Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, 3 years ago today, a Saudi Air Force officer with ties to al-Qaida attacked Naval Air Station Pensacola resulting in the deaths of Ensign Joshua Kaleb, Airman Apprentice Cameron Walters, and Airman Mohammed Haitham; this also included the injury of eight others, including brave sheriff's deputies and sailors.

Saudi Arabia had the responsibility to screen and monitor their officers, and they failed. The family members who lost their loved ones live with this pain every day, and the Saudi Government's initial promise made directly to me that they would compensate the grieving families has resulted in nothing.

For this reason, I am introducing the Saudi Arabia December 6, 2019, Anti-Terror and Accountability Act.

This bill would prohibit the DOD from funding any Saudi-led proxy wars and would end the export of weapons and logistical services to Saudi Arabia. This legislation would halt the military officer exchange programs with Saudi Arabia. It would also set aside $10 million within the state-sponsored terrorism fund so that the victims would be able to be compensated.

The legislation is budget neutral as it draws from a reallocation from funds that would otherwise go to a war in Ukraine.

It is time that we demonstrate national solidarity on the anniversary of this terrorist attack. We should send Saudi Arabia a message, not more weapons.

Madam Speaker, I want to honor the legacy of Michael Beedie, who has recently announced his departure as Fort Walton Beach, Florida's City Manager. Michael has been serving Fort Walton Beach--the city he was born and raised in--since 2005, when he started as City Engineer. As a licensed engineer in the State of Florida with a background in Civil Engineering, Michael is a perfect example of the exceptional value someone brings to the community through dedicated service. After four years of service as the City Engineer, Michael became the Engineering & Utility Services Director, overseeing city employees spanning the areas of code enforcement, construction services, facilities maintenance, engineering, and more.

Michael possesses exceptional vigor, dedication, and successful management skills that resulted in his promotion to City Manager in 2012. Since then, he has served his community for more than ten years. His work to improve the city's recreational facilities, expand development, promote efficiency, and responsibly manage the city's budget is exemplary.

While he will not be in City Hall to oversee the completion of his latest work, Fort Walton Beach is destined for success in the many years ahead. I am proud to have worked with Michael for many years in many roles. He has the heart of a servant and the brain of a curious innovator. I am as proud to wish him well as I have been to call him a neighbor and friend.

Mr. Speaker, it is head-spinning that House Democrats either want to defund the police, as Judiciary member Cori Bush does, or they want to Federalize the police, as Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler does. I am against both, here is why.

In my community, the voters in one of the reddest counties in Florida voted to raise their own taxes to fund school resource officers. Protecting our schools was that important, and we understood that that was the responsibility of our community.

Now, as places like Detroit, Chicago, almost every major metropolitan area in California, defund their police as some virtue signal, as some way to sacrifice the safety of their constituents on the altar of wokeism, now they want my Florida constituents to subsidize the bad decisions that they make at the State and local level, both constitutionally and practically.

The police power is not a power of the Federal Government, it is a power of our State and local governments. When we excessively entangle ourselves in that, we do to law enforcement what we shamefully did to education.

In our schools all across this land there was innovation, creativity, school projects, different ways to learn. Then the Republicans and Democrats joined with President Bush in passing the No Child Left Behind Act, and we got Common Core, in this theory that we had to have every kid on the same page, in the same book, on the same day, and we lost what was so special about it. We don't want to do that now to law enforcement. You see, this entire package of legislation today is intended to do just that.

They don't want to fund the police. They want to edict the police to the Federal dollar. That comes with a more efficient way to ensure centralized decisionmaking, not the localized decisionmaking that our Constitution promises, and that has offered great promise to this country for generations.

Do not buy this theory that this legislation is intended to help law enforcement. The best thing we could do for law enforcement is get out of their way, have their back, and call out the politicians like those in Congress who keep trying to defund the police and devalue the commitment they make to our communities.

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

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

Madam Speaker, my first vote on September 13, 2022, was not cast because of a proxy vote communications error. Further, my letter sent to the Clerk of the U S. House of Representatives on September 13, 2022, altered my proxy designation before Role Call No. 421, which was received and verified pursuant to H. Res. 8. Had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 421.

Madam Speaker, I rise to recognize the life and accomplishments of Vincent Ungro. With his passing on September 5, 2022, America lost a true patriot. Vincent, also known as Vinny to friends and family, was a proud American from Staten Island. He had a heart of gold and a head for politics.

Vinny was never afraid to voice his opinions and beliefs, regardless of what others might think. He ran the popular `Conservative Dad' Facebook page, where he advocated for conservatism and capitalism.

Family and friends will remember Vinny for fighting for what he believed in. His passion for politics is only matched by his love for the New York Islanders and Metallica.

