Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I am so pleased to introduce Cantor Dr. Joel Gluck of Rhode Island, who delivered today's opening prayer for the House of Representatives. I could not think of someone better to open today's session, especially ahead of the Jewish high holidays later this month.

Cantor Gluck is a committed member of the Rhode Island community. A native of Warwick, Rhode Island, he serves as spiritual leader of United Brothers Synagogue in my hometown of Bristol, and as artistic director of the Shireinu, the Jewish Community Chorus of Temple Sinai, in Cranston, Rhode Island.

His leadership expands beyond his faith and is recognized by others in Rhode Island. He teaches anatomy and physiology at Cranston High School West and the Community College of Rhode Island, where he is president of the Part-Time Faculty Association.

I am proud to represent Rhode Island's Second Congressional District in Congress and to call Cantor Gluck a constituent.

Mr. Speaker, I wish our Jewish neighbors in Rhode Island and across the country a meaningful holiday season.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and to honor the nearly 3,000 Americans we lost that day, including nine Rhode Islanders. I recognize the bravery of the first responders who ran toward danger to save others: firefighters, police officers, paramedics, ordinary people who became heroes, and who we continue to lose today due to illnesses tied to their service at Ground Zero.

We remember that in the days after 9/11, our Nation stood united, regardless of party, in grief and in resolve. In the face of tragedy, we showed the world how strong a united America can be.

As a member of the Homeland Security Committee, I take seriously our duty to ensure that such an attack never happens again and to honor the sacrifices of the 9/11 generation with the vigilance of this one.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call attention to a plot that threatens to undermine the security of the upcoming elections.

A whistleblower has revealed that the Trump administration has directed the United States Postal Service to secretly build an untested, illegal system to intercept mail ballots on their way to State election administrators. It is a system that will disenfranchise thousands of American citizens and throw the November elections into chaos.

The whistleblower reports that under this new system, the Trump administration is building their own list of who they think should be eligible to vote, and Postal Service workers will be required to scan bar codes on ballots to see if the voter appears on the Trump administration's list, a list that has not been made publicly available. They admit that it exists, but they have not shown the list to the public.

If just one bar code on just one ballot does not match a name on this secret list, then the whole batch of ballots numbering as many as 10,000 will not be delivered to the States to be counted.

Think about that. Do we really trust the Trump administration's secret list of who they think should be eligible to vote? And if one ballot is found not to match, should thousands of others also be seized? They are launching this system with no testing at all and with no time to identify and fix the bugs in the system.

That is to say nothing of the fact that they are doing this illegally. They have defied multiple court orders telling them to stop.

This secret system that they are forcing on the American people without the consent of Congress threatens to throw our elections into chaos. But the chaos is the point.

President Trump knows Republicans can't win the midterm elections on the merits--not with this economy, not with these tariffs, not with this war.

The Republicans have given up on trying to earn the votes of most Americans, and instead, they are trying to ensure that votes do not get counted, unless the voters are on their secret list.

Vote by mail is how millions of Americans, especially seniors, exercise their right to vote. President Trump even voted by mail himself just last month.

There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in American elections. We must ensure our elections are secure, and I am open to working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do that, but launching an untested, illegal, last-minute system that can silently wipe out thousands of legitimate ballots is a recipe for disaster.

I am joining a number of our colleagues in filing an amicus brief to stop this half-baked and dangerous attempt to interfere with American elections.

When Democrats take back the majority, we will end this nonsense. We will fight for every Americans' right to vote and defend our democracy from those who seek to undermine it from within.

Iran War

Mr. Speaker, the President's unnecessary war in Iran has now lasted 6 months with no end in sight. Mr. Speaker, 18 American servicemembers are dead. Countless civilians, including 100 children, have been bombed in their school.

This war has now cost $100 billion and counting. Think of what we could have done instead with $100 billion. We could have built 1 million new affordable homes for Americans. We could have repaired 80,000 bridges, made insulin free for every American who needs it, and given a $1,000 tax cut to every middle-class family. Instead, we are wasting this money on a completely unnecessary war with no end in sight.

Because of this stupid war, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, and the cost of gas is skyrocketing. There has been a 40 percent increase since before the war began. The average American has paid $500 more for gas in the last 6 months than they would have if the President had never bungled us into this stupid and unnecessary war.

To make it all worse, our top military leaders are sounding the alarm that we are depleting our munitions to the point that it has made us more vulnerable and less safe than we were before.

The American people are tired of politicians sending other people's kids to fight and die in unnecessary wars in the Middle East.

The President promised people that he would be different, but he is not. This is just another unnecessary war with no plan and no regard for what the American people actually need.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for his leadership and partnership.

