservative who is brilliant, but they also want to assert a marriage penalty against him because his wife also thinks for herself.

Now, there is a great article written by Mark Paoletta, and this is dated March 11. I won't go through the whole article, but he says: ``D.C. Circuit Judge Nina Pillard, for example, voted not to rehear a case rejecting President Trump's refusal to produce his tax returns in response to a congressional subpoena. That was exactly what her husband, the ACLU's litigation director, advocated in an article reviewing the lower court decision.''

Now, Justice Thomas is being told he needs to recuse himself because he has a wife who thinks for herself. We can't have that, these liberals say. Yet, the hypocrisy rises higher and higher with every comment they make about Justice Thomas and/or his wife.

``Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, a liberal icon, participated in a case even after his wife, the chief of an ACLU chapter, commented on the lower court opinion. Her ACLU chapter even submitted a brief to the district court. Reinhardt defended his decision not to recuse, writing his wife's `views are hers, not mine, and I do not in any way condition my opinions on the positions she takes regarding any issues,''' even though he took the same position that his wife took.

The article said: ``Ethics experts defended Reinhardt's decision, noting that `Judge Reinhardt is not presumed to be the reservoir and carrier of his wife's beliefs. . . . A contrary outcome would deem a judge's spouse unable to hold most any position of advocacy, creating what amounts to a marriage penalty.' ''

Exactly. And liberals will not apply that standard to liberals, yet they come after Justice Thomas with their fangs bared, viciously attacking him and his wife.

What happened to the old ideas of liberals being these caring, compassionate people who would never judge one's spouse by the acts or thoughts of the other? Well, those have gone by the wayside, and we see exactly what is at play here.

The article says: ``The Supreme Court has long rejected this `marriage penalty.' ''

Further down, it says: ``While any lower court can substitute a recused judge with another judge, there is no one to replace a Supreme Court Justice who recuses.''

We lost my constitutional law professor in the last year, David Guinn. He was a tough professor but a great teacher. He continued to be an incredible resource up to the end of his life. He used to say there is only one court that owes its existence wholly to the U.S. Constitution. Of course, that is the U.S. Supreme Court. All other courts, as he would say, rely completely on the auspices of the Congress for their existence, for their continued existence, and for their jurisdiction.

It is interesting to look at this, and it is a great point that is being made by some scholars. Since the Supreme Court is set up as a separate branch, that is actually the one that Congress does not have authority to set up rules for recusal, for the Supreme Court.

In this article, Mr. Paoletta says: ``Consistent with the Court's policy, even though Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's husband, Marty Ginsburg, practiced law at a firm that represented parties before the Supreme Court, Justice Ginsburg never recused herself. Law professor Jane Ginsburg, the Justice's daughter, wrote an article about a case pending before the Supreme Court. The petitioner cited Jane's article in its brief, and Justice Ginsburg voted for the result advocated by her daughter.

``Marty Ginsburg solved a complex tax problem for his client, Ross Perot's company EDS, and Perot endowed a chair named after Marty Ginsburg at Georgetown University Law Center. When Perot and EDS appeared several times before the Supreme Court, Justice Ginsburg did not recuse. Nor was she required to.''

I would add, nor did any of these people attacking the Black conservative, Justice Thomas, bother to advocate their new position back then.

``If reporters mean to tighten recusal standards, they should prepare to levy a marriage penalty on all judges' spouses, not just the Thomases.

``But the press now singles out Justice Thomas, calling on him to recuse because of his wife's activities. Ginni Thomas is a longtime conservative activist who works with groups that take public positions on issues and sometimes even file amicus briefs at the Supreme Court. But unlike the spouses and children of other judges, Ginni does not practice law, much less write briefs. She merely builds conservative coalitions to pursue shared political aims. None of her activities require Justice Thomas to recuse.

