Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, March 8, 2017, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, something that has not gotten nearly enough attention in the media concerns security. We know that there were people working--Imran Awan, Abid Awan, Jamal Awan, Hina Alvi, Natalia Sova--and I have heard that one of these has fled back to Pakistan since being investigated.

They worked on Democratic computer systems. And although we have been told, ``Well, they couldn't get into the SCIF and get into the classified section,'' they had access to congressional computers. I am told that if you can get access to one Congress Member's Outlook program, you can easily hack into many others.

This has got to be investigated. It appears to be a major crime and a major breach of trust in the House.

I hope my friends across the aisle that use these people will step forward and help us plug the hole.

Mr. Speaker, we are back in session. We were out of session last week. It was great to get all over east Texas. It is just good to be an east Texan and from around east Texas. I had occasion to talk to a whole bunch of folks from part of my district, even tonight.

As I think about the headlines, I think about this group called Indivisible demanding townhalls, and I keep coming back to last Monday at Jack Ryan's restaurant in downtown Tyler. Tyler Young Professionals had asked me to speak there. I knew the gentleman that had white hair and looked distinguished was probably not one of the Tyler Young Professionals but probably one of the Indivisible people, the Democrats that--yes, some of them say they are nonpartisan, but so much for that. But I knew when I called on him to ask the first question, he probably wasn't one of the Tyler Young Professionals.

I offered to him, I said: Look, I give you my word. You come, bring somebody with you. Let's sit down at a conference table and I will hear you out. I will give you a chance.

No, he said. That is not what I want. I demand a townhall.

So I keep coming back to that answer because that seems to make very, very clear this whole Indivisible movement. It is not about being heard. That can be best done, as the Founders realized when they put together the Constitution--a complete democracy is where you have mob rule, that a majority is always going to prevail; but they figured out that, far better than having a big mob rule so you don't end up with lynchings and crowds convincing themselves to do something dramatic that they would never, ever do individually--it would be too much of a violation of their conscience. But there is something about a group dynamic that people can get whipped up into a frenzy as a group that doesn't happen when you sit down one-on-one with them.

So this has never been about townhalls. It has never been about being heard. It has been about headlines, trying to intimidate some of us from keeping the promises that we made to our constituents before we got elected.

I think God has a way of preparing us for what lies ahead. Had I not been a felony judge for a decade and been threatened by all kinds of felons, then I might have been at least somewhat intimidated. But it all seems rather interesting, this frenzy. Really good, decent people get in a group and get worked up into a frenzy.

One of them did ask an interesting question there in east Texas on the east Texas Indivisible Facebook page: Well, what would be wrong with sitting down with him on an individual basis or something like that? That individual understood that, if all we want is to be heard, why wouldn't we just want to sit down and talk.

What that individual didn't understand is Indivisible is not about being heard. It is exactly about what is in the Indivisible playbook, the Guide. The idea is to disrupt those who won with a majority of the vote in congressional seats and Senate seats, disrupt those who won with a majority and prevent them from keeping their promises.

It reminded me somewhat of what happened back when George H.W. Bush was President. He had run saying, ``Read my lips: no new taxes.'' I wasn't in politics back when he was running and saying that, but I sure got involved in late 1991, I guess December, and in 1992. I guess that was back in the 1988 election.

It cost him the 1992 election because he kept saying, ``Read my lips: no new taxes.'' Then he had to deal with the majority of Democrats in the House and Senate. They kept luring, trying to suck him in: Come on, if we are going to reach an agreement, you are going to have to give up on that pledge just a little bit, just a little bit. We are not going to reach it. You are going to have to give up just a little bit. You are going to have to allow just a little bit of a tax.

After enough cajoling, they finally convinced George H.W. Bush that they were not going to allow the bill to go through unless he had at least a little bit of a tax increase. As soon as they lured him into that--kind of sounds like something that happened in the Garden of Eden. But as soon as they lured him into it and he agreed to a very small increase in taxes, then immediately the cries became: You are a liar. You broke your promise of no new taxes.

He got lured into it. He thought they were acting in good faith, when all they were trying to do was get him to break his promise so they could call him a liar. They lured him into it. They trapped him into it. He should have told them, ``Read my lips: no new taxes.'' But being a benevolent man, he thought they were acting in good faith, as he was, and he found out differently. It cost him the 1992 election.

So we have people demanding: Oh, yes, just give us the townhall. That is all we want. Just give us the townhall. They know and most of us, thank goodness, on my side of the aisle know, if we give the bullying mobs, what they are demanding when they are saying: We are going to harass you--as one man did--we are going to harass you at church, everywhere you go, until you finally give in, fine. No matter how big the mobs get, no matter how mean and frenzied they get, no matter how big of bullies they become, I know what I promised my constituents and I know what we have got to deliver.

I am starting to hear from people on my side of the aisle: Well, maybe we shouldn't repeal. Maybe we shouldn't do what we did in 2015.

Everything we did in 2015 was consistent with the rules that are in play right now. We ought to be able to do the same thing again. We should. We did it in 2015. We ought to be able to do it now--we just should--House Members and Senate Members. We had a majority both places then. We have got a majority now. We need to do it again.

We don't have to have this huge government program as a replacement. That is the beauty of a free market. But in order to have a free market, you have got to have honesty and integrity in the system. That means nobody on my side of the aisle, nobody in the Senate on the Republican side of the aisle, and nobody in the White House should be intimidated no matter how frenzied the insurance lobby may become about what we can't do.

Those same people embraced ObamaCare, which was about to destroy them. Some of them said: Well, you have got to understand we had to have a seat at the table. I tried to explain, you don't want a seat at the table when you are on the menu. But no, they dove in. Big Pharma and those folks dove right in.

Now, I could understand AARP jumping in and endorsing ObamaCare even though it cut Medicare by $716 billion, even though it stabbed seniors in the back by dramatic cuts to Medicare. I could understand AARP endorsing ObamaCare. They were going to be able to sell more insurance than they had ever sold before.

I had seen 1 year before--I think it was 2007 or 2008--they had over $4 million in profit, which is pretty good for a nonprofit, selling insurance or endorsing the policies that were sold. So, of course, then you get to the deal in ObamaCare that all these other policies are going to have an extra 2 percent tax on them, but not the kind of policies you sell.

I can understand AARP getting behind ObamaCare, even though it did so much damage to the health care of seniors because they were going to make a lot of money. No telling how much money they have made since ObamaCare passed.

I couldn't understand health insurance companies. I couldn't understand Big Pharma. I guess I could, because they were going to make tens of billions of dollars more in the short run than they had made in the past. That is why President Obama got them to offer to give billions of it back. You don't get billions given back unless you are going to make a lot more billions than you put back. I am sure they did, but that was short term. If ObamaCare continued into the future, it wouldn't be--probably within the next decade that you would see them heading toward their demise.

But the big executives would be fine. They would have gotten their golden parachute and taken off with all the money that appeared to be rolling in at that point, even though the day of reckoning was going to come for them down the road.

But we shouldn't be listening to people who sold out knowing they will make money short term, but it probably will destroy them long term. People who were guided by the mentality that embraced that bill should not be dictating what is in the replacement plan. And I say plan, because when you are going to use free market to have a better healthcare environment, you have got to have free market; and you can't have free market unless everybody knows how much things cost.

I was seeing again tonight from constituents, people think they ought to know how much a medical visit costs. Whether it is Blue Cross, Aetna, Humana, Anthem, whether it is an HMO, whatever, they ought to know how much that costs, whoever is paying for it. Whether it is the government--whether it is the Federal Government, State government, whether it is an insurance company, people have a right to know what a medical visit, procedure, whatever it is--they have a right to know how much it costs.

Only when we have truth in treatment are we going to be able to fix so many of the wrongs in health care. Then we can move toward a free market, where insurance will have a high deductible. This is the ultimate goal, I think, where you have a high deductible, but you will have every dime of that deductible in a health savings account either put in there by your employer or by you. In a proper program, it ought to be every dime of it put in there pretax, no tax on that money that you put in there. I still believe that every dime that is put in there should then be marked for health care only. If the person owning that health savings account passes away before it is spent for health care, it ought to keep that healthcare designation and roll over into the heirs' health savings account. And if there are not heirs or it's not in the will, it could go to a charity's health savings account, as I feel sure you would have every worthwhile charity set up a health savings account that could be used to have people donate from their own health savings accounts to help the poor, help those who are chronically ill.

As a Christian, I believe God knew it blesses us, it helps us as individuals when we are charitable toward others. That does not mean when the government, with the threat of the IRS, some SWAT team behind them, or some threat to come take your home, all of your assets, says you will give so that we can give to who the government thinks should receive the charity--that is not charity. That is not charity at all. That is a much too powerful government.

What we find is that the United States has been the most charitable country in the history of the world. We have got a lot of benevolent Americans. Of course, that doesn't include George Soros. He makes his money. It seems like one of the ways he makes money is if he can topple an economy, bring it down; and through all of the suffering that is brought about, he makes money.

When we heard tape recordings made in the past year by people who were saying, ``Oh, yeah, we funded the violence at those Trump rallies,'' or ``We funded violence here, there or yon,'' or ``We funded efforts to help bring down this activity or that activity,'' then it sure seems like that is worthy of investigation, because what you have when you have people giving money to create violence at events, some people would call that basically a racketeer influenced and corrupt organization, RICO. It ought to be worthy of investigation. If people are giving money when they

should know that money is going to be contributed to create chaos, get somebody hurt, then it sure seems like that is the kind of criminal conduct people have gone to prison for.

I hope our new Justice Department will continue its trend toward getting out of litigation that they never should have been in in the first place and getting in where there is corruption. We know under the Attorney General Eric Holder that as long as the people who were carrying billy clubs and threatening voters outside of polling places were Democrats, then certainly they did not need to be investigated, nothing needed to be done to them because they are Democrats. Apparently under that old Department of Justice that was just about them, just us, then as long as it is one of us, we don't need to prosecute them. But, whoa, if it is a Republican, yeah, we need to go after them.

But the great irony is there could be no greater dissolution of the right to vote when then loading the deck with people who have no right to vote, who vote and completely dissolve law-abiding people's right to vote, you just canceled out their right to vote with illegality. So it seems strange to some of us that you would have a Justice Department that would say: No, no, no, don't you dare purge those records of the dead people. You have got to leave those dead people in. Some of those dead people may want to vote. It is important to let dead people vote if they feel like voting.

To have a Department of Justice that doesn't want counties to clean up their voter registration so that there can't be fraud, people that are dead, people that are living in other States or other voting districts don't come and also vote there. It just was incredible lawlessness to have a Department of Justice fighting against cleaning up voter registration rolls so that only people alive and living in that district could vote.

Why would anybody do that? Why would anybody fight against cleaning up voter registration?

The only reason I can think of conceivably would be they must still want people who are dead or don't live there to vote illegally. What else could there be?

I mean, there are some people willing to have the Department of Justice: We are even okay if you supervise to make sure we don't throw out somebody who is alive. But this Justice Department under President Obama's administration, they didn't want voter registration rolls cleaned up.

The lawlessness, thankfully, has come to an end. I know that there are people who have been stirring up fear in American hearts about Jeff Sessions, but Jeff Sessions is a good man. He is a good person. He will enforce the law fairly across the board, and I am grateful that we finally have a Justice Department that will be about justice.

In the meantime, I saw this story today from Peter Hasson from The Daily Caller:

``Leaked audio from an anti-Trump protest group meeting reveals activists with anti-Trump group Indivisible plotting how to best manufacture a hostile environment at a town hall with Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. . . .

``The audio, obtained by local radio station KPEL, reveals a coordinated effort to create the public impression that Cassidy's support for Trump is unpopular with his constituents. The activists, who describe themselves as liberals in the audio, can be heard strategizing how to best turn a local town hall into a political victory.

``The activists split up into an `inside team'--tasked with occupying `as many seats as we can' and an `outside team,' whose job was to `give the media the coverage they want' before joining the others inside. Activists were instructed to dress like conservatives and leave at home `any signifier that you're a liberal' in order to blend in with constituents.

``The leftist activists strategized how best to `dominate' the question-and-answer section of the town hall and keep anyone `sympathetic' to Cassidy from asking a question.

``The audio also reveals the activists laughing about `the poor people of Breaux Bridge'--local constituents--who might get stuck behind them. Local news coverage of the town hall said that `many attendees were turned away' from the town hall due to `capacity restrictions.'

``'Game plan number one is to fill as many seats as we can, right? If it's all of us in there and the poor people of Breaux Bridge are sitting behind us, well then tough luck for them,' said one organizer, identified by KPEL as James Proctor. His `poor people' comment drew laughs from the other activists.

`` `If we can arrange it so he doesn't hear one sympathetic question--great. That only magnifies our impact,' Proctor said.

``KPEL identified Proctor as the leader of Indivisible Acadiana, a local branch of the national Indivisible organization, which has organized hostile Republican town halls all around the country.

`` `The Indivisible Guide does say that when you start to lose the meeting, that's when you boo and hiss,' one unidentified activist can be heard saying. `Right, I was going to say that,' another activist replied. Local news outlet The Advertiser reported that members of the crowd `frequently interrupted, expressing disagreement with some of Cassidy's positions and shouting out their own questions.'

`` `The outside team will join the inside team in the hall after media coverage'. . . . `So what we'll do is we'll try to dominate enough, because--remember, the camera people especially are looking for some `b-roll' and some quotes.'

`` `They've got three or four things to cover that day, this is just one of them'. . . . `So we make sure we give them the coverage they want, and then everyone breaks and goes inside.' ''

That reminds me of an article that was written in Gregg County, the largest newspaper. Obviously they know what Indivisible is, and they were demanding a townhall belittling me. It just shows how partisan, how malicious. They showed their malice toward me repeatedly. Fortunately, for the people of east Texas, they don't count for a whole lot. Their opinion is so biased; it is what it is. They know that these people are doing just what is talked about here, what is talked about in the Indivisible handbook, and that is what they want. They want me out of office, and there is such a problem with envy, with emotions that I have just never had like that. They can't stand it.

So, anyway, here is one, Todd Starnes from FOX News, today's article:

``A group of enraged protesters exploded in anger after a chaplain prayed in the name of Jesus at a town hall meeting in Louisiana hosted by U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy.

``The verbally-abusive crowd''--and it is talking about this same townhall that this tape came from, where they were plotting and planning to disrupt and to keep the people from Breaux Bridge from actually being able to participate in their own townhall.

Anyway:

``Louisiana State chaplain Michael Sprague and the unidentified Vietnam War veteran should be commended for maintaining their composure in the face of verbal barbarism.

``The February 22, town hall meeting in Metairie, was quickly overrun by the angry mob--much like other town hall meetings hosted by Republican lawmakers across the country.

``The mainstream media would have us believe the unruly demonstrations are part of an organic, grassroots effort.

``But I sincerely doubt many in the mob were actually residents of Louisiana--because I know the good people of Louisiana and nobody behaves like that in the Bayou State.

``Folks are raised right in Cajun Country. There's no way anybody would embarrass their mommas by acting the fool in public.

``I'd be willing to bet a cup of Community Coffee that the Jesus- hating rabble-rousers were shipped in from some God-forsaken place like Berkeley or Brooklyn.''

Now, I don't agree on Brooklyn.

Anyway:

``Chaplain Sprague had barely invoked the name of the Almighty when the heckling began.

`` `Pray on your own time. This is our time,' someone shouted. `Amen. Let's get on with it.'

``Others chanted, `Separation of church and state' and so on and so forth. Someone filmed the prayer and words do not do justice to the amount of hate directed at the chaplain.

`` `I've never been shouted down throughout a time of prayer like that,' Chaplain Sprague told me. `I've never been in a situation like that. It's sad there wasn't honor and respect for God.'

``But they became absolutely unhinged when he concluded his prayer in the name of Jesus.

`` `Wow, they booed the name of Jesus,' Cassidy said in remarks reported by the Times-Picayune.

``I thought several of the agitators were going to spontaneously combust.

``The chaplain said the overwhelming majority of people in the room were causing a disruption--but he harbors no ill will toward the mob.

`` `I'm not mad at people. My heart is bigger than that,' he said. `My heart's prayer is that everybody be treated with dignity and respect.'

``The chaplain was especially disappointed by how the mob insulted the Vietnam War veteran.

`` `There was a lot of shouting. Some turned their backs. Many didn't stand or put their hand on their heart,' he said.

``Infuriating, but not surprising.

``As I wrote in `The Deplorables' Guide to Making America Great Again' liberals have a strong aversion to President Trump, Jesus and Old Glory.

``But I still have hope in America.''

And I share that.

There is a lot to be grateful for, but one is not this article from CBN News in Jerusalem, Israel:

``A Palestinian Arab terrorist convicted of murdering two Israeli university students is one of the leaders of the feminist protest movement against U.S. President Donald Trump.

``Rasmeah Yousef Odeh, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is helping to organize a `Day without a Woman' on March 8, Arutz Sheva quotes reports in The New York Post and The Guardian.''

In 1969, Odeh was sentenced to life in prison for planting explosives that kill people and is now out leading organized resistance to the President of the United States and to law and order. It is tragic.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 49 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, February 28, 2017, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, in our Judiciary Committee today, we have been marking up what should have been a couple of rather simple bills, but it is really as if the instructions on the Soros-funded website, manual, things telling people how to obstruct the current majorities in the House and Senate and administration, could possibly be carrying over here into the Capitol itself because there are so many amendments being offered and things being drug out and people saying the same thing over and over. It is about Russia and corruption and one thing and the other--on and on and on.

It is just interesting when people are talking about their dramatic concerns over Russia, who, for years, have been totally silent. When everybody I know of on the Republican side here had been asking that President Obama and his administration do something about the terrible hacking problem from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, he didn't seem terribly bothered.

