Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, this is a very sad time in America. As was discussed earlier today in debate, we used to have bipartisan agreements on things. One of those was when anti-Semitism was raising its ugly head. One party here on the floor still speaks up against, will vote against anti-Semitic statements and call them out for what they are, and another will not. I heard my friend across the aisle, Brad Sherman, just appropriately decrying the violence, these anti-Jewish folks in California, this incident. Well, that surely could be something we could once again, come back together in a bipartisan way and condemn the 40 percent rise in violence against Semitic people. It is time to come together on that. It will show the world.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, here is an article by Tristan Justice: ``April job numbers are so bad, CNBC thought it was a typo.'' Another article: ``New stimulus package: Unemployment benefits, $300 per week extended till September.'' ``America's Vanishing Workforce,'' article by Megan Cassella and Rebecca Rainey. And this one, The Hill: ``It is time for States to take the lead in getting Americans back to work,'' by Anthony Hughes. Why is that? It is because we have an administration that is doing everything it can in conjunction with the Democrats in Congress to keep people from going back to work. Now, when I was between my sophomore and junior year at Texas A&M, I was accepted on an exchange program for the summer to the Soviet Union. And at one point, being out at a collective farm many miles outside of Kiev, I couldn't tell what was cultivated and what wasn't. It looked brown. It didn't look good. But all the farmers in the middle of the morning--10, 10:30--they are sitting out under a tree in the shade, and they are visiting. And I tried to have a smile and use my best Russian. And I asked, ``When do you work out in the field?'' Because I had stood there for a while. And they all laughed, and I thought maybe I didn't say it right in Russian. And finally one of them said, ``I make the same number of rubles if I am out there in the sun as I do in the shade, so I stay in the shade.'' I got a message from one of my friends, a lady, that says her yard guy says he can't get people to come back to work. He has got 125 yards. And her hairdresser's kids, they are not working, all because of this big bonus if you don't work. It is time to get people back to work, having them earn their money. America will be better for it.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it has been interesting. I get to take my mask off under the rules now. We haven't quite caught up with the science here in the House. The House of Representatives that has leadership proclaiming that we need to follow the science refuses to do so, so far. But we are hoping we will eventually get at least the majority of people here to follow the science. It has been an interesting time, not a good time, not a wonderful, enriching time to be in the House of Representatives. It has been an exceedingly frustrating time. After January 6, apparently, the number one goal here in the House was something referred to as optics. According to the Sergeant at Arms, the reason the National Guard was not brought up in advance on January 6, so there would be no one entering the Capitol that was not desired to enter the Capitol, was that word, ``optics.'' So, the Capitol Police, doing the best they could, were left to fend for themselves without the support they needed. It is a big place. But had the number one concern before January 6 by people here in Washington, at the Capitol, at least, if that number one concern had not been optics, there would have been no one coming into the Capitol that we didn't want to be in the Capitol. Since then, we have been entertained by all kinds of false statements, false allegations. It has really been amazing. The number one thing we keep coming back to is, apparently, it is not about getting at the truth. It is all about optics. The top person charged with the safety of Members of Congress, the head of the Capitol Police, months ago indicated that there was no intel from any source that any Member of Congress was at risk or a threat to any other Member of Congress. No Member of Congress was at risk from another Member of Congress. Since then, as I understand it, there was an ethics charge leveled at Marjorie Taylor Greene that she was encouraging a debate with another Member of Congress and somehow that is apparently an ethics violation. I had a Democrat some years back come up and threaten to kick my buttocks. I think he used other language. But had he swung, I might have filed a complaint. Here on the House floor, what we have are words. We get into very heated debates at times because we care deeply about the things we care deeply about. But those are not assaults. There have been assaults in the Capitol, and I know memory is apparently a big question these days, but when the President of the United States stands right up here at the second level, as Presidents have since this opened before 1860, and have made speeches--in this case, it wasn't to a joint session; it was to an invitation-only session--but he indicated that what happened on January 6 was the worst attack on democracy since the Civil War. So being an ongoing student of history since Coach Sam Parker instilled a love in me for history, especially American history--the good, the bad, the ugly, the incredible--I have continued to be a student of American history, and World history as well. So sometimes it is helpful for those who don't know our history or can't remember our history to be reminded that since the Civil War put an end to slavery in America, even though it took an ordained Christian preacher resolutely, peacefully advocating for civil rights, and that the Constitution should be used as a document that means what it says. And as the Declaration of Independence made clear, we are endowed not by government, but by our creator with certain unalienable rights. And Dr. King's letters from the Birmingham jail, as he was unjustly incarcerated, pretty powerful words from a man full of vision. We miss his vision. I think things would be very different if he were still alive today. The assassin did great damage to the United States of America, and the benefits that we would have had from a visionary still if he were alive today. Because there are some who say if you even use words to debate, that somehow you are an insurrectionists, you need to be jailed. And that has been happening since January 6. In fact, January 6 of 2017, I believe there were 11 different Democrats that stood up and forcefully objected to the results and to the electors that were voting for President Trump. And there was not a single Republican I ever heard on our side of the aisle that accused them of trying to overthrow the government, insurrection--all these things that some of us have been accused of-- simply wanting a fair election in which the votes of tens of millions of Americans were not disenfranchised. The very same thing even our current Speaker has said back in prior days about prior elections. So imagine the shock for those of us who, for the last 20 years, had been preached to by people on the other side of the aisle about the unfairness of election, the vulnerability of electronic elections, who seemed disgusted that some of us had the same kind of objections as they had about the election in November. There is nothing illegal, improper, against the House rules of objecting, yet we had people on the other side of the aisle who were encouraging all kinds of punishment for those on this side of the aisle who did exactly what Democrats have been doing for 20 years or so-- objecting, as they did January 2001. And we saw objection January 6 of 2005. And these ``woke'' corporations that now want to punish anybody that objected to potentially--and there is evidence of fraud in the November 2020 election--and those who say there was no fraud in the election are either doing so knowingly, knowing that it is false what they are saying, or just because they bought in to what the mainstream/lame- stream media has reported. But there was fraud in that election. There usually is some fraud in national elections. And in States where it was somewhat close compared to the number of people voting, like Arizona, they are doing the right thing. They are trying to have an audit. And, obviously, the efforts of the audit is being covered up. There is evidence being destroyed. I guess a bit like when you have a Secretary of State that destroys evidence that she has, that has been sought, has it destroyed with a hammer or with BleachBit, obstruction of justice. But, fortunately, for some, we had a Justice Department that saw crimes committed by Democrats that did not need to be pursued or punished, and things that were not crimes that Republicans did needed to be punished. People all across America are naturally going to be upset when they don't just perceive, they see and know that there is a two-tiered justice system--one for certain high-place Democrats and one for Republicans, or those who support Republicans. And Heaven help them if they support President Donald Trump. That is what has been so amazing to someone like me, who has been part of the justice system and seeing the law enforced for so much of my adult life. It is unbelievable. And hearing from FBI agents around the country who repeatedly said, if anybody in our office, in this location, that location, different locations around the country had done a fraction of the things that were done by top FBI officials in Washington, D.C., then we would not only have been fired, but they would have been looking at coming after us with criminal charges. And they were despondent because they were devoting their lives to justice. Republican and Democrat prosecutors in different parts of the country couldn't believe what they were seeing. The injustice coming from what was supposed to be the Justice Department. And what has happened since January 6 is quite sickening. It is a war. It is an assault on our Constitution. Now, it is not new. Back when Mueller was head of the FBI, and the inspector general shocked everyone who was paying attention, that there had been over 3,000 abuses of the national security letter where FBI agents had just wanted to do fishing expeditions--no crime, no probable cause. They just wanted information about people when the Constitution did not permit it. So they send a national security letter demanding that a bank accompany an individual, give them all the information on another American, just because they wanted it. Outrageous. And that, we know, occurred during President George W. Bush's administration, while Mueller was FBI Director. Now, he made a statement: Gee, I will take all the blame. Well, he should because he created an environment at the FBI that apparently encouraged lawlessness by top FBI agents. And if you look at Ted Stevens, Senator from Alaska, who was framed by the FBI, and you look at what Director Mueller did in the aftermath of finding out if he did not know all the time before that while it was going on, that Ted Stevens was framed, that he was not guilty of what was charged. And the FBI had evidence that he was not guilty, and they covered that up and they helped create evidence to make it look like he was guilty. And they saw that he was tried right before his election. And the loss seemed like it was between 1,000-2,000 votes. He lost his seat. The FBI did that. Mueller's FBI did that. And when one FBI agent with a conscience pointed that out in an affidavit, the injustice that had occurred by the FBI and his supervisor, well, Mueller's reward for that FBI's agency was to drive him out of the FBI. And his reward for the person that--according to the affidavit, helped frame Ted Stevens--was that that FBI agent was promoted, got a better job with the FBI. Apparently, Mueller likes people who are quite good at framing somebody and getting them convicted, because that is what happened. That should have been all the wake-up call we needed to have a housecleaning at the top of the FBI, but that didn't happen. So the abuses got worse during the Obama administration, and you had things like fast and furious, where people actually encouraged the sale and distribution of weapons to drug cartels. And no one, even to this day, has ever been held accountable for that. In fact, there was a cover-up by the Justice Department then. They wouldn't let us have the documents so we could see exactly what happened. In fact, Congress was so inane in its effort to obtain those documents, that the best job--both on fast and furious and on the Benghazi cover-up--was done by Judicial Watch. They got more documentation out of the Justice Department than Congress did, and we are charged with oversight. Even when the Republicans had the majority, people were put in place who did not pursue justice and a cleanup of the Justice Department. So by the time President Trump came along, he had a number of people at the top who created the Russia hoax--a fraud. And as others have said, when the Justice Department and the FBI can work as effectively at trying to frame the President of the United States, who happens to be a billionaire, then most of us would be in severe trouble. And that is the case, and we have seen it in the last few years. We have seen a Justice Department--of course, Christopher Wray--my humble opinion--when he was put in there with a job of cleaning up the FBI, his idea of cleaning up the FBI was to sweep as much of the dirt under the rug so that people couldn't see it. Just like now, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, their job is not to just secure the border under this administration. Their job is to now get them away from the border as quickly as possible so that people don't see them. They are not in the news every night because they have moved them out. As the border patrolmen have said, they are looked upon as the Mexican drug cartels' logistics. The drug cartels get paid money or agreements to pay money from people they bring, including unaccompanied minors; and then the U.S. Government is their logistics because the government ships future drug sailors, traffickers, human traffickers, sex traffickers. Our U.S. Government ships them around the United States so that they can get to the town the drug cartels want them doing their drug trafficking, human trafficking or sex trafficking. The government has become a part of the process for the drug cartels, all to the damage and often the death of American citizens. When Pancho Villa and his minions invaded, I believe it was New Mexico, John Pershing, General Pershing, was sent down. He had a lieutenant named Patton. They were sent down to Mexico, even invade Mexico, going after Pancho Villa and his troops because there were some families who they killed in New Mexico. We have thousands of people dying from fentanyl coming from Mexico, and the answer of this administration, we heard in the last couple of days, the administration is going to add 13 miles to the wall but otherwise leave over 1,000 miles without wall. The answer has not been to secure the border. The answer from this administration has been to say that the border is secure, when anybody with eyes to see or ears to hear knows that is not true. The injustices that have occurred since January 6 appear to be a continuation of the goal of that one word, ``optics,'' the one word that prevented our leadership from having the National Guard on hand to ensure that the Capitol was not invaded. We heard in the Judiciary Committee--that is why I had videotape, which we are not allowed to have here on the House floor, obviously, but had the videotape of John Sullivan, a Trump-hater, who has been supportive of groups that wanted Trump pulled out of office, or as Mr. Sullivan--and I will paraphrase--wanted to yank him out of the White House and do things to him. But he was one of the first ones in the Capitol. He is on video. He was bragging: See, I told you we would be able to do this, getting into the Capitol. He was there egging on people, even at the shooting of the young lady who was shot by a Capitol policeman. Many