Steve Cohen

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 2(a)(1) of rule IX, I rise to give notice of my intention to raise a question of the privileges of the House. The form of the resolution as is follows: Directing the Committee on Ethics to preserve and publicly release records of the Committee's review of the alleged violations of the House Code of Conduct and Federal law by Representative Matthew Louis Gaetz II of Florida. Whereas, Matthew Louis Gaetz II of Florida served in the House of Representatives from January 3, 2017, through November 13, 2024; Whereas, Clause 2 of Section 5 of Article I of the Constitution of the United States establishes that: ``Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings [and] punish its Members for disorderly behavior''; Whereas, clause 3(a)(2) of rule XI of the House of Representatives provides the Committee on Ethics the authority to investigate alleged violations by a Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House of the Code of Official Conduct or of a law, rule, regulation, or other standard of conduct applicable to the conduct of such Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee in the performance of the duties or the discharge of the responsibilities of such individual; Whereas, on April 9, 2021, the Committee on Ethics initiated review of allegations that Representative Gaetz may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused State identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift, in violation of House rules, laws, or other standards of conduct in violation of Federal law and the rules of the House; Whereas, on June 18, 2024, the Committee on Ethics released a statement acknowledging the Committee's continued review of allegations that Representative Gaetz may have engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct; Whereas, if Representative Gaetz engaged in the alleged violations while serving as a Member of this body, such conduct would affect the rights of the House of Representatives and the integrity of the legislative process: Now, therefore, be it resolved, that the Committee on Ethics shall-- (1) preserve all documents and investigative materials related to any review of Matthew Louis Gaetz II's conduct while serving as a Member of the House of Representatives; and (2) make public the Committee's report regarding the alleged violations of the House Code of Official Conduct or of a law, rule, regulation, or other standard of conduct by Matthew Louis Gaetz II while serving as a Member of the House of Representatives.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay a respectful tribute to Dorothy Truitt Walk whose 1960 sit-in at Memphis' Cossitt Library began a transformation of my hometown for the better. Ms. Walk passed in October at the age of 88. Typical of her public-mindedness and humor, she donated her body to the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, the medical school in Memphis, telling her family it would make her a Tennessee Volunteer. Ms. Walk was a civic dynamo, raising the money to build the Orange Mound Community Center and riding in the parade on the day it opened. She also helped preserve and protect our city's monuments and landmarks. But it was the sit-in at the downtown library and her arrest that began her storied career in public life. Memphis had a segregated library for African Americans and a lawsuit to end segregation was pending when she, then a 24 year-old student at LeMoyne College, and 34 others, grew impatient and staged the March 16, 1960 sit-in. Months later, the city integrated its libraires, but her arrest meant she could not work in the city schools, and she got a job teaching across the river in Arkansas. Ms. Walk often wrote to me with ideas, and I was fortunate to receive her thoughts and support. She also wrote thoughtful letters to the editor and to city officials, raising important issues. In response to her suggestions, then-Mayor Dick Hackett asked her to serve on a city board or commission, and she chose the Memphis-Shelby County Landmarks Commission and served there for 10 years. She also worked at International Harvester, the farm- equipment company, and retired when the Memphis plant was moth-balled. Ms. Walk was a lifelong member of the Beulah Baptist Church in Orange Mound. In addition to her civic work, she read the daily newspapers for 14 years on the public radio station WYPL, the Memphis Public Libraries' non-commercial station. St. Mary's Episcopal School named her a Memphis Woman Who Made a Difference in 2001. I extend my condolences to her son Calvin and his wife Christy Walk; her sister Janiece Williamson; stepsister Claudette Flowers; brother Jeff Harrison; and her extended family, friends and many admirers. Ms. Walk truly made a difference and made Memphis a better place. Hers was a life well-lived.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, this week, I came back to Washington with the idea of trying to give President Trump a chance, an open mind, hold my tongue a bit. It has been difficult, and it will get more difficult, it appears. I first got inspired to get into government because of John Kennedy. I knew every single one of John Kennedy's Cabinet members. They are referred to in a book as the best and the brightest. That is what we used to have in our Cabinet of the United States of America was the best and the brightest. What we have seen with the nominations that have come forth and the request for changes in the Senate's confirmation policy really is scary and should be of concern to the American people. It is a red light on the possibility of loss of democracy and the implementation and institution of autocracy. Mr. Trump asked the Senate leadership to give him a 2-week period where he could make Senate recess appointments, something that is permitted in the Constitution but was permitted because of the idea that back when they wrote the Constitution, if the Senate took a recess, it could take weeks or months before they could all get back to Washington by trains or horses, or however they traveled back in those days, in the late 1700s, to conduct business. That is not the case anymore. The Supreme Court has ruled in a case about 10, 15 years ago that--I think it was Justice Scalia who was the lead on the Court--this should only take place in intersession, between the times the Senate ends a term and begins a new term, and that is simply whenever they decide to take off. President Trump has asked. Senate leaders, candidates, and the Senate leader who was chosen, Mr. Thune, all said they would do it when Mr. Trump asked them to do it, to have a period where he could have his appointments for Cabinet to come forward and be approved because of lack of action by the Senate in what is called a recess appointment. That is a dereliction of the Constitution, and anybody that goes