``Even so, the press criticized Ginni Thomas for honoring conservative leaders at an awards luncheon because those individuals subsequently filed amicus briefs at the Supreme Court. Historically, this has not required recusal. Ginsburg once donated an autographed copy of her VMI opinion to the pro-abortion NOW Political Action Committee, which auctioned off the opinion at a fundraiser in 1997. Moreover, in 2004, she spoke at a lecture named after herself for the NOW Legal Defense Fund''--that is, the National Organization for Women--``on whose board she served in the 1970s. Two weeks before that lecture, Justice Ginsburg voted in favor of a position advocated by the NOW Legal Defense Fund in an amicus brief.

``None of those activities required Ginsburg to recuse, but the press has

attacked Thomas for stoking concerns of a hyperpartisan court by attending conservative events. Thomas' critics conveniently ignore the numerous instances of liberal Justices attending similar events, such as Justice Sotomayor giving speeches to the liberal American Constitution Society.

``These recent stories have also ignored Justice Ginsburg's partisan attack on Donald Trump during the 2016 Presidential campaign. The Justice called him `a faker' and criticized him for not disclosing his tax returns. She even voiced concerns about Trump being President. The day after he was elected, Ginsburg again objected by wearing a collar that traditionally signaled she would be dissenting in a case, though there were no cases handed down that day. Yet, she sat on a case challenging a congressional subpoena for President Trump's tax returns, and she decided plenty of other cases involving President Trump and his administration. No one talked of impeaching Justice Ginsburg for her conduct.

``The media are weaponizing baseless ethics charges to smear a conservative Black Justice. Thomas infuriates them because he expresses views they consider unacceptable for a Black man to hold, and because an increasing number of Justices are aligned with those views and may be ready to issue rulings that undercut longstanding liberal precedents. But going after his wife is despicable. And it won't work.''

It is also interesting that the majority in H.R. 1 attempts to go after--without naming Justice Thomas, it requires the Judicial Conference of the United States, which is chaired by the Chief Justice, to establish a mandatory code of conduct for the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. This is potentially unconstitutional. This is according to testimony before Congress by Hans von Spakovsky.

He makes a good point: ``Article III states that the `judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme court and in such inferior courts as Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. . . . The Constitution, not Congress, created the Supreme Court. It is an independent, coequal branch. In the same way that the Justices cannot dictate what ethics rules apply to Members of Congress or the President, it is highly questionable whether Congress can dictate the ethics rules that apply to the Supreme Court.''

Since the Judicial Conference was established by Congress, ``for the benefit of the courts it had created,'' and ``is an instrument for the management of the lower Federal courts, its committees have no mandate to prescribe rules or standards for any other body.''

According to the Chief Justice, Justices use the current code of conduct for the lower courts as guidance as well as ``a wide variety of other authorities to resolve specific ethics' issues.''

The Supreme Court has ``never addressed whether Congress may impose those requirements on the Supreme Court.'' But a serious constitutional problem under Article III with Congress trying to impose such mandates on the Justices, although they comply with the current provisions voluntarily.

So very good points, but just interesting how selective things have gotten.

Now, most judges and most judicial standards will indicate that if a Justice has spoken out and taken a position on a case that has come or is before the Court, it indicates an opinion before the case has concluded that that Justice should be recused. But we know two of the Supreme Court Justices actually appeared, performed same-sex weddings before they came out with their opinion. So that certainly seems to raise questions that people attacking Justice Thomas never actually raised back during those days.

It was interesting to be in here and hear the colloquy between the majority leader and the minority whip and hear the majority leader go back to the allegations raised by President Biden about all these leases that are not being utilized for drilling. Quite interesting, because there are some very legitimate reasons about why they are not utilized. And one of the things that has done tremendous damage to investment in additional wells, one thing, there has been encouragement for banks to look the other way. Do not get involved in fossil fuel development, which is rather interesting; could lead to our own demise as a Republic when we have been the most blessed country when it comes to natural resources of any country of which I am aware.