I mean, it was as if he were afraid he might hurt Putin's feelings or Khamenei's feelings in Iran and maybe they would want to kill Americans in a more brutal way, the Iran terrorists being paid. I can't help but think that there will be people in the next 4 years who are Americans, who are Muslim, Jews, Christians--especially those groups--who would be killed because of the billions and billions of dollars that this administration forced into the hands of the largest supporter of terrorism in the world: Iran.

It was as if the world--and in particular, the United States--had not been punished enough for the mistakes of the Carter administration in thinking that by pushing the Shah of Iran--not a great man. Apparently, he could be pretty brutal in his own right, but he kept radical Islam at bay.

When President Carter encouraged his forcing out of office, much as President Obama did the same thing with the President of Egypt, in both cases, it created a vacuum that was immediately filled by radical Islamists. The Muslim Brotherhood is who filled it in Egypt. In Iran, yes, it was radical Islamists. And probably for the first time since the Ottoman Empire, radical Islamist leaders were given a country, a country's military with which to wreak their havoc on the world.

It is just hard to believe that, in the intervening years between President Carter leaving office in January 1981 and President Obama coming in in January of 2009, all history had been forgotten or possibly even not really learned.

I guess, if you are learning at the hands or at the feet of Jeremiah Wright, who has such contempt--GD America was his feelings and expression--or if you are at the feet of Bill Ayers, who felt that blowing up police stations, things like that, hadn't quite served the purpose, or perhaps if we take over educating college students who will one day train elementary students and high school students, then we can ultimately create the anarchy that we were trying to create in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Back then, we were unsuccessful, but great inroads have been made here recently. You would just have to believe that America was the problem for the world in the last 100 years, and apparently there are those who feel that way.

But for those of you who have talked with friends of different religions--Muslim, Christians, Jews, secularists--in different parts of the world, those who are actually fair minded make it very clear: the United States has been the greatest force for good as a nation that the world has ever known since the Dark Ages. It just has.

And thank God we have had such wonderful allies in the endeavors that we have undertaken. Of course, in the liberation of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's hands, we had many other countries who joined us. President George H.W. Bush was going to liberate Iraq. So many Democrats had screamed at President George H.W. Bush as troops were moving into Iraq after the liberation of Kuwait, screaming: Stop, stop, stop. They are giving up. They are giving up.

President George H.W. Bush ordered the stoppage, and immediately thereafter, the Democrats that screamed for him to stop began berating Bush because he didn't finish the job in Iraq. Some of those same people were around to condemn his son George W. Bush when he actually did finish the job.

There was yellowcake uranium that was taken out which showed that Joseph Wilson had apparently said one thing to CIA agents and testified to something totally different, who said something totally different from his original interview when he got back from Africa. Of course, he was heralded a hero by the mainstream media.

But it has just been amazing to see the ebb and flow of international relations. And reflecting back as I did earlier today, as so much from my Democratic friends in Judiciary was made about connections between the Trump administration and Russia, it is just hard not to remember so vividly the comments by Mitt Romney in a debate with President Obama in 2012 that Russia was potentially the greatest threat.

I may be mistaken, but it seems like President Obama even said something glibly like, you know, ``The 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back,'' something rather cheeky like that, when, actually, my friends across the aisle, in Judiciary at least, have come to realize that that was one thing Mitt Romney was right about and President Obama was wrong about.

But if you look at what the Obama administration did, as soon as President Obama took office, instead of taking a principle stand--and I know there was a lot of perceived hatred by those coming in with the Obama administration for George W. Bush. Perhaps it goes back to President Obama's days when he was growing up in Indonesia and he commented in his book, ``Dreams from My Father,'' about how his stepfather was apparently paid off by these fat-cat guys from Texas, oil guys, fat cats from Texas and Louisiana, something to that effect, and you realized, holy smokes, he has had a great disdain for Texas, for Louisiana going back to, you know, preteen years. You couldn't help but wonder if, in policies, it was carried through. Of course, he didn't appreciate his stepfather for working, and working with the Americans back in those days. But perhaps that has affected him.

So if George W. Bush took a principled stand against Russia after Russia assaulted the independent nation of Georgia--I mean, some of us remember that President George W. Bush, trying to look for the good in people, came back from meeting Putin and said, you know: I looked into his eyes and saw his soul. He thought that is what he saw--may have been looking into shark eyes. But in any event, he soon learned the error of his ways. And that is one of the things I liked about President George W. Bush. If he made a mistake, he was big enough to say that wasn't the right way to go, and he would try to fix it.

That is exactly what he did in his relationship with Russia. When Russia attacked Georgia--unprovoked, really--President George W. Bush, his administration, properly took a very principled stand. Some didn't think it went far enough, but he immediately caused a cessation of the great relations that had been going on and took some steps to chill those relations because of Russia's unilateral attack against Georgia, hoping to wake Putin up that you can't just go attack a neighboring country like that. Even if you want the old Soviet Empire back, you can't just do that without repercussions. So because of Putin's imperialistic attack, Bush took a strong stance and let Russia know: We don't approve of what you have done, and we are cooling things, we are freezing things.

One of the first things that occurred after President Obama took office, he sent his new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to meet with the Russians and they had this red plastic button--looked pretty cheap, but it was supposed to have said ``reset,'' but apparently, they couldn't get the translation right. I am not sure what it said, peregruzka. I don't know what it said. I don't know what it was. But somebody that didn't know how to translate ``reset'' put it on and delivered the wrong message.

But the more important message that Secretary Clinton and President Obama delivered to the rather ruthless imperialist leader of Russia was this: George W. Bush overreacted when you attacked your neighbor, Georgia, Mr. Putin, and we want you to know, we don't have a problem with you attacking Georgia, attacking your neighbors, trying to take over their territory. So we are here with big smiles and big laughs because we want to be such a good friend of yours, and we think it is perfectly fine what you are doing. We think you are terrific.

That is the message after Bush let Putin know: Wait a minute. We are not going to let you be the big bully in the world. Enough.

But the Obama administration sent a very clear message: We are not Bush. We don't have a problem with you attacking Georgia.

And it is hard to think anything but that message that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as our President, sent to Putin was clear: We would be okay if you attacked Ukraine, Crimea. You know, we are okay with that. If it is adjoining, yeah, yeah, attack away.

What else is Putin supposed to think when President Bush reacts harshly when he attacks a neighboring country, and the new President comes in and says: We are fine with everything you are doing. We are nothing but smiles and plastic red buttons. We are good. We don't mind anything you have done. We want to be your good friend.

If the message from that was not clear enough, before he was reelected in 2012, a microphone he didn't realize could pick him up, picked up our President telling the President of Russia: Basically tell Vladimir I will have a lot more flexibility after the election.

Well, now that could only have one meaning, and that is, I got to look tough and like I am standing up tough to Putin right now before the 2012 election, but make sure Putin knows that after the election I can give the farm a whole lot easier. I can let him do a whole lot more that he wants to do. We can be a lot more chummy once I get past my second and last election as President. So you make sure Vlad knows--my bosom buddy over there, my best friend forever--I am going to be able to work with him like he wants me to once I get past the next election.

So with those kind of messages, then, as if it wasn't enough, followed up by another message to Russia and the world when he stated that, basically, if President al-Assad in Syria used gas on people in Syria, that would be a red line. And if he crossed it, obviously we would have to do something. He created a red line. Nobody asked him to.

Putin picks up messages like that. For all of the problems he presents, one problem he does not present is where he stands, where he wants to go, and what motivates him. He's very clear.

I have never met the man, but I have studied enough about Russia, and I have learned enough about Putin to know exactly who he is, what he is capable of, what he wants to do. And it is pretty clear: He wants to rebuild his empire. He hates the United States. He blames the United States for the fall of the glorious Soviet Union, that great USSR that once ruled the waves and the world. He wants a grand return to those days, and he wants to be the leader like Khrushchev or Brezhnev. Really, he would rather be in the nature of Stalin.

As Stalin himself once said, a translation: With power, dizziness. Stalin said that, and he should certainly know.

I think probably Putin has run into that as he has gotten all this glamour. During the Obama years, so many magazines and journalists just couldn't get enough of Putin with his shirt off. I mean, it may have helped the sex status of--as the status symbol of people who were bald. Maybe I should be proud and happy for that, but it didn't seem to affect me at all.

But there was so much laid on the shoulders--the mantle laid by the Obama administration on the shoulders of Putin. And when that didn't seem to work out very well, it looked like the next big step was to ingratiate this Nation's Presidency, administration to the most evil leaders in the world, those who are leading Iran.

They can be an evil empire all by themselves. They have wreaked so much havoc in the world. So many of the Americans that died liberating Iraq, lost their lives at the hands of IEDs or other weapons of war inflicted on them by Iranians--are sent to Iraq from Iran.

There is a big price to pay for mistakes in judgment of Presidents.

I believe Donald Trump will ultimately end up being one of the greatest Presidents in foreign relations because I think he is going to figure out, as George W. Bush did, Putin is not someone you can trust. You need to understand where he is coming from and where he wants to go. And you can use him when it is to our advantage against a common enemy. But make no mistake, he would glory in the fall of the United States.

He is wrong about why the Soviet Union fell. It fell because it was based on communism, totalitarianism, and it was destined to fall.

I could see that during the summer that I was there as an exchange student, and I went out to a collective farm. And being from East Texas, I worked on farms and ranches. And during summer, as this was sometime in July, I went out to a collective farm there; and there were massive acres, huge numbers of acres out there.

I couldn't really tell what was being cultivated and what wasn't, what even the crop was. It didn't look good. It was brown. I couldn't get over how sad things looked out there. This was down in the Ukraine, the bread basket of what was the Soviet Union at the time.

I know that if you are going to work around the latitude that that was in Ukraine--similar to ours back in Texas--in the summer, you best start around sun up so that you don't have to work when the Sun reaches its hottest time in the day.

Seeing all of the farmers gathered in the shade there near the center of the village--a little town they had there--they were all sitting in the shade midmorning. I tried to use my best Russian that I could speak at the time and asked them, tried to use a smile: You know, when do you work out in the field?

They laughed. I thought, well, maybe I messed up a word and made it into a weird translation.

Then one of them spoke up in Russian, and he said: I make the same number of rubles if I am out there in the field or if I am here in the shade--if I am out there in the Sun or here in the shade, so I am here in the shade.

I thought at the time that is why socialism, communism could never work. If you are going to pay people the same thing not to work as you do the people who are working, then eventually most people are not going to work.

It is a good thing to have a safety net for those who, through no fault of their own, find themselves unemployed; but you can't turn into a Socialist nation where you reward people--provide the safety net, sure--but you can't provide incentives to sit in the shade and not work at all. Because eventually some day, your people will go hungry and your nation will fail as a nation-state, and it did. There were many factors that contributed, but the bottom line is that type of system can never work in this world, in this life.

The Pilgrims tried it in that beautiful Mayflower Compact where they were all going to work and bring into the common storehouse and share. It was just a beautiful, lovely way to approach things.

I have loved looking, as I did last night, at the painting there in the rotunda reflecting the Pilgrims' famous prayer meeting there in Holland. It says ``Speedwell'' right under the platform where they were. They were on the ship, the Speedwell, before they left in two ships--the big Speedwell and the small Mayflower--and went over to England.

The Speedwell, the big ship that was going to allow them to take so many more to the new land, America, began

taking on water, for whatever reason. There were different things said about what may have been the cause.

But for whatever reason, they had to do a bit like Gideon did. They had to winnow it down to the people that had the best chance of making it to America so they could fit on that small Mayflower. So they winnowed the group down. They came over on the Mayflower.

It was a beautiful thing, loving, working hard as they did. But when such a huge number of their settlers died during that first winter, basically, the short version, they ultimately tried something new resembling private property: You take your property. You grow. You use it however you want. And whatever you grow and produce, that is yours.

It's amazing that worked out so well. Unlike the collective farms in the Soviet Union, there was incentive to work hard, produce, and people thrived, did so well. That actually gave a lot of incentive to others. Hey, this private property thing can work out well.

Here, all these years later, we have people wanting to go back to that way of life that has failed every time it has been tried. Even when the Apostle Paul tried it, he ultimately had to throw up his hands and say: Okay. New rule. If you don't work, you don't eat.

Because the socialist way of doing things in this world is not going to work.

I am glad that my friends who were so vocal about not wanting a strong relationship with the current leader of Russia, I am glad they finally realized what those of us on the Republican side--most of us-- have been saying for a very long time. Yeah, we can work with the Russians to defeat our common enemy, but you should never lose sight of the fact Putin does not really want us for friends. He wants to see this country gone. He wants to see our way of life fail. So just don't lose sight of that.

It is also interesting--we had amendments being proposed today with the same theme being repeated constantly about a Muslim ban, in essence, that we should not ever take religion into account when it comes to immigration. That has no place.

Yet, when our chairman, one of our other Members brought up the--I believe it was Raul Labrador--the Lautenberg amendment that so many of us support, when you know a group of people--such as the Jewish people in another part of the world--are being killed and they are being persecuted, when we know that is taking place, it is a good thing to consider who they are and that their religion is being persecuted.

When there are Christians in another part of the world being persecuted beyond what other religions are, it is a good thing to try to help them.

When there were Muslims being persecuted in Eastern Europe, the Clinton administration responded, came to their aid. And for those that say, gee, standing up to radical Islam will only encourage more recruitment--my word--how much worse can it get than it has gotten during the last 8 years?

There was no ISIS. President Obama took office, Afghanistan, they were still fighting; but actually, the Taliban had been totally--any organized Taliban had been destroyed by February of 2002, and we hadn't lost a single American life. We had used--we had let the Northern Alliance, residents, citizens in Afghanistan, we let them fight our enemy because, though they were Muslim, most of them, they didn't want radical Islamists running Afghanistan.

A mistake was made after our friends in the Northern Alliance totally routed the Taliban. We sent in tens of thousands of American troops, and our friends, who loved us and heralded us for our liberation from the Taliban in Afghanistan, began to look at us as occupiers. I have been to Afghanistan enough. I have seen the way that relationship has gone, from us being the heroes that liberated their country from these radical Islamists that were a bane to the existence of just peace- loving Muslims wanting to live and not be terrorized by radical Islamists, and somehow we ended up becoming bad guys to so much of the country because of our massive presence.

I do believe, Mr. Speaker, there is potential with all of the chaos that is beginning to raise its head again in Afghanistan. I heard a report this morning that Afghans had confided to a Republican here in town when he was over there visiting that al-Qaida is even back in Afghanistan. So it is not just the Taliban back stronger than ever; now al-Qaida is back in Afghanistan.

And what was the cost to America, to our military over the last 8 years in allowing the Taliban to come back stronger than they were originally, to al-Qaida, to come back in Afghanistan stronger than they were originally? My personal opinion, I believe it was because of President Obama's rules of engagement. But we lost four times more precious military lives in Afghanistan during President Obama's command than were lost during just under 8 years under Commander George W. Bush.

How could we lose four times more American military and suffer such a setback over the last 8 years, where we are back maybe a little worse off than things were when we went in to Afghanistan in October of 2001? Well, it has to do with the commitment. I heard former Vice President Cheney say that when President Obama announced he is committed to Afghanistan and he sent a surge into Afghanistan, he also announced, what seemed almost simultaneously, and we are going to be out in 18 months.

As we know from history, nobody that ever won a war, a police action, a confrontation, ever set a deadline: We are going to win by this date or we are coming out, whether we have won or not. That message went out loud and clear to the Taliban that was growing back that if we can just hang on for 18 months, we will own Afghanistan all over again.

I understand that, apparently, General Harwood, that has apparently been named by President Trump as the new National Security Adviser--and Mr. Speaker, I am sorry. I have got to say this because of what Billy and Karen Vaughn have come to mean to me since I met them some years back, after the death of their SEAL Team 6 son, Aaron. Gosh, I have come to know--I never met him while he was alive, but I have come to know him and feel like I knew him as a friend and as one of his admirers, vicariously, through his parents, Billy and Karen.

When I heard the general's name come back up as one of those being considered, I thought, oh, please, surely not, because Billy and Karen made clear, you know, as family members were finding out what happened there in Afghanistan that took the most SEAL team lives we had ever had, they went onto a Chinook that should not have carried our SEAL team members. They went onto this Chinook and, supposedly, going on a mission, and yet because of the rules laid down by President Obama and his administration, they had to make sure that the Afghans knew exactly what was going to occur, where they were going, what they were going to do.

Even knowing that after Vice President Joe Biden's gaffe, where he released classified information, that it was the SEALs who took out Osama bin Laden, it wasn't supposed to come out. It was another gaffe. But immediately, Bill and Karen said, after Biden outed the SEALs and it came out it was SEAL Team 6, they got a call from Aaron saying: Hey, you need to get off social media. The radical Islamists are going to be looking for us, for our family members.

So this administration put big targets on SEAL Team 6 by disclosing classified information that ultimately led to their deaths, and it put targets on family members of SEAL Team 6. I know they didn't mean to do it. I know it wasn't intentional. They just didn't realize how serious things were.

I know they must not have realized, or at least President Obama must not have realized, how serious it was when I watched the video of the gentleman that was called his body man, was with him through so many days, and he was answering questions at a university in California. It has been some years back that I watched. But he was asked, in effect, what was it like being with President Obama when he went into the room where they were watching SEAL Team 6 go after Osama bin Laden. He basically said: Oh, we didn't stay in there long. The President looked in but said, ``I'm not watching this,'' and they

went and played cards, several hands of cards, while the SEAL Team 6 was putting their lives on the line for their country.

So if that is your way of thinking, then it is understandable that you wouldn't appreciate the dangers in which you put SEAL Team 6 when you out them as the people who went after Osama bin Laden. But they knew, and the chatter was clear, and it was loud. They wanted to take casualties and get a price back with lives of SEAL Team 6 members.

The mission that they were on should have ended right then, when the Afghan commander came up. They knew where they were going. He comes up and pulls off their elite soldiers, off the Chinook helicopter, and replaced them with people whose names were not on the manifest. Well, under the rules, that should have ended the task, should have ended the operation right there. They were told to go on, so they went--I have seen the transcript of testimony, statements--by gunship, C-130 gunship in the area. They had all kinds of imaging.

