Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, we have heard a great deal today-- actually, from both sides of the aisle pointing fingers across the way at the opposing party--about the issue of children: taking care of children that are brought here illegally, taking care of children that supposedly come here on their own.

But since we know that nobody crosses from Mexico into the United States illegally without having the permission of the drug cartel that controls that section of the Mexico-U.S. border, it is not really accurate to say a child comes unaccompanied, because a child can't cross Mexico by himself. A child is brought by somebody.

Unfortunately, as we know, the figures from both government groups, Doctors Without Borders, and others are pretty staggering when you realize that such a large percentage--25 percent, 30 percent--of girls who come to the United States through Mexico are raped.

I have seen too many rape trees that it breaks my heart. It is just, as the poet said, incredible, the inhumanity to man. It is staggering.

And sometimes it is difficult to tell people no that want to come here, but there is not a country in the world that lets more people into that country than the United States does. There is nowhere.

Countries that are much bigger geographically, countries that have many more people, countries that have more space per person, there is no country that is as generous with the right being given to come in to a country legally as the United States, and I love that about our country.

But it is important to have rules about who gets to come in. Obviously, some have projected that there may be 1 billion, 1.5 billion people who would like to come to the United States. If the 300, 350 million or so people here were to have a billion people come in, obviously, this country would cease to exist as it has or is or could be. It would cease to exist. It would become a Third World country. There would be so much massive unemployment overwhelming the social services. Disease would become rampant.

As we see people coming here from other countries, there are diseases that we had completely eliminated in the United States that are now being reintroduced to the United States because we have not enforced our borders and made sure that people coming in, as welcome as they are to come in legally, that they are not coming in with a disease that puts people in the United States in jeopardy. Once you do that, then you don't continue to be that light on the hill that so many want to come to. There is no place left.

Last year, there were some people here who said: Well, you know, if we keep losing more and more of our freedom here in the United States, maybe we just can all go to Australia.

I had a few guys that I met with from Australia. I thought they would find that amusing. But they didn't smile; they didn't laugh. They said: Do you not understand? If you lose your freedom here in America, China will take

us over in a heartbeat. There will be no place you are going to be able to go.

The United States of America is the place that gives everyone else in the world hope for freedom.

I ran into the same thing in Nigeria, people imploring, in fact, some West Africans who were Christians wanted to meet with me before I left. The oldest gentleman said: You know, we wanted to make sure, before you went back to Washington, you understood we were all so thrilled when you elected your first Black President.

They said: But since President Obama has been the leader in the United States, we have seen America get weaker and weaker. And you have got to make sure people in Washington understand, when America gets weaker, we suffer.

Ebenezer was his name. He said: You know, we know where we are going when we die. We are Christians. We are believers. But our only chance of having some degree of safety in this life is if America is strong.

Unfortunately, as I heard from people there, as I have read since, the Obama administration was putting requirements: Look, we will give you more help in neutralizing Boko Haram, but you are going to have to legalize abortion, start paying for those, and you have got to legalize same-sex marriage, and then we will give you some serious help with Boko Haram.

In the meantime, the American administration had a hashtag, #bringbackourgirls. It didn't really do much. Actually, it didn't do anything, really. The hashtag went around and around, but thank God for people who stepped up like our government did not and actually helped girls, and some continue to be helped. I won't talk about where they are, how well they are doing.

But it is just really tragic when the United States Government that so many people around the world look to for hope, look to as an example of what perhaps their country could be someday, start losing hope when they see what happens here. It is tragic.

I know some say, and we have seen this over the years, whether it is Dr. Spock's book on how to raise children, don't ever say no. Gee, you might hurt their pride or enthusiasm. Don't ever punish, just encourage.

But the fact is that the reason we have laws that don't allow children to enter into binding contracts is because we understand that children can be too easily persuaded. That is why criminals are able to dangle candy or in some way entice children into situations wherein their lives are destroyed.

There is a time to say no out of love and caring.

I don't know anybody on either side of the aisle here, either party, who wants to see children harmed, but the fact is, as the border patrolmen tell me constantly both when I am down there all night or when I am up here and hear from them: When you guys make it sound like anybody is welcome, especially if they have a child in their group, well, we have more children now coming, often to their own detriment, than we have ever had in our history.

So I understand the feeling, gee, let's don't say no to any child who wants to come into America accompanied, unaccompanied. We extend our arms.

But what happens? We know every time caravans, groups are coming in, big, small, people die trying to get in. The drug cartels are so corrupt, they will utilize children. They have no problem taking young girls and using them in sex trafficking.

And by our leaving that open, I hear it all the time from people who work the border: You guys lure them up here to their own harm. If you would just secure the border, these folks will quit coming, and you won't have thousands of girls being raped. You won't have people being sold into sex slavery.

And I say ``sold,'' but it sounds more like, from the stories we get down there that what happens, and it is not on the list of questions a border patrolman asks as they are in-processing people, but sometimes it is asked: How much did you have to pay? And sometimes they will add: to the gang or the drug cartel to get you in here illegally?

The answer normally is 5, 6, 7, $8,000.

And again, the question is not on their list to ask, but sometimes they ask: How did you get that money? You don't have that kind of money. Where would you come up with that kind of money?

So often, the answer is: We got a thousand here. We had a thousand sent, $1,500 sent from people in the United States, and they are going to let us work the rest off when we get where we are going.

So, so many are not sold into slavery. They just agree, without realizing, they are about to become an indentured servant to a drug cartel, and they are going to be a servant either in sex trafficking or drug trafficking.

So often I have stood there and watched people waiting to be processed, and they will have an address in a city in the U.S. And I have seen them, different times, exchange, and they would switch cities, and then they would tell the border patrolman: Here is the city where I have relatives, where I can go and be taken care of.

And it is where the drug cartels told them to go. So, technically, they are not sold into slavery, but they have agreed to be indentured servants to the drug cartels.

So it is amazing how many people seem shocked when they read story after story about how the drug cartels in Mexico have big operations in cities all over America. That is why the border patrolmen say: You know what the drug cartels call us? They call us their logistics.

Like the commercial?

Well, yeah. Like the commercial.

They get them across the border, and then the U.S. Government ships these people wherever the drug cartels want them to go.

Right now, they are so overwhelmed on our border, it is just tragic.

I know there are Christian groups that receive millions of dollars for going down and helping get people in and taking care of them. And it sure makes it appear like they are scared of losing the millions of dollars they get for assisting illegal aliens, but we need to be realistic.

When you are in a country that is self-governing, where you have an obligation as part of the government, if you are a citizen serving on juries, that makes you a judge of the facts of a case, or running for office, or voting, you vote because you are supposed to be the one who hires the servants who come to work in the county seat, the State capitol, the Federal Capitol.

But the people are supposed to be the real rulers, and those of us elected are supposed to be the servants. But there is an obligation that goes with the freedoms, and that obligation means you have got to enforce the law across the board.

Some people quote Scripture, saying, we have got to be good to the foreigners--true; we have got to help the widows and orphans--true; we ought to be encouraging and embracing of families--true.

But when you are acting as the government, you have a different role, and that is a role to ensure that the law is enforced evenly and fairly across the board without regard to someone's financial situation, social status, or anything else.

That is why there are verses in the Bible that say something to pray for is people who will not show favoritism to the rich and, also, verses say, not show favoritism to the poor. You treat everyone fairly across the board.

I sure got a lot of hateful things when I was a judge, and I revoked the probation of a daughter of one of the wealthy oil families in my hometown. They even had many of my supporters in the courtroom, thinking that would intimidate me from doing what I would have done to anyone else.

But as a judge, that is the job. You don't show favoritism to people because of their wealth or because of their lack of it. You enforce the laws fairly across the board.

Just as it would be crazy for a parent to welcome a child who can't swim to come jump in the pool, you say: No. No. That is dangerous. No, don't touch the hot stove. No, don't stick anything into the electric socket.

There is a time to say no. But some think that being loving and caring means never to say no. There is a time to say no.

If we enforce our borders and do so fairly and are fair about the over a million visas that we give out in this country--again, the most generous of any country in the world--just do so

fairly, then you don't have people forced into sex trafficking, forced into drug trafficking.

You know, the best, most compassionate thing we could say or do to help people in Mexico would be to totally secure the border so only people come in who are legally coming in and to shut down the money that the drug cartels are making off the drug trafficking and the sex trafficking because, according to some estimates, before they started getting so much money from human trafficking, they estimated $80 billion, one source, $80 billion or so from drug trafficking.

And what an incredible business model. They are making all this money off drugs, but they don't have to hire employees, because the employees come to them and pay them a fee to help them get to a place where they can sell the drugs for them at no charge to the drug cartels.

And don't think the drug cartels don't know how to say no and take lives. They know how to cut heads off and put them on pikes to intimidate people, to keep them in line.

There is nothing more difficult in Mexico than being a law enforcement officer who is dedicated to truly enforcing the law fairly, including against people in the drug cartels. Their lives are at great risk, as are their families'. But if we secure the border, build a wall where we need it, secure the border, then the money dries up to pay for corruption in Mexico.

Mexico, you think about Mexico. They ought to be a top ten economy. They have incredible natural resources. They have got a better location than North America. They are between North and South America. They are between the two oceans. They ought to be the greatest trader: all the natural resources, and, of course, they have got some of the hardest working people in the world.

Why are they not a top ten economy? Because of corruption.

How is corruption funded? From money coming across our border illegally for drugs that come in illegally or sex trafficking coming in.

What an incredible gift to the people of Mexico, so many of whom dream of a day when they could have an incredibly vibrant economy and they didn't have to worry about corrupt police or corrupt government officials.

That is why I know, when you hear some Mexican elected official say they don't want the border secured, then you can pretty well take it to the bank they are taking money to the bank from the drug cartels; otherwise, they would want to see Mexico reach its potential that cannot be reached as long as we are allowing tens of billions of dollars to flow from the United States to the drug cartels for the corruption of government and harm to people.

Now, there used to be an unwritten rule, as I understood it, that the drug cartels would not kill anybody, rob, they would not let crime go on around Mexico's resorts. But that has certainly gone to the wayside.

My wife and I went on our honeymoon in Mexico. We celebrated our 25th anniversary in Mexico. But, as a government official, going to Mexico, with people and cartels knowing who I am, it is a dangerous place to go now, so we haven't been back in a long time. I look forward to the day when we can, and that day will be when we secure our border and Mexico achieves the status in the world's economies that it should because of what is there and the people. That would be a gift we should give them. But in the meantime, we make clear that we are securing our border, you are not coming in unless you come in through a port of entry, a legal port of entry, and you come in legally, you are not coming in.

Now we hear the stories, we read the stories and get the accounts, children are now a commodity. The drug cartels know that if somebody comes in with a child, with them or with their group, oh, gee, this is a big family. We saw all of the wild screaming and gnashing of teeth over children not being with parents. So they know they are not going to be separated and they are going to be able to stay in the country. So they are coming. They are coming in greater numbers than ever before.

If you look back at some of the numbers from the nineties, it was 80 percent, as I recall. And somebody was just referring to the numbers recently, about 80 percent were single adults from Mexico, men, who were coming for jobs. And now, because of the dramatization over what happens every day, in every county in the country, and that is an adult who has committed a crime or is arrested for committing a crime, being separated from a child. It happens every day.

I used to sign warrants to arrest people, and they certainly didn't bring the children to the jail with them. They were separated from their children. It is what happens when a government is trying to be fair and not make the children suffer or be punished for the sins of the parent. That is what a caring society would do. You don't punish the children for the wrongs of the parent. But now, children are a commodity. They are being rented, purchased, and used in order to better ensure that people coming in illegally will be able to stay here.

I did vote against my own party's motion to recommit. That is not the way that kind of spending should be done. Two billion dollars will end up luring people again to this country. If we advertise, and people will know, the drug cartels will use it. Look, they just voted through a provision that will provide $2 to $3 billion for medicine, medication, for people who come into the country illegally. That is not something we should be playing a game with. That is why I voted no. This is too serious to be taken lightly.

We shouldn't be playing politics with things like that. Let's secure the border and take care of folks who are here and ensure that people who come into this country do so legally.

Actually, I asked a question to Secretary Nielsen when she was at Homeland Security this year. I asked her: What if we were to have immigration judges, not in an interior courtroom somewhere across America, but had immigration judges there at the border, even if we had to just set up big tents, have the immigration judges at the border? She said that would solve the problem. You wouldn't have to give somebody a notice to come back for a hearing 4 years from now to determine whether they can stay in the country legally or not, and for which most people never come back for their hearing.

I am hopeful that, at some point, President Trump will say: Do you know what, let's don't set hearings years off. In fact, Secretary Nielsen, as I recall, indicated, if somebody is kept there at a facility near the border, they normally have a hearing 90 to 100 days, 120 days, from when they are picked up. But if they are released on some kind of recognizance or bond, it is years, on average, before they have their hearing. Well, let's solve that.

Let's just send our immigration judges to the border. If you come across and claim asylum, let's have your hearing today, and we will know by tonight whether you get to stay or whether we are taking you back across.

But it doesn't do much good to ``deport'' someone who is here illegally if you don't secure the border. That is why a guy who ended up in my felony courtroom, who had nine DWIs and didn't speak English, and he finally came to my felony court after--normally, a third DWI gets charged as a felony, but somehow, he had gotten by. And on the ninth DWI--he was driving while intoxicated--he ended up causing an accident, nearly killed some folks, and did serious damage.

But I figured if he had nine DWIs, this guy is a threat to the safety of everybody in this country. Everybody legally and illegally in this country is at risk if this guy is here, out, and driving.

So I went ahead and sent him to prison. Nine DWIs is far too many, especially when you start doing serious bodily injury to people. And I was shocked that within 6 months he was back in my courtroom. He was driving drunk and hurt somebody else.

Through the interpreter, I asked him: How is he back here in my courtroom? I sent him to prison. And he said: Well, about 3 months after--well, at that time, it was not even 3 months, it may have been a month--he was picked up and deported. They carried him to the border. And through the interpreter, he explained that they made him walk across the border. And I said: So how are you back here? He said: I waited until the deportation officers drove off. And then he came back across the border as soon as they left, got back to

drinking and driving, and ended up back in my courtroom.

So, this time, I thought, well, if he is going to be here, obviously, he is an alcoholic, so I sent him to a substance abuse felony punishment facility because everybody there is either an alcoholic or a drug addict. They go through a 12-step program. And I figured, well, if he is going to be in the country, for heaven's sake, he at least needs to be clean and sober. And I got word that at that facility he was there about 90 days before he was deported. I would imagine he came back in the country somewhere, but, obviously, not back to my county.

So why wouldn't we enforce our borders? A country that has no borders, or that has borders that are not enforced, it is not a country, it is not definable, it is just kind of an area where people go.

If we are going to continue to be a shining light for so many countries and so many people around the world, we need to follow the law, not show favoritism, not to people because they are poor, not to people because they are rich, but to be fair and enforce the laws across the board.

That brings me to an important point that has been in the news a great deal lately, and, actually, it has been going on for some time. This country, regardless of how many people may want to rewrite history, was largely inhabited and founded by people who were Christians, different denominations, who were looking to have a place where they were not persecuted for being a Christian. And I know, we are told, as Christians, we are going to suffer for Christ's sake. And I know Jesus said, remember, when they hate you, they hated me first.

But, for whatever reason, we have been allowed to have a country, unlike most any place in history, where you are not persecuted for being a Christian. Now, there are different denominations that would have big controversies with other denominations. Some of that was playing out in the first 5 weeks of the constitutional convention in 1787.

That is when Ben Franklin gave his famous speech. How do we know what he said? Well, Madison was taking notes. But afterwards, Franklin was asked for a copy of his speech. He sat down and wrote it out. Everybody who was there who saw the speech said: Oh, yeah, this is word for word everything he said.

And I know most children apparently in the country are taught that Ben Franklin was a deist, you know, someone who believed that there was some force, some being, something that created the universe. And if that thing, being, force still exists anymore, it never interferes with the laws of nature or the activity of human beings, it never gets involved. And kids are being taught Ben Franklin was a deist.

But he stood up. He is 82 years old. He has gout, he has advanced arthritis, he is overweight, he has trouble getting up and down the few steps into Independence Hall, he has trouble getting up, he has a cane, and often had to have help.

And he hadn't really spoken to that point at the convention. One of the people at the convention wrote that President Washington--he wasn't President of the country, he was President of the constitutional convention--that President Washington looked relieved when Dr. Franklin sought recognition because there was so much screaming going on. Franklin didn't have an M.D. or a Ph.D., but he was certainly recognized as being worthy of being a doctor.

But Franklin gets up--he probably had help--and we know what he said because he wrote it down. And he starts about saying, you know, we have been going on for nearly 5 weeks. We have got more noes than ayes on virtually every vote. And then this is his verbatim, he says:

How has it happened, sir, that we have not thought of

humbly seeking illumination from the source of all life?

That is not verbatim, but close.

He said:

In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we

were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room.

Our prayers so were heard, and they were graciously answered.

Then he goes on to point out that everybody in there should remember specific things that they prayed for as leaders in the Continental Congress during the Revolution, and that they should remember how specific things they prayed for were answered by God.

And then back to verbatim he says: ``I have lived, sir, a long time.'' He is a year or so away from meeting his maker. And he said: ``And the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth--that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?''

He is talking about the Bible: We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings that no empire is going to rise without his aid.

He says that we have a chance to create something special. These are not his verbatim words. He said if we take advantage of that and we come together, by the grace of God, we are going to have a special country. He adds, without God's grace, we are going to succeed no better than the builders of Babel.

He said that we will be confounded by our local partial interests, and we, ourselves, shall become a byword down through the ages.

He goes on and ends up making a motion, just like during the Revolution, just like with the Continental Congress, that the Constitutional Convention should start with prayer every day.