Our world is jealous. And yet, we routinely put off-limits those very resources we desperately need, even though we produce them more cleanly for the environment than any other country that we are buying them from, particularly China, Russia, others that have gotten control--some in Africa.

But one article here by Peter Hasson about ``Biden's Misleading Spin About Oil Production Under Him vs. Trump.'' ``But the White House's framing omits a key fact: while domestic oil production in 2021 was higher than it was in 2017, it was lower than it was in 2018, 2019, and 2020, Federal statistics show.''

And the significant reason for that is that drilling doesn't occur overnight. Production doesn't occur overnight. It is a work in progress. So that one President, when he comes into office, actually inherits the preparation to drill or the killing of drilling by the prior President.

So when President Trump took office, his first year, the drilling and production numbers were a result of what had happened before he took office. And thus, when President Biden takes credit for production numbers in his first year, of course, he doesn't want to acknowledge it, but those were the results of actions taken during the Trump administration. But after that, he does deserve to get credit for the damage or the good that is done.

An article by Thomas Barrabi and Ariel Zilber points that, ``If President Joe Biden came out forcefully on the side of increasing U.S. oil production, the price of a barrel could fall quickly, experts told The Post--even if it takes a while to bring that new energy online. Just looked at what happened Wednesday''--this article is from March 9--``in the wake of the United Arab Emirates and Iraq saying they'd up production by an estimated 800,000 barrels a day: The global price of oil dropped by $22 a barrel within minutes.

``If Biden signaled full-throated support for U.S. drillers to get to work--and perhaps allowed the restarting of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada--global oil prices could similarly fall sharply, the industry experts told The Post.''

And I have noticed that when there is good news about the production of oil or natural gas, that the price doesn't fall quite as quickly as it goes up after bad news, but it should be noted that after years of not replacing oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve of oil, the SPR, President Trump not only saw to it that America became energy independent for the first time in decades, but they started putting oil in that Strategic Petroleum Reserve, so that in the event of an emergency, we would have oil to keep going.

It was not put there for a President that has done damage to our ability to produce what we need, to try to get out from under the criticisms from people that can't afford where he has driven the price of energy. And in fact, I would humbly submit that by President Biden's starting to take a million barrels of oil per day from that Strategic Petroleum Reserve, he is setting America up for a catastrophe. Because there are interruptions in the production of oil and natural gas. They come time to time, and especially when there is war activity.

Now, President Biden used a claim that there is a wartime emergency. Yet, under our Constitution, only the U.S. Congress has the authority to declare war, and no such war has been declared. And in fact, President Biden has made very clear, we are not putting troops in Ukraine.

And I was hearing on the news today that actually things that were announced by this administration that would be helping Ukraine fight off Russia have not arrived. There were announcements, but the help that was supposed to be coming from the United States has not come that will help them fight off Russia.

So we can hear all the grand pronouncements about how evil Putin is. But at times, they are just that. They are pronouncements.

Because we are not giving the help to Ukraine that is being promised. Is this some kind of show without putting actions behind it? A lot of Ukrainians

think so when they look at the Biden administration. Because they are desperate. They are fighting with all they have.

I heard the majority leader casting aspersions at Republicans thinking Putin is some great guy. He is a thug.

And yet, who was it that put back in Putin's head that the United States has no problem with him attacking innocent countries and invading innocent countries? Well, we can go back in the second half of the Bush administration, George W. Bush administration, when President Bush and Secretary Condoleezza Rice got upset, as many of us did, when Putin's Russia invaded the country of Georgia. And he slapped some very serious sanctions on Russia to try to send a message: Don't go invading other countries.

So when Biden became Vice President, Obama became President, one of the first things they did, they sent a Secretary of State named Clinton with a red plastic button that they misnamed in Russian. They meant to call it a reset button. But the people working for the Obama/Biden administration and for Secretary Clinton were not smart enough to properly translate the word, so it didn't mean reset.