Mr. Speaker, House Republicans are pushing a voter suppression bill that would severely restrict the mail ballots that seniors, rural Americans, and so many others rely on, and would throw our elections into chaos late in the cycle while people are already casting their ballots.

They are doing this at the behest of Donald Trump, who continues to obsess over his 2020 election loss and promote election conspiracy theories.

They are trying to trick us into supporting their voter suppression bill by calling it the Stop Insider Trading Act and including watered down language that would still allow Members of Congress to own stocks and to trade stocks with only some new restrictions.

Make no mistake, this is a trap. This bill is to make it harder for eligible Americans to vote. The Republican leadership is trying to trick us into supporting it by calling it a congressional stock trading ban, even though it doesn't actually fully ban congressional stock trading.

This bill also does nothing to stop the biggest stock trader in Washington, President Trump, who has made millions of dollars trading stocks for the companies that he regulates--tech companies, healthcare companies, defense companies, and more.

The American people are sick of corruption. The American people are sick of politicians getting rich off of inside information while working people struggle. The American people want a real stock trading ban for politicians in Washington.

Last year, I worked with reformers on both sides of the aisle, including Mr. Roy, whose partnership I very much appreciated. Republicans and Democrats wrote a strong bill that will actually ban congressional stock trading with no loopholes and no gimmicks. That is what the American people want.

Mr. Speaker, for this reason and at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to committee.

If the House rules permitted it, I would have offered that motion with an important amendment to this bill. My amendment would replace this Republican voter suppression bill with the Restore Trust in Government Act, our bill to fully ban stock trading in Congress and the Oval Office. Mr. Speaker, 190 Members have signed on to support this bill, and it is time to bring it to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record immediately prior to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting it.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

Mr. Speaker, in recent days, three more American servicemembers have been killed in the Iran war, while another is missing, and 1,600 civilians have been killed--not combatants--with our tax dollars.

Here at home, the average price of gasoline is above $4 a gallon again, and we continue to spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money on this unnecessary war that President Trump started. This is money that could have been spent to make people's lives better here at home.

President Trump got us into this war for no good reason, with no good plan, and no regard for the pain that it is causing. The American people are tired of endless wars, tired of unnecessary bloodshed, tired of children being bombed in their schools with our tax dollars, and tired of our best and brightest coming home in caskets for a war that nobody can explain.

It is time to put the adults back in charge. Put experienced negotiators at the table to find an end to this unnecessary war, not the President's relatives and real estate buddies.

It is time to elect a new majority here in Congress that takes our responsibility to be a check on the President seriously. We need people here in Congress who have the courage to say ``no'' when the President has a bad idea, especially when it gets people killed.

We grieve for the American servicemembers who have lost their lives in this war and for their families, and we pray that the Members of this Congress can find the courage to stand up and end this unnecessary war.

Mr. Speaker, in the last week, ICE agents shot and killed two more innocent people in broad daylight.

In both cases, the people who they shot and killed weren't even the people who they were looking for. In both cases, they shot and killed people who were on their way to work in front of their families.

In Houston last week, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a construction worker who has lived in the United States for 35 years, a husband with three children, no criminal record, was driving to work with the lunch that his wife had packed for him, and his brother riding in the passenger seat, when ICE agents rammed his vehicle and shot him because they thought he was someone else.

Yesterday, in Maine, Joan Sebastian Guerrero, 26 years old, legally authorized to work in the United States--legally authorized--was shot and killed by ICE agents who thought he was somebody else, in front of his wife and his 3-year-old daughter, who screamed and wearing her Bluey pajamas, while she watched her father bleed to death.

How many more innocent people have to be killed in broad daylight? How many more children have to watch their parents shot to death by masked men too cowardly to show their faces? When will this madness stop?

When he took his position, Secretary Mullin said that his goal was to get the Department off the front page of the news. Well, you are back on the goddamned front page now with two innocent people gunned down in broad daylight. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. It is total chaos.

Do you know what? In both of these shootings in Texas and in Maine, none of the agents were wearing their body cameras. Congress gave them tens of millions of dollars for body cameras, and none of them were wearing them.

Where is the accountability? Do you want to know why I won't vote to give funding to this lawless, reckless, dangerous agency? Mark my words. We are not going to be silent about what is happening. We are not going to forget until there is justice.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, 8 million Americans have lost their health insurance over the last year. Again, 8 million Americans lost their health insurance.

Millions more have seen their health insurance premiums go up by hundreds and thousands of dollars. Hospitals and community health centers have shut down all across the country. Why? It is because our Republican colleagues passed the big, ugly bill last year that cut funding from healthcare in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations.

That is not all. They also cut money from SNAP.

Mr. Speaker, 1 million children--children--lost their SNAP benefits over the last year. Children are going hungry. People who are sick and hurt are not able to go to the doctor because they can't afford it anymore.