See, it was really a secular Congress because they voted that down. If you go look at what the discussion was, there were a bunch of different denominations there. Usually, the Quakers were most disagreeable about whom they would approve for saying a prayer for the whole group.

As the debate pointed out, yes, during the Revolution, we had a treasury. We had money so we could hire a Christian chaplain to say the prayer every day for us.

There wasn't anybody here that could say a prayer that everybody else in the Convention would feel got a fair shake for their denomination. But we could hire, agree on, one chaplain, one minister who would say a prayer for everybody.

Here we are at the Convention, and we are not getting paid. We don't have a treasury, so we are going to have to put off hiring a chaplain to do the prayer every day until we get this constitution done. That is why it didn't get approved.

Then Randolph from Virginia gets up. He says he understands that we don't have money to hire a chaplain to do the prayer every day, but here we are at the end of June--this is 1787. He said it is the end of June, and we are about to celebrate our Nation's birthday. We are not accomplishing anything, so why don't we recess here now and reconvene together in a church that we all agree on, a Christian church. We all go there together, and on our Nation's birthday, we worship God together. Then we come back and try to work this constitution thing out.

That passed. The Delegates at the Constitutional Convention came together and worshipped on our Nation's birthday at the Reformed Calvinist Church in Philadelphia, Reverend William Rogers presiding. He was the minister. I think you can even find online one of the prayers that he prayed for the Convention.

As somebody wrote back then, when they came back together, there were differences. There was a different spirit, and they were able to come together. They were able to reach an agreement.

There was such strong division among the most populous States. They said we are the most populous States, so we ought to have more representation. Others said, no, we can't come together unless we all have equal representation.

The Great Compromise came together, that we will have two separate bodies within the Congress. We will have one where States have representation based on the population, and it won't be like the House of Lords where they really don't have any power. This will be a separate body. They will have just as much power as the other house, but every State gets two representatives, and then we will balance.

That was the Great Compromise. It enabled them to come together. There

were great concerns about human rights and government intrusion into people's private matters. They wanted to make sure that a king or President couldn't just sign an order to go search somebody's home, take over a home, or go gather up anything they wanted.

They agreed that if we come together on this Constitution, then we also agree that it must have a Bill of Rights that comes with it.

The first of the Bill of Rights that was approved, the first 10 amendments, they didn't want to have a Church of England that was the official government church. They didn't want a government church.

Of course, now we got one. It is called, informally, the church of secularism the Supreme Court has forced us into. Regardless of what anybody thinks, a government--and I used to say in college that you can't legislate morality. Eventually, I have realized a government legislates somebody's morality. It may be no morality, and we have kind of come to that.

Moses' face is up there because at one time he was considered to be the greatest lawgiver of all time. You have Hammurabi, the Justinian Code, started by Justin. Napoleon, Jefferson--Jefferson didn't help with the Constitution, but these are all the great lawgivers, considered as such. We have two or three Popes up here. But Moses was supposed to be the great one.

In recent years, children are being taught there is no real right or wrong. It is whatever you feel in your heart is wrong, and it is all relative. Right and wrong are relative. That is not what Moses said.

I was hearing Dennis Prager earlier today saying you cannot have a free country based on secularist beliefs, based on atheism. You can't.

The only way you can have the level of freedom we have had is not requiring everybody to be a Christian but to base the government upon Judeo-Christian beliefs. That has been our history.

We welcome people. We don't mind anybody having any religion or no religion. But the only way you can have that kind of freedom is to base it on Christian beliefs.

I know from visiting with General Jay Garner, who President Bush initially sent to Iraq to talk to people and get a feel from the Iraqis what kind of government they should have, he talked to a direct descendant of Mohammed.

There were a lot of people with him. After they left, General Garner asked if everybody heard what they said.

They all agreed they heard. There was a reporter there. They asked if he was going to write that in a story. He said, no, nobody will believe it. They would think he was crazy.

But this very devout Muslim, descendant of Mohammed, said, in essence--summary--we need a government that is based on a constitution that Iraqis write, that the government be composed of Iraqis, and the constitution needs to be based on the teachings of Jesus.

After he left, General Garner asked: Did you guys all hear that?

He said, yes, he said they need a constitution based on the teachings of Jesus. A devout Muslim descendant of Mohammed agreed that if you really want a free society, use the teachings of Jesus.

The Founders knew, just like the descendant of Mohammed, that is the best way to have a free country. But now we are seeing more and more the persecution of Christians.

Now the U.N. General Secretary, back when he was in charge of all the refugee programs, was asked about why there is not as high a percentage of Christians in the U.N. refugee program as there is a percentage of Christians in the areas where refugees are coming from, like Syria.

He basically made the statement that Christians are so very important to those geographic areas that we think it is important to leave them where they are. They were being wiped out where they were.

The truth is, when Christians were coming to the U.N. refugee camps to be reassigned or sent elsewhere after that, they were often victims of violence.

I read many reports, talked to people over in some of the refugee camps. The Christians didn't want to go there. They didn't like the way they were picked on, so you didn't find that many Christians in those camps.

Here is an article from May 3. This is from the BBC because this stuff is not being reported properly in the mainstream media in America.

The title is, ``Christians Are `Most Persecuted Group.' '' It says, ``The persecution of Christians in parts of the world is at or near `genocide' levels, according to a report ordered by the Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.'' That is the Foreign Secretary in England.

Christians were the most persecuted religious group, is what this study found.

``The interim report said the main impact of `genocidal acts against Christians is exodus' and that Christianity faced being `wiped out' from parts of the Middle East. It warned the religion''--talking about Christianity--`` `is at risk of disappearing' in some parts of the world, pointing to figures which claimed Christians in Palestine represent less than 1.5 percent of the population, while in Iraq they had fallen from 1.5 million before 2003 to less than 120,000.''

`` `Evidence shows not only the geographic spread of anti-Christian persecution, but also its increasing severity.' ''

It says, `` `In some regions, the level and nature of persecution is arguably coming close to meeting the international definition of genocide, according to that adopted by the U.N.' . . . Its findings come after more than 250 people were killed and more than 500 wounded in attacks at hotels and churches in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday.''

I mean, this is the kind of stuff going on.

The article goes on, again from the BBC, `` `What we have forgotten in that atmosphere of political correctness is actually the Christians that are being persecuted are some of the poorest people on the planet.'

``In response to the report, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Marie van der Zyl, said Jews had often been the targets of persecution and felt for Christians who were discriminated against on the basis of their faith.

`` `Whether it is authoritarian regimes or bigotry masked in the mistaken guise of religion, reports like the one launched today remind us that there are many places in which Christians face appalling levels of violence, abuse, and harassment.' ''

Pretty tragic. Then here in the United States, this story from CBN News, May 7, this year, the Pacific Institute, ``The Pacific Justice Institute, PJI, announced Tuesday that a Bible study for elderly residents of the Veterans Home of California has been restored.''

``The facility is owned and operated by the California Department of Veterans Affairs.

``The nonprofit PJI,'' Pacific Justice Institute, ``also says its attorneys will continue to fight for full restoration of religious freedom in the facility.

``After some negotiation, CalVet''--that is California Department of Veterans Affairs--``said it would allow Artis Breau and her Bible study attendees to resume the Bible study, effective immediately, after it had been shut down for weeks.

``However, CalVet''--that is California Department of Veterans Affairs--``continues to insist that it can investigate and substantiate allegations against Breau and her fellow residents for expressing religious views that it''--the California Department of Veterans Affairs--``deems `offensive,' and even for discussing Heaven and salvation.

`` `We are encouraged that CalVet realized it could no longer prohibit and threaten the veterans' Bible study,' PJI President Brad Dacus said in a press release. At the same time, the agency's position that it can continue to punish religious''--and really, Christian expression is specifically what CalVet is going after--``expression it deems discourteous or offenses is unacceptable. We've won an important first round in this battle for these heroes''--the veterans--``and we are committed to seeing this through to complete victory.

``PJI attorneys began representing Breau last fall when staff at the veterans home complained that she had committed `emotional abuse' and `elder abuse' by allegedly causing another

resident to lose sleep after a discussion about Heaven and hell. Last week, CalVet admitted the allegation was unsubstantiated. . . . ''

``This past March, a CalVet attorney threatened to have Breau removed from the home if she did not immediately halt her longtime Bible study.

`` `What we've seen at the Veterans Home of California should concern every freedom-loving American' . . . `Of all people, our veterans and their widows from the Greatest Generation should enjoy the greatest blessings of liberty--not the least. We're not about to let up until these veterans have complete freedom.' ''

That is from the PJI attorneys. It is just outrageous how wrongheaded people have gotten, and that is because they are imposing a court- ordered imposition of secularism.

We have come to a point in political correctness where the only group that is politically correct to abuse, belittle, and discriminate against is Christians. You don't have to like Christians, but for heaven's sake, that is the kind of freedom in allowing Christians to worship freely that made us the greatest country in history.

Now we have got the Equality Act. Supposedly, it is going to come up next week.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 was passed by a huge majority of Democrats in 1993 because they were concerned, in 1993, some of them, including our current chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler, about the persecution of Christians and Jews, and they saw the need to have the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

Back then, these same people believed that Moses knew what he was talking about, and when Jesus quoted Moses verbatim about marriage, that he knew what he was talking about.

In fact, we knew that that still was true in 2008, from David Axelrod's book. They knew that Barack Obama could not win the Presidency if he said of marriage with the same sex, that that was fine. It was not sufficient to say--you could have same-sex relationships. That was fine. But marriage is what the Bible said is between a man and a woman.

Apparently, they had polled it every which way, and in 2008, if you thought marriage was something besides what Moses believed and that Jesus said as he quoted Moses verbatim, then you couldn't get elected President.

Now, if you say: I still think what Moses and Jesus said is what marriage ought to be. Same-sex relations are one thing, but marriage, historically, except perhaps during the days of Moses--my understanding is even in Sodom and Gomorrah, obviously, same-sex relationships were fine, but even there, marriage was for procreation; therefore, it was a man and a woman. Now if you say that, you are to be persecuted. You are to be destroyed for believing Moses and Jesus knew what they were talking about.

But some of those same people who rammed through the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 have now added this provision that that Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 shall not provide a claim or a defense to a claim under this bill, and there is even a provision here that you can have a claim filed against a bank, a lending institution, if they don't lend money to someone who is gender confused.

That is what gender dysphoria is. That is what the DSM-5 calls it, gender dysphoria, like the opposite of euphoria. It is confusion about one's gender, biological gender, which may disagree with what they feel like that day.

We are seeing great gains made by women in women's sports. If this becomes law, that will be destroyed. You will have men's sports, and you will have coed sports.

As the lady who was the first to ever benefit by having a women's scholarship from Villanova said--she is a Ph.D.--when she testified: Look, you have got thousands of men who can beat the best time in the world for the women's 400 meter in the 2016 Olympics. Women won't be the ones getting the scholarships anymore if this Equality Act becomes law.

Martina Navratilova, she makes no bones about being a lesbian, and she has been basically destroyed in social media for saying that a woman should not have to compete with a biological man. It is unfair.

We had a lady who tells us, she was a lesbian testifying: Look, women's sports are going to be destroyed if you pass this bill. All the great gains made for women being treated fairly and equally are going to go by the wayside.

I know from my days as a judge, hearing the tragic stories of sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault, that women suffer from a greater percentage of post-traumatic stress disorder than soldiers do if they have been sexually assaulted.

One of the things that can trigger the trauma again is being in a confined space and a man comes in. But the response from the majority is, well, they just basically need to get over it because we don't want to hurt the man's feelings if he thinks he is a woman.

I hope this doesn't pass. I hope it doesn't become law. There are some great things in here for equality, but that is not one of them.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 2 o'clock and 8 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Tuesday, May 14, 2019, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Madam Speaker, we had an interesting debate and interesting vote today regarding the Paris climate change agreement that is a treaty. It hasn't been properly treated like a treaty, just like the Iran treaty was a treaty.

No matter whether the House or the Senate agreed to violate the Constitution and treat the Iran treaty in exactly the opposite format as required by the Constitution, it doesn't matter. It was treaty. It was never properly ratified.

It doesn't matter whether it was a Republican or a Democrat who came up with the bill. A Republican Senator or House Member cannot come up with a bill that changes the Constitution and say: Do you know what? We are going to take this treaty and act like you have to have two-thirds to vote it down instead of two-thirds to ratify it.

But that is what they did, so the President did exactly the right thing. It was time to stop giving billions of dollars in both direct money aid to the largest sponsor of terrorism, Iran.

It was also time to reimpose the sanctions that had basically brought Iran to its knees begging for help. Well, the Obama administration helped them in two ways: number one, allowing them to pursue nuclear capabilities, just doing it privately.

I am one of three people who met with the two main inspectors from the IAEA over in Europe, and they would issue the statement each time that they had seen no evidence that Iran was developing nukes. They were asked the question: Did you see the military facilities that they keep so hidden in secret and where their nuclear development would be occurring?

In response, they said: No. Gee, they gave us a video that they said came from there, but we had never been allowed to examine the facilities.

So the IAEA was not allowed to examine the facilities where nuclear weapons would have been developed, probably were being developed.

From Iran's standpoint, based on how ridiculous the agreement was and knowing their mentality of cheating, certainly they would have been pursuing nuclear weapons, whether or not

they would wait for 10 years before actually going public with actually having nuclear weapons.

But I even asked: Okay. The Obama administration sent them $150 billion in cash. Say, hypothetically, Iran decided, ``We will just take some of that $150 billion and buy us one, two, three, four, five nukes from North Korea or from Pakistan.''

We know that during those final years of the Obama administration that Iran had met with Pakistani officials and with North Korean officials, so that was certainly a possibility, but I wondered if the IAEA had a capability of noting and discovering if Iran were to import a nuclear weapon from, say, North Korea or Russia or Pakistan. Apparently, unless the Iranians brought their new nuclear weapons immediately near the detection equipment, there would be no way to know that Iran bought nuclear weapons.

So, to anyone who used reason in dealing with the largest supporter of terrorism in the world, responsible for killing so many precious American military members and others, President Trump did a great thing. He did the right thing. It was a great thing to do for America's future safety; it was a great thing to do for the world's safety; and it was absolutely a helpful thing to do for the nation of Israel. So that was smart.

We have had these different climate accords, and what so many of them have in common, basically, was, gee, we will pay the world lots of money, supposedly some type of guilt money, even though we have been more philanthropic than any other country in the history of the world.

To any astute eye examining the state of the world and world history, it becomes very clear that the only countries that are able to do anything about pollution on the planet are countries that have a strong, vibrant economy. Countries that are struggling are doing all they can to put people to work and to survive. They just can't spare the money to clean up the environment.

You have got countries like China and India, massive polluters, and under these accords, heck, China wouldn't even have requirements for them to clean things up until 2030, and by then, there would be all new agreements that would probably give China even more time.

These accords appear to be geared to do one thing: do damage to the economy of the one country that is doing so much to clean up carbon emissions and to clean up pollution.

I have an article here from Forbes. This is back in the fall of 2017. Yes, the U.S. leads all countries in reducing carbon emissions--and that was 10 months into the Obama administration--but, as the Environmental Protection Agency announced, we are leading the world with respect to our CO2 footprint in reductions.

The Washington Post fact-checked this claim and rated it three Pinocchios, which means they rate the claim mostly false.

They further wrote that Pruitt's usage of data appeared to be a deliberate effort to mislead the public. But the data mostly supports Pruitt's claim. You have to consider the source, Madam Speaker.

Just like during my days on the bench as a felony judge, major civil litigation, it was all about the credibility of the witness.

As we have seen, The Washington Post is exceedingly biased and slanted in their reporting, so we need a source that gives Pinocchios to The Washington Post.

If you look at the 2017 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, since 2005, annual U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have declined by 758 million metric tons. That is, by far, the largest decline of any country in the world over that time span, and it is nearly as large as the 770 million metric ton decline for the entire European Union.

By comparison, the second largest decline during that period was registered by the United Kingdom, which reported a 170 million metric ton decline. So we had a 758 million metric ton decline in carbon emissions in that year, and the U.K. was second. They were not quite up to our 758 million metric tons. They were at 170 million metric ton decline.

But, at the same time, China's carbon dioxide emissions grew--that is grew--by 3 billion metric tons, and India's grew by 1 billion metric tons.

So we are over here in the United States trying not to destroy our economy and yet cleaning up the environment more than anybody else in the world, and this ridiculous accord--really, a treaty--allows the biggest polluters in the world to keep polluting much more, just either one of those, than the rest of the world.

It is just phenomenal.

The article goes on: ``The Washington Post gets into per capita emissions, and indeed despite the decline, U.S. per capita emissions are still among the highest in the world. However, The Washington Post story claimed: `The United States may have had the largest decrease in carbon emissions, but it is still the largest per capita emitter.'

``That's not accurate either.

``According to World Bank data, U.S. per capita carbon dioxide emissions rank 11th among countries. So, we are not the largest per capita emitter, but we do emit 2.2 times as much on a per capita basis as China. But, China has 4.3 times as many people, and that matters from an overall emissions perspective. China's lower per capita carbon dioxide emissions are more than offset by its greater population, so China emits over 70 percent more carbon dioxide annually than the

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Holding).

Congratulating Steven Kandarian

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from North Carolina's words.

Today, we voted on a bill referred to as net neutrality. It is a position that was taken up by the Federal Communications Commission back during the Obama administration. It was quite interesting. During the Obama administration, President Obama had said he would not allow the FCC to take over control of the internet, and then apparently was convinced otherwise and eventually made clear to the FCC they would take over control of the internet.