of us would like to know the full circumstances of so much that went on here, but the thousands of hours of tape are not being used. Now, some of us had heard that the wonderful Capitol policeman, Office Sicknick, that he had died of natural causes. Yet, it was all over the media that he was beaten with a fire extinguisher. It turned out that was completely false. There is an article about that by Julie Kelly in American Greatness, April 26. Her article pointed out there is no reason to keep these men in jail, let alone in solitary confinement in a D.C. prison. The cause of Capitol Officer Sicknick's untimely death on January 7 is finally settled, but the prosecution of his alleged attackers rages on. After months of dishonest accounts about what happened to Officer Sicknick-- first, that he was bludgeoned to death by insurrectionists with a fire extinguisher, and then that he died of an allergic reaction to bear spray. The D.C. medical examiner's office confirmed that 42-year-old Officer Sicknick died of a stroke. The chemical sprayed in his direction during the chaos outside the Capitol on January 6 did not contribute to his death. In its haste to bolster the new narrative, maintaining Sicknick was killed by rioters wielding bear spray, the Acting Attorney General was in on the lie from the start. The Justice Department charged two men with the chemical attack. George Tanios and Julian Khater were arrested March 14 and charged with several crimes, including four counts related to possession and use of a deadly or dangerous weapon and for conspiring ahead of time to use the spray against the officers. They have been behind bars ever since. Both were transported to the Nation's Capital, where they joined dozens of January 6 detainees held in solitary confinement in a D.C. Jail. A judge on Tuesday, this was dated April 26, will consider motions filed by their attorneys to release both defendants as they await trial. This says, as I have reported: For the past few months, Federal courts, at the direction of Joe Biden's Justice Department, are denying bond to nonviolent protestors as their cases continue a slow slog through an intentionally overloaded D.C. judicial system. The presumption of innocence has been suspended for Trump supporters involved in the January 6 protest, largely based on a supposed thought crime of doubting the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Parenthetically, if that were a crime, there would be Democrats who would have been arrested and gone to jail going back to January 2001, when an objection was made to electors. There were no woke corporations back then saying they would no longer do business with those Democrats, nor did they do that after the Democrat objections on January 6, 2005, or after the significant number of objections on January 6, 2017. Now, all of a sudden, it is supposed to be a crime, a heinous act, to object under the rules in the Constitution? Things have to turn around here if we are going to save this little experiment in self-government. Anyway, dangerous evidence, the article questions, law enforcement officials have argued in court pleadings that defendants shouldn't have unfettered access to tens of thousands of hours of video evidence because they might pass along the information to those who wish to attack the Capitol again. Instead, according to a recent Politico article, prosecutors are ``working to build an archive of video that would permit defendants to peruse relevant clips but sharply restrict their access and permit prosecutors a chance to object if they feel such footage could be misused or present a risk.'' Now, that sounds a great deal like what the prosecutors and the FBI were saying about Ted Stevens and their evidence, that they restricted him having access to his own evidence that would have proved his innocence had he been allowed all the evidence that was seized from his home and other places. Anyway, toward the end of the article, it says: ``Khater's family is asking the court to release him on a $15 million bond guaranteed by 16 family members. As one journalist noted, that amount is three times higher than Harvey Weinstein's bail. ``Judge Thomas Hogan will hear the case on Tuesday and then decide whether to keep Khater and Tanios behind bars until their next court date or confine the pair to home detention. ``There is no reason to keep these men in jail, let alone in solitary confinement in a D.C. prison. Cherry-picked video evidence does not support the weapon charges against them. The chief investigator confessed no evidence exists to prove that the can of spray ever was used or that Khater sprayed it at anyone, including police officers. The Justice Department's refusal to allow access to the video evidence raises plenty of red flags. ``Neither man has a criminal record. George Tanios and Julian Khater pose no threat to society. Their only crime, as is the case with hundreds of nonviolent Capitol protestors, was supporting Donald Trump and daring to question the validity of the 2020 Presidential election, a doubt shared by tens of millions of Americans.'' So we have Federal judges that are playing along with this whole outrageous miscarriage of justice for hundreds of Americans who were concerned, as Democrats were in 2001, 2005, 2017. But fortunately for them, Republicans didn't try to create a Federal crime out of questioning election results. Julie Kelly has done extraordinary research on what has occurred since January 6 and on January 6. Some points that she has found: On April 28, 2021, Paul Hopper heard a ruckus in his house. He was in his bedroom answering emails. Clad in his pajamas, he went downstairs to see what was happening. He was confronted by at least a dozen FBI agents, some pointing guns at him and his wife, Marilyn. The couple, along with their houseguests, including a teenager, were handcuffed. Now, where is the outrage that we have been hearing in the Judiciary Committee about young people being unfairly treated? Where is the outrage about the treatment of people since January 6 by any Democrats? Even our Vice President was raising money to pay their bail in places where there was not just looting but there was burning, physical assaults, and, like in Missouri, even death of innocent people. The Hoopers were placed in separate rooms in their home in Alaska, without legal counsel, without the chance to inspect a warrant. Paul and Marilyn were interrogated for hours about their trip to Washington, D.C., in January. They attended President Trump's speech and walked down to the Capitol. They committed no crime. They did not even enter the building. They did what tens of thousands of Americans did on January 6. They traveled to their Nation's Capital, just like all the leftists did that did such damage, and tried to physically assault some of us here in the Capitol last year. Yet, not only were they not punished, those of us who were being threatened and people running after us, we were not protected at all. But Paul and Marilyn, as they were so unfairly and unjustly treated by the FBI and the Department of Justice, the FBI claimed they were looking for Nancy Pelosi's stolen laptop. They said Marilyn looked like a woman in the Capitol who was a suspect, but the photos--that anybody could clearly see--the photos that the FBI finally presented, eventually, it was clear, that wasn't Marilyn, and that wasn't Paul. They didn't take the laptop. Yet, their freedom was taken from them to teach a lesson. Nonetheless, agents threatened both Paul and Marilyn Heupers, the teenager that was there. They threatened them with legal recourse. They ransacked their home, and they took their cell phones and their computers. They even took a copy of the Declaration of Independence. I wish they would read it and understand it. The Huepers have not been charged with any crime, but more than 400 Americans have been charged with various offenses relating to January 6, but most face nonviolent trespassing and disorderly conduct charges. Just yesterday, the Justice Department announced the arrest of an Active Duty United States Marine stationed at Quantico for his involvement in the protests that day. Joe Biden's Justice Department is criminalizing political protest-- but only political protest by Republicans or conservatives. They are destroying the lives of American families. They are weaponizing the events of January 6 to silence Trump-supporting Americans. You don't have to take our word for it. Michael Sherwin, the acting U.S. Attorney who handled the first few months of the Capitol breach probe, bragged that his office arrested at least 100 people between January 6 and January 20 to stop people from coming to D.C. to protest Joe Biden's inauguration. ``I wanted to make sure there was shock and awe, that we could charge as many people as possible before the 20th, and it worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C. because if we go there, we are going to get charged.'' That is only part of what is happening. Dozens of Americans have been hauled out of their homes, transported to Washington, D.C. and held in solitary confinement for months awaiting delayed trials with no end in sight. Nearly all have no criminal record. Some are veterans and ex-law enforcement officers. But the Justice Department is throwing the book at them. Even worse, Federal judges and prosecutors argue that these folks are a danger to society because they doubt the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election. In one case against a man who didn't even enter the building, a Federal judge nonetheless denied bond and said this: ``This is an offense that, at bottom, was an attempt to stop democracy from moving forward, because people were unhappy about the results of the election. I don't think that the defendant will follow my conditions if he believes I am part of this machine of the democratic process.'' Well, that judge ought to be part of the Democratic Justice Department, because that is how that judge is acting, not as a judge but as an advocate and as a part and parcel of what you could call a conspiracy because these people are working to silence anybody who has supported Donald Trump. That is one example of how government lawyers and judges are criminalizing someone's belief about the 2020 Presidential election. It is much like the U.S. Attorney who is saying that if they charge enough people, then Trump supporters are not going to be willing to come back out because they know they will get charged. We have in this city political prisoners held hostage by their own government. They are victims of an unequal system of justice in a country where rioters and looters on the left are let off the hook-- even considered heroes--while those on the right are considered hardened criminals without any record before trial can even begin. Here is how one defense attorney described the conditions in the D.C. Correctional Treatment Facility: Detainees are held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. They cannot shower or shave regularly; some have been physically assaulted by prison guards. They cannot play a role in their own defense. They have no regular access to tablets to communicate with their lawyers or family members. In-person meetings with counsel are nearly impossible; conversations between defendants and lawyers are overheard by other defendants and their lawyers in addition to prison guards. At a detention hearing on May 11 for the two men accused of using pepper spray against police officers and against the late officer, Brian Sicknick, one defense lawyer told the judge he had not been able to speak with his client for 2 weeks. Julian Khater and George Tanios--about whom we were speaking earlier--were arrested in March for allegedly spraying the officers. They are still being held in the D.C. jail for weeks awaiting trial. This week, a Federal judge--one I spoke of earlier--denied bail to both defendants. Julian Khater's family was willing to put up a $15 million bond package. Neither man has a criminal record, but you have a judge and a Justice Department with an agenda, and so what these men are getting is not only not bond, but they are getting the most injustice the Department of Justice can throw at them. They never even went inside the building and the government has yet to prove their cases at all, but the judge basically tried the case himself this week without either defendant present. Judge Hogan said the men are a danger to society because they attempted to halt the democratic process. Well, if that were a crime, we would have dozens of Democrats with a criminal record for coming in here. It was the first and only time in American history that one party came in, took over the House floor, and prevented a session from taking place. It never happened before, and it never happened since. Of course, the election didn't go too well for Democrats after that. We had a very weak Speaker of the House at the time who kept saying that those people will be punished for their improprieties and for their unethical and unruly behavior. There were at least a dozen or more rules of the House that were violated by most of the Democrats. Madam Speaker, you are not supposed to sit on the House floor, on the floor itself. You are not supposed to bring food. Heck, food was catered in here. You are not supposed to take pictures in here. There were not only pictures taken, but there was a broadcast going on from the House floor. Rule after rule were broken. There could have potentially been criminal charges, but none were made. None of us filed any criminal charges. Even though the insurrectionists and the Democratic Party came in here and prevented the House from doing business for 24 hours, Paul Ryan kept saying he was going to do something about it. He never did. No one has ever been punished for the massive improprieties that took place. Many of these people are finally being charged with preventing, or conspiring to prevent Congress from taking action. Well, that is exactly what many of the House Democrats did that day when they prevented, for 24 hours, us from going into session here. The fact is, I didn't and wouldn't advocate that any of the Democratic Representatives be charged or should have been charged criminally. There were rule violations. I felt like it should have been handled by Ethics, but I would not want criminal charges brought against other Members of the House for the very things that Trump supporters are being charged with. I would have felt that was inappropriate against Democratic Members of Congress then, and I feel like it is inappropriate for those who were nonviolent--at least many of them. It is a misdemeanor, it should be, but they are trying to make it for optics purposes into some kind of justification for having metal detectors out here, even though they ought to be other places, and Capitol Police ought to be other places. But it is a great deal like I look around, and anybody who is not speaking has to wear a mask because of optics, that we want people to think there is this grave, great danger here. That is why we have the fence. They took the outer fence down. The inner fence is still around here. We have National Guard troops that could be helping secure our border. That doesn't violate posse comitatus, because they would be enforcing our border against non- American citizens, so posse comitatus, as I hear people bring up, wouldn't come into play. They could be down there helping secure the border, but instead, they are stuck around here in parking garages. I see them in parking garages all the time. That is outrageous. Why are they all here still after all this time? Optics. Optics. It was not as President Bush said when he signed the bill to be used against political protesters, but that is exactly what is being done right now. That bill did not apply to the thousands of people who occupied the Senate and tried to stop the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. It didn't apply to protesters who tried to stop his swearing-in by banging on the doors of the Supreme Court. It didn't apply to any of the protests we have seen over the years in Washington, D.C., but people who were here on that day are being charged with that offense, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in