Madeleine Dean

Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to pay tribute to a champion for environmental protection, former Pennsylvania State Senator Franklin Kury, whom I had the privilege of meeting.

Born and raised in central Pennsylvania, Franklin Kury passed away on August 16. He was 89. A devoted public servant, Kury was first elected as State representative in Northumberland County before serving as State senator.

His lasting legacy was the writing and passing of our environmental rights amendment, Article I, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, which guarantees Pennsylvanians the right to ``clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic, and esthetic values.''

It affirms that Pennsylvania's natural resources are the common property of our Commonwealth, and it makes us, Pennsylvanians and legislators, the stewards of our environment for generations yet to come.

Every legislator supported it. Article I, Section 27 was the first of its kind, though several States have now followed Kury's lead. It is a testament to its creator, who understood that we each have the right to enjoy but bear a responsibility to pass along a clean, healthy, safe environment.

Mr. Speaker, may his memory be a blessing, and may we continue his unwavering love of our planet.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I have with me just some of the products USAID had used around the world to save lives and to protect nutrition.

On February 19 of last year in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 5-year-old Suza Kenyaba died of malaria. The shipment of antimalaria drugs that could have saved her life was stranded in a distribution warehouse just a few miles away from her clinic after United States Government payments to local contractors were frozen, ordered by the President of the United States.

Suza was not alone. According to The Washington Post, 95 percent of malaria

medication shipments in the first 6 months of 2025 were either delayed or did not arrive at all. In Suza's province, death caused by malaria tripled.

There is no mystery about what happened here. Suza died because President Trump, in his first year back in office, slashed humanitarian aid by nearly 70 percent and people died.

Just look at USAID, which Trump's billionaire buddy Elon Musk, now the world's richest man, bragged about ``feeding it into the wood chipper.'' The result of this deliberate, gleeful destruction has been nearly 750,000 deaths around the world, nearly one person a minute, an irreplaceable humanitarian loss.

In sub-Saharan Africa, as many as 159,000 people are estimated to have died due to the interruption of critical USAID and PEPFAR funds. Nearly 700,000 more children are expected to develop malaria and nearly 164,000 could die from malnutrition.

These figures are from researchers around the world, and I have seen the work close up right on these different countries.

Due to the interruption of critical USAID funds, it is likely that the final death toll by 2030 is estimated to be even higher, maybe more than 9 million people. Nearly all of these deaths can be prevented, and they were being prevented for pennies on the dollar.

I serve on the Appropriations Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee. I have seen the numbers on how, sometimes for pennies a day, American food and medicine saves lives, but it does so much more.

We often argue that we spend less than 1 percent of our budget on foreign aid. I argue we should spend more on foreign aid because it returns to us in our national security and, of course, in security around the world.

What happens when we withdraw from that indispensable leadership position? Representatives from China or Russia, adversaries, visit these locations and say, how can we help you? And how would you ever trust America again?

For less than 1 percent of the Federal budget, we save millions of lives. We save people from starvation, stop pandemics before they start, and build a network of alliances and goodwill that will help achieve America's goals worldwide.

This President may imagine a fortress of America, disconnected from the world, hoarding our tremendous prosperity for ourselves or for himself, but we cannot wall ourselves off from disease and disorder. One way or another what happens abroad affects us here at home. If America does not lead, our adversaries will.

Mr. Speaker, I ask Mr. Trump to restore the funding to USAID.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Representative holding this Special Order hour.

Mr. Speaker, I rise with my colleagues to mark a grim milestone: 35 people died in ICE detention custody last year, the deadliest year in more than two decades. This year, there have been 24, with one more death reported just this afternoon.

Ordinarily, this should spark some form of reckoning or investigation. Not under this administration. The President continues to flood American cities with thuggish ICE and CBP agents, acting as though the law does not apply to them, arresting more and more people who have committed few or no crimes.

Since President Trump returned to office, ICE has arrested more than half a million people, 40 percent of whom do not have a criminal record.

I have seen this firsthand, how this administration treats people in custody. I have seen the overcrowded holding facilities at Dilley, Texas--99 children without a toy or anything to play with. I have spoken to people who have been denied critical medications and have been denied legal aid. I saw a precious child whose mouth was so infected, it had turned green.

Texas is not alone. In New York, The Washington Post detailed dozens of detainees held for days in rooms that usually hold no more than 12 for hours and hours.

People are forced to sleep sitting up, to use bathrooms without any privacy, and others with serious health conditions, including tuberculosis, an ovarian cyst, and kidney failure, lacking proper care.

In my home State of Pennsylvania, Mr. Speaker, at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a 32-year-old detainee died allegedly of suicide just 5 days after entering the ICE facility. His name is Chaofeng Ge, a Chinese national. His family wants answers.

In February of last year, Daphy Michel, a 31-year-old woman suffering from untreated severe mental illness, with a significant language barrier, was dropped off by ICE at a bus stop in freezing winter temperatures. She was wearing summer clothes, and she froze to death.

This is under this administration.

Most recently, in the Philadelphia detention camp, Parady La, a 46- year-old citizen of Cambodia, died in ICE custody on January 9 while suffering from withdrawal, which he and his family detailed.

In these conditions, conditions of deliberate neglect, deaths are not accidental. They are inevitable.

Martin Luther King warned, and others too, that justice delayed is justice denied.

For those who have died in ICE custody, waiting for their day in court, there can never be justice. For their families, there can never be peace. For our Nation, it is a failure for which we can never overcome.

This is not a matter of just humanity and ethics. It is about who we are as Americans. Not here. Not in this America.

I urge the administration to stop this illegal set of detentions and not let people pay with their liberty and their lives.