But they went over there with the intention of sending a message that President Bush, he overreacted when you attacked Georgia. And the message from Obama, Biden, Clinton was, We won't overreact like that when you invade countries you shouldn't. We won't. We don't have a problem with it. That was Bush. That was Condoleezza Rice. They had a problem with your invading Georgia, but we don't have a problem like that.

What was Putin supposed to think? Exactly what he thought.

Number one, this Biden, Obama, Clinton, they are weak people. And they are giving me a green light to invade Crimea, which he did. And what happened? Nothing. The Obama/Biden administration sent blankets over there. It is hard to stop a tank with a blanket; that is what was sent.

But Putin got that message. And then Trump comes in. And he can say flattering things about Putin, but he knew that Putin is not stupid, and he knew that he could be vicious, and he made very clear, you don't invade under my administration, or you will pay a big price. But once President Trump was gone, and we got back to the old policies of the Obama/Biden administration, Putin knew he had a President that he could push around. And that was accented when President Biden telegraphed that we could be okay with a minor incursion. If it is just a small invasion, we probably wouldn't even react. That was the message that was heard in Russia.

And at times, it is almost as if there are people in this administration that have been paid off by Russia.

Well, I guess some people in the Biden family have been paid off, but that is another matter. At times, though, it does seem like with the change in policy of standing firmly against China's devastating activity when it comes to stealing our secrets, patents, and copyrights, and the lack of action by this administration, it does seem like, gee, it makes you wonder if somebody is getting paid off in this administration. Then you realize, oh, yeah, the Biden family has made a lot of money from China.

People want to talk about maybe Clarence Thomas should recuse himself, I wish they would apply those standards to people who benefit in this administration from the failure to stop China.

In any event, just mark my words, this administration, President Biden, releasing a million barrels of oil a day from our strategic petroleum reserve is really going to come back to hurt us. When we are in an emergency situation and we need that oil, it is not going to be there because President Biden was hoping he could ameliorate some of the anger of voters by the prices that we are seeing at the gas pump and the prices we are seeing in inflation.

That is the thing, when energy prices go up, it affects every price; because food, the things we use to stay warm or to house ourselves, even electric cars cannot be produced without the use of fossil fuel-- can't--they will some day, but they can't right now. You got to have fossil fuel or you cannot make a car; not for production, not cheap enough to be bought by the American public.

Since I have been here in Congress, I filed a bill to have a huge cash prize to anyone who could develop the type of battery, capacitor, some way to hold megawattage of electricity for at least 30 days without significant loss. One of these days somebody is going to come up with that, an ability to hold electric. When that happens, we won't need fossil fuel at all. Whoever comes up with a way to do that is going to be mega wealthy.

Once we have that ability, we should be able to capture lightening. There are all kinds of ways we can have energy. I have been told, oh, no, we already can capture energy because some place they have water in a lower reservoir and during off-peak time they pump the water up to a higher reservoir so that during peak times they have the water flow down and that turns turbines and that produces electricity. That is storing energy, but it is not storing electricity.

That energy has to then be converted back into electricity by turning the turbines. Some day we are going to have the ability to have energy held in massive quantities, but right now we don't have that ability.

The batteries that are being used in vehicles, we are heading for all kinds of headaches when enough people buy electric vehicles and we have to do something with all of those toxic batteries. It is going to be bad. It is going to be horrendous for the environment if too many people start buying electric vehicles.

There is a great article by Kevin O'Scannlain in March of this year titled ``The Red-Herring of Unused Leases,'' which is what the majority leader brought up. It says: ``The fact is, natural gas and oil companies hold numbers of `nonproducing' leases--which is far different from the claim of `unused' leases mentioned by the White House,'' and by our majority leader.

Here are some key numbers: 1,548, that is the number of nonproducing offshore leases, according to the Federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management; 13,000, that is the approximate number of nonproducing onshore leases, according to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management:

``Context: `Nonproducing' means exactly that. These are leases that have not yet been developed to the point of actual production--the average time from onshore lease sale to production is 3 to 4 years; 7 to 10 years for offshore leases--and those that have not produced commercial volumes of oil and gas.''