And this isn't classified because this was on the DVD that was given to the family members. They were later asked if they would give it back. They didn't realize quite how much information they had put. Yeah, they sure didn't because the family members, like the Vaughns, watched it, read it, found out what was on it.

We had a C-130 gunship, and I--my 4 years on Active Duty in the Army, I was never in combat. I think we should have gone into combat in Iran when an act of war occurred and our embassy was attacked. But that was Commander-in-Chief Carter's call, and he decided not to send anybody. I think if he had responded within 48 hours and said, ``You either release our hostages, or we are sending our United States military, and you better not hurt them or there will be a powerful price paid by you and your country,'' I think they would have released them. I think that is why, probably--I mean, I was watching closely from Fort Benning. All of us were watching the news. Were any of us going to be sent?

The Ayatollah had a spokesman. I have not seen anything about it since I watched back in those days, `79, but I recall him. It was very interesting. For a few days, he kept distinguishing that it was the students that attacked the U.S. Embassy. It was the students that had the hostages.

I said to some of my Army friends at Fort Benning: I think he is afraid Carter's going to send our military, and he is using the students as a back door for him. So if Carter shows a backbone and says, ``You either release our hostages or we are sending--you are going to feel the full vengeance of the United States military,'' they had a back door. It gave the Ayatollah an opportunity to save face by saying: You don't have to do it. We have negotiated with the students. Here are your hostages back. You don't have to invade Iran and take out our administration. See, we are your friend. We helped you out.

But after a few days, I am not sure exactly what it was, but after a few days, it was clear, I think, to the Iranian leaders that this President is not going to do anything. He is just going to ask us to let their people go, and so we don't have to worry. They began to say ``we have the hostages'' because they knew Carter wasn't going to do anything.

I still believe, based on what I learned at Fort Benning, that if President Carter had allowed all the helicopters to go that I was told were originally requested, then there would not have been one chopper-- they had to have six to be able to make it the 500 miles into the staging area there in Iran. As has come out publicly, they all knew, if we don't get six choppers out of the--eight was all the Carter administration would allow to go. They should have sent 12 because they expected to have a 50 percent loss, turbine engines going across sand like that 500 miles. They knew they had to have six or the mission was an automatic abort.

As we know, when only five got there and it was clear there was not another one coming, then it was aborted. As I understand, the investigation indicated the helicopter pilot, as sand swirled around his chopper, must have gotten vertigo and not relied on his instruments. The helicopter tilted. The blade went through the C-130, and everybody on the chopper and the C-130 was killed.

But, once again, we were embarrassed because we didn't have a Commander in Chief that was totally committed to doing what it took to get our hostages out. Again, I will always believe, if he had shown a backbone within 48 hours of our embassy being attacked and our hostages being taken, there would be thousands of American military lives still in being today.

So having witnessed firsthand lessons of poor decisions by Commanders in Chief, having seen the data, the statistics of dead American military in Afghanistan, four times more under Commander Obama than under Commander Bush in approximately near the same amount of time, we haven't learned the lessons of the past very well.

I feel absolutely confident that the President is going to learn his lessons. He has made a couple of mistakes. And certainly I agree, you can't have a National Security Adviser that is not completely honest with the Vice President and the President; you just can't. You have to be able to totally trust him. That has been a problem in our intelligence community. They were leaking and undermining President Bush, and now it is happening again to President Trump.

So as I was talking about SEAL Team Six, these devastated families that had lost the greatest military members that we could have lost at that point, their every life is just priceless, invaluable. But there was so much money spent in training up these SEAL teams. It is an investment. You need to make sure they have the right equipment, that you don't have Afghans pulled off that are the best fighting members that Afghanistan has, and you put what they considered expendable Afghanistan soldiers on with our elite SEAL Team Six, especially when you know there are targets on their backs.

But when the families met General Harward, they said they were just so crushed, they were so devastated, and they found out that this AC- 130 gunship, that there were opportunities to take out this patrol, this team, that shot down the Chinook and our SEAL team members. And there were other precious American lives on that helicopter in addition to the SEAL Team Six members, and they should not be shorted in when we owe them and their memories.

But they asked if they had an opportunity to take these guys out. And the crew said they did. They had the thermal imaging. They could see these guys moving like military. They could see them moving up to the high point and getting ready to fire. They asked for permission to take them out, and they were denied permission to take them out. They watched them fire over and over at the helicopters with the rocket- propelled grenades apparently of some kind, and they missed with the first one. As I understand it, they were still not allowed to shoot them down, take out the Afghan rebels. They fired again, and they fired again. And the second and third took out our precious American military members along with those precious Afghan lives who should never have been on that helicopter to begin with.

Then they watched them dismantle their equipment and start to climb down. They asked permission to take them out, it is my understanding, and, once again, they were told there may be civilians in the area, so, no, do not fire; and they watched them fade back into the population of Afghanistan after killing so many of our SEAL Team Six and others on the helicopter.

They asked the general who is now apparently going to be our National Security Adviser: Why didn't you take out these people, these Afghan radical Islamists? Why didn't you take them out before they took out our military members, our SEAL Team Six? Why?

His statement, from their memory, as related to me, was, in essence: Because we were trying to win hearts and minds.

Our National Security Adviser is going to be more interested in--or at least he has in the past--apparently has been more interested in winning hearts and minds of people that hate our guts than he is of protecting the most precious assets the United States of America has: American lives.

We haven't won any hearts and minds by allowing SEAL Team Six--so many of those members on that Chinook--to be killed. We haven't. That strategy didn't work.

I am sorry. I want to be supportive. I was excited President Trump won, but when I know how this man, who I understand today has now been named to be the new National Security Adviser, was given the task of encouraging and being empathetic to the family members who lost those precious American family members in that Chinook that should never have been shot down, it should never have been allowed to take off, and the best he could do is say: Sorry, they had to die because we were trying to win hearts and minds instead of win the war.

I hope that his mentality has changed. I hope he will not be willing to expend the best trained, the best and brightest military members we have, as he tries to win hearts and minds instead of trying to win a battle and win the war; but I guess time will tell.

Mr. Speaker, I want to finish by saluting all those brave Americans that have defended freedom, that have fought for America, and who have responded in a voluntary military since 1979 and given their lives at the hands of radical Islamists. I hope and pray this President will pick people from here who will have the same feelings about precious American lives.

I know Donald Trump does, and I think he will be a good President. I think he blew it on this call, but time will tell.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to the chairman of our committee. I appreciate the question asked by my colleague across the aisle: Why now?

The answer to the question, why now, is that this Federal Government has not done its job. This Congress has not done its job in complying with the aspirations of the Constitution.

When you have disagreement between documents, as we did between the Louisiana Purchase on the south border of the Red River, and Oklahoma going to the middle of the Red River--and, of course, the Red River changes as time goes on--then the Federal Government should have long since stepped in and said: Here is the land we are talking about. Here is where the borders will actually go.

I am amazed at times, we talk in terms of agencies, of bureaus, of departments, as if they are some independent country that deserves a place at the United Nations making policies and making executive decisions all their own.

These people work for us. The Bureau of Land Management does have some folks that don't understand that. They think they are an entity unto themselves, and they make policy. Well, that is not what the Constitution set up.

In fact, the Constitution, in the preamble, as my friends know, says: ``We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility. . . .''

This is what this bill is trying to do.

Now, last Congress, my friend, Mac Thornberry, had a bill that went ahead and took care of the issue, once and for all, and it was going to sell the land, and this dispute could be over. But since friends in the Senate were not able to come to a conclusion and they still just could not figure out what an appropriate disposition was, then my friend, Mr. Thornberry, has come back with this bill.

It is consistent with what every good parent will tell the child: Before you make a decision, gather all the evidence and information you can, then make a more educated, informed decision.

That is all this bill does, Mr. Speaker. It says, we are going to do a survey now. We are going to figure out what land we are talking about. And since the BLM has said we are not even going to even survey that land, we are going to leave it in dispute. We are not going to establish justice. We are going to worry about ``just us'' at the BLM.

We are not going to ensure domestic tranquility. We are going to create chaos, because when we create chaos, then we benefit. We get more land, we put people in jail.

Well, this is a simple bill, for heaven's sake. It says we are going to do a survey. We are going to see what we have got. That is all the bill does.

Why now?

Exactly. That is a great question. This should have been done 100 years ago or more than 100 years ago. It wasn't, so it is time to do it now and ensure domestic tranquility.

So all of the parties involved--not the BLM; they are not a party-- the Federal Government, the Government of Oklahoma, the Government of Texas, and all the owners involved can, once and for all, have domestic tranquility.

Mr. Speaker, we had a resignation now that seems to be the big news of the day of a Cabinet member of the Trump administration.

It is interesting to have seen this Indivisible movement arise. The Daily Signal points out: `` . . . Ties to George Soros, Sows Division Against Trump, GOP Lawmakers.''

``Democrats who used to work on Capitol Hill are helping to disrupt Republican lawmakers' town hall meetings across the country through a nationwide effort to oppose and `resist' President Donald Trump's agenda.''

And it goes on to talk about some of the leftists who are trying to do that.

And another article that says that the Indivisible team is trying to mimic strategies of the Tea Party. But it was quite a difference. The Taxed Enough Already Party was grabbing hold of American principles, constitutional principles, principles that brought about the revolution and served the country well for over 200 years; and that we are supposed to have a government that works for us, not works us; takes away our religious freedom, tries to take away Second Amendment freedom, tries to take away freedom of religion; tells us we can't say anything negative about anything they care about or they will try to destroy us, our business. And there were people that were shocked. And then on top of it all, add a lot more tax. And as the President told Joe the Plumber, in essence: We need to take your income and spread it around the country.

I had some friends here during the inauguration. I took them to the Lincoln Memorial. And, of course, on the south inside wall is the Gettysburg Address. On the inside of the north wall is the second inaugural that is so profound. Mark Levin's father has a terrific book about it. What an amazing speech.

Lincoln is talking just shortly before his assassination. But the second inaugural, the war is winding down, it is about over, and there is so much hope abounding. He was not bitter. He was an amazing man, our first Republican President. He talked about the Nation and about how both the north and south both read the same Bible and both pray to the same God. He points out that the prayers of both could not be answered, the prayers of neither have been fully answered. But he points out that it might seem strange that a group of people would invoke God's name to wrench their bread out of the sweat of other people's brow.

But I heard enough from people in the Taxed Enough Already Party, this group that arose that--wait a minute--basically are saying when the President says, I am going to take your money that you made and spread it around, he is basically saying, Look, I am going to be the most powerful man in the world, and certainly in this country, and my principles dictate; I need to take what you work for and spread it around to other people.

Is that a way of wrenching your bread from the sweat of others?

It is interesting. But anyway, this group had 17 show up at an office. Obviously, they were more interested in publicity than a meeting, because all they had to do is call and we make sure they have a meeting and somebody is there to meet them, even though I am here in Washington when they demand to meet.

Apparently groups all over the country are following this Soros- funded effort to try to destroy the country, disrupt the country, and create anarchy and mayhem wherever they can. Fortunately, in east Texas, people realize we can't quite go as far as some groups do because nobody would accept it. I have got some constituents that are asking legitimate questions.

But what we go back to is what really gave strength to this movement, objecting to what was being done in the Obama administration, was when we had a President and a Speaker who were saying: We know that a majority of Americans don't want this ObamaCare, Affordable Care Act. It is hard to call it affordable care because it is such a misnomer. But we see the polls. A majority of the American people don't want it, but we are going to stick you with it anyway because it is part of our agenda.

That is what was really bothering people. The thing is that this so- called Indivisible and groups like this are terrific at coming up with names that are anathema to what they really are. So you have a group called Indivisible, and their goal is completely dividing and destroying the constitutional principles of America.

But the thing is, a majority didn't want ObamaCare passed. It was shoved down their throats, even though most of the people in this body here had not even read it. I read it. It scared me. I am still asking for answers.

Why did President Obama need a commissioned and noncommissioned Presidential officer corps that he could call up. Initially, it sounded like a medical emergency group, but then it said they would be trained. It didn't say with weapons or with what. And it said the President would be able to call them up for any international emergency, and it didn't mention the word ``health'' or ``medical'' on that.

So, anyway, there is just so much in there that we didn't need. Most of Americans didn't want it and didn't like it. And it took away people's health insurance from them.

I was talking with thousands of people in my district. I love to do telephone townhalls with my district. This was one segment. About a third of the district last night was represented in this group, and I will have others coming up in the future. But it is very helpful to me because I can talk to people that you wouldn't see, you wouldn't hear, wouldn't see or hear you if you had 40 people come to a townhall, like sometimes do.

And since we know that there are groups out there that have instructions to create mayhem, disrupt, accuse them of racism--it is in the documents that we are seeing--whatever they bring up, charge racism, corruption, and something else, we can have a telephone townhall and I can find out what people are thinking that I otherwise wouldn't hear from.

I thought about doing a mailer to mail to as many in my district that I could, but the costs were just so dramatic. I could do it, but why spend $100,000-plus of taxpayer dollars just to find out what my district is thinking?

I think the best indication of what people in each congressional district in the country are thinking is what happened in the November election. That is the ultimate poll that anybody could ever take. And I have having been talking about for 6 years that ObamaCare needed to be repealed, that it takes away choice, that it is costing more money. You don't get to keep your doctor, you don't get to keep your insurance policy; and so many thousands in my district did not.

And so it was very helpful to hear from people, for example, how many believe the government needs to be more involved in health insurance, and I think that was at like 97 percent. There were thousands of people that had been called. But anyway, it gives me feedback.

It was interesting to note that this group, this indivisible group, the websites had gotten some information about the messages going back and forth, and one of them is, when we demand that they have a townhall that we can disrupt and they say we are going to have a telephone townhall because we can reach a lot more people, people that are invalids or homebound, seniors that couldn't get out to a personal townhall meeting can participate in the telephone townhall. They are saying how do we respond to that when there are so many more people they can reach and hear from and it helps the disabled to do these telephone townhalls, how do we respond to that? And they really didn't get a good answer, last I saw.

But it is important for every Representative to know where their district stands, where their people stand, and I continue to believe that I am the most fortunate Member of this 435-seat body because of whom I get to represent.

I had an opponent last year raising Cain about I was on national media so much, and I mean, when I think about it, why would national media want me to be on? It is certainly not my looks, certainly not because I have such an incredible voice.

You know, I would love to have a voice like James Earl Jones, or I was just so moved at the Senate Chaplain speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast a couple of weeks ago. I would love to have a voice like I think maybe God's voice may sound like

some day when I get to hear it, but I don't. I don't have a voice like that. This is what I have got. I don't put on any airs.

Why would any national media want to have me on? And I think it would have to have something to do with the fact that I represent extraordinary people in Texas where sense is very common, just so much common sense, and I think a lot of the country likes hearing about the way three-fourths of my district thinks. I think I reflect that district, and that is why, basically, three-fourths of the district voted for me. It is not because of the way I look or sound.

Even people that can't stand me in that 25 or 26 percent, they know I am going to stand up and do what I told people I am going to do. It is just that some people don't like it. Some years back, one guy wrote that I was a moron and misspelled ``moron.'' If he is listening, Mr. Speaker, he needs to know there is no E in moron.

But in any event, it is interesting to see how frantic things have gotten and how destructive some of the forces in this country have gotten in trying to bring down the principles that made us great, and it is quite disconcerting.

That leads me to a point I want to discuss, which we had the news, the tragic failing of the dam in California. We will continue, those of us who believe in the power of prayer, to pray that there will be no loss of life, despite the negligence of the California government in refusing for over 12 years--apparently, at least 12 years--to heed the warnings that this dam was going to be failing at some point. They needed to do something. We just need to pray that the negligence that occurred in the New Orleans area in diverting money away from shoring up the levee would not end up having the mass cost of loss of life in California.

But as we continue to have people try to disrupt our congressional districts, continue to try to make so much noise, create so much anarchy that it creates an inability to govern properly--despite the fact it isn't going to work--this President, this administration, and this Congress is not going to be diverted from what needs to be done.

This article came out today from the Free Beacon, by Adam Kredo: ``Former Obama Officials, Loyalists Waged Secret Campaign to Oust Flynn.''

Now, I hadn't known Flynn before. I don't believe I had met him before maybe last September. I might have, but I don't believe I have before that. But I had a chance to visit with him at that point with, at that time, Donald Trump, now our President. He is an interesting man. He has served his country well.

But there are issues that are coming out now about discussions with Russians. It would seem to me, if President Trump had an intelligence community and had people in the government service around him, the career people that were really wanting to help the country--rather than the Democrats or President Obama as he went out--that were really interested in helping the best interests of the United States of America, they would want the President to have all of the information that anyone in any of the upper echelons or anywhere in the departments that work for President Trump--wouldn't they want their boss to know or have the most accurate information?

Apparently, there was information out there that didn't come to light until President Trump had selected his National Security Adviser. He had been sworn in as the National Security Adviser, and they were on a roll. And of course, one of the things General Flynn was concerned about, something that is a deep concern of so many of ours in this body, was the outrageous Iran treaty that got treated like it wasn't a treaty. It was, indeed, a treaty. It never got ratified by the Senate, but it was, indeed, a treaty. It had all of the things in it that treaties would have.

But this article goes on: ``The abrupt resignation Monday evening of White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is the culmination of a secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald Trump's national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran, according to multiple sources both in and out of the White House who described to the Washington Free Beacon a behind-the-scenes effort by these officials to plant a series of damaging stories about Flynn in the national media.

``The effort, said to include former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes--the architect of a separate White House effort to create what he described as a pro-Iran echo chamber--included a small task force of Obama loyalists who deluged media outlets with stories aimed at eroding Flynn's credibility, multiple sources revealed.