I know the bill is referred to as net neutrality, but it is anything but neutral. It is government control of the internet. And, yes, I realize that the internet has produced some billionaires who are tremendous contributors to the Democratic Party, but, to me and to my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, it is more an issue of independence of this incredible invention of the internet. If it creates more billionaires that happen to become Democrats, so be it. But let's leave the internet free.

Net neutrality does not leave it free. It is government controlled. And that is what the new chairman, Chairman Pai, undid. He said: We are backing off. This is an executive position taken by the executive branch during the Obama administration and we are now, as an executive branch, taking our hands off of the internet so that people are free to become billionaires, but we are not going to pick and choose winners, which means the government chooses losers, as well.

There was a good article by James Gattuso on March 11, 2019. He said:

``Just over 1 year ago, the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to repeal the network neutrality rules it adopted in 2015.''

That is such a misnomer, net neutrality.

``However, the FCC regulation could make a comeback if House Democrats have their way.

``Lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced legislation Thursday to restore the rule.''

That is from last week.

``Sponsored by Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and Representative Mike Doyle, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, the 3-page bill makes no attempt to modify or improve the 2015 rule. It simply declares that the 2017 order repealing net neutrality `shall have no force or effect.'

``Formally titled the `Open Internet Order,' the FCC imposed the rule 4 years ago under its Democratic chairman, Tom Wheeler. But the political battle over net neutrality has gone on close to 17 years.

``A Columbia University law professor, Tim Wu, coined the term `net neutrality' in 2002. Wu argued that because internet service providers such as Comcast and AT&T enjoy near-bottleneck control over the traffic going to web users, they should be prohibited from favoring any web content over another.

``In other words, according to Wu, internet service providers should be required to treat content providers neutrally.

``But regulation can make problems of its own. Today's market for internet access is not perfectly competitive, but it is also clearly not a monopoly. Most Americans have the ability to choose from at least two service providers.''

And this gets critical here. It says:

``In addition, net neutrality would do nothing to increase the number of companies that compete in the market for access. In fact, it could make it harder for new entrants to compete effectively with existing market leaders.

``That's because one of the best ways to get a foothold in a market is to differentiate your service.''

It is called competition. This goes on to say:

``For instance, T-Mobile to differentiate itself in its struggle to compete with industry leaders AT&T and Verizon, pioneered `zero rating' pricing plans that allow free access to content from participating content providers without incurring a charge against your data cap.''

``T-Mobile's free-data option has made wireless broadband available to millions at affordable rates. Zero-rating, nevertheless, has been condemned by many as a violation of net neutrality and could be banned, should Congress restore the rule.''

Now, that is what is so amazing about this term, ``net neutrality.'' It means the government could, and probably would, say to somebody like T-Mobile--and I don't have their service. I don't have a dog in that fight. But they could say to an entity like T-Mobile: Look, we are not going to let you have a no-charge access to data through your plan, through your wireless plan. No, that won't work. You have to charge something.

If this net neutrality--so-called, which, when you hear ``net neutrality,'' it ought to mean, in your mind, government-controlled, because it is actually antithetical to what it says it is. It is government-controlled.

But that would say to somebody who is trying to break into the market, they would say: Okay. We would give you free access, no cost, no data cap, so that we could get into the market, develop customers. They would be loyal to us.

No, the government wants net neutrality/government control to be back in place. They can say: You can't do that. We are not going to let you become competitive with the two companies that control the lion's share of the internet.

The government shouldn't be in that business. Let it be competitive.

It just seems every time the government gets its hands on something that has been as productive as the internet, it chokes it; it overwhelms it with regulation. That has been one of the beauties of the internet.

So, as this article says: ``Net neutrality''--government-controlled-- ``is not needed to save the internet but, in fact, could jeopardize it.

``The FCC was right to reject the net neutrality''--or government- controlled--``rules completely. Congress should do the same.''

Even though it has passed the House, 13 Democrats voted with the Republicans, who said: Look, let's at least

add a provision to this bill that forbids the government from taxing, just completely forbids it, so you can't tax the internet. For internet service, you're not going to tax internet service.

And so that was bipartisan. We had 13 Democrats vote with us. We don't want to tax the internet service.

But, unfortunately, it was narrowly defeated by a majority, being all Democrats voted to allow the potential to tax the internet.

So that ought to tell you, basically, what you need to know about net neutrality. It is going to be a way, number one, for government control and, number two, to eventually get around to providing revenue--that means taxes--on what has not been taxed so far.

Greg Walden, who is managing this bill, had a good article. He said: ``Net neutrality is a bipartisan issue in Congress. Despite the overheated rhetoric and the political talking points, Democrats actually agree with me and my Republican colleagues on the key net neutrality parameters that protect a free and open internet for consumers.

``Democrats agree with Republicans that internet traffic should not be blocked. There is bipartisan support for prohibiting the blocking of illegal content on the internet.

``Democrats agree with Republicans that internet service providers should not be allowed to impair or degrade lawful internet traffic on the basis of content''--as long as it is legal--``a process known as throttling. There is bipartisan support for prohibiting the throttling of illegal content on the internet.''

But it goes on to say: ``Democrats, however, believe that net neutrality can only be achieved by regulating the internet as if it were a utility under title II of the Communications Act, which was originally used to govern monopoly telephone companies in the 1930s. The `Save the Net Act,' imposes the heavy hand of Washington's regulatory bureaucracy over the single most important driver of economic growth, job creation, and a better quality of life for all Americans. This will do everything but save the internet.

`` `Title II' sounds inconsequential, but layering this new national governance over the web''--over the internet--``would give the Federal Communications Commission unbridled regulatory authority'' over the internet. ``The government would have the power to tax the internet''-- because most of the Democrats voted to allow taxing the internet--and it would allow them to ``dictate where and when new broadband networks can be deployed and take over the management of private networks.''

In a rural district like his in eastern Oregon, ``title II inhibited the ability of small internet service providers to expand broadband to underserved communities, saddling these small businesses with onerous reporting requirements that shifted their focus from their customers to new, expensive regulatory interference. Nationwide, title II had a chilling effect on internet investment, which declined for the first time since the dawn of the internet age, decreasing consumer choice and increasing the digital divide.''

As Greg Walden says: ``Fortunately, we do not need title II to achieve real net neutrality. Republicans have put forth serious proposals--a menu of options--that would keep the internet open and free, so it can continue to be a driver of opportunity for all.''

But that means, since it just passed the House, we are going to need to count on the Senate not to take up more government control of the internet but, instead, to take up a bill that does keep things fair instead of having more government control and potentially taxing the internet usage.

I shift to another topic, since Attorney General Barr testified this week, may be testifying again. It is interesting, as more information comes rolling out about the Muellergate.

This article from the Daily Caller, from Chuck Ross, ``Cambridge Academic Reflects on Interactions with `Spygate' Figure.'' Her name is Svetlana Lokhova. She says she ``did not get along with Stefan Halper, which is what she says made a dinner invitation to the Cambridge University professor's home in January 2016 all the more peculiar.

`` `Halper was a lurking presence with a horrible aura--I avoided him,' said Lokhova, a Cambridge postgraduate student who studies Soviet-era espionage.

``Lokhova dodged the invitation to Halper's home, which she said was sent to her by Christopher Andrew, a Cambridge professor and official historian for MI5, the British domestic intelligence service. But the past 3 years have revealed new details about Halper and other activities that went on at Cambridge that have caused Lokhova to question why she was asked to that dinner at Halper's.

``For one, a series of stories that appeared in the press in early 2017 heavily implied Lokhova was a Russian agent who tried to suborn Michael Flynn at a dinner hosted at Cambridge on February 28, 2014. Flynn served at the time as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

``A year after those stories appeared, The Daily Caller News Foundation reported Halper cozied up to three Trump campaign advisers: Carter Page, Sam Clovis, and George Papadopoulos.''

Isn't that interesting? Those are the ones--particularly Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. Those are the people that the Department of Justice and FBI used to claim there were some kind of ties to Russia when, now, we are finding out it was Fusion GPS. It was Bruce Ohr at the FBI, his wife Nellie Ohr, working with Fusion GPS and working with foreign agents, former foreign agent, also, we know, from MI6.

But, apparently, they are working with the British Government in trying to create reasons that the FBI could go before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, FISA's secret Star Chamber, and get warrants to spy on the Trump campaign.

It all started to come out. This is somebody who is now described--or has been, in the last 2 years: Oh, this was a Russian agent. It turns out, she was being manipulated by MI5 and by people, as we will be finding out, with the Justice Department, FBI, Clinton campaign, to try to set up so that they could go after the Trump campaign officials, spy on them, and potentially bring down the Trump campaign as an insurance policy just in case the unthinkable happened and Donald Trump were elected President.

The article goes on: ``A year after those stories appeared,'' as it says, ``Halper cozied to three Trump campaign advisers. . . . In May 2018, Halper was revealed as a longtime CIA and FBI informant, a revelation that led President Donald Trump to accuse the FBI of planting a spy in his campaign. The Republican coined the term `Spygate' to describe the alleged scandal.

``After Halper's links to American intelligence were revealed, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported he and another Cambridge luminary, former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove, raised concerns about Lokhova's contacts with Flynn that were subsequently passed to American and British intelligence.''

Far bigger than Watergate, because Watergate concerned people hired by the committee to reelect Richard Nixon, when this involves the spies owned, controlled, and former spies of the British Government working in collusion with the FBI, the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS.

It says: ``Lokhova blames Halper for distorting her brief interaction with Flynn into, `an international espionage scandal' in which she wound up as collateral damage.

``What Halper staged is a textbook `black-op' to dirty up the reputation of a political opponent. He needed an innocuous social event to place Flynn in a room with a woman who was ethnically Russian''--I was unlucky to be picked.

``Lokhova, a dual Russian and British citizen, has spoken out before about Halper and the allegations about her in the media. She accused Halper of making `false' and `absurd' claims about her in 2018 interviews with TheDCNF. She has also taken to Twitter to criticize the reporters who published allegations about her and Flynn.''

``The Guardian's Luke Harding is one target of Lokhova's ire. She has criticized the British reporter for a March 31, 2017, story that contained thinly veiled allegations she tried to compromise Flynn.

``According to the report, which was based on anonymous sources, American

and British intelligence developed concerns about Lokhova's interactions with Flynn at the February 2014 dinner, which was hosted by the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. Halper, Dearlove, and Andrew are co-conveners of the seminar, which hosts events for current and former spies.''

Halper, Dearlove, and Andrew, they appear to be the ones who should have been spied on, but, instead, they are the ones being used by British intelligence, working together with the FBI, the Department of Justice, Fusion GPS, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, and the Clinton campaign, to come after Donald Trump.

``The Wall Street Journal also published an innuendo-laden story March 18, 2017, about Flynn and Lokhova. The hook for the story was that Flynn had failed to report his contact with Lokhova to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

``Lokhova, who has lived in the U.K. since 1998, vehemently denies the insinuations in the articles that she is a Russian agent or that she tried to seduce Flynn. She has provided emails and photographs to TheDCNF to help back up her case. She also notes that all of the allegations about her have been made anonymously.

``Dan O'Brien, a Defense Intelligence Agency official who accompanied Flynn to the Cambridge event, told TheWSJ he saw nothing untoward involving Lokhova. Lokhova's partner, David North, has told TheDCNF he picked Lokhova up after the event.

``Since learning more about Halper, Lokhova has reflected back on the few interactions she had with him over the years at Cambridge.

``A veteran of three Republican administrations, Halper joined Cambridge in 2001. From his perch at the stories university, Halper wrote books about American politics and the geopolitical threat that China poses to the West. He also received over $1 million in contracts from the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment to write studies on Russia, China, and Afghanistan.''

It is interesting, as an aside, but Adam Lovinger was working for the Defense Department, and his job was to look for improprieties within the Defense Department. He noticed these million-dollar contracts going to Stefan Halper and said: Wait a minute. We are paying this guy $1 million? We are not getting anything for it. What is this about?

And for that, the Obama administration crushed Adam Lovinger. He was an honest whistleblower. He wasn't even a whistleblower. He was doing his job, which was to look for improprieties. He found things that raised questions. He raised the questions about: Why is Stefan Halper being paid all of this money? We are not getting anything from this guy that helped the Pentagon. Why is he getting a million bucks from the Pentagon?

Well, unfortunately, for Adam Lovinger, he stepped on a land mine, and the Obama administration set out to get him fired and to destroy him for noticing the impropriety--at least, it appeared to be an impropriety; that is why he brought it up--that involved Stefan Halper that was used by the Obama administration Justice Department, FBI, Fusion GPS to help them set up the Trump campaign.

``Lokhova says she first remembers seeing Halper in November 2013, when she gave a talk about her research on Soviet-era spy archives.''

She said: `` `The guy looks at us like we're completely horrible people, and then gets up and sits across the room.'

``Lokhova also said she learned from a Cambridge faculty member that Halper was spreading rumors that she was linked to Russian intelligence.''

Anyway, it just shows how outrageous the conduct has been that we are now beginning to find out about. And, certainly, it was high time, after 2 years of finding nothing for which the Mueller special counsel office was set up, hiring people who hated Trump, they couldn't find anything. They couldn't find evidence that they could take to a grand jury and get an indictment.

And that is just probable cause. That is not beyond a reasonable doubt standard.

And, certainly, because Mueller couldn't stand the man who--24 hours before Mueller was offered the special counsel job, he had been begging President Trump to make him the Director of the FBI again. President Trump turned him down. Twenty-four hours later, he jumps at the chance, although he certainly should have recused himself. He was conflicted in far too many ways to be a special counsel on something involving Russia. He jumped at the chance to investigate the guy who refused to hire him.

Another article from Catherine Herridge. And Catherine Herridge has done extraordinary work looking into these different issues.

She points out that: ``Russian woman claims she was manipulated into entrapping General Flynn.''

``A Russian-born academic who was at the center of attention in 2017 for past contact with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn told FOX News in an exclusive interview that she is not a spy for Moscow--and, to the contrary, believes she was `used' to smear Flynn.''

She said: ``I think there's a high chance that it was coordinated, and I believe it needs to be properly investigated.''

So Catherine has done good work on that.

And then an article from Jason Beale from The Federalist, entitled: ``How Obama Holdover Sally Yates Helped Sink Michael Flynn.''

And of course, we know Sally Yates was working as the Deputy Attorney General, and she refused to defend constitutional activity by the Trump administration, so she was fired. Unfortunately, there were people who were totally devoted to Sally Yates, couldn't stand Trump, some of whom are still at the Department of Justice undermining the Trump administration.

But this goes on to say, `` . . . Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates made a couple of urgent trips from the Department of Justice building to the White House, carrying information she believed to be critical to U.S. national security.

``Yates was aware, likely through intercepts of Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak's communications, that the newly seated national security advisor, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, had discussed with Kislyak Russia's response to the Obama administration imposition of sanctions for Russia's attempts to meddle in the 2016 elections. According to news reports, Flynn had asked Kislyak to wait a few weeks and allow the incoming Trump administration a chance to review the issue before Russia retaliated. Flynn's conversations with Kislyak occurred on December 29, the day Obama announced the sanctions.

``Recall that this period between the election of Trump in early November and his inauguration in late January was characterized by a frenzy of questionable and as-yet unexplained actions taken by the Obama White House, intelligence agencies, and the State Department. The Steele dossier was in circulation at various levels of government and media officialdom; Carter Page's communications--and those of anyone with whom he communicated, and anyone with whom they communicated--were being monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency.

``The great unmasking had also begun, with unprecedented numbers of requests forwarded from various Obama administration officials to the NSA to reveal the identities of American citizens otherwise protected in their reporting and transcribing of intercepts of foreign official communications. Distribution regulations were relaxed to allow wider access to these NSA intercepts, and the word went out throughout the halls of every government agency to get everything into the system, lest these barbarians coming into office destroy evidence and deny their roles as Russian agents.

``It was inevitable, then, that David Ignatius of The Washington Post would publish a column on January 12 describing Flynn's December 29 phone calls with Kislyak, information he attributed to `a senior U.S. Government official.' Ignatius' column began thusly:

`` `Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,' mutters Marcellus as ghosts and mad spirits haunt Elsinore castle in the first act of Shakespeare's `Hamlet.'

``After this past week of salacious leaks about foreign espionage plots and indignant denials, people must be wondering if something is rotten in the

state of our democracy. How can we dispel the dark rumors that, as Hamlet says, `shake our disposition'?

``The `senior U.S. Government official' who leaked both the name of a U.S. citizen captured in an intercept of a foreign government official's communications, and the fact that the foreign official was under NSA surveillance, has not been identified. Nor has there been any indication that a thorough investigation has been, or is being, carried out in search of his or her identity.''

It is a crime. What happened to smear Flynn and the Trump campaign involved crimes by senior DOJ officials. Perhaps it was Sally Yeats who committed the crime, perhaps others, but it needs to be investigated, and there was no way in this world that Robert Mueller was going to investigate anything to do with corruption in the Obama administration.

There it was, all of these leaks that were clear, most of them. Each of them would have been a crime. There is plenty of evidence there to support that. But, instead, Special Counsel Robert Mueller pursued things and got indictments for things that made clear we didn't need a special counsel to do what Bob Mueller was doing.

If you look back, there is nothing he did, nothing he produced that could not have been done without a special counsel's office. In fact, he ended up having to pass some stuff off to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Even as badly compromised as Bob Mueller was from even being special counsel, he recognized he had gone beyond his limits, as broad as they were, and needed to pass some of those things off.

There is another article here from Brooke Singman, ``DOJ Watchdog Reportedly Scrutinizing Role of FBI Informant in the Russia Probe.''

It talks about: `` . . . Inspector General Michael Horwitz is looking into informant Stefan Halper's work during the Russia probe, as well as his work with the FBI prior to the start of that probe.''

