Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Gaetz). Honoring the Dedicated Service and Selfless Sacrifice of Sergeant First Class Robert R. Boniface

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it has been an interesting couple of days. We heard from our President, and that was a great privilege this morning to hear from him at our Conference. We were reminded what an amazing victory President Trump had last November. Some said it was so very historic, maybe as historic going back clear to Andrew Jackson's victory in 1828. That took me back, being a lover of history, being convinced over the years, as I majored in history in college because I knew out of the Army 4 years, when I finished that, I figured I would major in what I loved, and that was history. Although my mother thought I should have majored in math or either been a doctor or a college math professor. But history I loved, and I continue to learn from history. The old adage is those who refuse to learn from history are destined to repeat it. The corollary that is not as well known is those who do learn from history will find new ways to screw up. But the 1828 election that saw Andrew Jackson become our President actually happened after four abysmal years, some would say the least productive 4 years any President has ever had, and it was actually a President who was a hero of mine, John Quincy Adams. He was the first son of a former President to be President. Some have said he was probably the best educated President we have ever had, having been educated at the best Massachusetts had, England had, and France had. He wrote books in German, fluently spoke French. Of course, if he had had his way, he would have been married to an American, but when his mother, Abigail, was not too pleased with the girl he thought was the love of his life, he ended up being directed to England where he ended up falling in love with Louisa, and she ultimately became his wife; but apparently his mother didn't think she was quite fit. Louisa became the first--used to be able to say the only--First Lady the country has ever had who was not born in the United States. Like I say, if he had had his choice--first choice--then his wife would have been born in the United States. But that is the way things fall. He loved his wife dearly. He was quite accomplished. He kept the most complete journal of anybody we have ever had who was President. He knew slavery was wrong. He knew slavery was destroying our country, that we could never reach the potential that God had for this country unless we eliminated slavery. He had corresponded to England with a guy by the name of William Wilberforce, who had dedicated his adult life since his twenties to eliminating slavery in the British Isles and British territories. He ran for President in 1824. No one won with the electoral votes. It was thrown to the House of Representatives. John Quincy Adams garnered the favor of Henry Clay in the House. And when Clay threw his support behind John Quincy Adams, Adams then won the Presidency. Adams had some friends who were very close to him. They knew his heart, they knew his heart was pure, and his intentions were clearly nothing but the very best for the United States. They knew him to be a man of honor, a man of integrity, a man of his word. He had not made any kind of deal with Henry Clay to make him Secretary of State. But as a man of honor, a man of integrity, he could not understand why he couldn't go ahead, and why he shouldn't go ahead, and appoint Henry Clay to be Secretary of State. His closest friend said: John, if you appoint Henry Clay to be Secretary of State, you will never, ever be able to convince anybody in Congress--the House or Senate--you will never convince anybody in Washington but your closest friends, those of us that really love you, you will never convince the rest of the world or posterity that you had not cut a deal with Henry Clay that in return for his support for you being President, you would make him Secretary of State. Please, appoint him to anything, but not Secretary of State. It is going to look like you made a deal and bought the Presidency with the appointment. But there were those who did not love John Quincy Adams, didn't have that much respect for him, and would have been fine if he had not won the election, but he had won the election. And those who didn't care about John Quincy Adams encouraged him: Sure, appoint Henry Clay, it is your choice. You appoint whoever you want. Those who loved John said: John, it is not a good idea. People are going to brand you improperly. We know you are honest. Those are not really your friends that are telling you to just appoint Henry Clay to be Secretary of State. Go ahead. He didn't listen to the closest friends who loved him and cared about him. He listened to those who didn't care if he succeeded or failed. So he appointed Henry Clay to be Secretary of State. Some historians would say he had the least productive 4 years of any President in history. It is always arguable. But there were clearly times throughout his 4 years as President when he backed bills and pushed bills that would have been good for the United States and that should have had the support of both the House and Senate when they couldn't get passed simply because people thought he had bought the office with the appointment of Henry Clay to Secretary of State. And so they went against anything and everything that John Quincy Adams tried to support thereafter. That may seem kind of a strange story to pull out from history, except I was reminded of it as I thought about today, and I thought about some folks who even in October, they didn't care about Donald Trump getting elected President, they didn't really support him at that point, so they encouraged him: You go ahead and let's do this bill that we are bringing to the floor and just never mind the fact that prices will not come down, unless you want to say 10 percent over 3 years, maybe 10 percent. After the prices will probably continue to go up after those same 3 years, we may be able to cut 10 percent off at some point. Why? Because we are not stripping the regulation, the regulatory authority, out of ObamaCare. We are only repealing part of it. And we are leaving almost all of the part that has driven costs through the roof. It has driven the price of health insurance through the roof. It has blown the deductibles so high that so many of my constituents and friends know they will never have enough cash to pay for the deductible to even get to a claim that the insurance company would pay. And I just know that when the prices of health insurance don't come down over the next few years, people are going to say President Trump broke his promise to repeal ObamaCare. He only got part of it, but the monopolies that had begun to grow in the health insurance market grew bigger and fatter. And a man who wanted to do an honorable thing for America and get rid of ObamaCare--that it cost people their insurance, their doctor, their medicine, that it caused so much suffering and heartache as people struggle with their healthcare bills--he promised he would get rid of it, he wanted to deliver on his promise, and he has been told by people who weren't really sure if they cared if he won or lost that: Gee, just pass this, this will be great. Just pass anything. Pass something. We will call it a victory and move on. But these are the times when it is very important to take an assessment of those who want to see you succeed and those who really don't care. There are those who have felt on the Republican side that if Donald Trump was defeated, that would be the end of the Tea Party movement, that would be the end of any type of populism rising up against the runaway socialism, the runaway assault on religious freedom, the Second Amendment. The American public rose up, and this is our first chance to really deliver on our promises. I hope that the votes are not all there yet so that we can reach an agreement so that we can include in the bill that comes to the floor, not an amendment we vote on so that it can be voted down, but actually included in the bill so that we take out at least the big hunk of what has caused health insurance prices to skyrocket. And if we can do that, we can have a win this week, one that we can all feel good about on our side of the aisle, and even my friends on the other side of the aisle. If we do the right thing and make sure that we take action that actually legitimately brings down health insurance costs, then my friends on the other side of the aisle will hear good reports of joyful remarks with gratitude that insurance prices have come down, we can now afford it, our deductible is lower, we are building a health savings account, it is great. There are some good things that can come out of the votes this week. But if people take advice from those who are not as concerned with their total success, then this could be the start of a Presidency that was as unpleasant as John Quincy Adams' Presidency, which ended up leading to the inevitable result of his defeat in 1828 to Andrew Jackson. I hope we keep our promise. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, yes, this is an important week. There are a lot of things we are bringing up, but nothing is more important than the bill that is supposed to address the Affordable Care Act, as it was called. But it is kind of tough to call it that since it has been completely unaffordable for so many. So many lost their health insurance and lost their doctor. Some lost medication that they were taking before. It is now no longer approved under their new policy. So it has been a very difficult period of time as ObamaCare has been foisted on the country. It came so close to not passing. And every Republican that I am aware of has promised: You give us the majority in both Houses and the President and we will repeal it. I believe Majority Leader McConnell said we will repeal it and rip it out root and branch. Republican leaders, I believe, mentioned lock, stock, and barrel. And I have great respect for my friends who were just speaking here, but I have got a real problem with the bill. We are told there will be three phases, three buckets, three stages, whatever you want to call it. The first will be to pass this bill. It leaves in place the parts of ObamaCare that caused insurance to skyrocket. It is leaving in place the part of ObamaCare that caused deductibles to rise from very little to thousands and thousands of dollars, beyond so many Americans' ability to ever reach. So the insurance, they are paying them money every month, but they realize: I don't have $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, $8,000 to pay the deductible; therefore, I am really paying for nothing. Especially young people have found this. We are told that it is because the Senate has what they refer to as the Byrd rule that would not allow us to take the part that is not currently in the bill regarding all of the regulations. We are told that the Byrd rule--and we have looked into it, apparently--if a bill is moving under reconciliation, as this is, then in the Senate, in essence, it must do more than affect the budget incidentally; it must materially affect the budget. And yet we know that if we repeal all of the part that is being put off for stage 2 or 3, but particularly stage 2, the regulations that were put in place by the Obama administration, the regulatory authority that was given to them, by putting that off, it means the prices that dramatically skyrocketed, they are not going to skyrocket down. We are told, well, they may go up some, but we think there is a good chance they will come down 10 percent. But for my constituents, so many of whom either lost their insurance or are now paying for skyrocketing prices two, three, four times or more than what they used to pay, a 10 percent drop will not be a help at all. Their deductibles will not be coming down anytime soon. We are told, though, with the regulatory reform that my good friend Secretary Tom Price will do, that will be the phase, the stage, the bucket, that will drop the prices. But when I read through--and I know some people said 2,700 pages, my two part. And I have gotten two copies, and they are both around 2,500 pages. So unless there are 200 pages I never found, I did read the bill more than once. And someone said 1,400 times. I don't know. I know it is a lot. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is given wide discretion in putting in place rules and regulations to implement the act. We have heard that there will, no doubt, be, immediately, litigation filed, lawsuits filed, to try to overturn the regulations that are put in place by Secretary Price. Well, since I have had experience in litigation, including Federal litigation, Federal appeals, what would be the issue? Well, the issue would be whether or not the Secretary of Health and Human Services has authority to create regulations that will, in effect, completely destroy the bill so that eventually the prices will come back down, the deductibles eventually will come back down. That is what we are told. And I trust Secretary Price will do everything within his power to make this happen. So Secretary Price will come forward with regulations that will emasculate the bill, emasculate ObamaCare. Litigation is filed. Ultimately, at some point, it will come back to a judge, an appellate judge. As a State district judge, I handled cases and matters that I knew were going to be appealed. As a chief justice of an appellate court, I made those decisions and sat in on discussions with other justices, and so it seems I am in a good position to potentially analyze what would happen on appeal. We know the Secretary has wide discretion promulgating the regulations, the rules, to bring about the implementation and the intent of the ACA, ObamaCare. But the question will be, on appeal: Does the Secretary of Health and Human Services have the authority, under the bill, to render it meaningless? Now, I am not aware of justices at the appellate level who are a great deal more conservative than I was, but I believed in following the law even though I, at times, didn't like the law. I would not legislate from the bench. And in a case such as this, you would look, well, yes, the Secretary should have wide discretion to implement the intention of the bill and see that it is carried out. But it would certainly seem the more powerful argument--perhaps, most likely, the winning argument--will be, yes, but he doesn't have discretion to kill the bill. He has discretion, wide discretion, to implement the bill and carry out the intent of the bill. I just can't help but think, again, back to words from my late friend, Justice Scalia. We weren't talking about a specific case, because he never betrayed the trust that he had as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. We were talking about things in general. He said at times it bothered him that Congress had the power to end some bill, to change some law, and yet we seem to put a rubber stamp and encourage people to go file a lawsuit to get the law struck down instead of just winning the vote in the House and Senate and repealing the law. The words that really come back are: If you guys in Congress don't have the guts to do what needs to be done, that you have the power to do and you are supposed to do, don't come running to us over at the Supreme Court expecting us to do your job for you. He was right. This body, along with the Senate, has the power to do exactly what we have promised for 7 years we would do if we got the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. We would repeal ObamaCare. Now, I don't know how many there are of us that cannot vote for a bill that will leave in place the regulations and the parts that made our insurance skyrocket, that caused me to lose my insurance. And I wouldn't take the subsidy for 3 years until we got insurance through other means. The law is very clear that, as Members of Congress, we weren't supposed to get that, so I went without insurance for a few years. But we promised our constituents we would repeal ObamaCare. So what about, we are told, this part that can't make it through the Byrd rule in the Senate? Well, for one thing, 51 votes could change the Byrd rule. For another, there is nothing that is going to more materially affect the budget, in this reconciliation or any other, than bringing the price of health insurance and health care down dramatically. That is more appropriate under the Byrd rule than the whole other part that we are told will make it through the Byrd rule in the Senate. The most important part is the part being left out. That will bring the prices down. That will give control back to the patients and the doctors. That will allow the States to come up with new ideas and new ways to provide health care and to get it to those who need it. But more important than anything, it restores freedom in America that has been lacking since that bill passed. When the government is in charge of every Americans' health care, the government has every right to tell people how to live. Those claims from years past--we don't want the government in our bedroom--became rather hollow when ObamaCare passed and the government came into your bedroom, your dining room, everywhere in the house. It has got to be repealed. As Mitch McConnell has said previously, rip it out root and branch. Who is going to make the decision on what seems so clear should allow all of ObamaCare to be repealed? Who is going to make that decision in the Senate? Well, we know the Vice President can come right on down to the Capitol, come down Pennsylvania Avenue and come into the Senate Chamber. He is the President of the Senate, and I couldn't be more thrilled that he is. If he is unable to come, then the majority leader could sit in the chair, or he could appoint someone to sit in the chair pro tem. But it will be a Republican who decides whether or not all of ObamaCare can be repealed, but especially the part that is left out right now. Mr. Speaker, I know the President is coming, and I am so glad that we have this chance because he is President. But I believe that the President of the United States who has been sold this bill that won't bring down prices--maybe 10 percent, we are told, some day--he deserves better. He does not deserve to be slapped in the face with a midterm election when prices have not come down, as people pushing this bill know they won't--maybe 10 percent. That is not going to change votes of those who know we promised a full repeal. We have the power to do a full repeal, and we should do a full repeal. Let's get freedom back to a doctor-patient relationship. And from what I am told--they certainly haven't called me--I am told that the health insurance lobbyists have been very active, and people in our leadership are listening. But if that is true, these are the same people with Big Pharma that signed off on ObamaCare. It meant they would make billions more than they ever had in the short term, but in the long term, they signed their own death warrant. We owe it to the American people to make sure that insurance is viable for the future, and the only way to do that is to repeal ObamaCare, rip it out, root and branch. I like Mitch McConnell's expression. That is what needs to happen. And for those of my colleagues who are getting nervous about having pressure from the White House, pressure from the House leaders, pressure from the Senate leaders, it is nothing like the pressure you will get from your constituents when they find out you didn't really do anything to make their lives better because the prices are not coming down; the regulations that require all of those parts and policies that people don't want that they should have the freedom to choose, they are still there; and in the meantime, the new regulations by the great Secretary of Health and Human Services, in whom I have great faith, they will be tied up in litigation. Maybe they get to the Supreme Court in 2 years. Maybe they don't. Maybe it is longer. And the American people continue to suffer because we didn't have the guts to do what we should do, what we promised we would do, and that is: Repeal ObamaCare. I would like to keep the Senate majority in 2018, and I am convinced that the only way we do that is if enough of us endure the name calling in the short term, and stand up and say no on this bill that doesn't keep our promises. It has got some good stuff in it, no question, but it doesn't keep our promises. And if enough of us will do that, then maybe we can get the Senate and the House leadership to agree to do what we promised. Then the President will be hailed in 2018, as prices of insurance actually come down, people are given their freedom back to choose their doctor, their health insurance, and the short stint of the name calling now ends up paying dividends in a glorious future. So, Mr. Speaker, thank you for recognizing me. We will see how the week plays out. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, happy St. Patrick's Day. March 17 is St. Patrick's Day--a day that, for so many, has become a reason for frivolity and joy and fun. Some think it is a day just for drinking, but St. Patrick is remembered not because he drank, not because of frivolity, but because he was a dedicated Christian committed to serving the Lord. I think it is good on St. Patrick's Day to remember why he was a saint. Now going 180 degrees from talking about saints, Mr. Speaker, I think it is worth discussing the decision made by a Federal judge in Hawaii, also in Maryland. We have judges who have become dictators. We have judges who have ceased to abide by the Constitution. They have widely applied themselves as politicians, though they do not run for office. A true judge, a conscientious and ethical judge, would review a document such as the President's executive order for what it is, what it says, what it does. Intent is not an issue. What does it do? The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, was seeking and is seeking to protect Americans, but we have judges who are not interested in protecting Americans so much as they are patronizing and sucking up to the liberals in the country: those in the media, those in entertainment, those in their highbrow circles. They are not interested in following the Constitution or the law. We had a hearing in the Committee on the Judiciary on the Ninth Circuit this week. The Ninth Circuit apparently is the most overturned circuit in the country. It has a massive number more cases filed in their circuit than any other circuit. In fact, I have now filed a bill that would divide the Ninth Circuit so that the Ninth Circuit would be comprised of California only, and then all the other States--Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming I believe is in, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, and territories--I may have missed a State, but all of the other States and territories would be in a new 12th Circuit. The judges who are currently on the 12th Circuit Court in my bill--who are currently part of the Ninth Circuit would remain with the Ninth Circuit. We would have a new circuit, and the judges would be appointed by the current President. I know there are a lot of people in California who have great sympathy for that, have been begging for years to be carved out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals because their destructive, unconstitutional decisions are doing great harm to those who believe in the Constitution as written, not as some liberal judge thought it might should be as he tries or she tries to play up to friends at their get- togethers. They would be hailed as being so wise, but the truth is, as Scripture talks about, these are people who are wise in their own eyes, but they are doing great harm to the United States of America. When anyone in any kind of leadership position loses their common sense, they are educated beyond common sense--they educate common sense completely out of some folks in the United States now--we have problems. And anytime people are educated and taught to believe that what instinctively they knew or were taught was not the right thing to think, and those people become leaders in the country, that country speeds up in its travel down the road to the dustbin of history. No nation has ever lasted forever. No nation ever will in this world. It is not going to happen. So the question is, from its founding, how long does it go? It depends on how long the leaders of that nation can keep good sense within their consideration in making decisions. That is not happening. Good sense is not being used by judges who have assumed powers they never had, were never given. Under the Constitution, the powers regarding refugees, immigration, those decisions are left to the President. Some judge may say, oh, you can't consider religion, but indeed any judge that so says is completely wrong. Thank God religion has been considered many times, as when Jews were being persecuted and killed, it was appropriate to say that we want to welcome Jews out of those horrors as refugees, bring them in. But this Nation is being put at risk by judges who are wise in their own eyes. Now, there is an article here about the Hawaii judge. It is in The Guardian. It was written by