``The operation primarily focused on discrediting Flynn, an opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, in order to handicap the Trump administration's efforts to disclose secret details of the nuclear deal with Iran that had been long hidden by the Obama administration.''

Mr. Speaker, I want to insert here, some of us went down to the classified area of the SCIF where we can review classified information and we reviewed what was available about the Iran deal, but we found out there was a lot of secret stuff that the administration would not allow us to know: what he had given away, what he had done, potential bad judgment in going so far out of the Obama administration's way to placate and assist the largest supporters of terrorism in the world.

Obviously, what this article is talking about, some secret parts of the agreement, those are things that we were certainly not allowed to read no matter who you were in Congress at the time.

But this says: ``Insiders familiar with the anti-Flynn campaign told the Free Beacon that these Obama loyalists plotted in the months before Trump's inauguration to establish a set of roadblocks before Trump's national security team, which includes several prominent opponents of diplomacy with Iran. The Free Beacon first reported on this effort in January.

``Sources who spoke to the Free Beacon requested anonymity in order to speak freely about the situation and avoid interfering with the White House's official narrative about Flynn, which centers on his failure to adequately inform the president about a series of phone calls with Russian officials.

``Flynn took credit for his missteps regarding these phone calls in a brief statement released late Monday evening. Trump administration officials subsequently stated that Flynn's efforts to mislead the president and vice president about his contacts with Russia could not be tolerated.

``However, multiple sources closely involved in the situation pointed to a larger, more secretive campaign aimed at discrediting Flynn and undermining the Trump White House.

``'It's undeniable that the campaign to discredit Flynn was well underway before Inauguration Day, with a very troublesome and politicized series of leaks designed to undermine him,' said one veteran national security adviser with close ties to the White House team. `This pattern reminds me of the lead up to the Iran deal, and probably features the same cast of characters.'''

And we know from news that has come out since the Iran deal was made by this administration, we know that some of the same placaters that enabled North Korea to develop nuclear weapons in the Clinton administration were involved in negotiating this deal with Iran. The deal with North Korea was to stop them from getting nuclear weapons, and so my interpretation of the deal was basically this:

They promised them: We will give you everything you need to develop nuclear weapons in North Korea if you will just sign a piece of paper that says you won't do that.

The Clinton administration, some of the same people that ran to do a deal with Iran, they jumped on that. And so what happens, North Korea uses what we provided them to help create nuclear weapons. Big shock.

So it is a big shock that the Obama administration would send at least one of those original people to be the top negotiator with Secretary of State John Kerry, who never saw a Genghis Khan that he couldn't work with, and they work out a deal. We still haven't found out all of the arrangements, all of the things that were done; but we know that there is, apparently, something so sinister about what this country has done, bent over backwards to provide for Iran or allow Iran to do, that the Obama administration could

not allow right-thinking American people to know what it had done for Iran and against Israel and the United States' best interests.

But if you believe the best interests of the United States are to weaken the United States, if you believe that the United States has been the biggest problem in the world for the last 100 years, then you would think, well, then if we make a deal with Iran that weakens the United States, may even lead to our demise, the world is a better place. So it is ultimately for the good of the world because the United States is certainly weaker than it has been in decades, going back to pre-World War II military strength.

The Chinese economy, it was announced at one point, may have exceeded ours. I am not sure that is true.

Anyway, countries around the world that are threats to world peace have gotten stronger. ISIS has gotten stronger during this President's term, in fact, came into being under President Obama and got quite strong, thousands upon thousands of lives lost.

In Afghanistan, he took a war that he told people--the voters in 2008--was the important war. And what should have been just a housekeeping operation under his leadership and with his rules of engagement, it cost about four times more American military lives than were lost in the height of the Afghan war for 7\1/2\ years under President Bush. It must be something in the leadership there when one President loses four times more military members than the prior President in the same length of time and the latter President being when the war was supposed to be basically over.

This article points out that:

``Flynn had been preparing to publicize many of the details about the nuclear deal that had been intentionally hidden by the Obama administration as part of its effort to garner support for the deal, these sources said.

``Flynn is now `gone before anybody can see what happened' with these secret agreements, said the second insider close to Flynn and the White House.

``Sources in and out of the White House are concerned that the campaign against Flynn will be extended to other prominent figures in the Trump administration.''

Well, Mr. Speaker, I can inject here: Whoever these sources are that are concerned the campaign against Flynn be extended to other prominent figures, I can guarantee them that people in and outside the United States Government right now, as I speak, will do everything within their power--some of these characters will--to prevent President Trump from getting us back on track to making the world a safer place, to getting Iran back in the little box that President Carter let them out of. They are going to go after lots of people. It is not going to be limited. This apparently is a campaign that is going to be ongoing.

Apparently, General Flynn messed up and wasn't completely honest when he should have been. A President has got to be able to trust his security adviser. That kind of goes without saying. The President has to be able to trust those people.

It takes me back to September when I was talking--it was right before General Flynn walked up, actually ironically. But I was telling: Look, I like President George W. Bush. He is a good man. He is a smart guy. He is a lot smarter than people give him credit. He is one of the wittiest people you can ever have a conversation with, but something that hurt him--and I wanted Donald Trump to understand this--something that hurt him was that he was such a nice guy. After the election was over, he made it known, in essence, that everything that happened in the past is bygones. What is happening now, from now on, we are going forward.

The trouble is he had people doing bad acts, even crimes like having FBI files at the White House. Chuck Colson went to prison a year and a half for having one. The Clinton administration had nearly a thousand; nobody did a day.

I said, you have got to clean out these departments, these agencies where Bush didn't clean them out. You have got to or they are going to undermine you the whole time you are President. And it looks like we are seeing that right now.

So, Mr. Speaker, I just encourage all my colleagues to let's give the Trump administration the chance to help get this country safer, freer, and just a better place to live. It is not going to happen while people are undermining the President from within his own administration and a little cabal that has those ties in this administration. It is time to clean house, and General Flynn is not who I am talking about.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I greatly appreciate my friend, colleague-- actually, dear friend--Steve King, and his points he is making--right on track.

I hesitated for a number of days now about making public reference to this, but it needs to be addressed and it needs to be looked at, and people need to be aware so that mistakes do not continue to be made. This is a story from John Stanton, February 2, 2017, BuzzFeed: ``Congressional IT Staff Under Investigation In Alleged Procurement Scam.''

And this is February 2, so several days ago--5 days ago. It says: ``A lawmaker briefed on the matter had said House officials had told staff from affected offices that contractors had been arrested, but late Thursday night US Capitol Police spokesperson Eva Malecki told BuzzFeed News that no arrest had been made. The USCP is investigating House IT support staff.''

Now, that is the technologically proficient staff members that work on congressional computers, that work on our technology, so it was quite disturbing to see this some days back.

This says: ``Five men who had access to the House of Representatives' entire computer network are under investigation Thursday evening following a months-long investigation by federal law enforcement officials, according to a lawmaker briefed on the raid.''

Well, it sure wasn't me because I didn't know anything about this until I read it a few days ago.

``Although the lawmaker said House officials had told staff from affected offices that contractors had been arrested, late Thursday night, US Capitol Police spokesperson Eva Malecki told BuzzFeed News that no arrest had been made, but that USCP are investigating members of the House IT support staff.

`` `At the request of Members of Congress, the United States Capitol Police are investigating the actions of House IT support staff,' Malecki said in a statement. `No Members are being investigated. No arrests have been made. It should be noted that, administratively, House staff were asked to update their security settings as a best practice. We have no further comment on the ongoing investigation at this time.'

``According to the member, the chiefs of staff for 20 lawmakers were summoned to a closed-door meeting with House administration officials, who briefed them on the incidents. The chiefs were told the men were conducting a procurement scam, although officials acknowledged the men--whose staff were told were brothers--had access to virtually all of the computer systems used by the affected lawmakers. Members were also told Thursday night to change the passwords to their email and other applications.

``The news has rattled nerves on Capitol Hill, especially after the series of high-profile political hackings over the last year. `They said it was some sort of procurement scam, but now I'm concerned that they may have stolen data from us, emails, who knows,' the lawmaker said.''

Then this was added: ``This post has been updated and corrected with new information from US Capitol Police, which said no arrests have been made but there is an active investigation ongoing into IT staff who were involved in alleged procurement scam. A lawmaker briefed on the situation had told BuzzFeed News that arrests were made.''

And then yesterday we had this update from Politico, ``House staffers under criminal investigations still employed,'' by Heather Caygle.

``Multiple Democratic lawmakers have yet to cut ties with House staffers under criminal investigation for wide-ranging equipment and data theft.

``Imran Awan, a longtime House staffer who worked for more than two dozen Democrats since 2004, is still employed by Rep. Debbie Wasserman

Schultz, though his access to the House IT network has been blocked since last week.

`` `At this time we are continuing to gather information from House officials and will determine the best approach to move forward once we have reviewed that information,' David Damron, communications director for Wasserman Schultz, said in an email when asked by POLITICO if Awan was still working for the Florida Democrat.''

Mr. Speaker, I might insert parenthetically that although you can't judge much from a name, one can't help but wonder, because of all of the outcry about the Russians, if maybe these brothers--well, I started to ask--have some Russian connection, but there doesn't appear to be any.

``Multiple relatives of Imran Awan, including his wife Hina Alvi, Abid Awan and Jamal Awan--all House staffers until recently--are also being investigated in connection to the alleged procurement scam, according to a senior House official close to the investigation.

``Alvi has worked for more than a dozen House Democrats and the House Democratic Caucus since 2007. At least one member, Rep. Gregory Meeks, New York, is still employing her.

`` `My office is in the process of gathering information to make a determination in the near future about the employment of Ms. Alvi with our office,' Meeks said Monday in a statement to POLITICO.

``Five House staffers are accused of stealing equipment from members' offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network, according to multiple sources briefed on the investigation.

``Top staffers for lawmakers impacted by the scam were briefed last Thursday. A source in the briefing said the Sergeant-at-Arms confirmed the U.S. Capitol Police is conducting an active criminal investigation but said no arrests have been made.

``Imran Awan was first employed on Capitol Hill by former Rep. Robert Wexler in January 2004 as an `information technology director.' Awan has worked for at least 25 other House Democrats since that time as a shared employee providing technical support including to previous House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra, currently the California attorney general.

``Imran Awan has a longtime relationship with some members, including working for Meeks and Becerra starting in 2004 and joining Wasserman Schultz's office in 2005.

``Several Members who have employed Imran Awan and Alvi in the past confirmed to POLITICO they terminated their employment late last week.

``Jamal Awan worked as a House IT staffer for more than half-dozen House Democrats since 2014, according to LegiStorm, a website that tracks congressional employment. Abid Awan worked for more than a dozen House Democrats as a systems administrator since 2005, according to congressional records.

``Another House staff with connections to Imran Awan is also under investigation, according to the senior House official.

``No one named in this POLITICO report as being under investigation returned multiple calls and emails requesting comment over the past several days.''

Capitol Police have not returned calls.

So it is extremely disconcerting. All of us have to hire people to help us with our jobs, and most all of us need computer assistants. I can't help but reflect back, there is a new policy last year that was instituted that requires every employee that may have access to the computer systems, the massive databases and emails of Members, such confidential information, they need a background check, but at the same time, there was the requirement that had to be certified by the Member or the administration officer in a congressional office, you either certify that this person has had the required background check to be allowed to access this confidential information on computers in the congressional offices. Some of these Members were part of the Intelligence Committee having access to top secret information. So this is quite serious.

There was another--there were two possibilities. One, you certify this person had the proper background check done. And, number two--it was an ``or in the alternative''--if this person works for more than one person--which computer personnel often do because you don't need them full-time, you just need them when something goes wrong or perhaps when they're needing to break into your computer and steal your data-- you could sign and certify that this person works for more than one Member of Congress. Therefore, I don't believe the background check is necessary.

So I hope all of my colleagues will make note that there may be people on the Hill that don't have the best intentions with our computer data, including access to classified information. So no matter who they are, even if somebody is worried, because of their background or where they were born, that somebody might scream bias or prejudice, we just need to have everyone who has access to classified information to have a background check even if they work for multiple people. We just need to do that. Lessons, apparently, are still being learned in that regard.

As we continue to hear from some friends here in Washington and some going nuts around the country about a Muslim ban, which is completely false and completely untrue, something we are not hearing a lot about is the horrors being experienced by Christians in the Middle East. Even Secretary John Kerry had acknowledged there was an effort, a genocide, in other words, an effort to wipe out every Christian because of their religious beliefs in the Middle East.

So you would think that if we were going to be the big-hearted nation, which we have repeatedly been throughout history--not always, but certainly most of the time, more than any other nation in history-- then you would think that our hearts would go out to the Christians being persecuted in far greater percentages than any other religious or racial group in the Middle East.

Yet this story from Townhall, ``Christians Were Persecuted In Every Corner of Globe in 2016,'' points out: ``Not only did the persecution of Christians increase in 2016, it also spread to every corner of the globe, according to Open Doors USA's latest World Watch List.

``The annual report ranks the worst 50 countries for Christians trying to live out their faith, and while some findings are not surprising, like North Korea topping the list for the 16th consecutive year, the group is troubled by the overall rise in the number of incidents considered persecution.''

It is getting worse than ever. Of course, the current Secretary- General, when asked a year and a half or so ago why the percentage of Christian refugees from the Middle East being helped is so much lower than the actual percentage of Christians living in the area, his response was, in essence, that, well, they were so historically important to the areas in which they lived, it was important that they be left there. In other words, we need to leave them where they are being murdered to extinction.

Then that guy with that kind of sensitivity for a genocide gets promoted to be Secretary-General of the U.N., which, to me, is all the more reason it is time to get out of the United Nations. Since a Rockefeller Foundation of some kind controls the land and it is to be used by the U.N., as long as the U.N. remains the main headquarters, then all we have to do is start denying visas and privileges to come in until we have extreme vetting for people that may be improperly using their positions at the U.N. If that proves too much of a burden, then they can go to Brussels or Istanbul or wherever. We might as well let them go to Syria. That seems to be where they want to be most involved, I guess.

It was certainly worth noting Jordan Schachtel in Conservative Review has pointed out: ``The Middle East country of Kuwait issued its own `Muslim ban' in 2011, citing the `instability' from several terror hotbeds in the Middle East.''

That is rather interesting because the United States has not and does not have a Muslim ban at all. Christians,

atheists, Jews, and Hindus were all just as prohibited as any Muslim from the seven countries that the Obama administration named as being troubled. And the Trump administration didn't just name them as troubled; it actually took action and did something about it.

We have this story from Liam Deacon, Breitbart, that the Islamic State is paying migrants smuggling fees for them if they join a jihad. So more good news. As President Trump is trying to protect America, more stories emerge that make what President Trump did even more important.

I was hearing something on FOX News. They had a panel. There was one panel member that repeated--and I know she didn't mean it to intentionally misrepresent the facts, but she did in saying that no one has been arrested from one of those seven countries for any terrorist activity. Or maybe she said not committed any.

So it seems that it is worth taking a look at Neil Munro's article from Breitbart: ``Seattle Judge Was Ignorant About Jihad Convictions Prior to Imposing Refugee Reform Ban.''

``The Seattle judge who temporarily banned the White House's refugee reform plan acted after mistakenly claiming the federal government has not arrested jihadi migrants from the seven Muslim countries covered by the reform.

``But the federal government has arrested and jailed at least 76 people since 2001 from the seven countries covered in the first stage of the president's reform, which was announced late January.

``That fact means there is a huge error in the judge's rationale for imposing a `Temporary Restraining Order' ban on the president's popular reform of the expensive refugee and immigration programs.

``In a hearing before the decision, Judge James Robart told a lawyer from the Department of Justice that the federal government has not arrested people since 2001 from any of the seven countries named in the reform, since the 2001 atrocity in New York. `How many arrests have there been of foreign nationals for those seven countries since 9/11?' he asked.

``The justice department's lawyer replied, `Your Honor, I don't have that information,' prompting Robart to answer his own question.''

The judge said: ``Let me tell, you, the answer to that is none, as best I can tell. You're here arguing on behalf of someone that says we have to protect the United States from these individuals coming from these countries and there's no support for that.''

All of us are ignorant of some areas. What is incredibly problematic is when you have a judicial official, a Federal judge with a lifetime appointment not only ignorant, but uses his ignorance as the basis of an illegal, unconstitutional order and then adds arrogance to his ignorance. This is shear, unadulterated, arrogant ignorance by Judge Robart.

So, as a former judge and chief justice, I can sure understand someone who is not a lawyer or somebody who was a lawyer and somebody who was a former judge or even a current judge saying this is a so- called judge.

You would like to think that judges, if they are going to be arrogant, they will be arrogant about their knowledge in some area that others don't have, instead of being arrogant about ignorance that puts the American public in jeopardy.

The Constitution and the laws passed by this Congress and signed by our President make clear that the President has the authority to do exactly what he did. Whether you like it or not, whether I like it or not, he does have that authority, based on our national security, because we gave it to him.

What we did not give the President was authority to do an amnesty program, as President Obama pointed out more than 20 times. He just didn't have authority to do what he ultimately did when he realized the Senate would not work with the House to stop him.

A judge who should know better and who is allowed to remain a judge only so long as he is acting in good conduct appears to be acting in very bad conduct.

A database was built by the Senate's Immigration Subcommittee. Why would they have to build this? Because President Obama made sure that his administration kept as much secret as they could about who was operating as terrorists in America.

Not only that, when some of us would try to gather such information like my repeated requests to the Obama administration and to the Justice Department, Would you let Congress have the documents that you gave to people convicted of terrorism in the Holy Land Foundation discovery phase, we repeatedly were shunned, and there was just repeated obfuscation. They did not produce what they should have, and America is more at risk now than it has been in a long time.

So what can we expect from the Ninth Circuit? Well, they have a history of not following the Constitution, not following precedent. They are rather liberal. I am hoping we can do something about that circuit. I would like to restrict their jurisdiction to controversies that arise in their building. We have total authority to eliminate them.

