Floor Statements

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.

Mr. Speaker, Private First Class Isabella Gonzales, First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan, Sergeant Angel Rampersad, and Sergeant Michael Emmanuel Swinton.

Mr. Speaker, it has been 5 months since President Trump started his reckless war with Iran, 1 week since these young servicemembers lost their lives.

Isabella, only 19, was graduated from Hebron High School in Texas last year. Her friends remember her as outgoing and how she pushed herself through boot camp to prove her bravery.

Angel had a smile her loved ones say lit up every room she entered. She had plans to travel the world.

Tyler, at 25, leaves behind his family and a community at Southern Utah University. He was mere weeks away from finishing his MBA.

Michael leaves behind his wife Mia. In the last photo of Michael, he is holding his daughter in his arms before deployment.

Eighteen American troops are dead, and more than 400 are wounded, all in the name of an ill-conceived and ill-begotten war. Dropping more bombs on Iran is no way to remember these heroes, and if our President won't say their names, I will.

Mr. Speaker, this month, as our country celebrated 250 years of American democracy, a moment for profound reflection and unity, instead my Republican colleagues rejoiced in one year of the big, beautiful bill. It was anything but beautiful.

SNAP cuts have literally taken food out of the mouths of babes, kicking 1.5

million children from nutrition assistance, leaving families hungry and afraid for tomorrow. Because of this now-law, Medicare cuts have left seniors facing life-threatening barriers to healthcare.

Martin Luther King once said: ``Of all forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhumane.''

When you consider that this bill is on track to cost our Nation $3.4 trillion, it becomes even more nonsensical, destabilizing, and cruel. That seems to be the point.

Our Founding Fathers believed--in fact, endangered their very lives-- on the unmovable belief of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for those fortunate to call our Nation home.

Ripping healthcare coverage, nutrition, and security from our most vulnerable is no way to honor our guiding principles.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member McGovern for his remarks, and I could not agree with him more.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this rule for many reasons, as expressed--the outrage about what is in here regarding veterans and their deserved, earned benefits. For my remarks, within it, I will speak to the Sunshine Protection Act.

I worry that this bill is repeating the mistakes of the past and that it is being rushed to the floor without a robust committee process.

We tried permanent daylight saving time during the 1970s oil crisis, and it lasted less than a year. The policy was popular until parents realized their children had to travel to school in darkness, armed with flashlights. After eight Florida children were killed in traffic accidents, the Governor called on Congress to end the 2-year experiment early.

Over 50 years later, we are making the same mistake again. Please, let's not. We are doing it with less information.

The only hearing on time zones this Congress focused on tourism and golf courses. Members should have been able to speak and ask doctors how permanent daylight savings time would affect our health, safety, and well-being.

My home State is Pennsylvania. We did just this in April. In a hearing, Dr. Indira Gurubhagavatula, director of the Sleep Medicine Fellowship at UPenn, explained that our body clocks rely on bright light when we wake up in the morning and dim light in the evening before we go to bed.

Under this bill, Pennsylvanians would wake up in the darkness for months. In some parts of the State, over 100 sunrises would be after 8 a.m. Disruption in our natural sleep-wake cycle can reduce reaction time, alertness, and other measures of performance and safety.

Sleep deprivation leads to a higher risk of serious health conditions like obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, depression, and some forms of cancer.

This topic deserves robust debate, not a closed rule. Congresswoman Scanlon proposed an amendment for a permanent standard time to do just that, but it was promptly rejected.

In closing, for the health and safety of our constituents, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the rule.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member Pallone for this opportunity to talk about the Sunshine Protection Act. I rise in opposition to the bill and the danger it poses to our health and safety.

This bill, sadly, is being rushed to the floor as a political bargaining chip without thorough consideration of the impacts, and we have been here before.

Permanent time is a national decision with implications for every aspect of our health and economy. It deserves a robust, thoughtful debate and an amendment process that allows Members to test each provision of the bill.

For example, we should be able to test the provision that eliminates a State's right to opt out of daylight saving time or the decision to ``stop the clock'' on daylight saving time in the first place.

