Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, what a strange world the woke are creating. Their open borders policy has produced an epidemic of child sex trafficking. They use taxpayer dollars to transport unaccompanied minors across the country. These children are then delivered to those claiming to be friends or family and then abandoned. The Biden administration has now lost track of 45,000 children that it has turned over to so-called sponsors in this manner.

Now, the Democrats won't even discuss the sex trafficking crisis that they have created, let alone do anything about it, because to condemn it is to acknowledge it, and they won't even do that. Yet, they bring a bill to the floor today to virtue signal their opposition to sexual harassment in the workplace. Specifically, it voids certain confidentiality clauses in cases involving sexual harassment.

Now, let's be clear, no civilized person condones such behavior, and several States have already passed laws similar to the measure before us today. That is where the Constitution rightly places such questions--with the States.

Federalism allows a State to try something out. If it works, other States copy it. If it doesn't, they can avoid it. This bill imposes the same standards across the country.

Now, what could possibly go wrong? Well, first, it references a study that includes among the definitions of sexual harassment a microaggression--I believe that is the word the woke use--such as misgendering.

The mere allegation of sexual harassment, without the necessity of any kind of proof, invalidates the nondisclosure agreement if the parties reach their agreement before the dispute arose. This bill doesn't define ``dispute,'' so we don't even know when exactly it will apply.

If an employee accidentally refers to a colleague by a pronoun that has just changed, should this really be grounds for publicly pillorying the employer for sexual harassment? The woke excel at targeting those they disagree with in such a manner. This makes it possible for them to do so under a wide range of circumstances.

Second, if the mere allegation of sexual harassment can void a nondisclosure agreement, would someone simply throw in such an allegation in order to air their real grievances? Remember, this bill voids the confidentiality clause entirely, even though those clauses can cover information unrelated to sexual misconduct.

Third, where do such confidentiality carveouts stop? Are references in the workplace to political ideology, religious beliefs, or cultural preferences, already branded as microaggressions by the woke, to be added one by one?

We know this bill is just the beginning. The White House said as much this week.

Perhaps these are questions best left to the States. Perhaps our time is best devoted to protecting the countless children that the crime cartels are sexually exploiting with their active assistance of the Democrats' open border policies.

Madam Speaker, I rise today along with my colleague, Representative LaMalfa, to recognize the decade spanning work and now retirement of Placer County Supervisor Robert Weygandt. Since his election to the Board of Supervisors in 1995, Robert has been an integral part of Placer County Government and business development; from his work to establish business centers in the community, to creating a citizen focused county government center, to work on the Lincoln Highway 65 bypass linking residents from Northern California to Interstate 80. Robert has always put the interests of his community first.

Since the beginning of his public service, Robert has led the efforts to drive new business into Placer County. Working to establish the Sunset Area Plan in 1997, which would later become known as the Placer Ranch, has created a 400-acre business park including a satellite campus for California State University, various commercial and industrial developments, and residential housing units.

Robert has also worked to create innovative government solutions for Placer County, helping the everyday citizen navigate the governmental process. This includes working with the Placer County government center to form a vibrant place for residents to conveniently obtain services and conduct county business. Today, the government center is home to several state-of-the-art amenities including a new Health and Human Services facility that will open in 2024.

Robert has also been instrumental in developing business partnerships with the United Auburn Indian Community during their bid to develop Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln. This partnership continues today with United Auburn committing to develop the first few miles of a bypass from Highway 65 to Highway 99 in Sutter County linking these busy

corridors and benefiting many in the northern part of the state.

Robert was also instrumental in gathering support for the Lincoln Bypass, a throughfare for Highway 65 that opened in 2011. The bypass, which encompasses 11.7 miles and cost $325 million to construct, moves traffic around the City of Lincoln and improves regional connections between business and residential centers. This is just another example of Robert's tireless efforts to develop Placer County.

I am proud today to congratulate Robert on his numerous accomplishments and to thank him for his decade long commitment, dedication and service to the citizens of the United States and the residents of Placer County.

Mr. Speaker, for 2 weeks now, the long-suffering people of Iran have taken to the streets to confront the thugocracy that has oppressed them for more than 40 years.