along with it should be questioned. The Senate is to act as a check and balance on the President and his nominations and appointments of Cabinet members. The Senate meets, has hearings, and votes to confirm or not to confirm nominees. To not have hearings, to not have votes because at least some of his Cabinet recommendations are so abhorrent that they would scare the American people, and have a spectacle of bringing forth the facts about their backgrounds, lack of experience, and the lack of character that they have shown in their times in government and life here on this planet--to not have hearings and to not have votes is a dereliction and an offense to the Constitution that has the Senate as a check and balance before nominees are approved. The worst was yesterday when Matt Gaetz was recommended for Attorney General. After his recommendation, and he flew back and forth to Washington with President-elect Trump, he announced his resignation from this body. By so doing, he thwarted an ethics investigation that has been going on in the House Ethics Committee concerning alleged conduct that he had had with a 17-year-old girl, sexual conduct, his involvement in activities using illegal drugs, use of his congressional powers for the benefit of people illegally, use of campaign funds for personal activities, and other offenses that would call for the expulsion of a person from this House. By his resigning from the House, that investigation ends because the Committee no longer has jurisdiction over him. He will become a nominee for Attorney General to go through the recess process where all of these facts won't come forth. I would hope that our Ethics Committee and the chair of the Ethics Committee, who has done a great job on other occasions, and I have great respect for, would release the results of that study to the American public because they should see it. They should see the work that has been done, and they should see the type of person who is going to be brought up for Attorney General of the United States, even if the Senate doesn't want to bring it forth with hearings. As I understand it, the report would be eye-opening and extremely damaging and should be released to the American public. They have a right to see it. The recommendation of Tulsi Gabbard to be the head of intelligence, when she has mostly been known for controversial statements supporting our foes around the world, from Syria to Russia to Iran, is disturbing and challenging. The suggestion that the Department of Defense should be led by the host of Fox & Friends on weekends, as his main contribution to society, is scary to our soldiers, who need the best and brightest at the helm.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to support the millions of Americans who live with disabilities and who want to stay in their homes. That seems like a pretty simple idea and something that, unfortunately, millions and millions of people are denied. In 1999, the Supreme Court issued the Olmstead decision, finding that individuals with disabilities have a right under the Americans with Disabilities Act to receive State-funded supports and services while living independently in their community. This landmark decision promised to ensure people would have access to home and community-based care as an alternative to institutionalization. However, 25 years later, people are still being forced into institutions, including nursing homes and psychiatric hospitals. One person who wanted to live in their home with the benefit of these services, which were court affirmed, was Latonya Reeves. She lived in my hometown of Memphis but couldn't get the services in her home that she needed, so she moved to Colorado in 1991 where she could live without being institutionalized. While there, she contributed to the community by working as a transition counselor and community activist. This session, I introduced the Latonya Reeves Freedom Act, which would codify the Olmstead decision and strengthen the rights of Americans with disabilities to receive long-term services and supports in the settings of their choice. This bill has been around in several forms for several years. In the last two terms, it has gained the support of a majority of the House of Representatives, and in this Congress it has had as many as 222 cosponsors. I filed a discharge petition to bring the bill to the floor just a few minutes ago. In the remaining days of the 118th Congress, I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will sign the discharge petition to support the millions of Americans with disabilities. Let's keep the American Dream alive for people with disabilities to stay in their homes.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay a profound tribute to William ``Bill'' Lucy, a giant of the civil rights and labor movements, who passed on Tuesday, September 24, at the age of 90. Mr. Lucy, a native of Memphis, was a 34-year-old working for the Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) when he was sent to Memphis to work with the striking sanitation workers in February of 1968. He is credited with the iconic ``I AM A MAN'' placard messages and with encouraging Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to come to Memphis to support the cause. Those efforts led to the creation of AFSCME Local 1733 which is still proudly representing local public employees. Lucy was born on November 26, 1933, and attended schools in Memphis until his father was recruited to work as a welder in the California shipyards during World War II. Lucy graduated from high school in 1951 and studied civil engineering at the University of California-Berkeley. He then worked in the shipyards before being hired by the Contra Costa County government as an engineering aide. In that position, he strengthened an employee association into a real union, AFSCME's Local 1675, before heading east to Washington in 1966 to work at AFSCME's national headquarters as executive assistant to its International President Jerry Wurf. He was working at the headquarters office in Detroit when he was called to Memphis to monitor a dispute between the city and striking sanitation workers, who were not officially affiliated with AFSCME. He joined the negotiations on their behalf with a city that deemed their strike an illegal walkout and refused to acknowledge the workers or their demands for improved working conditions, union recognition, and respect. He and the Reverend Malcolm Blackburn helped devise the iconic I AM A MAN placards that galvanized not just local workers but world opinion. After Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, and cities across the country burned, President Johnson urged an end to the strike largely on the workers' terms. On a personal note, I considered Mr. Lucy a good friend and have valued his advice and guidance throughout my time in public office. I