And the article goes on to talk about Halper. I mean, he was used to try to set up Michael Flynn. He was used to try to set up Papadopoulos. He was used to try to set up Sam Clovis.

That was the insurance policy that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page texted, lovingly, back and forth about, although, to the ignorance of Peter Strzok's wife.

Some people think, when I asked Peter Strzok in our Judiciary Committee hearing about him having that same smirk the hundreds of times he lied to his wife, that that was inappropriate; it violated the rules.

Well, the rules in our committees are extremely relaxed compared to rules in a jury trial of which I have had many as a litigant and as a judge. I know the rules.

I know the rules, and I heard him in his deposition talk about how he never lies, he just always tells the truth. I knew he was lying when he said basically that he remembered Frank Rucker, the investigator for the intelligence inspector general, coming over and advising about something, but he didn't remember what it was about.

I guarantee you, he was lying when he said that because Frank Rucker went over--and it is now public. I knew at the time, but it has now been made public. It was China, and the intelligence inspector general knew China was getting every email going in and out of Hillary Clinton's private server.

Since Strzok and others apparently had protected information about what happened with her server, here comes the intelligence inspector general's investigator who discovered the fact that her private server had been compromised. He rushes over with Janette McMillan from the intelligence community. She was an attorney.

They briefed Dean Chappell, who was the FBI liaison with intel, and the FBI's head of counterintelligence, Peter Strzok, and he tells him: Look, we now have proof positive Hillary Clinton's private server was hacked. We found this anomaly in there.

As I dug in to figure out what this thing is, it was an embedded placement in the server that directed every email coming in and every email going out of Hillary Clinton's private server, which we also know contained classified information, and directed it to go to a known front organization for the Chinese Government.

Peter Strzok, after all the protection he tried to afford Hillary Clinton, is going to sit there and lie and say: Well, I remember Frank Rucker coming over and telling us something, but I don't really remember what it was.

He remembered very well what Frank Rucker said. That was a lie. Since he has said previously that he told the truth, then any time he had ever told a lie, it would have been admissible in front of a jury. Even with the more restricted rules of evidence, you could have asked about every time he ever lied. I just chose to make one blanket question about the hundreds of times he lied to his wife. He does not always tell the truth. He is a liar, and he lied there under oath.

That wasn't the only thing. Yes, David Ignatius participated as a recipient of criminal--of a crime, really--sending him leaked information from either the Justice Department, FBI, or NSA. Any one of them that submitted information to him committed a crime. We need to know who it was. We need to know how deep and how far these crimes committed by our people who are supposed to be investigating crimes, not committing them, how far this goes.

Now that Mueller will be out of the picture, I think we have a chance to get those things determined. As long as he was there, then these folks were protected. But now that he is finished wasting America's money and time, we can start getting down to investigating the real crimes that occurred.

I want to finish. I got a copy of a wonderful book, really interesting, called ``Dark Agenda'' by David Horowitz. I was in his presence once, and I introduced him as--he was a former socialist. David Horowitz turned 80 this year. He said: No, I was a communist. I was a complete communist. I was one of those rebelling in the sixties. I was part of the riots and all those things.

He came to understand that communism doesn't work. It never has. Socialism doesn't work. Margaret Thatcher said that the reason it doesn't work is that, eventually, you run out of other people's money.

I would submit that the answer I got at a Russian--well, Ukrainian-- collective farm back in the seventies. I said: Why aren't you out working in the field? It is midmorning.

The farmer says: I make the same number of rubles if I am out there in the sun as I do in the shade, so I stay in the shade.

Those who are crazy enough to work while others are getting paid the same as them eventually quit working, and the whole system falls. It always does.

It sounds wonderful, share and share alike. Isn't that socialism and communism? Isn't that wonderful? Share and share alike.

A Christian ought to be in favor of that, except it requires in this world a totalitarian government strong enough and powerful enough to take from those who earn and give to those who don't and strong enough to suppress anybody who objects.

Eventually, it falls. It can't work. It never will work. It never has worked.

But David Horowitz deals with another subject here in ``Dark Agenda,'' and I think it is worth hearing his words themselves.

The first chapter is named ``Religion Must Die.''

He starts: ``On Sunday morning, November 5, 2017, a gunman walked into the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. He wore tactical gear and a black face mask marked with a white skull, and he carried a semiautomatic rifle. He shot and killed two people outside the church, then went inside, walking up and down the aisle, cursing and shooting people in the pews. He reloaded again and again, emptying 15 magazines of ammunition.

``When the gunman emerged from the church, he found an armed citizen facing him from across the street, a former NRA firearms instructor named Stephen Willeford. The two men exchanged fire, and Willeford hit the gunman in the leg and upper body. The wounded shooter limped to his car and sped away. He was later found at the wheel of his crashed car, killed by a self-inflicted gunshot to the head.

``The attack killed 26 people, ages 5 to 72, and wounded 20. The killer had been court-martialed in the Air Force for domestic violence. He had beaten his wife and cracked the skull of his infant stepson. The Air Force failed to

report his conviction to the FBI's crime information database.''

Parenthetically, we didn't need new laws. We just needed for people to obey the laws we had. The Air Force violated the law, and this guy got his gun as a result. The Air Force failed to obey the law and report this to the FBI's crime information database. He got a gun and did destruction.

Horowitz said: ``The slaughter of unarmed Christians in a church sanctuary was a cowardly attack on one church. But what happened after the church shooting was part of a wider war by the political left against Christians and Christianity.

``As news of the shooting broke, prominent Christians took to Twitter and urged fellow believers to pray. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, a devout Roman Catholic, tweeted, `Reports out of Texas are devastating. The people of Sutherland Springs need our prayers right now.'

``From Hollywood to New York and Washington, the left responded with a chorus of jeers and insults. Former MSNBC political commentator Keith Olbermann suggested in a tweet that Speaker Ryan should proctologize himself with his prayers.

``Seattle Democrat Representative Pramila Jayapal tweeted, `They were praying when it happened. They don't need our prayers. They need us to address gun violence.' Comedian Paula Poundstone sneered, `If prayers were the answer' to mass shootings, `wouldn't people at a church service be safe?' Actor Wil Wheaton tweeted, `The murdered victims were in a church. If prayers did anything, they would still be alive, you worthless sack of. . . . '

``These and other comments from the secular left displayed not only a smug disdain for Christians but an amazing ignorance of how religious Christians view prayer.''

Mr. Speaker, keep in mind that David Horowitz has been an atheist--he is Jewish--and he is writing this book. Amazing.

``Christians don't view prayer as a magic incantation to make themselves bulletproof. Christians believe in the teachings of Christ who warned them: `In the world ye shall have tribulation.' In the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ prayed to be delivered from the agony of the cross, but He ended His prayer, `Nevertheless not my will, but Thine, be done.' The answer to Christ's prayer was silence, and He was later crucified on a Roman cross.

``In her commentary on the church shooting, MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid tweeted that `when Jesus of Nazareth came upon thousands of hungry people,' He didn't pray. He fed the people.''

Horowitz said: ``She is simply wrong. Matthew 14:19 records that, before Jesus fed the people, He looked heavenward and prayed. Jesus prayed and He acted. That is how His followers still view prayer. They pray and they act.

``At around the same time Joy-Ann Reid was tweeting, the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team was already in action, rolling into Sutherland Springs with 16 chaplains to comfort grieving families and help meet their material needs. Two days after the shooting, the Southern Baptist Convention announced it would pay all funeral expenses for the 26 slain churchgoers.

``Because this is a world made by flawed human beings, it will continue to be a world of tribulations. There will be more shootings, attacks, fires, floods, earthquakes, and other tragedies. Christians will call for prayer, and leftists will mock them for it, imagining there are solutions that can perfect this life and regarding Christians as the enemies of that perfection.

``Since its birth in the fires of the French Revolution, the political left has been at war with religion and with the Christian religion in particular.''

Again, Mr. Speaker, this is really interesting coming from an atheist Jewish individual.

Horowitz said: ``In a symbolic revolutionary act, the Jacobin leaders of the French Revolution changed the name of the Cathedral of Notre Dame to the `Temple of Reason.' Then, in the name of `reason,' they proceeded to massacre the inhabitants of the Vendee region of west- central France because its citizens were Catholics.

``This has been called the first modern genocide, but it was far from the last. Karl Marx famously described religion as `the opium of the people' and `the sigh of the oppressed.' Inspired by his hatred ever since, revolutionaries have regarded religion as the enemy of progress and the mask of oppression.

``In Russia, Marx's disciples removed religious teaching from the schools, outlawed criticism of atheists and agnostics, and burned 100,000 churches. When priests demanded freedom of religion, they were sentenced to death. Between 1917 and 1935, 130,000 Russian Orthodox priests were arrested, 95,000 of whom were executed by firing squad.

``Radicals in America today don't have the political power to execute religious people and destroy their houses of worship. Yet they openly declare their desire to obliterate religion. In their own minds, their intentions are noble. They want to save the human race from the social injustice and oppression that religion allegedly inflicts on humanity.

``'Religion must die in order for mankind to live,' proclaimed left- wing commentator and comedian Bill Maher in `Religulous,' the most- watched documentary feature of 2008. Both title and script were transparent attempts to stigmatize religious people as dangerous morons whose views could not be taken seriously.

``Throughout the film, Maher travels to Jerusalem, the Vatican, and Salt Lake City, as well as other centers of religion, interviewing believers and making them appear foolish. How did he gain interviews with his victims? He lied to them, saying he was making a film called `A Spiritual Journey.'

``According to Maher, `The irony of religion is that because of its power to divert man to destructive courses, the world could actually come to an end.' He predicts the destruction of the human race as a result of `religion-inspired nuclear terrorism.' Hence the need for religion to die if mankind is to live.

``Maher's views accurately reflect the attitudes of a movement called the `New Atheism,' whose leaders are prominent scientists and best- selling authors, far superior in intellect to Maher but equally contemptuous of religion and religious believers.''

``Like Maher's film, the New Atheism movement seeks to discredit all religious belief by caricaturing its adherents as simpletons, and worse. The stated goal of the New Atheism is to delegitimize and extinguish the religious point of view.

``Maher's suggestion that religion--and evidently religion alone-- threatens the existence of the human race is simply malicious. Both he and the New Atheists are blind to all the positive influences religion has had on human behavior, and they ignore all the atheist-inspired genocides of the last 250 years. In the 20th century alone, Communist atheists slaughtered more than 100 million people in Russia, China, and Indochina. Not even the bloodthirsty jihadists of radical Islam have killed innocents on anything close to such a scale.

``It's striking that Maher and the New Atheists ignore the appalling body count of Marxism--an ideology that is explicitly atheistic, whose atrocities were committed in the name of social justice. According to Maher, it is religious people who are `irrationalists,' and dangerous because they `steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken.' Yet civilization was built and improved by such irrationalists--believers like Locke, Newton, Washington, Wilberforce, Sojourner Truth, and Abraham Lincoln. For the five millennia of recorded history, with few exceptions the most rational, compassionate, and successful decision-makers, both military and civilian, have been people guided by a belief in God, including some whose spiritual compass took the form of reading the entrails of a chicken.''

That is David Horowitz' sense of humor.

``Near the end of Maher's rant, he pauses to address any religionist who may have unwittingly strayed into the cinema where `Religulous' was playing: `Look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you actually comes at a terrible price. If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you'd resign in protest.'''

Horowitz says: ``How myopic. And the crimes and horrors committed by atheism? From the French Revolution to the Bolshevik, from the Vendee to Vietnam, the bigotries and atrocities committed by the forces of godlessness match and even outweigh those committed by the forces of godliness. If a history of violence, persecution, and murder serves to discredit an ideology, why hasn't Maher resigned in protest from the party of atheism?''

I appreciate those brilliant, insightful observations by an atheist Jew, who is a friend. Amazing from a man who is an overt, unapologetic, rebellious communist, to now having written a good account of the war to destroy Christian America.

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 1 o'clock and 20 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Friday, April 12, 2019, at 2:30 p.m.

Madam Speaker, the bill that was entitled the Violence Against Women Act was passed in the House today, and I deeply regret it was not the kind of bipartisan bill that I feel like we should have had.

I don't know anybody in this Chamber who supports violence against women or who does not want to do what we can to stop it. We battled this out verbally in the Judiciary Committee.

It is so clear to me, having prosecuted sexual assaults of women who were battered and beat up badly by their husbands or partners, that it is such an egregious thing. I heard over and over as a felony judge in Texas about how traumatized the women were and potentially would be for the rest of their lives. I heard that, with counseling, they could work to avoid having the triggers that put them right back in the place where they were so badly abused.

More recent literature indicates that women who have been sexually assaulted seem to have a much higher percent--a number of times, apparently--more post-traumatic stress disorder after having been sexually abused than even soldiers have after combat. One suggestion in a study indicates that because soldiers are trained for what they go through, perhaps that reduces the amount of PTSD. There is no adequate training to prepare a woman for the kind of abuse that so many have suffered.

One of the triggers that I have heard about as a judge that could trigger this trauma, reliving the experience all over again, is a woman being in a confined space and having a biological man come in to that confined space. We have heard of women assaulting men who have done that, some who may have been through sexual assault before.

I understand the idea of my colleagues across the aisle who want to help avoid hurting the feelings of biological men who think they are women, or according to the latest rendition of DSM-5, they are suffering from gender dysphoria, which is kind of the opposite of euphoria, but it basically is a confusion or a discomfort with one's biologically assigned gender.

So I get it. You don't want to make them feel bad. You don't want to hurt their feelings. So to avoid hurting their feelings, we would put so many women at risk.

A lot of folks I have heard say that one in four women will be sexually assaulted. If that is true, then that means that those who voted for this bill today would seek to punish again and again and again women who have suffered the outrageous and egregious assault sexually or being battered with no way out.

When my friend across the aisle, Debbie Dingell, speaks of those fears and terrors as a child and abuse going on in the home, my heart goes out to her and anybody who has suffered like that.

But this is the United States Congress. Can't we have a bill that doesn't have a political aspect and that just tries to do the right thing by women who have suffered from sexual assault or being battered, and let them have a confined space without a biological man being forced into their traumatized world? Couldn't we agree on that? The answer is no.

Debbie Lesko, my friend and colleague also on the Judiciary Committee, has been such a victim. She had amendments. She spoke brilliantly about the suffering and what needed to be done to fix the bill. And yet, it was a political matter. It is too important that we not hurt the feelings of men who think they are women. Therefore, we are just going to let those women have to suffer. They just need to get over their trauma, their PTSD, their reliving the nightmare of a sexual assault over and over again. There is more regard for somebody's hurt feelings than someone else's. A woman's terror forces them over and over through such terror time and time again.

I read a story about a woman seeing a man and freaking out and started to assault him. If a woman has been through a sexual assault before, my heart goes to her, not for the guy who walks in and traumatized her so.

Yet if the majority here has their way, that bill would become law. Those traumatized women would be condemned to be traumatized repeatedly at the demand of the Democratic majority in Congress, in the House here.

I really would have hoped we could have had a bill that we could all, of one accord, say: This is right. This is the thing to do by women.

But we can't get a bill to the floor to try to protect unborn women, unborn girls.

In China, the abortion rate of girls is dramatically higher than that of boys, because they think--they haven't been like me and had three girls. They don't know how wonderful it is. So they think: Gee, if I am only going to be allowed to have one child, I prefer it be a boy.

And there is outrageous discrimination--a real, true war on women-- going on in China. And China has yet to feel the destructive results of what they have required.

But that is a war, killing an unborn child because she happens to be biologically female. But we haven't heard condemnation about such practice in this Congress, and that is a legitimate war on women, children who were never given the chance to live simply because--not to live outside the womb simply because they are biologically women. It's very tragic.

I hope the Senate will use some common sense and have a heart for the women who have been victims of assault. And I know. I have seen it. I have heard it. As a prosecutor, I was frustrated by it, when a woman would come in, beat to a pulp, black and blue, all bruised up and scarred. You want to put her husband in prison forever, doing that to anybody, and especially a woman who could not defend herself.

And, time and again--too often, the experts will tell you, those who prosecute a lot--the woman will come back and say: You know what, now that everything has healed, it is really my fault.

And they have this idea that somehow they deserved that kind of beating when they didn't at all. As a judge, there were so many times that I told young children--you could tell they blamed themselves for a sexual assault--without the jury around, you need to understand this was not your fault. You didn't deserve this. You never did anything to deserve it. This was a crime committed against you. You were the victim, and don't ever think that you deserved it, or you are the guilty party.

Because it is amazing. Some men have the ability to make their victims think they are the ones at fault.

Yet, for those who suffer the trauma again, having a man confront them in a very confined space, they are going to be condemned to relive it over and over again. It is very unfortunate.

Hopefully, wisdom will win out and the Senate will help us have a bill that really considers the women and the damage done by the full complement, if you want to call it that, of this Violence Against Women Act, as it was labeled.

We have also heard repeatedly: There is no crisis on the border. It is not a national emergency. This is a manufactured emergency.

We have heard that over and over. We have seen the montages of the mainstream media saying: Manufactured crisis. Manufactured crisis.

Apparently Jeh Johnson, former Secretary of Homeland Security, didn't get the memo that he was supposed to come forward and lie, so he actually said: Yes, it is a crisis on the border.

It is a humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis for our Nation's security. And it is so out of hand.

I keep hearing every day from people whose jobs it is to protect America and to protect Americans, protect people who are legally here. But they are so busy having to get names, whether they are fictitious or not. Most of the time there is no proper identification. You have to take the person's word, take the information on where they say they have relatives.

I have pointed it out before, but I have been there when, while they are going through questions with one end of the group, at the other end, they are moving kids: Why don't you take this kid. You take this kid, claim it is yours. Oh, here. You take my address. I'll take your address.