Today, America must stand with the people of Iran. H. Res. 118 has 257 cosponsors, representing both political parties, expressing its support for the Iranian resistance. I urge the leadership to bring it to the floor immediately for a vote.

It is time for the United States to step forward with material support for the freedom movement. They need direct satellite access to the internet that the regime has denied them on the ground. They need us to restore economic sanctions against the regime.

This time, in this hour, let the United States stand with the people of Iran and, by so doing, honor those proud words on our Liberty Bell: ``Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof.''

Mr. Speaker, this bill imposes $1.4 billion in new fees on large companies seeking mergers and makes it easier to block those mergers.

Now, mergers only occur when they promote efficiency and productivity. They only occur when they enhance a company's ability to provide better goods and services at lower prices. Interfering in this process harms the prosperity of every American.

Let's start with the simple fact that taxes and fees on businesses aren't paid by businesses. They are paid by consumers through higher prices, employees through lower wages, and investors through lower earnings.

How does increasing consumer prices protect consumers?

Where will these fees go?

Well, they are going to go to increasingly corrupt bureaucracies like the FTC. That agency is now led by a radical leftist who has declared her intention to use the powers of government to replace consumer decisions with her own, all to advance her brand of ideological zealotry.

The worst damage this does is to make the marketplace less efficient, which makes prices higher, consumer choices less satisfying, and ultimately diminishes our prosperity as a society.

Markets are inherently democratic because they fundamentally are regulated by consumer choices. Consumers vote every day with every dollar they spend what the market will provide and at what prices. Consumer choices reward companies that best meet their needs and punish the companies that don't.

Now, the left seeks to substitute its judgment for yours. It seeks to tell you what choices you may make to advance their political goals. For example, personally I don't care for Jeff Bezos' political views, but he has built a successful, gigantic company by satisfying his consumers.

Americans have voted with their dollars every day that the services that Amazon provides are better than the many other alternatives they have to choose from. The moment they decide otherwise, Amazon will shrink and competitors will emerge and grow to fill those gaps.

Substituting government's judgment for yours, as this bill does, ultimately undermines your right to decide for yourself who is best at providing for your own needs.

Mr. Speaker, we need to reject not only this bill, but the poisonous, authoritarian, and destructive ideology behind it.

Mr. Speaker, in the summer of 2020, mobs of radical leftists burned our cities, preyed on innocent citizens, attacked our police officers, and occupied business districts during what one leftist Democrat mayor called the summer of love. At least 25 people were killed.

Republicans called for law and order. Democrats called for defunding our police departments and releasing dangerous criminals onto our streets, often within hours of their arrests. In the cities they controlled, they did just that.

In those cities, crime has skyrocketed, including the fastest increase in homicides ever recorded in our Nation. Ironically, the greatest victims are their own constituents, who are now turning on them.

Crime doesn't concern House Democrats, but losing political support before an election, that scares them to death, so we have these bills brought hurriedly to the floor today.

Let me point out the obvious. Republican communities have backed their police departments with the local funds and the moral support they need to do their jobs. Democratic cities have defunded and demonized their police departments.

The Democrats' response is to take the taxes paid by the citizens who fully funded their police departments and give them to those Democratic cities that have cut them, and still virtually none of the money they propose to spend is for actual law enforcement. It is, rather, for intervention, de-escalation, training, public health, and social work training, all administered by the increasingly corrupt and politicized Department of Justice.

We have watched the Democrats utterly destroy the cities that they have dominated for decades. Do we really want to let them do the same thing to our country?

Americans need to ask themselves how much farther down this dismal road they are willing to go. We can restore safety to all of our communities the moment we summon the political will to do so.

Madam Speaker, the Electoral Count Act of 1887 asserts that Congress may vote to disqualify electoral votes. It was misused by the Democrats in 2016 and by Republicans in 2020, attempting to interfere with the constitutionally required tally of electoral votes. I believe both sides were wrong.

Congress has no such power, period. Think about it. Under our Constitution, if no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes, the election immediately passes to the House and Senate. If Congress had the power to pass judgment on the validity of electoral votes, it could simply invalidate enough to place the election in its own hands, an obvious conflict of interest.