particularly cherish the 2007 William Lucy Award I received from the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists of Tennessee and Kentucky that he founded. Mr. Lucy was a tall and commanding figure whose presence was striking and justly demanded respect and attention. Mr. Lucy became the international secretary-treasurer of AFSCME and served there for 38 years. During that time, he helped found the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists to counter the neutral stand the AFL-CIO took in the 1972 presidential race, contending that re-electing Richard Nixon threatened civil rights and labor progress. Mr. Lucy was later a central figure in the boycotts and campaigns for divestments from state employee pension funds aimed at the white South African apartheid system. In the mid 1980s, he helped launch the Free South Africa Movement which held protests outside the South African Embassy in Washington and called for the release of Nelson Mandela, who was ultimately freed in 1990 after 27 years in prison to become the country's first Black president. In 1994, Mr. Lucy led an AFL-CIO delegation to South Africa to monitor the election in which Mandela was elected president. Mr. Lucy served as the first Black president of the Public Services International, the world's largest labor federation, and was on the boards of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Africa-America Institute, and other organizations and was regularly recognized as one of the most influential Black Americans by Ebony magazine. In 1995, he was elected to the AFL-CIO's executive council. Before and during his retirement, Mr. Lucy remained active in a variety of civil rights activities and was an advisor to Washington, D.C., Mayors Walter Washington and Marion Berry. Dorotheria, his wife of 47 years, passed in 2000, and his son William Jr., in 1977. I extend my sincere condolences to his daughters Benita and Phyllis, his extended family and his many friends and countless admirers. Mr. Lucy was a major force for good in this country and around the world, and he will be missed.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, today I attended a marvelous program in Emancipation Hall where a statue of Johnny Cash was unveiled for time immemorial. The statue of Johnny Cash was placed there by the State of Arkansas who earlier placed the statue of Daisy Bates in the Capitol. I commend the State of Arkansas for doing that, and for the outstanding addresses by Arkansas legislators, their Governor, and by Rosanne Cash, daughter of Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash was born in Arkansas, but he came to Memphis to start his musical career. He went to Sun Records, and Sam Phillips got him started. He was at Sun Records on a day when Elvis was there, Jerry Lee Lewis was there, and Carl Perkins was there. They put together songs that day that Sam Phillips recorded. It was called the Million Dollar Quartet. Johnny Cash was a great singer, a great humanitarian, worthy of this honor, and someone we should all remember, a life well lived and memorialized here in the Capitol.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay my sincere respects to Mike Cody, a highly respected Memphis lawyer who worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike, before going on to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, the state's Attorney General, and a Memphis City Council member. Cody passed Sunday at 88. I knew Mike Cody all my adult life, worked as a volunteer in his City Council campaign, and clerked for him at Burch, Porter & Johnson, where he began his legal career in 1961. As firm founder Lucius Burch might have said, `the hair of the hypocrite was not seen about him.' After he, Burch and others met with King, Cody helped successfully argue, on the morning of April 4, 1968, for lifting a federal injunction preventing King from leading a second sanitation workers march after a first march ended in chaos. King was assassinated that evening. Cody worked with the Reverend James Lawson and others to form what became Memphis Area Legal Services, initially to meet individual sanitation workers' legal needs. He served as a Memphis City Councilman from 1975 to 1977 and was then appointed by President Jimmy Carter to be the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee into 1981. Scrupulously honest, he was known to prosecute both Democratic and Republican officials who abused their offices. An unsuccessful candidate in a special election for Memphis Mayor in 1983, Cody was soon appointed Tennessee's Attorney General during the administration of Republican Governor Lamar Alexander, serving from 1984 to 1988. He was also Chair of the Memphis and Shelby County Crime Commission (1997-1998). In 2005, he was appointed to serve as the Co- Chair of the Tennessee Commission on Ethics focusing on revising state ethics laws. In 2010, he was elected Co-Chair of the Society of Attorneys General Emeritus (SAGE). Cody graduated from Memphis East High School (1954), then earned his undergraduate degree from Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College), in 1958, received his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1961, and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws from Rhodes in 1989, where he served as an adjunct professor. As Attorney General, Cody argued four cases before the United States Supreme Court: Rose v. Rose, 481 U.S. 619 (1987), Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570 (1986), Alexander v. Choate, 469 U.S. 287 (1985), and Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985). The landmark Garner case, in which Cody represented the State of Tennessee, established the precedent that an officer may not use deadly force to prevent the escape of a suspect without probable cause to believe the suspect poses a significant threat to the officer or others. The case grew out of a police chase in Memphis. Cody also served as an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University School of Law, Memphis State University's School of Law, Rhodes College and LeMoyne Owen College. He served as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve from 1961 to 1967. He was the author of Honest Government: An Ethics Guide for Public Service (1992), and law review articles on excluding the mentally ill from the death penalty, Tennessee's experience with the privatization of correctional institutions, and on his representation of Dr. King in 1968, among other scholarly works. A member of the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame and the Memphis Amateur Sports Hall of Fame, Cody was a runner since high school and ran in more than a dozen Boston Marathons, finishing fifth in his age group in 1990. He served on the board of the National Civil Rights Museum, as vice chairman of the Memphis and Shelby County Library Foundation, and President of the Memphis in May International Festival (1996). I extend my sincere condolences to his wife Suzanna; his children Jane, Mia and Michael; his extended family, and his many friends. He did much for his community, the legal profession, his state and the Nation. His was a life well-lived.