Les Carpenter, Oliver Laughland, and Liz Barney. It was written apparently before the decision was made. ``U.S. district judge Derrick Watson is one of several judges hearing arguments over the ban in the final hours before its implementation. He said on Wednesday afternoon after hearing oral arguments that he would issue a written ruling before 6pm Hawaii time. Hawaii was the first state to challenge the second version of Trump's travel ban, after the first was halted by court order. ``The state has argued that the ban is unconstitutional, and that it will suffer damage to its local economy and to various educational and religious institutions. It also argued that some Hawaiians will be prevented from reuniting with family members swept up in the ban.'' That is heart rending, but the fact is none of those are a basis for reversing a Presidential executive order that Congress and the Constitution together gave the President to issue. We also find from comments that the courts didn't look to the four corners of the document and look what the document says because many of us know that as long as the Constitution is the foundational bedrock for the country, we have a solid foundation. But when we have judges like this Derrick Watson or the judge from Maryland or James Robart, who issued a ban in the first travel order, when they don't pay attention to the Constitution but pay more attention to what they hear from their liberal friends who are disgusted by the elected President of the United States, and they know they will be heroes, and they long for the accolades of the intelligentsia, which actually isn't the intelligent-- educated, yes; intelligent, no. The Constitution gives certain powers to certain parts of the government. Congress has the power to make decisions on immigration, migration, naturalization, but it has the power to delegate those responsibilities as it sees fit to the President, and it has done so. The President has certain powers of his own office, of his own right to protect the United States of America. But these judges think that you should not consider the fact that one of the most educated people in the world on what Islam is and what it isn't says the Islamic State is Islam. He has a Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the University of Baghdad, as I recall, and he happens to be the head of the Islamic State. But the judge would have us disregard the fact that a man who spent his life studying Islam, Koran, the Holy Koran because the Koran that is brought around to some of our offices, they take out verses that have to do with violence against those who are not Muslims, but the Holy Koran he spent his life studying, but these judges would say, oh, no, no, you can't consider the fact that these radical Islamists claim to be Muslim or Islamists, you can't consider that. One article out this week pointed out that somebody should tell these judges that the terrorists coming in from the nations designated by the President are Muslim. They are not Christians. They are not Jews. They are not secularists. They are radical Islamists. It is ridiculous to have to continually state the obvious that we all know, that all Muslims are not a threat to the United States, but it is absurd not to understand that those who in the name of Allah are killing, beheading, torturing, trying to destroy a free society in the name of Allah, they should not be allowed into the United States. If they are U.S. citizens and their goal is to supplant the U.S. Constitution with sharia law, that is treasonous. That is why I was so pleased with President Sisi, as a Muslim leader, telling a room full of imams: We have got to stand up to the radicals who have hijacked our religion. President Obama didn't know that. He kept continuing to say that, oh, no, the Islamic State, it is not Islamic, these Islamic terrorists are not Islamic, when actually wise Muslim leaders like President Sisi, they understand, yes, these people are Islamic. They claim it in the name of Allah. They claim it in the name of the Holy Koran, but they have hijacked our religion, and it is time to stand up to them. As long as we have world leaders who are, metaphorically speaking, without clothes, and nobody has the nerve among the world leaders to say: you are naked, put on some clothes. Again, for those who are educated beyond their intellectual level, that means you have got to call it like it is and don't just go along to play to the crowd, the media, the Hollywood types. Stand up and call it like it is. We have a President who is trying to do that. There is no doubt, as Justice Scalia said about one of the ill- advised decisions previously made by the Supreme Court, this will end up costing American lives. These decisions, if they are allowed to stand, by these unconstitutional judges will cost American lives, and the blood will be on the judges' hands in their pursuit of accolades and popularity among the neo-intellectual elite. They left common sense behind and put our Nation at risk. It is tragic. I have the two decisions from the courts--one from the District of Hawaii and one from the District of Maryland. But it is interesting. In this article I was reading, Mr. Speaker, it says the judge, within just a matter of brief hours, was going to have this 42- or 43-page decision made. Let's see. This is the Hawaii decision, 43 pages. It seems to me somebody must have been working on that before oral arguments. The decision must have been worked on before that to have a 43-page decision just within a matter of a few hours. But let's face it, the litigant surely knew before they ever had a hearing what the judge surely knew before the hearing--that he was biased, prejudiced, and was in no way going to have a fair hearing. He was going to end up ridiculing the President of the United States, and unwittingly, witlessly, putting America at risk. We have testimony here from the FBI Director saying: We will vet these people, but we have nothing against which we can check the information they give us. Yeah, we will vet them, but we got nothing to check their information against. As Director Comey pointed out: At least in Iraq, we had government records from Iraq, we had the criminal records. But in Syria, since the Obama administration was so diametrically opposed to the Assad administration in Syria, well, the official government certainly wasn't sharing information. And since this administration said we were going to stop the Islamic State--even though we did nothing from the administration decisions, at least, but help the Islamic State grow bigger and strong, and kept sending weapons, material to what the Obama administration thought or said were our friends and allies, but actually ended up repeatedly allowing the weaponry, the heavy artillery tanks, to fall into the hands of the Islamic State--well, the Islamic State was not sharing the information they had about the people of Syria. And, in fact, Mr. Baghdadi made clear that they were going to get some of their best warriors mixed in with refugees, and they surely have. When you have judges who close their eyes, wet their finger, and hold it up for liberal friends to blow on so they know which direction they should move, well, we get bad decisions that put the Nation at risk. For those of us who spent much of our lives studying history, it is very clear. Since you know no nation lasts forever, then you look at important milestones along the rise and along the demise, and these are the kind of decisions that lead to a country's demise. When you refuse to recognize what your enemies say--that they are your enemies, they are going to destroy your way of life, they are going to get refugees who are terrorists into your country--because you are so stupid you don't know how to defend yourself, you want to pat yourselves on the back for being so open-minded and open-doored that you allow your killer to come in and kill you, just like the proverbial song and tale taking in a snake, warming it, bringing it back to life, and it bites the rescuer; or the tale of the tortoise carrying the scorpion across the water and then getting stung. When people tell you they despise your way of life, they are going to bring your way of life down. When their documents tell you that they believe that you are infidels and need to be destroyed, there has to be somebody at the top of the country's leadership that understands the risk and stands up to protect the country. And when people like these judges take the Constitution into their own hands, rip it up, and say, ``I don't care what restrictions we have on us, I don't have any restrictions, I am a Federal judge for life,'' well, that is only so long as the judge has good behavior. And these judges have not had good behavior. They have taken powers under themselves--their name might as well be Chavez or Morsi--taking power into their own hands that they were never supposed to have. But at least in the case of Chavez and, possibly, Morsi, they won elections. There was a great deal of fraud involved in Morsi's election. It was questionable whether he actually won. The threats eliminated any contest to the election results. But the 30 million or so that went to the streets and demanded his ouster in Egypt, the greatest public step in world history, demanded the removal of an unconstitutional leader in world history. There has never been 30 million people go to the streets peaceably. It wasn't all peace. But the part that wasn't peace was caused by the Muslim Brotherhood. That is why they have been labeled as a terrorist organization, and that is why the United States should label them as a terrorist organization. Regardless of what anybody thinks about President Trump, his order was an attempt to protect Americans against judges who think they are unaccountable because we haven't impeached near enough and who become dictators and seize power that was never given to them. I have got a bill we are preparing that would eliminate any jurisdiction for any Federal court other than the Supreme Court to take up an issue involving immigration of refugees, other than immigration courts, but not on a constitutional level, not to issue an injunction to stop a congressional action or a Presidential action. That would have to come from the Supreme Court, and that is the way it ought to be. When the Constitution was written, there was only one Federal court provided for. That was the United States Supreme Court. Any other court that is Federal in this country owes its life, its jurisdiction, to the U.S. Congress. As some have said in other applications, ``We brought them into the world and we can take them out,'' as far as their courts are concerned; and we need to do that. We need to take their courts out of the business of making decisions that overrule congressional and Presidential action on refugees and our national security when it is involved with those refugees. At a hearing that Dr. Alid Perez and Steve King, my friend from Iowa, set up and held yesterday, there were very touching stories of Christians, Yazidis, the persecution of Jews in the Middle East. We heard from people that know what it is to be persecuted by radical Islamists. They see how stupid the policies have been in this country. We heard from one of the people in the Homeland Security Department that with the massive millions of dollars that Congress appropriated to be used in countering violent extremism, an inarticulate euphemism, that we have spent millions on things like teaching young school choirs Muslim songs. Now, that is one of the contributing factors to the senseless Orlando killings, the San Bernardino killings, the Boston marathon killings--choirs. A contributing factor is that we have wasted millions of dollars, maybe billions, on outreach programs that should not necessarily be the role of some parts of our law enforcement. I challenged FBI Director Mueller that they had not even gone to the mosque where Tsarnaev went to find out if his pattern had changed, if his behavior had changed, you know, if he was memorizing more and more scripture than he ever had. We often hear after these shootings, these killings, or these bombings take place: Well, he was becoming more and more religious. Well, that can be an indication that somebody has become radicalized. There are a number of factors. Kim Jensen from the FBI, who prepared 700 pages or so on training people how to spot radical Islamists, well, he had his 700 pages purged from training materials for a long period of time. Finally, they realized somebody really needs to know what radical Islam is. They allowed some of the training materials to be used again--maybe all of them--but only for a limited number of FBI agents, as I understand it. We had material that was removed during the purge of our State Department, Homeland Security Department, intelligence departments, agencies, during the purge of their training materials, removed what our Federal agents need to know in order to be able to spot if somebody is no longer a peace-loving Muslim but now has been radicalized and wants to kill American infidels. There are things that can be spotted if you know what to look for. We have people that know how to train for those things. Phil Haney with Homeland Security knew. With this scientific methodology of finding the connections between radical Islamists, as we have heard publicly, he had identified 800 who may have terrorist ties--reviewed 400, where nearly every one of them ended up being named on the terrorist watch list, but the other 400 were not ever analyzed. No telling how many of those potential terrorist individuals may actually kill people, kill Americans some day, if they haven't already. Although Secretary Napolitano said we get pinged and we connect the dots, yet she was Secretary when somebody high--maybe her, but probably someone else--was eliminating the dots, thousands of pages of dots, dots representing terrorist ties. They wiped them out. They erased them. Phil Haney saw it as it was happening, was able to capture much that was being deleted, that would allow us to know who in the United States has terrorist ties. Under President Obama, our ability to identify our enemy was greatly weakened, and now we have judges that will put us even further at risk. But you see it repeatedly through history. When a nation's leaders begin to think they are so wise, so above the fray that they refuse to recognize a direct threat to the nation, then the nation is--it speeds up its trip to that dustbin of history. My continued hope and prayer is that this administration will reverse that slide. I know there are many that say that you have a cycle--whether it was ancient Greece, Rome, other societies--where they pursue freedom, they have some freedom, they begin to lose freedom, they fall under a dictatorship, a totalitarian regime, and then the cycle goes on. But my reading of history leads me to believe perhaps it is more like, can be like, bell-shaped curves where you can go up, create more and more freedoms, have periods where you lose freedoms, but if you have a generation or two that stands up and recaptures those freedoms, you could have another bell-shaped curve. It doesn't have to be a cycle where you completely lose your freedom. But the way we are headed, this will happen. I was hearing from my friend Secretary Tom Price yesterday that there are 76,000 employees in Health and Human Services, and we are not talking about people that even put Band-Aids on those who need medical care. We are talking mainly about bureaucrats. That is one of the things that contributed so mightily to the increased cost of health care: so many more bureaucrats were being hired, had to be hired, more and more regulations. You had IRS agents, by the thousands, that had to be hired in order to implement ObamaCare. They weren't going to help anybody's health. They might actually cause problems with people's health--ulcers, at least. But this Nation is at risk. We have gotten a reprieve, a chance to catch our breath, restore freedom. As I have said before, for those who have read ``Nineteen Eighty- Four'' by George Orwell, the main thing that Orwell got wrong was the date, because we now have eyes in our homes wherever we are that are staring at us, allow the government to stare at us through our own computers, through our own smartphones. When watching the movie of ``1984,'' it actually is an eye like a picture, but what it really is these days, they are computer screens, smartphone screens. The government can watch any time it wants. We were assured that the government would not be watching like that unless they followed the law or got a FISA court warrant, but Edward Snowden showed that--those of us who heard testimony and heard statements from people in authority about what they would do and not do--has been proven to be false. That became clear to me when I saw the affidavit seeking a warrant for all of Verizon's data on all of their customers, all of their calls, all of the information, because the Fourth Amendment says it has to be with particularity. You have got to be specific, what it is you are seeking, make sure there is probable cause to believe a crime is being committed and this person committed it, and that there is evidence to show that that is being sought, and then you get the warrant. That is the way I reviewed applications for warrants repeatedly when I was a judge, but not anymore. No, no. A guy comes in, swears to a FISA court judge that at one time I had great trust in because we were assured, hey, these are appointed--nominated, at least--confirmed Federal judges. They would never violate the Constitution. Well, we found out that is just not true. They became a rubber stamp. So the particularity in the affidavit we saw was: We need all the information on all the customers Verizon has. The FISA judge, supposedly out there to protect Americans' private information, said: Oh, well, that is particular enough. You want everything, all of the numbers, all of the information. Okay, here is the order. Here is the warrant. Verizon, turn over everything you have got on all the numbers you have. Well, so much for protection of our rights by the FISA court. We now know we are not protected by the FISA court. We can't trust the FISA court. As I said in our hearing last week--well, I have said it publicly-- unless our intelligence agencies produce the culprits who violated the law and did not follow the law in masking the name, minimizing the transcripts, unless our intelligence agencies can root out the people that have been violating the law, I will vote against a reauthorization of 702. I know they say: Well, we need all of this power to keep us safe. But we have competing interests here. On the one hand, we have a government that yearns to be bigger and bigger and know more and more until it knows everything about everybody; and on the other hand, we have got people wanting to be safe and wanting their government to protect them. So there has to be a balance. But when government officials can get every bit of information about your private life, then why do we even need a Congress? You have got bureaucrats making your decisions, know all about you. Might as well let them make the rest of your personal decisions. They know everything else you know. So we are living in a dangerous time, but the judges have got to be reined in. I hope that my colleagues will join us in restricting the ability of a district or circuit court, any Federal court other than the Supreme Court, taking up these types of national security issues involving refugees or immigrants, because it looks like that is the best thing we can do at this time. In the meantime, I do intend to review more information about these two judges from Hawaii and Maryland--any others that may join hands as they jump off the cliff--and see if their conduct seems to be sufficiently bad conduct to require their removal from office. I know this will be looked at as a political thing, but it is not. We are talking about the freedoms of every Democrat, every Republican, everybody that is not identified with a party--every American. The judges have overtaken the Constitution. In the name of political correctness, we have ended up, apparently, according to the information that is coming out, allowing people who happen to be Muslim to have total access to our congressional computer systems. This article from March 15 in the Conservative Review by Luke Rosiak--and apparently, he has done a great deal of digging on this story. He seems to have more stories about it. Well, let me touch on the one from March 13: ``Congressional IT staffers who are the subject of a criminal investigation into misusing their positions had full access to Members' `correspondence, emails, confidential files,' and there was almost no tracking of what they did, a former House technology worker said. ``Imran Awan bullied central IT to bend the rules for him so there wouldn't be a paper trail about the unusually high permissions he was requesting. And their actions were not logged, so Members have no way of knowing what information they may have taken, the central IT employee said. ``Awan ran technology for multiple House Democrats, and soon four of his relatives--including brothers Abid and Jamal--appeared on the payroll of dozens of other Members''--of Congress--``collecting $4 million in taxpayer funds since 2010. ``U.S. Capitol Police named him and his relatives as subjects of a criminal probe on February 2, and banned them from the complex's computer networks. But Members of Congress for whom they worked have downplayed their access or publicly ignored the issue.'' And, of course, the reason is no one wants to be seen as a racist. Islam, being Muslim, is not a race; it is a religion. And for some, it is not only a religion, it is a form of government that some-- fortunately, a minority--think should replace our own Constitution. Anyway, the article goes on: `` `They had access to everything. Correspondence, emails, confidential files--if it was stored on the Member's system, they had access to it,' the former House Information Resources technology worker with first-hand knowledge of Imran's privileges told The Daily Caller News Foundation. ``Technology employees who work for Members must initially get authority from HIR, a component of the House's chief administrative officer, which maintains campus-wide technology systems. ``There were some things--like access to the House email system that were totally controlled by the technicians at HIR. In order for certain permissions to be granted, a form was required to ensure that there was a paper trail for the requested changes. Imran was constantly complaining that he had to go through this process and trying to get people to process his access requests without the proper forms. Some of the permissions he wanted would give him total access to the Members' stuff.'' And again, he used the threat of calling someone bigoted because he was Muslim if he was not given the total access that this person now being investigated as a criminal said he needed. And it is amazing how many people gave him the full access he wanted without the proper credentials, without the proper background investigation, because no one wanted to be called bigoted since he was Muslim. `` `IT staff at HIR can be tracked for every keystroke they make,' the worker said. But by comparison, `when these guys were granted access to the Member's computer systems there is no oversight or tracking of what they may be doing on the Member's system. For example they could make a copy of anything on the Member's computer system to a thumb drive or have it sent to a private server that they had set up and no one would know.' ``That raises questions about why Members are so quick to brush off the seriousness of the investigation.'' Mr. Speaker, as you know, we are not hearing a lot of people talk about it. We are not seeing a bunch of stories about it. But this is critical to the ongoing of Congress' actions. You can't have privileged communications that allow us to know what is going on in the departments, agencies, over which we have oversight--you can't have access to that kind of information. The wrong people know everybody we talk to, everything that is said. They know how to fend off and best come after America. They know how to manipulate us and do so so much easier and better. You don't have to be Russian, apparently, to get access to the Democratic National Committee's emails. I am still really interested to know if any of these five who didn't have proper background investigations, that worked on so many of our Democratic friends' computer systems, if they possibly helped set up the Democratic National Committee's computer system. `` `After being notified by the House Administration Committee, Abid was removed from our payroll.' '' This is a quote. `` `We are confident that everything in our office is secure,' Hilarie Chambers, chief of staff for Democratic Representative Sander Levin of Michigan, told TheDCNF. ``Multiple House IT workers said it is impossible for Members' offices to make that judgment, and that Capitol Police--who are running an investigation that involves cybercrimes and current and potential international fugitives, despite their primary duties being providing physical security--aren't capable of determining