I see I am joined by my friend, Mr. Rohrabacher. I didn't know if the gentleman desires to speak.

I am so grateful to my friend from California. We have traveled around the world and stood for people who weren't able to stand for themselves, and I look forward to continue doing that.

Just to continue on, Ken Klukowski has a terrific article, ``Travesty of Legal Errors in Immigration EO Lawsuit.'' It is a great article pointing out problems with Judge Robart's decision.

Then, this article from Hans von Spakovsky on February 6 from Daily Signal, he points out:

``This fact is obvious from an examination of his seven-page order, which contains absolutely no discussion whatsoever of what law or constitutional provision the president has supposedly violated. That temporary restraining order is now on an emergency appeal before a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.''

It contrasts a 21-page opinion issued by Massachusetts District Court Judge Nathaniel Gorton. ``Unlike Robart, who totally ignored the federal statute, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), cited by Trump in his executive order, Gorton bases his decision denying the temporary restraining

order on an examination of the extensive power given to the president under that statute. . . . ''

The article goes on: ``That is exactly what the president has done.''

Whether you agree or disagree, he had the power to do it.

The order signed on January 27 on Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States suspends for only 90 days, unlike the 180 days President Obama did for Iran, the issuance of visas to anyone--not Muslims--just to anyone from those countries of concern as classified by the Obama administration.

And then Gorton goes on to make further notes, saying ``the decision to prevent aliens from entering the country is a `fundamental sovereign attribute' realized through the legislative and executive branches that is `largely immune from judicial control.' ''

And then it goes on in this article to quote the Supreme Court.

``Robart's opinion ends with a claim that seems like a joke.

``He says that `fundamental' to his work is `a vigilant recognition that--the court--is but one of three equal branches of our federal government. The work of the court is not to create policy or judge the wisdom of any particular policy promoted by the other two branches.

``Instead, says Robart, his job is `limited' to `ensuring that the actions taken by the other two branches comport with our country's law, and more importantly, our Constitution.' ''

That shows that he intentionally and knowingly abused his authority as a judge by not citing either one.

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

Mr. Speaker, here it is, Friday. It has been a good week in Washington. We have gotten some of President Trump's nominees approved and through the Senate. Call them like you see them, I think.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has done a great job this week. I applaud his efforts. And as a result of what President Trump has been doing--and actually part of it is just his getting elected--has done for our economy because people know--at least a lot of people know--he is going to keep his word. He is already showing he is doing that, and he has repealed some of the executive orders that have been doing so much damage to our economy.

And when we say economy, what we mean is, the rank and file people, the backbone of America who have been struggling, who have made less money than they did 8 years ago when adjusted for inflation. Those are the people we are talking about; those who have been out of work, the 94 or 95 million who have become so desperate, they pulled out of even applying for work.

I enjoyed, to an extent, the exchange between my friend, Kevin McCarthy and my friend across the aisle Leader Hoyer. And I get amused when I hear Democrats quoting Senator McCain and Senator Graham-- wonderful people. Lindsey Graham, it is a real joy to be around talking to Lindsey Graham. But if you look at positions they have taken, it would make you think twice about quoting them as positions you wanted to have supporting yours.

I mean, nothing stands taller than the 30 million of the 90 million or so living in Egypt, when they rose up that June because a Muslim brother named Morsi was seizing power. He was on his way to becoming the Chavez in North Africa, and the people rose up. It was not only the largest peaceful demonstration in the history of the world, it was the largest demonstration in the history of the world.

All over Egypt, moderate Muslims, Christians, Jews, secularists, they all rose up, went to the streets and demanded the removal of the man who would be king, the Muslim brother named Morsi. The difference in this king is, as many of the Egyptians have pointed out when I have been in Cairo and other places, he wasn't just going to be king. He was going to be the puppet of the spiritual leader of Islam in Egypt.

Some of my Egyptian friends, when I have been over there, say: yeah, we have seen video of him taking his orders from the spiritual imam, and he followed his leadership. So if that is true, then he wasn't just going to be king. He was going to be a king puppet.

But the Muslim brother was removed as a result of 30 million people rising up peacefully. Morsi only, allegedly, got around 13 million to claim the win and made clear his opponent knew--for the original Presidential election--that if he raised a stink about any votes being fraudulent, they would burn the country down--that was some of his supporters. Because the Muslim Brotherhood, if you go back and check, when churches are burned, it is normally the Muslim Brotherhood over there.

In Egypt, they had been anathema to representative government, to civilized government, to nonsectarian government. They want a new caliphate to start with basically the old Ottoman Empire and Erdogan in Turkey; he is undoing all of the great reforms made by the great Ataturk nearly 100 years ago, and he is undoing them.

There are those in Turkey who would like to see a caliphate--a new Ottoman Empire--and it have its leadership in Turkey. They long for the days when they ruled an expansive caliphate.

I had a reporter say: Why would you say that?

I said: Go look at a map. I know you weren't ever taught what the Ottoman Empire was. Go look at a map and look at the countries where our President is supporting an uprising that eventually, if we don't stop it, will become anarchy or it will become part of the caliphate.

The new jobs report that is just out: 227,000 new jobs. And from what I'm hearing from constituents, these aren't just the part-time jobs or the minimum wage jobs that the previous President bragged about. He had to brag about it because he didn't have anything else to talk about. People lost their full-time jobs and could only acquire part-time jobs, and this administration bragged about those. If they got two part-time jobs to make up for losing their full-time job, this Administration bragged: We created two jobs.

I would submit that when you are creating two jobs by causing a person to lose all of their benefits and full-time employment, you haven't done such a good thing.

Fortunately, the people of Egypt did not listen to Senator McCain and Senator Graham when they flew to Cairo and begged for the people of Egypt to return the Muslim ``brother who would be king'' back into his royal kingship. I know they weren't intentionally supporting an evil ruler; it is just they didn't know. So, hopefully, they will become more aware that it is not a good thing to support the Muslim Brotherhood.

With regard to Australia and the alleged news about President Trump getting into it with the leader of Australia, well, to whom is the leader of Australia accountable? To whom does the leader of Australia owe his allegiance?

It is the people of Australia. So when he calls or talks to President Trump and begs or demands Trump to take these refugees that the Prime Minister in Australia knows are a threat to the safety of the Australian people, when he wants them out of Australia, there is a reason--because his allegiance is not to the people of the United States--his allegiance is to the people of Australia. So, naturally, being allegiant to the people of Australia, he wants the dangerous refugees out of Australia.

President Obama, basically by his actions, in effect, was saying: Give us not your tired, your poor, the people yearning to be free, but give us your people that yearn to destroy America because we're going to bring them in. We're not going to vet them properly because we have got no information to properly vet them. That's how we have been able to let people in who had their fingerprints on IEDs that killed Americans, and maimed Americans because we are not properly vetting them.

Oh, yeah, we compare any information we have against what we've got. But don't forget, as Phil Haney, the whistleblower from Homeland Security, pointed out, he was personally required to delete massive pages of information about terrorist ties of people coming into the United States because they did not want those terrorist ties in the Homeland Security database. Then he also, of course, was on his computer when he saw somebody above his pay grade deleting things that he personally put in about terrorist ties. They were deleting them.

So when Janet Napolitano talks about, We get a ping and we connect the dots, she caused massive numbers of dots to be deleted. They are not there. We don't know who we are getting. When anyone comes from Syria--we know ISIS has taken governmental printing areas before. They can produce official Syrian passports not with the support of the Syrian Government, but just because they have the equipment to do it. So when we get information saying, I am from Syria, maybe they are, and maybe they're not. We don't know where they're from.

The FBI Director created one of the most incredible political stunts of any FBI Director in history last summer when he stepped up and outlined that a crime had been committed by Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. But then he goes on to say: But no reasonable prosecutor would pursue this. It is incredible the extent he went to to help Hillary Clinton.

I know there were some of my Democratic friends that got mad at him when a week before the election he said that they were reopening the investigation. But if you look at the circumstances, it was information that we had FBI agents who were so upset that Comey wouldn't reopen the investigation. When they knew some of what was in the computers that they had gotten ahold of belonged to Anthony Weiner and Hillary Clinton's closest adviser and confidante, Huma Abedin Weiner, the word was we had FBI agents saying that: If you don't reopen, we're going to have a press conference, we're going to resign, and we're going to out you that you're protecting Hillary Clinton. So what could he do to help Hillary Clinton but say: ``I am going to reopen the investigation?''

I commented to somebody in the media back then:

Well, of course, it may appear to help Hillary. We will

know whether that was his intent or not because you can't

examine tens of thousands of emails adequately. You can do an

algorithm search, but you can't adequately investigate them

for a crime, including false statements to the FBI, within a

week. So if he comes out before the election and says that

there is nothing here, then we know why he came out and said

that we are reopening. It was to stop FBI agents from

resigning and from outing him for protecting Hillary Clinton.

So what happens?

Two days before the election, he said: Yeah, we checked it all out.

He couldn't possibly have.

He said: We checked it all out, and there is nothing here to prosecute.

So that same FBI Director, though, didn't help the Obama administration. On occasion, he was calling them like he saw them; and that is:

Yeah, we will vet these people, but when they give us

information from Syria, we have no information against

which to vet that. We have to accept it for what it is

because, yeah, we're technically vetting it against what

we have, but we have nothing, so we don't know who these

people are.

So, in the meantime, the economy is turning around.

How sad is it when we have just lived through 8 years under a President's policies that were so abysmal for the good of America that the economy, when adjusted for inflation, was slower than it was in the 4 years of Jimmy Carter?

I know there are some in the media that would grab 1 month and say: See, this was a good month.

Let's look at the 8 years compared to the 4 years of President Carter, 4 of the worst years for the American economy in history since the Depression. President Obama, over 8 years, had a slower economy when adjusted for inflation. That is pretty sad.

It is also sad this week to read this article from The Daily Caller: ``Laura Wilkerson, whose teenage son was tortured and murdered by an illegal alien in 2010, got into an emotional confrontation with House Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at a CNN town hall event Tuesday night.

``Wilkerson told Pelosi, `In 2010, one of the illegals slaughtered my son. He tortured him, he beat him, he tied him up like an animal, and he set him on fire. And I am not a one-story mother. This happens every day because there are no laws enforced at the border. We have to start giving American families first.'

``On the issue of Pelosi and Democrats' support for sanctuary cities, Wilkerson asked, `How do you reconcile in your head about allowing people to disavow the law?'

`` `There's nothing, I'm sure, that can compare to the grief that you have, and so I pray for you,' Pelosi said.''

Pelosi went on: ``But I do want to say to you that in our sanctuary cities, our people are not disobeying the law. These are law-abiding citizens. It enables them to be there without being reported to ICE in case of another crime that they might bear witness to.''

``Pelosi then asked if her son was murdered in a sanctuary city. Josh, Wilkerson's son, was murdered just outside Houston, Texas, which is a sanctuary city.''

So I believe in the power of prayer. I think it's one of the greatest gifts God gave us. C.S. Lewis talked about we are here on Earth behind enemy lines, if you would.

Can you imagine being behind enemy lines and getting messages from your home headquarters and you refuse to open them and read them?

He says that we have a Bible. Those are messages from our home headquarters. We ought to be reading them.

I do believe in the power of prayer, just like our minority leader, Ms. Pelosi; but we need to distinguish between things that we should pray for and things that we can fix ourselves. Things that are outside our control, we

ought to be praying about. Those things which are in our control--when it is within your control--to return to the rule of law, enforce the laws that exist, treat everybody fairly under the law, that's something you don't really have to pray about. You just help us do it.

I have not met Tommy Nelson, a pastor in Denton, Texas, but I listened to a 12-hour Bible study he did; and one of his comments on that study in Ecclesiastes was basically what so many people say: We don't have to worry; God is in control.

Tommy Nelson said: Yeah, God is in control, but just because He is in control doesn't mean He wants us to lean on our shovel and pray for a hole. When you have got a shovel in your hand, you don't have to pray for a hole; you just start digging.

When you have got the tools to protect the American people and enforce the rule of law, you just do it. Now, you can pray for wisdom to help you as you go.

I know it may have been a Freudian slip--may not have been--but when Minority Leader Pelosi was asked about illegal aliens, she referred to them as ``our people.''

I don't know; could that be because they know when illegal aliens vote, they vote Democrat?

We know that most dead people vote 100 percent Democrat. I have encouraged the Republican Party: Let's don't have any group that we're not willing to recruit votes from, and traditionally dead people vote 100 percent Democrat. Perhaps it's time that some of them started voting Republican for a change.

In any event, the minority whip, Mr. Hoyer, was talking about a fellow with tears in his eyes saying: Please don't repeal ObamaCare because my son will be unable to get insurance if you repeal ObamaCare.

Well, that gets to all of us when somebody with tears in their eyes comes to us and begs for help. The only reason he had tears in his eyes is because of the false information being put out by the Democratic Party, because when we repeal ObamaCare, people are not going to lose their insurance. Some Americans have a right to be skeptical because they were told by President Obama and all of the Democrats: No, no, when we pass ObamaCare, nobody loses their insurance.

Well, we found out that that was a lie to millions of Americans. Some of them were able to get insurance. Some of it ended up being Medicaid. Most of the new people got Medicaid, which is not really the insurance they were hoping for, but that's the insurance most people got.

I had 17 people come to my office in Lufkin. They were looking to make a show and not so much to give information; otherwise, they would have called for an appointment.

My district representative there was at a service honoring her late father at a hospice and she forgot, in her emotional state, to put a note on the door that she was running to that. Anyway, they made a big deal, here is an office not occupied. Hopefully, they will have a little sympathy for somebody in her situation.

But they weren't looking to get information to me. That is why the reporter had more information about the meeting when my office had no information about the meeting. If they want an appointment, we make appointments. I am here most of the time, so I can't be there. I have got people to meet with them.

This article, February 1, Melissa Quinn, Daily Signal:

``Pamela Weldin's experiences with ObamaCare can be boiled down to just a few numbers.

Since the health care law's implementation 3 years ago, Weldin, 60, has lost her insurance four different times''--under ObamaCare. ``And the Nebraska woman is currently enrolled in her fifth new insurance policy in four years.''

She said: `` `Yet again, and through no fault of my own'. . . . `I'm just sitting here minding my own business, and here we go again.' '' She gets thrown off another insurance policy.

Anyway, she goes on to explain she has been denied coverage because of a preexisting condition related to her career as a dental hygienist.

People are not going to lose their insurance. All we are going to do is create the opportunity to have far better insurance policies than you have got under ObamaCare. You are not going to get a penalty for having better insurance than what ObamaCare required. So you don't have to pay a penalty, and you can have good insurance and you won't be taxed for having better insurance. It is going to be a great day for America to do that.

That brings me to a point I want to get to next about the wall.

An article here, February 1, Virginia Hale from Breitbart, says: ``Smuggling Migrants to Europe Now a Major Funding Source for Islamic State.''

Well, it only makes sense that the Islamic State would figure that out, because we had information they consulted with the drug cartels in Mexico. As the Border Patrolmen have told me during the middle of the night the times I have been down there, there is not an inch of the Mexican border that is not controlled by some drug cartel. Nobody crosses that border illegally without paying something to the drug cartel or promising to work for them when they get to America.

What a great business model. You are selling drugs, making billions of dollars getting it across the border illegally into the United States, and, unlike most businesses where you have to pay the employee, they get the employee to pay them as part of their debt repayment to get them into the United States.

So, what a business model, making billions from selling drugs illegally gotten into the United States, and then the Department of Homeland Security, as one told me down on the border: They call us their logistics, in the drug cartels, because we ship people all over the country to cities where they need drug sales, prostitutes, mules. We send them there, and then they have got people selling drugs for them.

If we build a wall--and I know there are areas like where the Rio Grande is so wide you don't need a wall, you just have people guard the border--it cuts off the massive flow of drugs into the United States. It means the billions of dollars going to the drug cartels that they can use to corrupt the Mexican Government will dry up to thousands. Drug cartels know it.

So I would submit, Mr. Speaker, the only Mexican leaders that object to a wall and total security of our border between Mexico are either ignorant--they don't understand that the reason they are 60-something in world economies instead of being fourth or fifth or sixth is because of the corruption that comes from the drug cartels. You dry up the billions of dollars they are making with a wall and border security, and Mexico gets in the top 10 economies. But, yes, it means the drug cartels dry up. They are either ignorant of what will really happen when we secure the border or they are in the pocket of the drug cartels. Those are the only two choices.

If you are a Mexican leader and you oppose the United States enforcing our border, you are in the pocket of the drug cartels or you are just ignorant of why your economy is not one of the top 10 in the world. You have got the best location. You have got two continents north and south above you. They would be great markets. You have got two great oceans on either side to ship. You have got incredible natural resources. You have got some of the hardest working people in the world in Mexico.

So why is it so far down the chain of economies? Well, drug cartels. The wall and border security will dry them up and the Mexican people will be free with a vibrant economy, and they will take their appropriate place in the great economies of the world.

I have been joined by my friend from Florida, and I mean that truly. I think the world of Matt Gaetz.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Gaetz).

If the gentleman might take a question. I appreciate that clarity. It is clarity that has been missing for a long time.

We have people screaming that President Trump should not have put a temporary pause that was half as long as the pause President Obama put on. I understand there is so much stress and pressure when you are President; he probably just forgot he put a 6-month ban, previously, on a Muslim nation sending people in.

You made so clear the case for concern about Iran, and I am with you. I am thrilled that we have a President that is not choosing to give our lunch money, figuratively speaking, to the big bully in the schoolyard.

I don't know if my friend from Florida ever got bullied in elementary school. I did. I learned early on that it doesn't help to give bullies money. They are not going to leave you alone until you stand up to them. Maybe they whip you, but they don't want to go through what you put them through again by standing up to them, so they leave you alone.

In our case, we are strong enough to take on any bully; but instead, we paid the big bully, Iran, as you pointed out, massive amounts, billions and billions of dollars. We agreed to pay them up to $150 billion.