In addition to being a 2020 National Pulse Writing Fellow, Vinny was a member and supporter of the New York Young Republican Club.

He also cared deeply for animals and loved working for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).

As much as Vinny loved politics, family mattered most to him. He cherished his parents, Stephen and Jean; his wife, Judith; his children, Steve, Nicholas, Gabriella, and Mia; and grandkids, Madison, Gabriella, Natalie, and Oliver.

Vinny was an extraordinary individual, and he will be missed by all.

Madam Speaker, on behalf of the United States Congress, I recognize the remarkable life lived by Vincent Ungro today. I thank him for all he did for his community and country.

Mr. Chair, I was unable to make it to the floor in time for the first vote today for the purpose of constituent outreach. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall No. 379.

Members Recorded Pursuant to House Resolution 8, 117th Congress

Auchincloss (Beyer)

Barragan (Beyer)

Bowman (Neguse)

Boyle, Brendan F. (Beyer)

Carter (TX) (Weber (TX))

Correa (Beyer)

Crist (Wasserman Schultz)

Demings (Kelly (IL))

Escobar (Garcia (TX))

Foster (Spanberger)

Gallego (Soto)

Gosar (Weber (TX))

Houlahan (Spanberger)

Kahele (Kelly (IL))

Katko (Joyce (OH))

Keating (Beyer)

Kirkpatrick (Pallone)

Lawson (FL) (Evans)

Leger Fernandez (Kuster)

Meng (Kuster)

Moore (WI) (Beyer)

Newman (Beyer)

Palazzo (Fleischmann)

Pingree (Kuster)

Porter (Neguse)

Salazar (Kim (CA))

San Nicolas (Takano)

Sires (Pallone)

Smucker (Keller)

Stevens (Kuster)

Taylor (Weber (TX))

Thompson (MS) (Bishop (GA))

Walorski (Fleischmann)

Williams (GA) (Neguse)

Wilson (SC) (Norman)

Amendment No. 137 Offered by Ms. Tlaib

Mr. Speaker, maybe someone should have sent an active shooter alert to police in Uvalde. Wait. They had the alert. They were in a school building with an active shooter and didn't take action.

America is at her best when she encourages her citizens to have safe, responsible gun ownership. But under Democrats, instead, we have a government that instead wants to stigmatize and scare people about guns.

Mr. Speaker, imagine you are at a concert with 5,000 people and everyone gets an alert on their phone ``active shooter'' because six blocks away there was a gunfire that went off. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe it was a tragedy.

Would that make the circumstance safer?

Of course not. It would lead to stampede, tragedy, hysteria, mistake, perhaps even more death. This bill is like yelling ``fire'' in a movie theater, except the fire is in another movie theater across the street. The bill makes no mention of distance requirements.

Will we be notified of any active shootings within 1 mile, 5 miles, 10 miles?

What is an active shooter?

A drive-by in an inner city?

A spousal murder in a suburb?

If you live in or near Democrat-run cities, it sounds like your phone will be buzzing off the hook. Some of our cities have shootings every day where multiple people are injured, and often this happens in the jurisdictions with the most intense and liberty-depriving gun control.

The bill states that an active shooter is defined as an individual ``determined to pose an active, imminent threat to people in a populated area.'' That sounds like a sizable amount of the people walking around the south side of Chicago every day.

Who is making this determination?

Is it in a millisecond?

By the time the alerts go out, it may be far too late to do any good. This bill is useless and foolish. Working on police response times is, of course, a worthy goal, a worthy goal for the States where the Constitution resides the police power. But alerting thousands of people to what may or may not have happened 30 minutes ago or 30 blocks away is, in fact, dangerous.

So one has to ask: What is the true purpose of this bill?

Why do the Democrats want to use the power of government to bombard your cellphone with active shooter alerts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?

It is because they want you to be afraid of the Second Amendment. It is because they want you to be afraid of responsible gun ownership. They hope that if they program you and bombard you long enough, that you will hate your own Second Amendment rights, or you may tattle on your neighbor who is lawfully and rightfully exercising theirs. The American people should not fall for this.

Madam Speaker, I hereby remove my name as cosponsor of

Madam Speaker, if House Democrats were so worried about violence, they wouldn't open the borders, open the prisons, and then disarm law-abiding Americans who want to protect themselves and protect their families.

Chairman Nadler says that Republicans shouldn't lecture about constitutional rights, but it was the last Democrat speaker, Mr. Cicilline, who in the House Judiciary Committee said, Spare me the bullshit about constitutional rights. So pardon us for standing up for the Constitution and the very due process that ensures that we are able to have a civil, functioning society in this country.