what actually occurred either. ``The Capitol Police web page listing their authority, scope of work, and expertise does not mention the word `computers.' ``A Fairfax County, Virginia, police report shows that the brothers' stepmother called the police on them in January, and a relative said Imran has been out of the country attempting to access assets stored in Pakistan in his deceased father's name. The relative said they forced her to sign power of attorney documents against her will. ``After naming them as suspects in a criminal investigation, the Capitol Police have not taken their passports or arrested them. The brothers previously took a $100,000 loan from a fugitive wanted by U.S. authorities, Dr. Ali Al-Attar, who has fled to Iraq and been linked to Hezbollah.'' Just gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling, Mr. Speaker, that we have got people with ties owing money to known associates of the Hezbollah terrorist organization and their having full access to Members' computers. This says: ``Imran ran technology for Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz--who resigned as head of the Democratic National Committee after a disastrous email hack that was blamed on Russians--and had the password to an iPad used for DNC business. ``Politico described the investigation this way: `Five House staffers are accused of stealing equipment from Members' offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network.' ``But it later said Hill staffers were downplaying the information security component, writing, `Sources close to the House investigation said the former staffers, while able to view some Member data, did not have access to any classified information.' ``That description rankled multiple House IT workers, who told TheDCNF those semantics misleadingly made it seem like they didn't have access to extremely sensitive information. `` `Classified' is a terminology used by spy agencies and other executive branch agencies, not generally Congress, with the exception of the Intelligence Committee. The full email correspondence and hard drives of Members of Congress are nonetheless sensitive, extremely private, and likely to contain privileged information of the utmost import. ``And an email need not deal with national security to open that Member to blackmail or extortion. All a rogue IT staffer would need to do was threaten to release emails that were politically embarrassing. ``The central IT staffer said any suggestion that the brothers' access didn't span the full gamut of congressional intrigue was silly because they were the ones giving out permissions. `` `When a new Member begins, they guide them on everything from which computer system to purchase to which constituent management system to go with and all other related hardware purchases. Then they install everything and set up all the accounts and grant all the required permissions and restrictions,' the staffer said. `` `In effect, they are given administrative control of the Members' computer operations. They then set up a remote access so they can connect from wherever they are and have full access to everything on the Member's system.' ``Numerous Members of Congress who employed the suspects wouldn't say whether they've been fired or what steps they've taken to examine whether their information is safe.'' Spokesmen for a number of Members of Congress ``all ignored requests or refused to say. ``The central IT worker said they were ignoring the problem in the hopes that it will go away, but that their apathy speaks to the problem. `` `Unfortunately, as the recent election has shown, security of computer systems on the Hill is not really taken seriously.' '' So we are told now, this article from March 15, says that the Capitol Police are getting outside help. We will see. Might I inquire how much time I have?

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, in my remaining time, I want to address the question of ObamaCare. Two years ago when Joe Biden was Vice President, making him President of the Senate, there was a compromise. Instead of doing complete and full repeal of ObamaCare as Republicans have been promising for years, there was a compromise: All right. We will take out all but the regulatory authority, those things that actually caused the greatest increase and expense. But it didn't change the fact, Mr. Speaker, that we had made a pledge to America that I didn't help write but our leaders of the Republican Party in the House did, and it said: Because the new healthcare law kills jobs, raises taxes, increases the cost of health care, we will immediately take action to repeal this law. Then it goes into some detail about that. Then we know we had A Better Way, Speaker Ryan, our leadership, current leadership's Better Way. And this was from June 22 of 2016. The plan begins by laying out five principles. It begins by repealing ObamaCare. That is all of it as its first principle. And the last sentence of the paragraph says: ``We need a clean start in order to pursue the patient-centered reforms the American people deserve.'' That is exactly right, and I was glad that our leadership of our party put that in there because we needed a full repeal. But 2 years ago, it wasn't a complete repeal. More so than what is being done now, in what we are being told is the new bill. It was more repeal then. But even then we wanted to do a full repeal, but we were told because Joe Biden could come over from the White House, come down Pennsylvania Avenue and take the presiding officer's seat straight down the hall, that he would likely rule that other part was not in compliance with the Byrd rule. In essence, the Byrd rule basically means, if something is merely incidental in its effect on the budget instead of a direct effect on the budget, then it may not be considered under the procedure that was being used, and that procedure only requires 51 votes. So the thing that everybody knew back then is, if it were a Republican in the presiding officer's seat, of course, would say all of this, especially the part that was taken out, would survive the Byrd rule because it is not just an incidental effect on the budget. It is the most dramatic effect on the budget of most any bill that Congress has ever taken up--dramatic and not incidental, dramatic. And so now we are told: Look, everybody needs to get on board with this new bill that doesn't go as far as the one 2 years ago, and it leaves all these regulations and things, all that power. 1,400 times it says the Secretary will make the rules, regulations to implement the bill. But we are being told it is okay; you don't have to knock those out because now we have Secretary Price that can do that. Well, for one thing, if he could, then that would mean when the next Secretary of Health and Human Services comes along and it is a Democrat, you can put them all back. We hadn't done anything. We didn't accomplish anything. We just had a little breather. But we are also told the prices will likely continue up. There may be a 10 percent drop of the two to four times the healthcare costs, health insurance costs, at least, are increasing. But since we know it will be a Republican in the chair, then the Republican in the chair in the Senate will be free to do the right thing and say, honestly, truthfully, absolutely, the repeal of all this regulatory massive mess is dramatically going to affect the budget, not incidentally. So it survives the Byrd rule. It stays in. There are things that are in the new bill that probably won't survive that analysis that have been added. Why don't we do what we promised for 7 long years, repeal all of ObamaCare? But we are told there is a second bucket, a second stage, where Secretary Tom Price--in whom I have got great faith because he knows health care, he knows healthcare law--can change those regulations. Well, we also know that this is going to be taken to court very quickly. And even I, as the conservative appellate chief justice that I was at one time, would probably look at that and say wait a minute. The law gives you the power to create regulations to implement the bill; it doesn't give you the power to make regulations that will destroy the bill. So it won't have to be a liberal judge that can knock down regulations. I remember my late friend Justice Scalia not talking about a particular case, but talking about the issue of when Congress doesn't do something and has a lawsuit to do it instead, Justice Scalia said: If you guys in Congress don't have the guts to stop something you have the power to stop, don't come running over to the Supreme Court to demand we do it. You do your job. That is not our job. And this is the case with ObamaCare. It needs to be repealed--as Mitch McConnell said, root and branch. And it survives the Byrd Rule, and then we really help America. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is the end of another week in session. Mr. Speaker, I want to revisit an important issue. It seems that what some of us were trying to point out for 8 years under the Obama administration fell on deaf ears, that there really are radical Islamists who want to destroy our way of life in the United States, who look at us as infidels, and not just Christians, Jews, secularists, and others, but even Muslims who do not adapt and accept the radical Islamic ways. That works to the advantage of some because we have seen for 8 years CAIR, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups, groups that were listed as co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial back in 2008, where the named defendants were convicted of many counts, and they were supporting terrorism. They have ties all over the United States and they have ties to people who constantly had access to President Obama's White House, the State Department, and so many other areas. We saw time and time again the Obama administration looking the other way as serious matters arose involving radical Islamists, both in the United States and abroad. The Obama administration's approach was: If we can just teach these racist, bigoted, Americans to love all Islamists. Because they wouldn't point out that some are radicals, as my Muslim friends don't hesitate to point out. But this administration didn't want to point out that there are radical Islamists, that they are part of Islam, that many of them are experts in Islam, like Baghdadi, who heads up the Islamic State. He has a Ph.D. in Islamic studies, so it is kind of difficult to say that he has nothing to do with Islam when that is the basis for everything he said and did. If one goes and looks at the pleading that the judge declassified from 2008 of testimony given by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a court at Guantanamo Bay, he makes very clear that he is not insane, that he is very lucid. He files a very impressive document explaining himself. For everything that he said, for example, about the need to kill Christians and Jews, he had a direct quote, not from the Koran. Like where often Members of Congress, if you bring something up on the floor about Islam or the Koran, then it is amazing. It hasn't happened in a while, but Members who bring something like that up, they frequently find themselves being presented a Koran. Somebody drops off a Koran. But, as an expert in the field pointed out to me when I showed him the Koran that was dropped off at my House, he says, that is a Koran, it is not a Holy Koran; because what they have done is they have taken what they call the Holy Koran and they have eliminated the verses that support terrorism and the killing of Jews and Christians. So if you read from cover to cover this Koran, you don't see any of the verses that the most radical Islamists rely on for their killing, their beheading, their betraying, their lies. And it is okay, they believe, to lie if it ends up supporting the cause of their radical beliefs about Islam. One of the reasons that I contend with so many others here that Egypt ought to be one of our dearest friends is because they have an elected president. Yes, he was a former general, like Eisenhower, like George Washington, like Andrew Jackson, like so many who had been generals before they became President. They understand warfare. But the radical Islamists in the United States, so many of them, Muslim Brotherhood-related groups, they pointed out time and again: Look, we know we are going to have to get to violence at some point. But for now, we are making so much progress in taking over the United States without using violence that right now violence distracts from what we are trying to do. Some of us continue to point out that what the Obama administration constantly used as their fight against, not radical Islam--they couldn't say that like President Trump does--but they would say against violent extremism: We have got to spend millions and millions, and hundreds of millions of dollars fighting violent extremism. They believed what the often Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated individuals would say: Yes, if we spend that money teaching people to love and accept Islam, then the problem goes away and there is no more violence. Which is, in and of itself, a complete lie. So the Obama administration has been spending money on things. I am told by someone who was looking at the ways that the Obama administration spent hard-earned taxpayer dollars paid to the government, and then the Obama administration would turn around and spend it. I am told by someone in Homeland Security--I haven't seen it--but they even had a project spending taxpayer dollars to fight radical Islam by teaching schoolchildren pro-Islamic songs to sing. It is one of the reasons I am so glad we have had a change of President. I know that there are so many people across the aisle, not necessarily people here in this body, but across the country, who keep saying: Oh, there is so much prejudice against Muslims, and that is the whole problem. If we can eliminate the prejudice against Islam, against Muslims, there will be no more violence. There are those that are in this body here who have gone so far to show how open-minded they are and how much they embrace the ideals of Islam, and are in no way bigoted, that they have exposed this body to criminals, to hacking; and who knows just how far the security breaches go. Mr. Speaker, we brought this up, but it is important to take note that this body--there were no Republicans that hired them, but Imran Awan seemed to be the ring leader, Abid Awan, Jamal Awan, Hina Alvi, Natalia Sova, each making $160,000-plus from the House of Representatives. The Awan brothers are of Pakistani descent. I am told the leader is now back in Pakistan while they are being investigated, but their immigration status appears unclear right now. They had been hired as IT specialists, computer specialists, to help some of my Democratic friends with their computer systems. And as suspicious activity continued to mount over the last 12 years, it was dismissed. And I am reading from an article that Luke Rosiak, March 8, from The Daily Caller wrote. I'm reading from an article that Luke Rosiak, March 8, of the Daily Caller wrote: It was dismissed because these five individuals were being unfairly picked on because they are Muslim. Well, some of us don't care what their religious beliefs are unless their religious beliefs happen to cause them to believe that our Constitution needed to be eliminated and replaced by nothing but sharia law, and our elected leaders needed to be replaced by what they believe is a holy appointment of a caliph or an imam. This article from March 8 says that congressional staffers suspected of improperly accessing sensitive data allegedly controlled their stepmother with violent threats in a plan to use her to access assets stored in the Middle East in their father's name. So just when we thought this whole matter could not get any more bizarre, these five, according to one of their employers here in this House, he says--and I have no reason to doubt him--that they are Muslim. But I know my friends. They don't want to ever be perceived as being bigoted because they are not. But they have gone so far overboard in trying to show how open-minded they are, they have exposed this body to security breaches that are really unbelievable. I understand from my friend, Devin Nunes, that these individuals were not, best they can tell, ever given access to the classified material in the separate classified system that the intel community has. Talking about running the Democratic House Members' computer networks, this article says: ``Days before U.S. Capitol Police told House Members three Pakistani brothers who ran their computer networks may have stolen congressional data, their stepmother called Fairfax County, Virginia, police to say the Democratic staffers were keeping her from her husband's deathbed.'' A relative described her situation as being kept in captivity by the brothers for months while they schemed to take their father's life insurance. The brothers, as IT professionals--computer experts--for Congress, could read House Members' emails and also had full access to their calendars: who they were meeting with and where they were meeting. Anyway, the article says they ``allegedly used wiretapping devices on their own stepmother and threatened to abduct loved ones in Pakistan if she didn't give them access to money stowed away in that country. ``On February 2, House officials banned Imran, Abid, and Jamal Awan from the House of Representatives network as part of a Capitol Police criminal investigation into House computer security.'' But longtime employers, including--and it has been in the news--our friend, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and others are named have stood by these suspected criminals. But they did say they had access to their data. They say we have `` `seen no evidence that they were doing anything that was nefarious' like steal or hack, and were being unfairly picked on for being Muslim. ``But a Fairfax police report obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group says that separately from that investigation, on Thursday, on January 5 at 2 p.m., `Samani Galani called police after her stepchildren were denying her access to her husband of 8 years, Muhammad Shah, who is currently hospitalized,' and police responded to the Springfield home she shared with him. `` `I made contact with her stepson, Abid, who responded to location and was obviously upset with the situation. He stated he has full power of attorney over his father and produced an unsigned, undated document as proof,' officers wrote.'' Then the officer said: ``He refused to disclose his father's location.'' So he didn't even have a signed power of attorney yet continued to assert--and, again, this is someone who is given access to the privileged computer material of people here on Capitol Hill. I am told by other IT professionals that do work here that, if you know what you are doing and you have access to even one Congress Member's computer, which means their calendar, their emails, and notes taken and stored on the computer about meetings, then it is very easy--you are good--to access virtually anybody else's information here in Congress. I was told some time back by one of my friends in Intelligence that at one time there was concern about positions I had taken like in support of Egypt against the Muslim Brotherhood and that there were those who were monitoring people that came to my office. I was told that they know everybody that walks into your office. So when you see these kinds of reports, Mr. Speaker, it is a little disconcerting. It is disconcerting that people are not more concerned here in this body about the potential for the kind of breach that is being stated here. Anyway the article goes on: ``The father died days later, with his children denying him a final moment with his loved one, and the body was taken to Pakistan, where there were significant assets in their father's name. Galani was shocked to learn that his death certificate''--that of her husband--``listed him as divorced, according to a relative of Galani's. The relative spoke only on condition of anonymity. `` `They kept their stepmother in sort of illegal captivity from October 16, 2016, to February 2,' the relative said, telling her they were in charge of her life and said she was not allowed to speak to anyone. The fact that she did not speak English made it easy for them to take advantage of her. ``As Shah laid hospitalized, `they would not let the father communicate with the wife, they would say he'd be meeting her when they said so.' ``The brothers bugged her house with hidden listening devices and told her `her movements were under constant surveillance and conversations within the house and over the telephone were being listened to. They would repeat what she had told people to prove that they were really listening.' ```This happened in the United States of America, can you believe it?' the relative asked. ``Galani obtained a secret cellphone and stood in the yard to communicate with relatives, who encouraged her to call the police. . . . ``After she did, Abid `threatened her very severely, made her fearful, they told her they are going to abduct or kidnap her family back in Pakistan, and she had to apologize.' '' Imran is the individual who had done computer work here for so many of our Democratic friends here in the House. ``Imran then tried `to manipulate her. She said to him, ``if you say you are my son, then why are you keeping my phone conversations listened to?'' So he said he would remove the devices. He came into the house and she saw him remove a couple,' including under the kitchen counter.'' So it is interesting. We have these guys who Members of Congress said: They don't need a background check. We can trust them. We are open-minded. They are Muslims, but we are not prejudiced. We don't even require a background check because we know we can trust them. Mr. Speaker, we don't know what they did here in the House, but in their stepmother's house they planted listening devices. Apparently, they knew where to get them, and they knew how to use them in the home. It still leads one to wonder: What all did they do during the 12 years they were working on computer systems here on Capitol Hill? Still, we know the allegations have been talked about at length in the media about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, but I keep asking: Are these the guys that set up the Democratic National Committee's computers, guys that are good at planting listening devices and who are good at setting up cameras to monitor movement and what is going on? Did these guys help the Democratic National Committee set up their system without any background checks? Are these the guys that made it so vulnerable to being hacked by Russians or most anyone else who cared to try? ``Galani learned from a life insurance executive that `a few days before the father's death, the beneficiary was changed and Abid became the beneficiary,' the relative said. On top of that, the Springfield house where she lived would go to Abid. ``Galani fled from the brothers and has filed a second police complaint with Fairfax County over insurance fraud and other abuses. ``Abid did not return a request for comment from'' the Daily Caller. It also pointed out that, after Mr. Shah passed away, these people that were doing computer work for Members of Congress without background checks came into her house. She said that whatever documents were there they stole, along with a couple of laptops that were their father's property, and they left for Pakistan. Now, I heard somebody that should have known that the ringleader here that headed up the computer company that serviced so many of the--well, this article talks about a handful of Democrats, but I have been hearing that at one time, over the years, over the last 12 years, they may have serviced as many as 80 different Democratic Members of Congress' computers. But the relatives are coming forward now, according to the article, because Members of Congress have attempted to downplay the brothers' potential crimes and have limited the investigation to just the Capitol Police, who lack the ability to investigate cyber breaches and international crimes, and despite naming the brothers as suspects, have not even arrested them. This is, apparently, a Muslim woman who says that she is fighting to protect the country--talking about the United States--these are very bad people. This kind of reminds one of the father who came forward to point out that his son had become radicalized and was a terrorist threat because, under the Obama administration, they purged the training documents so FBI agents, State Department officials, and intelligence officials would not know what to look for to spot radical Islamists. We know most Muslims are not terrorists. They are not radicalized. Most are loving people and want to live in peace. That includes friends of mine who have lived all their lives in Afghanistan and were glad to fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan because they didn't want radical Islam. They are Muslim. They didn't want radical Islamists running the country. Radical Islamists hate moderate Muslims as much as they do Christians and Jews. So, this lady says she is trying to protect our country because