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, this morning I woke up to bad news. One of my friends, JD Souther, also known as John David Souther, a great singer, songwriter, and an actor to boot, passed away yesterday in New Mexico at the age of 78. JD wrote a lot of songs that the Eagles did and that Linda Ronstadt covered, and he performed some of them too. He did ``New Kid in Town.'' When I was elected to Congress, he came to Memphis with Jackson Browne to do what I considered probably the greatest fundraiser in history. It was a small house with a living room that had a little area above it, and the two of them did an hour concert for the few people they could cram into that living room. JD sang ``New Kid in Town'' about me saying that I am going to be the new kid in town in Congress and great expectations are thought of me. I think about that a lot. When I got elected, JD called me, and he said: Steve, you are going to the show. Well, the show is major league parlance for going to the major leagues, and we were both baseball fans. He was just a great guy. He was smart as hell. He is in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He had a great voice and was so respected by musicians. I kind of got him from Warren Zevon. He was my pal, and Warren kind of willed him to me. Warren was dying, and he said: Steve, I have got a friend who is moving to Nashville, and you all should be friends. When I met him in Nashville, he said: I need to get something out of this, and I want to get married. Can you marry me? I could do marriages, and I married him at Burt Stein's house. Rodney Crowell was the only witness. The marriage didn't take, but I did the best job I could. JD was my friend and a great American songwriter. He will be missed.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to my first Congressional Chief of Staff, an early activist in the Civil Rights Movement, a life-long public servant, and my friend, Shirley Cooks, who passed on January 19, 2024. A celebration of life will be held for Shirley on Capitol Hill on September 12 with her family, friends and former co-workers gathering to honor a woman of substance, skill and humor who they considered a mentor and hero. Shirley ran my D.C. office with outstanding skill and loyalty, helping me, a first-term congressman, navigate a world she had known and managed relationships in for years. Her sage advice, deep knowledge, and constant grace were invaluable to me. A dedicated public servant all her life, Shirley was an ardent advocate of civil rights and had the achievements and life history to advance them. Shirley was born on August 27, 1944, to Melvine and William Wright in New York City. Her early education was divided between New York and Aboukir, St. Ann, Jamaica. Shirley graduated from St. Paul's School in Los Angeles in 1958. She became acquainted with leaders and staff members of both the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) when she moved from Los Angeles to New York to live with her brother and sister-in-law, entertainer and political activist Harry and his wife Julie Belafonte, and their children. She studied at Bank Street College, a groundbreaking school advancing early childhood education; the New School for Social Research; and New York University during that time. By the mid-1960s, Shirley had moved to Atlanta to work full-time in the Civil Rights Movement as a member of the SNCC administrative staff with additional work on Voter Registration field projects in Alabama and Mississippi. Her work included liaison outreach with SCLC, where she met her future husband, Stoney Cooks. They were married in September 1970 and settled in Atlanta the following year. Shirley gave birth to her first child in 1972, the year Andrew Young was elected to Congress, becoming the first African American representative from the Deep South since Reconstruction. Shirley worked in the principal's office at Peabody Elementary School on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. in 1974 and gave birth to her second son in 1976. In 1977, when Andrew Young was appointed U.N. Ambassador by President Jimmy Carter, Shirley and Stoney and their two children moved to New York City where she worked at the African American Institute (AAI). In 1981, Shirley gave birth to her third son and the couple returned to Atlanta with their three children where she served in the position of Director, Bureau of Cultural Affairs, in the Parks and Recreation Department for the City of Atlanta. Continuing her work in public service, Shirley returned to work as Legislative Affairs Director at AAI in Washington, then served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs at the U.S. Department of State under Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. She later worked as Chief of Staff for U.S. House Representatives members Juanita Millender-McDonald of California, Laura Richardson of California, and for me, before retiring. Shirley will be remembered as a devoted public servant with a wonderful sense of humor, a serious commitment to justice and good causes, her loyalty and her kindness. I extend my sincere condolences to her sons Caleb, Judah, and Micah; her grandchildren, Stoney Nakoda and Wiyot Adeline; and her many loyal friends and extended family members. May they take comfort in the life she lived. Shirley Cooks made a difference in our world and will continue to be greatly missed.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay my respects to my friend Gina Sugarmon, a civil rights groundbreaker and a passionate advocate for children, who passed on Saturday at the age of 86. Mrs. Sugarmon came to the United States as a refugee escaping from defeated Germany after the Second World War ended and settled in Memphis after marrying a soldier from the area. That marriage ended, and she met and married Russell B. Sugarmon, a lawyer, judge and member of the Tennessee General Assembly. Their biracial marriage in 1968 caused a stir in then-racially fraught Memphis just months after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They were married 51 years. Russell Sugarmon passed in 2019, and I successfully introduced and saw signed into law the legislation that named the U.S. Post Office at 1325 Autumn Avenue in Memphis in his honor. Mrs. Sugarmon was active in the Head Start program that prepares young children for success in school for 30 years. She also worked with the Memphis Council for International Visitors to show off her adopted city to foreign visitors with her unique international perspective. Mrs. Sugarmon was a trailblazer and an inspiration to all who came to know her. I valued her friendship and join her family, friends and admirers in saying hers was a life well- lived. She will be missed.