These were addresses, apparently, where the drug cartels needed them to operate or work in either their drug trafficking or sex trafficking. So, under the laws the way they exist now, as the border patrolmen have said, you know, the cartels say: We're the logistics. The drug cartels get paid, and they hire some person to bring them across the border.

And the drug cartels, as I have heard them say out there in the middle of the night, when it is not on their list of questions to ask, but often it gets asked: How much did you pay to be brought into this country?

And when the question is asked: Where did you get that kind of money--$5,000, $6,000, $7,000, $8,000. You don't have that. Where did you get that money?

Well, we got so much here, so much there, some sent from the U.S.

Well, what about the rest?

They are going to let me work it off when I get where I am going.

So then, our own Homeland Security, our own HHS, they ship the drug cartels' future employees to the place that the cartels want them to work.

So, I would hope that, as people read stories: Oh, no, another meth lab busted, and this guy is part of the Mexican drug cartel, and it is not in Texas, then that is when people should remember: Oh, yeah, that's right. We use tax money to send the cartels' future employees to the cities where they want them to work in sex trafficking or drug trafficking.

I mean, an advanced civilization cannot continue to reach its potential when we are bringing in the people and paying to put them where they can destroy the city, the State, and ultimately our country. This is a crisis.

As I understand, down in the quadrant of Texas, especially down south of McAllen, where I have spent so many nights, one was saying: We process 1,200 a day, process 13,000 in about 10 days--one area.

It is incredible. How can an intelligent civilization keep doing that to itself in the name of helping our country and helping our neighbors, when the fact is that the most compassionate thing Americans could do for our neighbors in Mexico is to secure the border completely. Nothing comes in, like drugs or women being sex trafficked. And, no, the drug cartels are not going to take lightly to it.

But, you shut down the tens of millions of dollars every year that are flowing from the U.S. into Mexico that fund the mass corruption in Mexico, then Mexico, in my opinion, would become a top-ten economy in the world.

They have got some of the best natural resources in the world, a better geographic location than the United States because they are between two continents and two oceans. Their trade ought to be astounding.

And they have got some of the hardest-working people in the world. So why aren't they a top economy? It is because of all the money that flows across from the United States to the drug cartels in Mexico.

And, now, a huge source of revenue for them is the money they get from sending people across by the thousands each week. It is insane.

We can't prolong this little experiment in self-government when we are providing corrupt drug cartels with the method to take us down and to keep Mexico subjugated to their evil intentions.

An article from CNS News by Terence Jeffrey, April 3 of this year, points out that the five Federal district court districts that sit along the U.S.-Mexico border were the top five districts in the country for the number of defendants they convicted and sentenced to imprisonment in fiscal year 2018, according to the data published by the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts.

I have a rather interesting chart here. You see the Western District of Texas has had 7,126 individuals convicted as criminals and sentenced to prison; the Southern District of Texas, 5,939 people convicted as criminals, sentenced to prison; Southern District of California, very close, 5,470 convicted criminals sentenced to prison. So, it isn't just a wrist slap. Sentenced to prison.

You have got the District of Arizona, 4,378; District of New Mexico, 3,923. Of course, Florida is behind them. And there are a lot of people coming in illegally there, but it drops off so dramatically. So, you see a bigger number of these 30 top sentencing courts have 700 or less, and the Western District of Texas has 7,000.

So why is this? It is because they are border courts, and they are dramatically affected by criminals coming across our border.

As I understand it, one of the MS-13ers that was caught--supposedly, for every person we catch coming in illegally, there are many times that many that are coming in that we don't catch. No reason to doubt that that is true about gang members, gangsters, part of MS-13.

But, why are we allowing this to go on for ourselves?

The old saying in Washington is: No matter how cynical you get, it is never enough to catch up. And, the more you hang around this town, the more you see there is something to that.

Could it be that a majority in the House don't want to stop this because the thinking is: These may be our future hope for being in the majority and electing a President?

Heaven help us if that were the case, that power is more important than preserving a union where freedom once abounded.

Of course, it could never adequately abound as there was slavery.

I just finished a book about the miracle of Yorktown, focused largely on George Washington. And we know he ended up, though he was from a State that prohibited the freeing of slaves, he freed the slaves in his will.

But it wasn't until Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, and others, withstood tremendous oppression in order that a White Christian boy like me could grow up and treat my brothers and sisters like brothers and sisters. So we have made great progress.

And then it seemed like, just as we get to the sixties, and the Constitution finally is meaning what it says, we start moving in a direction that most civilizations, when you read their history, actually were moving them to the dustbin of history.

Here we accomplished so much, and freedom for--we spread it around. The Civil Rights Act helped with that. And now we are going to punish women who have been victims of assault by forcing them to endure men coming into their private spaces.

We are going to take a country where a massive amount of crime is occurring on our border and our border areas--we are overwhelmed with people that don't understand that it is a lot of education and a lot of work involved in order to preserve self-government.

So it is not unusual to see socialism become so popular as an idea. It sounds wonderful. Everybody's going to share and share alike.

But then you dig down, and you find out historically, you can't have socialism; you can't have communism unless you have a big, powerful government, strong enough that it can take from those who earn things and give it to those who didn't, without their permission, and punish them if they try to object. That takes a big, strong government.

And our Founders found actually, if you let people keep what they earn, put a small tax on it so you keep order in the country, that that is far more productive. That is how the United States has been the greatest economy, and still is, in the world.

But those freedoms are going away. We are no longer ranked as the freest country in the world. And as those freedoms diminish, it shouldn't be a big surprise that freedoms are diminishing as people that don't understand what it takes to preserve liberty and self- government come in, unabated, virtually. We are not stopping people from coming in.

I am hopeful, prayerful, I hope that we will be able to have our government do what has not been done, as far as I know, since Woodrow Wilson, and that is, have people on the border, use nonlethal means, and say, you are not coming in to our country illegally.

We ought to have a bipartisan bill passed pretty easily with regard to asylum that says, You can't come into the United States and claim asylum. You have got to go to the nearest embassy or an American embassy, somewhere to claim asylum.

But if you come into the country illegally, and your first act in America involves breaking the law, then we are not going to allow you to apply for asylum. And you would see these massive caravans stop overnight. That is why there is such fluctuation.

Earlier last year, numbers were way down. People in other countries thought Trump was going to stop them; that we had a President that wanted to do all he could to stop illegal immigration, secure the border.

But by the time they found out that his party was not going to be in the majority in the House, and that people said they want to eliminate all barriers and let people in, anybody that wanted to come here, not just the over 1 million that we give visas to, then the numbers picked up.

And when they got word that if you have a child, whether it is yours or somebody else's, it doesn't matter, that gets you into the country, and keeps you in the country, get a child. Bring a child. That is the thing to do.

It is really outrageous what that has done to children. Now they are an important commodity to the drug cartels. Make sure, whoever you are, wherever you are coming from, even if you are an MS-13er, bring a kid with you, bring a child; because the United States made such a big deal about we won't separate children from parents, even though, to American citizens, we separate children from parents every single day of the year because, in America, at least in the past, we didn't believe in putting children in confinement for crimes their parents committed.

As a judge, I don't know how many warrants I signed, but I would never allow a child to be incarcerated because of the alleged crime of their parents. We don't do that. So we separate children from their parents every day in America, in every county in America, in every State in America. It happens all the time, because we don't punish the children for the sins of their parents.

But once word got out that if you come to America illegally with a child, you have got a good chance of staying in, claim asylum, the courts are backed up, and you have got a good chance of staying for years; and once you are here a number of years, just don't show up for your asylum hearing, and they won't know where you are, and you will be in good shape.

It has got to stop. The American people expect us to protect them, protect the Constitution, and we have not done a good job of that because there seems, so often, right here in this room, more devotion to people that hate America, that still want to come here, than there is to those who are legally here, that are saying, I don't want to be a victim of a crime; would you please protect me from people coming in illegally that may commit a crime against me.

And it shouldn't even have to be said, but because we have so many ``lame stream'' media folks who either are liars by trade, or simply that ignorant--no, all immigrants are not criminals or people looking to commit crimes such as robbery, rape, destruction, murder; but they do happen.

When you look at the percentages of people in our Federal prison who are in the country illegally, an objective bystander looking on would go: Wow, why is this country doing that?

Why are they letting all these people in illegally, when they may have 20, 25 percent in their prison who are there because they are in the country illegally? Why are they letting that go on?

And the only answer from an accurate cynic would be, Well, it is for politics. They think it is good for one political party, so they keep it up.

That is so dramatic, such a dramatic demonstration of where the real problems are in this country.

And I have heard my friend, now Senator Marsha Blackburn, point out, every city in America is now a border city, because of all of the illegal aliens that they are having to take care of.

But an article in the Federalist, by John Daniel Davidson, April 4-- it is actually his testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee--but he says: ``I visited a migrant respite center in McAllen, Texas, run by Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, the charitable arm of the Diocese of Brownsville. Sister Norman Pimentel helped establish the center in 2014, at the height of the unaccompanied minor crisis, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement was overwhelmed with thousands of children and teenagers turning themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol agents.

``At that time, the center was receiving between 60 and 120 migrants a day, nearly all of them families from Central America. Here's how it worked: Every afternoon, ICE dropped off the families at the Greyhound bus station downtown, about a mile from the respite center. Greyhound employees would call the center to let them know the migrants were there, and the center would send vans to pick them up.

``Once at the center, the children would be sent to a separate room for a hot meal while the parents took turns working with volunteers to get in touch with friends and family members all over the country.''

Or, as we have seen, sometimes those are not friends and family; they are people to which the drug cartels have ordered them.

``The goal was to get them all bus tickets and get them on their way that same day, usually later that evening, because the next day there would be another group of families coming in, and there simply wasn't space for more than a couple dozen people to spend the night there.

``This wasn't some gleaming facility. The center occupied one half of a rundown commercial building, consisting of a large multipurpose room, a bathroom and a shower, a small kitchen, and a separate room for the makeshift cafeteria. There was an area in a corner of the main room cordoned off for young children to play and a large stack of blue plastic mattresses in another corner.''

Anyway, ``in December, the diocese moved the center to a larger location, a former nursing home, about 16,000 square feet. . . . that's because the number of migrants turning up at the bus station skyrocketed. Today, the new respite center is receiving about 800 people a day''--800 people a day--``sometimes more. Last Sunday, 1,300 people were dropped off there and at other shelters around town.''

I mean, this is what is going on on our border, when we are the most generous country in the world.

Some people even in this room will shout: You know, we are a Nation of immigrants. That is right. And that is why we are so--we are the most generous country in the world when it comes to giving free passes into America. Nobody gives a million or more visas for legal entry into their country. Nobody. Not these countries that are geographically bigger. Not countries that have a number of times the population. No, nobody is that generous as we are with letting immigrants in.

So it is outrageous to say, because we want to limit those coming in to the very--the most generous number in the world, that we say come in legally, what is wrong with that?

As has been said before, a nation with no borders will not be a nation much longer. Not for long.

But, we find out, yeah, it is a moneymaker. It is a moneymaker for the drug cartels. Some people profit off the people coming in here illegally. The people that work here, either from

drugs or legitimate businesses, they send an awful lot of money home, and that is the kind of people we want, people that care about their families, want to help them provide, make their way. That is a very noble thing to send money home to family. Unfortunately, that is not all the people that are coming in these days.

I want to touch on one other matter, and that's with regard to the special counsel. I know there are people, the House and Senate, that say, Oh, you know, Robert Mueller is the gold standard when it comes to prosecutor. I submit that is some pretty tarnished gold with an awful lot of impurities, speaking metaphorically.

So I wasn't surprised when we learned that the Mueller report indicated, really, there is plenty of evidence Russians were trying to get the Trump campaign to conspire with them; no evidence they did conspire with the Russians.

Through the years of questioning Robert Mueller in our committee and doing a lot of research on the man, it would explain why I was so upset when he was appointed as special counsel, because I wanted somebody who would be fair and investigate all parts. But when we look back now, we see all the indictments that came as a result of having a special counsel, not one single one of the indictments involved a conspiracy of any kind between anybody at the Trump campaign, including our President, and Russia.

What we have learned from all the evidence we have gleaned in committee and in public is that there was a conspiracy, and it involved top people at the Department of Justice; it involved top people at the FBI; it involved the Clinton campaign; it involved Fusion GPS; it involved a foreign agent named Steele. He is a foreign agent.

And, by the way, our great Justice Department, such as it is--or was in the last couple years--never bothered to tell the FISA court: This man has no credibility with the FBI. We have stopped using him as an agent of our government, the foreign agent that he is, because he is not trustworthy.

Never bothered to tell the judge that.

And I don't know if it was one FISA judge or more, but the fact is that the FISA judges, nobody has punished any of the applicants, or affiants, that have come in and sworn before them that this is true to the best of their knowledge.

That was a lie. They didn't give the judge the best of their knowledge. It was a lie and they knew it, and they did it four times.

I have lost respect for whoever in the FISA court would not call those lawyers in, or the FBI agents, and say: You lied to me when you didn't tell me the full truth. You committed a fraud on my court, and now I need to decide how long I am putting you in jail.

They haven't done that. That tells me we either need to get rid of the FISA courts or we need to have such a big overhaul because they have gotten too comfortable in that star chamber.

And I know all of them haven't, because I know there are some good judges who have been nominated, confirmed by the Senate, and sit on Federal benches. I know there are plenty of good ones. I have got too many good friends not to know that. But we at least have some who don't care when they are lied to if it furthers their own political ideas, because that is the bottom line.

Why would the FISA court or courts that have been lied to, had fraud against the court, why would they not have already punished the people who committed the fraud against their court?

It seems to me it has got to be one of two reasons:

They must be dishonest people; therefore, they don't mind being lied to; or

They were so politically aligned with the people who were committing the fraud upon their court that they are fine with the fraud because it helped accomplish their political agenda as well as the ones who committed the fraud.

We need to do something about the FISA courts. It is a real problem.

I know there are a lot of people who think: Well, no, it is not really a problem because it has only been abused against Republicans, and we hate Donald Trump, didn't want him to be President, and so it is okay for them to abuse the FISA court system and the warrant system and the First and Fourth and Fifth and Sixth Amendments. It is okay to abuse those because we don't like the people being abused.

But there is a reason that we have an adversarial system. With all its flaws, it is the best there has ever been anywhere when it comes to justice. We are not supposed to allow the kind of thing that has now happened.

I was not surprised when Mueller couldn't help himself, Weissmann couldn't help himself: Yeah, the evidence is not there to prosecute anybody, but we want you to know we are not exonerating him.

Well, that is not a prosecutor's job. If a prosecutor learns that a crime has most likely--has probably been committed and that a person has probably committed it and they find out a crime has been committed, they look for a person who probably committed the crime. That is the job.

When you find the person, you gather enough evidence that you can have probable cause that they committed the crime. You get them indicted. You pursue them, prosecute them, convict them, sentence them. That is how it is supposed to work.

A prosecutor is not supposed to ever go into something to exonerate somebody. You don't go into it looking for evidence that exonerates somebody. You are looking for evidence that shows they are guilty. And if you don't find evidence that establishes they are guilty, then you are supposed to move on; although, Mueller has had a problem with that.

We also have seen the history, whether it was Comey admitting that-- it sounded like he admitted a crime, because he leaked information that he knew should not have been disclosed to a professor so that he would get it to The New York Times so that they could have a justification for appointing a special prosecutor. Wow.

You have got 18 U.S.C. 1905, disclosure of confidential information. That is a general provision. It is a felony to disclose confidential information. You have got other laws.

Well, this from the DOJ, their own regulations. If you look at 1- 7.110, it says: ``It is against the law to disclose classified information to someone not authorized to receive it.''

But that has gone on during the years Mueller was head of the FBI.

We have had FBI agents make clear: No way we could prosecute a Member of Congress without the knowledge and okay of the Director of the FBI.

That would be Mueller when they were pursuing Ted Stevens, Senator. They fabricated a case against the man. He had evidence he was not just not guilty, but completely innocent.

But you do your investigation. You gather up all the evidence that would show somebody is innocent, completely innocent, 100 percent innocent, and you don't let them have all their stuff back and you manufacture evidence. You threaten a witness to get them to lie so you can convict somebody. That happened to Ted Stevens.

When I first heard, gee, he had added a $700,000 addition to his home, something like that, I am going, well, he should have known better than that. Surely you are going to try a guy for that.

Well, it turns out he overpaid. He even told the contractor: Just cash my checks. I have to overpay, because they are watching everything I do, and I have got to keep my nose clean.

They still went after him and convicted him immediately before an election that he narrowly lost.

Thank God there was an FBI agent with a conscience who did an affidavit so the judge found out that the prosecutor, the FBI, had framed Ted Stevens for a crime he didn't commit.

Those people should have been disbarred. They should have been thrown out of the FBI. But the only guy forced out was the one who did the affidavit, because Mueller--obviously, it had to be done with his knowledge, that you run the guy off that had a conscience and reported it to the court and you keep on the FBI agent that helped fabricate the case against the longest serving Republican in the Senate at the time.

He wouldn't have been on that plane where he was killed if it hadn't been for Mueller's FBI and the framing of

Ted Stevens. So he lost his seat in the Senate, even though he was later exonerated.

And, of course, you know, we have these repeated examples. I am not even going to go back into the Whitey Bulger situation when Mueller was in Boston.

But, you know, Curt Weldon, serving here in the House, he was giving speeches right here over and over about the FBI could have stopped 9/ 11.

I didn't know what he was saying, whether it was true or not. He talked about a program Able Danger, but I sure did feel like Mueller needed to respond, because this was a serious allegation against his

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 2 o'clock and 22 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, April 8, 2019, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Chair, I rise out of concern for violence that has been done against women.