Members are not realizing how exposed Congress has been. As she says-- she is the stepmother: These are very bad people. Politico reported that Imran and his wife, Hina Alvi, are personal friends with the former DNC chair, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, when she was subject to an email hack that was blamed on the Russians. This article is dated March 8. Apparently, Imran still hasn't been fired, even though he was banned from the House network, but that has been circumvented by having him serving as an adviser. Well, Imran began working for her in 2005, the article says, and soon after, his two brothers and two of their wives all appeared on the congressional payroll, collecting more than $4 million. That is over this period of time, of course. The brothers had numerous additional sources of income, all of which seemed to disappear. While they were supposedly working for the House, the brothers were running a car dealership full time that didn't pay its vendors. After one Rao Abbas threatened to sue them, he began receiving a paycheck from another Democratic member of the House of Representatives, also from Florida. While they were working for House Members--and it should be pointed out, not any Republican Members--they were working for House Members, including members of the Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs Committees--the dealership took and never repaid a $100,000 loan from Dr. Ali Al-Attar, who is a fugitive from U.S. authorities and is linked to Hezbollah. This is perfectly consistent with what was going on for 8 years under President Obama. You had Imam Majid, who had been president of an organization that was listed as a coconspirator. So, whatever happened to all of those coconspirators named by the U.S. Department of Justice? Well, I understood from a former member of DOJ under the Bush administration that they took this first case, and if they were successful in getting convictions, then they would turn around and go after the other coconspirators. But the interesting thing that happened immediately after that conviction in late 2008, we had a new President, and Eric Holder became Attorney General. Eric Holder had no interest in prosecuting the named coconspirators of those convicted of supporting terrorism. So, we spent 8 years with the Obama administration listening to people who identified not just being part of, but leading coconspirator groups and supporting terrorism. Of course, he was an American citizen by birth. His parents were both from Yemen. They came here on visas. He was born. They went back and trained him to hate America, as I first pointed out, had been occurring 7 years ago, after a friend in an international setting advised me that this person knew of radical Islamic leaders who sent their wives to the United States to have babies so they can bring them back, teach them to hate America, and they would be American citizens. They could come in and out at will. I know CNN refused to do a proper investigation. They like name calling better than doing proper investigations. Our Nation is threatened by people that hate us. Different countries had what many referred to as birth right travel programs. China was bragging that they had the best birth right travel programs. You pay money to this travel group, they would get you a visa to come to the United States. Of course, you would want to come during the third trimester of pregnancy so you can have a child in the United States. Then, some of them would advise: We will even help you make sure your child has an American passport before he or she leaves the U.S. so that your child can never be denied entrance, whether it is for college, for work, for whatever, they can come in and out as they pleased. That is how a man named Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, helped the Clinton administration, helped the Bush administration. I had someone who was working at one time for the administration advise me that the Obama administration was really upset because they thought Anwar al-Awlaki was helping them as kind of a double or maybe triple agent. When they found out that he was not actually helping the United States, he was still helping radicalize individuals, was behind some of the radicalization of people that went on to kill Americans in the United States. With all of those ties, in fact, there are photographs of him leading right here in this building in which I stand, Mr. Speaker, Friday prayers with Muslim staffers here on Capitol Hill; leading those prayers. President Obama thinks that with all his ties to people in his administration, to people on Capitol Hill, this guy, an American citizen, free to come in and go as he wishes, was so dangerous, we could not possibly allow him to come back and have a trial where he could testify about all his connections to people in the Obama administration, or Bush or Clinton administration. This guy is so dangerous, we better blow him up in Yemen; silence him forever. We don't want to give this guy a trial. Silence him forever--the first American citizen to be ordered killed by a President without a trial, with a drone strike. That was Anwar Al-Awlaki. There are so many others. A Muslim brother, the former President of Egypt who was ordered removed by the largest gathering of peaceable demonstrators in the history of the world, these were incredible Egyptian people--Muslims, Christians, Jews, secularists--all joined together to demand the removal of this corrupt, evil Morsi. Even though we did have Senator McCain fly over there and demand the Egyptians release this Muslim brother and put him back in charge, he was on his way to becoming what Chavez was to Venezuela, he was about to be to Egypt. So it wasn't just Democrats that were fooled. But thank God--I do thank God--that the Egyptian people would not have it. Morsi claimed to have had 13 million or so votes, but the Egyptians tell me, when I have been over there visiting with friends, that they knew there was a lot of fraud and that he probably did not get elected with a majority of the votes. But the Muslim Brotherhood made clear to his opponents and those who wanted him removed: If you try to remove Morsi, we will burn this country down. When Morsi was removed, the Muslim Brotherhood tried to do that. They burned many churches--dozens of them--attacked synagogues, and then they tried to blame this on the army and others in Egypt, but it was very clear it was the Muslim Brotherhood carrying out their threat that, if you remove the Muslim brother leader Morsi from Presidency before he took all control, all while he was taking his commands from an imam, a religious, holy, radicalized Islam. I am told they had him on video taking orders from such an imam. Well, he didn't get back into power, and they recognized the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group. My friend, Ted Cruz, has filed a bill with many cosponsors, as I understand, and we filed one here in the House, to recognize the Muslim Brotherhood as the terrorist organization that it is. I know that replacing ObamaCare as a system for taking care of people's health is a priority for so many of us, but we have got to multitask and not lose sight of the fact that we are still under the threat of radical Islam. They still want to kill us. They still want to eliminate our way of life here in the United States. So, while we are, hopefully, about to create a better healthcare system in the United States, we have got to make sure the United States is protected. And for those who are so open-minded that they want to make sure that no Muslim ever suspects them of being prejudiced, they would allow people to get into our computer system constantly, without a background check, we are being put at risk. We were put at risk when the Obama administration listened to CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the group you hear from immediately after there is a terrorist attack, basically challenging people: How dare you say this was a Muslim. Well, it was a radical Islamic. Oh, so you are an Islamophobe. I kept hearing from people inside homeland security that we were spending more time and effort training our officers to spot Islamophobes than we were training them to understand radical Islam. But that is exactly why Tsarnaev was never stopped, was never picked up and prevented from killing and maiming people in Boston. The FBI agents, doing the best that they could, being deprived of Kim Jensen's 700-plus pages of radical Islam that the Obama administration did not want FBI trainees to see and to know. They finally brought it back toward the end, but most FBI trainees never got any training on what radical Islam looks like. They never knew what questions to ask. They never knew what questions to ask at a mosque. And yes, if somebody is suspected of being a radical Islamist, you should go to the mosque and talk to their friends, find out how they were acting, find out what their new religious practices were. There are people that understood and have studied radical Islam. They knew. Kim Jensen knew. So I am very hopeful that people like Kim Jensen will be given free rein to once again fully train our Justice Department officials, people like Phil Haney. I am hopeful and prayerful that Phil, after he had so much information that was deleted under Secretary Napolitano establishing ties to terrorism--they wanted them deleted because many of them had ties with the White House and it would make the White House look bad. But when Secretary Napolitano talked about, Yeah, we get pinged and then we connect the dots, well, she oversaw the elimination of dots, she oversaw the elimination of the ability to ping, as she said, and she exposed our country to dangers that were completely unnecessary if proper training had been given to our people in the Justice Department, in our Homeland Security Department, in our intelligence agencies and groups. It really is clear from what has been going on. I have only been here under two Presidents--President George W. Bush, President Obama--and now the third, President Trump. But under the first two administrations that I served with, we were told repeatedly that use of the section 215 program or the 702 program that allows wiretapping of foreign agents, we were assured that if an American citizen were picked up, nobody knows the name, it is immediately masked, the conversation is minimized, so you don't have access to that. We were told a lot of things that turned out to be lies. And it does appear that Snowden was guilty of treason from what we have seen. He should be tried and, if convicted, punished severely. But I sure learned a lot from what got released. I learned that we were lied to during the Obama years about what was or wasn't being done in surveilling American citizens, and at least the last part of the Bush administration. It could be the Presidents didn't know. But somebody knew. If we do not, in this body, give President Trump the ability to do what he became famous for--and that is say ``You're fired''--then this country is not going to get back on a sound basis. There will continue to be people who will monitor others illegally, improperly, unconstitutionally, and use that information to get rid of leaders who don't play ball with them. That is dangerous. We hear of foreign intelligence people who are corrupt spy on their own people, and they are impressed with what was going on under the Obama administration and feel like that was a dream come true for anyone in intelligence, to be able to monitor the people of a country, like has been going on. I mean, it has got to be cleaned up or we lose our freedoms. Once you have the ability to reach in to people's private lives, that completely--you don't even have to have a case. You can destroy their lives. A good example was Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. Somebody should have gone to prison for what happened to that man. As a former prosecutor, judge, and chief justice--I prosecuted people as a prosecutor, I sentenced people who were convicted when I was a judge, I ruled on convictions when I was a Chief Justice--I had to make sure due process was followed and the people got a fair trial, evidence was not obtained illegally. But in Ted Stevens' case, I know when I read that he had had this addition--I can't remember now; I am going strictly off recollection, but like 700,000 or so improvements to his home, and I thought, oh, come on, you have got to know, Senator, you can't have that kind of improvement free to your home. You can't do that. But they came in with search warrants, took all of his documentation. They got all of his bank records, they got all of his computers, his flash drives, anything that had memory on it. They took all of his documentation. The man could not defend himself. He had, as it turns out, proof that he overpaid, maybe by half a million dollars, and that the prosecutor had material--a note, as I recall--from the contractor saying something like: Look, you are overpaying me. Senator Stevens said: Yeah, I have got to overpay you because they will look closely at everything I do. I guess I am overpaying you, but I want the addition, and I have got to do this so I never get in trouble. Don't even cause the least suspicion. I have got to overpay you, so just take the overpayment. He didn't have those documents, and he was not allowed to testify about documents that were not producible. He couldn't produce them because the prosecutors or the FBI, somebody kept those and refused to turn them over, which is a violation of the law, and it is a crime to unfairly prosecute somebody when you know they have evidence to prove they are innocent. You don't even give it back to him so he can use it and show the truth? Thank God there was a whistleblower who finally exposed--if I recall correctly, I believe it was an FBI agent. The judge hit the roof, of course. Any judge. I would have. You deceived us? You caused this prosecution, had the trial right before the election so he would lose? You changed the election? You talk about the Russians, for heaven's sake. That was an intentional invasion, and it wasn't by Russians. It was by Americans. They ran that Republican Senator out of his office, basically destroyed his life. If he had been in the Senate, he wouldn't have been in that airplane when it went down. But that is what a corrupt government can do. They can come after anybody. We have got to clean out the Federal Government of people who have become dizzy with their power. I always thought it interesting, one of the most powerful dictators in history responsible for killing, starving millions of people, Stalin, one of his quotes was: With power, dizziness. We have got a lot of dizzy people working in the Federal Government. Thank God that there are not more of those than there are people who love America, who really do keep their oath to the Constitution. But it has become very dangerous, and we have got to get to the bottom of this. I have had people say: Louie, aren't you worried? I mean, you are talking about people who can destroy a Senator, can destroy all kinds of people. Aren't you worried they will come after you, try to destroy you the same way? I am more concerned about my country. We have got to salvage this country's freedoms from the brink that it came to under the Obama administration Then we have a report, March 6, Paul Bedard, Washington Examiner: 300 Refugees Probed As Terrorists. ``In a bid to bolster President Trump's new executive order suspending travelers from six nations into the U.S., federal law enforcement officials revealed that they are investigating 300 refugees for terrorist ties. ``While U.S. officials would not provide details on the FBI investigations, they did say that they are refugees `who either infiltrated with hostile intent or radicalized' since coming into the United States.'' So these investigations are ongoing. I heard yet again this week a number of times, some of my friends across the aisle would say: Look, these refugees are not a problem. They are vetted for 2 years. We don't have to worry about them. Yes, we do. We have already seen people who came in as refugees, people who were granted asylum. A couple of them, I believe it was Tennessee or Kentucky where they got asylum. They had not bothered to check or notice that their fingerprints were on IEDs that were set up to kill Americans. So this 2-year vetting, oh, no, no, it is a long, tedious process to make sure they are okay. Well, I found out this week from an official with Homeland Security who said he wanted to know just how thorough the 2-year investigation and vetting was by the U.N. because he knew Homeland Security didn't do 2 years of vetting on these refugees. And, of course, the judges--who don't know ``sic `em'' from ``come here''-- out in the 9th Circuit think they have the right under the Constitution to be dictators, and for them, without proper knowledge of what is and isn't a threat to this country, to just dismiss orders that the President had the authority to make and just say, oh, they are unconstitutional, even though from their own statements they proved their own ignorance. So we have got refugees coming in. Thank God somebody at the Homeland Security Department wanted to get to the bottom of exactly what occurs during the 2 years that the United Nations refugee program does in vetting people. So he went straight to the person in charge of the refugee program at that time. He said: I would like to get a description of the processes of vetting that refugees go through from these countries they allege they are coming from. What all does the U.N. do to vet these refugees? And the answer came back: Well, actually, we don't do any vetting of the refugees. It is a long 2-year process most of the time, as we are trying to convince countries to take these people. We are not spending any of that time looking into their background. The 2 years is what it usually takes to get a country to accept them, figure out where they are going to go. No, somebody else must do that. We don't worry about that. We are just trying to find a place for them. Mr. Speaker, the next time you hear somebody say, Oh, no, this is a very thorough 2-year process of vetting these refugees of making sure they are not a threat, then I hope it will come to your mind that a representative of the U.N. talking to one of our top Homeland Security people--and I am not going to give his name, but he was told: We don't do any vetting. We are just trying to find a place to put them. When we find somebody who will take them, we feel like we have done a great thing. Well, maybe, if they are not terrorists. But we have seen the data that indicates that for the amount of money it costs to bring a refugee from the Middle East to the United States and take care of them for a year, what happens to the money actually spent, you could take care of 12 refugees if they were kept in the area and provided a safe area. That is what the Obama administration should have done. Instead of drawing red lines that it couldn't find after it drew them, the Obama administration should have said: We are going to participate in creating a safe area, provide flyover and provide people there. We are going to provide a safe area for refugees to come to until the war is over and people can return to their homes. Rather than create a system that will allow our enemies, the Islamic State and others, to do as they promised us they have been doing and will continue to do, and that is putting their terrorists in amongst the refugees, instead of doing that, putting our country at risk, let's let them stay near to their home, provide them safety, help provide them with what they need. Because when the greatest country, strongest country, most charitable country in the history of the world becomes so self-righteous that they feel like they don't need to do vetting, when they become so taken with appearing to be open-minded that they don't even protect themselves by doing what used to be called due diligence and checking on people to make sure they are not a threat to others around them, instead of doing that, we show irresponsibility when it comes to protecting America as when you are at risk of losing the country. But Americans, by a huge majority of electors, electoral college, elected President Trump. They wanted a change. When you look at a map that shows all of the counties that voted for President Trump and those that voted for Hillary Clinton, you see that our friends across the aisle, part of a party that has really become a fringe party, has the fringes of the country. But the massive interior--most, except for some big cities here and there--is people that want to preserve and protect the most blessed place to raise a family that there has ever been. I am sure Solomon's Israel was apparently an amazing place, but the people didn't have our freedoms. But we are in danger of losing them when we become so cocky that we think we don't have to check on people to make sure they are not a threat. That actually is a form of bias. They are so afraid that people might say that you are closed-minded that they don't even do a background check, but they would for someone who is not Muslim, then that is a form of bias. We have got to use commonsense, we have got to protect America, or we will be cursed when we are gone and our children see what we have done. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I was handed a letter by a lady when I was at one of the many events that I attended in my district. It is how I stay in touch with what is going on. This lady says: ``U.S. Congressman Louie Gohmert: I am a 52-year-old widow. ObamaCare is a major financial problem for me. Someone needs to fix the healthcare system. One-third of the money I get from my deceased husband's retirement fund is given to health care. My deductible alone is $7,000.'' She has an exclamation point. ``I am angry with the government deciding how I should spend what little money I have. I had to get a part-time job just to put gas in my car. So I clean tables and I mop floors. I am physically unable to work full time. I am frustrated with the fact I had to move back in with my parents just to make ends meet. Would you like that? Fulfilling. Could or would you do something to relieve this burden?'' That is from a 52-year-old widow in my district. That is what we have done with the burden, ObamaCare. We here in Congress decided: You know what? We are going to tell people like this widow how she has to spend what little money she has left. We are going to force this woman to go clean tables and mop floors when she is physically unable to work full time because we here in Washington have decided we know better than she does. So we have every right in Congress to force people like this dear widow to get on her hands and knees to work for the United States Congress. Pay your taxes and now, that is not enough. We are going to tell you that you are being forced to spend your money on health care that will never help you a dime because you have a $7,000 deductible. Or how about hearing, 2 weeks ago, from a friend, one of those who was cut because of financial troubles. They had 100 employees. They can't afford the ObamaCare, so they have cut their 100 to 70, and they are continuing to work to get down to 49. Why? Because of ObamaCare. So we have already had 30 breadwinners, men and women, lose their jobs because of one thing: ObamaCare. And now there are going to be 21 more who lose their jobs because of one thing: ObamaCare. They have got to get it under 50 so they don't have to keep paying such ridiculous prices for health insurance that has such high deductibles nobody will ever benefit. Who is benefiting? Well, it can't be all of the health insurance companies because they have dropped out. They can't make money. So it has to be the government that is making all the money from this ObamaCare program. A single mom told me she had been working at McDonald's making ends meet, but because of ObamaCare, they cut her hours back. Now she has to work at both McDonald's and Burger King, and she was in tears because it is just too much. And why is she having to do it? Because people right here in this House and the other body, without one Republican vote in this body, told America: Too bad. You are not working enough at McDonald's. We want to make your life miserable. We are going to make you work at two places part time just like this widow that we condemned to start scrubbing tables and floors because the Democrats in this body, without a single Republican vote, decided we know better what you need to do with your time and your money than you do. So it is a problem of arrogance when Washington thinks it knows so much better than people across the country. And yes, I know, I represent the 26 percent that didn't vote for me. I understand that. And I have heard from them, and I don't need a townhall to know they are for keeping this albatross of a healthcare system. The ACA is not affordable, though. It is ridiculous to call it affordable care. One of the problems is, when you have to take precious healthcare dollars that used to go to providing care in a hospital, in a clinic, for a patient, now it goes to government navigators. Why? Because there were union officials that decided: We have lost too many