``Polling released last week shows that Americans know the stakes involved overseas and at home. They overwhelmingly support--by a 90 percent margin--increased U.S. production over reliance on foreign energy. That means lawmakers and regulators need to address that.''

``The first, by some members of the Biden administration, including White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday, is that American oil and natural gas producers are sitting on hundreds of unused Federal leases and do not need access to more. The second, by some industry opponents, is that ramping up U.S. production will not help the Ukrainian people today.

``Psaki has made the claim about `unused' Federal leases before. It has become a line at the White House pivots to when pressed to explain why it isn't doing more to support American oil and gas production-- with soaring demand putting upward pressure on prices and with much of Europe at the mercy of its top energy provider, Russia.''

Here are key facts about Federal leases:

``The law already requires companies to either produce oil and/or gas on leases or return the leases to the government--the so-called `use it or lose it' provision. . . . `' It is already in there. Generally, it is required in the first 10 years.

``When a company acquires a lease, it makes a significant financial investment at the beginning of the lease in the form of a nonrefundable bonus bid and pays additional rent until and unless it begins producing.

``For Federal onshore, the Mineral Leasing Act prevents any one company from locking up unproductive excessive Federal acreage.

``Developing a lease takes years and substantial effort to determine whether the underlying geology holds commercial quantities of oil and gas. The lengthy process to develop them from a lease is often extended by administrative and legal challenges at every step along the way.''

Every company is familiar with lawfare, going to court, being drug repeatedly into court to stop the use of a lease.

``The argument about `unused' leases is a red-herring, a smokescreen for energy policies that have had a hamstringing effect on the world's leading producer of natural gas and oil. It suggests American producers have been motivated by desire to manipulate the market during the current crisis in Europe. This is false. American oil and gas producers are able and willing to do their part to support American energy leadership, including providing energy that can help allies abroad.

``Ultimately, energy policies affect the energy investment climate. Specifically, they impact the ability of producers--typically accountable to shareholders--to take the risks involved in spending billions of dollars to find and develop oil and gas. Mischaracterizing the way Federal leases work does not help foster new investment and risk-taking.''

``The time for helping Ukraine with American energy was months ago. Then, the Biden administration support for robust U.S. production might have helped deter Moscow from thinking that European nations were so dependent on Russian energy might do less to oppose Russia the aggressor.

``Instead, the administration discouraged American energy. For more than a year it has halted new Federal leasing--key to future energy investment and production. It canceled energy infrastructure, blocked development in parts of Alaska, entertained new taxes to punish the U.S. energy industry and chilled future investment by signaling that oil and gas would not be part of America's future energy mix. All last summer, the administration called on OPEC+, the oil cartel, to increase its production more rapidly in the face of rising energy costs, bypassing the American producers.''

Let me go back and readdress ANWR. We lost Don Young. We had a wonderful service and tribute to him. It was a great funeral, a great service for a great man. I got to sit beside Don Young for years in the Natural Resources Committee because I became the second most senior person on Natural Resources. Since I made Republican leaders mad, they were not going to allow me to be chairman, and we sit by seniority, so I sat by Don Young for years.

Don would get so upset when people would pretend to speak for Tribal groups in Alaska or for the Alaskan people, and say, they don't want ANWR--well, there was one little Tribe that didn't, but the rest sure did. He would take Members of Congress on trips to ANWR. So much of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, that area that was designated by the Carter administration, it is beautiful, it is pristine, there is wildlife in abundance.

Don always wanted to make sure that anybody that would listen and cared to know the truth could see for themselves in Alaska--here is this massive wildlife area that has been set apart by Congress. Well, here is this little bitty area comparatively where the Carter administration said: You know what, there is nothing there. Nothing can live there. This is a great spot, and we will allow drilling here. For decades, drilling was not allowed in the one place that it would have been okay to have drilling.