jail. The media and Democrats continue to misrepresent what happened on January 6. But nearly 200 people have been charged with ``obstruction of an official proceeding.'' That is the vague law that President Bush signed into law in 2002. It was aimed at white-collar criminals after the Enron scandal, and yet, it is being used only against people who support President Trump, none of those who officially obstructed the House Chamber for 24 hours who were members of the Democratic Party. Well, the claim about a fire extinguisher being used to murder Officer Sicknick even made it into the Democrats' impeachment memo. But it was a lie. We finally learned he died tragically at the age of 42 of a stroke. The three other people did not die because of what happened that day. Two died of heart failure, and one died of a drug overdose. There is no evidence as has been said on January 7 that this was an armed insurrection--armed meaning with firearms. There were no firearms. Of course, Bruno Cua had a little baton. He didn't use it against anybody, but he still is being charged with using a deadly weapon. Not one person has been charged with bringing a firearm to the Capitol. People have been charged with carrying or using things like Mace or a helmet, but no one brought a gun into this building, and we still have no one in custody for allegedly planting inoperable pipe bombs near the headquarters of the DNC and the RNC. What was all of that about? Some of us tried to get information about those bombs. Normally, people don't put bombs that don't work out where people can see them unless it is simply for the optics. Now, when they are serious, they do what Bill Ayers' people, the Weather Underground, did when they set off a bomb in the U.S. Senate. To me, that was more of an attack, more of a war or an attack on democracy. In this very room, terrorists from Puerto Rico came in here and shot four House Members. Four Members of Congress were shot in this room in 1954. To me, that was more of an attack on democracy, for the President's information. When Pearl Harbor occurred, that was more, thousands, 2,000 to 3,000 people were killed. That was more of an attack on democracy than the protest of January 6. When 9/11 occurred--and I know it has been so long ago, there are a lot of people who have forgotten, apparently, about 9/11--3,000 people killed. The Pentagon was hit. The two World Trade Center buildings were hit. Thousands died. That was more of an attack on democracy. I just want the President to understand there have been things worse than people without any firearms coming into a building. Now, I have been a judge. I wouldn't put up with that kind of activity, disruption. Sure, people go to jail for that. They would not get charged a felony, normally, but certainly misdemeanors. So there is punishment that should and could be used, but not innocent people, not like Paul and Marilyn. FBI swarmed their home, took all their stuff. That is just so wrong. The coverup of the video that was available here in the Capitol that could really establish what all went on is atrocious. I have so many friends in the Capitol Police. They are wonderful people. I admire them greatly. But there are people in leadership positions, apparently, who are covering up video of what went on here. Now, even the news media is asking the D.C. District Court for access to video evidence presented in virtual court proceedings. As one of my Republican colleagues said this week in the House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing, we need to release all the tapes so the American people can see what happened before, during, and after the disturbance on January 6. There is no doubt people came here on January 6 to cause trouble. Most did not come here to cause trouble. Most came here to protest in the manner that I have advocated for years, and that is the effective manner that Dr. King advocated for. So much more is done by peaceful protest. But Americans need to make their voices heard. This power-hungry group occupying positions of power in Washington, D.C., right now, they are wanting to intimidate and use injustice for their own political purposes. The overwhelming number of people caught up in this ``unprecedented investigation,'' as the Justice Department promises, they are actually nonviolent, peaceful Americans. Their only crime was supporting Donald Trump and concern about the fraud Democrats have been telling us about in elections for many years. An article from April 12, Julie Kelly, ``Indefinite Incarceration for Protesters with `Wrong' Politics,'' a great article, documents about different people who are getting death threats. The press has helped bring about all kinds of calamities on people whose crime was being concerned about the election and being here and peacefully protesting. It documents some of the travesties that are occurring with some people whose only crime was being concerned about fairness in the election in America. Another, as ``Capitol Defendants Rot in D.C. Jail, Portland Rioters Get Leniency,'' documents how lenient the Justice Department--yes, the same Justice Department that is locking up in solitary confinement people who really didn't commit the actions they are charged with. That same Justice Department is going easy on the looters and destroyers in Portland. An article from April 19, ``From `Insurrectionists' to `Interruptionists'''--that is probably going to be the charge that ends up sticking in most cases. They obstructed Congress from their jobs, not for 24 hours like the Democrat Members of Congress who kept us from having session in here for 24 hours. Not like that, but just for a matter of hours till things were under control. Then we were back in no time, back here in this Chamber, doing our business. But the FBI raided the Hueper couple's home. That was with guns drawn. Here is this 18-year-old, Bruno Cua, the complaint I have here. He is charged with assault on a Federal officer. Yet, there has been no evidence presented of any assault on a Federal officer--civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding. That is the one that probably is why Julie Kelly says they have gone from insurrectionist to interruptionist: enter or remain on the floor or gallery of either House of Congress; violent entry or disorderly conduct; engage in physical violence; obstruct or impede passage; and parade, demonstrate, or picket on Capitol Grounds. That is what we have come to, locking up this 18-year-old with no criminal history whatsoever. Interesting, in Bruno Cua's case, the Justice Department was arguing, since he had begun to be homeschooled before January 6, as thousands and thousands of American children have been since teachers are refusing in so many places to come teach them, that is used by the Justice Department to say you can't allow this guy to be released, this dangerous 18-year-old with no criminal history. It says, oh, but look at his social media, and he is being homeschooled, so you can't release him home because, you know, that is where he came from. That would be terrible. Yet, in Portland, they are letting people go, right and left, with long criminal histories and with actual violence that they have committed. Anyway, Rick Manning has a good article from May 12 in Townhall, ``Biden's America Resembles the Bad Old Days of 1973.'' I keep expecting, at any time, our President to say that we need to put out big pins with the letters W-I-N on them, as Gerald Ford did. That stood for ``Whip Inflation Now,'' and that didn't work. Wearing a pin with ``Whip Inflation Now'' did not whip inflation, nor did Jimmy Carter wearing a sweater heal or fix our problem with a lack of energy. That didn't work. But that looks like the kind of thing we are headed back to. There is a great deal of injustice, and I would think, for all of those who obstructed an official proceeding here on the House floor, under the leadership of the Democrat Party leadership, that for far longer disrupted the House proceedings, violating countless House rules, I would think that with that in someone's background, that they have committed that crime that these people are being charged with, that we would get a lot more sympathy from our colleagues across the aisle. Many were not here then. But the ones who were, who committed that crime being charged now, have it a little easier on those who interrupted us that day. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it is my honor to yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Cammack). Farmers to Families Food Box Program

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Florida, who truly is my friend, for her comments. At this time, it is my privilege to yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Baird), my friend, a Baird man. Plight of Lakes Shafer and Freeman

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments. It is obviously an important issue. We have been taking up such issues, but it is not necessarily the best way to proceed. For one thing, the bill that was passed today to make the District of Columbia a State flies in the face of the brilliance of the Founders when it came to setting up our Federal Government. Before we had the Constitution ratified in 1789, our first President was sworn in under the new Constitution in 1789, George Washington, and the first Vice President, John Adams. They were all sworn in in Federal Hall there in New York City, so that was technically the first Capital under the new Constitution. Before that, under the Articles of Confederation, they used Philadelphia and, obviously, New York. But in the Constitution itself, there was a provision for a Federal district 10 miles by 10 miles square. It included land that was ceded from Maryland that was on the east side of the Potomac River, as well as a little bit less land from the west side of the Potomac from Virginia. The reason the Founders felt it was so important to have a separate Federal entity that was not wholly contained within a State, not contained within a city, but a Federal enclave as the Capital, was so that--the big reason--no State, no city government could try to extort or hold the Capital hostage. For example, if the Capital got its water from or through a State or city, then they would be subject to having their water turned off. Of course, that was a rather big issue back in the day. We know that New York City had a problem with disease and lack of water to put out fires. A guy named Aaron Burr, who ended up being Vice President and hoped to be President, he and some partners made a proposal for legislation that would create the Manhattan Water Company that would provide all the water that was needed, and it would be clean. That would help stop the disease. They would provide water free to put out fires, and so that seemed very attractive. The thing is, though, they said they needed a monopoly so that they could afford to pay for all they were going to do. They had Alexander Hamilton review it. They got him to sign on that it was a worthy, honorable project. Somewhere after Alexander Hamilton reviewed the language for that, other words were inserted not only to provide for the Manhattan Water Company, or water business, but also such other economic practices or businesses they felt appropriate. Well, that was the scheme the whole time, to create a bank that was not created under other Federal law. So, the Manhattan Bank was created. Aaron Burr and his partners let Manhattan suffer without the water. So, even back then, in the late 1700s, early 1800s, water was a big deal. Electricity was, obviously, not a big deal yet, but the same thing. If you have to get things you need to subsist through another State or city, then there is always a possibility that you could be extorted. We saw the brilliance of the Founders back last summer when we had a Democrat Mayor that did not like the President of the United States. Some of us were wondering whether she was going to authorize Washington, D.C., police to protect the White House itself. Obviously, she didn't provide much help to stop fires from being lit at the historic church right there, catty-corner to the White House. But some of us observed what was going on and a Mayor who didn't seem to care too much about the President. Wow, what if you saw that play out? It is exactly what the Founders wanted to avoid, the U.S. Capital, the U.S. Government, being held hostage. You could see how it could very easily have played into that situation. So, it was brilliant. The Federal enclave, the Federal district that was provided for in our Constitution, would not be part of any State, would not be part of a city. It would be the District of Columbia. It was brilliant. Now, as the majority leader pointed out, purely for politics--this was all about politics. The majority decided they wanted to make the District of Columbia a State unto itself. If that were to become a part of our system here, then this government would be totally subject to the whims of the State of Columbia. We could be prevented from going into session. We could be prevented from leaving. It creates a situation down the road for when things could truly get out of hand. And even though the mainstream media and our friends across the aisle referred to the at least $2 billion of damage, the deaths, shooting, looting, government buildings being burned as peaceful demonstrations, they certainly weren't in the areas where things were being burned, stores were being looted, and destruction was the lot. That could come back again, and you could have people who would be that active. It certainly appears that BLM is more concerned about making this a socialist country, an Orwellian, a totalitarian country than they are about any race. Antifa is just all about creating chaos, because they figure, out of chaos, will come a totalitarian, Orwellian government. So this time we are going through right now will be looked at historically in other countries and whatever this country becomes, and this will be pointed to as a very, very important time. Now, we were accused of playing politics with this issue on the Republican side. I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for all the Republicans I have talked to. This is still an important concept that we not have a Capital subject to being held hostage. And if D.C. becomes a State, that scenario is then set up, and it is not good for the country. In wrestling with these issues after I got here--you know, I saw the license plate, and I mentioned this before in years past--that, at first, when I saw ``taxation without representation,'' you know, I didn't get it. It didn't seem appropriate. But then you find out that actually every territory that does not have a full voting Member of the House of Representatives that is a territory of the U.S.