I see our Republican colleagues. They don't understand why their bill isn't more popular. They don't understand why the American people aren't grateful to them for cutting their healthcare and cutting their food aid in order to pay for tax cuts for rich people who don't need it.

They tried changing the name of their bill. They don't call it the big, beautiful bill anymore. They said that maybe if they change the name, then people will like the fact that they can't afford to go to the doctor anymore because of our tax cuts for the rich.

Well, that didn't work, so now they are proposing to use floor time this week to vote on a resolution congratulating themselves for passing this monstrous bill that has cut healthcare and cut food aid for the American people in order to pay for tax cuts for people who don't need it.

Don't worry. The bill did more than that, by the way. One thing that it did fund is more ICE agents invading American cities, such as Minneapolis and Chicago, and killing American citizens in broad daylight.

They wonder why the American people aren't grateful for that. Well, maybe a resolution congratulating ourselves for doing this will do the trick.

Why aren't the American people grateful for the fact that whatever small tax relief was included for the middle class is outweighed dramatically by the increased costs from the tariffs, the war, and health insurance premiums skyrocketing?

Mr. Speaker, how about this: How about we, as a Congress, instead of using this floor time on meaningless resolutions, actually do the work of the American people? How about we fund healthcare? How about we fund food aid? How about we fund education instead of yet more tax cuts for Elon Musk and the billionaires partying at Mar-a-Lago while working people suffer?

Mr. Speaker, my whole life, politicians have been sending other people's kids to fight and die in unnecessary wars in the Middle East, and we are no better off for it.

In the 6 months since the unnecessary war in Iran began, over a dozen U.S. servicemembers have lost their lives. Countless civilians have been killed, including over 100 children bombed in their school. Tens of billions of tax dollars have been wasted, and gas prices are through the roof.

What do we have to show for it?

Iran still controls the strait. There are no guarantees for inspections of nuclear sites, and there are no guarantees that Iran will stop funding terror.

That is no surprise because the President's negotiating team is made up of his relatives and his real estate buddies, not seasoned negotiators. So here is what we need to do: Put real negotiators at the table. Work with our allies instead of constantly insulting them, and then we, as a Congress, need to use our authority to prevent this President and any President from getting us into more unnecessary wars.

The people have had enough.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and legacy of a renowned American historian and my former professor, Gordon Wood. Professor Gordon Wood was one of America's great historians. He was a longtime professor at Brown University whose scholarship reminded us why the American Revolution was truly a world-changing event.

Wood was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Humanities Medal, among many other honors.

He also profoundly shaped my own life. When I was an undergraduate student, he inspired me to major in history and gave me an appreciation for the American story that I hold to this day.

His writing and lectures didn't just teach us the facts of the past, they revealed why they matter.

As we mark our Nation's 250th anniversary, Professor Wood's scholarship feels more important than ever. He reminded us that the American experiment is truly exceptional, that our Founders envisioned a Republic where power ultimately belongs to the people. While the Nation they created has always been messy and imperfect, they provided the world with a whole new way of thinking about the relationship between the people and their government, setting the stage for the expansion of democracy and human rights in America and across the world.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that we all take a moment to celebrate the life of Gordon Wood who has helped us understand better what it means to be an American.

Mr. Speaker, we continue to have an economy that is working great for the very rich but not for the average working person in my district or anywhere across the country.

In the first quarter of this year, average wages rose by 0.8 percent. Corporate profits rose by 2.7 percent.

This is not a sustainable trend. We have two economies in this country. You are doing great if you are a billionaire partying at Mar- a-Lago or a hedge fund manager. But for the average working person, this does not work.

What did this Congress do last year? We passed a $4 trillion tax cut for the rich and big corporations. How about instead we spend some of that money to make healthcare better for the American people or to make education better. How about we focus on lowering costs instead of letting big corporations price gouge people.

This is not working. It is driven by the corruption in this city, and it has to stop.

Mr. Speaker, today this Congress just voted to cut the WIC program that provides nutrition to pregnant women and children by over $200 million. Many of the same members who voted to cut funding for pregnant women and children to be able to afford food are also actively supporting giving $1 billion to the President for his ballroom, $1.8 billion, to reward cop-beaters and white-collar criminals as part of the President's slush funds, and $1 billion a day on an unnecessary war in the Middle East.

How corrupt and morally bankrupt could this Congress be, that we are taking food out of the mouths of children and pregnant women and using it to pay for vanity projects for the President of the United States? This Congress has failed the American people.

Mr. Speaker, generations of Americans fought and bled for civil rights, to make the United States of America a place where everyone's voice can be heard, regardless of the color of their skin.