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Memphis and national rock 'n' roll legend Jimi Jamison as we approach the 10th anniversary of his death in 2014. Mr. Jamison is best known as the frontman of the band Survivor and for hits that placed him at the top of the music charts in collaboration with other artists. He co-wrote ``I'm Always Here,'' the theme song for the television series ``Baywatch,'' and performed ``Burning Heart'' with Survivor for the film ``Rocky IV,'' but is best known in Memphis for his performances of ``Eye of the Tiger'' at University of Memphis Tigers sporting events. Born in Durant, Mississippi, he moved as an infant to Memphis and considered our city his home. In 2022, a stretch of Highland Street between Central and Southern avenues was named Jimi Jamison Street. Acclaimed for his rich vocal skills, Jimi Jamison will be long remembered for his contributions to American music. I join his many fans and friends in remembering him as we near the September 1 tenth anniversary of his passing.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend Memphis Public Works Director Robert Knecht who is retiring from the City of Memphis after 23 years of making it a safer and more attractive place. Mr. Knecht is a hard-working and outstanding public servant who always had time to answer my questions about federal funding for city projects or how securing federal funding could advance the city's infrastructure needs, a quality invaluable to me as the Congressman representing Memphis. Mr. Knecht concentrated his efforts on the full Public Works portfolio including stormwater and wastewater operations, blight remediation, Code Enforcement, environmental enforcement, sustainability, street sweeping and street maintenance operations, and the results are to his credit. My staff and I worked closely with Mr. Knecht as we realized the $41 million Big River Crossing project, which included improvements on downtown Memphis' Main Street from Uptown to the Harahan Bridge and the conversion of the vehicle sections of the bridge into a bike/ pedestrian path. This project was made possible by $15 million in federal funds I secured through the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER IV) Grant as well as matching grants from state and local funds and private funds. Mr. Knecht was instrumental in helping to execute Community Project Funding I secured for projects such as developing the Memphis Cobblestone Landing Recreational Center, which received $4 million. I have also worked closely with him to secure district projects in the past several Water Resources Development Acts, including provisions to deauthorize the Wolf River to create a lake adjacent to the historic downtown Snuff District and to accommodate a floating entertainment dock at Cobblestone Landing. A graduate of the University of Memphis with a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering (2003), he also has a Master of Business Administration (2008) from the University of Phoenix. A veteran of the U.S. Air Force, he served during Desert Storm/Desert Shield. Married to Memphis native Mandy, he and his three children have bright days ahead as he heads for an opportunity in the private sector. As Mayor Paul Young has said, his shoes will be hard to fill. His has been a job well done.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend Romeo Lucchesi, the Visual Information Specialist at the Lt. Col. Luke Weathers Jr. VA Medical Center in Memphis, for his successes in video marketing and film-making. Earlier this year, he won a Gold Aster Award for excellence in healthcare advertising for his special video production ``A Tribute to Lt. Col. Luke Weathers Jr.'' Earlier this year, he also won an Emmy Award for his documentary video essay ``The Green Beret Who Fought Muhammad Ali.'' Lt. Col. Luke Weathers, Jr. was a Tuskegee Airman from Memphis. During World War II, Weathers was credited with shooting down German planes while protecting U.S. Army Air Corps bombers. As a result of his stellar flying record, he earned an Air Medal with 7 Clusters, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the American Theater Ribbon Victory Medal WWII. After the War, he worked for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and eventually returned to Memphis, where he continued to support African Americans in the military, aviation, and elsewhere. Lt. Col. Weathers's inspirational story moved me to introduce legislation to rename the Memphis VA after him. Lucchesi produced a memorial video of Lt. Col. Weathers for a renaming ceremony of the Memphis VA Medical Center in July 2023. ``The Green Beret Who Fought Muhammad Ali'' tells the story of Memphis native Henry Hooper, a Booker T. Washington High school graduate who enlisted in the Marines and later joined the U.S. Army's Special Forces Green Berets. As a Green Beret, he was invited to the U.S. Olympic Boxing Trials in 1960 held at San Francisco's Cow Palace, where he sparred with Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, who won the Gold Medal in the light heavyweight division in the Rome Olympics later that year. Hooper describes the fight in the film, explaining that for a split second, he took his eyes off Ali, and got knocked down. Ali won the match on a technical knock out. Hooper spent 11 years on active duty, some of it in Vietnam, while Ali resisted the draft and was charged with draft evasion in a case later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Hooper later became a Secret Service agent and was assigned White House duty during the Carter Administration. At a state dinner to which Muhammad Ali had been invited, Ali approached Hooper saying he was sure they'd met before. Hooper said they'd met at the Cow Palace and they embraced. Hooper's colleagues asked about the encounter because they had never heard the story of the boxing match. As Hooper explains it, he didn't talk about it: ``I lost. I got beat . . . but he (Ali) remembered.'' Hooper, now a retired insurance agent in Memphis, is finally getting the adulation as a veteran that he deserves, and it is thanks to Mr. Lucchesi's talented filmmaking. The six-minute documentary can be viewed on the Medical Center's Facebook page. Romeo Lucchesi's talent is apparent, and I am pleased that he is working at the Lt. Col. Luke Weathers Jr. VA Medical Center, helping to tell the stories and honor those who have sacrificed to protect our freedoms. I congratulate him on his successes and look forward to seeing what else he has in store for us.