That is why the Constitution clearly mandates that the vote shall be counted in the presence of the Congress. Disputes arising from the conduct of elections are the sole province of the courts. Does anyone seriously believe that a Congress of 535 intensely partisan politicians is a safe repository for

the power to adjudicate the integrity of the vote? Well, neither did the Founders.

This measure does narrow the grounds upon which the count can be interfered with by the Congress, but it still allows Congress to invalidate electoral votes. So it does not solve the problem, and it creates new problems by allowing a State to delay its election for up to 5 days after the rest of the Nation's vote is already known.

Can you imagine the chaos and suspicions that that would create? How sad that such an important issue as the electoral count should be handled in so clumsy and partisan a bill as this.

Mr. Speaker, as the tensions of the Civil War reached a boiling point, President Lincoln vainly reached out to Democrats with these words: ``We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.''

The contrast with Mr. Biden's September 1 speech in Philadelphia is jarring. In it, and many remarks since, Mr. Biden clearly addresses the 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump as enemies who ``threaten the very foundation of our Republic.'' He condemned us as ``extremists'' who ``do not respect the Constitution,'' and who ``do not believe in the rule of law'' and who ``refuse to accept the results of a free election.'' In other forums, he has called us ``semi- fascists.''

Mr. President, we revere our Constitution and the structure of individual liberty that it was designed to protect. We do not understand how a government established under that Constitution could use the FBI to pressure social media platforms to censor and suppress free speech or to intimidate parents concerned about their school boards with threat tags or to instruct its field offices to regard anyone who displays our founding American flag as a political extremist.

Mr. President, we revere the rule of law and our Nation's promise of equal justice under law. We do not understand how our immigration laws can simply be ignored as millions of foreign nationals illegally enter our country. We do not understand how a dispute over records justifies an armed raid on a former President who is also a political rival.

We do not understand how public health officials can order our schools and businesses closed or suspend our fundamental rights to worship and assemble with no vote of the people's Representatives. We do not understand how obvious influence peddling by the son of a President can be ignored for years.

Mr. President, of course we accept the results of a free election, but we do not understand how the safeguards to protect the integrity of our elections can be torn down to benefit one party. Replacing in- person election day voting with mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, month-long voting, accepting ballots after election day, printing ballots on home computers--all of these changes undermine public confidence in the process that is essential to democracy.

We wonder how you can call MAGA candidates a fundamental threat to our Republic while your party spends millions of dollars to nominate them when you believe it may help you in November.

Mr. President, we can condemn all forms of violence and especially political violence in the strongest possible terms. The riot at the Capitol on January 6 was a disgrace and an abomination that you are right to condemn, and we join you in doing so.

But we don't understand how you can at the same time turn a blind eye to prosecuting the political violence that burned our cities the year before or how you can refuse to enforce the laws that protect our Supreme Court Justices from intimidation at their own homes.

Mr. President, we, too, fear for our democracy. We fear armed bureaucracies that seem increasingly disconnected from the results of our elections. We remember that the IRS singled out ordinary Americans because of their political views, yet no one was held accountable, and now we are adding 87,000 new agents to that bureaucracy.

We fear arbitrary changes in our election laws calculated to skew results. We fear an executive branch that is increasingly taking over the legislative powers of Congress and judicial powers of the courts. We fear the powers of government wielded by officials who view half of our people as dangers, threats, and extremists--your words, Mr. President.

Lincoln spoke of the mystic chords of memory tracing back to the founding of our Nation that must hold us together as Americans. As friends and not enemies. Yet we see these chords increasingly strained by an alien ideology that seems hostile to the flag, the principles, and the heritage of our Nation.

We have only one President, Mr. President, and that is you. I didn't vote for you, and I won't vote for you again, but you are still my President. And the 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump are still your fellow citizens.

As the person most responsible for the policies we now live with and the future that is unfolding before us, I ask you to engage us as a friend and not an enemy. We must not be enemies.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the groundbreaking work of the Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

The Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team is a group of dedicated professionals who have protected the homes and businesses of the Tahoe community for over a decade. Since its founding in 2008, they have treated over 65,000 acres in the Lake Tahoe Basin's wildland-urban interface. This includes forest thinning by both hand and machine, as well as prescribed burns. Over twelve years, they have invested $133 million into forest health community projects to reduce fuels in the forests and protect the Lake Tahoe region from wildfires.