Speaker Pelosi asks the question: Well, if you knew when the next act of violence would be, why wouldn't you want to stop it? What is this, the United States Congress, or the plot for the movie ``Minority Report''?

The best you could ever hope to have in terms of warning is what we had in the Parkland case, where a neighbor saw Nikolas Cruz preparing for a school shooting, called the FBI, and because they were so focused on the bureaucracy, they didn't take action.

That is why I am against federalizing the regular police and it is why I am against federalizing the school police, because the more the FBI was involved, the more they botched the case, and maybe there are people dead who didn't need to be.

These red flag laws violate our Second Amendment rights, our Fifth Amendment rights, and when they are done at the national level, they violate our Tenth Amendment rights. It is crazy that we are considering legislation to bribe the States to take rights away from our fellow Americans, and it is nuts that Republicans in the Senate, the very Republicans who say they are the classic, liberty-minded conservatives, they are now working with Democrats on this very endeavor to Federalize the school police and to engage in this bribery for the sake of deprivation of rights.

Let me give you this warning, my friends: It is no victory, as Mr. Carbajal said, that in my beloved Florida we have used red flag laws 8,000 times. There weren't 8,000 school shooters we stopped, probably not even 8,000 criminals.

What we do see is that these red flag laws are used in divorce proceedings, they are used in every type of dispute and shouldn't be a cudgel that way. We will stand up for their rights. That is no bullshit; we will.

Madam Speaker, Speaker Pelosi tells us she is on a crusade for the children. Someone should maybe remind the Speaker the Crusades did not always end well when they were reflexively driven by emotion and riddled with poor planning.

No, this is no crusade for the children. If it were, you wouldn't leave our children as sitting ducks in gun-free zones when they go to school every day.

The Speaker says we need action. We are for action. How about the action of my bill to create a national stand-your-ground law to strengthen self-defense, or Richard Hudson's bill for national concealed carry, or any number of proposals Republicans have offered to unlock the safe and secure environment when we have our military veterans and our former members of law enforcement able to carry a firearm responsibly in schools to be able to respond to these acts of violence?

No, their version of action is more gun control and raising the age to be able to buy certain firearms. Well, on November 25, 2021, a crazed lunatic with a knife broke into a home in El Paso and began assaulting a woman inside. The 20-year-old homeowner grabbed his rifle and killed the assailant. That is action.

In 2017, in Sutherland Springs, Texas, a gunman open fired inside the First Baptist Church. A Good Samaritan grabbed his AR-15 and engaged the

shooter, stopping him from further carnage--a good use for an AR-15.

In 2019, in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, a 19-year-old killed three would- be burglars who broke into his home.

These situations happen every day. There would be more death and more bloodshed if we were to accept these proposals from the Democrats.

The Second Amendment isn't about hunting or about self-defense; it is about power. It is about the power that is reserved in the citizenry to curate a balance so that Americans are not overrun by tyranny. Thank God we haven't had to use the Second Amendment for the purpose that some might have envisioned necessary when our Founders were creating the Constitution.

That power belongs to the people, not to the Democrats trying to take their rights away.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Well, we have heard the plan from Democrats. This is not a modest, trimming around the edges of gun laws. It has been a full-throated assault on the Second Amendment; a desire to deprive people of the weapons that they choose at the age that they achieve majority.

And we have heard countless examples of where the good guy with the gun has been the difference between more or less bloodshed.

But this is particularly an aggrieved time to bring this legislation forward because we heard the Speaker of the House recently say that members of the Republican Party were members of a cult. So you now have House Democrats demeaning, defaming, calling extremists, tens of millions of Americans, while they try to disarm you and then subsequently defund the police.

And so no good guys are coming when the woke mob ends up at your door. That is their plan for America.

And gun control, unrestrained gun control is a key part of it. And just like they said, they will pack the Court; they will blow up the filibuster; they will abuse every mores of this place for the opportunity to take down the Second Amendment. That is what is at issue. That is what we are fighting for.

And Republicans in the United States Senate should not sign up for this charade. They should stand with our fellow Americans for the Constitution and with American gun owners.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is ostensibly to fight extremism, which wouldn't be so objectionable if the people it empowered weren't so damn extreme.

They are so extreme, they would chill speech at school board meetings by targeting parents as domestic terrorists. Obey, accept the mandates, accept the requirements, the CRT, or you will be punished at the hands of your own government.

They are so extreme, they would leak a Supreme Court draft opinion so that they could gaslight violence and intimidation against the Court, all so that the law would abandon those unborn lives and beating hearts.

They are so extreme, they would weaponize the Department of Justice against a sitting President over an election that Hillary Clinton lost. It was the Russians, they told us, and we were extreme if we said it was them all along. Now we know it was.