We have got some friends here in Congress in the House and Senate that were so upset with the President having this 90-day pause on seven countries. They didn't realize--I know we get so busy here that we don't notice a lot of other things, but they apparently hadn't realized that those seven countries were designated by the Obama administration. One of them, Iran, a country you have talked so eloquently about, we have people here in this body that don't think we should hold up refugees from Iran.

As the gentleman was talking about, the Government of Iran has not shown any good faith at all. Would the gentleman be concerned about having people that the Iranian Government allowed to slip out of the country and come into the United States? Do you have any problem with President Obama's pause on that refugee surge into the United States?

Those are such great points. The counterargument is made often to us: ``Other than the San Bernardino shootings, has there been a terrorist attack involving a non-U.S.-born attacker since 9/11?''

There was a great article in The Federalist by Kyle Shideler on January 30. He answers: Yes, but first of all, why exclude the San Bernardino killers, terrorists?

Tashfeen Malik was born in Pakistan, and that attack killed 14. As Phil Haney, the whistleblower from Homeland Security, pointed out, if he had not been removed from the line, he would have been allowed to secondarily question someone like Tashfeen Malik. It is worth noting, under the Obama administration, under Jeh Johnson, and before him, Janet Napolitano, they punished people who pointed out radical Islamists rather than giving them positions where they could recognize radical Islamists.

Phil Haney points out that Tashfeen Malik is actually a man's name. The woman came, and if she had come through him, he would have asked: Well, why do you have a man's name, and it happens to be a man who was a terrorist centuries ago?

Well, to ask a question like that, you have to be well educated into the history of radical Islam. Not Islam, but radical Islam.

We have spent so much money as a country and even as a Congress on countering violent extremism. We hear from Homeland Security whistleblowers--some of them don't want to go public yet, but we hear from them that so much of that money was spent on conferences and seminars teaching our Homeland Security agents, our FBI agents, our State Department people, our intelligence people to spot Islamophobes. They would teach them the phrases to look for when someone reported a potential radical Islamist so that they would know that that is an Islamophobe. That is exactly why in San Bernardino, when someone reported this guy as a potential radical Islamist, that he was crazy, that he was going to hurt somebody, they wrote him off as just being prejudiced against Islam. It is because of the money spent by this government intimidating people into refusing to notice radical Islam and getting them punished. If they didn't find people who they named Islamophobes, their career was over.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

I thank the gentleman. I would also note, as this Federalist article points out, yeah, of course, when there is a terrorist attack, it also affects the economy. That is why Osama bin Laden wrote about how they had only spent a tiny amount of money to train their people from 9/11 and that it had clearly cost America trillions of dollars, that even if they couldn't bring us down any other way, if they could do other attacks like that, costing relatively low amounts to them but costing us billions and trillions, they could bring us down economically.

So it only makes sense, though, Iran wants to bring us down, so they ought to be one of the seven that the Obama administration named as a threat, and they were. But even just recently at Ohio State University, Abdul Razak Ali Artan ran over several students with a car before attacking them with a butcher knife. That was a refugee born in Somalia, one of the seven countries that the Obama administration named as a threat, and so President Trump took the Obama administration seriously and named them as one of seven, that we would have not a permanent ban but a temporary ban for 90 days. The guy ran over numerous students at Ohio State, but our friends on the other side of the aisle and their friends in the mass media, they refuse to notice what is going on.

Look at Tsarnaev, the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston. As we know, Russia notified the United States not once but twice that the older Tsarnaev had been radicalized, and he had been to a country, and the people he hung around with were radicals, and it seemed like they probably radicalized him.

So what happens? Well, they get information to our intelligence community, and, since, they have been trained for the last 8 years to only notice Islamophobes. You can tell someone is an Islamophobe if they complain about a radical Islamist, then you know you have got an Islamophobe. So of course if they want to stay in the intelligence community, they are not going to be looking. They are going to follow their training, look for Islamophobes instead of looking for radical Islamists. I am sure they looked into it, but, based on their training, they have no basis to work with.

So what happens? Russia notified us again. As I understand, they notified the FBI. And as the FBI Director commented, look, we sent an FBI agent to interview him, and he said, basically, he wasn't a terrorist, he was a good guy. Wow. Imagine that. Somebody who wants to kill Americans might also lie. Who would have ever thought? Except American juries. I have seen it as a judge. I have seen juries find that if you will lie to them, you may do a lot worse things as well. Well, the reverse is also true. Often, if you are willing to take someone's life, you might just be willing to lie about it as well.

So the FBI didn't even stop there, taking the word. They didn't take the word of Tsarnaev. They went to his mother, and apparently his mother said: No, my son is not a terrorist. He is a good boy. He is a good boy.

There you go, full FBI investigation. Not under the old FBI. Not the way most FBI agents have ever been trained. But, of course, under the last 8

years of training of the FBI, they were afraid to ask the tough questions.

The truth is, they don't know the questions to ask. They don't know that you should ask about whether there has been a tremendous increase in the amount of study of the Koran and a massive increase in the memorization of the Koran, and a change in the appearance, and knowing what to look for, and asking questions like: What do you think about Qutb, the Egyptian martyr, the Muslim brother who wrote the little book ``Milestones'' that Osama bin Laden said, along with Mr. Nasif, for whom Huma Abedin worked at one time according to the masthead of the publication, he credited Nasif and also Qutb's book ``Milestones'' to radicalizing him.

If you haven't been trained with Kim Jensen's 700 pages, which were outlawed by the FBI for a while, because he clearly explained what FBI agents should be looking for. Mr. Jensen told me that they banned his information, they struck it, and wouldn't allow anybody to be trained. Under incident information, they train people what to look for in a radical Islamist. But then they brought it back, but only for some of the leaders. The rank and file for so long under this administration did not get the benefit of his 700 pages that would help train. Why? Because CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, who had implications in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the biggest supporter of terrorism ever prosecuted in the United States, convictions all around in November of 2008, and they should have gone on to prosecute the named co-conspirators. The only reason they didn't is because a new administration came in.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--the mastermind of 9/11, of the brutal killing of about 3,000 Americans and other foreigners, innocent victims--has bragged about his planning. In a guilty plea where the judge went through, as I used to, to make sure they understood their rights, he bragged about that and some terrorist attacks they didn't even know he had involvement in. He was bragging.

And he says, if we have terrorized you, then praise be to Allah. And he says such things as we deserve attack, we deserve to be killed in America, anyone who is a low-life Jew or says that God has a Son.

So those of us who believe God had a Son, and He loved the world so much He sent His only begotten Son and whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life, anybody who believes that is worthy of death under the Koran, according to the brilliant teacher and mastermind of the 9/11 attack. And then he quotes from the Koran that anyone who tries to combine someone with Allah is worthy of death, and that means any Christian. They have explained these things.

But Khalid Sheikh Mohammed went through an expansive hearing with a judge explaining what all he was involved in and why he was guilty of 9/11 and praise be to Allah for all of the people that were killed on 9/11 at the Pentagon, at the World Trade Centers.

Why was he not sentenced? Because we had an election in 2008, and before the plea was made final, we had a new Attorney General named Eric Holder. At that point, all bets were off. They didn't follow up the plea was withdrawn, and he still hasn't been sentenced for the things he admitted to over 8 years ago.

Had they simply moved forward with the guilty plea, if we had had a President for the last 8 years that made clear ``you might as well plead guilty because nobody else is going to let you out,'' then we would have finished the guilty plea, and he would have been appropriately sentenced. But instead, this administration chose to send hope to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed he might end up being one of the people they release; because, if they close Guantanamo Bay, he either gets moved to the United States or we let him go, maybe like we have for some who went to Yemen and are back in the fight, or other people like Saudi Arabia and are back in the fight.

He had real hope once President Obama came in and Eric Holder became Attorney General, and Loretta Lynch after him, that he might get released even after he admitted to the most important role in the killing of 3,000 people on American soil on 9/11. He still has not been prosecuted. They didn't follow up on his guilty plea. The plea was withdrawn.

That man should not be allowed out of prison. He is a threat to the world, and he is a valuable tool in the hands of radical Islam.

Well, thank God, as President Obama said, elections have consequences. We have a President who didn't take an oath of office to protect all of the people of Australia. He made clear that our friends will know they are our friends, and I can see him working very closely with the Prime Minister of Australia in the future. But leaders around the world are now taking notice: Wait a minute. America has a President that is not coming to us and apologizing for America's goodness and their pursuit of freedom for as many people as they can--not apologizing.

He is making clear, if you are our friend, you are going to feel it. If you are our enemy, you are going to feel it. So I think Iran may have finally met their match. We don't have an apologist to come in and apologize for America's efforts, the blood, the treasure that has been spent on behalf of people around the world.

And now even our Australian Prime Minister understands: Look, I want to work with you--President Trump feels that way; he wants to work with them, and he will work with them--but my oath is to the United States of America and I know your oath is to Australia. I know because of your oath to help and protect the people of Australia you want to get rid of those refugees, some of whom may be dangerous.

I know President Obama said: Yeah, we will take the dangerous people that may hurt Australians. Never mind we have got Americans being hurt. We will take them.

Well, there is a different sheriff in town here in Washington, and leaders around the world need to know that starting on January 20, the United States is no longer going to take actions that are detrimental to our own well-being, to the well-being of Americans, and to the security of the United States under our Constitution. So thank God, thank Trump, thank those that are seeing with clarity what is going on.

We will look forward to working with the Mexican leaders that realize the only way Mexico ever achieves its rightful economic place in the world is if a wall is built where it can be so that our border is enforced and the drug cartels are impoverished. Then Mexico can be one of the top economies in all the world because of the best workers, some of the best workers in the world, and massive natural resources with which they have been blessed. They just, so far, have not had America be the kind of good neighbor that would help them stop the drug cartels. Instead, we would have Presidents, administrations like the past one, that would send 2,000 weapons to the drug cartels instead of stopping them.

It is a new day. Thank God it is.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 12 o'clock and 36 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, February 6, 2017, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Madam Speaker, I might say it is great seeing you in the chair. You are a natural fit. Maybe we can do something about that at some point.

It is an honor to speak in this hallowed Hall. There has been much ado made about contrived misrepresentations about what has gone on with President Trump's executive order regarding seven countries that the Obama administration designated as being problems when it comes to refugees coming from those countries.

It has been absolutely incredible. And I think some of us were talking that it really exemplifies why networks like CNN--that was the one, the only 24-hour cable news network--have lost so much to other networks. MSNBC, CNBC, and even Fox News got caught up in some of the misrepresentations, and I couldn't believe that they were spending the kind of time talking about a contrived issue.

Now, there was a problem in some innocent people being delayed and improperly handled, people who didn't deserve that. I am familiar with how that feels because I deal, like most of us do in this body, with TSA on virtually a weekly or even sometimes more often basis.

There is a great article here by John Hayward from January 29. Mr. Hayward says:

``The sober and logical reasons for President Donald Trump's executive order on refugees and visitors are rising above the noise after an evening of hysterical over-reactions and emotional meltdowns on the Nation's TV networks.

``Advocates of sane, secure immigration policy have long noted that it's almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion of the refugee and immigration issues, because it's been sentimentalized and politicized beyond the realm of rational thought.

``This weekend brings them another superb example of media-magnified shrieking about fascism, bleating about `white nationalists,' howling about `religious persecution,' false invocations of the Constitution, and theatrical sobbing on behalf of the Statue of Liberty.''

We do have that water coming off the Statute of Liberty being analyzed, so that we can determine whether or not it is tears or something else.

``For readers who want to wallow in the emotion, examples can be found in this handy dossier of hysteria compiled by the Washington Post. But clear-eyed adults prefer to examine plain facts about Trump's executive order:

``1. It is NOT a `Muslim ban.' ''

I have the executive order here. Unlike those in the Senate and those in the media, who were just excoriating President Trump and anyone involved in this executive order, I actually read it, unlike those people. I read the executive order.

And because I read the executive order, I understood there was no ban against Muslims, no ban against Islam. It was very straightforward. And Hayward's article points that out.

He said: ``You will search the executive order in vain for mentions of Islam, or any other religion. By Sunday morning, the media began suffering acute attacks of honesty and writing headlines such as `Trump's Latest Executive Order: Banning People From 7 Countries and More.''

And that was from CNN. And, Madam Speaker, I am very pleased that CNN finally got around to having a more truthful headline.

``Granted, CNN still slips in the phrase `Muslim-majority countries' into every article about the order, including the post in which they reprinted its text in full, but CNN used the word `Muslim,' not Trump. The order applies to all citizens of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. It does not specify Muslims. The indefinite hold on Syrian refugees

will affect Christians and Muslims alike,'' not to mention people of every other religion and people of no religion.

``As Tim Carney at the Washington Examiner points out, the largest Muslim-majority countries in the world are not named in the Executive Order.

``More countries may be added to the moratorium in the days to come, as the Secretary of Homeland Security has been instructed to complete a 30-day review of nations that don't provide adequate information for vetting applicants.

``It is also noteworthy that the ban is not absolute. Exceptions for `foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas, North Atlantic Treaty Organization visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G- 1, G-2, G-3 and G-4 visas' are expressly made in the order. The Departments of State and Homeland Security can also grant exceptions on a `case-by-case basis' ''--that is all in the executive order--``and `when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked.'

``There is a provision in the Executive Order that says applications based on religious persecution will be prioritized `provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual's country of nationality.' ''

And so it is important to note here, I think from the executive order, that it says applications based on religious persecution. That means that people that have applied for visas or immigration benefits to come into the United States who, themselves, raise their religion as a reason to let them into the United States, those need to be prioritized based on whether or not their religion is actually being persecuted, those holding those religious beliefs are actually being persecuted. And I think that is a rather intelligent way to approach things.

But in those cases, it would be the applicant that would raise the issue of religion, not the Trump administration, not the State Department, not Homeland Security. It would be the foreign applicant trying to come into the United States who would be the one to raise that issue.

Now, the article goes on: ``This has been denounced as a `stealth Muslim ban' by some of the very same people who were conspicuously silent when the Obama administration pushed Christians--who are the most savagely persecuted minority in the Middle East, with only the Yazidis offering real competition--to the back of the migration line.''

So it is important to note that, for years, this administration has been part of the discrimination and persecution against Christians in the world against whom there has been a genocide in progress.

So when the head of the U.N. was in charge of the refugee program and was asked why is there not a similar percentage of Christians coming in as refugees to other countries to the percentage that Christians make up in that nation they come from, basically, the man who is now head of United Nations said, well, it is important to leave them where they have this historical presence, basically.

So in other words, yes, there is a genocide going on. They want to kill off every Christian in those areas, every Christian in the Middle East, and so the U.N. now Secretary General says let's leave them in the area where they are being wiped off the map, brutally killed. Let's leave them there until we can say this place where they were historically has now shown there are none there. They have all been brutally murdered as the U.N. watched and didn't help. It is outrageous how uncivilized this United Nations has become.

I filed a bill, and I still think we should bring it to the floor, that would require a complete defunding by the United States of the United Nations until such time as they withdraw the resolution of the Security Council that condemned Israel.

I mean, it is like a teacher of mine in the fifth grade after I got beat up by a bully who had been held back two grades, was about 18 inches taller. She pointed to the class and said: This is what happens when little boys try to play with the big boys.

Well, that is basically what the Obama administration had been doing. It is basically what the U.N. had been doing. They took the side of the mean bullies that had been devastating the Christians in the area.

Having talked to so many Christians who were living in Syria and who the mainstream press say, oh, yeah, they are big Assad fans--no, they were not big Assad fans. They knew that he could be quite brutal, but their only point that the mainstream media in the United States and most of the world was missing is that Assad prevented Christians from being the victims of a genocide; and as Assad was weakened, the assaults and the murders and the rapes of Christians increased exponentially.

I do think that the United States may still be held to account in the ledger of world history--what I would submit is God's ledger--for having the power and the moral right to stop a genocide of Christians in the Middle East and we participated in leaving them where they were, as did the U.N., so that they could be brutally murdered.

I am going back to Mr. Hayward's article.

``2. The order''--talking about the executive order of Donald Trump. ``The order is based on security reviews conducted by President Barack Obama's deputies.''

And, Madam Speaker, for those in the mainstream media, I think it is important to repeat that line. President Trump's executive order that didn't ban Muslims but that ordered a temporary pause on people from certain countries from whom we had no information or inadequate information to vet the people that were coming in, it was based on security reviews conducted by President Barack Obama's deputies.

``As White House counselor Kellyanne Conway pointed out on `Fox News Sunday,' the seven nations named in Trump's executive order are drawn from the Terrorist Prevention Act of 2015. The 2015 `Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015' named Iraq, Iran, Sudan, and Syria, while its 2016 update added Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.

`` `These are countries that have a history of training, harboring, exporting terrorists. We can't keep pretending and look the other way,' said Conway.

``3. The moratorium is largely temporary. Citizens of the seven countries''--and by the way, in this executive order that President Trump signed, there is no mention of the countries. It refers to what President Obama signed declaring, first, the four countries, and then the three countries.

It just refers to that that President Obama signed. He doesn't single out or name the countries; and I can't help but think, as intelligent as some of the people are that are assisting President Trump, that they showed a massive amount of naivete because it appears that they thought, if in the executive order President Trump refers to documents that President Obama signed designating these countries as countries where we didn't have adequate information, then even the mainstream media would have to go back to President Trump's and look above his signature and see that these are places that President Obama said were threats.

And then they would--having some semblance of a conscience--have to point out that actually Trump is just putting in an executive order of what basically Obama signed off on but didn't go ahead and carry out what needed to be done based on that law.

But, as I say, these folks were rather naive. And as the saying goes in Washington, no matter how cynical you get, it is never enough to catch up in this town. And so the Trump administration, the Trump advisers have a lot of growing to do to understand just how unfair the media can be. It is a valid presumption that if you don't name the countries, you make the mainstream media go back and look at what President Obama signed that they will understand, oh, this is what President Obama proclaimed that he is basing this on, so we can't be so mean to President Trump.