--whether it is Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, U.S. Virgin Islands, a number of places--if they don't elect a full voting representative, they do not pay Federal income tax. And in going back to the Revolution--and I put this in what is H.R. 1295, in this Congress, but I filed it back several Congresses ago, and I filed it, I think, in most every Congress since because I believe it is the right thing to do. To me, it is not a matter of politics; it is a matter of being consistent with an ideal. As Ben Franklin said, if we don't elect one Member of the British Parliament, they have no right to tax us. That was a righteous concept, and it still is. As a matter of principle, I have to agree with that. The people of D.C. are right, they shouldn't have to pay a Federal income tax. But as I put in my bill and have in all these different Congress sessions we have been through, as I filed it each time, the phrase ``no taxation without representation'' was a rallying cry of many American colonists during the period of British rule in the 1760s and early 1770s. The slogan gained widespread notoriety after the passage of the Sugar Act on April 5, 1764. American colonists increasingly resented having taxes levied upon them without having any legislators they elected who were voting in Parliament in London. The idea that there should be no taxation without representation dated back even further. This issue became even more defined in 1765, with the passage of the Stamp Act, which was the first true attempt to levy a direct tax on the American colonies. Ultimately, that tax was repealed, but the idea of no taxation without representation persisted. Article I, Section 2, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution says: ``The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States.'' That is why, unless someone was from a State, then under the Constitution, they didn't get a full voting Member of the House. By the same token, if we are going to be consistent with the founding principles, the residents of the District of Columbia should not be paying Federal income tax, just as those in Puerto Rico and other territories don't pay Federal income tax. So the bill goes on, and it points out that Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, all of these, don't pay Federal income tax. So the rest of this bill, H.R. 1295, in this Congress, just has, in effect, the residents of D.C. shouldn't have to and don't pay Federal income tax. Now, since I have been here, this issue has been coming up, just as it has over the centuries, about the District of Columbia representation. It came up back in 1847. The Federal Government was not really utilizing the land west of the Potomac, and the people there were saying, Look, we want to elect two Senators, Representatives as our population allows; and you are not using our land; let us go back to being part of Virginia. So, in 1847, Congress, the House and Senate, signed by the President, ceded land back to Virginia, the State from which it came, because to do otherwise would have been to cheat Virginia, because Virginia gave that land for the purpose of being used as part of the Federal enclave, the Federal Capital. So if the U.S. Government had done anything besides use it as a Federal enclave for part of the U.S. Capital, without Virginia's permission, that basically the Federal Government would have stolen that from Virginia. The right thing, the proper, honorable thing to do, if it wasn't going to use the land, was to give it back to Virginia. Now, some of us can see why it might have been nice if they had said, No, we are going to use it, so we are not going to cede it back, but you don't have--when Federal income tax came along, you don't have to pay that. But that is not what happened. It was ceded back to Virginia. That is why, when anyone sees a map of the District of Columbia, it is not a perfect square. On the west, it follows the Potomac River. So I have that bill. I have had it for many Congresses now. I wish that when Republicans were in the majority, I could have gotten our leadership to bring it to the floor, because it should have been brought to the floor and it should have passed. But I really thought that at some point--and I had even offered to redo the bill and put any Democrats, including Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, have it as her bill. She has not chosen to ever be part of this bill. And then we hear today, well, it is all because of politics. Well, I have not ever proposed this for politics. I am proposing it because I know our history and I know this is the right thing to do. They should not have to pay Federal income tax. What I have offered in prior years is, Look, you are trying to have D.C. have a full voting representative with just legislation. That will be unconstitutional at some point. Why don't you at least go ahead and get this bill passed, especially while Democrats are in the majority, so that until such time as D.C. has a full voting representative, you at least don't have to pay taxes without full representation? But I have never gotten Democrats to agree to do that. So it was not brought to the floor by Republican leaders over the years. That may well have been for political reasons. But it is being pushed by me, and has all these years, as a matter of principle, and it still is. Why wouldn't Democrats agree to go ahead and do this bill until such time, when and if, it becomes unnecessary? Why would Democrats continue to allow taxation without representation to go unchanged? I have been trying to do this for 13 years or so. Apparently, it is a problem on both sides of the aisle. I wish people would quit playing politics and just be fair to the people of Washington, D.C. Back when I first proposed a bill to eliminate the Federal income tax--as Puerto Rico knows, there is no Federal income tax, but they have a very, very substantial local tax, which is what happens when you have approaching 30 percent of the workers working for the government. You are going to have a lot of taxes to pay. But on the other hand, in 1847, since land was ceded west of the Potomac back to Virginia, if you are bent on giving people two Senators to vote for, as well as at least one Representative, then the proper thing to do would be to cede the land back to the State from which it came; don't cheat that State. The Federal Government should not be in the business of cheating people or cheating States. This bill--it has had another number before, but in this Congress it is 2651, and it is cited as the ``District of Columbia-Maryland Reunion Act.'' It goes through and gives some history. I am kind of big on that. It is important to know where we came from so we know where we should go. It cites some of the things I have already mentioned, but then it gets into actually drawing a descriptive line around the Federal buildings, to include the Capitol and the White House and the important Federal buildings--so that would still be Federal property-- and then ceding the rest of the land back to Maryland. Now, I would prefer just to keep the District of Columbia and the residents not pay Federal income tax, rather than trying to do what is unconstitutional--it seemed pretty clear to me--to cheat Maryland out of the land they gave. I mean, it is a bait and switch. Yeah, you gave it for the Federal enclave, but we are going to take it and make it a separate State. And, yes, each time you create a new State, it weakens the power of those States already in existence, because their two Senators' votes are not quite as important as they once were. But this would be a constitutional and appropriate solution if the majority chose to go that way. I still think, regardless, even as the majority persists in trying to create a State, which I think should ultimately be struck down, why not go ahead and give the residents of the District of Columbia the relief they deserve and say, In the meantime, Congress has full authority to say who is taxed and who isn't, and the residents of the District of Columbia do not elect a full voting Representative yet, so they don't pay any income tax. And, again, I will extend that offer. I was told by State senator Bill Ratliff-- and I can't remember who he quoted--but ``It is amazing what you can get done if you don't care who gets the credit.'' I have often been willing to say, put whoever's name will help this bill get through. In fact, sometimes I have made my own leadership mad enough that, you know, if I had a good idea, I would provide it to somebody on the committee of jurisdiction and say, ``This is a good bill, why don't you lead on it? ``Well, why don't you do it? ``Because you are on the committee of jurisdiction, and I have made Republican leaders mad, and so it has got a better chance if you do it.'' And it has been nice to see people make good use of their authority in that way. Of course, there has been plenty of things written about this issue. There is one from a blog of the National Archives, ``Unratified Amendments: D.C. Voting Rights,'' interesting article there. National Review has an article from March of this year, ``D.C. Statehood is an Idea Whose Time Should Never Come.'' Another from David Harsanyi, ``Concerning D.C. Statehood, the Founders Have Already Spoken.'' That is from March of this year also. Something called the Wayback Machine has an article on ``Constitutional Amendments Not Ratified,'' and of course, D.C. statehood is one such, as is the idea of giving full representation, though the Constitution says it will come from the several States. That was something we had voted on in a prior Congress since I have been here. There is a great letter from the Attorney General of South Carolina, Alan Wilson, on this issue, and he makes a great argument just stating how Article IV, Section 3 provides that new States may be admitted by Congress in the Union, but goes on to explain why the only lawful way to provide statehood to the District of Columbia is to amend the Constitution. The District of Columbia's creation traces to Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution, and he goes on and makes a very compelling case. So I don't know what the Senate is going to do. I hope that at least some of the Democrat Senators will understand that this is no time to be violating our Constitution when things have been going out of control. You have got even some people right in our own House of Representatives that are calling for and have called for confrontation, getting in people's faces, making them miserable, intimidating, threatening, making sure they aren't feeling welcome. This is a tragic time. The Founders would normally quote Voltaire-- some say the attribution lies elsewhere--but the statement was, ``I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.'' And nowadays it seems like the majority in power in Congress and the White House more takes a position: I disagree with what you say, and I am truly woke, so I want you fired. I want you never to be able to get work again. I want your children harassed. We are going to threaten to rape, kill, destroy, do all kinds of damage to your family, and we hope that, you know, your family is destroyed and no longer exists very soon. I mean, that is a long way from where we came. We have come so far, and in each century we made major steps forward so that the Constitution would mean exactly what it says. And now we are arriving at a time where, instead of reaching what Dr. King dreamed of, people being judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin or anything else, we are going back to being a more racist society. We do want segregation. I mean, there was a time when segregation was considered evil. You shouldn't segregate people by their skin color. Yes, Franklin Roosevelt believed in it, Democrat that he was. Democrat Woodrow Wilson believed in segregation and did so and used segregation inappropriately. And now we are coming back to a time where people on the left are advocating for segregation, advocating for judging people by their skin color. It is still wrong. It has always been wrong. It still is. One of the beauties of a country founded on Judeo-Christian principles was, regardless that slavery existed, if this country was going to continue under the principles on which it was founded, there was going to have to be a day of reckoning when people who were leaders in this country said, Look, we were endowed by our God, our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and it doesn't matter what your skin color is. Those things don't matter. God loves every human being. There are some things we are told in the Bible God hates. Lying lips is one that God detests, and that is easy to understand. But God doesn't want for any of us to stumble, and he doesn't want people causing others to stumble. We seem to have been approaching that more closely than ever in our history. It took a Civil War, it took a Christian minister named King preaching nonviolence, peaceful demonstration, not getting in people's faces and intimidating them or using violence. We were making so much progress. We had come further than any country in the history of the world. I heard somebody this week say we are really probably the most racially diverse country, and we don't penalize people for their race. That has been a problem throughout history for the world, and yet we have made so much progress, and now we have people on the left advocating for segregation and advocating for judging people by characteristics instead of by the content of their character. It was also shocking this week in debate in the Judiciary Committee to hear somebody across the aisle saying that no Democrats have ever advocated for defunding the police, and I am sure it was intended as an honest statement. The trouble is it is simply not true. And you don't have to do much of an online search. Even with Google and Facebook and Twitter covering for the Democratic Party, you still don't have to work too hard to find so many Democrat-controlled cities that are defunding the police. They are cutting funds to the police. It is easy to find. And there are more even in this body itself that are advocating to just completely do away with the policing like we have. Having dealt with the justice system for most of my adult life, I know the police are not immune to having bad apples, but it always struck me that there were a whole lot fewer bad apples, percentage wise, in law enforcement than there were in most any other area of life, of any other profession. And they are owed our respect. That is why it becomes very unpleasant when anyone in control ends up using law enforcement as a political battering ram against those who are not in the majority. We have known for many weeks now that there was and is, according to the chief of Capitol Police and Sergeant at Arms, no intelligence from any source that any Member of Congress is a threat to any other Member of Congress, which means the metal detectors that the Speaker has had installed around the west, east, and north entrance were totally unnecessary. And then, of course, after I pointed out that I was being fined $5,000 for going to the restroom right out that door, where there was no metal detector there or at the other end of the Speaker's lobby, and I didn't avoid the metal detectors. I went through the metal detector on the west and did so satisfactorily, and for days when I was in here for a long period of time, I could go right there to the restroom, the guards right there at the entrance of the Speaker's lobby could see you go in, see you come out. They checked out the restroom, you know. There is not even a tank where you could do like was done in ``The Godfather'' where a gun was put in the tank of the toilet. Not even a tank to do that in there. I had never been told you need to be wanded or checked or anything. That was totally new. But since I raised that, now metal detectors have been put there so that Democrats can go after Republicans. And I say that because we now have examples of even the Speaker and others who have gone through metal detectors, set off the metal detector, and refused to be wanded and have not been fined. Now, I understand the majority whip may have done that today. I am very sorry for Mr. Clyburn, they may have to make an example of him just to keep the pressure, to keep me from getting out of my fine, but it doesn't change the fact that to this time the use of the metal detectors has been very arbitrary and capricious, and the enforcement of the metal detectors has been very arbitrary and capricious. Hopefully, those being utilized to harass Members of Congress-- especially since a couple of our folks have missed votes. If they hadn't had to go through the metal detector, they would have gotten in here in time to vote. It is time to open things up. Then we get word: Well, we are going start opening up, but you have to go through us, tell us anybody you are proposing to meet with and what the purpose is, this kind of stuff. We are not letting a good crisis go to waste. We are going to be very Orwellian here, and we are going to use this as an excuse to control who Members of Congress can see, who they can talk to, and really have an iron grip on what people can do. It has gotten really sad around this place. Here is an article from Stephanie Pagones, ``Cities such as Austin, L.A., Minneapolis, New York City, and Portland have shifted funds from police departments.'' Obviously, this lady, Stephanie, knows that when Democrats have said they are not defunding the police, that is not true. Democrats around the country are pushing for and actually getting budgets slashed for police departments. ``Cities in parts of the U.S.,'' she