When the Trump administration says, hey, there was a designated place. And despite commercials where you see all this wonderful wildlife, that is not in the part designated for drilling. All the beautiful mountains and all, that is not the part designated by President Carter for drilling. It would bless the heck out of Alaska and their people because of the revenue it would bring.

It would be a blessing for America to further be independent and to further have the ability to encourage countries like Ukraine, and to discourage countries like Russia from picking on them because we have enough of the energy needs, we can fill enough energy needs. They don't have to worry about begging a ruthless dictator, like Putin has become.

Yet, year after year we have had people trying to stop it, and then once Biden was sworn in as President he did the same thing. No, we are going to put that back off limit. It is really a shame.

This article says: ``The current situation is a reminder that American energy abundance requires foresight and planning, investment and policy support. This is the path to sound energy policy that keeps America safe and strong and allows American energy to support allies.''

I am hoping--since I am not going to be in the next Congress--I am hoping that the bill I filed years ago that would provide a big cash prize to whoever comes up with the method of storing massive amounts of electricity for long periods of time efficiently, I am hoping that that won't be so futuristic that we couldn't have a majority actually pass that.

Because once we do that, there is no need for fossil fuels. We will have all the energy we need, and you could even produce cars. Let's face it, natural gas is such an important feedstock for so many of the products we use every day that we have come to rely on as necessities, as essential, including things in vehicles themselves.

In fact, in Texas, our air and water have been getting cleaner year by year. A lot of that is due to moving from oil and coal into natural gas; much cleaner.

In fact, here are some oil and gas facts:

In March of 2020, before the lockdowns began, the United States reached its highest level of energy production by January 2021. For the first time in nearly 50 years, U.S. was producing more oil than we were consuming. In just over a year, we have seen a 4 percent surplus of domestic oil and gas production fall to a 4 percent oil and gas deficit.

President Biden directed the Secretary of the Interior to halt new oil and gas leases on public lands and waters. President Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline which would have transported 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

The Biden administration has created significant regulatory uncertainty by threatening new and excessive burdensome regulations on the oil and gas industry, including the EPA methane rule and the DOI waste prevention rule.

The Biden administration has rescinded Trump administration permitting improvements, including the NEPA reforms, the WOTUS reforms, and the ESA reforms.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has failed to approve natural gas pipeline applications leading to a backlog of pending applications that discourage economic growth and new energy development.

The U.S. Department of the Interior scrapped the Trump administration decision that authorized expanded leasing and development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

The price of gasoline has risen from an average of $2.38 under President Trump to approximately $3.53 today. It is a lot higher than that. Today I noticed around $5 around here.

This is the largest year-over-year price rise in 30 years and leaves little room to absorb the impact of potential massive oil and gas sanctions on Russia.

So those are some facts.

I want to touch on one other matter here. The name of this article is ``Republicans expose `uncommon' CDC, teachers' unions ties on COVID school reopening guidance in report.''

This is from Jessica Chasmar, March 30.

``Republicans accuse Walensky of downplaying the degree to which the CDC departed from past practice to allow AFT to affect the policymaking process.''

``Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, official's testimony claiming that the agency coordinated with teachers' unions at an extraordinary level in crafting its school reopening guidance, despite the agency's earlier claims that such coordination was routine and nonpolitical.''

``Republicans wrote that emails between the American Federation of

Teachers, the White House, and the CDC showed that the AFT's `cozy relationship with the Biden administration's political leadership at the CDC positioned the union to impose line-by-line edits' to the reopening guidance, despite the CDC's `past practice to keep draft guidance confidential.'''

So we find out the mental and physical suffering of children due to 2 years of closed schools in some places, we can, again, go back to some of the teachers' unions that helped bring that about.

An article from the Daily Caller by Nicole Silverio, apparently NBC actually edited photos of Lia Thomas to look more like a woman.

That is what Erica Denhoff alleged in the NBC's ``Today'' show, they photoshopped her work to make transgender swimmer Lia Thomas look more feminine.