Most importantly, the Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team played an integral part on the evening of August 30, 2021, when the Caldor Fire reached the Tahoe Basin with a destruction path of 200,000 burned acres and 1,000 destroyed structures left behind it. On this day, this team sprang into action to defend the communities of Christmas Valley, Meyers, and South Lake Tahoe. Remarkably, they successfully saved all structures in South Lake Tahoe from the destruction of the fire. This was all made possible because of their prior efforts to reduce forest fuels and increase defenses around homes and community buildings. Without their past and present efforts, the totality of the destruction in these Lake Tahoe communities would be unimaginable.

The Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team understands, and has demonstrated for years, the importance of proactive forest management in preventing wildfires. These efforts have protected communities in the Tahoe Basin and significantly improved the resilience of the surrounding landscape.

Madam Speaker, it is impossible to overstate the necessity of fire protection or to measure the countless contributions this team has made to our community. It has been my privilege to represent such a dedicated group who continuously defends one of California's most remarkable natural treasures. I thank Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team for their extraordinary impact on the Lake Tahoe community, and the countless individuals they have protected due to their tireless efforts.

Mr. Speaker, the Democrats printed and spent trillions of dollars we didn't have, and they unleashed the worst inflation in 40 years. They waged war on capitalism and the energy industry and produced an economic recession.

Now, they are doubling down on these foolish policies. The more that some people invest in their mistakes, the less willing they are to admit them.

They are adding 87,000 new IRS agents--that is larger than the entire population of Flint, Michigan--in order to collect $200 billion in new taxes, mostly from middle-class families and shopkeepers who don't have the resources to contest expensive audits.

They are adding $300 billion in new corporate taxes, which will be passed on to families as higher prices, lower wages, and lower returns.

All of this is to give away three-quarters of a trillion dollars more of your earnings to their green energy cronies and other political supporters. That averages about $6,000 per household.

Just as you cannot drink yourself sober, you cannot spend your way out of inflation, or tax yourself out of recession, or borrow your way out of debt. Yet, that is exactly what the Democrats claim they can do. What makes them think socialism will work any better here than everywhere else in the world that it has been tried?

This bill takes our country further into this dismal future, and only more suffering and poverty will come of it.

Madam Chair, this is the Democratic equivalent of fiddling while our forests burn. They call it the Wildfire Response and Drought Resiliency Act, but while it spends lavishly, it accomplishes almost nothing.

For 14 years in Congress, I have dealt extensively with issues of fire and water, and here is what I have learned: Excess timber will always come out of the forest. Either we will carry it out or nature will burn it out. When we carried it out by logging, we enjoyed healthy forests and a thriving economy.

We stopped active forest management decades ago due to radical environmental laws that have made it impossible. Today our forests are now morbidly overgrown, and nature is again burning out the excess.

This bill does nothing to reform the laws that have made active forest management impossible, and instead it consigns us to fight a losing battle that will cost us our forests for generations to come.

When it comes to water, droughts are nature's fault. They happen. But water shortages are our fault. They are the choice we made when the same radical laws made new dam construction impossible. Dams save water for wet

years so that we have plenty in the dry ones. We will not solve our water shortage until we build more dams, and we can't build more dams until we overhaul these same laws.

Instead, this bill pours hundreds of millions of dollars into desalination. The most successful desalination plant is in Carlsbad, California. At a time when we can't guarantee enough electricity to keep your lights on, Carlsbad consumes enough electricity to power 250 homes in order to produce enough water for one home.

This bill is pure folly. It will consume billions of dollars of our resources while condemning us to a dismal future of chronic forest fires and water shortages.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, this amendment allows the admission of scientists and technical experts from foreign countries to work on the national security innovation base. Without a clear provision forbidding foreign nationals from hostile regimes like China and Iran, we should strongly oppose this amendment.

The Democrats' open border policies have produced the largest illegal mass migration in our Nation's history. Since they took power, including deliberate releases and got-aways, the Democrats have allowed into our country an illegal population larger than that of the entire population of West Virginia.

We have apprehended at the border scores of persons on the terrorist watch list, and we have no idea how many more have come in among the 800,000 got-aways who evaded apprehension as the Border Patrol was overwhelmed processing these unprecedented numbers.