union members. The unions that are growing are the government unions, the very ones that Franklin Roosevelt said you should never have a union composed of government workers. Think about it. You are working for the people of the United States of America. Why would you need a union to organize against the people? Sounds un-American. But those are the ones that are growing. And union leaders, without concern for their members, decided: Let's embrace as many aliens as we can get into the country, legally or otherwise, because they will join the union and that will grow our ranks; and we as union leaders will be better off, but our members' wages will continue to go down, our members will continue to lose jobs. But, gee, we may have more people in our union. We know that there was supposed to be thousands of new IRS agents hired so that they could help enforce ObamaCare. It is a travesty. The bill that has been filed is not going to do it, but, hopefully, our Republican leadership will be willing to work things out and not prevent good amendments that will make it palatable so enough of us can vote for it. I have gotten to know President Trump a bit, and I feel like he wants the best deal he can get for America. If this bill were the best he could get, he would probably have to live with that, but we can do a whole lot better. Some of us are determined we are not going to vote for one that doesn't. In the meantime, there is so much talk by President Obama and all of his minions that are still out there trying to undermine the Trump administration. We have a crisis here in Congress that people are not talking about. I keep bringing it up. Doesn't seem to be a lot of folks who want to talk about it. There was a time when we had mainstream media that actually did research, asked questions, dug to the bottom of things. But there are IT--information technology, mainly working with computers--employees, shared employees for several Democrats that are under investigation. Imran Awan was the company owner. Abid Awan, Jamal Awan, Hina Alvi--the wife of Imran Awan--and Natalia Sova, wife of Abid Awan, each made $160,000 a year as IT-shared employees working on computers for various Democrats in the House of Representatives. The Awan brothers are of Pakistani descent, but their immigration status is unclear. There are a lot of things that are unknown about the Awan brothers. But they worked for our former DNC chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz--that is Imran Awan. These people are under investigation for stealing material, potentially accessing material they shouldn't have, for taking material off of Capitol Hill and stealing it, using it in other places. We are told, oh, not to worry, they didn't access classified intelligence information in the SCIF; but other IT people tell me, once someone is in the congressional system, the calendar, email for one Member of Congress, if they are good, it is not that hard to break into lots of other Members of Congress' email and calendars. What country that hates America--some that like America--wouldn't love to know who people are meeting, especially on the Intelligence Committee like some of the people that have employed these? Some of them, very fine members of things like the Ethics Committee, Judiciary, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence Committee. Let's see, Andre Carson, Sandy Levin, Jackie Speier--a lot of people, good people--Tim Ryan. A lot of these folks, they employed these folks. They were very trusting, kind people. And these people didn't have a background check, and now they are under investigation. I heard some have been told that Imran Awan, the lead guy, went back to Pakistan. Well, if this guy set up and was working on computer systems, is it possible he could have--and this is what a normal mainstream reporter, 30, 40 years ago back in the seventies would have asked: Well, did he set up the DNC computer system that got hacked, that was supposedly hacked by Russians or others, did he set that up so it could be hacked? I mean, there is a lot here going on that we don't know the answers to, and we deserve to know the answers. There were mortgage transfers, debt evading bankruptcies. Imran Awan, Jamal Awan were known to be the ringleaders of the group, had been providing services since 2005; has convictions for driving offenses which were serious enough to become criminal misdemeanors, used an illegal radar detector, drove an unregistered vehicle; some say, after masterminding the family's finances, was running the business completely by 2010 and instructed Abid not to even speak to anyone. The wives of Imran and Abid also began receiving paychecks from the House of Representatives. They purchased two homes in Lorton in 2008, one of which was associated with all three brothers at one time. Alvi sold that home in 2016 to the younger brother Jamal for $620,000. Imran owned a home and put it in his father's name in 2008 in Springfield. Abid later claimed, in bankruptcy, that the house was his. Jamal Awan was placed on the House payroll at age 20, making $160,000. Imran is also a real estate agent. Despite making $160,000 in congressional salaries, debts went unpaid by the Awan brothers, including debts to the Congressional Federal Credit Union. $100,000 was taken from a known Hezbollah-connected fugitive, a fugitive from the FBI; and they are associated with this Hezbollah- connected agent, and there is no press out there getting to the bottom of it? What happened to the Washington press, the proud press of Washington of the 1970s? Well, they are in the bag for one party. They are not interested in getting to the bottom of the news. They are all about advocating. God not just bless America, God help America. We have got to have people wake up before we do much more damage to ourselves. It is time to turn this country around, and one of the things we should start with is getting to the bottom of this investigation; find out how much damage these alleged criminals did from Pakistan to our Congress, and also start undoing the damage ObamaCare has done so people can get jobs again they have lost, so people can have health care that has deductibles they can afford. It is time to make America great again. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, something that has not gotten nearly enough attention in the media concerns security. We know that there were people working--Imran Awan, Abid Awan, Jamal Awan, Hina Alvi, Natalia Sova--and I have heard that one of these has fled back to Pakistan since being investigated. They worked on Democratic computer systems. And although we have been told, ``Well, they couldn't get into the SCIF and get into the classified section,'' they had access to congressional computers. I am told that if you can get access to one Congress Member's Outlook program, you can easily hack into many others. This has got to be investigated. It appears to be a major crime and a major breach of trust in the House. I hope my friends across the aisle that use these people will step forward and help us plug the hole.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we are back in session. We were out of session last week. It was great to get all over east Texas. It is just good to be an east Texan and from around east Texas. I had occasion to talk to a whole bunch of folks from part of my district, even tonight. As I think about the headlines, I think about this group called Indivisible demanding townhalls, and I keep coming back to last Monday at Jack Ryan's restaurant in downtown Tyler. Tyler Young Professionals had asked me to speak there. I knew the gentleman that had white hair and looked distinguished was probably not one of the Tyler Young Professionals but probably one of the Indivisible people, the Democrats that--yes, some of them say they are nonpartisan, but so much for that. But I knew when I called on him to ask the first question, he probably wasn't one of the Tyler Young Professionals. I offered to him, I said: Look, I give you my word. You come, bring somebody with you. Let's sit down at a conference table and I will hear you out. I will give you a chance. No, he said. That is not what I want. I demand a townhall. So I keep coming back to that answer because that seems to make very, very clear this whole Indivisible movement. It is not about being heard. That can be best done, as the Founders realized when they put together the Constitution--a complete democracy is where you have mob rule, that a majority is always going to prevail; but they figured out that, far better than having a big mob rule so you don't end up with lynchings and crowds convincing themselves to do something dramatic that they would never, ever do individually--it would be too much of a violation of their conscience. But there is something about a group dynamic that people can get whipped up into a frenzy as a group that doesn't happen when you sit down one-on-one with them. So this has never been about townhalls. It has never been about being heard. It has been about headlines, trying to intimidate some of us from keeping the promises that we made to our constituents before we got elected. I think God has a way of preparing us for what lies ahead. Had I not been a felony judge for a decade and been threatened by all kinds of felons, then I might have been at least somewhat intimidated. But it all seems rather interesting, this frenzy. Really good, decent people get in a group and get worked up into a frenzy. One of them did ask an interesting question there in east Texas on the east Texas Indivisible Facebook page: Well, what would be wrong with sitting down with him on an individual basis or something like that? That individual understood that, if all we want is to be heard, why wouldn't we just want to sit down and talk. What that individual didn't understand is Indivisible is not about being heard. It is exactly about what is in the Indivisible playbook, the Guide. The idea is to disrupt those who won with a majority of the vote in congressional seats and Senate seats, disrupt those who won with a majority and prevent them from keeping their promises. It reminded me somewhat of what happened back when George H.W. Bush was President. He had run saying, ``Read my lips: no new taxes.'' I wasn't in politics back when he was running and saying that, but I sure got involved in late 1991, I guess December, and in 1992. I guess that was back in the 1988 election. It cost him the 1992 election because he kept saying, ``Read my lips: no new taxes.'' Then he had to deal with the majority of Democrats in the House and Senate. They kept luring, trying to suck him in: Come on, if we are going to reach an agreement, you are going to have to give up on that pledge just a little bit, just a little bit. We are not going to reach it. You are going to have to give up just a little bit. You are going to have to allow just a little bit of a tax. After enough cajoling, they finally convinced George H.W. Bush that they were not going to allow the bill to go through unless he had at least a little bit of a tax increase. As soon as they lured him into that--kind of sounds like something that happened in the Garden of Eden. But as soon as they lured him into it and he agreed to a very small increase in taxes, then immediately the cries became: You are a liar. You broke your promise of no new taxes. He got lured into it. He thought they were acting in good faith, when all they were trying to do was get him to break his promise so they could call him a liar. They lured him into it. They trapped him into it. He should have told them, ``Read my lips: no new taxes.'' But being a benevolent man, he thought they were acting in good faith, as he was, and he found out differently. It cost him the 1992 election. So we have people demanding: Oh, yes, just give us the townhall. That is all we want. Just give us the townhall. They know and most of us, thank goodness, on my side of the aisle know, if we give the bullying mobs, what they are demanding when they are saying: We are going to harass you--as one man did--we are going to harass you at church, everywhere you go, until you finally give in, fine. No matter how big the mobs get, no matter how mean and frenzied they get, no matter how big of bullies they become, I know what I promised my constituents and I know what we have got to deliver. I am starting to hear from people on my side of the aisle: Well, maybe we shouldn't repeal. Maybe we shouldn't do what we did in 2015. Everything we did in 2015 was consistent with the rules that are in play right now. We ought to be able to do the same thing again. We should. We did it in 2015. We ought to be able to do it now--we just should--House Members and Senate Members. We had a majority both places then. We have got a majority now. We need to do it again. We don't have to have this huge government program as a replacement. That is the beauty of a free market. But in order to have a free market, you have got to have honesty and integrity in the system. That means nobody on my side of the aisle, nobody in the Senate on the Republican side of the aisle, and nobody in the White House should be intimidated no matter how frenzied the insurance lobby may become about what we can't do. Those same people embraced ObamaCare, which was about to destroy them. Some of them said: Well, you have got to understand we had to have a seat at the table. I tried to explain, you don't want a seat at the table when you are on the menu. But no, they dove in. Big Pharma and those folks dove right in. Now, I could understand AARP jumping in and endorsing ObamaCare even though it cut Medicare by $716 billion, even though it stabbed seniors in the back by dramatic cuts to Medicare. I could understand AARP endorsing ObamaCare. They were going to be able to sell more insurance than they had ever sold before. I had seen 1 year before--I think it was 2007 or 2008--they had over $4 million in profit, which is pretty good for a nonprofit, selling insurance or endorsing the policies that were sold. So, of course, then you get to the deal in ObamaCare that all these other policies are going to have an extra 2 percent tax on them, but not the kind of policies you sell. I can understand AARP getting behind ObamaCare, even though it did so much damage to the health care of seniors because they were going to make a lot of money. No telling how much money they have made since ObamaCare passed. I couldn't understand health insurance companies. I couldn't understand Big Pharma. I guess I could, because they were going to make tens of billions of dollars more in the short run than they had made in the past. That is why President Obama got them to offer to give billions of it back. You don't get billions given back unless you are going to make a lot more billions than you put back. I am sure they did, but that was short term. If ObamaCare continued into the future, it wouldn't be--probably within the next decade that you would see them heading toward their demise. But the big executives would be fine. They would have gotten their golden parachute and taken off with all the money that appeared to be rolling in at that point, even though the day of reckoning was going to come for them down the road. But we shouldn't be listening to people who sold out knowing they will make money short term, but it probably will destroy them long term. People who were guided by the mentality that embraced that bill should not be dictating what is in the replacement plan. And I say plan, because when you are going to use free market to have a better healthcare environment, you have got to have free market; and you can't have free market unless everybody knows how much things cost. I was seeing again tonight from constituents, people think they ought to know how much a medical visit costs. Whether it is Blue Cross, Aetna, Humana, Anthem, whether it is an HMO, whatever, they ought to know how much that costs, whoever is paying for it. Whether it is the government--whether it is the Federal Government, State government, whether it is an insurance company, people have a right to know what a medical visit, procedure, whatever it is--they have a right to know how much it costs. Only when we have truth in treatment are we going to be able to fix so many of the wrongs in health care. Then we can move toward a free market, where insurance will have a high deductible. This is the ultimate goal, I think, where you have a high deductible, but you will have every dime of that deductible in a health savings account either put in there by your employer or by you. In a proper program, it ought to be every dime of it put in there pretax, no tax on that money that you put in there. I still believe that every dime that is put in there should then be marked for health care only. If the person owning that health savings account passes away before it is spent for health care, it ought to keep that healthcare designation and roll over into the heirs' health savings account. And if there are not heirs or it's not in the will, it could go to a charity's health savings account, as I feel sure you would have every worthwhile charity set up a health savings account that could be used to have people donate from their own health savings accounts to help the poor, help those who are chronically ill. As a Christian, I believe God knew it blesses us, it helps us as individuals when we are charitable toward others. That does not mean when the government, with the threat of the IRS, some SWAT team behind them, or some threat to come take your home, all of your assets, says you will give so that we can give to who the government thinks should receive the charity--that is not charity. That is not charity at all. That is a much too powerful government. What we find is that the United States has been the most charitable country in the history of the world. We have got a lot of benevolent Americans. Of course, that doesn't include George Soros. He makes his money. It seems like one of the ways he makes money is if he can topple an economy, bring it down; and through all of the suffering that is brought about, he makes money. When we heard tape recordings made in the past year by people who were saying, ``Oh, yeah, we funded the violence at those Trump rallies,'' or ``We funded violence here, there or yon,'' or ``We funded efforts to help bring down this activity or that activity,'' then it sure seems like that is worthy of investigation, because what you have when you have people giving money to create violence at events, some people would call that basically a racketeer influenced and corrupt organization, RICO. It ought to be worthy of investigation. If people are giving money when they should know that money is going to be contributed to create chaos, get somebody hurt, then it sure seems like that is the kind of criminal conduct people have gone to prison for. I hope our new Justice Department will continue its trend toward getting out of litigation that they never should have been in in the first place and getting in where there is corruption. We know under the Attorney General Eric Holder that as long as the people who were carrying billy clubs and threatening voters outside of polling places were Democrats, then certainly they did not need to be investigated, nothing needed to be done to them because they are Democrats. Apparently under that old Department of Justice that was just about them, just us, then as long as it is one of us, we don't need to prosecute them. But, whoa, if it is a Republican, yeah, we need to go after them. But the great irony is there could be no greater dissolution of the right to vote when then loading the deck with people who have no right to vote, who vote and completely dissolve law-abiding people's right to vote, you just canceled out their right to vote with illegality. So it seems strange to some of us that you would have a Justice Department that would say: No, no, no, don't you dare purge those records of the dead people. You have got to leave those dead people in. Some of those dead people may want to vote. It is important to let dead people vote if they feel like voting. To have a Department of Justice that doesn't want counties to clean up their voter registration so that there can't be fraud, people that are dead, people that are living in other States or other voting districts don't come and also vote there. It just was incredible lawlessness to have a Department of Justice fighting against cleaning up voter registration rolls so that only people alive and living in that district could vote. Why would anybody do that? Why would anybody fight against cleaning up voter registration? The only reason I can think of conceivably would be they must still want people who are dead or don't live there to vote illegally. What else could there be? I mean, there are some people willing to have the Department of Justice: We are even okay if you supervise to make sure we don't throw out somebody who is alive. But this Justice Department under President Obama's administration, they didn't want voter registration rolls cleaned up. The lawlessness, thankfully, has come to an end. I know that there are people who have been stirring up fear in American hearts about Jeff Sessions, but Jeff Sessions is a good man. He is a good person. He will enforce the law fairly across the board, and I am grateful that we finally have a Justice Department that will be about justice. In the meantime, I saw this story today from Peter Hasson from The Daily Caller: ``Leaked audio from an anti-Trump protest group meeting reveals activists with anti-Trump group Indivisible plotting how to best manufacture a hostile environment at a town hall with Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. . . . ``The audio, obtained by local radio station KPEL, reveals a coordinated effort to create the public impression that Cassidy's support for Trump is unpopular with his constituents. The activists, who describe themselves as liberals in the audio, can be heard strategizing how to best turn a local town hall into a political victory. ``The activists split up into an `inside team'--tasked with occupying `as many seats as we can' and an `outside team,' whose job was to `give the media the coverage they want' before joining the others inside. Activists were instructed to dress like conservatives and leave at home `any signifier that you're a liberal' in order to blend in with constituents. ``The leftist activists strategized how best to `dominate' the question-and-answer section of the town hall and keep anyone `sympathetic' to Cassidy from asking a question. ``The audio also reveals the activists laughing about `the poor people of Breaux Bridge'--local constituents--who might get stuck behind them. Local news coverage of the town hall said that `many attendees were turned away' from the town hall due to `capacity restrictions.' ``'Game plan number one is to fill as many seats as we can, right? If it's all of us in there and the poor people of Breaux Bridge are sitting behind us, well then tough luck for them,' said one organizer, identified by KPEL as James Proctor. His `poor people' comment drew laughs from the other activists. `` `If we can arrange it so he doesn't hear one sympathetic question--great. That only magnifies our impact,' Proctor said. ``KPEL identified Proctor as the leader of Indivisible Acadiana, a local branch of the national Indivisible organization, which has organized hostile Republican town halls all around the country. `` `The Indivisible Guide does say that when you start to lose the meeting, that's when you boo and hiss,' one unidentified activist can be heard saying. `Right, I was going to say that,' another activist replied. Local news outlet The Advertiser reported that members of the crowd `frequently interrupted, expressing disagreement with some of Cassidy's positions and shouting out their own questions.' `` `The outside team will join the inside team in the hall after media coverage'. . . . `So what we'll do is we'll try to dominate enough, because--remember, the camera people especially are looking for some `b-roll' and some quotes.' `` `They've got three or four things to cover that day, this is just one of them'. . . . `So we make sure we give them the coverage they want, and then everyone breaks and goes inside.' '' That reminds me of an article that was written in Gregg County, the largest newspaper. Obviously they know what Indivisible is, and they were demanding a townhall belittling me. It just shows how partisan, how malicious. They showed their malice toward me repeatedly. Fortunately, for the people of east Texas, they don't count for a whole lot. Their opinion is so biased; it is what it is. They know that these people are doing just what is talked about here, what is talked about in the Indivisible handbook, and that is what they want. They want me out of office, and there is such a problem with envy, with emotions that I have just never had like that. They can't stand it. So, anyway, here is one, Todd Starnes from FOX News, today's article: ``A group of enraged protesters exploded in anger after a chaplain prayed in the name of Jesus at a town hall meeting in Louisiana hosted by U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy. ``The verbally-abusive crowd''--and it is talking about this same townhall that this tape came from, where they were plotting and planning to disrupt and to keep the people from Breaux Bridge from actually being able to participate in their own townhall. Anyway: ``Louisiana State chaplain Michael Sprague and the unidentified Vietnam War veteran should be commended for maintaining their composure in the face of verbal barbarism. ``The February 22, town hall meeting in Metairie, was quickly overrun by the angry mob--much like other town hall meetings hosted by Republican lawmakers across the country. ``The mainstream media would have us believe the unruly demonstrations are part of an organic, grassroots effort. ``But I sincerely doubt many in the mob were actually residents of Louisiana--because I know the good people of Louisiana and nobody behaves like that in the Bayou State. ``Folks are raised right in Cajun Country. There's no way anybody would embarrass their mommas by acting the fool in public. ``I'd be willing to bet a cup of Community Coffee that the Jesus- hating rabble-rousers were shipped in from some God-forsaken place like Berkeley or Brooklyn.'' Now, I don't agree on Brooklyn. Anyway: ``Chaplain Sprague had barely invoked the name of the Almighty when the heckling began. `` `Pray on your own time. This is our time,' someone shouted. `Amen. Let's get on with it.' ``Others chanted, `Separation of church and state' and so on and so forth. Someone filmed the prayer and words do not do justice to the amount of hate directed at the chaplain. `` `I've never been shouted down throughout a time of prayer like that,' Chaplain Sprague told me. `I've never been in a situation like that. It's sad there wasn't honor and respect for God.' ``But they became absolutely unhinged when he concluded his prayer in the name of Jesus. `` `Wow, they booed the name of Jesus,' Cassidy said in remarks reported by the Times-Picayune. ``I thought several of the agitators were going to spontaneously combust. ``The chaplain said the overwhelming majority of people in the room were causing a disruption--but he harbors no ill will toward the mob. `` `I'm not mad at people. My heart is bigger than that,' he said. `My heart's prayer is that everybody be treated with dignity and respect.' ``The chaplain was especially disappointed by how the mob insulted the Vietnam War veteran. `` `There was a lot of shouting. Some turned their backs. Many didn't stand or put their hand on their heart,' he said. ``Infuriating, but not surprising. ``As I wrote in `The Deplorables' Guide to Making America Great Again' liberals have a strong aversion to President Trump, Jesus and Old Glory. ``But I still have hope in America.'' And I share that. There is a lot to be grateful for, but one is not this article from CBN News in Jerusalem, Israel: ``A Palestinian Arab terrorist convicted of murdering two Israeli university students is one of the leaders of the feminist protest movement against U.S. President Donald Trump. ``Rasmeah Yousef Odeh, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is helping to organize a `Day without a Woman' on March 8, Arutz Sheva quotes reports in The New York Post and The Guardian.'' In 1969, Odeh was sentenced to life in prison for planting explosives that kill people and is now out leading organized resistance to the President of the United States and to law and order. It is tragic. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, in our Judiciary Committee today, we have been marking up what should have been a couple of rather simple bills, but it is really as if the instructions on the Soros-funded website, manual, things telling people how to obstruct the current majorities in the House and Senate and administration, could possibly be carrying over here into the Capitol itself because there are so many amendments being offered and things being drug out and people saying the same thing over and over. It is about Russia and corruption and one thing and the other--on and on and on. It is just interesting when people are talking about their dramatic concerns over Russia, who, for years, have been totally silent. When everybody I know of on the Republican side here had been asking that President Obama and his administration do something about the terrible hacking problem from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, he didn't seem terribly bothered. I mean, it was as if he were afraid he might hurt Putin's feelings or Khamenei's feelings in Iran and maybe they would want to kill Americans in a more brutal way, the Iran terrorists being paid. I can't help but think that there will be people in the next 4 years who are Americans, who are Muslim, Jews, Christians--especially those groups--who would be killed because of the billions and billions of dollars that this administration forced into the hands of the largest supporter of terrorism in the world: Iran. It was as if the world--and in particular, the United States--had not been punished enough for the mistakes of the Carter administration in thinking that by pushing the Shah of Iran--not a great man. Apparently, he could be pretty brutal in his own right, but he kept radical Islam at bay. When President Carter encouraged his forcing out of office, much as President Obama did the same thing with the President of Egypt, in both cases, it created a vacuum that was immediately filled by radical Islamists. The Muslim Brotherhood is who filled it in Egypt. In Iran, yes, it was radical Islamists. And probably for the first time since the Ottoman Empire, radical Islamist leaders were given a country, a country's military with which to wreak their havoc on the world. It is just hard to believe that, in the intervening years between President Carter leaving office in January 1981 and President Obama coming in in January of 2009, all history had been forgotten or possibly even not really learned. I guess, if you are learning at the hands or at the feet of Jeremiah Wright, who has such contempt--GD America was his feelings and expression--or if you are at the feet of Bill Ayers, who felt that blowing up police stations, things like that, hadn't quite served the purpose, or perhaps if we take over educating college students who will one day train elementary students and high school students, then we can ultimately create the anarchy that we were trying to create in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Back then, we were unsuccessful, but great inroads have been made here recently. You would just have to believe that America was the problem for the world in the last 100 years, and apparently there are those who feel that way. But for those of you who have talked with friends of different religions--Muslim, Christians, Jews, secularists--in different parts of the world, those who are actually fair minded make it very clear: the United States has been the greatest force for good as a nation that the world has ever known since the Dark Ages. It just has. And thank God we have had such wonderful allies in the endeavors that we have undertaken. Of course, in the liberation of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's hands, we had many other countries who joined us. President George H.W. Bush was going to liberate Iraq. So many Democrats had screamed at President George H.W. Bush as troops were moving into Iraq after the liberation of Kuwait, screaming: Stop, stop, stop. They are giving up. They are giving up. President George H.W. Bush ordered the stoppage, and immediately thereafter, the Democrats that screamed for him to stop began berating Bush because he didn't finish the job in Iraq. Some of those same people were around to condemn his son George W. Bush when he actually did finish the job. There was yellowcake uranium that was taken out which showed that Joseph Wilson had apparently said one thing to CIA agents and testified to something totally different, who said something totally different from his original interview when he got back from Africa. Of course, he was heralded a hero by the mainstream media. But it has just been amazing to see the ebb and flow of international relations. And reflecting back as I did earlier today, as so much from my Democratic friends in Judiciary was made about connections between the Trump administration and Russia, it is just hard not to remember so vividly the comments by Mitt Romney in a debate with President Obama in 2012 that Russia was potentially the greatest threat. I may be mistaken, but it seems like President Obama even said something glibly like, you know, ``The 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back,'' something rather cheeky like that, when, actually, my friends across the aisle, in Judiciary at least, have come to realize that that was one thing Mitt Romney was right about and President Obama was wrong about. But if you look at what the Obama administration did, as soon as President Obama took office, instead of taking a principle stand--and I know there was a lot of perceived hatred by those coming in with the Obama administration for George W. Bush. Perhaps it goes back to President Obama's days when he was growing up in Indonesia and he commented in his book, ``Dreams from My Father,'' about how his stepfather was apparently paid off by these fat-cat guys from Texas, oil guys, fat cats from Texas and Louisiana, something to that effect, and you realized, holy smokes, he has had a great disdain for Texas, for Louisiana going back to, you know, preteen years. You couldn't help but wonder if, in policies, it was carried through. Of course, he didn't appreciate his stepfather for working, and working with the Americans back in those days. But perhaps that has affected him. So if George W. Bush took a principled stand against Russia after Russia assaulted the independent nation of Georgia--I mean, some of us remember that President George W. Bush, trying to look for the good in people, came back from meeting Putin and said, you know: I looked into his eyes and saw his soul. He thought that is what he saw--may have been looking into shark eyes. But in any event, he soon learned the error of his ways. And that is one of the things I liked about President George W. Bush. If he made a mistake, he was big enough to say that wasn't the right way to go, and he would try to fix it. That is exactly what he did in his relationship with Russia. When Russia attacked Georgia--unprovoked, really--President George W. Bush, his administration, properly took a very principled stand. Some didn't think it went far enough, but he immediately caused a cessation of the great relations that had been going on and took some steps to chill those relations because of Russia's unilateral attack against Georgia, hoping to wake Putin up that you can't just go attack a neighboring country like that. Even if you want the old Soviet Empire back, you can't just do that without repercussions. So because of Putin's imperialistic attack, Bush took a strong stance and let Russia know: We don't approve of what you have done, and we are cooling things, we are freezing things. One of the first things that occurred after President Obama took office, he sent his new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to meet with the Russians and they had this red plastic button--looked pretty cheap, but it was supposed to have said ``reset,'' but apparently, they couldn't get the translation right. I am not sure what it said, peregruzka. I don't know what it said. I don't know what it was. But somebody that didn't know how to translate ``reset'' put it on and delivered the wrong message. But the more important message that Secretary Clinton and President Obama delivered to the rather ruthless imperialist leader of Russia was this: George W. Bush overreacted when you attacked your neighbor, Georgia, Mr. Putin, and we want you to know, we don't have a problem with you attacking Georgia, attacking your neighbors, trying to take over their territory. So we are here with big smiles and big laughs because we want to be such a good friend of yours, and we think it is perfectly fine what you are doing. We think you are terrific. That is the message after Bush let Putin know: Wait a minute. We are not going to let you be the big bully in the world. Enough. But the Obama administration sent a very clear message: We are not Bush. We don't have a problem with you attacking Georgia. And it is hard to think anything but that message that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as our President, sent to Putin was clear: We would be okay if you attacked Ukraine, Crimea. You know, we are okay with that. If it is adjoining, yeah, yeah, attack away. What else is Putin supposed to think when President Bush reacts harshly when he attacks a neighboring country, and the new President comes in and says: We are fine with everything you are doing. We are nothing but smiles and plastic red buttons. We are good. We don't mind anything you have done. We want to be your good friend. If the message from that was not clear enough, before he was reelected in 2012, a microphone he didn't realize could pick him up, picked up our President telling the President of Russia: Basically tell Vladimir I will have a lot more flexibility after the election. Well, now that could only have one meaning, and that is, I got to look tough and like I am standing up tough to Putin right now before the 2012 election, but make sure Putin knows that after the election I can give the farm a whole lot easier. I can let him do a whole lot more that he wants to do. We can be a lot more chummy once I get past my second and last election as President. So you make sure Vlad knows--my bosom buddy over there, my best friend forever--I am going to be able to work with him like he wants me to once I get past the next election. So with those kind of messages, then, as if it wasn't enough, followed up by another message to Russia and the world when he stated that, basically, if President al-Assad in Syria used gas on people in Syria, that would be a red line. And if he crossed it, obviously we would have to do something. He created a red line. Nobody asked him to. Putin picks up messages like that. For all of the problems he presents, one problem he does not present is where he stands, where he wants to go, and what motivates him. He's very clear. I have never met the man, but I have studied enough about Russia, and I have learned enough about Putin to know exactly who he is, what he is capable of, what he wants to do. And it is pretty clear: He wants to rebuild his empire. He hates the United States. He blames the United States for the fall of the glorious Soviet Union, that great USSR that once ruled the waves and the world. He wants a grand return to those days, and he wants to be the leader like Khrushchev or Brezhnev. Really, he would rather be in the nature of Stalin. As Stalin himself once said, a translation: With power, dizziness. Stalin said that, and he should certainly know. I think probably Putin has run into that as he has gotten all this glamour. During the Obama years, so many magazines and journalists just couldn't get enough of Putin with his shirt off. I mean, it may have helped the sex status of--as the status symbol of people who were bald. Maybe I should be proud and happy for that, but it didn't seem to affect me at all. But there was so much laid on the shoulders--the mantle laid by the Obama administration on the shoulders of Putin. And when that didn't seem to work out very well, it looked like the next big step was to ingratiate this Nation's Presidency, administration to the most evil leaders in the world, those who are leading Iran. They can be an evil empire all by themselves. They have wreaked so much havoc in the world. So many of the Americans that died liberating Iraq, lost their lives at the hands of IEDs or other weapons of war inflicted on them by Iranians--are sent to Iraq from Iran. There is a big price to pay for mistakes in judgment of Presidents. I believe Donald Trump will ultimately end up being one of the greatest Presidents in foreign relations because I think he is going to figure out, as George W. Bush did, Putin is not someone you can trust. You need to understand where he is coming from and where he wants to go. And you can use him when it is to our advantage against a common enemy. But make no mistake, he would glory in the fall of the United States. He is wrong about why the Soviet Union fell. It fell because it was based on communism, totalitarianism, and it was destined to fall. I could see that during the summer that I was there as an exchange student, and I went out to a collective farm. And being from East Texas, I worked on farms and ranches. And during summer, as this was sometime in July, I went out to a collective farm there; and there were massive acres, huge numbers of acres out there. I couldn't really tell what was being cultivated and what wasn't, what even the crop was. It didn't look good. It was brown. I couldn't get over how sad things looked out there. This was down in the Ukraine, the bread basket of what was the Soviet Union at the time. I know that if you are going to work around the latitude that that was in Ukraine--similar to ours back in Texas--in the summer, you best start around sun up so that you don't have to work when the Sun reaches its hottest time in the day. Seeing all of the farmers gathered in the shade there near the center of the village--a little town they had there--they were all sitting in the shade midmorning. I tried to use my best Russian that I could speak at the time and asked them, tried to use a smile: You know, when do you work out in the field? They laughed. I thought, well, maybe I messed up a word and made it into a weird translation. Then one of them spoke up in Russian, and he said: I make the same number of rubles if I am out there in the field or if I am here in the shade--if I am out there in the Sun or here in the shade, so I am here in the shade. I thought at the time that is why socialism, communism could never work. If you are going to pay people the same thing not to work as you do the people who are working, then eventually most people are not going to work. It is a good thing to have a safety net for those who, through no fault of their own, find themselves unemployed; but you can't turn into a Socialist nation where you reward people--provide the safety net, sure--but you can't provide incentives to sit in the shade and not work at all. Because eventually some day, your people will go hungry and your nation will fail as a nation-state, and it did. There were many factors that contributed, but the bottom line is that type of system can never work in this world, in this life. The Pilgrims tried it in that beautiful Mayflower Compact where they were all going to work and bring into the common storehouse and share. It was just a beautiful, lovely way to approach things. I have loved looking, as I did last night, at the painting there in the rotunda reflecting the Pilgrims' famous prayer meeting there in Holland. It says ``Speedwell'' right under the platform where they were. They were on the ship, the Speedwell, before they left in two ships--the big Speedwell and the small Mayflower--and went over to England. The Speedwell, the big ship that was going to allow them to take so many more to the new land, America, began taking on water, for whatever reason. There were different things said about what may have been the cause. But for whatever reason, they had to do a bit like Gideon did. They had to winnow it down to the people that had the best chance of making it to America so they could fit on that small Mayflower. So they winnowed the group down. They came over on the Mayflower. It was a beautiful thing, loving, working hard as they did. But when such a huge number of their settlers died during that first winter, basically, the short version, they ultimately tried something new resembling private property: You take your property. You grow. You use it however you want. And whatever you grow and produce, that is yours. It's amazing that worked out so well. Unlike the collective farms in the Soviet Union, there was incentive to work hard, produce, and people thrived, did so well. That actually gave a lot of incentive to others. Hey, this private property thing can work out well. Here, all these years later, we have people wanting to go back to that way of life that has failed every time it has been tried. Even when the Apostle Paul tried it, he ultimately had to throw up his hands and say: Okay. New rule. If you don't work, you don't eat. Because the socialist way of doing things in this world is not going to work. I am glad that my friends who were so vocal about not wanting a strong relationship with the current leader of Russia, I am glad they finally realized what those of us on the Republican side--most of us-- have been saying for a very long time. Yeah, we can work with the Russians to defeat our common enemy, but you should never lose sight of the fact Putin does not really want us for friends. He wants to see this country gone. He wants to see our way of life fail. So just don't lose sight of that. It is also interesting--we had amendments being proposed today with the same theme being repeated constantly about a Muslim ban, in essence, that we should not ever take religion into account when it comes to immigration. That has no place. Yet, when our chairman, one of our other Members brought up the--I believe it was Raul Labrador--the Lautenberg amendment that so many of us support, when you know a group of people--such as the Jewish people in another part of the world--are being killed and they are being persecuted, when we know that is taking place, it is a good thing to consider who they are and that their religion is being persecuted. When there are Christians in another part of the world being persecuted beyond what other religions are, it is a good thing to try to help them. When there were Muslims being persecuted in Eastern Europe, the Clinton administration responded, came to their aid. And for those that say, gee, standing up to radical Islam will only encourage more recruitment--my word--how much worse can it get than it has gotten during the last 8 years? There was no ISIS. President Obama took office, Afghanistan, they were still fighting; but actually, the Taliban had been totally--any organized Taliban had been destroyed by February of 2002, and we hadn't lost a single American life. We had used--we had let the Northern Alliance, residents, citizens in Afghanistan, we let them fight our enemy because, though they were Muslim, most of them, they didn't want radical Islamists running Afghanistan. A mistake was made after our friends in the Northern Alliance totally routed the Taliban. We sent in tens of thousands of American troops, and our friends, who loved us and heralded us for our liberation from the Taliban in Afghanistan, began to look at us as occupiers. I have been to Afghanistan enough. I have seen the way that relationship has gone, from us being the heroes that liberated their country from these radical Islamists that were a bane to the existence of just peace- loving Muslims wanting to live and not be terrorized by radical Islamists, and somehow we ended up becoming bad guys to so much of the country because of our massive presence. I do believe, Mr. Speaker, there is potential with all of the chaos that is beginning to raise its head again in Afghanistan. I heard a report this morning that Afghans had confided to a Republican here in town when he was over there visiting that al-Qaida is even back in Afghanistan. So it is not just the Taliban back stronger than ever; now al-Qaida is back in Afghanistan. And what was the cost to America, to our military over the last 8 years in allowing the Taliban to come back stronger than they were originally, to al-Qaida, to come back in Afghanistan stronger than they were originally? My personal opinion, I believe it was because of President Obama's rules of engagement. But we lost four times more precious military lives in Afghanistan during President Obama's command than were lost during just under 8 years under Commander George W. Bush. How could we lose four times more American military and suffer such a setback over the last 8 years, where we are back maybe a little worse off than things were when we went in to Afghanistan in October of 2001? Well, it has to do with the commitment. I heard former Vice President Cheney say that when President Obama announced he is committed to Afghanistan and he sent a surge into Afghanistan, he also announced, what seemed almost simultaneously, and we are going to be out in 18 months. As we know from history, nobody that ever won a war, a police action, a confrontation, ever set a deadline: We are going to win by this date or we are coming out, whether we have won or not. That message went out loud and clear to the Taliban that was growing back that if we can just hang on for 18 months, we will own Afghanistan all over again. I understand that, apparently, General Harwood, that has apparently been named by President Trump as the new National Security Adviser--and Mr. Speaker, I am sorry. I have got to say this because of what Billy and Karen Vaughn have come to mean to me since I met them some years back, after the death of their SEAL Team 6 son, Aaron. Gosh, I have come to know--I never met him while he was alive, but I have