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, this week the person who occupied the White House for 4 years before President Biden returned to Washington for the first time since he left. Since that time, he has been found guilty of sexual abuse with E. Jean Carroll, and he has been found in defamation of E. Jean Carroll on two different occasions for nearly $100 million. He has been found to be fraudulently projecting his income and liabilities in his businesses in New York and the State to the tune of about a $480 million civil judgment. He has also been found guilty of a felony in New York State 34 times. What he also did before he left was he led an assault on this Capitol, on this government. I was up there in the balcony when they were beating on the doors, and we were told to get out for our lives and put on gas masks. Gunfire was in this room. Four officers were killed or died because of that insurrection against our government. Trump didn't come here to apologize to the Capitol Police, who put their lives on the line, which he should have. It is unfortunate.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, this is absurd. This is Fellini in the Congress. Comparing what Joe Biden did to what the other fellow that preceded him in office did in keeping documents in Mar-a-Lago in his bathroom and out in the fancy rooms where all of his billionaire friends go is like comparing somebody that writes a bad check by $2, an overdraft, to somebody who is a bank robber with guns, weapons, and machine guns going into banks and robbing money. Biden was a sympathetic figure, said Mr. Hur, a Republican, who Merrick Garland gave the duty to study that case. He was a sympathetic figure. You don't convict a crime unless there is guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Mr. Hur found there could not be guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. What the other fellow did, refusing to comply with requests to give the classified documents up, refusing and refusing and then having to have a search warrant to find them, hundreds of documents, not for the purpose of writing a book--for somebody who can't even read a book--was for purposes that we don't know. We don't know what they were used for, but they were taken illegally and improperly. Merrick Garland is an honorable and good man who should be in the College of Cardinals and not being tried for contempt by this Felliniesque----

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I have not seen a more diligent and honorable Attorney General in the time I have served in Congress. Merrick Garland is a superb individual, and this is just projection, trying to throw things off from the other fellow, Trump, and put them on Biden. There is no comparison. Once again, it is like comparing a bank robber to a guy who wrote an overdraft.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, this world lost one of its most outstanding citizens yesterday. Reverend James M. Lawson passed away at age 95. Reverend Lawson was one of the architects of the civil rights movement in our country that brought rights to African Americans and others. He was the architect of Dr. King's practice of nonviolence. He went to India, and he studied what Mahatma Gandhi had done in India to bring about rights in India. Dr. King adopted that and made him the person in charge of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's nonviolence division. He marched in Selma with John Lewis, and both were beaten for trying to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama. He was in Memphis as a minister in 1968 when the sanitation workers went on strike, the ``I Am A Man'' campaign. He encouraged Dr. King to come to Memphis, which he did, which resulted in Dr. King's assassination in Memphis on April 4. Reverend Lawson was a steadfast supporter of civil rights. He was against war, against the Vietnam war. He was for gay rights, for labor, and for progress in this country. He was a significant human being who did much for this world, and we will miss his opportunities to share and make us a better, a more perfect Union. His was a life well-lived.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to remember Larry Cox, a transformational figure in the development of Memphis International Airport in my hometown over more than 40 years, who passed last Friday at the age of 76. Mr. Cox spent his entire 41-year career at the airport, beginning as an unpaid intern and ending with the last 29 as President and CEO of the Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority. During his tenure, in much of which the airport was a major Northwest Airlines and later Delta hub and the largest cargo airport in the world, he oversaw development of the World Runway, an 11,120-foot runway to accommodate FedEx and other nonstop intercontinental flights, which was dedicated in 2000. Mr. Cox served as Chairman of the American Association of Airport Executives, on the board of Airports Council International and President of the Tennessee Association of Air Carrier Airports. His influence was recognized with the Federal Aviation Administration's ``Kitty Hawk'' Award in 1996. In addition, as a civic leader, he served as Chairman of the board of directors for the Greater Memphis Chamber, the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau (now Memphis Tourism), and the Mid-South Minority Business Council. Mr. Cox, an Air Force veteran and licensed pilot, earned undergraduate Economics (1969) and graduate MBA (1974) degrees from the University of Memphis. I express my deep condolences to his wife Patrica, his two daughters, Stephanie and Leigh-Ann, his extensive family and his many friends and colleagues. Mr. Cox made Memphis a better place and improved the air travel experience, and he will be missed.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate my friend and former Memphis neighbor Cary Fowler, currently serving as the U.S. State Department's Special Envoy for Global Food Security, who was recently named a World Food Prize Laureate at a ceremony at the State Department. Dr. Fowler is perhaps best known as the ``father'' of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon described as an ``inspirational symbol of peace and food security for the entire humanity.'' The facility on a Norwegian archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole opened in 2008 and provides ultimate security for more than 1.2 million unique crop varieties, the biological foundation of agriculture and the raw material for all future plant breeding. Dr. Fowler is the former Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an international organization based in Rome cosponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UN FAO) and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Prior to leading the Crop Diversity Trust, Dr. Fowler was a Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and a senior staff member of Bioversity International. Earlier, he oversaw the U.N.'s