And then this has application to January 6, work by the FBI, we still need to get to the bottom, those who committed crimes and harmed the Capitol need to be punished. But those who didn't, so many appear to be sought and persecuted, not just prosecuted.

It has gotten kind of strange.

But Julie Kelly has a March 10 article about the Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, an alleged kidnapping plot, and the trial that was going on about that.

``After it became clear during opening statements that the defense could not argue their case without explaining the deep involvement of the FBI's confidential human sources,'' so the judge reversed his ruling, ``telling the jury that `it won't be possible to draw a line between the government proving their case and entrapment.'''

``One FBI official told his supervisor he planned to conduct a `terrorism enterprise investigation' into the loose band of misfits with no solid plans, much less the ability, to do anything nefarious at the time. The alleged ringleader, Adam Fox, lived in the ramshackle basement of a vacuum repair shop with his two dogs; if he needed to go to the bathroom or brush his teeth, Fox had to use the facilities at the Mexican restaurant next door.''

``Secret gatherings and out-of-town excursions, courtesy of the FBI and U.S. taxpayers, animated the scheme.''

Then she goes on to explain the extent to which the FBI and U.S. taxpayers paid to have meetings to try to bring the conspiracy to kidnap Governor Whitmer into actually going forward.

It really is shocking and does raise a serious question: When you have a dozen or so FBI informants or employed people, many getting paid in cash and benefits of tens of thousands of dollars, is it a plot then by the FBI or is it really a plot by the people who hadn't had the ability without the FBI to do anything about it?

So it is a sad time when the FBI seems to be using taxpayer resources to create events that would not happen without their involvement.

So there is a lot of oversight that needs to be done and a lot of housecleaning that needs to be done. It doesn't look like that will be happening any time soon.

I am grateful that we are again beginning to see some of our friends across the aisle getting back to basics and concern about civil rights that have been abused by government entities.

We have got a lot of work to do, and I hope that we will at least come together in stopping the Federal Government from being the source from which criminal plots are made available and potentially real.

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

Madam Speaker, Don Young of Alaska was a fixture in this House. He was the kind of fixture that didn't just look pretty, because that wasn't his thing. He added immeasurably to everything else here.

He and I have been on the Natural Resources Committee for years together, ever since I have been here. Since I ticked off Republican leaders over the years, I was not going to end up being the chairman, so I got to sit by him for years. That has been a real pleasure.

He was a practical man and understood the contribution that he was making, and it was truly a massive contribution to this country, to Alaska, to the people of America. You never had to wonder where he stood, and I loved that about him. He didn't pull punches. He told you what he thought, and he didn't require a lot of words to do that.

His laugh was contagious, but so was his love for America. He dedicated his life to making this a better place for all of us. He loved Alaska, he loved Alaskan people, and if someone tried to tell him that, gee, the Tribal folks in Alaska would be better off if you never drilled, he wouldn't have any of it. He would get upset at that point, tell them they didn't know. He had lived with those people, he had been there, he knew.

Don Young was a survivor, and though we bid farewell to his remains today, his spirit will survive as long as there is a Capitol.

Madam Speaker, there is no way I could vote to exchange getting oil from Putin for getting oil from some other tyrant who wants to destroy America, which makes this a rather cynical ploy, so I had to vote ``no'' on Suspending Energy Imports from Russia Act.

It is time to make America energy independent again and stop the war on American seniors, Americans on fixed incomes, and those that have to keep maxing out their credit cards to buy gas just to get to work. I had to vote ``no'' on what is being referred to as the Russia bill.

We have heard enough of the Biden administration lectures that Americans should basically eat cake in their brand new expensive electric cars. People who can't afford a tank of gas today can't afford $30,000 to $150,000 for a new electric car.

This bill allowed the President to waive the provisions we voted on, so I voted ``no.''

Madam Speaker, I have an article here about the Justice Department. It says it continues to go easy on the 2020 rioters.