said, ``that slashed their police department funding last year, in part as a result of police- involved shootings, have seen an uptick in certain crimes over the past year, according to data analyzed by FOX News. Cities such as Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City, Portland, Oregon, and Austin, Texas, have shifted funds from police departments to social services programs. Such cuts have led some departments to lay off officers, cancel recruiting classes, or retreat from hiring goals. ``As police departments were left to make do with shrunken budgets and less support, some big cities have seen sometimes drastic upticks in murders and other violent crimes. . . . The `defund the police' movement is not necessarily about gutting police department budgets, though some groups have tried. And budget cuts were already expected as a result of alternative needs for funding because of the coronavirus pandemic.'' Then, the article goes on and looks at the cuts that some of these cities have had. Here is an article: ``Democrat Representative Maxine Waters Demanded Special Police Motorcade and Escort Before Calling for Violence at Anti-Police Event,'' by Jordan Davidson at The Federalist. Daily Caller's Henry Rodgers reports: `` `The Squad' Pushes to `Defund the Police' While Spending Thousands on Private Security to Protect Themselves.'' You have to have some protection from somewhere. Otherwise, you are not going to be able to maintain a position of authority in government. There are always going to be evil people, in this world at least, who are going to attempt to bring down people in authority. This article is from Matt Palumbo, December 30, 2020: ``2020 Homicide Surge Sets Record Amid `Defund the Police' Hysteria.'' It has facts and figures on that. One other thing I want to touch on. Since we have some people who believe climate change is the most pressing issue of our time, I was surprised to hear the former leader of NASA say that they had found that our Moon, the Earth's Moon, is slightly changing its orbit because I had not read that or seen that anywhere, and that even Earth's orbit around the Sun is slightly changing. Of course, I had seen previously that the ice caps were melting, and some people say it is because of the cars, pollution. But it still doesn't explain to me why the ice caps on the planet Mars have melted or have been melting for cow flatulence or different things here on Earth. How is that causing the ice caps on Mars to melt? Here is an article from NASA, from February 27, 2020. It says: ``Our lives literally revolve around cycles: series of events that are repeated regularly in the same order. There are hundreds of different types of cycles in our world and in the universe. Some are natural, such as the change of the seasons,'' that is one form of climate change, ``annual animal migrations, or the circadian rhythms that govern our sleep patterns. Others are human-produced, like growing and harvesting crops, musical rhythms, or economic cycles.'' It goes on to point out something called the Milankovitch cycles, and they include: ``The shape of Earth's orbit, known as eccentricity; the angle Earth's axis is tilted with respect to Earth's orbital plane, known as obliquity; and the direction Earth's axis of rotation is pointed, known as precession.'' It goes on to discuss this. Apparently, there is another article from Forbes from April of last year, ``Earth Is Spiraling Away From the Sun for Now, But Eventually Will Crash Into It.'' I had not heard or read that before, about our Moon's orbit changing at all or the Earth's orbit around the Sun changing at all. I don't know what, if anything, could be done about that, but there is no question that the Moon's orbit changing or Earth's orbit changing around the Sun can't help but have significant effects on our climate. This article, the headline says that Earth will eventually crash into the Sun. Well, it is amazing. I remember in the 1970s reading that we were at the beginning of a new ice age. It was very early in the new ice age, but eventually, Earth would be covered by ice. It would mean the end of life as we knew it. As a Christian, I was thinking that is not how the Earth is going to end, and I didn't really believe that. Lo and behold, it wasn't too many years later we find out, or we are told: Well, the Earth is warming, and the Earth's warming is going to destroy the planet. It is global warming. Then, of course, global warming, we found out some places it was cooling. As one witness said some years back, actually, the Northern Hemisphere is not nearly as warm as it was back when the Norse were coming over and having these big farms in what we now call Greenland. There are cycles, and there is something that could come into play in the great design of our Creator that would keep Earth from crashing into the Sun. But in the meantime, it is important that we not run around like Chicken Little and destroy the rich blessings we have out of fear that we may miss out on other blessings. Let's use the wisdom and common sense that most of our constituents have. In the meantime, I think we really need to find out more about the changing orbit of Earth around the Sun and the changing orbit, if any, of the Moon around the Earth. It is a lot to learn. If we are going to help contribute to the downfall of the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of the world, then making our Nation's Capital where it could be subject to being extorted, held hostage, then these other things may not matter anyway. In the meantime, we have a responsibility to the Nation, our oath, and the Constitution to ensure that we keep this experiment in self- government going. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it was good to hear the majority leader say this is about politics. We knew that. But for some of us, it is about principle. And if it were about taxation without representation, I would have a slew of Democrats cosponsoring the bill I have been filing for many terms to eliminate Federal income tax in the District of Columbia. But I was told years ago: We are not going to join in with your bill because it will weaken our chance to get a representative full voting for D.C. That is what this has been about. Mr. Speaker, for some of us, principle is a big deal. When the Bush Justice Department was violating constitutional rights, some Republicans got furious. When the Obama administration did that, they circled the wagons and protected. This is about principle for some of us. Mr. Speaker, we got a tiny taste when the Mayor of D.C., of an opposite party of President Trump, wasn't sure she was going to provide the police to protect the White House. This is about the Constitution and principle. Vote against this.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I know it seems compassionate to those who support this bill to say we want to give this young child whose parents sent them up by themselves, give them a lawyer, help them out. But the consequences for those of us that have spent a lot of time on the border are very clear. It means, if you make this law, that the representatives of the drug cartels, which are often gang members, they can tell the parents, Look, I know it is a tough decision whether to send your child alone, this little 3-, 5-, 8-year-old child up by themselves, but the good news is that there are people in Congress that have fought for and have gotten you a lawyer at the border for your child. So with the drug cartels, the truth is this child will likely be an indentured servant for many years, either drug trade or sex traffic, but they are going to be owned by the drug cartel, as far as what they get to do in their freedom. This is not something we should be doing, adding more to lure more unaccompanied children up to our border. We are already in crisis mode. As all of the Border Patrol that I have talked to over the years explained, they are basically working now for the drug cartels. As they have said, we are the logistics for the drug cartels. The cartels send them up, get them to the border, and then we ship them wherever the cartels want us to send them. This is not as compassionate as it may seem. This is going to damage millions of people.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I saw one study that indicated that these masks are very helpful; that, by wearing a mask, you have two-tenths of 1 percent less chance of getting COVID. So hurray for that two-tenths of 1 percent, especially for those of us who have had it or have had vaccinations. But I look forward to getting our freedom back at some point. But you can't have a free society if the media is dishonest. When the Founders fought for the right to have free media, they anticipated that there should always be a majority of the media who would be willing to expose media who were dishonest. But we are living in a dangerous time, when what used to be called the mainstream media is anything but honest; and that was played out before our very eyes and ears as Project Veritas had a CNN--well, as this article says--a CNN head, but he had leadership, and he admitted quite a great deal about the abuses of CNN, the manipulativeness of CNN. This article from The Epoch Times--which, by the way, is under fire from the Chinese Communist Party, so since this administration seems to side with the Chinese Communist Party a great deal, they may be coming after The Epoch Times the way the Chinese Communist Party is. But we will wait and see if that happens. But this story, dated April 14, says a CNN head has personally intervened to order the cable network staff to display the number of people who have died from COVID-19 in the broadcast, according to a CNN technical director who was caught on hidden camera making the comments. The goal was to boost ratings, the director said, explaining fear really drives numbers and is the thing that keeps you tuned in. That is rather tragic. A former segregationist President, Democrat, named Franklin D. Roosevelt, had said, quite eloquently: ``The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.'' And he was right that that should be a big concern. But what we are hearing from the undercover tape is that CNN sees fear as the best way to increase ratings. So another article from The Gateway Pundit: ``CNN director caught on hidden camera saying the network is `trying to help' BLM by only pushing stories that implicate White people.'' Well, that is unfortunate. What that shows is that CNN doesn't mind being racist. It is very unfortunate that we would stir up that kind of animosity; have a major news network, or what used to be a major news network, CNN, pushing racist divides. Madam Speaker, I have been joined by a friend--hopefully, she doesn't mind me calling her a friend because that is the way I see her--from New York, an extraordinary Member of Congress. I am thrilled she is back. I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Tenney).

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentlewoman's efforts, and I would be thrilled to join that caucus. That is absolutely meritorious, and it should be something that all of us work to support together. Yet, we get cast, as Republicans, as wanting to limit the number of voters, when actually, we want more voters; but we need to have people vote legally, not multiple times, not voting after you no longer have a pulse, but voting as citizens. So I am thrilled. I yield to the gentlewoman from New York.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it brings to mind being in Iraq back in 2005. Iraq had just had its first true fair election, and people stood in line for hours and hours. In talking to a police chief, he pointed out one place where there was a very long line. We knew that radical Islamists were going to try to disrupt the election. There was a suicide bomber who was found in the line, and a policeman grabbed him, threw himself on top of the suicide bomber. The bomb was set off, and the policeman and the radical Islamist were both killed. I said: Wow. Did the voters come back? He looked a little surprised and said: They never left the line. They knew if they got out of the line and did not vote, that the policeman would have given his life for nothing. They wanted the policeman's life to count, and they were not going to be intimidated by a suicide bomber trying to prevent them from voting, so they stayed in line to vote. Too many Americans have come to think of voting as too onerous, that they don't really have time to do it, that it doesn't really matter, when, actually, as we hear and find over and over, elections do have consequences. It is important that if you are legally allowed to vote, you should vote. It is unfortunate that there is a push to have people who don't understand--they are not citizens. They haven't been educated yet to understand what it takes to preserve a republic, which has allowed us to drift toward a more Orwellian-style government, a totalitarian, more socialist government. Yes, you have to have a totalitarian government in order for socialism to succeed. Khrushchev finally came to grips with that. True communism is where everybody shares and shares alike, and there is no government. I remember doing a report in college about a commission that Khrushchev set up to figure out a plan to move to where there was no government and just pure communism, pure sharing. Ultimately, they disbanded the commission because they realized there is no way to have no totalitarian government. If you are going to have communism or socialism, the government has to be big, powerful, and totalitarian enough to take from those who earn and give to those who don't. Anyway, elections are important. The next national election, of course, will be in 2022. That is something we need to be working toward making sure is fair. But it is difficult when you have entities like CNN that are more interested in ratings, scaring people, and supporting the Democratic Party than they are in reporting the news. It really makes it difficult to have free and fair elections when people are being deceived. It was also interesting that since James O'Keefe, who founded Project Veritas, getting the truth out, he had the video of a leader at CNN exposing exactly what CNN was about: helping the Democratic Party and scaring Americans. Twitter, being part of the high-tech oligarchy, has banned Project Veritas. O'Keefe, the founder, was first banned, and then, later, it was indicated he was banned permanently for violating the Twitter rules on platform manipulation and spam. So, according to Twitter, if you expose the truth about somebody or some entity that Twitter is figuratively in bed with, then Twitter will ban you because they don't want the truth out there. They don't want the truth about Americans being manipulated by entities like CNN, Twitter, Facebook, or Google. They don't want the American people finding that out, so they will ban you. When any entity is powerful enough that it can prevent people from, say, learning about the Vice President's family member, who may have engaged in an impropriety, or from finding out that, actually, when the current President, at that time a candidate for President, was saying that Russia was paying bounties to kill American soldiers, which people promoting the story, at least some of them, knew was not true, knew was not likely true, that they want that falsity out there. They want to hurt a candidate with false news. I don't know what the Supreme Court will end up doing, but the Sullivan case is there, requiring malice to be shown by a public figure in order to prevail in a lawsuit. But it ought to be clear, especially with things like this video exposing that CNN is out to destroy Matt Gaetz, out to deceive the American public, out to fearmonger to increase ratings even though it hurts America. They don't care. It is okay, in CNN's leadership mind, to harm America if it helps their ratings. We have seen the same thing from Major League Baseball and some international corporations. They are okay with doing business with the Chinese Communist Party and benefiting them, helping them, making money for them, if it makes money for the corporation or the sport, even though it is greatly to the detriment of millions or, in the