Well, it didn't turn out that way, and they are learning that just because it would make great sense, be common sense in most areas of the country--that is areas that are not the fringe

that voted for Hillary Clinton, but most of the country would say it is common sense. It isn't common within the original 10-by-10 mile boundaries of the District of Columbia, which are no longer 10 by 10 after ceding the land west of the Potomac to Virginia back in the 1840s.

But number four in this Hayward article: ``Obama banned immigration from Iraq, and Carter banned it from Iran.

`` `Fact-checking' website PolitiFact twists itself into knots to avoid giving a `true' rating to the absolutely true fact that Jimmy Carter banned Iranian immigration in 1980, unless applicants could prove they were enemies of the Khomenei theocracy.

``One of PolitiFact's phony talking points states that Carter `acted against Iranian nationals, not an entire religion.' As noted above, Trump's Executive Order is precisely the same--it does not act against an `entire religion,' it names seven countries.''

But, you know, I had some personal experience with PolitiFact. I used the word earlier today, ``hack,'' ``political hack,'' in an interview, and that is what I think of PolitiFact. They shouldn't be called PolitiFact. They ought to be called ``PolitiHack.''

I know I was speaking here on the House floor--I think it was last year--and I made a statement based on data received by the Senate on the percentage of American citizens and the percentage of noncitizens-- non-American citizens--who were in Federal prison for possession of a controlled substance. The reason I singled out possession was because President Obama has tried to make it appear that people in Federal prison have gotten such a bad rap because they really--just simple possession--they didn't deserve to be in prison so long. There is this whole intimation that, gee, there are people in Federal prison for possession of controlled substances who should have been let out a long time ago, and that is why we needed to have our laws changed.

Well, since the President had mentioned people in Federal prison for possession, I singularly pointed out that the huge majority of people in Federal prison for simple possession were not American citizens. I'm going from my memory, but, apparently, PolitiFact wanted to do as they normally do and cover for the Democrats and try to do a hatchet job on a Republican since they are not political fact, they are political hack. So my communications person gets an email from ``PolitiHack'' that uses the name PolitiFact and wanted to know the source of my information because they were going to rate my statement. She provided the facts as provided by this administration to the Senate.

Clearly what I had said was exactly true. I had quoted specifically from the data from the Obama administration, and it was 100 percent accurate. So then they come back--they thought they would catch me in not having proper information, and they come back to my communications person and said: Well, we have got information from the Bureau of Prisons that showed that if you look at all offenses that involved controlled substances, the percentage of noncitizens is not nearly that high. So why would he use just possession?

The point was because President Obama had used simple possession to try to make it look as if people in Federal prison were not there for very serious crimes, and there is certainly a smaller number of people in Federal prison for possession than for dealing drugs and other charges.

So in the end, after all the back and forth, they basically perpetuated a fraud upon the American people, PolitiFact--a bunch of political hacks--by not being willing to say that my statement was 100 percent true because they, in some contorted manner, did not want to point out that my statement was exactly true. They refer basically to, oh, that the number wasn't near that high of people involved in controlled substance. I didn't mention everybody with controlled substance.

So that is just a parenthetical in Hayward's article for me because I know personally PolitiFact is a political joke if what they were doing was not so serious in harming the American people by misrepresenting the true facts of what is going on. I hope that at some point being still remaining an entrepreneurial country for a little longer--at least we have got nearly 4 years to go that we can be assured of as an entrepreneurial country--at least in that time perhaps we will have an entrepreneurial group that will rise up and start scoring PolitiFact to show just how unfair they are, and, on occasion, when they are actually fair, show that as well so the American public can actually score the illegitimate scorers.

But going back to this article, it says: ``As for Barack Obama, he did indeed ban immigration from Iraq, for much longer than Trump's order bans it from the seven listed nations, and none of the people melting down today uttered a peep of protest. Richard Grenell summed it up perfectly in a Tweet: `Obama took 6 months to review screening for 1 country. Trump will take 3 months for 7 countries. . . . ' ''

This article goes on: ``5. Trump's refugee caps are comparable to Obama's pre-2016 practices: David French, who was touted as a spoiler candidate to keep Donald Trump out of the White House during the presidential campaign--in other words, not a big Trump fan--wrote a lengthy and clear-headed analysis of the Executive Order for National Review. He noted that after the moratorium ends in 120 days''--and that is one section. It ends in 120 days, the other section is 90 days, another part says they will have 30 days to produce a report.

But it goes on to say: ``Trump caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year . . . which is roughly the same as President Obama's admissions in 2011 and 2012, and not far below the 70,000 per year cap in place from 2013 to 2015.

``Obama had fairly low caps on refugees during the worst years of the Syrian civil war. He didn't throw open the doors to mass refugee admissions until his final year in office. Depending on how Trump's review of Syrian refugee policy turns out, he's doing little more than returning admissions to normal levels after a four-month pause for security reviews.

``6. The Executive Order is legal: Those invoking the Constitution to attack Trump's order are simply embarrassing themselves. The President has clear statutory authority to take these actions. As noted, his predecessors did so, without much controversy.

``Most of the legal arguments against Trump's order summarized by USA Today are entirely specious, such as attacking him for `banning an entire religion,' which the order manifestly does not do. Critics of the order have a political opinion that it will in effect `ban Muslims,' but that's not what it says. Designating specific nations as trouble spots and ordering a pause is entirely within the President's authority, and there is ample precedent to prove it.

``It should be possible to argue with the reasoning behind the order, or argue that it will have negative unintended consequences, without advancing hollow legal arguments. Of course, this is America 2017, so a wave of lawsuits will soon be sloshing through the courts.

``7. This Executive Order is a security measure, not an arbitrary expression of supposed xenophobia. Conway stressed the need to enhance immigration security from trouble spots in her `Fox News Sunday' interview. French also addressed the subject in his post:

``When we know our enemy is seeking to strike America and its allies through the refugee population, when we know they've succeeded in Europe, and when the administration has doubts about our ability to adequately vet the refugees we admit into this nation, a pause is again not just prudent but arguably necessary. It is important that we provide sufficient aid and protection to keep refugees safe and healthy in place, but it is not necessary to bring Syrians to the United States to fulfill our vital moral obligations.''

The article goes on. It is well written, points are well made, and I would humbly submit, Madam Speaker, that we had the statistics last year that showed that for the cost of bringing one Syrian refugee to the United States for 1 year, we could help take care of 12 Syrian refugees in place in a safe zone over near their home.

Now, I am very encouraged that even though President Obama simply would not ever agree or strive to have a safe zone in areas near the refugees' homes so we can take care of 12 times more than we can possibly bring to our country for the same cost, and he is working on that, and he has got some agreements, and it looks like that may be a possibility. We give air cover, help create safe zones in areas there in the Middle East so the refugees can live without being killed and horribly brutally murdered and abused. That makes more sense. It appears that the President has worked with or talked with the Saudi authorities and perhaps will be able to get something like that worked out.

There were people just quite emotional over the fact that Saudi Arabia was not mentioned and Egypt was not mentioned. Actually, the order did not mention any nations by name. The Trump executive order simply referred to what President Obama signed off on which included seven countries. These are seven countries where it shouldn't even be arguable among people of common sense that we do not have, have not received, and cannot get adequate information from which to determine whether people wanting to come into the United States are actually refugees or if they are part of al Qaeda, al Nusra, and ISIS, and they want to come kill Americans and end our freedoms and our way of life. That is why such an executive order was entirely appropriate.

Although I supported a different candidate for President for over a year, I applaud President Trump in caring so deeply about the American public that he would take the honorable and appropriate steps to protect Americans that the last administration would not take.

A great article in Townhall from Matt Vespa is entitled: ``Friendly Reminder: Obama Selected The List Of Seven Countries in Trump's Executive Order.'' That certainly should be noted yet again.

Another great article here by Seth Frantzman says: ``Obama's Administration Made the `Muslim Ban' Possible and the Media Won't Tell You.'' It is a good article there.

I think this article from John Hayward from January 27 on Breitbart may give us insight as to why there is so much howling by CAIR and CAIR associates because there were implications of people involved with CAIR in the Holy Land Foundation trial.

One just merely need to go look at the pleadings. Here in Congress, since Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch went through their entire terms as Attorneys General and continued to refuse to provide the discovery documents in the Holy Land Foundation trial that were provided in pretrial to the convicted terrorist supporters, it is pretty incomprehensible for some of us.

On one occasion, when Attorney General Holder pointed out that, well, there may be some classified issues involved, I pointed out to him-- apparently, it went right over his head and he couldn't discern--the fact that the Justice Department gave the documents I am requesting to people that were then convicted of supporting terrorism.

If Justice could give them to the terrorists without concern about being classified, surely they could give them to Members of Congress. Although some of us may argue in such ways that it terrifies some people, we are not terrorists and we are authorized to receive classified information. We should have been authorized in Congress to receive the same documents that the Justice Department provided to the terrorist supporters who were convicted.

This article from John Hayward, January 27, points out that:

``According to Reuters, a `factional' debate is under way within the Trump administration over adding the Muslim Brotherhood to the State Department and Treasury lists of foreign terrorist organizations.

``This is a measure often called for by critics of the Brotherhood as Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney, who once again recommended an official terrorist designation on Wednesday's edition of Breitbart News Daily.

``A source in the Trump transition team told Reuters the effort to so designate the Muslim Brotherhood is led by National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The source was personally in agreement with Flynn.

``In Congress, a bill to add the Muslim Brotherhood to the official terrorist list was introduced this month by Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida. Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson denounced the Muslim Brotherhood as an `agent of radical Islam' during his confirmation hearings, but he has not made public statements regarding adding them to the foreign terrorist organization list.

However, other Trump advisers, and members of the intelligence and law-enforcement communities, argue the Brotherhood has `evolved peacefully in some countries,' Reuters claims.

``They also expressed the pragmatic concern that going hard on the Muslim Brotherhood could complicate diplomatic relations with nations such as Turkey. It would unquestionably, however, please such U.S. allies as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, although there have been signs the Saudis might be softening on the Brotherhood as they search for allies against ISIS in Iran.

``One official familiar with the State Department's deliberations conceded that the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology has influenced such terrorist groups as Hamas, but since it is a large, loose organization spread over several nations, it could be legally difficult to apply the terrorist designation. Allied nations such as Britain have also expressed suspicions about the Brotherhood's influence, while stopping short of a formal terrorist designation.''

So this is important to note. It is a good article. But I can't help but wonder if the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, may be getting quite concerned about the potential for designating their friends in the Muslim Brotherhood.

There may be a mutual relationship there. There may be people that are part of both groups. No doubt, CAIR is getting quite concerned about heightened talk about naming the Muslim Brotherhood as the terrorist organization they are. It is just that they don't use terrorist tactics, as some of them have indicated before, when they are making great progress without terrorism, but knowing that eventually, after they get as far as they can with peaceful methods, they will ultimately be resorting to terrorism to bring the United States and other Western civilizations, countries into the international caliphate, wherein we are ruled by a caliph.

So it is interesting times. Here, tonight, in perhaps an hour and a half or so, our new President will name the nominee to fill the Honorable Antonin Scalia's spot on the Supreme Court. He is still greatly missed. He was a great man. He was a great jurist. He was a great patriot and he was great for America and our freedoms. So we will look forward to hearing that.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford).

Privacy Protection

I thank the gentleman from South Carolina not merely for the bill, but this gentleman's bills, just like the reasoned argument made here in this Chamber, well reasoned, well thought out. Having sat and listened to so many lawyers during my years on the bench, both trial bench and appellate bench, I would have welcomed the opportunity to hear from my friend from South Carolina in any courtroom where I was sitting. Well reasoned, a lot of good research in trying to solve problems. I look forward to a lot of us reading that bill and finding out because there is no doubt it involved just as good reasons as were used in your argument here today.

Also, we heard from another colleague of ours, the Honorable Don Young from Alaska. I am actually optimistic about so many things with this

President in the Oval Office now, and one of them is that our friend, Don Young from Alaska, may finally get some help.

President Carter had identified an area that really didn't have any wildlife to speak of. Yes, it was part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but it was an area that really didn't have wildlife to speak of. As I understand it, there are some caribou that may walk across there from time to time, but they can't stay because there is not enough to sustain them. But President Carter, as anticarbon energy as he was, realized that is an area that we can agree ought to be drilled for the production of oil and gas, and it has been fought over and over.

Who stands to gain?

Well, actually, the American public. But since so much oil has now been found out in my friend Mike Conaway's district in west Texas, up in the Dakotas, we are not as needful of that as we were. But the people who will really benefit are the people of Alaska, and then additional beneficiaries will be the people of the United States and the people who want to get out from under the iron fist of Russia rising. We will be able to help them with that by not only becoming energy independent; but after energy independent, exporting oil and gas to other nations so they don't feel the pinch that nations like China and Russia are putting on them.

I thank my friend, Mr. Young from Alaska, and my friend, the former Governor of South Carolina, Mr. Sanford.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are off to a fast start this year under the Trump administration. It is difficult, apparently, for some of the press to keep up with how quickly some of the things are going.

I did want to make clear something that has been completely muddled by the mainstream media. They keep wondering why they continue to lose out to news channels like FOX News and why some of the conservative news sources online do so well compared to the leftwing sources. It is because a majority of people really are seeking truth, really are seeking answers.

I realize that is not true for everywhere. The areas that Hillary Clinton won are basically relegated to the edges, the fringes of the country: around the coasts and southern valley, Chicago, Detroit, and some of those areas. It is really the fringe party.

After someone--anyone with the least amount of even a small modicum of fairness--looks at the actual executive order that Donald Trump issued, it seems eminently reasonable. When looking at it, for example, compared to orders signed by a President named Obama, a President named Carter--I couldn't find any CNN, MSNBC, or anything like CNBC, and I could have missed that somebody did break through all the misrepresentations of those networks and actually point out,

because sometimes I am going by and I don't have the sound on and I will be reading the subtext, but you would think that someone in one of those networks would make a big deal out of the fact that Muslims were not banned under the Trump executive order. Yet people all over the world and all over this country are still under the mistaken impression they can trust certain networks. They still haven't figured out that they can't.

They see that, my gosh, the President has banned Muslims. I actually have the executive order here because, just as I read ObamaCare before I voted against it, I have read the President's executive order. I made highlights in bold on some things. I saw that there is no reference-- not one--to Muslims, to Islam. It is just not there. So it is a total misrepresentation.

Now, to try to cover for the way the executive order news is being spun, some of them, to try to grasp back just a small portion of something resembling fairness, would say the words ``Muslim-majority country banned,'' try to bring it back so they can work in the word ``Muslim'' when it wasn't about religion at all. It is about the safety of the United States, the people we are sworn to protect, the Constitution that we raise our right hand and we swear to protect. We just took that oath earlier this month, and already it is forgotten.

The refugee program that President Trump has paused is the same one that ISIS terrorists have repeatedly vowed that they are infiltrating, and they are intending to use it to kill Americans. The President is acting temporarily and prudently to give his administration and this Congress the time it needs to properly evaluate the refugee program and reform it to ensure that we help legitimate refugees and ensure the safety, as much as is possible, of the American people.

When an FBI Director warns that they have no information from a country with which to compare identity information that refugees have or present or even orally convey, then I would think at some point we would take that information seriously from the sworn testimony.

Now, I realize that the past administration has played fast and loose when you keep telling the American people and the Members of Congress that the attack in Benghazi was all about a video, and you even try to cover that by encouraging the producer of the video to be arrested and put in jail to help with this misrepresentation of the truth. Then I guess, under those circumstances, you don't take testimony from the prior administration Cabinet members all that seriously because you know that they have been out there and misrepresented the truth before.

I don't know if Klein's book about, I think it was, the blood feud between the Obamas and the Clintons was right, but there had to be a reason that Hillary Clinton did not come out on the Sunday shows after Benghazi and make this claim that was adverse to what she emailed her daughter and what she emailed to the President of Libya, saying that it was an attack. She didn't mention a video because it wasn't about a video. She knew that. I realize that, between the concussion, the problems, she may not remember that, but she knew it at the time.

According to that book, she called and talked to former President Bill Clinton; and she was encouraged not to go public and say it was about a video, that, in essence, that was indefensible. Nobody in their right mind was going to believe that, so she couldn't be out there.

There were thoughts being entertained of maybe resigning rather than going out and trying to defend that story, but, gee, they realized that if she was going to run for President in 2016 and she resigned right before the election in 2012, it would have likely cost President Obama a second term, and then Democrats would not be very kind and forgiving even though that would have been a stance based on truth and honor. If it cost the Presidency in 2016, it was just not something that could be done.

Apparently, according to the book and his sources that he says are close friends of the people involved, they decided the best way was not to resign and cost the President the reelection in 2012, but refuse under all circumstances to go on the Sunday shows and try to tell America six times that the attack at Benghazi was not planned; it was just instantaneous that arose from a protest over the video, but just don't go make that representation. Make that clear to the administration you are not going to do that, and then let the chips fall where they may. Because we haven't been able to figure out outside that representation in the book, why in the world did Susan Rice come out and say all that?

That should have been Hillary Clinton's role. So he provides the excuse or the reasoning. So Susan Rice goes out and over and over on Sunday shows, it was all about a video.

Well, I know from my days as a judge hearing of incidents where someone perhaps in a company that was not being honestly run would keep somebody in the dark so they could go out and make certain representations. The person really didn't want to know what the real truth was so they could come out and say with a clear conscience, here is what happened, and that wasn't it. So it may well be Susan Rice just did not know that her statements were lies. And if she didn't know, then they are not lies; they are just falsehoods she didn't know were false.