The Democrats' unconditional surrender to the Taliban last year released more than 5,000 terrorists held at Bagram Air Base. Ten days later, one of those terrorists detonated the bomb that killed 10 marines at Abby Gate. We have no idea where the other 5,000-plus are today, but it is a good bet that more than a few have been among those got-aways coming across our open southern border. Obviously, the security of the United States is not high on the Democrats' list of concerns.

Now, instead of addressing this national security crisis, the Democrats have pursued one measure after another to encourage still more immigration--legal and illegal--and this amendment should concern us all.

Now, some of our greatest military breakthroughs have come from foreign-born scientists--the Manhattan Project comes to mind. But so too, some of our worst security breakdowns have come from foreign scientists, and I do not trust this administration to know or even care about the difference.

China, for example, is so intent on using our U.S. immigration system to steal our sensitive technologies that the Trump administration had to issue a proclamation suspending entry of certain Chinese students and researchers.

The Trump Administration found that ``the People's Republic of China is engaged in a wide-ranging and heavily resourced campaign to acquire sensitive U.S. technologies to bolster the modernization and capability of its military.''

The proclamation warned that ``students or researchers from the PRC studying beyond the undergraduate level are at high risk of being exploited or co-opted by the PRC.''

In fact, the Department of Homeland Security warned us in 2020 that the Chinese Government requires its nationals to ``support, assist, and cooperate with State intelligence work.''

The idea for this amendment came at least in part from the Commission on Artificial Intelligence which called for ``increasing China's brain drain.'' So clearly the green cards contemplated under this amendment would go to Chinese nationals.

The last thing we should do is make it easy for the Chinese Communist Party to gain access to our national security innovation base work, Department of Defense research, or other critical technologies.

I would also note that sadly our new woke Department of Defense does not

have a great track record regarding immigration programs. Many of you may remember that the Department of Defense supported and encouraged the military accessions vital to the national interest--or MAVNI program--through which foreign nationals were able to enlist in the U.S. military. Once enlisted, they were eligible to nationalize.

The Obama administration was forced to halt this program when it was discovered that the Department of Defense had allowed some Chinese spies to enlist in the military.

Let that sink in: the Department of Defense allowed Chinese spies to enlist in the U.S. military.

Add to this the Biden family's questionable financial ties to China and the ingratiation of Chinese spies with several Members of Congress, and this amendment becomes most disturbing. Accordingly, I urge the House to oppose it.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

The Democrats' record speaks for itself: no concern for the dire national security implications of their open borders policy; no concern for the infiltration of hostile foreign agents into our military; no concern for the ingratiation of foreign agents into our legislative and executive branches.

Americans should be concerned. They should be very concerned. Until there is a sea change in the attitude of the ruling Democrats toward our national safety, our security, and our sovereignty, amendments like this should be utterly rejected.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, instead of treating law-abiding citizens as if they were criminals, maybe we should start treating criminals as if they were criminals. Stop the plea bargains, put gun predators behind bars until they are old and gray, and execute the murderers.

Those measures worked until a generation of soft-on-crime judges, woke district attorneys, and politically correct police commissioners made a mockery of our laws.

If someone is dangerously mentally ill, then, of course, they should not have access to firearms. They shouldn't have access to any kind of weapons. We once confined them so we could treat them and prevent them from doing harm during the course of their illness. We had a commitment process that respected due process. They could come before a judge to challenge the findings in open court, submit evidence on their behalf, and face their accuser, but not under the red flag laws this bill promotes.

An anonymous accuser can trigger a secret proceeding against you that you don't even know is happening until the police bang on your door in the dead of night, ransack your house, and strip you of your right of self-defense. The burden then falls on you to try to restore it.

This bill also targets young adults for special restrictions. We trust them to vote, to start families, to enter into legally binding agreements, but we don't trust them with firearms because of what some criminal or madman their age did?

Just laws hold people accountable for their own actions; unjust laws hold them accountable for other people's actions. This is an unjust law.

These atrocities will go on until we get the criminals and madmen off our streets. How many more tragedies do we need to go through before the Congress understands this self-evident truth?