case of the Chinese Communist Party, hundreds of millions or a billion people. It is okay, in the minds of some of these people. It is okay to be totally hypocritical and hurt Black-owned businesses in Atlanta, where they are so prevalent, and move the All-Star Game to a place that is substantially White if it makes you appear woke, even though you are hurting African-American businesses and helping White businesses. It is okay to help the Chinese Communist Party, which is trying to destroy America. They are trying to get to a place where the American economy could collapse, and China would survive that economically. If they get to that place, then you will see them taking additional actions, rather profoundly, to bring down our economy and leave them remaining as the only, at that point, superpower. We have to be more wise than we have been. We need to call out corporations or entities in the United States that are out to help the enemies of the United States and stir up divisiveness within the United States if they think it creates a profit. We are seeing that with CNN. We are seeing that with Major League Baseball. It is just a sad time in America. This article from Epoch Times says: ``Twitter pointed to a section in the company's rules, which states: `You can't mislead others on Twitter by operating fake accounts,' and `you can't artificially amplify or disrupt conversations through the use of multiple accounts.' '' Well, Twitter really has to stretch in order to come up with a basis for banning someone who is promoting truth and is exposing truth that CNN did not want exposed and, obviously, Twitter did not want exposed. This is a story by Allum Bokhari, ``Twitter Permanently Blacklists James O'Keefe After CNN Expose.'' This article also mentions: ``In the first video, Chester admits that CNN's negative coverage of unproven allegations against Representative Matt Gaetz is `propaganda' because Gaetz is a `problem for the Democrats.' '' Yes, I am told, he is nice-looking. I don't see it, but I am told he is nice-looking. He comes across well. I do hear that. I see him come across well. He is quite smart, quite clever, and insightful. The CNN leader says: ``It would be great for the Democratic Party to get him out. So we are going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.'' ``In further undercover footage posted today, Chester can be heard admitting that CNN is unlikely to give a great deal of attention to the race of a mass shooter in its coverage if they `aren't White.' '' ``Chester also admits that `a bunch of Black men' have been responsible for recent violent attacks against Asian Americans and that this is a problem because `the optics of that are not good' and CNN is `trying to help BLM.' '' BLM, let's be fair, they are trying to establish socialism and get rid of the constitutional government we have and move to a more Orwellian, socialist type of government. ``This is pure censorship for political reasons because he has successfully exposed CNN,'' talking about Twitter banning O'Keefe. That is a comment from Robby Starbuck on Twitter. My friend Matt Gaetz says: ``O'Keefe exposes CNN for lying about me and Donald Trump for propaganda. Then Twitter suspends him.'' Conservative commentator John Cardillo says: ``If the left weren't terrified, they wouldn't be banning people.'' So, anyway, it is rather tragic that Twitter has joined in to become a part of, figuratively, the ministry of truth that Orwell talked about in his novel ``1984.'' I mean, Orwell was apparently in a great deal of pain, dying of cancer, had been through brutal cancer treatments. Some think that is where he came up with the idea of some of the torture that was utilized by the ministry of love, which would arrest people with whom they disagreed and would torture them for hours, days, weeks, months, or many years, whatever was necessary to finally get them to change their story. But the ministry of truth were the ones that were constantly rewriting history to serve the interests of this totalitarian government, and that appears to be exactly what we are beginning to see from many in our own media in the United States. I was struck the summer that I was an exchange student to the Soviet Union, how Pravda always--it was like the ministry of truth that Orwell wrote about. They would change any story in order to make the Soviet Government the prime player, the prime interested party. They would lie about anything. In the summer of 1973, I was intrigued by what they were saying about this Watergate thing, that that was clearly stirred up by the Democrats against Richard Nixon because Nixon had had the courage to be the first U.S. President to go to the Soviet Union and to reach out to create a viable relationship with the Soviet Union. So the Democrats were totally manufacturing Watergate just because Nixon had dared to be friendly toward the Soviet Union. Well, we know that was not the case, but that is the way the Soviet Union would use the media, Pravda, to lie about what was going on to make them the central players in everything. Obviously, Watergate was real. There was a manipulation of the law. If you listen to some of the tapes or read some of the transcripts of the Nixon tapes, you are struck by the inconsistency and the ability of a President of the United States to be two-faced in talking to different people and the manipulative approach to being President. So, hopefully, the truth will all come out. Apparently, unless Twitter and CNN change their approach to news, the truth will not come from Twitter, will not come from CNN. But, hopefully, emerging news sources will take the place of the once great CNN, unless CNN begins to report more truthfully. That would be a welcome change. And we can all hold onto that hope that springs eternal in the human breast, that maybe someday somebody will take over at CNN that will see CNN's viewership surge because they have decided finally to be going after real news and truth instead of manipulating things for the Democratic National Committee or an entity like Black Lives Matter. Of course, they matter. But that is not what BLM is about. They are about moving America toward socialism. They are about destroying the nuclear family, which the War on Poverty helped do for Black families, and now it is all families. We have seen that happen, and Thomas Sowell and Candace Owens have both covered that very effectively in their recent books. This article from Joel Pollak, April 16: ``Patrisse Cullors, a co- founder of Black Lives Matter, told interviewer Marc Lamont Hill on Thursday that there is no contradiction between her radical left-wing politics and owning four homes because she is providing for extended family. ``In the interview on `Black News Tonight,' Hill asked Cullors, also known as Khan-Cullors after spouse Janaya Khan, about the truth of reports that she had bought four homes since 2016--including a $1.4 million compound in the remote Topanga Canyon neighborhood of L.A. and a vacation home with an airplane hangar in Georgia--and that she and her spouse had considered buying exclusive property in the Bahamas also. ``The reports prompted criticism from within the Black Lives Matter movement''--and I would hope that it would--``and questions about her source of funds. ``She replied that `never taken a salary from Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation,' and that she had other sources of income from her work as a college professor, as a TV producer, an author, and a YouTube content creator. ``In a statement, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation said she had not received any compensation from the group since 2019, though she had received $120,000 from the group since 2013 for performing specific duties. ``She added: `Organizers should get paid for the work that they do.' '' But, now, having spent a summer in the Soviet Union, I know how socialism is supposed to go, and there were Soviet friends that were somewhat disenfranchised with the Socialist way of doing things. They said, yeah, we all receive about the same amount of money, but those who have leadership positions or political power, they get to buy things the rest of us don't buy. We have all got about the same money to spend, but we don't have access to the things that they do. So in a true Socialist country, people that want power, if you have a shoe store, then we saw it back then, they would take the best shoes and save them for people in political positions of power. So when those power brokers come in, then they get to pick from the best shoes while all the rest are told, well, you either take these or you don't get any; there just are no others. If you were a power broker, yeah, you had about the same amount to spend as everybody else. But everybody else was told there is no toilet paper, whereas the power brokers would be taken to the back and allowed to buy toilet paper. Those were the days, and that is normally the way it works. On one occasion I was surprised because a cleaning lady appeared that she was going to be running and telling on this Soviet citizen. And I said: Why would she go tell on you? And he said: Look, in your country, you can get ahead by working harder and making more money. In our country, we all make about the same. So the only way you can get ahead is if you step on other people. So, yes, she will go tell on me, and she will go up a little bit in power because that is how you get ahead here in the Soviet Union. You step on other people, and that elevates you. So that is where some are wanting to take the United States, where everybody is getting about the same amount of money, except that, apparently, we have leaders like this in the BLM movement who think-- and she said she is ``a trained Marxist''--``and your lived practice.'' Those are her words. But she is not--well, she says: ``The way that I live my life is a direct support to Black people, including my Black family members, first and foremost. . . . I see my money as not my own. I see it as my family's money as well.'' But a true Socialist would not say that because a true Socialist says everybody shares and shares alike, from those according to their ability to those according to their needs. So your family can't be foremost if you are a true Socialist. So there is some confusion here on what is true socialism, and Ms. Cullors does not have that down very well. According to the article, she is buying a $1.4 million compound in an exclusive part of Los Angeles and a vacation home with an airplane hangar in Georgia. No, no, no, that is not supposed to happen. If you are a true Socialist, you share and share alike. You may think you have earned all this money, as she said she had, doing all these different things, but a true Socialist would say: No, but we are going to share that with everybody. Apparently she would appropriately think: I have all this additional ability that others don't have, so you should take my money away from me, from those according to their ability, and give it to those according to their needs. So she has got a ways to go before she understands the socialism that she is trying to force on the United States. The article goes on to read: ``The point of the criticisms, she said, was `to discredit me, but also to discredit the movement.' She added: `We have to stay focused on white supremacy.''' Yeah, don't look behind the curtains at the guy that is manipulating things, as we saw in the ``Wizard of Oz.'' No, no, keep looking over here at what we will call white supremacy. Anyway, ``She responded to claims that Black Lives Matter should distribute funds to the Black community by noting that while she was sympathetic, the organization was not a `charity' and was not the government.'' So she has got a ways to go before she really understands the socialism she is trying to force on everybody else. She says: ``Our target should be calling on Congress to pass reparations.'' Well, she doesn't understand that true reparations in a Socialist society would take from somebody that had $1.4 million to spend on a home and spread it out to everybody else. So she could never own a $1.4 million home. But, anyway, hopefully others will help her and any other leaders with Black Lives Matter who don't understand what they are trying to force on America, and we will see if that actually happens. Now, I heard our majority leader in what some call a colloquy or soliloquy, whatever you want to call it, talking about compassion for those who are foreigners. It strikes me, there are so many people across America in the lamestream media and even on this floor who think it is compassionate to lure people across miles, hundreds or thousands of miles even, across horrendous terrain; have them pay drug cartels, which thoroughly oppress a country like Mexico; have as much, maybe, as 25, 30 percent of young women raped, we are told, often repeatedly on that journey; have many girls subjected to a life of sex trafficking in order to pay back the money they owe to the drug cartels. Others subjected to human trafficking and drug trafficking in order to pay back the money they owe to the drug cartels. Creating a life as a servant, as a bondsman to the drug cartels, where people have no hesitation to cut off fingers, hands, arms, or heads and put on pikes, like some honest policemen have had happen, as a message from the drug cartels that: You don't mess with us. Somehow that is compassionate to add to the billions of dollars the drug cartels have to terrorize a country or hemisphere. But if you really look closely enough at this problem on our southern border, you will find that is not compassionate at all. The most compassionate, caring, neighborly, Christian thing we could do for the people of Mexico would be to secure our southern border, cut the billions of dollars going to the drug cartels that they use to terrorize a continent, just cut that down to a trickle. They may always make some, but you can cut it to a trickle if we secure our southern border. And then Mexico, because of the incredible people in Mexico, some of the hardest workers in the world and with natural resources in excess of most of the countries in the world--and actually a better location between the Atlantic and Pacific; yes, we are between the Atlantic and Pacific in the United States, but it is closer across Mexico from one ocean to the other. They are in a prime location. They ought to be a top economy in the world. And the only thing that appears to be holding them back, the one thing is the corruption from the drug cartels that has greatly increased under this new administration. It is a boon to the drug cartels that President Biden is helping their human trafficking business as he is. Now, he doesn't look at it, I am sure, as helping the drug cartels. He is looking at it as helping the Democratic National Committee down the road when they can give amnesty and make them voters, but that is so hurtful to Mexico. How about cutting the power of the drug cartels and allowing Mexico to keep its own citizens and central American countries that are being depleted of good, hardworking people, letting them keep their citizens, getting rid of the corruption. We are the main source of the funding for the corruption south of our border. Compassion would dictate that we stop funding the corruption instead of turning a blind eye to that corruption that we are funding through the drugs, sex trafficking, human trafficking, cut that down to nothing or very little and watch how our good neighbors will explode with a vibrant economy, not with terrorism the drug cartels use. Chip Roy has a bill to name the two main drug cartels as terrorist organizations, and I think that is exactly what we should do. That would allow more resources to go towards stopping the terrorism and the corruption within Mexico and within Central America. That is what a good neighbor would do. That is what real compassion is. Compassion is not luring people to situations that destroy their lives. The indentured servitude that the drug cartels subject these people to is just unfathomable, and it is unfathomable that educated people, including here in Washington, D.C., would say, oh, yes, that is a good thing that we lure people here, even though they become indentured to the drug cartels. I have mentioned before, I have been there all hours of the day and night, but especially at night because it is easier to get drugs across--in the dark, that is. So the drug cartels totally control who comes across, when they come across, and in what numbers they come across. And as the Border Patrol, when they are down there and they don't have supervisors watching over them every moment, they will tell you, we know when we have a big group come across and we are all having to come together to get them in process, that that is when they are bringing in large amounts of drugs or some high-value customer perhaps from a Middle Eastern country; a place like Yemen, where two terrorists were picked up on the terrorist watch list. But, of course, if they are not going to be able to get through customs because they are on the terrorist watch list, well, for goodness' sake, all they have to do is come to Mexico. The drug cartels will charge them extra money, somewhere north of $35,000 or so, maybe much more than that, but they make a lot of money if somebody wants to come and is on the terrorist watch list. I was told down there, if you are coming from China, you are probably going to pay $35,000 or more; but some of the Middle Easterners, they will pay a lot more than that to avoid being detected coming in. So let's be compassionate. Let's allow countries south of our border to keep their citizens and grow a vibrant economy where people won't have to come begging to the United States. They will have their own vibrant economy, and they will be blessed immeasurably because of it. A Tribute to Former Speaker Boehner