The last press secretary thought that COVID discussions on Facebook, rooted in science, were so extreme that Mark Zuckerberg had to deplatform these people, take them away from the digital world. This press secretary wrongly tweeted that FOX News is racist. I wonder if she thinks all of FOX's viewers are dangers to the American people.

Are you a domestic extremist? This bill is about whether or not you want the Department of Homeland Security looking over your shoulder at the shows you watch, the websites you visit, some politically incorrect meme you liked, some joke you forwarded, and any bad association you might have had. If you are not a racist, maybe your neighbor is, and you weren't antiracist enough to disallow it.

These things aren't criminal, of course. They are bad politics, at worst, in most cases, which is exactly the point of this bill. They are trying to deploy criminal, even antiterrorism, authorities against what they deem is bad politics.

How long until mainstream Christianity is deemed domestic extremism?

All the domestic extremists, they declare their pronouns. So if you don't declare your pronouns, maybe you are a domestic extremist, too.

Under this bill, how long until Facebook jail means a government file on you, a higher interest rate on your home loan, or your spouse fired from their job?

At first, I was a critic of the disinformation board, but it might go down as one of the most efficient government entities in all of history. It took only one action, and it actually shut down disinformation by pausing its own activities.

The worst part of this bill is how it puts a target on the back of every one of our military servicemembers. This bill will sic the FBI on our military, not to prevent or investigate crimes, but to prosecute thought crimes.

The problem with our military is wokeness at the Pentagon, not white

supremacy in the ranks. Even the much-maligned Lloyd Austin admitted that 99 percent are doing the right thing. A recent DOD report showed that less than 100 people in the force of 2 million were problematic in any way.

We seem so intent on a neo-Nazi witch hunt in our own battalions while we freely send $40 billion, much of which will end up in the hands of the Azov Battalion, without much inquiry.

I am sincerely worried about domestic extremism, but from my vantage point, it is coming from America's political left. You should really think about that, how domestic extremism is truly in the eye of the beholder, perhaps the beholder of power, and power is about to change hands. Who will be the domestic extremists then?

Madam Speaker, I rise to recognize the Fort Walton Beach Chamber of Commerce for the historical contribution they have made in commemorating the Doolittle Raiders.

The mission of the Doolittle Raiders was to strike back at the Japanese military after their attack on Pearl Harbor. Lt. Colonel James Doolittle began training the Doolittle Raiders at Eglin Air Force Base just weeks before their historic raid. Before leaving Eglin, the Doolittle Raiders would become some of the greatest and most capable fighting pilots of all time.

In April of 1942, the Doolittle Raiders began their historic flight. However, they were reported by a Japanese vessel off the coast of California. They decided to launch their mission early in order to surprise the Japanese fleet that had been notified of their attack. Unfortunately, this early launch meant they would not have enough gas to make it to their designated landing place. As a result, many would have to either bail or perform a crash landing.

Despite this, the historic Doolittle Raid was invaluable to American morale in the early stages of WWII, which inevitably changed its course.

In the years following WWII, the Raiders held reunions commemorating the Doolittle Raid and all it stood for. Each reunion they would toast the Raiders who had passed since their last meeting. In 2013, the last reunion took place in Fort Walton Beach, and in 2019, the last Doolittle Raider, Bud Cole, passed away.

This year, the Fort Walton Beach Chamber of Commerce sponsored a final commemorative toast to Bud Cole and the Doolittle Raiders at Northwest Florida State College. The distinguished honor bestowed upon these great servicemen by the Fort Walton Beach Chamber will never be forgotten.

Madam Speaker, on behalf of the United States Congress, I am privileged to recognize Fort Walton Beach Chamber of Commerce and their commitment to preserving the memory of these national heroes. I thank them for their service and dedication to the legacies of these historic U.S. Servicemembers.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the men and women of Naval Air Station Pensacola on being named Navy Installations Command's Large Installation of the Year.

I am continuously in awe of the dedication and patriotism our servicemembers and defense civilians display day-in and day-out to ensure the defense of our great Nation and advance the cause of liberty.

The patriots of NAS Pensacola conducted 50,000 operations in fiscal year 2021 without mishap. An astonishing feat given the inherently dangerous nature of military training.

The installation established the Emergency Family Assistance Center to provide relief and aid in the recovery, shelter, and assistance of 267 Hurricane Sally victims. We ask our servicemembers and their families to sacrifice so much, and the ability to decompress and enjoy leisure time with family and friends is critical to their well-being and readiness. To that end, NAS Pensacola's morale, welfare, and recreation department received a five-star rating and was ranked number one among large bases.

Mr. Speaker, it is my distinct privilege to serve Florida's First Congressional District and to represent the brave men and women of NAS Pensacola. The best is yet to come.