These are people that destroyed government buildings, destroyed places of business, yet this administration continues to not just prosecute but persecute people who just came into the Capitol wrongly that should be punished. But to have people let loose immediately after burning people, being

involved in incidents where people were killed, is absolutely an outrage to judgment.

Then, to put people under the control of a deputy warden at the D.C. jail who absolutely, maliciously, intentionally despises anybody that supported President Trump--and she is in charge of these people? This is so dangerous and should not be allowed.

On top of that, we have the January 6th Committee. They were not interested in following the traditions and the rules of the House with regard to committees, where both parties could submit people for that committee membership.

There is so much damage that is being done to this institution. It is not the collegial working--sure, we have disagreements over the years, strong disagreements, but we have never seen anything like what we are experiencing now where we could have a commission that is totally made up of people that the one party only wanted on the commission and others that the other party wanted on were eliminated.

So, something has to be done.

Now, we have seen that this administration has not been particularly concerned with its constitutional duties, like the one in Article IV that mandates that the Federal Government must protect the States from invasion.

You know, to Woodrow Wilson, four or five dozen people was an invasion. Nowadays, this administration thinks 2 million is not an invasion even though they bring death and suffering in the form of drugs, sex trafficking, and human trafficking.

At the same time, for the first time since I have been in Congress, we have seen that our mail--we have gotten two mail just a day apart. One came in September 17, stamped by the Department of Justice as being received and reviewed and examined. Another, from a Christian missionary to me, it was reviewed by the Department of Justice.

The Supreme Court has made clear that the Department of Justice cannot even get a search warrant to search a Member's office, yet this administration, like this House, doesn't think the rules, the laws, the Constitution, perhaps, mean what they say.

We have to get back to following the Constitution if we are going to preserve this Republic. It is in a dire situation. It is in a desperate situation.

If we do not get back to following the Constitution and observing the rules of the House, then our Republic will be lost. That is where we are being taken right now.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate Mrs. Cammack having this Special Order.

Madam Speaker, we ought to be concerned about the most vulnerable among us. Most Americans believe in God, a Heavenly Father. Is it hard to imagine that it would be extremely important to such a Heavenly Father that we protect the lives that are most vulnerable, most innocent, particularly? Could there be anybody more innocent, more vulnerable, than a child that is still in the womb?

I met Ramona Trevino some years back, and she had been a director of Planned Parenthood, I believe, in Sherman, Texas. She became shocked, having a teenaged daughter, that they were taught that they should come between a daughter and her mother.

Earlier, when they had directors' meetings of other Planned Parenthood facilities, the number they were most interested in is how many girls you are getting on the pill and how early in age. The earlier, the better, because they are more likely to forget to take the pill and get pregnant, and then they would get to destroy the life of an unborn child. That is something that if there is a Heavenly Father, as I know there is, he would have to be very upset with us for allowing that to happen.

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding the time and for managing it.

This is very important. We take 1 week a year to acknowledge the importance of the Bible in America. The Bible was at the foundation of the great awakening in the first half of the 1700s, the second great awakening in the first half of the 1800s, the 1700s. Many attribute that to leading to the liberty that drove the Revolution.

The second great awakening leading to the desire for liberty that brought a war that ended slavery, no country had ever done that before. Fight a war? Lose 500,000, 600,000, 700,000 people in a war that would free people who were called slaves at the time?

It took this Bible at the basis of an ordained Christian minister named Dr. King fighting for civil rights that brought us more freedom, that brought the Constitution into a fuller embrace of what this country is supposed to be about.

C.S. Lewis talked about in this world, as the Bible teaches, that the prince of this world is not God. But Lewis said imagine being behind enemy lines and you get messages from your home headquarters, and you don't pick them up and read them. Well, we have a book of messages from our home headquarters. You don't have to believe that. We have the freedom to believe or not to believe so long as we don't run this out of American society.

This has to be the basis of morality. Otherwise, we lose the rights that are afforded us under our Constitution.