I hear broad agreement in this Chamber and beyond that the twice- yearly time changes have acute health consequences, but I want to talk about the chronic long-term impacts of this bill's late winter sunrise.

Early morning light is an important environmental cue to set our bodies' internal clocks and promote alertness, and dim evening light tells our bodies that it is time to sleep.

We function best, scientists tell us, on a physical, mental, and social level when our bodies, the Sun, and the clock on the wall are all aligned.

Kids perform better at school. Workers are more alert. That is why we observe standard time in the winter months and why we should at least consider observing it year-round.

The American Medical Association, American Academy of Sleep Medicine, National Sleep Foundation, and dozens of other societies tell us that if we stop the clock, permanent standard time is a healthier choice-- permanent standard time.

That is not the debate before us. We have been here before. In 1974, children died as a result of a permanent daylight saving time attempt or trial when they were trying to go to school in the dark for hours. In 1974, this was revoked.

More than that, we aren't voting on bills right now that would reduce the sky-high costs of food, fuel, and healthcare or address the President's war in Iran. Instead, we are considering a bill that was deadly and dangerous in the past, in the seventies, that we learned from. I hope we don't have to learn that lesson again.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, for the past 27 years, the Bipartisan Women's Caucus has held an annual wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington's Military Women's Memorial. It is a solemn event, a time when Republicans and Democrats come together to honor the immense service of women in the United States Armed Forces--until this year.

Several military branches declined to participate in what would have been the 28th annual ceremony, leading to the event being canceled. They cited Trump's executive order and Department of Defense guidance that bans the celebration of identity months and diversity events.

DEI? America is home to more than 2 million living women veterans. For 200 years, women have fought and sacrificed for our Nation.

DEI? Instead of honoring their service, the Trump administration is trying to erase women's contributions to our Nation and our history.

DEI? They want to deny and diminish the sacrifice of women veterans. Can you imagine anything more un-American?

Mr. Speaker, DEI. This administration will not ever erase their devotion, excellence, and integrity.

Agriculture is the largest industry in my Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Farmers are stewards of our land. For some, they carry generations of family work. For all, they fulfill our most basic need. Their crops feed us.

When an extreme, unexpected cold front hit at the end of April, it was devastating for many of our crops, especially the fruits, apples, peaches, and pears. Our Commonwealth's specialty crop industry could face staggering losses between $150 and $200 million. Losses of this magnitude, especially impossible to prepare for, would be insurmountable to our farmers, especially in our rural communities.

That is why my colleagues and I, alongside Governor Josh Shapiro, urged Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to declare a Secretarial Disaster Declaration, a truly bipartisan effort to bring much-needed relief to our crop growers.

I am grateful that last week, Secretary Rollins signed the declaration for 17 counties, allowing our farmers to secure necessary recovery loans. When our farmers thrive, we all do.

Mr. Speaker, Tuesday was primary day in Pennsylvania. It was a safe, successful election where thousands of voters made their voices and their vote known.

Yet, it was a dark reminder that voting rights across the country are under attack. On April 29, the Supreme Court of the United States gutted the Voting Rights Act, opening the door to coordinated attacks on Black voters, particularly in the South.

Emboldened by the Court, Republican Governors and legislatures immediately moved to redraw congressional maps in their favor by dismantling majority-Black districts. Not since Jim Crow have we witnessed such a blatant and disgusting effort to disenfranchise Black voters.

I had the privilege, many of us had the privilege of serving alongside the Honorable John Robert Lewis. In times like these, I am reminded of his words. He would say: ``When you see something that is not right, that is not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something.''

Voting is our sacred right. It is the lifeblood of our democracy. Every one of us must protect it. We must do something before it is too late.

Mr. Speaker, ``I don't think about Americans' financial situation at all . . . I don't think about anybody . . .''

Madam Speaker, over the past too many years, I have found it important to point out our leaders' failures to tell the truth. This week I heard something different, though no less troubling. I heard the truth.

On his way to China this week, the President said he does not care about Americans' financial situation, while back home, inflation is surging.