come to know him and feel like I knew him as a friend and as one of his admirers, vicariously, through his parents, Billy and Karen. When I heard the general's name come back up as one of those being considered, I thought, oh, please, surely not, because Billy and Karen made clear, you know, as family members were finding out what happened there in Afghanistan that took the most SEAL team lives we had ever had, they went onto a Chinook that should not have carried our SEAL team members. They went onto this Chinook and, supposedly, going on a mission, and yet because of the rules laid down by President Obama and his administration, they had to make sure that the Afghans knew exactly what was going to occur, where they were going, what they were going to do. Even knowing that after Vice President Joe Biden's gaffe, where he released classified information, that it was the SEALs who took out Osama bin Laden, it wasn't supposed to come out. It was another gaffe. But immediately, Bill and Karen said, after Biden outed the SEALs and it came out it was SEAL Team 6, they got a call from Aaron saying: Hey, you need to get off social media. The radical Islamists are going to be looking for us, for our family members. So this administration put big targets on SEAL Team 6 by disclosing classified information that ultimately led to their deaths, and it put targets on family members of SEAL Team 6. I know they didn't mean to do it. I know it wasn't intentional. They just didn't realize how serious things were. I know they must not have realized, or at least President Obama must not have realized, how serious it was when I watched the video of the gentleman that was called his body man, was with him through so many days, and he was answering questions at a university in California. It has been some years back that I watched. But he was asked, in effect, what was it like being with President Obama when he went into the room where they were watching SEAL Team 6 go after Osama bin Laden. He basically said: Oh, we didn't stay in there long. The President looked in but said, ``I'm not watching this,'' and they went and played cards, several hands of cards, while the SEAL Team 6 was putting their lives on the line for their country. So if that is your way of thinking, then it is understandable that you wouldn't appreciate the dangers in which you put SEAL Team 6 when you out them as the people who went after Osama bin Laden. But they knew, and the chatter was clear, and it was loud. They wanted to take casualties and get a price back with lives of SEAL Team 6 members. The mission that they were on should have ended right then, when the Afghan commander came up. They knew where they were going. He comes up and pulls off their elite soldiers, off the Chinook helicopter, and replaced them with people whose names were not on the manifest. Well, under the rules, that should have ended the task, should have ended the operation right there. They were told to go on, so they went--I have seen the transcript of testimony, statements--by gunship, C-130 gunship in the area. They had all kinds of imaging. And this isn't classified because this was on the DVD that was given to the family members. They were later asked if they would give it back. They didn't realize quite how much information they had put. Yeah, they sure didn't because the family members, like the Vaughns, watched it, read it, found out what was on it. We had a C-130 gunship, and I--my 4 years on Active Duty in the Army, I was never in combat. I think we should have gone into combat in Iran when an act of war occurred and our embassy was attacked. But that was Commander-in-Chief Carter's call, and he decided not to send anybody. I think if he had responded within 48 hours and said, ``You either release our hostages, or we are sending our United States military, and you better not hurt them or there will be a powerful price paid by you and your country,'' I think they would have released them. I think that is why, probably--I mean, I was watching closely from Fort Benning. All of us were watching the news. Were any of us going to be sent? The Ayatollah had a spokesman. I have not seen anything about it since I watched back in those days, `79, but I recall him. It was very interesting. For a few days, he kept distinguishing that it was the students that attacked the U.S. Embassy. It was the students that had the hostages. I said to some of my Army friends at Fort Benning: I think he is afraid Carter's going to send our military, and he is using the students as a back door for him. So if Carter shows a backbone and says, ``You either release our hostages or we are sending--you are going to feel the full vengeance of the United States military,'' they had a back door. It gave the Ayatollah an opportunity to save face by saying: You don't have to do it. We have negotiated with the students. Here are your hostages back. You don't have to invade Iran and take out our administration. See, we are your friend. We helped you out. But after a few days, I am not sure exactly what it was, but after a few days, it was clear, I think, to the Iranian leaders that this President is not going to do anything. He is just going to ask us to let their people go, and so we don't have to worry. They began to say ``we have the hostages'' because they knew Carter wasn't going to do anything. I still believe, based on what I learned at Fort Benning, that if President Carter had allowed all the helicopters to go that I was told were originally requested, then there would not have been one chopper-- they had to have six to be able to make it the 500 miles into the staging area there in Iran. As has come out publicly, they all knew, if we don't get six choppers out of the--eight was all the Carter administration would allow to go. They should have sent 12 because they expected to have a 50 percent loss, turbine engines going across sand like that 500 miles. They knew they had to have six or the mission was an automatic abort. As we know, when only five got there and it was clear there was not another one coming, then it was aborted. As I understand, the investigation indicated the helicopter pilot, as sand swirled around his chopper, must have gotten vertigo and not relied on his instruments. The helicopter tilted. The blade went through the C-130, and everybody on the chopper and the C-130 was killed. But, once again, we were embarrassed because we didn't have a Commander in Chief that was totally committed to doing what it took to get our hostages out. Again, I will always believe, if he had shown a backbone within 48 hours of our embassy being attacked and our hostages being taken, there would be thousands of American military lives still in being today. So having witnessed firsthand lessons of poor decisions by Commanders in Chief, having seen the data, the statistics of dead American military in Afghanistan, four times more under Commander Obama than under Commander Bush in approximately near the same amount of time, we haven't learned the lessons of the past very well. I feel absolutely confident that the President is going to learn his lessons. He has made a couple of mistakes. And certainly I agree, you can't have a National Security Adviser that is not completely honest with the Vice President and the President; you just can't. You have to be able to totally trust him. That has been a problem in our intelligence community. They were leaking and undermining President Bush, and now it is happening again to President Trump. So as I was talking about SEAL Team Six, these devastated families that had lost the greatest military members that we could have lost at that point, their every life is just priceless, invaluable. But there was so much money spent in training up these SEAL teams. It is an investment. You need to make sure they have the right equipment, that you don't have Afghans pulled off that are the best fighting members that Afghanistan has, and you put what they considered expendable Afghanistan soldiers on with our elite SEAL Team Six, especially when you know there are targets on their backs. But when the families met General Harward, they said they were just so crushed, they were so devastated, and they found out that this AC- 130 gunship, that there were opportunities to take out this patrol, this team, that shot down the Chinook and our SEAL team members. And there were other precious American lives on that helicopter in addition to the SEAL Team Six members, and they should not be shorted in when we owe them and their memories. But they asked if they had an opportunity to take these guys out. And the crew said they did. They had the thermal imaging. They could see these guys moving like military. They could see them moving up to the high point and getting ready to fire. They asked for permission to take them out, and they were denied permission to take them out. They watched them fire over and over at the helicopters with the rocket- propelled grenades apparently of some kind, and they missed with the first one. As I understand it, they were still not allowed to shoot them down, take out the Afghan rebels. They fired again, and they fired again. And the second and third took out our precious American military members along with those precious Afghan lives who should never have been on that helicopter to begin with. Then they watched them dismantle their equipment and start to climb down. They asked permission to take them out, it is my understanding, and, once again, they were told there may be civilians in the area, so, no, do not fire; and they watched them fade back into the population of Afghanistan after killing so many of our SEAL Team Six and others on the helicopter. They asked the general who is now apparently going to be our National Security Adviser: Why didn't you take out these people, these Afghan radical Islamists? Why didn't you take them out before they took out our military members, our SEAL Team Six? Why? His statement, from their memory, as related to me, was, in essence: Because we were trying to win hearts and minds. Our National Security Adviser is going to be more interested in--or at least he has in the past--apparently has been more interested in winning hearts and minds of people that hate our guts than he is of protecting the most precious assets the United States of America has: American lives. We haven't won any hearts and minds by allowing SEAL Team Six--so many of those members on that Chinook--to be killed. We haven't. That strategy didn't work. I am sorry. I want to be supportive. I was excited President Trump won, but when I know how this man, who I understand today has now been named to be the new National Security Adviser, was given the task of encouraging and being empathetic to the family members who lost those precious American family members in that Chinook that should never have been shot down, it should never have been allowed to take off, and the best he could do is say: Sorry, they had to die because we were trying to win hearts and minds instead of win the war. I hope that his mentality has changed. I hope he will not be willing to expend the best trained, the best and brightest military members we have, as he tries to win hearts and minds instead of trying to win a battle and win the war; but I guess time will tell. Mr. Speaker, I want to finish by saluting all those brave Americans that have defended freedom, that have fought for America, and who have responded in a voluntary military since 1979 and given their lives at the hands of radical Islamists. I hope and pray this President will pick people from here who will have the same feelings about precious American lives. I know Donald Trump does, and I think he will be a good President. I think he blew it on this call, but time will tell. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we had a resignation now that seems to be the big news of the day of a Cabinet member of the Trump administration. It is interesting to have seen this Indivisible movement arise. The Daily Signal points out: `` . . . Ties to George Soros, Sows Division Against Trump, GOP Lawmakers.'' ``Democrats who used to work on Capitol Hill are helping to disrupt Republican lawmakers' town hall meetings across the country through a nationwide effort to oppose and `resist' President Donald Trump's agenda.'' And it goes on to talk about some of the leftists who are trying to do that. And another article that says that the Indivisible team is trying to mimic strategies of the Tea Party. But it was quite a difference. The Taxed Enough Already Party was grabbing hold of American principles, constitutional principles, principles that brought about the revolution and served the country well for over 200 years; and that we are supposed to have a government that works for us, not works us; takes away our religious freedom, tries to take away Second Amendment freedom, tries to take away freedom of religion; tells us we can't say anything negative about anything they care about or they will try to destroy us, our business. And there were people that were shocked. And then on top of it all, add a lot more tax. And as the President told Joe the Plumber, in essence: We need to take your income and spread it around the country. I had some friends here during the inauguration. I took them to the Lincoln Memorial. And, of course, on the south inside wall is the Gettysburg Address. On the inside of the north wall is the second inaugural that is so profound. Mark Levin's father has a terrific book about it. What an amazing speech. Lincoln is talking just shortly before his assassination. But the second inaugural, the war is winding down, it is about over, and there is so much hope abounding. He was not bitter. He was an amazing man, our first Republican President. He talked about the Nation and about how both the north and south both read the same Bible and both pray to the same God. He points out that the prayers of both could not be answered, the prayers of neither have been fully answered. But he points out that it might seem strange that a group of people would invoke God's name to wrench their bread out of the sweat of other people's brow. But I heard enough from people in the Taxed Enough Already Party, this group that arose that--wait a minute--basically are saying when the President says, I am going to take your money that you made and spread it around, he is basically saying, Look, I am going to be the most powerful man in the world, and certainly in this country, and my principles dictate; I need to take what you work for and spread it around to other people. Is that a way of wrenching your bread from the sweat of others? It is interesting. But anyway, this group had 17 show up at an office. Obviously, they were more interested in publicity than a meeting, because all they had to do is call and we make sure they have a meeting and somebody is there to meet them, even though I am here in Washington when they demand to meet. Apparently groups all over the country are following this Soros- funded effort to try to destroy the country, disrupt the country, and create anarchy and mayhem wherever they can. Fortunately, in east Texas, people realize we can't quite go as far as some groups do because nobody would accept it. I have got some constituents that are asking legitimate questions. But what we go back to is what really gave strength to this movement, objecting to what was being done in the Obama administration, was when we had a President and a Speaker who were saying: We know that a majority of Americans don't want this ObamaCare, Affordable Care Act. It is hard to call it affordable care because it is such a misnomer. But we see the polls. A majority of the American people don't want it, but we are going to stick you with it anyway because it is part of our agenda. That is what was really bothering people. The thing is that this so- called Indivisible and groups like this are terrific at coming up with names that are anathema to what they really are. So you have a group called Indivisible, and their goal is completely dividing and destroying the constitutional principles of America. But the thing is, a majority didn't want ObamaCare passed. It was shoved down their throats, even though most of the people in this body here had not even read it. I read it. It scared me. I am still asking for answers. Why did President Obama need a commissioned and noncommissioned Presidential officer corps that he could call up. Initially, it sounded like a medical emergency group, but then it said they would be trained. It didn't say with weapons or with what. And it said the President would be able to call them up for any international emergency, and it didn't mention the word ``health'' or ``medical'' on that. So, anyway, there is just so much in there that we didn't need. Most of Americans didn't want it and didn't like it. And it took away people's health insurance from them. I was talking with thousands of people in my district. I love to do telephone townhalls with my district. This was one segment. About a third of the district last night was represented in this group, and I will have others coming up in the future. But it is very helpful to me because I can talk to people that you wouldn't see, you wouldn't hear, wouldn't see or hear you if you had 40 people come to a townhall, like sometimes do. And since we know that there are groups out there that have instructions to create mayhem, disrupt, accuse them of racism--it is in the documents that we are seeing--whatever they bring up, charge racism, corruption, and something else, we can have a telephone townhall and I can find out what people are thinking that I otherwise wouldn't hear from. I thought about doing a mailer to mail to as many in my district that I could, but the costs were just so dramatic. I could do it, but why spend $100,000-plus of taxpayer dollars just to find out what my district is thinking? I think the best indication of what people in each congressional district in the country are thinking is what happened in the November election. That is the ultimate poll that anybody could ever take. And I have having been talking about for 6 years that ObamaCare needed to be repealed, that it takes away choice, that it is costing more money. You don't get to keep your doctor, you don't get to keep your insurance policy; and so many thousands in my district did not. And so it was very helpful to hear from people, for example, how many believe the government needs to be more involved in health insurance, and I think that was at like 97 percent. There were thousands of people that had been called. But anyway, it gives me feedback. It was interesting to note that this group, this indivisible group, the websites had gotten some information about the messages going back and forth, and one of them is, when we demand that they have a townhall that we can disrupt and they say we are going to have a telephone townhall because we can reach a lot more people, people that are invalids or homebound, seniors that couldn't get out to a personal townhall meeting can participate in the telephone townhall. They are saying how do we respond to that when there are so many more people they can reach and hear from and it helps the disabled to do these telephone townhalls, how do we respond to that? And they really didn't get a good answer, last I saw. But it is important for every Representative to know where their district stands, where their people stand, and I continue to believe that I am the most fortunate Member of this 435-seat body because of whom I get to represent. I had an opponent last year raising Cain about I was on national media so much, and I mean, when I think about it, why would national media want me to be on? It is certainly not my looks, certainly not because I have such an incredible voice. You know, I would love to have a voice like James Earl Jones, or I was just so moved at the Senate Chaplain speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast a couple of weeks ago. I would love to have a voice like I think maybe God's voice may sound like some day when I get to hear it, but I don't. I don't have a voice like that. This is what I have got. I don't put on any airs. Why would any national media want to have me on? And I think it would have to have something to do with the fact that I represent extraordinary people in Texas where sense is very common, just so much common sense, and I think a lot of the country likes hearing about the way three-fourths of my district thinks. I think I reflect that district, and that is why, basically, three-fourths of the district voted for me. It is not because of the way I look or sound. Even people that can't stand me in that 25 or 26 percent, they know I am going to stand up and do what I told people I am going to do. It is just that some people don't like it. Some years back, one guy wrote that I was a moron and misspelled ``moron.'' If he is listening, Mr. Speaker, he needs to know there is no E in moron. But in any event, it is interesting to see how frantic things have gotten and how destructive some of the forces in this country have gotten in trying to bring down the principles that made us great, and it is quite disconcerting. That leads me to a point I want to discuss, which we had the news, the tragic failing of the dam in California. We will continue, those of us who believe in the power of prayer, to pray that there will be no loss of life, despite the negligence of the California government in refusing for over 12 years--apparently, at least 12 years--to heed the warnings that this dam was going to be failing at some point. They needed to do something. We just need to pray that the negligence that occurred in the New Orleans area in diverting money away from shoring up the levee would not end up having the mass cost of loss of life in California. But as we continue to have people try to disrupt our congressional districts, continue to try to make so much noise, create so much anarchy that it creates an inability to govern properly--despite the fact it isn't going to work--this President, this administration, and this Congress is not going to be diverted from what needs to be done. This article came out today from the Free Beacon, by Adam Kredo: ``Former Obama Officials, Loyalists Waged Secret Campaign to Oust Flynn.'' Now, I hadn't known Flynn before. I don't believe I had met him before maybe last September. I might have, but I don't believe I have before that. But I had a chance to visit with him at that point with, at that time, Donald Trump, now our President. He is an interesting man. He has served his country well. But there are issues that are coming out now about discussions with Russians. It would seem to me, if President Trump had an intelligence community and had people in the government service around him, the career people that were really wanting to help the country--rather than the Democrats or President Obama as he went out--that were really interested in helping the best interests of the United States of America, they would want the President to have all of the information that anyone in any of the upper echelons or anywhere in the departments that work for President Trump--wouldn't they want their boss to know or have the most accurate information? Apparently, there was information out there that didn't come to light until President Trump had selected his National Security Adviser. He had been sworn in as the National Security Adviser, and they were on a roll. And of course, one of the things General Flynn was concerned about, something that is a deep concern of so many of ours in this body, was the outrageous Iran treaty that got treated like it wasn't a treaty. It was, indeed, a treaty. It never got ratified by the Senate, but it was, indeed, a treaty. It had all of the things in it that treaties would have. But this article goes on: ``The abrupt resignation Monday evening of White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is the culmination of a secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald Trump's national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran, according to multiple sources both in and out of the White House who described to the Washington Free Beacon a behind-the-scenes effort by these officials to plant a series of damaging stories about Flynn in the national media. ``The effort, said to include former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes--the architect of a separate White House effort to create what he described as a pro-Iran echo chamber--included a small task force of Obama loyalists who deluged media outlets with stories aimed at eroding Flynn's credibility, multiple sources revealed. ``The operation primarily focused on discrediting Flynn, an opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, in order to handicap the Trump administration's efforts to disclose secret details of the nuclear deal with Iran that had been long hidden by the Obama administration.'' Mr. Speaker, I want to insert here, some of us went down to the classified area of the SCIF where we can review classified information and we reviewed what was available about the Iran deal, but we found out there was a lot of secret stuff that the administration would not allow us to know: what he had given away, what he had done, potential bad judgment in going so far out