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I do want to say a special word of tribute. I know our former Speaker Boehner has been in the media recently, and I have been asked about comments he has made about some of us. Speaker Boehner was an interesting Speaker. I don't know if he knows who Machiavelli was, but he employed some of those tactics. I remember July, I believe it was, of 2011, when he was pushing a big sequester deal. I got up at conference and said--I haven't seen it, but I read that he apparently said that I didn't make sense. But I stood up at conference. And I can understand sometimes his mind was a little clouded. I might not seem to make sense, but I pointed out this sequester deal is a mistake. It is a terrible mistake because you are going to cost billions of dollars for the military, to our own defense. That is our own security. I actually said in front of the whole conference, when I was in high school, a friend's father was in a poker game, and he thought he had a hand that nobody could beat. He was out of money, so he put his home on the table, and somebody had a hand that beat him, and he lost his home in a card game. And I have known since that time that you never gamble with your own security, your family's security, your country's security. Speaker Boehner said: Louie, listen, those sequesters will never happen. And I said: Of course they are going to happen. And he said: No, because we have the super committee that will reach an agreement; because, if they don't, cuts to Medicare will happen. I forget if it was $200 billion or $300 billion. And I said: Of course there will be no agreement, because ObamaCare cut $716 billion from Medicare, from our seniors' coverage for healthcare. And they did it without a single Republican House vote. So the only way in 2012 the Democrats will be able to run a commercial that says Republicans cut Medicare is for the Democrats to prevent an agreement by the super committee. So the cuts will take place to Medicare, and the defense and the Democrats will get a twofer, I explained to Speaker Boehner. They will be able to cut the defense, which they have been wanting to do, and there will be a cut to Medicare that they will blame on Republicans' unwillingness to compromise. As I recall, there were a couple of Senators that even proposed a way to raise fees that wouldn't be called taxes, and there was an article that said Democrats thought that was going to get a deal worked out. Then they met with Democratic leaders and they had to come back and say: You really made a good-faith offer, but we are told there won't be a deal. Well, I tried to explain that that is what would be coming just as it happened, but as the Speaker has now admitted, I didn't make sense to him because he had said those sequesters will never happen. That was in July. Before the end of the year, he had to come before the Republican conference and explain why the sequesters were going to happen, but we are going try to minimize the damage. I also remember another summer when there was a short, funds were running out for a particular area of our budget of our appropriations, and we were going to have to do something before we went out on August break. I asked my dear friend Thomas Massie: Have you talked to McConnell? Are we going to get a deal on this? And he said: Yes, I was at breakfast with him this morning, and he said he and Boehner had an agreement, and we are going to extend the funds for a couple of months, and they are going to throw in some additional money to help veterans. They have got it all worked out. So we are listening as Speaker Boehner gets up, and he says: ``You know, what often happens is the Senate passes something and leaves town and they jam us, and then we have to pass what the Senate passed. But here is what we are going to do''--he even put his finger in the air-- ``we are going to pass a bill, and we are going to extend this a couple months''--the funding--``we are going put some money in there for veterans, and then we are going to pass it, and we are going to leave town, and we are going to jam the Senate.'' And most of the House Republicans jumped to their feet and were giving him a standing ovation because the Speaker just told us we were going to jam the Senate, even though, according to what Senator McConnell told another Kentuckian, he and Boehner had a deal worked out. But it got Speaker Boehner a standing ovation and big loud cheers, not from my friend, Representative Massie, and myself because we knew what the truth was. But, anyway, some people, I hear, miss those days where he was Speaker and did things like that, or totally missed an opportunity on Cut, Cap, and Balance Act. Speaker Boehner said that could never pass the House of Representatives. We assured him it could, and it would if he would just bring it to the floor. So Speaker Boehner finally agreed, and he brought it to the floor, and it passed and it was a huge victory, a huge day. But by that very afternoon, he was already talking about scrapping that and working a deal with the Senate. In other words, he had no intention of carrying out the will of the House as we had just passed it, which would have been great for lowering the indebtedness and getting America on a financially secure path. He was already scrapping the big victory we had before it even had a chance to be discussed in the Senate So I know there is some that miss those days, but if God grants us the chance to be in the majority again, we can't go back to those days of manipulation. We have got to be straightforward with the American people. We have got to have leaders that will do that. And we have got to be about the business of turning this country back to where freedom is the watchword for the day, not government oppression, not government putting businesses out of business, but letting freedom reign for real once again. Madam Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, this morning I was notified of a death in my family for which I had been legally designated to make all of the arrangements and decisions. It came unexpectedly and I have scrambled to get back to Texas on the first accessible plane. For this reason, I am missing the votes today, and will miss the votes tomorrow.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I yield to the gentleman from Texas, my friend.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I know that we are brothers, and we are going to be together for a long time. I am not talking about here in this Chamber. Anyway, I appreciate my friend very much. I didn't know anything about Senator Russell, but I have gotten an education. I thank him.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, my friend was a former judge in Houston. In fact, he was the kind of judge that is the only judge in Texas that is allowed to order an exhumation of a body. We ran into that in one of my criminal trials, and we had to find a justice who would do that. Texas entrusts a great deal with our judges. I did want to touch on some things that I feel rather passionate about because I know people are being hurt. My friend Chip Roy and I were talking earlier. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Rosendale, a number of people spoke on this, but we can't speak enough on what is happening at the border. It is absolutely a crisis, and it really does need to be dealt with. Regardless of what anybody thinks about President Trump, put that aside and look at the border. Look at what it does to people who have been standing in line for years to come into this country legally. We know, and it has been established numerous times, people are not allowed to cross the southern border unless they pay something to the drug cartels. It may be paid through the gang member, through the coyote that is bringing them into the country, but it is still the drug cartels. They are still in the drug business; they are still in the prostitution and sex-trafficking business. It disturbs me that not enough Americans are upset about how much sex trafficking has gone on. They get absolutely worked up when they find out an American has been pulled into sex trafficking and not allowed to get out of it. But it happens all the time, especially with Hispanics from south of our border. The rapes that occur along the way have been established by different groups and means. It is just an abomination that more people are not upset, deeply upset, about what is going on, enough so that a majority in both Chambers, House and Senate, would do something about it, not leave incentives out there dangling to lure more people into dealing with the drug cartels. It used to be they made most of their money from the drug trafficking, and that is still probably true. As I started to mention earlier, my friend Chip Roy and I had an article dangled in our hearing that says, oh, gee, more drugs came in through public ports of entry than came through illegally across other parts of the border. But what I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, spending a lot of time down on the border, the Border Patrol, when they see a big group, especially with a bunch of children, most of the ones I talk to say we know when we get a group like that, the drug cartels are coordinating when they come across the border, especially there at the river south of McAllen. They know, when they send a group like that, especially in the middle of the night, it is going to take a lot of border patrolmen to go through, ask the questions, document, and in-process each one. They will tell you that is when we know they are sending drugs. Sometimes, it may be a high-value person who they are trying to get across into the U.S. But I know, one night, on the Texas Department of Public Safety boats--they have a couple of them there on that part of the river. They have the thermal technology and night vision. They were identifying people along the river waiting to come across. The Border Patrol identified the groups, and eventually, the Border Patrol said: Why don't you guys go back to the dock, and then we will catch them trying to enter? Well, I thought that meant they would be turned away. But this was during the Obama administration, and their instructions were: No, don't turn anybody away. Just in-process them. There were numerous groups of more than 10 or 20 in size, and we got the report from the Border Patrol that they caught all the groups that were going to cross. But those groups of two or three that appeared to be bringing drugs, they somehow knew where to come across and come into some bushes, and we never found them. It is impossible for anyone to report how much in the way of drugs comes across our border outside of a public port of entry, an official port of entry, because they don't catch them. In fact, it seems like, from my experience of being there, I have seen--actually, it surprised me. It sure surprised them. There were some guys that were up on a pump cage, and they were on the move. They had people with them. They were on the move. It was because they knew a big group had just come across the Rio Grande River, and the Border Patrol had seen the truck. I knew the direction they came from. I had seen the truck. They knew that the Border Patrol would have to zoom to where all of those people were, have to get some kind of a bus like they have there, and process all of those people at the site and get them on the bus and bring them into McAllen. These guys knew all of the Border Patrol was tied up with the people. They had a bunch of kids in that group, so that meant they really had to concentrate on that group. These were clearly people who were doing something illicit and illegal. I didn't see their drugs, but they clearly were doing something very illicit, and they also knew that the Border Patrol was going to be tied up. I visited with the Border Patrol and had seen what they were doing, watched some of the in-processing, but they knew how long it took to in-process a group like that. They knew they had time to do what they wanted. It was only a mile or two up the road from where they knew the Border Patrol was occupied. There were a couple of guys up as lookouts and some others who were carrying something down below, but they all took off into the trees. I didn't know if they were armed, and I wasn't armed at the time, so I didn't pursue them. You have to know, there are a lot of things that cross the border that nobody has accounted for. Look at the business model. If you don't have any conscience, it is a great business model. Fortunately, most people I know do have a conscience and would never do this. But without a conscience, they are thinking: Okay, we need drug salespeople in every town in America. All we have to do is get them across the border, give them the address where we want them to sell drugs. They give that to the Border Patrol, and either HHS or ICE gets them where they want them. That is why Border Patrol says the drug cartels call us their logistics. They get their future employees across the border. They think that they are just coming and going to have a free life in America, but they are going to be working for the drug cartels. It is not slavery, as that abomination is known, but it is a form of indentured servitude. They owe being in the United States to the drug cartels, and they are going to have to pay them. They made that deal to get into the U.S. The reason they were willing to make that deal to get in the U.S. now is because they keep hearing the Biden administration is going to let everybody in and give them all amnesty. That lures more and more people into these terrible circumstances. It needs to stop. I will repeat again what I have been saying for years. The most caring, compassionate thing we could do for our neighbor Mexico and its citizens to the south of us, when we know they have great raw materials, great minerals, wonderful hardworking people, the majority of whom believe in a God, as most of the Founders did--they love their families. I love watching Hispanic family reunions. It reminds me so much of reunions I used to see in the town where I grew up. They love their families. That is a wonderful thing. These attributes that folks south of the border have, those are things that help make America the greatest Nation in the world, and we need more of what they have, but it needs to be done legally. And to not care at the way that they are manipulated by the cartels? Their business model, send them across. The U.S. taxpayers will pay to ship them to whatever town we want them to sell drugs in or be involved in prostitution or human trafficking themselves. The U.S. taxpayers will pay