We don't know, but it is an interesting representation. And it still brings us back to the fact that in certain countries in the world, we don't have adequate information to check individuals coming in against. No matter how much the credibility of the FBI Director may have been harmed last summer when he came out and made a totally political move of outlining that Hillary Clinton basically committed a crime, but no reasonable prosecutor would pursue this, that is my interpretation of what he said basically, and those who have prosecuted--I have prosecuted. You know, there are a lot of prosecutors who would take that. But he made the statement. So I figured that was pretty political.

Despite that, when he says, you know, look, we had some information from some of these countries we got from their governments so that when we see their passport, we see some of this information, we could say, all right, we can check it against their government's records: What do you have on this person?

But we had heard from Syria, for example, that they had actually taken over facilities that could print official passports. So they could print a totally fictitious passport because they have the means to do it. They have captured that. Not only do we not have a cooperating government, but we have no information. We don't have fingerprints off IEDs like we did from Iraq, and most of the time we had cooperation so we could compare this information. But we had nothing in some of these countries that could give us the assurance that the leaders of radical Islamist groups were not doing exactly what they said they were, and that is infiltrating the refugees with people who were going to come in and kill Americans. They said they were doing that in Europe. At some point we need to take these things seriously.

I am thrilled to death to have a President--fortunately it is nice being thrilled to death instead of being beaten or knifed or hit with a truck. But I am thrilled to have a President who is taking seriously the things that the Obama administration found should be taken seriously. Let's be clear, no one is being discriminated against in the President's executive order based on religion. Christians, Jews, Muslims, any religious group, agnostics, atheists from the countries designated for a pause--it is not a ban; it is a pause so we can look better at what we need to do.

I am thrilled to be joined by one of our sharpest new freshmen.

Mr. Speaker, as I told my friend from Florida, I am honored anytime he comes to the floor to speak because he knows what he is talking about. When I was a judge back in Texas, a young prosecutor also shared his first name, and he is now the DA. He is as sincere and intelligent. Anyway, it is just an honor to serve with Mr. Gaetz. I wondered if he might yield for a question.

The Attorney General--I am sorry, this is the acting Attorney General because the Senate is dragging its feet on one of its own, Jeff Sessions, but this came out today in The Hill that ``Acting Attorney General Sally Yates sent a letter Monday ordering the Justice Department not to defend President Trump's executive order . . .'' even though it is an order that basically has been done by the Obama administration--except President Obama had done it one country that is included in the seven for 6 months instead of 3--and also by President Carter. I don't think he was a Republican. Anyway, these things have been done before, and the letter says we are not going to defend it.

This story from Lydia Wheeler today says: ``Yates's''--the acting Attorney General--``decision suggests she does not want to put the credibility of the Justice Department behind the order. . . .''

I wanted to ask the gentleman from Florida, does he have concerns that, if the Justice Department were to defend this executive order, it would hurt the credibility of the Justice Department when acting under its Democratic leadership?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Great points. And I wish I were as articulate.

I have been critical of the majority leader in the Senate, Senator McConnell, but this story is from CNS News. Majority Leader McConnell says: ``Well, I think it's a good idea to tighten the vetting process.''

And he went on to say: ``I don't want to criticize them''--the Trump administration--``for improving vetting.''

And I applaud the majority leader for not running for the hills when all of the media does their typical thing and just goes freaking out. But, we found this story goes also, I think, to illustrate the point Mr. Gaetz was making. This is from Daniel Horowitz's article today. It turns out that 17 sitting Democrats in the House and Senate voted to ban visas from some Muslim countries and that law still exists today. Of course, this was back in 2002. And back at that time, you had some quite conservative Democrats in the House and Senate, people like Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Dianne Feinstein, you know, real bulwarks of conservatism, who voted to ban visas from these type countries, of the Muslim majority countries, as CNN would like to call them. Gee, names like Cardin, Markey, Menendez, Murray, Nelson of Florida, Reed of Rhode Island, Sanders of Vermont. Wow, there is another conservative, Sanders of Vermont. Schumer, another strong hearted conservative. Stabenow, Wyden, Durbin, Feinstein, Leahy, and Udall.

So it kind of begs the question: If this is only a temporary ban from countries until we can ascertain better vetting, how much worse is it for these 73 sitting Democrats to have voted for a permanent ban? That is rather shocking.

And it is notable that President Obama, not exactly consistent with former President George W. Bush who went 8 years without coming out and making formal criticisms--well, President Obama has said he is very heartened by all of the anti-Trump protests. We even have Democrats here in the House who said: `` . . . as we've heard before, the President fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion.'' Because I know my friend here in the House would not misrepresent the truth. So it just shows, obviously, he hasn't read this executive order that makes very clear it is not banning a religion or a faith, it is countries where we don't have enough information.

And I just find it interesting that we are standing on the side of 73 Democrats--Markey, Bernie Sanders, Feinstein, people like that--who thought it was a good idea when they were closer to 9/11.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. Speaker, my friend makes such a great point. I think the way this country has, in recent years, been so discriminatory as has been the United Nations against Christian refugees, I am afraid that this United States of America could be called to account for the slaughter of so many Christians who we could have helped. And as we know from the numbers, there are a lot of excuses by the U.N. as to why they are not helping an equal percentage of Christians to the percentage of makeup of those countries they are coming from. There have been all kinds of excuses.

But even our Secretary of State, under the last administration, John Kerry, admitted there was a genocide going on of Christians in the Middle East. Now, there is not a genocide going on of Muslims in these countries. There are Sunni versus Shia and vice versa, and there are clashes within the Islamic religion, but there is not a genocide of all Muslims in any of these countries. And yet there is clearly a genocide clear enough for John Kerry to note.

So one of the most heinous and outrageous answers that I have heard a U.N. general secretary make was--well, I didn't hear it, I read--that the U.N. general secretary was asked about a year and a half or so ago, when he was in charge of the United Nations' refugee program, and this issue of the U.N. not helping the same percentage, in fact, just helping a fraction of the percentage of Christians who exist in these countries, his response was basically that it was important to leave these Christians in the areas where they are being killed because they have historical precedence in those areas.

So we are going to bring Muslims out, according to the U.N. general secretary, because they didn't have as much historical significance, whereas the Christians who are being wiped out--throats cut, heads cut off, crucified, women raped, and just the most heinous of crimes committed against individuals are taking place--our U.N. general secretary and, apparently under our past President, the State Department felt like it was important to leave Christians there in larger percentages than existed among the refugees of Muslim because, hey, they have been there a long while, so let's leave them there, which ultimately means they will all be slaughtered. It is quite distressing.

But here is a point made by George Rasley today in an article, ``President Trump Stops Suicidal Immigration Policy . . . ,'' where he points out that:

``Had President Trump's policy been in place participants in many Muslim terrorist incidents would have been prevented from entering our country, for example the Ohio State University attack by Somali `refugee' Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the September 2016 stabbing attack in a mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and two foiled bomb plots--one in Portland, Oregon, in 2010 and one in Columbus, Ohio, in 2000.

``Indeed, some 74 terrorist incidents have been attributed to Somali Muslims alone. And while the Obama administration did its best to cover-up the immigration status of the perpetrators we know that at least 13 of them were admitted to the U.S. as `refugees.'

``Fourteen were legal permanent residents at the time of their radical activity, and 10 were naturalized citizens.''

So it is quite disturbing.

And by the way, as a result of the Kentucky case where we had two refugees who had been brought in from Iraq, it was reported, in 2013, that in 2009, two al Qaeda Iraq terrorists were living as refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Anyway, because of that discovery, the Obama State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for 6 months in 2011.

So I do think it is important, as people keep screaming around here, what I believe as a Christian, Jesus said: The greatest commandment is to love God, and the second, he said, is to love each other. But he had also stated: Love thy neighbor as thy self.

And what some have not realized, if you don't like America, if you don't

like Americans, if you don't like our own country, and you don't love yourself, it is a bit hard to love your neighbor as yourself if you don't love yourself.

I think it is time Americans stood up and thanked God for--and/or thank whatever force they may be, some would say, or agnostic, whatever--just thank your lucky stars, but be thankful we have had the opportunities to live in the greatest country in the history of the world. And the only one who has truly given lives and treasure, not for imperialist sake but simply for freedom sake, for liberty sake, for people we didn't know, but we wanted them to share in freedom and liberty. That is a rare country. It has been a blessed and blessed country.

And I think it is important that if we are going to continue or get back to being that city on a hill, glowing that draws people to it, that would draw people to the Statue of Liberty, you have to be a nation of laws, you have to protect the people in the country, otherwise we go back to the Dark Ages, and we become a country that no one wants to come risk their lives to get to because there is nothing special.

We squandered our opportunities and refused to take up our responsibilities to protect this Nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for a friend like Mr. Matt Gaetz from Florida, as articulate and intelligent as he is, and I look forward to working with him and with the Speaker in the days ahead.

God has blessed America. Let's keep asking for God to bless America. If we ask, we are told: you will be given.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 1 minute p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, January 31, 2017, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I am so grateful that Representative Chris Smith is a Member of the United States Congress because of his leadership, because of his enormous heart, and his enormous caring.

It is amazing--those of us who believe in God--the way our lives develop. I was a guy that grew up; I never liked to hug anybody. But when we had three beautiful incredible girls added to my wife's and my life, I became a hugger. Fox has a show named ``Outnumbered,'' but that has been my life for years now.

I know there are so many people that say you are a man and you have no right to speak about this. I guess, when I was a judge, there were those who thought, since I was not a person that had been on both sides of a civil lawsuit or had been a defendant in a case, maybe I should not be able to say anything about or pass sentence. But we have laws, and laws are there to protect people.

I do believe, as our Founders did, in nature's God, that we have a Creator who provided us inalienable rights. But in this world, you have to fight for any inheritance, including your inalienable rights.

It does appear that nature gave a greater percentage of women a nurturing greater sense of loving and caring than most men. That gets changed for some of us when you have a house full of girls.

But I could identify with the doctor who had performed, I think he said, over 1,000 abortions, who came before our Judiciary Committee and testified about how it was just a procedure, how it was nothing to him, and how he would go into the uterus.

Of course, the pregnant mom was not dilated and not going to be able to deliver a baby that had begun forming, had a heartbeat. But that is why he would go in with his instrument, feel around with his clamps for something that felt long, and when he found it, he knew that it was either a leg or an arm, and he would grab it and pull it out from the baby's body, and continue till he did that four times, and then reach in and find something that felt bulbous, and he would--he knew the head could not come out in a bulbous form, and so he would crush it and pull out the baby's head. And that was the way he went about beginning the abortion of a child that had begun developing like that.

He never thought a thing about it until his daughter died, and then he became nauseated, and he was never able to do another abortion like that, and it became such a burden that he had done what he had done.

I know from my years on the bench as a judge, I know from my years as an attorney helping people, if something is built on a lie, the chances are that the outcome will not be good for a majority of people. I also know that if someone encourages and perpetuates a lie within some other person's life, they are not that person's friend.

So I would like to quickly reference an article published by WND called ``The Real `Jane Roe' '' and just hit some of the highlights about the real Jane Roe, the woman.

I was talking with my friend, Chris Smith, about Norma McCorvey. He is quite familiar with her, and I believe he said he had talked to her and had come to know her. Being the Christian that Chris Smith is, he cares deeply about people, and that included Norma McCorvey.

But this article says: ``At the age of 21, McCorvey was pregnant with her third child. She had given her other two children up for adoption and McCorvey did not want to say good-bye to her offspring a third time. So she decided to have an illegal abortion, but the Dallas clinic she went to had been recently raided and shut down. So McCorvey made up a story--she had been raped, she told her doctor and two lawyers. She signed an affidavit on condition of anonymity, and the lawsuit began.''

And she told WorldNetDaily: `` `I considered abortion and, because of this, I was put in touch with two attorneys, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. They had just recently graduated from law school and were interested in challenging the Texas abortion statute.' ''

She says: `` `Plain and simple, I was used.' '' This is Norma McCorvey. `` `I was a nobody to them. They only needed a pregnant woman to use for their case, and that's it. They cared, not about me, but only about legalizing abortion. Even after the case, I was never respected--probably because I was not an ivy-league educated, liberal feminist like they were.' ''

But she goes on and says--well, this was from a New York Times interview: ``McCorvey describes her meeting the two young attorneys. . . .

`` `Sarah Weddington sat right across the table from me at Columbo's pizza parlor, and I didn't know then that she had had an abortion herself. When I told her then how desperately I needed one, she could have told me where to go for it. But she wouldn't because she needed me to be pregnant for her case. I set Sarah Weddington up on a pedestal like a rose petal. But when it came to my turn, well, Sarah saw these cuts on my wrists, my swollen eyes from crying, the miserable person sitting across from her, and she knew she had a patsy. She knew I wouldn't go outside of the realm of her and Linda. I was too scared. It was one of the most hideous times of my life.' ''

She says: `` `My experience with pro-abortion leaders is that they are snobs. They claim they care about women and their rights but, in my experience, they care for nothing, not even themselves in a way,' '' McCorvey said.

``McCorvey said in a 1990 New York Times interview that the rape lie caused her to be `terribly depressed.' ''

`` `I was brought up not to lie and, because of this story, I had to lie all the time. And the depression periods got deeper and longer until the night I cut my wrists.' ''

Well, it is one of the difficulties that attorneys have: when you represent someone and you are sworn to do the best job you can, it should be more than simply about getting the legal result that a lawyer wants. It ought to be about helping the client. You can't always do that.

But it is rather tragic that Jane Roe, Norma McCorvey, now looks back on that as the most hideous time of her life, and that she was taken advantage of by people that didn't care about her. They had an agenda.

I heard someone here on the floor talking about the Women's March and how that was for all women, except the hypocrisy of that march was it was not about all women because there were pro-life women that tried to march. It was about women that think exactly like they do, and nobody else gets to participate.

It is the same kind of mentality that would--when in the majority here in this body say: We want everybody to participate in debate, except we are

going to have a record-setting number of closed rules so nobody can debate. We don't want your input on ObamaCare. We don't care that you support what we do on preexisting conditions and on kids living with their parents.

Heck, some of us said 30 would be a better number than 26. They didn't care. They could pass it without our votes. They didn't want our input.

So then to hear people who treated us like that say we care about open debate, knowing that some of those same people came down here and grabbed microphones and, for the first time we can find in congressional hearing, prevented the majority from starting into session; and then they want to lecture us on openness and kindness and open debate? Really?

Let's go back to the Norma McCorveys of the world. Let's minister to them individually, as my church, as a number of ministries with which I am greatly familiar do. Let's help the real person. Let's help that child so that that little boy or that little girl doesn't have its arms and legs jerked out of the uterus. Let's help that child have a life that will be so full they will never think about slitting their wrists, as Norma McCorvey did. Let's vote for life.

Mr. Speaker, I am very grateful to Mr. Lance for his great leadership on this issue. And I appreciate the comments of my friend across the aisle, Mr. Doyle.

This did pass by voice vote.

One can't help but wonder: How many times has this played out that we don't know about? How many times has there been a child that tried to dial 911? How many times has a panicked adult dialed 911 not knowing?

And I was in a hotel the other day where you had to dial 7 to get out.

How many times has somebody been killed trying to dial 911?

We don't know. There is no way to know. But we do know that this is the right thing to do. And the only reason this came forward is after the tragic loss of Kari. Her death occurred over several minutes. Normally in a town like Marshall, especially in a town like that, the police are going to be there within a minute or two when something goes on this long. It was a beating; it was a stabbing; her daughter was trying to dial.

After Kari had left this world, her daughter was sitting in Hank Hunt's lap. She was crying saying: I did all I could. I kept dialing 911 and it wouldn't go through.

Hank was torn up about it and got to investigating. That is when this was brought to light. When Hank brought it to my attention, we got to investigating. And we do have limits here in Congress. We are not supposed to go meddling, according to the 10th Amendment, in State and local affairs; but this is a matter of interstate communications. This is a matter for the Congress. This goes across State lines constantly. It is in the public domain across the country. If we don't do it when it involves interstate commerce, then nobody else has the authority to go across State lines.

I also thank the FCC Commissioner Pai, who I understand will soon be the chairman, for all his efforts because he truly participated.

We found out that there is really no cost. If we pass this law such as it is, then the companies that produce these phones would just set the default position so that when someone dials 911, it goes straight to an emergency operator without having to dial a prefix, whether it is 7, 9, 3, whatever. So there is no cost in that. It is just telling them how to do the default.

What about existing lines?

And then we found from people that have installed these multiphone lines that, actually, if somebody calls and says, ``Hey, we need to get our phone system reset so you can dial 911 and it goes straight through,'' everyone that we have talked to that was in that business said, ``Oh, we will come make that switch for free.''

So we knew we had a bill here, we had a law--it goes across party lines, it goes across bicameral lines--we had an opportunity to pass a bill.

I am grateful to Senator Klobuchar in the Senate and all the bipartisan support there. As my friend, Mr. Doyle, pointed out, there is another push. Let's identify exactly where someone is within that multiline system. That will cost money.

There are some that have said: Look, if there is somebody that is making a secret call, they don't want the bad guys figuring out where the call is coming from.

So there are other issues involved here, but we have a bill that will save lives and it is agreeable across the aisle. It passed this manner in the past Congress. It will pass this way again today. So I urge not only our friends here in the House, but also my friends in the Senate, please pass this bill that we all agree on, save lives, and then let's have a full and thorough debate on the part that will cost money. We have some mom and pop hotels that say: If you make us buy a new phone system, the one we have won't be able to identify which room is making the call. You make us add to that, we are already in trouble. We are barely getting by. Please don't add more costs to what we are struggling to pay as it is.

Let's have that debate in a separate bill. Go in and pass this noncontroversial one for Kari's sake and for the sake of all of those that would come into the same situation. Let's just pass this bill. Kari, as her father and her daughters have said, will then not have died for nothing. Her loss of life will save lives in the future.

Again, I thank my friend, Mr. Lance. What a great American, the way he pursues matters of conscience. I appreciate again my friend across the aisle, Mr. Doyle.

I urge passage of this bill now, today.