Gas in my home of Montgomery, Pennsylvania, has skyrocketed to $4.69 per gallon. Diesel is even higher, farmers input costs soaring. Groceries, utilities, rent, and all sorts of goods are all up.

Through his illegal tariffs, grotesque immigration policies, and now a reckless $30 billion-to-date, poorly thought out, deadly war with Iran, everything costs more.

The President does not care, and now he wants American taxpayers to fund his billion-dollar golden ballroom. Congressional Republicans somehow champion it.

Madam Speaker, the President may not think about lowering costs. He may not care, but I do.

Mr. Speaker, the world watched in awe as three astronauts from NASA and one astronaut from the Canadian Space Agency became the first people to travel to the Moon in more than 50 years.

I applaud Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen for their exploration and their excellence.

Through the Artemis II mission, these courageous four ventured farther from Earth than humankind has ever been, reminding us of our relative smallness and the love and common humanity that binds us together. From 250,000 miles away, they saw a planet with no borders.

Yet a feat as interstellar as Artemis is, it offers some local pride. Bally Ribbon Mills from Bally, PA, manufactured 3-D woven material, super-strength textiles to support thermal protections for the spacecraft.

McDanel, a company from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, manufactured the windows. Mission Specialist Christina Koch, though a Michigander, is a Philly sports fan.

Victor Glover summed it up: From up here, you look like one thing. We are all one people.

Mr. Speaker, last weekend, I flew through Philadelphia International Airport where three security checkpoints are now closed.

The lines were long, yet our dedicated TSA officers moved us through security with speed, efficiency, and professionalism.

They are doing the work, keeping us safe, even though it has been more than a month since they have been paid. The only reason their paychecks have stopped is because Republicans in Congress, led by the Speaker of the House, refused to act.

The Speaker could have held a vote today or a month ago to fund TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and our cybersecurity folks, all the parts of the Department of Homeland Security that

are untainted by ICE's cruelty and corruption.

Republicans are refusing to pay Federal workers. Withholding paychecks from dedicated public servants does not make America safer. It makes us more vulnerable in our neighborhoods, our airports, and overseas.

Mr. Speaker, listen to Americans. Hold ICE accountable and fund TSA now.

Mr. Speaker, President Trump has launched us into a war of choice with Iran, with no clear explanation. Yet we know some of the consequences. Six U.S. servicemembers have been killed, dozens injured. More than 40,000 of our troops, including hundreds of Pennsylvanians, are at risk. Thousands of American citizens are stranded.

I do not mourn the loss of Ayatollah Khamenei. Yet I am greatly concerned about the danger and destruction that Mr. Trump has unleashed in the Middle East.

Abraham Lincoln wrote that our Founders resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power to bring oppression of war upon our Nation.

That power lies with Congress because we are closest to the people, and it is why I voted today in favor of the War Powers Resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I lift the names of our fallen soldiers. Just as our colleagues did a moment ago, I lift their names in prayer: Captain Cody Khork, Sergeant First Class Nicole Amor, Sergeant First Class Noah Tietjens, Sergeant Declan Coady, Major Jeffrey O'Brien, and Chief Warrant Officer Robert Marzan.

God bless them, and God bless their families.

Mr. Speaker, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress, and Congress alone, the ``power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises.''

As Chief Justice John Roberts correctly noted last week, the Framers were explicit: The executive has no given power to reach into the pockets of the people to impose taxes and tariffs.

The Supreme Court has now confirmed two truths that we have known: Tariffs are a tax on consumers, on you and me; and number two, the President's disastrous, on-again-off-again tariffs are not just illegal, they are also unconstitutional. I am thankful to the Court for so clearly recognizing and rooting their opinion in our Constitution.

Now we must turn our focus to those who unjustly suffered because of this President's economic chaos. The Treasury Department must immediately issue refunds for the $134 billion stolen from American families and businesses.

I call upon all of my colleagues in Congress, Republicans and Democrats, let's work together to create tariff policy that supports U.S. economic objectives, laws that give businesses the security and time needed for investments, and that bring costs down for consumers.