As someone who has prosecuted such things and has sentenced many men to prison for such things, I want to be part of the solution toward mitigating and stopping the violence against women, but I can't vote for this bill in its current form when politics, as my friends have said, have been played with it here, because I have heard the

testimony repeatedly, as a judge, from experts.

I have read the studies. The literature, psychiatric literature, indicates that the studies show that women who have been through sexual assault are more likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder than even soldiers, on a percentage basis.

One of the things that can trigger the trauma coming back is a man coming into a confined space like a restroom, like a dressing room, like a battered women's shelter, and they are living it again.

Why would we do that? Why would we have a bill that forces that kind of trauma back on women who have been through enough?

This bill, in the name of equality, says women are not going to be able to have a safe place from biological men. No. We are going to force them, and under this bill, there will be lawsuits. A homeless shelter, a shelter for battered women, and it is shocking how much of this still goes on, but they will be subject to lawsuits if this bill becomes law.

You will have people, the government with all its power, forcing shelters for battered women to accept biological men, no matter how traumatic it is for the women who have suffered domestic abuse from men, sexual assault from men.

For heaven's sake, can't we compromise in the name of really helping women?

I understand the concern from my colleagues across the aisle is that we don't want to hurt the feelings of someone who is biologically a man who thinks they are a woman. We don't want to hurt their feelings; therefore, it is worth the risk of all the trauma that will be relived by women by forcing men into those confined situations. There are other alternatives instead of making women suffer more than they already have.

This Violence Against Women Act, the way it is currently written in its current form, will do additional violence to women. It is something that I just can't support.

Mr. Chair, I wish my friends would worry about the concerns for men who think they are women and suffering from gender dysphoria in some other bill. Let's use this one to protect women.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, it is my honor to yield to my friend from New Jersey, not just a friend, but a brother, ardent pro- life advocate who I have seen has compassion for every baby child.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).

An Important Message America Needs to Hear

Will the gentleman stay for a question.

Mr. Speaker, I am deeply moved and touched by everything my friend from New Jersey has had to say. But at one point, my friend said, he really believed that some day Americans will look back on this point in history. And one of my great concerns, because of the love I know is shared between us both for this country; and desperately wanting this country, our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, someday to enjoy our freedoms, one of my biggest concerns is that it won't be Americans that look back; that if we stay on this road where we dismember and kill babies, it may not be Americans that look back, it may be historians in some other country after the United States no longer exists in its present condition that look back and say, Wow, look how degenerate they had gotten, and it just seemed so accepted.

Does the gentleman from New Jersey, my friend, have any concerns that, perhaps, if we don't address this problem that it may not be Americans that look back and see this problem area?

I yield to my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate those words from my friend, Chris Smith, and I look forward to seeing that movie.

I was very moved watching the movie ``Gosnell''. It just--I thought about the poets, the inhumanity to man. It is tragic.

Having talked to people that have taught in China, you know, it is a human crisis what is going on with the abortion of so many women. And like my friend, Chris Smith, I can't help but wonder why that is not considered a war on women when you kill a baby in utero simply because the child is female. But apparently, in China, since couples are only allowed normally to have one child, many couples think, well, we would rather have a boy. Discrimination against girls.

As a father who has three girls, they have brought joy to my life in so many ways. I just cannot fathom the thought of ever doing anything to have prevented those girls from being born.

But there are far-reaching implications when you have a gendercide. But as was pointed out by a teacher in China, first of all, the boys don't have as much opportunity to have female friends, making it more difficult to find a heterosexual partner.

But more than that, because it is restricted to one child, you have two sets of grandparents and two parents, six people who have one child to focus on, and it actually--

One of the greatest disciplined groups of children in the world used to be considered from China.

More and more, you have doting grandparents and parents. Since they only have one child to dote on among the six of them, more and more of those Chinese children are being spoiled rotten. It is much more difficult to maintain order, because now that there is one child to spoil among six people, the teacher is never right. The child is always right.

It is interesting, seeing all the far-reaching ramifications of this gendercide against women. I hope and literally do pray that things will change, and babies will no longer be killed just simply because they are female.

Fraud on FISA Court

Mr. Speaker, there are four other topics I wanted to touch on.

One, I was greatly surprised to find out about a motion and order by the Obama administration in 2012 before the FISA court, because being on the Judiciary Committee--I wasn't there when the PATRIOT Act was passed; I have been there for reauthorization--I have grave concerns about some of the civil rights there.

My colleagues across the aisle on the Judiciary Committee, many of them had extremely grave concerns when they were in the minority about civil rights and civil liberties, and those seem to have taken a backseat while the President was President Obama.

I am hopeful that, now that there is not a Democrat in the White House, we can get some bipartisan concern again about civil liberties, after the Obama administration really did run roughshod over so many.

One of the things we were assured in reauthorizing the FISA court, the procedures and all, is that no American, and this was in the PATRIOT Act as well, but no American would be caught up in any foreign surveillance or surveillance by our U.S. entities, whether CIA, NSA, whatever, unless the American citizen was engaged in a conversation with a known terrorist, foreign terrorist, or an agent of a known terrorist organization.

Then through this colonoscopy, figuratively speaking, that the Trump campaign and administration were getting, we come to find out things were far more loose in protecting civil liberties and privacy rights.

On the FISA court, unfortunately, we have at least one or more FISA judges that really don't care about the Constitution. They don't care about Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. They have allowed the Justice Department to run roughshod over those.

I am very concerned about how far this goes back. Did it go back before the Obama administration? Is it a newer invention? Just how many activities once considered unthinkable by the Federal Government are now just ho-hum to FISA judges?

The fact is that we now know the FISA court, at least one, perhaps more courts, were lied to. Since this is basically a Star Chamber where the public is not allowed to know what went on--things are held in secret. The transcripts are held in secret, unless you get them released by WikiLeaks, as the application for warrant, the affidavit on which it was based, and the order regarding Verizon some years back-- WikiLeaks released that.

That was the eye-opener for me, because as just an ardent historian when it comes to so many things American, and that includes First Amendment rights, I was shocked, Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment.

We know the Constitution is very clear. You can't just say: Give me all the information you have.

It is required that you have some kind of probable cause here, and you have to describe with particularity the area to be searched or the thing to be searched and the specific thing that is being sought for which there is a warrant.

I was overwhelmed to see an affidavit saying: Well, for America's protection, we just need every bit of information that Verizon has on every one of their customers.

I am going, oh, my gosh. During my days as a felony judge in Texas, if an officer had come with an affidavit and an application signed, sworn to, and given that to me, that we need a warrant, I am going, you have got to be kidding. There is no particularity here. It is just saying give me everything you have on every customer this company has.

Are you kidding? You need to go back to school. I am not sure I need to be signing any more warrants for you if that is the way you consider constitutional rights.

Yet, it was just ho-hum for the Justice Department, ho-hum for the FISA court judges.

I mean, unless there is some FISA judge that signed these four warrants regarding the Trump campaign, and individuals with it, who has just completely lost his or her mind and doesn't know what is going on, that judge, or judges, has to be aware they were lied to. There was fraud upon that court.

The fact that we have Federal judges who were confirmed by the U.S. Senate after being appointed by a U.S. President who would not be bothered that the United States Department of Justice and the FBI had people who would come before that judge and lie to that judge, and the judge is not bothered--``oh, well.''

I remember after a bankruptcy hearing many years ago, I really liked this judge, but he said: Louie, you seem bothered that the person who filed bankruptcy got caught in a huge lie. That seemed to bother you. But, Louie, they all lie. You just got to get used to it.

Well, I have still not gotten used to the idea that somebody can come in and lie under oath before a judge without any ramifications coming from that.

The fact that we have one or more FISA judges who are not bothered, have done nothing, and have put no one in jail for the fraud committed in the FISA court tells me we have to either get rid of the FISA courts--go back to the way it was before, when if you had a matter of national security, it was treated differently, but we didn't have special Star Chambers where you came and had secret hearings. You just went to a normal judge and handled things in camera, if necessary. We have to either do that, get rid of the FISA courts, or we have to have some safeguards to make sure that Americans' rights are protected.

But there is a motion and order here. The motion, it was secret, classified, before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. This is from April 23, 2012. It has now been declassified. I had no idea that the Obama administration, the Justice Department, had sought this and gotten it, but apparently, as broadly spread as information was about American citizens whose names were unmasked and about what they were saying when it didn't necessarily involve any foreign terrorist organization--I am still not over the fact that some of us were lied to, in order to get some of the PATRIOT Act reauthorized. That was not the Obama administration I am talking about.

But this is a motion, and the title is: ``Government's Submission of Amendments to Standard Minimization Procedures.'' That is the procedure where, if it is an American citizen who is caught up in a phone surveillance, phone conversations that are being surveilled by our intelligence, the minimization is what the law requires where you mask the name. You minimize the conversation so that the identity and other information is not available for review, because the Constitution protects American citizens and gives them Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendment rights that otherwise would be abused.

But this says: ``For FBI Electronic Surveillance and Physical Search Conducted Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and Submission of Revised Minimization Procedures for the National Counterterrorism Center, and Motion for Amended Orders Permitting Use of Amended Minimization Procedures.''

Then I see that it was classified by Tashina Gauhar, Deputy Assistant Attorney General. She answered directly to Rod Rosenstein, I guess still does.

My understanding is, and I was told, that she is one of the key people who was telling Jeff Sessions that he needed to recuse himself. This is an attorney, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, who was loyal to Sally Yates, is still loyal to Sally Yates, even though she refused to do her constitutional duty to defend a constitutional act by President Trump. She didn't care for the President, so she wasn't going to carry out her constitutionally mandated duty.

Fortunately, Sally Yates is no longer there, and we have at least some people there who are willing to carry out their obligation under the Constitution.

But when my friend Jeff Sessions was saying he has talked to career people and they have encouraged him, told him he needed to recuse himself, I had heard that Tashina Gauhar was one of those people. You can call her a career person. I hope her career is about ended, at least in the Justice Department.

I also had understood she was someone who was trying to make Jeff Sessions look bad. As the National Security Council liaison, the notices of NSC meetings would go to her for the Attorney General. I was told she would sit on those and not get them to the Attorney General. He would get his notices late. He would be, therefore, the least prepared at the NSC's critical meetings. Sometimes, he would have conflicts because she didn't get him the notices early enough. Yet she, I was told, is one of those who said: Oh, yeah, you have to recuse yourself.

Her loyalties were more to President Obama and Sally Yates than they appear to be, at least to me, to the Constitution itself. Yet she is the one who is also pushing to change the minimization requirements.

What really got me as I read through this lengthy motion, I think this is really the crux of it, over here at page 64.

Over here on page 64--so, obviously, it is a long motion on behalf of the U.S. Government by Tashina Gauhar--it says:

``The following underlined text will be inserted into the first sentence: `The FBI may disseminate FISA-acquired information concerning United States persons, which' ''--and then here is the underlined part--`` `reasonably appears to be' ''--and then not underlined--`` `foreign intelligence information' ''--more underlining--`` `is necessary to understand foreign intelligence information or assess its importance, or is evidence of a crime being disseminated for a law enforcement purpose.' ''

Look, when you get language like this that could allow the massive distribution of what we were assured during reauthorization of these type procedures--oh, no, it is so restricted.

See, here are the regulations. This is who can find out about an American citizen who was surveilled electronically. It is protected. If somebody--an American citizen--happens to be captured just because of who they are talking to, you know, we have the minimization--nobody gets to know who that person is. The requirements are so tough to reveal the name.

Oh, no, not in this that was filed by Tashina Gauhar, if it reasonably appears it is necessary to understand some intelligence. Good grief, that throws the door wide open. You could justify giving this constitutionally protected information to basically anybody. Well, I think this will be important to help them understand some other intelligence information. This is an outrage.

And I had no idea--I don't know of anybody who did know back in 2012--that the Obama Justice Department was throwing this door open with this kind of vague and ambiguous terminology: Oh, well, if it helps them understand other information, well, then they can see and hear and get all of what otherwise should be constitutionally protected information where the U.S. Government has been spying on U.S. citizens.

As I have said before, I mean, it is becoming more and more clear that the only thing that Orwell got wrong was the year. It wasn't 1984. But here, oh, yeah, anything that our DOJ, our intelligence, want to disseminate to their friends, even if it is somebody that may be working at the U.N., we will disclose it to anybody, because it will help them understand other information better.

For everyone's sake, this is such an outrage. And here it is, 7 years--yeah, next month--7 years since this motion and order was filed in order to allow the government to pass around top-secret information that should be not only classified, it should never have been obtained in the first place.

And then, through the investigation of the Donald Trump campaign, we find out that, actually, you don't have to be a terrorist or a member of a known terrorist organization. If you happen to be an ambassador, which, I would imagine, most all of the Members of the House and Senate have met with ambassadors and have talked to ambassadors of foreign countries. And it had never crossed my mind that our Justice Department, or our NSA, CIA, or FBI, that they may say: Oh, here is a Senator or a U.S. Congressman who is having a conversation with a foreign ambassador, so we get to surveil this Member of Congress or Senate.

But, it turns out, if you have a conversation with an ambassador, you can't be sure anymore that you don't have the FBI's electronic intelligence community noting and logging and checking everything that you are doing and saying. That is incredible. That is just almost unfathomable, due to the protections that used to be observed for American citizens. I thought we made progress.

The days when Attorney General Kennedy authorized a wiretap of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Hoover were surveilling so many people that never should have been allowed to be surveilled, I thought we had gotten beyond that. Some of those activities were unconstitutional, were illegal. I thought we had progressed to the point that Members of the House and Senate, both sides of the aisle, should be deeply offended to find out that their government may be spying on them, perhaps when they talk to an ambassador. Even if it is not a terrorist country, it is just extraordinary what we have been finding out in the last 2 years about the extent of abuses of Americans' privacy rights.

I am hoping, though, that we can work across the aisle to rein in some of these abuses, since the Obama administration is no longer there and the protection that seems some of my colleagues were trying to afford them, even though, in my mind, it meant really abuses of Americans' constitutional rights.

And then, somewhat related, my friend Rand Paul, down the hall, this story from Paul Bedard, yesterday, notes that, ``Senator Rand Paul escalated his demand for an investigation into former Obama officials who `concocted' the anti-Trump Russia scandal, revealing that former CIA director John Brennan was the key figure who legitimized the charges and discredited `dossier' against the President.''

And it is interesting. This term ``dossier'' everybody is using now because of the former MI6, a former FBI informant who became no longer trusted by the FBI, no longer usable, because he was untrustworthy by the FBI, which was never conveyed to the FISA judge, that allowed the judge to keep signing warrants based on this untrustworthy person, but now to have this. As Senator Paul was reporting in a tweet, he said that he had heard from a high-level source that Brennan helped to validate the dossier in intelligence reports.

``A high-level source tells me it was Brennan who insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier be included in the intelligence report . . . Brennan should be asked to testify under oath in Congress ASAP,'' Senator Paul tweeted.

In an earlier tweet Wednesday, Senator Paul called for wide investigation into former President Barack Obama and his team. ``Time for Congress to investigate. What did President Obama know and when? How did this hoax go on for so long unabated?''

It goes on to say:

``Brennan has denied in the past that he included the salacious dossier. . . . But at least two other top intelligence officials said he did.''

And we do know, sort of parenthetically here, it is not in the article, but we know Brennan has admitted being untruthful under oath before the Senate. He has admitted perjuring himself when it suited what he wanted to accomplish. And this is a guy that was overrunning the Trump campaign, Donald Trump and his campaign--then Donald Trump, now President Trump--just abusing his position as head of an intelligence agency.

This says, ``And Washington Post editor Bob Woodward also said that Brennan endorsed the dossier from Christopher Steele when he''--Bob Woodward--``got a copy in late 2016. Woodward said that Brennan felt it matched the Russia collusion charges he had heard.''

And I can't help but wonder now if where Brennan heard this was when it came out of his own mouth.

``The dossier was never considered true until it was recognized in intelligence assessments and only after the late Senator John McCain and top Obama officials helped circulate it, said Paul.''

``The dossier was underwritten by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign. By indicating the Kremlin interfered in the election, it helped to fuel false allegations of foreign collusion with the Trump campaign, leading to 2 years of nonstop investigations.''

`` `I'm very concerned that it's becoming more clear that the Obama administration was able to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on our campaign based on phony opposition research from the Clinton campaign. Having Federal law enforcement spy on a Presidential campaign based on phony campaign research is really distressing and the true untold story,' he said.''

This is a problem. I know others may feel otherwise.

I like Adam Schiff. He was put in charge of--back when he was in the Judiciary Committee where I was serving, we actually impeached two Federal judges who needed to be impeached, who needed to be removed, and my colleague, Adam Schiff, did a wonderful job in handling that effort. As far as I am concerned, he developed great credibility with me in his professionalism in the way he handled the impeachment of those two Federal judges.

But, over the last 2 years, as he has continued to say we know there was collusion between the Trump administration and Russia and we have evidence and on and on, his credibility when it comes to intelligence matters has now been done great harm, not only here, but abroad. So I think it is time to have a different chairman of intelligence.

It is too important that we have someone who is a chairman that hasn't spent 2 years saying something was true that it turned out wasn't. We need to have a Democrat who has credibility with foreign governments, as well as here in the House, as well as in the Senate, and there are people like that. There are people like that on both sides of the aisle that have that kind of credibility that we know just would not be spreading something that wasn't absolutely true.

So I agree with my friends that are on the Intelligence Committee, and I appreciate my fellow Texan, Mike Conaway, for pointing out this is now a problem and it needs to be addressed.

This article points out something I very much appreciate. The article is from Gregg Re with FOX News. ``President Trump, in an exclusive, wide-ranging interview Wednesday night with FOX News' Hannity''--and that was a great interview my friend Sean Hannity had with the President, really enjoyable, last night. But anyway, it says, `` . . . to release the full and unredacted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants and related documents used by the FBI to probe his campaign, saying he wants to `get to the bottom' of how the long- running Russia collusion narrative began.