Mr. Speaker, we all know the tale of ``The Emperor's New Clothes.'' Grifters convince an emperor that they are expert tailors who weave a cloth so fine that only the virtuous can see it. The emperor wraps himself in nothing and parades the streets as all the townspeople compete to signal their own virtue by proclaiming how beautiful the material is, even though their own common sense tells them otherwise. This scheme is successful until a little boy who knows better states the obvious.

For 2 years now, we were told by the experts that they could stop COVID-19 if everyone did exactly as they commanded. I am science, as one put it. They quashed debate within the medical community and ridiculed, censored, and fired any dissenters.

Looking back, we can clearly see what a self-destructive folly they produced. Study after study now confirms the obvious, that the mask mandate, school closures, home detention orders, and business closures had virtually no impact on the virus. But they did appalling damage to the economy, seriously harmed children in ways we are still cataloging, and cost untold lives due to suicides, drug and alcohol overdoses, delayed health screenings and treatments, and poverty-related deaths.

This recent, tragic experience should warn us all to be much more skeptical of surrendering common sense to so-called experts and of suppressing free debate over what science actually is telling us, which brings us to the Democrats' ongoing and escalating war on fossil fuels.

The road they have placed us on leads to a bleak future of unaffordable energy, rolling blackouts, empty shelves, and increasingly brutal rationing of every watt of electricity and drop of gasoline that we once took for granted.

Gasoline prices are already the highest ever seen in this country as we have discouraged production. Electricity prices are skyrocketing, pushed by the crushing cost of renewables. Utilities across the county are now warning of summer blackouts because renewable mandates have destabilized the electricity grid.

Joe Biden and the Democrats promised to wage war on fossil fuels, and they have succeeded. On his first day in office, he canceled the Keystone pipeline, which today should have been completed and delivering 830,000 barrels of crude oil every day into American markets. He canceled oil and gas exploration on Federal lands. Just last month, he withdrew 1 million acres of land from exploration and production in oil-rich Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

And he blames Vladimir Putin? Under the progrowth policies of the Trump administration, America didn't need Putin's oil. We were energy independent for the first time in our lifetimes. We were producing more oil than Russia and even Saudi Arabia. The day the Democrats took office, gasoline was averaging $2.39 a gallon.

Today's sky-high fuel prices are aggravating supply chain breakdowns and adding to consumer prices. Acreage once devoted to growing corn for food is now used to produce ethanol, which requires trading an entire acre of corn to produce just 550 gallons of ethanol.

The irony is, at a time when these Green New Deal policies can't guarantee enough electricity to keep the lights on this summer at any price, these Democrat elitists are telling families to buy electric cars. Where do they think the electricity for their electric cars comes from? Eighty percent comes from fossil fuels that they are ruthlessly shutting down.

The excuse for all of this, of course, is to stop global warming, but they cannot account for why it is that there have been periods throughout paleo history when temperatures have been much higher and also much lower than they are today. Nor do they account for the infinitely more powerful natural forces that shape our constantly changing climate.

The blind reliance on handpicked experts and the suppression of dissent in our approach to COVID cost lives and destroyed the most prosperous economic expansion in our lifetimes. But its excesses pale in comparison to what the green left is now doing to our society. The pain and damage we are feeling today is just the first bitter taste of what is to come if they prevail.

Of one thing we can be certain: Whether or not we destroy our Nation's prosperity by continuing the Democrats' war on fossil fuels, the Earth will continue to warm and cool, as it has for billions of years. The only question we can answer is whether ours will be a future of abundance or scarcity, prosperity or poverty, comfort or misery.

Madam Speaker, on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag, Germany's capitol building, was set on fire. Who was responsible remains in dispute even today.

But what is undisputed is that the Nazis, barely holding on to power in a coalition government, used the attack to besmirch their political opponents, consolidate their grip on the government, arrest hundreds of political opponents, and, ultimately, rescind the due process rights and fundamental freedoms of the German people. It remains a cautionary tale, for obvious reasons.

The January 6 riot at the Capitol has become the centerpiece of the Democrats' agenda. No other issue facing our country, not the worst inflation in 40 years, not the highest gasoline prices in history, not the fastest increase in homicides ever recorded, not the historically unprecedented illegal mass migration across our southern border, none of these crises has commanded prime-time congressional hearings from the Democrats.