However, in the last few weeks, at the urging of the President, the Supreme Court effectively overturned section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which had been the law of the land for decades. Since then, Republican Governors and State legislators across the South have been racing to break up majority Black and Hispanic congressional districts.

What a horrible state of affairs, to see the law that Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and Lyndon Johnson fought for cast aside. What a shameful way for Republicans to try to win elections, by breaking up majority-Black and Hispanic districts, to try to rob those voters from being able to elect their chosen Representatives in Congress.

Now, these Republican politicians redrawing the maps in State after State claim with a straight face that they are not engaged in racial gerrymandering, only partisan gerrymandering. Well, then why is it that only majority-Black districts are being split up in Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, and potentially South Carolina and other States? It is only the Black vote in those States that they are trying to dilute.

Republicans, you see, have given up on trying to make the case to people of color in those States that their policies are better. They have given up on trying to persuade people and win elections through campaigning. Instead, they have resorted to splitting up those communities to rob them of their chosen representation in Congress. What a shameful way to try to cling to power.

John Adams, our second President, wrote that the House of Representatives should be in miniature a reflection of the people at large. Yet, when it comes to the Republican side of this House, their own former Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, admitted that they do not look like America. He said that his Republican Congress looks like ``the most restrictive country club in America.''

Now, the Democratic Party is not perfect. We don't always get it right. There have been times occasionally when I thought that most of my Democratic colleagues were wrong on an issue, and I voted with the Republicans, but I am a Democrat because the Democratic Party is the one party left that is still committed to government of, by, and for the people.

Seventy percent of the House Democratic Caucus are women, people of color, or LGBTQ. I am none of those things, but when I look at the two sides of this Chamber, I know what side I want to be on. I want to be on the side that looks like America. I want to be on the side with an inclusive vision of America, that wants every American's voice to be heard, not the side that is cheering the destruction of the Voting Rights Act.

I want to be on the side that honors the legacy of King, Parks, Lewis, and other civil rights heroes, not the side moving at breakneck speed to try to break up majority-minority districts and rob people of color in our country from their chosen representation.

I don't care what your politics are. There is no honor in winning that way, and it is not good for America.

Republican colleagues should think about their own legacy. If they refuse to speak out against the racial gerrymandering their party is engaged in, if they stay silent, history will see them for who they are.

At times like this, it can be easy for people of good faith to become discouraged, but I still believe in the fundamental goodness of America. I still believe that the politics of division cannot prevail over the politics of hope. As long as we are willing to do the work, we will move past this troubling chapter in our Nation's history, and our country's better angels will prevail.

Mr. Speaker, President Trump is demanding $1 billion of taxpayer money for his ballroom, while Americans struggle to put food on the table.

He wants to spend millions more to build an arch as a monument to himself, while parents can't afford childcare for their children.

He is spending millions on a no-bid contract to repaint the reflecting pool, while small businesses are closing down because of the high costs of energy caused by his unnecessary Iran war.

This is all taxpayer money we are talking about, by the way, and the Rhode Islanders whom I speak to don't understand why our colleagues in Congress are putting more energy into trying to use their taxpayer money to lavish the President with gifts and monuments instead of making healthcare more affordable for the American people, along with housing, food, and childcare.

We need to get our priorities straight as a Congress and as a country.

Mr. Speaker, 250 years ago, on May 4, 1776, the people of Rhode Island became the first in America to declare their independence from the British crown.

Two months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, the Rhode Island General Assembly met in Providence and passed an act of renunciation to separate our State's political ties with the English King.

Rhode Islanders have always believed in freedom, democracy, and the right to chart our own course. Our State's founding document in 1663 made us the first place in the Western Hemisphere to allow freedom of religion.

In 1772, when the British Empire sent ships to enforce its unfair laws, we took matters into our own hands and burnt the HMS Gaspee in the Narragansett Bay, an act of defiance to inspire the continent to rise up against tyranny.

Rhode Island did not just participate in the American Revolution. We launched it. Happy May 4.

Mr. Speaker, last year, 88 of the most profitable companies in America paid zero in Federal income taxes. Citigroup made over $4 billion in its U.S. businesses last year, no Federal taxes paid; Halliburton nearly $1 billion and paid no taxes; Tesla more than $5 billion of profits and paid no taxes.

How is it that in the United States of America the biggest and most powerful corporations pay less in taxes than the teachers, doctors, firefighters, and nurses whom I represent?

How is that?

Mr. Speaker, that is what happens when you have a city in Washington that is for sale. The wealthy and well-connected get tax breaks, and average people get stuck with the bill. This is why we need to get dark money out of elections. This is why we need to end congressional stock trading.

This is why we need real ethics reform in Washington because until we have that, the wealthy and well-connected are going to continue to get tax breaks while working people get screwed.