``Trump told anchor Sean Hannity that his lawyers previously had advised him not to take that dramatic step out of fear that it could be considered obstruction of justice. `I do, I have plans to declassify and release. I have plans to absolutely release,' Trump said. `I have some very talented people working for me, lawyers, and they really didn't want me to do it early on. . . . A lot of people wanted me to do it a long time ago.' '' I was one of those people.

He says: ``I'm glad I didn't do it. We got a great result without having to do it, but we will. One of the reasons that my lawyers didn't want me to do it is, they said, if I do it, they'll call it a form of obstruction.''

Last fall, when I was in the Oval Office along with the President talking for a while, and then his personal attorney came in, it seemed clear to me that his personal attorney was very concerned about declassifying the documents, that it was not the time to do it.

But there is no reason not to do it now, for sure. These things need to come out. We need to see just how badly abused this system was.

My friend Jerry Nadler is chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary. I remember my first term. There was no more vocal advocate on behalf of civil liberties and privacy rights. I really hope that our chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary will join in with Republicans to try to correct this situation.

Clearly, there are still many people who are working in the Trump administration who don't want President Trump to succeed, don't want the President to succeed with what he is trying to do, what he promised he would do.

I don't think anybody has to worry about President Trump being abusive secretly of somebody's rights. But if this isn't handled now, even though Republicans are not in the majority, if we don't clamp down on what we see are clear abuses within the DOJ, within the intelligence community, with the FISA courts, then we are easily headed for a time when somebody else will come in there and they will see how the system was abused during the Obama administration.

I don't know whether that will be a Democrat or a Republican, but I am telling you, if we don't clamp down on it now, the abuses will allow the arising of a Chavez. It will allow the arising of these people who got elected and then became totalitarian.

I think there is a great deal to the poster that circulated: ``The problem with socialism is, you can vote your way into it, but you have to shoot your way out of it.''

That is what they found in Venezuela. They voted it in, but in order to have true socialism, you have to move toward totalitarian. You have to have such a powerful government. You can take from those who have earned and who have worked and give to those who are more desirable to have it, according to the government.

It is interesting that we have billionaires who are contributing massive amounts of money to move toward socialism. Obviously, they don't know their history well enough to know, that, yeah, they are considered good friends of the movement--thank you; you are a hero--but then when you move either toward communism--which true communism means there is no government. Everybody just shares and shares alike out of the goodness of their heart. You never can get there. You got to have a totalitarian government. That is why communism doesn't work.

Socialism, they welcome the help of all the rich people. But once you move toward real, true socialism, most of the time, the billionaires, they are going to end up in prison or dead and their money confiscated.

So I am amazed that so many billionaires don't realize they are just lackeys who are being appreciated now, but some day, they are going to go under the bus, and their money is going to be relieved from them.

It is a very critical time. As the Mueller investigation has finally concluded, having questioned Mr. Mueller numerous times, having done so much research on the man I feel like I know him very well--obviously, not as well as Eric Holder, who thought he would end up with an indictment to keep going.

I can't help but wonder if we have a new Attorney General who came in and realized there is nothing here. After all these subpoenas, tens of millions of dollars, it is time to wrap it up.

I really do think Mueller, left to his own devices, would have just kept an investigation going until every potential limitation on anything he had done wrong had run out.

But it is time to reform FISA courts, time to reform DOJ, time to reform our intelligence communities so the kind of abuses that have just gone on will not continue and Presidents in the future, whether Democrat or Republican, will not be tempted to abuse the system, as it is now appearing to have been done.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the indulgence. At this time, 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 1 o'clock and 6 minutes p.m.),

under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, March 29, 2019, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. Speaker, as most Members are heading back home, I was reminded in the elevator of someone who said: Well, you know, you guys are getting off this week. I have told friends and some of the media that you guys take vacations all the time.

I explained: You don't want us in session every day. Every day we are in session, we pass something that could be law restraining you in furtherance of your freedoms.

It is a good thing when Members of Congress go home, as most of us do. It is tougher for those on the West Coast, but most of us go home each weekend during recesses or maybe a quick trip to speak here or there just outside of the district. But it is a good thing for Members of Congress to go home and to hear from people back home. That is good. Anyway, sometimes the rigors at home are even more than we face here.

There are at least three things I want to address today. One of them is information that has come out.

I was there for a number of the depositions that were taken behind closed doors of witnesses--formerly from the Justice Department, some still with the Justice Department--regarding what Gregg Jarrett called ``The Russia Hoax,'' and he documents why that sounds like an appropriate title.

There is an article from FOX News about this by Gregg Re. This quoted Lisa Page. She was an interesting witness. It was interesting watching her testify.

As a former judge who has tried a tremendous number of cases in Federal court, State court, and military court, it is interesting watching people testify. Most you can get a little tell when they are being dishonest, but it has been amazing to me, especially since I have been in Congress, how many people can look you in the eye and lie. You know they are lying; they know they are lying; and often you can see they don't care. People like that are often able to pass polygraph tests because you have got to have a conscience. You cannot have numbed your conscience to the point that you are not affected by your own lying anymore.

Lisa Page's presentation as she testified was tremendously different from Peter Strzok as he testified behind closed doors. It was amazing to watch that guy. Because of his answers, I knew he was lying. And it appeared to me that there were no tells, that he just didn't seem to be bothered by the fact and that he could sit there and lie under oath. I thought perhaps he would be a great candidate to pass a lie detecter test when he is lying.

But then somebody told me, actually, he failed two lie detecter tests in the FBI, but somebody like Lisa Page removed those from his file. It is great to have friends to help you out when you do wrong and they can cover for you.

And I am being sarcastic, for friends who cannot figure that out.

But the article points out that former FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, testified: ``The FBI was ordered by the Obama DOJ not to consider charging Hillary Clinton for gross negligence in the handling of classified information.''

It goes on and says: ``Page's testimony was perhaps the most salient evidence yet that the Justice Department improperly interfered with the FBI's supposedly independent conclusions on Clinton's criminal culpability''--well, stating that that came from John Ratcliffe, a colleague of ours from Texas, here in Congress. He was questioning her, and he says: ``But when you say advice you got from the Department, you're making it sound like it was the Department''--talking about the Department of Justice--``that told you: You're not going to charge gross negligence because we're the prosecutors and we're telling you we're not going to--''

And Lisa Page interrupted and said: ``That is correct.''

Lisa Page also testified that ``the DOJ and FBI had multiple conversations . . . about charging gross negligence,'' and the DOJ decided that the term was ``constitutionally vague,'' which is really interesting because as a judge, as a lawyer, I tried cases in which gross negligence was alleged. I am not aware of any court case ever indicating that gross negligence was unconstitutionally vague. Maybe there is a case that says that. I am not aware of one.

But if there were to be one from the Supreme Court, then there would be massive criminal and civil judgments that would be due to be undone and be reversed because most lawyers who have done any research, tried any

cases, or done adequate reading know that the term ``gross negligence'' is not unconstitutionally vague, nor is it negligence.

Now, different States in the Federal Government may have slightly different definitions of negligence and gross negligence, but they are substantially the same. It has just never been a problem with constitutional vagueness from the term ``gross negligence.''

Understanding that, it would bring one to the conclusion, if Lisa Page is correct, that the prosecutors in the Obama Justice Department were saying Hillary Clinton was grossly negligent handling classified material but gross negligence is too vague so we are not going to charge her, then it shows one of two things: the Obama DOJ had some of the most ignorant lawyers in the country working there, or the Obama DOJ had some exceedingly dishonest lawyers working there. You choose.

Going back to the article, it says: ``In July 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey''--parenthetically, I would insert, another real peach-- ``publicly announced at a bombshell press conference that Clinton had been `extremely careless' in handling classified information. . . . Federal law states that gross negligence in handling the Nation's intelligence can be punished criminally with prison time or fines, and there is no requirement that defendants act intentionally. . . . Originally, Comey accused the former Secretary of State of being `grossly negligent' ''--using that term ``grossly negligent''--``in handling classified information in a draft dated May 2, 2016, but that was modified to claim that Clinton had merely been `extremely careless' in a draft dated June 10, 2016.''

Comey also said: ``Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information''--I mean, I am sure the guy from the Navy that snapped a few pictures on a submarine and had absolutely no ill intent whatsoever, though he apparently was acting recklessly and ended up doing prison time, I am sure he would love to know that there was such a high standard applied to Hillary Clinton while he, who put his life on the line, ended up having to do prison time for far less mens rea than, according to Comey, what Hillary Clinton had.

``Then-Obama administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch was spotted meeting secretly with former President Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac as the probe into Hillary Clinton, which Lynch was overseeing, continued.''

And that is pretty amazing: two planes just happen to sit down and get over to where two people can get together. If it weren't for the reporter who spotted a guy he thought to be Bill Clinton, we would never have known about this.

I wonder how many DOJ officials would have lied about this if no one had spotted it. I mean, they lied enough about other things, but they got busted being seen out in a remote spot on the tarmac get-together while the DOJ jury was still out on what they were going to do about Hillary Clinton and she had not testified.

And then we find out, actually, they never had her testify. They gave immunity to her lawyer, Cheryl Mills, and all these people who had direct evidence of potential crimes.

And the prosecutors--and I have been one. You don't give immunity to someone without knowing what they are going to say. If a lawyer comes to you and says, ``My client wants immunity,'' then you say, ``Give us a proffer. What is your client going to say?'' Because we are not just handing out immunity and then there is nothing worth giving immunity to get.

Yet the Obama Justice Department handed out immunity like candy to anybody, it appeared, who was associated and had evidence of potential crimes. They could have gotten a subpoena and gotten laptops of the witnesses, but, instead, the Obama Justice Department said: Do you know what? We will give you immunity not knowing what you are going to say because we really don't want you to say anything.

That is my interpretation, after having read the immunity agreement.

And, look, the evidence you have got, we just want to look, but we promise you we will never use any of it and we will give the stuff back. We just want to look.

That is outrageous. Were these prosecutors that incompetent or were they that dishonest? It is up to individuals to judge for themselves. But to use a term coined by James Comey, no reasonable prosecutor would have done what they did in that case. They sure didn't do it when they were trying to chase down anything they possibly could regarding our current President, Donald Trump.

It was revealed last month that FBI's top lawyer in 2016 thought Hillary Clinton and her team should have immediately realized they were mishandling `` `highly classified' information based on the obviously sensitive nature of the emails' content sent through her private server. And he believed''--this is the FBI's top lawyer--``that she''-- Hillary Clinton--``should have been prosecuted until `pretty late' in the investigation, according to a transcript of his closed-door testimony before congressional committees last October.''

And, of course, being pretty late in the investigation, actually goes along with what Lisa Page said; that DOJ prosecutors said, we are not charging her.

And then that ties in nicely with the FBI lawyers saying, Okay, I thought she should have been prosecuted. But then it ties in, by the time the DOJ lawyers/prosecutors said ``we are not charging her,'' then he decided, Okay, maybe she shouldn't be.

Among the texts between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok was one concerning the so-called ``insurance policy.''

During her interview with the Judiciary Committee, July 2018, Page was questioned at length about the texts, and essentially referred to the Russia investigation, the insurance policy referred to the Russia investigation, while explaining that officials were proceeding with caution, concerned about the implications of the case while not wanting to go at a total breakneck speed and risk burning sources, as they presumed Trump would be elected anyway.

Further, Lisa Page confirmed investigators only had a paucity of evidence at the start.

Comey, last December, similarly acknowledged that when the FBI initiated its counterintelligence probe and possible collusion between Trump campaign officials and the Russian Government in July 2016, investigators, ``didn't know whether we had anything,'' and that, ``in fact, when I was fired as Director in May 2017, I still didn't know whether there was anything to it.''

And that was from Comey.

Trey Gowdy had asked, ``I want to believe the path you threw out in Andy McCabe's office, that there is no way he gets elected, but I am afraid we can't take the risk. It is like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you are 40.'' And that was the quote from the text sent from Peter Strzok to Lisa Page in August of 2016.

So clearly, they were talking about coming up with this bogus Russia investigation as an insurance policy just in case Donald Trump got elected, then they could try to take him out of office, basically, a DOJ coup for the first time in the history of this country.

And, unfortunately, there is no George Washington around to stop this attempted coup that continues today.

``So, upon the opening of the crossfire hurricane investigation''-- which was the name that these DOJ officials who have been shown to have acted totally inappropriately; that is the name they gave the investigation into Donald Trump--it goes on to say ``we had a number of the discussions up through and including the Director regularly in which we were trying to find an answer to the question, right, which is, is there somebody associated with the Trump campaign who is working with the Russians in order to obtain damaging information about Hillary Clinton? And given that it is August, we were very aware of the speed and sensitivity that we needed to operate under.''

It is really amazing.

You see, the way our justice is supposed to work in the United States, and in every State in the union, if you have probable cause to believe a crime

was committed, then you can go after someone for that crime.

In the case of Donald Trump, his campaign, and those that worked with him, they did just the opposite. They said, Here is Donald Trump, he has got a chance of winning--though we don't think he will--so let's try to find something.

And if you go back and look, you can find an Op Ed written by, I believe, Bruce Ohr. And basically, it was from 2007 talking about Russia collusion. And, of course, Donald Trump was not mentioned at all. And then when they came up with this Russia hoax investigation without any evidence at all, there are indications that somebody-- perhaps Brennan--had asked the British to spy on Americans so it wouldn't be Americans spying on Americans, which is not supposed to happen unless there is probable cause to believe they have engaged in a crime or--under the Patriot Act--that they are conspiring with a known foreign terrorist.

That is what we were sold when the Patriot Act was reauthorized.

But as we have come to find out that has been greatly loosened up by the DOJ, CIA, NSA, and they pretty much go after everybody they want to.

I found out--I had not been aware of it until this week--that clear back in 2012, the Obama Justice Department made a motion to the FISA court to allow them to unmask information about American citizens if-- under this new incredibly relaxed language--it might be of assistance to someone outside the scope that is supposed to be allowed to see this information, if it might assist them in assessing other information.

Well, it doesn't get much more vague than that. And I know from having been on the Judiciary Committee for years, that until the Obama Administration, I had a lot of colleagues on the other side of the aisle that were extremely concerned with privacy issues and the government gathering evidence without probable cause and the government violating the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

Somehow during those years, I lost my colleagues on the other side that quit being as concerned about privacy invasions and Fourth and Fifth Amendment violations, but I am not aware of anybody on our Judiciary Committee that knew about this motion to just blow the door wide open. And, I think, against the wording of the law, they came up with a motion and got a judge to sign off, apparently, to say, Okay, yes, you can unmask and spread information to anybody outside the originally indicated circle, if it might help them assess other information.

For Heaven's sake, that is an outrage. I couldn't believe it when I was reading that motion.

And what I am saying, Mr. Speaker, it is not classified. It was ordered declassified back years ago. But I haven't met anybody here in Congress that was aware that in 2012, back at that time, the Obama DOJ was going to blow the door open and start spreading information that people should never have had it, making sure they got it.

And perhaps, that explains to some extent how somebody like Samantha Power could have, I think it was hundreds of American citizens' information unmasked. I mean, basically, they were running our intelligence agency as a political operation to go after anyone that they felt like might be a potential problem for a Democratic administration.

Very, very alarming.

This article from Town Hall is really talking about the bill H.R. 1.

I love the idea of making information more public. It was called For the People legislation. This article says that is really for the government. I would submit it is really more for Democratic politicians. The things in there that would degrade our election process are phenomenal.

We really ought to be going back to paper ballots; that would be the appropriate thing to do, and put proper safeguards on those ballots. I think it would be a good thing to do.

I also like Ron Kind's bill--he has been filing ever since he has been here--that would require each person seeking Federal elected office to disclose the identity of anyone who donates anything. You have got a $200 floor. And I like what Ron Kind, my colleague on the other side of the aisle, his bill he has been pushing for years, you know, whether you are a Republican or Democrat, we want to eliminate this having people donate without knowing who is donating.

It leaves open the possibility--and surely, it has happened--that somebody with a lot of money could give $50, $50, $150, over and over and over.

And since you don't have to report it, who it came from, they could be violating--and criminally violating--our election laws.

So I hope that we will have some cleanup of election laws, but not the kind of thing that allows you to go out and harvest votes that didn't happen until after the election.

We have an election day in this country. And to leave that election open so that you could have a Lyndon Johnson style of finding votes after the fact--whether they voted in alphabetical order or not--is just not a good idea. It leaves an opening for stealing elections.

We have an election day, and there ought to be a cutoff; no ballots accepted after this day, at this time. And don't come bringing in a bunch of ballots the next day after you find out how many ballots it is going to take to overturn the election that finished the day before.

I mean, it is third world-type activity with this election. If we heard that a dictator somewhere had put into place some of the things in H.R. 1, we would be outraged and say that is what a dictator does, and it is not right. You are trying to manipulate the election, and it is totally inappropriate.

Another topic that is, I think, very important, we took up in Judiciary Committee a bill called the Violence Against Women Act; it hadn't been reauthorized in a while. And there has been inequality in the treatment of women compared to men in a number of ways that needed to be addressed. And the Violence Against Women Act addresses some of those.

But now this bill goes too far and does damage to so many of the equality gains by women over the decades. And one of the problems created in the new Violence Against Women Act involves what most people call transgender, but the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual, Fifth Edition--which in many ways the DSM-4, DSM-5--they begin to incorporate a great deal of politics in some areas as much as they incorporated medicine.

The definition or the term given in DSM-5 for what is commonly called transgender is someone who suffers from gender dysphoria. That is a bit of a reclassification from where DSM-III and DSM-IV were.