first global assessment of the State of the World's Plant Genetic Resources. He was responsible for drafting and negotiating the first FAO Global Plan of Action on the Conservation and Sustainable Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources, formally adopted by 150 countries in 1996. Following this, Dr. Fowler twice served as Special Assistant to the Secretary General of the World Food Summit and represented the CGIAR in the multi-year negotiations on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources. In 2015, Dr. Fowler was appointed to the Board for International Food and Agricultural Development by President Obama. He is a former board member of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center and former chair of the Livestock Conservancy. Dr. Fowler is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, has delivered a TED Talk, and is a frequent lecturer at universities around the world. He is the author of Shattering: Food, Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity, and Unnatural Selection: Technology, Politics and Plant Evolution, as well as Seeds on Ice: Svalbard and the Global Seed Vault. He is also the recipient of several awards including the Right Livelihood Award, the Vavilov Medal, the Heinz Award, Bette Midler's Wind Beneath My Wings Award, the William Brown Award of the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Proctor Medal of the Garden Clubs of America, the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Citizen Leadership, and three honorary doctorates. He is one of two foreign elected members of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences. In his spare time, he and his wife, Amy, an heirloom plant conservationist, tend an apple orchard with more than 100 varieties in New York's Hudson River Valley. In their marriage, one plus one equals three. They are a simpatico couple, loving the Earth and its products. The World Food Prize, awarded since 1986, was the idea of agronomist Norman Borlaug, known as ``the father of the Green Revolution,'' who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977. Dr. Fowler will share this year's award with agricultural scientist Dr. Geoffrey Hawtin. Dr. Fowler's forward-thinking work is protecting humanity itself and helping secure its future, and I congratulate him.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Senate amendment to H.R. 3935, which reauthorizes the FAA and its related authorities through fiscal year 2028. At long last, after the House passed our bill almost a year ago, the Senate caught up with the House, and it passed a bill Thursday night, making critical investments and key policy reforms to the aviation system to deliver for the American people and the American economy. From air traffic controller staffing challenges to the modernization of the FAA's legacy safety and technology infrastructure to the integration of new entrants in the U.S. skies, there is no shortage of problems facing the aviation sector. This FAA reauthorization bill takes significant steps toward addressing these issues and ensuring the U.S. aviation system remains the safest and most efficient in the world. It will bolster aviation safety, strengthen consumer protections and accessibility, and make landmark investments in sustainability, enhance and diversify our aviation workforce, and advance American leadership in aerospace. I am pleased that many of my priorities have made it into this bill. For too long, airlines have made passengers jump through countless hoops to get refunds for flights that have been canceled or significantly delayed or changed. I worked with Senator Markey on this on the Senate side. Airlines will now be required to provide full cash refunds in those situations if a passenger does not accept alternative compensation. Mr. Speaker, I am also glad to see the inclusion of my proposals that provide transparency in the complaints from passengers with disabilities to help passengers who use mobility aids such as wheelchairs. Too many times we have seen disabled people's wheelchairs damaged from being tossed like some type of rubber baggage, and they have trouble even leaving the airport. This will protect disabled people and allow them to have access to the skies equivalent to nondisabled passengers. This bill additionally directs the FAA to consider real-life conditions in its evacuation standards and initiating rulemaking on seat sizes. We have worked on rulemaking on seat sizes since the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster) was the chair of the committee. He was my friend and a great chairman. We got it into the bill, but we still haven't got the FAA to make a test where they have real situations that are like it is when you fly to see how long it takes to evacuate a plane and have seat sizes that are safe for the American public. Finally, we have long-overdue requirements for aircraft cockpit voice recorders to record the most recent 25 hours of audio and for critical flight data to be recoverable without underwater retrieval to be included. This was included as part of the bill that I received from the suggestions of the former NTSB chair, Jim Hall, a great Tennessean, who championed this when there was a plane that went down leaving South America, and it took forever for them to find the recorder. He has been a tireless champion of these requirements, and this will provide greater clarity for accident investigations. The challenges facing the U.S. aviation system make it clear that we must pass this long-term, comprehensive reauthorization. I thank my friends and colleagues: Chairman Sam Graves, who did a great job in bringing this bill together, bringing everybody together, giving everybody opportunities to be included, and making sure it was successful; and Garret Graves, who is a big fan of Steve Larsen, and also Ranking Member Rick Larsen. Our partnership in this body shows we can come together and pass meaningful and transformative legislation. It is bipartisan, it is bicameral, and it is bicoastal. It is not bisexual. I support the Senate amendment to H.R. 3935 and urge my colleagues to do the same. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my chairman, and I also found the remarks that were directed at you to be reprehensible. I know you and I know your commitment to fair play and the First Amendment. However, I have questions about this bill, and that is why I am here to listen to the debate. I don't know if Mr. Lawler wishes to respond, but there is another bill, Representative Manning and Representative Smith's bill. It is bipartisan. It has, I think, 15 Members of each party on it. I have been trying to get on it, but they are doing this crazy balancing act that eliminates certain people. I yield to Mr. Lawler to ask if he would support H.R. 7921 and work with Mr. Smith to get that brought to the floor.