What happened here on January 6 was an affront to our Constitution and a national disgrace. Those who entered the Capitol with the intent to disrupt the counting of electoral votes deserved to be denounced by their fellow citizens and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

More importantly, questions involving the authority of Congress to refuse to count electoral votes, or why adequate security was not present to protect the Capitol, or whether there were conspiracies to break into the Capitol are all important to resolve to ensure that this never happens again.

What is unfolding, instead, is a sick mockery of the principles of fairness and due process that this House is founded upon. It promises to discredit those proceedings and to dishonor its participants.

Congress has a time-honored process to get at the truth. It guarantees the right of both sides to appoint their representatives, who then question and debate the facts, offer conflicting evidence, and hold an issue to every light.

For the first time in the history of this institution, the Speaker arrogated to herself not only the selection of the majority members but the minority members as well, thus assuring only one side, her side, could be heard.

Without having both sides represented, it becomes impossible to test the accuracy of facts, the truth of the narratives, and the soundness of opinions. It robs the process of the credibility that is a necessary prerequisite to legitimacy.

Instead of the sober inquiry that should have been undertaken a year and a half ago, we have a Soviet-style show trial, all carefully choreographed by an ABC television producer.

To add hypocrisy to outrage, some of the Speaker's representatives played a crucial role in developing and fanning the Russia collusion hoax that groundlessly challenged the legitimacy of the Trump election and Presidency. Some were themselves involved in challenging electoral votes counted after the 2016 election. Some were apologists for the violent riots that consumed this country in 2020. Some have been eerily silent as Supreme Court Justices have been intimidated in their own homes.

Now, the FBI thoroughly examined the riot last year. They found no evidence that President Trump conspired with protesters to enter the Capitol, nor have the Democrats offered any now. They instead repackage and rehash the snap impeachment trial in which the President was acquitted by the Senate.

Indeed, this committee knows but has deceptively suppressed the stunning fact that 4 days before the riot, President Trump offered the use of National Guard troops to keep the peace. The Democrat leadership turned it down.

Do they really expect us to believe that the same guy who meticulously planned the riot also authorized the National Guard to prevent the riot? This is insane.

Insurrection? The constitutional process immediately resumed once these yahoos were kicked out of this building. Do the Democrats actually expect us to believe that some lunatic wearing buffalo horns was moments away from seizing control of our government?

The narrative cannot survive in open debate, and the Democrats know it. That is why they are not permitting one.

Our institutions are strong because they are backed by the common sense of the American people. Our traditions of due process and fairness are too deeply ingrained in the American character to succumb to this madness.

After Americans have reported their verdict in the upcoming election, perhaps we can forge a bipartisan consensus on the measures necessary to assure that the excesses of both January 6 and the January 6th Committee never threaten us again.

Madam Speaker, Alexis de Tocqueville said that the defining trait of socialism is ``a profound opposition to personal liberty and scorn for individual reason, a complete contempt for the individual.''

Socialists are hostile to our Bill of Rights specifically because it protects the individual against the State by guaranteeing our most fundamental rights and the means to defend them, and the guarantee that we can't be deprived of them except through due process of law.

You have the right to have your day in court, to face your accuser, to present evidence on your behalf, to contest the charges brought against you.

Now, if someone is adjudged to be dangerously mentally ill, of course they should not have access to firearms or to any other weapons. They shouldn't be on the street where they can do harm at all. They should be confined, during the course of their illness, so they can be treated and not endanger themselves or others.

We already have commitment procedures that address this in concert with our Constitution. In that process, you appear before a judge, you can know the charges, you can face your accuser, you can plead your case, and you can present evidence on your own behalf in open court.

But not under this bill. Under this bill, an anonymous accuser, including a jilted date or an ex-roommate, can trigger a secret proceeding that you don't even know is happening until the police show up at your door to strip you of your Second Amendment right to self- defense, and the burden then falls on you to try and restore it.

And it won't stop here. The left has already branded speech they disagree with as dangerous.

But they are right about one thing. This is an extreme risk bill. It is an extreme risk to our most fundamental individual rights as Americans.