The definition they give for gender dysphoria is ``distress that accompanies the incongruence between one's experienced and expressed gender and one's assigned or natal gender.''

Then it also defines dysphoria as a condition in which a person experiences intense feelings of depression, discontent, and, in some cases, indifference to the world around them.

Some have said, well, dysphoria is the opposite of euphoria, so it is someone who has difficulty dealing with the gender with which they were born. That is someone unhappy with, confused about, displeased with, or depressed about the gender which they have.

We have made so much progress over the years. I saw it as a felony judge. So often in cases involving domestic abuse, involving sexual assault, the women have not been treated fairly, and they have been demonized. Their victimization has not been properly considered.

Over the years, we have gotten better and our justice system has gotten better. It certainly has in Texas.

Some people, including my old friend, former Congressman Ted Poe, another former felony judge from Houston, saw the way women were not always treated properly as victims of sexual assault.

Most D.A.'s offices were required to have victim's assistance that could help, advise, counsel, and comfort victims of sexual assault. But this Violence Against Women Act that was passed by the committee with many of the Republicans voting ``no''--maybe all of us; I am not sure-- it sets women's rights back significantly.

I am pointing this out with a heart that has broken for women who I have

seen so abused. Sometimes it was even harder on the women because they would end up blaming themselves. There were many times when I would call either a woman victim or a child victim up because I could tell they had that mentality that ``I probably deserved what I got.''

After the trial was over, I would tell them: You need to understand, this is not your fault. You didn't deserve this. This was a crime committed against you. You had nothing to do with this. It was nothing that you should have done. It was a crime being committed against you, and you were not properly protected. For that, I am sorry.

Again, this Violence Against Women Act does not take into account what has come to be known. As we have tried to be more sensitive and caring, and appropriately so, for female victims of domestic abuse, sexual assault, and aggravated sexual assault, the crimes against women can be, obviously, committed against men and have been. But most often, it is against women and, therefore, deserves special consideration.

If you go to health.com, this site has information talking about female victims of sexual assault. Most people are familiar with post- traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, for soldiers. But this points out: ``In some ways, the trauma from sexual assault may be worse than the trauma from combat because, normally, soldiers are prepared and trained for combat.'' It points out that PTSD affects about 3.5 percent of U.S. adults, but women are twice as likely as men to have PTSD.

For those who are not aware, there is a difference between men and women, and these kinds of statistics bear that out.

Another article from Lindsay Burgess in March of 2018 says: ``For survivors of sexual assault, the odds of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, are high: Up to 94 percent,'' and it is talking about women who experience or are victims of assault, ``experience symptoms during the first 2 weeks after the incident, and up to 50 percent may struggle long term. For these survivors, day-to-day events . . . can hit especially hard. And like any mental health issue, PTSD can be debilitating.''

It also goes on to point out: ``PTSD is commonly associated with combat veterans, but around 50 percent of PTSD cases in the U.S. develop in the aftermath of sexual or physical violence. Despite the high number, it is important to recognize that some sexual assault survivors feel `okay' afterward, and that is equally valid.

`` `Being sexually assaulted or abused is such an invasion of our body, personal space, and safety,' says Kandee Lewis, executive director of The Positive Results Corporation. `People often can't move past that point.'

``Psychotherapist Akiami McCoy, LCSW, LCSW-C, explains that PTSD is more common among survivors who felt that their lives were in danger during the assault. `The brain does not perform well for a victim during a sexual assault,' says McCoy. She explains that this is because the `fight or flight' response kicks in. `Unfortunately, most victims are overpowered, and they can do neither. They may instead disassociate themselves from the act, and that is where the mind escapes the body until the assault is over.'

``Because dissociation is common among sexual assault survivors, during and after the event, a 2015 study looked into and found strong links between dissociation and PTSD.''

It goes on to say that most people who have lived through major trauma don't develop PTSD. Unfortunately, survivors of sexual assault and rape have particularly high chances of experiencing symptoms of the disorder.

In fact, the overwhelming majority of rape victims experience at least some PTSD symptoms within just 2 weeks. Almost a third of all women continued to experience their symptoms 9 months after being raped. Overall, more than two-thirds of all victims of sexual assault and rape develop stress reactions that qualify as moderate or severe.

In a study published in 2005 in the journal ``Behaviour Research and Therapy,'' a team of British researchers explored the connection between unwanted memories in survivors of sexual assault and the severity of PTSD symptoms. The researchers found that assault survivors who are easily and frequently triggered by visual reminders of their trauma can experience a sharp increase in their symptom's intensity.

Then this goes--I guess it is commonly reported--that one out of four women will be victims of sexual assault. When you consider, if that is accurate, those kinds of numbers, that you have that many women who have been sexually assaulted, and they go into a public restroom that is for women, in a confined space, having a biological man come walking in because he indicates he feels like a woman that day, it can trigger those experiences of sexual assault all over again.

Why would we do that? Women have made so much progress toward equality. And I understand the hearts of my Democratic friends who wanted to allow transgenders to go in any restroom they feel like they should go into. I understand they want to help people who are often victims of abuse themselves. I get the desire to help them, but why traumatize women when it is unnecessary?

We had people in the community say, well, there is no indication anybody has ever been bothered by having a biological man come into a women's restroom or private facilities for women. I am sure they were being sincere. They were not familiar, but they abound.

That is why there is a lawsuit in Fresno, California. This is a homeless shelter. Who goes to homeless shelters? Often, very often--and I have been there; I have talked to them--it is women who have been sexually abused. Often, it is domestic abuse by a partner or a spouse or a husband. They have nowhere else to go. They are afraid if they go to a friend's home, that husband will find them. They do have to be careful.

Right in Marshall, Texas, the inspiration for Kari's Law that we passed in the last Congress, she was afraid of her husband. He was abusive, but she was supposed to let him see the kids. He took them to a hotel room, and he pulled her into the bathroom and beat her with his fist for many minutes. Eventually, he took a knife and began stabbing her over 20 times, ultimately killing her, while her young daughter was trying to dial 911, not knowing she had to dial a prefix.

It was one event out of far too many events where a victim of domestic abuse, just trying to hang on and not be abused further, they go to a homeless shelter, having been abused, beaten, many times raped, and they think, at a homeless shelter, they would be protected against triggers that would make them relive the trauma of their aggravated rape.

When you talk to people who work in those facilities, they work there because they care deeply about women who have been harmed. They have immense hearts caring deeply. That is why they are there. Yet this law will end up forcing these women to be cohabitating with biological men.

Whether they are honest about feeling like a woman or not, why should we pass laws that force women victims of sexual assault to be further traumatized?

That is not appropriate for a government role.

In this case from the ``Toronto Sun,'' a predator--who claimed to be transgender--because of his sexual crimes had been declared to be a dangerous sexual offender. Let's face it, like this guy in Toronto, Canada, since you don't have to have any overt proof, Mr. Speaker, no patent proof that you feel like a woman, you can just say it, and people under the new Violence Against Women Act have to recognize it, then this will not be an isolated incident.

I have seen it, I have prosecuted it, and I have sentenced it. These predators look for any way they can to get a woman in a defensive position--a woman or a child--someone whom they can render helpless. If they will drill holes through walls so they can spy, do you think they wouldn't go to the trouble of walking in?

Because if you drill a hole and spy, Mr. Speaker, you can be arrested for being a Peeping Tom. But if you, under the new proposed laws, simply say: ``I feel like a woman today,'' then you can go in and be a voyeur all you want to,

and it opens the door to sexual deviants that should not have a door available to them.

There is another here from ``The Courier'' in the U.K. The mom of a supermarket sexual assault victim warns that her attacker will strike again.

Regarding the lawsuit from the Eastern District of California about the man who claimed to be transgender, why would we pass a law that would undo the great appropriate advances that have occurred for women's rights toward equality and toward not being victimized?

I know the intention is to try to help people who have gender dysphoria, gender confusion, from being victims so they can walk into any restroom they want to, but it is a mistake that will do far more damage to women, and it is just tragic to have that kind of law included in the Violence Against Women Act.

It was mentioned by a friend across the aisle--and I know his motivation. He has a big heart and he cares about people who are victims, and that includes people who have gender dysphoria--but he was bragging about--apparently according to what he said--that equality law was being passed yesterday that will open the door to equality for transgender across sports and education and across the board.

We are already seeing something that is just incredible. Martina Navratilova is probably one of the top five women tennis players of all time and has been an icon for so many tennis players, especially for liberal tennis players, liberal women, because she has fought so for gay rights. Yet she is now being attacked because she dared to say that she didn't think that someone who is a biological man with biological advantages over a biological woman, in most cases, should be able to compete in women's tennis.

How is that something to beat her up for verbally?

How is that something to abuse her for?

What will happen to the great progress of equality for women if that bill becomes law will be it will eliminate women's sports. You may occasionally have a woman who desires to compete as a man who is extraordinary and can win some things. The doctors talk about the potential for greater muscle mass, they are built differently, can do better in some sports than women can, as a general rule. And, yes, I know there are women that could kick the rear of many men, including me, I know, I get that. But we are talking about competition at the highest levels, and it is grossly unfair to allow a biological man to compete in women's sports. No matter how gender dysphorically confused the person is, it is unfair to the great progress of women's equality.

What that bill will do if it becomes the law is it will bring an end to women's sports. You will be left with mainly men's sports and co-ed sports--co-ed sports consisting of the women and the men who say they are women, and it will end the equality, the fairness that has come to be known in Title IX and through women's sports and women's professional sports, that they will become co-ed sports. It is tremendously unfair to women.

Now, the final thing I want to bring up is the resolution we took up in here regarding hate last week. The reason that all came about were specific comments by a Member of the House that most everyone here, not all, but most believe were anti-Semitic. For those in Congress who don't understand, anti-Semitic comments are not criticism of one person for something they have said or done. That is not anti-Semitic, even if that person happens to be Jewish. It is not. So when I criticized George Soros for damage I believe he has done to my country by the things that he has contributed to, by the damage he has done to countries yearning to be free in Europe as he has pushed them toward socialism--why would a billionaire push people toward socialism?

Because socialism means everybody is treated equally.

It is because he knows that in a Socialist country after you eliminate the middle class, what you are left with, Mr. Speaker, is a very thin veneer of a ruling class and everybody else who is ruled over by the ruling class. That is where socialism goes. Some billionaires think, oh, they will be there in that tiny, little, ruling class, not understanding that historically if you go to full-bore socialism or communism, you are going to end up killing off the billionaires and taking their money. So it is an amazing thing to see that.

I am also aware that even Israel's defense ministry has pointed out the damage that George Soros has done to Israel. Because I have criticized George Soros, people say: Oh, you are anti-Semitic.

It is not anti-Semitic to criticize somebody for things they have done, things they are paying for, or things they are contributing to just because they happen to be Jewish. What makes it anti-Semitic is when you slander or libel an entire race or group of people and smear them as all having the same characteristics and belittle them as a group.

So there was a resolution that was supposed to address specific anti- Semitic remarks by a Member of Congress, and then we hear, well, there were protests because they didn't want her condemned for anti-Semitic remarks. So it got watered down.

I printed out the copy of the resolution as it was at 3 o'clock that afternoon. I came over here ready to speak against that resolution because it had been so watered down, and I was told: well, actually, that one got pulled and they watered it down even further, and here is the new one, as of about 3:20 that afternoon.

It kept being watered down until it basically said that we are against all kinds of hate. Of course, they didn't mention the kind of political hate that would cause a Democrat--and if it had been a Republican who supported Donald Trump, that would have been what everybody talked about, oh, gosh, this is what Trump inspires, but since it was a Bernie Sanders supporter, I don't know of any Republican, including me, who has blamed Bernie Sanders for the criminal who shot Steve Scalise and tried to kill my baseball friends and colleagues. He wanted to kill them all, but that wasn't singled out.

In fact, when we were taking testimony on gun crime in Judiciary, the majority would not even allow Steve Scalise to testify. Oh, well, if he comes in and testifies, it might open the door to all kinds of other Members of Congress.

Well, why don't you just say that we will restrict the testimony from Members of Congress to those who have been shot by somebody who hates them and their party?

How about that?

But Steve was not even allowed to come testify before our committee. That kind of thing was not mentioned in what was, basically, we are against all kinds of hate, except for that, and we are also not going to call out the hate that causes the hate hoaxes which there seem to be a rash of people saying they are the victim of some hate when actually it is their hate that created a hoax.

But I have made loud and clear repetitiously, the reason I and 22 others voted against that resolution was because it did not do what it should have done, and that is, call out specific anti-Semitic comments.

Now, some were bothered that I said that there is no moral equivalence between the Holocaust and say the years of slavery, the slavery that is continuing today. I was shocked to find out this year that there are 40 million slaves in the world today, more than any time in history. We ought to do all we can to stop it. It is horrendous. It did so much damage to the core of this country for far too long. But there is a special hatred that the Jewish people have experienced that we need to stop when it starts. For those morons who didn't know, I voted against the first anti-hate resolution.

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 12 o'clock and 15 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, March 18, 2019, at noon.

Mr. Speaker, I was listening to the colloquy earlier. I have listened to comments here during debate. I have seen comments made in the media by some of the folks here in the House over the vote that was taken, basically, on an anti-hate resolution that was originally intended to address anti-Semitic remarks that were made by a Member of the House.

Yet, instead of addressing the anti-Semitic remarks, it was made a global, general: Oh, we are against almost all hate--well, not all hate. Apparently, not the kind of hate for Republicans that would cause our minority whip, Steve Scalise, to be shot and almost killed; not the violence being perpetrated on supporters of President Trump, including on college campuses. But even they, as horrendous as they were, have no moral equivalence to the Holocaust.

Expanding the resolution from a simple condemnation of anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic remarks to a panoply of other items--actually attempted to give everything ever done to anyone, except a few hate-filled actions, of course--attempting to give them the moral equivalence of the Holocaust where none exists, that is tragic.

And then to compound that regrettable action by the majority in trying to please everyone, instead of standing up and calling out anti- Jewish, hate-filled remarks, biased, bigoted remarks, then came here and condemned those of us who call them out for not standing up against anti-Semitic remarks and accuse us of being hate-filled because we took a principled stand against anti-Semitic remarks that needed to be singularized, needed to be addressed, needed to be condemned.

And not only that, to come in and also take the occasion to slander Steve King, saying: Well, he should have been called out 10 years ago.

No allegations, no specifics. Let's just generally slap somebody down because we don't like them; we don't like what they have said.

This is outrageous. This was no place for any of those actions, any of those comments, and I deeply regret people for whom I have had respect who would come in here and try to draw moral equivalence to every little action.

Look, I bet most of us--I know a lot of us have had plenty of death threats. We have had plenty of nasty comments made. But we don't go running to the media every time somebody threatens to kill us or somebody makes these outrageous threats or allegations.

The Holocaust was different. The suffering caused during the years of slavery in the United States really were unforgivable. It was a horrible thing to inflict on anybody.

I was shocked to find out here in February that there are more slaves in the world today--40 million--than there have ever been in the world's existence. That is horrendous.

We ought to take actions to stamp out slavery wherever it is, against whatever race or nationality, whatever. It has no place in the world.

But we know what leads to a Holocaust, the killing of millions of Jews simply because they were Jewish. It starts with maligning comments against Jews.

At first people will say, you know, that is really not appropriate. But then it gets watered down to where, well, there are a lot of bad comments against all kinds of people. You know, we are not for any of those.

And that is where we find ourselves this week in the House of Representatives. It has started.

People in this body knew which Members have made anti-Semitic feelings known in the past, so it is kind of hard to imagine that anybody would put someone who has espoused very strong anti-Semitic feelings in the past, put them on the committee where they can do the most damage to Israel and our relationship with Israel and then act like they had no idea: Let's just say that there are problems with all kinds of hate.

Well, there is a problem with not calling out the kind of comments that start the ball rolling toward another Holocaust.

Those of us who believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and believe, as it says up here, in that God we trust, that is the God it is talking about. That is why Moses, his full face, is up here in this body, because of the respect for the moral laws that he gave.

But there is a danger to any civilization, any country, that will not call out anti-Semitic comments when they happen. It is not enough to put in language so that if you accuse somebody of anti-Semitic comments because they have actually made them, but they happen to be of a certain race or religion, then you get condemned. They say, oh, you are against this race, or you are against this religion, because you called them down for their anti-Semitic remarks.

That resolution yesterday leaves that kind of ambivalence out there and available to people who make anti-Semitic remarks.

It needs to stop. It needs to be called out before this body loses its moral relevance to make a difference in the world.

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 1 o'clock and 1 minute p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, March 11, 2019, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, according to Proverbs, something that people who are practicing Jews and Christians believe, it says that there are seven things that are detestable to the Lord. They are: ``Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies, and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.''

It goes so far as to say, these are things the Lord hates. So the word hate is not wrong in the Jewish and Christian tradition, but anything beyond this is wrong. And, yes, there has been persecution of Christians. There has been persecution of Muslims, but anybody who is persecuting a people in the name of Christianity is not acting as a Christian. That is not part of the faith.

But what makes this so dangerous--and the reason I will vote against this resolution--is because we came here because of an anti-Semitic remark. We came here to condemn anti-Semitism, but this resolution, as changed up over the last hour, now condemns just about everything, and the reason that is so dangerous is that anti-Semitism, hatred for the children of Israel, is a very special kind of hatred that should never be watered down.

There has never been a persecution of a people like the Jewish people from 1933 to 1945. Over 6 million were killed. It started with little things, hateful remarks made about the children of Israel that grew and grew, and it was okay because it was made by somebody who had a grudge. It was let go, and it built until it led to the death of 6 million Jews. We have to say no.

We will not let it go on. That is why I will vote against it. It has watered down the sentiment.