to ship them there. And then once there, they all know, we know where their families are in Mexico or Central America, and they will keep paying as long as we tell them or they know we don't mind cutting off heads, cutting off appendages, and sending the message. So the best thing we could do, though, secure the border. Dry up that tens of billions of dollars, maybe over a hundred billion dollars a year that they get from the drug business, from the human trafficking, from the sex trafficking. Dry that money up. We will never dry it completely up because there are always people who will look for ways. But you cut that $80 billion or $100 billion or so down to even $10 billion, it dries up their ability to control so much of the national and local government. It would surely put an end to so many policemen, police chiefs, and mayors that have stood up to the cartels only to have their heads cut off and, in some cases, put on a pike. We are providing the money in this country to the drug cartels to create corruption run amok in the Mexican Government. So caring, compassionate people would say, let's dry up the drug cartels' money, and that will do more for the American people. They won't have to put their lives at risk or risk sexual abuse, all kinds of abuse, death, being left by coyote out in the desert somewhere. They won't have to risk that because the country they love-- many will say, ``I would rather stay there if there were opportunity.'' They get the opportunity if we help end the corruption. But there is corruption enough. Talking to a DEA agent earlier this afternoon, there is so much corruption you don't know who even in the national government is on the payroll of the drug cartels. So let's help the Mexican people, Central American people, even some from South America, let's help them by giving them the freedom in their own country without a corrupt government so they can have the kind of freedom we have here. In this article from March 10th, Alex Nitzberg says: ``More than 92,000 Clark County, NV mail ballots returned undeliverable in general election.'' It talks about corruption in the last election. Just tragic, tragic stuff. If we keep heading this direction, we are surely going to end up like some of these corrupt countries. But there is another article I just saw today that indicates that Venezuelans are coming from Venezuela into the United States illegally, and why they are doing that is because of the corruption and oppression in Venezuela. Under their progressive, Socialist country government down there, they have taken what many say was the most prosperous, vibrant country in South America, Venezuela, all the oil they had there. They took that country and, as socialism will ultimately do wherever it is tried, turned it into a fiasco. So the Venezuelans were fleeing and coming to the United States. And the question continues to come as to what will Americans do? Where will they go? When the path we are on to become the devastated Venezuela are perpetrated on America, where will Americans go? They can't go to Venezuela. It has already been economically and socially destroyed by the Socialists. And as friends from Australia told me a few years ago, you know, if anything happens to the freedom in the United States, you are not going to be coming to Australia. They felt like China would take them over before anybody in the U.S. had time to go there. There will be no place to go. You know, Venezuela, they have got America to try to get into since their wonderful, vibrant country has been destroyed by socialism. We won't have anyplace. As I think Reagan said, this is the last best chance on Earth. We have been so blessed. And the old saying about give a man a fish and he can eat for a day; teach him how to fish, and he can eat for a lifetime. Instead of just saying, yeah, come on to America, we will let everybody in and we will all pay you welfare, we will give you free healthcare, ultimately the whole system will be bankrupt and nobody will have anyplace to go, why not help them get rid of the corruption and stay in the country they love? Then we have neighbors like Mexico and Venezuela, if we can help them stop the corruption, with whom we can trade, we can visit, we can vacation. My wife and I had our honeymoon at a place in Mexico. We haven't been back in recent years, though we thought about it, as we keep celebrating anniversaries. It would be nice to go back where we had our honeymoon, but there is just too much corruption in Mexico and it is not worth the chance, in our opinion. So wouldn't it be wonderful if we took a stand, we dried up the drug culture, the drug cartels' money by securing our Southern border? And then the Mexican people have a vibrant country that Americans fall in love with all over again. We visit, vacation there. They visit, vacation here. And we mutually help each other. But continuing to fund tens of billions of dollars to go to the drug cartels in Mexico keeps the Mexican people under the thumb of the drug cartel corruption. Now, going back to the point about the DEA, the U.S. Government, they cannot know how much in the way of drugs that they don't know about. And I know I have got friends on the other side of the aisle who think, oh, well, there is a report, there is more drugs going through our public ports of entry than there are going across our border, where we don't know they are crossing. The truth is, we don't know what we don't know about how much and what kind of drugs are coming across our border. I know. I voted against putting Sudafed behind the counter, but I understood drugstores, grocery stores had a problem with people stealing it because that was an ingredient in making methamphetamine. But according to what pharmacies and others tell me, law enforcement, in Texas, okay, once you put Sudafed behind the counter, making it harder to get, certainly harder to steal, homegrown meth ceased being the problem it used to be, and now we are getting much stronger drugs coming from Mexico, and they are much more addictive than even the methamphetamine. And I had enough people come in, meth cases that I totally understand. It is extremely addictive. But now we have got more and worse drugs coming from Mexico than what we had when they were homemade. It did get more difficult for a while when a new way of cooking methamphetamine, what they called a cold cook, didn't smell as bad. For so long it was easy to find meth plants because they smelled so bad. But, anyway, how much meth being cooked, not to the extent it used to be in Texas. They are bringing up stronger, more addictive, more individual-destroying drugs from Mexico. President Trump did what he could to get the border secure. We were on the way to a much more secure border. In fact, people are not aware in the second term of George W. Bush, a number of Texas Members of Congress were upset that more had not been done by a Republican administration headed by a Texan to secure our border. And, actually, President Bush had Karl Rove meet with us. And we began to meet every 2 weeks, as I recall, and Rove would have the latest report every 2 weeks about how much progress was being made toward securing our border. One thing he didn't have--that President Bush didn't have was more fence or walls on the Southern border, which makes it easier. Sure, people can build a bigger ladder, as some used to say, but it at least slows them down where it is easier to keep them out of the country with their illicit, illegal drugs and sex trafficking. So President Trump knew the value of a wall, and his knowledge of how important a wall or a fence was has been totally and for all time confirmed by the Democratic administration and the Speaker and the Senate majority leader, as evidenced by the wall or fence, whatever you want to call it, with all the razor wire around the top. Some places you have got two layers of that. So all this time people were saying, you know, it doesn't help, you can't stop people. It doesn't do any good. But we knew it did good because former President Obama got him a new house up somewhere around here and built a 10-foot wall around it. So we knew, regardless of what people were saying, they knew that a wall or a fence could make a difference. But we are hoping that since there is no threat and since the concerns that the Speaker and majority leader here in the House had that there was going to be another inauguration last Thursday--we knew that wasn't going to happen. I am just surprised that they were believing QAnon. I didn't know anybody on our side who believed QAnon, but apparently the Speaker and the majority leader were concerned that QAnon knew what he or she or they, whatever it is, were talking about. So we called off Congress--they called off Congress last Thursday. So we are hoping that as they see that their beliefs and their concerns are being assuaged, the acting chief of the Capitol Police has confirmed there is no Member of Congress who is a threat to another Member of Congress, no intel from any source that indicates that. I have had friends across the aisle say, well, Lauren Boebert talked about wanting to bring a gun on the floor, and that is scary. Well, that is also a testimony that firearms can be the great equalizer. Lauren tells me she is five foot exactly, so that should reaffirm if she has got people in this body that are concerned about her, it is not because of her five foot status, it is because sometimes she has a firearm with her, and it truly is the great equalizer. And I don't hear a lot of people talking about the number of lives that are saved by law-abiding citizens that have firearms and prevent crimes. Madam Speaker, I see my time is expiring. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it is an honor to follow my fellow former judge from Texas. We both know Jesus, and one of Jesus' comments was that if we were just lukewarm, we would be spit out of the mouth. I know my friend's heart, and he is passionate about things that he sees as unjust, so I know he is in no danger of ever being spit out because he does have that passion and cares so deeply.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I would just like to reinforce that when these people get into the United States, their nightmare is not over. They get shipped to towns all over America. Those who wear colored arm bands now tell the drug cartel what their situation is. When they get where they are going, they are still under the thumb of the drug cartels to either sell drugs or sex trafficking. If they don't pay up what they owe, then a family member gets killed or some part gets cut off. We know how bad the drug cartels are. So it doesn't just end there when they get to America. That nightmare will continue, and this administration is all part of it.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas for yielding. I am so thrilled you are hammering this point. These are people's lives, as you were saying earlier. We just were having a hearing in a crime subcommittee, and an article was introduced that said there are more drugs that come in through public ports than illegally across our border. Well, my friend has been involved in enforcing the law as a State prosecutor. There is no one who can tell you how much in the way of drugs were missing, but these kids are now--there is incentive from the Biden administration to keep reusing these kids. Border patrolmen are saying--my friend may have touched on this earlier--that, actually, they are recognizing some of the kids who come in and help people to stay there, and then they will go back across the border and come with another group. It is bad enough that this administration is luring people up, especially children, to their detriment, but it is even worse when they become just products to be used and thrown away. I had been standing there all hours of the night seeing the long line of people being processed and the border patrolmen were asking their questions. At the opposite end where I would go, there are people passing kids around and asking: Who is going to be the mother? Who is going to be the father? Do you want this kid? I will take the kid. Madam Speaker, you can see them. Who is going to take the kid? Clearly, the child didn't belong to any of the people there. Many multiple times I have seen them looking at the address that the drug cartel gave them, and they are supposed to turn that over to Border Patrol, and then ICE or HHS would ship them to where the drug cartels want them to go, and they are switching addresses: I would rather go to that one. Then they tell the Border Patrol: This is where I have a relative. This is where I want to go. That is why the drug cartels call the Border Patrol and us here in the U.S. their logistics. They get them illegally across the border, and then taxpayers ship them to wherever the cartels want them.

Mr. GOHMERT. That would be the Obama administration, Madam Speaker, although now we have some being put up by the Biden administration.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we have been told that 90 percent of Americans support this bill. Well, that is because 99.99 percent of Americans have not read this bill. And we are told, yet again, that this will save lives. And, yet, there is not one single mass killing that has been brought up here today that would have been prevented by this bill. And yet over and over we have people come in here, usually they mean well; look, this will protect people when the fact is that they can't point to any of these mass killings they talk about that would have been prevented. So let's talk about lives that would be saved. Think about the people that are shot every day and would their situation be different if they were not finding it so difficult to legally get a gun? I mean, we had thousands of felony cases that came through my court, and we tried a lot of those cases. Over and over you hear, the criminals are not obeying the law. They are not going to follow the law. They got their guns illegally. And this will not change at all any of those people we tried and convicted for getting guns. They steal them. They buy them from other people that stole them. They don't obey the law. That is why they are criminals. So quit penalizing the American people.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to call up H.R. 682, the Reopen Schools Act, to get our kids out from behind screens and back in the classroom.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, what happened to George Floyd is atrocious, it is criminal, and the policeman will be held accountable; he has got to be. But that has nothing to do with eliminating immunity for countless policemen across the country. This bill does not properly address or prevent what happened in poor George Floyd's case. Why would we have a bill that eliminates immunity for anybody charging the Capitol, breaking in illegally? They would be able to sue the police in the future, tie them up in court. Why would we do that? Because if we do this--follow the money--then the unions will be selling a lot of liability insurance; it will be the biggest fundraiser they have ever had. Let's get together and come together on a bill that will not just raise money, not just hire more lawyers, but will solve the problem of the death, as criminal as it was, of George Floyd.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, there needs to be comment about the way the schedule was totally transformed, once again. What drove this change? We were supposed to be debating the George Floyd bill tomorrow. George Floyd deserves a better bill than he got, a bipartisan bill that we would certainly be willing to work with the Democrats on, but they didn't want our help. We rushed through and did it tonight. We asked: What was the reason for the dramatic change? Is somebody ashamed of what we are bringing and they want to do it late at night? We were told: No. There is concern from somebody that the QAnon- announced inauguration will be tomorrow, so we need to get out of town. Apparently, there is somebody that believes it. I don't know anybody on our side, but perhaps the Speaker and the majority leader are the believers in QAnon. Nobody else here that I know of.

Mr. GOHMERT

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