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. I thank the gentleman. I appreciate his support for that, I think it is very important. I think it is a more inclusive bill, a broader bill. It takes in not just the problems at the universities but also takes on problems in the communities at large. There has been anti-Semitism for over 2,000 years. The Jews have a homeland. Before they had a homeland, they didn't have that sense of security anyplace where they were. It has been threatened so many times and so many places over the years, and it should not be taken from them. I was concerned, and Mr. Nadler made the point, that in 2017 in Charlottesville there were national socialist movements, Vanguard America groups, traditional workers parties, Klan members, all kind of rightwing anti-Semitic crowds, racist skinheads that were in Charlottesville. They marched around saying: ``Jews will not replace us.''

Mr. COHEN. President Trump said there are good people on both sides. Well, there are good people on both sides in Columbia, but there were not good people on both sides in Charlottesville. That anti-Semitism needs to be addressed and has not been addressed by my friends on the other side, although Mr. Smith has addressed it and there are others, so I don't want to paint a broad brush. There have been so many instances in history that have come not from these Palestinian supporters, but from skinheads, Neo-Nazis, and Klansmen, and that needs to be addressed. I think Mr. Smith's and Ms. Manning's bill addresses it. I hope that comes to the floor and we do a comprehensive attack on anti-Semitism.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, Speaker Johnson said he was a wartime Speaker and was a child of the eighties influenced by Reagan who went to the Berlin Wall and said: ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.'' I am a child of the sixties and John Kennedy, and I heard him say in his inaugural address: ``Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.'' Mr. Reagan and Mr. Kennedy each expressed what is the will and the heritage of the American Government in supporting liberty around the world. These bills, that protect the Indo-Pacific, Israel, and Ukraine, protect these countries against attacks on their sovereignty and their existence. They are free countries that celebrate democracy. We have a duty to support them, and we are engaging in that American tradition. I support the bills, and I urge everyone to do so.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to include in the Record a statement from Josselyn Wolf, a young woman from Rhode Island, who appears with me in the documentary film ``Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West'' about the plight of America's wild horses. She is an advocate for H.R. 3656, the Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act, of which I am an original cosponsor, and has some insightful thoughts to share about how the Wild Horse and Burro Program is being run by the Bureau of Land Management. This is her statement: ``We need the tonic of wildness.'' This powerful sentiment, articulated by Henry David Thoreau in his reflective piece Walden, was embodied when millions of children sent letters to Congress--more letters than any non-war-related movement has generated in American history--begging for the protection of one of our nation's most treasured species: the wild horse. Harnessing the power of our democratic republic, these voices inspired the unanimous passage of the 1971 Wild Free- Roaming Horses and Burros Act. The Act reserved roughly 47 million acres of Western rangelands for the unbridled existence of wild horses and burros and promised the dwindling numbers of mustangs--then at extinction level-- protection from ``capture, branding, harassment, or death.'' Over fifty years since the passage of that vital legislation, half of designated herd management areas have been eliminated and the protections promised by the Act continue to be grossly and sometimes violently violated under a system that misleads and misinforms Congress, the media, and the American people. Each year, Congress allocates over one hundred million dollars to the Bureau of Land Management to support the Wild Horse and Burro Program: a system that endangers, kills, incarcerates, and separates close-knit equine families through the use of traumatic helicopter-induced stampedes and dismal holding facilities, a system overseen by land managers who claim to restore the land while destroying it, a system that has sent thousands of wild horses--wild horses: the icons of freedom and grit that define our great nation--to the slaughter pipeline. Why? To support millions of livestock who produce less than two percent of American beef, much of which is shipped overseas to China. Livestock who, by the Bureau of Land Management's own statistics, graze nearly six times more public land than wild horses, vastly outnumbering them on their own designated territories. Not only does public grazing of cattle and sheep degrade biodiversity, it also subsidizes billion-dollar cattle corporations at the expense of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars: a stark contrast to small ranchers who are forced to pay rising grazing fees. As human beings, we wield unprecedented power to disrupt the thriving natural ecological balance of our planet and therefore unprecedented responsibility to sustain it. As the National Academy of Sciences along with a multitude of independent scientists and researchers have attested, our land's ecological harmony is, in its current state, fundamentally broken. As law scholars have passionately voiced, our legal compliance with the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act is fundamentally broken. As Indigenous representatives have testified, our relationship with the land is fundamentally broken. You, Members of Congress, wield the power to defend this untamed wildness that is the history and heart of America before it reaches extinction level. Each of you, Members of Congress, are in a unique position to rectify this dysfunctional system that is compromising our environment, our economy, and the natural wonders and gifts we are collectively responsible for, to pass down to our children untarnished and undestroyed. Therefore, I am not asking for a radical, partisan rewrite: I am asking for a conversation. It is up to you to reevaluate the priorities of our nation . . . before it's too late. As a sixteen-year-old constituent, it is of imperative importance to me that the planet of my future is managed sustainably, and that carelessness does not forever eliminate the tonic of wildness that makes our Earth a home.