of the Obama administration's way to placate and assist the largest supporters of terrorism in the world. Obviously, what this article is talking about, some secret parts of the agreement, those are things that we were certainly not allowed to read no matter who you were in Congress at the time. But this says: ``Insiders familiar with the anti-Flynn campaign told the Free Beacon that these Obama loyalists plotted in the months before Trump's inauguration to establish a set of roadblocks before Trump's national security team, which includes several prominent opponents of diplomacy with Iran. The Free Beacon first reported on this effort in January. ``Sources who spoke to the Free Beacon requested anonymity in order to speak freely about the situation and avoid interfering with the White House's official narrative about Flynn, which centers on his failure to adequately inform the president about a series of phone calls with Russian officials. ``Flynn took credit for his missteps regarding these phone calls in a brief statement released late Monday evening. Trump administration officials subsequently stated that Flynn's efforts to mislead the president and vice president about his contacts with Russia could not be tolerated. ``However, multiple sources closely involved in the situation pointed to a larger, more secretive campaign aimed at discrediting Flynn and undermining the Trump White House. ``'It's undeniable that the campaign to discredit Flynn was well underway before Inauguration Day, with a very troublesome and politicized series of leaks designed to undermine him,' said one veteran national security adviser with close ties to the White House team. `This pattern reminds me of the lead up to the Iran deal, and probably features the same cast of characters.''' And we know from news that has come out since the Iran deal was made by this administration, we know that some of the same placaters that enabled North Korea to develop nuclear weapons in the Clinton administration were involved in negotiating this deal with Iran. The deal with North Korea was to stop them from getting nuclear weapons, and so my interpretation of the deal was basically this: They promised them: We will give you everything you need to develop nuclear weapons in North Korea if you will just sign a piece of paper that says you won't do that. The Clinton administration, some of the same people that ran to do a deal with Iran, they jumped on that. And so what happens, North Korea uses what we provided them to help create nuclear weapons. Big shock. So it is a big shock that the Obama administration would send at least one of those original people to be the top negotiator with Secretary of State John Kerry, who never saw a Genghis Khan that he couldn't work with, and they work out a deal. We still haven't found out all of the arrangements, all of the things that were done; but we know that there is, apparently, something so sinister about what this country has done, bent over backwards to provide for Iran or allow Iran to do, that the Obama administration could not allow right-thinking American people to know what it had done for Iran and against Israel and the United States' best interests. But if you believe the best interests of the United States are to weaken the United States, if you believe that the United States has been the biggest problem in the world for the last 100 years, then you would think, well, then if we make a deal with Iran that weakens the United States, may even lead to our demise, the world is a better place. So it is ultimately for the good of the world because the United States is certainly weaker than it has been in decades, going back to pre-World War II military strength. The Chinese economy, it was announced at one point, may have exceeded ours. I am not sure that is true. Anyway, countries around the world that are threats to world peace have gotten stronger. ISIS has gotten stronger during this President's term, in fact, came into being under President Obama and got quite strong, thousands upon thousands of lives lost. In Afghanistan, he took a war that he told people--the voters in 2008--was the important war. And what should have been just a housekeeping operation under his leadership and with his rules of engagement, it cost about four times more American military lives than were lost in the height of the Afghan war for 7\1/2\ years under President Bush. It must be something in the leadership there when one President loses four times more military members than the prior President in the same length of time and the latter President being when the war was supposed to be basically over. This article points out that: ``Flynn had been preparing to publicize many of the details about the nuclear deal that had been intentionally hidden by the Obama administration as part of its effort to garner support for the deal, these sources said. ``Flynn is now `gone before anybody can see what happened' with these secret agreements, said the second insider close to Flynn and the White House. ``Sources in and out of the White House are concerned that the campaign against Flynn will be extended to other prominent figures in the Trump administration.'' Well, Mr. Speaker, I can inject here: Whoever these sources are that are concerned the campaign against Flynn be extended to other prominent figures, I can guarantee them that people in and outside the United States Government right now, as I speak, will do everything within their power--some of these characters will--to prevent President Trump from getting us back on track to making the world a safer place, to getting Iran back in the little box that President Carter let them out of. They are going to go after lots of people. It is not going to be limited. This apparently is a campaign that is going to be ongoing. Apparently, General Flynn messed up and wasn't completely honest when he should have been. A President has got to be able to trust his security adviser. That kind of goes without saying. The President has to be able to trust those people. It takes me back to September when I was talking--it was right before General Flynn walked up, actually ironically. But I was telling: Look, I like President George W. Bush. He is a good man. He is a smart guy. He is a lot smarter than people give him credit. He is one of the wittiest people you can ever have a conversation with, but something that hurt him--and I wanted Donald Trump to understand this--something that hurt him was that he was such a nice guy. After the election was over, he made it known, in essence, that everything that happened in the past is bygones. What is happening now, from now on, we are going forward. The trouble is he had people doing bad acts, even crimes like having FBI files at the White House. Chuck Colson went to prison a year and a half for having one. The Clinton administration had nearly a thousand; nobody did a day. I said, you have got to clean out these departments, these agencies where Bush didn't clean them out. You have got to or they are going to undermine you the whole time you are President. And it looks like we are seeing that right now. So, Mr. Speaker, I just encourage all my colleagues to let's give the Trump administration the chance to help get this country safer, freer, and just a better place to live. It is not going to happen while people are undermining the President from within his own administration and a little cabal that has those ties in this administration. It is time to clean house, and General Flynn is not who I am talking about. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to the chairman of our committee. I appreciate the question asked by my colleague across the aisle: Why now? The answer to the question, why now, is that this Federal Government has not done its job. This Congress has not done its job in complying with the aspirations of the Constitution. When you have disagreement between documents, as we did between the Louisiana Purchase on the south border of the Red River, and Oklahoma going to the middle of the Red River--and, of course, the Red River changes as time goes on--then the Federal Government should have long since stepped in and said: Here is the land we are talking about. Here is where the borders will actually go. I am amazed at times, we talk in terms of agencies, of bureaus, of departments, as if they are some independent country that deserves a place at the United Nations making policies and making executive decisions all their own. These people work for us. The Bureau of Land Management does have some folks that don't understand that. They think they are an entity unto themselves, and they make policy. Well, that is not what the Constitution set up. In fact, the Constitution, in the preamble, as my friends know, says: ``We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility. . . .'' This is what this bill is trying to do. Now, last Congress, my friend, Mac Thornberry, had a bill that went ahead and took care of the issue, once and for all, and it was going to sell the land, and this dispute could be over. But since friends in the Senate were not able to come to a conclusion and they still just could not figure out what an appropriate disposition was, then my friend, Mr. Thornberry, has come back with this bill. It is consistent with what every good parent will tell the child: Before you make a decision, gather all the evidence and information you can, then make a more educated, informed decision. That is all this bill does, Mr. Speaker. It says, we are going to do a survey now. We are going to figure out what land we are talking about. And since the BLM has said we are not even going to even survey that land, we are going to leave it in dispute. We are not going to establish justice. We are going to worry about ``just us'' at the BLM. We are not going to ensure domestic tranquility. We are going to create chaos, because when we create chaos, then we benefit. We get more land, we put people in jail. Well, this is a simple bill, for heaven's sake. It says we are going to do a survey. We are going to see what we have got. That is all the bill does. Why now? Exactly. That is a great question. This should have been done 100 years ago or more than 100 years ago. It wasn't, so it is time to do it now and ensure domestic tranquility. So all of the parties involved--not the BLM; they are not a party-- the Federal Government, the Government of Oklahoma, the Government of Texas, and all the owners involved can, once and for all, have domestic tranquility.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I am so grateful to my friend from California. We have traveled around the world and stood for people who weren't able to stand for themselves, and I look forward to continue doing that. Just to continue on, Ken Klukowski has a terrific article, ``Travesty of Legal Errors in Immigration EO Lawsuit.'' It is a great article pointing out problems with Judge Robart's decision. Then, this article from Hans von Spakovsky on February 6 from Daily Signal, he points out: ``This fact is obvious from an examination of his seven-page order, which contains absolutely no discussion whatsoever of what law or constitutional provision the president has supposedly violated. That temporary restraining order is now on an emergency appeal before a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.'' It contrasts a 21-page opinion issued by Massachusetts District Court Judge Nathaniel Gorton. ``Unlike Robart, who totally ignored the federal statute, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), cited by Trump in his executive order, Gorton bases his decision denying the temporary restraining order on an examination of the extensive power given to the president under that statute. . . . '' The article goes on: ``That is exactly what the president has done.'' Whether you agree or disagree, he had the power to do it. The order signed on January 27 on Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States suspends for only 90 days, unlike the 180 days President Obama did for Iran, the issuance of visas to anyone--not Muslims--just to anyone from those countries of concern as classified by the Obama administration. And then Gorton goes on to make further notes, saying ``the decision to prevent aliens from entering the country is a `fundamental sovereign attribute' realized through the legislative and executive branches that is `largely immune from judicial control.' '' And then it goes on in this article to quote the Supreme Court. ``Robart's opinion ends with a claim that seems like a joke. ``He says that `fundamental' to his work is `a vigilant recognition that--the court--is but one of three equal branches of our federal government. The work of the court is not to create policy or judge the wisdom of any particular policy promoted by the other two branches. ``Instead, says Robart, his job is `limited' to `ensuring that the actions taken by the other two branches comport with our country's law, and more importantly, our Constitution.' '' That shows that he intentionally and knowingly abused his authority as a judge by not citing either one. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I greatly appreciate my friend, colleague-- actually, dear friend--Steve King, and his points he is making--right on track. I hesitated for a number of days now about making public reference to this, but it needs to be addressed and it needs to be looked at, and people need to be aware so that mistakes do not continue to be made. This is a story from John Stanton, February 2, 2017, BuzzFeed: ``Congressional IT Staff Under Investigation In Alleged Procurement Scam.'' And this is February 2, so several days ago--5 days ago. It says: ``A lawmaker briefed on the matter had said House officials had told staff from affected offices that contractors had been arrested, but late Thursday night US Capitol Police spokesperson Eva Malecki told BuzzFeed News that no arrest had been made. The USCP is investigating House IT support staff.'' Now, that is the technologically proficient staff members that work on congressional computers, that work on our technology, so it was quite disturbing to see this some days back. This says: ``Five men who had access to the House of Representatives' entire computer network are under investigation Thursday evening following a months-long investigation by federal law enforcement officials, according to a lawmaker briefed on the raid.'' Well, it sure wasn't me because I didn't know anything about this until I read it a few days ago. ``Although the lawmaker said House officials had told staff from affected offices that contractors had been arrested, late Thursday night, US Capitol Police spokesperson Eva Malecki told BuzzFeed News that no arrest had been made, but that USCP are investigating members of the House IT support staff. `` `At the request of Members of Congress, the United States Capitol Police are investigating the actions of House IT support staff,' Malecki said in a statement. `No Members are being investigated. No arrests have been made. It should be noted that, administratively, House staff were asked to update their security settings as a best practice. We have no further comment on the ongoing investigation at this time.' ``According to the member, the chiefs of staff for 20 lawmakers were summoned to a closed-door meeting with House administration officials, who briefed them on the incidents. The chiefs were told the men were conducting a procurement scam, although officials acknowledged the men--whose staff were told were brothers--had access to virtually all of the computer systems used by the affected lawmakers. Members were also told Thursday night to change the passwords to their email and other applications. ``The news has rattled nerves on Capitol Hill, especially after the series of high-profile political hackings over the last year. `They said it was some sort of procurement scam, but now I'm concerned that they may have stolen data from us, emails, who knows,' the lawmaker said.'' Then this was added: ``This post has been updated and corrected with new information from US Capitol Police, which said no arrests have been made but there is an active investigation ongoing into IT staff who were involved in alleged procurement scam. A lawmaker briefed on the situation had told BuzzFeed News that arrests were made.'' And then yesterday we had this update from Politico, ``House staffers under criminal investigations still employed,'' by Heather Caygle. ``Multiple Democratic lawmakers have yet to cut ties with House staffers under criminal investigation for wide-ranging equipment and data theft. ``Imran Awan, a longtime House staffer who worked for more than two dozen Democrats since 2004, is still employed by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, though his access to the House IT network has been blocked since last week. `` `At this time we are continuing to gather information from House officials and will determine the best approach to move forward once we have reviewed that information,' David Damron, communications director for Wasserman Schultz, said in an email when asked by POLITICO if Awan was still working for the Florida Democrat.'' Mr. Speaker, I might insert parenthetically that although you can't judge much from a name, one can't help but wonder, because of all of the outcry about the Russians, if maybe these brothers--well, I started to ask--have some Russian connection, but there doesn't appear to be any. ``Multiple relatives of Imran Awan, including his wife Hina Alvi, Abid Awan and Jamal Awan--all House staffers until recently--are also being investigated in connection to the alleged procurement scam, according to a senior House official close to the investigation. ``Alvi has worked for more than a dozen House Democrats and the House Democratic Caucus since 2007. At least one member, Rep. Gregory Meeks, New York, is still employing her. `` `My office is in the process of gathering information to make a determination in the near future about the employment of Ms. Alvi with our office,' Meeks said Monday in a statement to POLITICO. ``Five House staffers are accused of stealing equipment from members' offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network, according to multiple sources briefed on the investigation. ``Top staffers for lawmakers impacted by the scam were briefed last Thursday. A source in the briefing said the Sergeant-at-Arms confirmed the U.S. Capitol Police is conducting an active criminal investigation but said no arrests have been made. ``Imran Awan was first employed on Capitol Hill by former Rep. Robert Wexler in January 2004 as an `information technology director.' Awan has worked for at least 25 other House Democrats since that time as a shared employee providing technical support including to previous House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra, currently the California attorney general. ``Imran Awan has a longtime relationship with some members, including working for Meeks and Becerra starting in 2004 and joining Wasserman Schultz's office in 2005. ``Several Members who have employed Imran Awan and Alvi in the past confirmed to POLITICO they terminated their employment late last week. ``Jamal Awan worked as a House IT staffer for more than half-dozen House Democrats since 2014, according to LegiStorm, a website that tracks congressional employment. Abid Awan worked for more than a dozen House Democrats as a systems administrator since 2005, according to congressional records. ``Another House staff with connections to Imran Awan is also under investigation, according to the senior House official. ``No one named in this POLITICO report as being under investigation returned multiple calls and emails requesting comment over the past several days.'' Capitol Police have not returned calls. So it is extremely disconcerting. All of us have to hire people to help us with our jobs, and most all of us need computer assistants. I can't help but reflect back, there is a new policy last year that was instituted that requires every employee that may have access to the computer systems, the massive databases and emails of Members, such confidential information, they need a background check, but at the same time, there was the requirement that had to be certified by the Member or the administration officer in a congressional office, you either certify that this person has had the required background check to be allowed to access this confidential information on computers in the congressional offices. Some of these Members were part of the Intelligence Committee having access to top secret information. So this is quite serious. There was another--there were two possibilities. One, you certify this person had the proper background check done. And, number two--it was an ``or in the alternative''--if this person works for more than one person--which computer personnel often do because you don't need them full-time, you just need them when something goes wrong or perhaps when they're needing to break into your computer and steal your data-- you could sign and certify that this person works for more than one Member of Congress. Therefore, I don't believe the background check is necessary. So I hope all of my colleagues will make note that there may be people on the Hill that don't have the best intentions with our computer data, including access to classified information. So no matter who they are, even if somebody is worried, because of their background or where they were born, that somebody might scream bias or prejudice, we just need to have everyone who has access to classified information to have a background check even if they work for multiple people. We just need to do that. Lessons, apparently, are still being learned in that regard. As we continue to hear from some friends here in Washington and some going nuts around the country about a Muslim ban, which is completely false and completely untrue, something we are not hearing a lot about is the horrors being experienced by Christians in the Middle East. Even Secretary John Kerry had acknowledged there was an effort, a genocide, in other words, an effort to wipe out every Christian because of their religious beliefs in the Middle East. So you would think that if we were going to be the big-hearted nation, which we have repeatedly been throughout history--not always, but certainly most of the time, more than any other nation in history-- then you would think that our hearts would go out to the Christians being persecuted in far greater percentages than any other religious or racial group in the Middle East. Yet this story from Townhall, ``Christians Were Persecuted In Every Corner of Globe in 2016,'' points out: ``Not only did the persecution of Christians increase in 2016, it also spread to every corner of the globe, according to Open Doors USA's latest World Watch List. ``The annual report ranks the worst 50 countries for Christians trying to live out their faith, and while some findings are not surprising, like North Korea topping the list for the 16th consecutive year, the group is troubled by the overall rise in the number of incidents considered persecution.'' It is getting worse than ever. Of course, the current Secretary- General, when asked a year and a half or so ago why the percentage of Christian refugees from the Middle East being helped is so much lower than the actual percentage of Christians living in the area, his response was, in essence, that, well, they were so historically important to the areas in which they lived, it was important that they be left there. In other words, we need to leave them where they are being murdered to extinction. Then that guy with that kind of sensitivity for a genocide gets promoted to be Secretary-General of the U.N., which, to me, is all the more reason it is time to get out of the United Nations. Since a Rockefeller Foundation of some kind controls the land and it is to be used by the U.N., as long as the U.N. remains the main headquarters, then all we have to do is start denying visas and privileges to come in until we have extreme vetting for people that may be improperly using their positions at the U.N. If that proves too much of a burden, then they can go to Brussels or Istanbul or wherever. We might as well let them go to Syria. That seems to be where they want to be most involved, I guess. It was certainly worth noting Jordan Schachtel in Conservative Review has pointed out: ``The Middle East country of Kuwait issued its own `Muslim ban' in 2011, citing the `instability' from several terror hotbeds in the Middle East.'' That is rather interesting because the United States has not and does not have a Muslim ban at all. Christians, atheists, Jews, and Hindus were all just as prohibited as any Muslim from the seven countries that the Obama administration named as being troubled. And the Trump administration didn't just name them as troubled; it actually took action and did something about it. We have this story from Liam Deacon, Breitbart, that the Islamic State is paying migrants smuggling fees for them if they join a jihad. So more good news. As President Trump is trying to protect America, more stories emerge that make what President Trump did even more important. I was hearing something on FOX News. They had a panel. There was one panel member that repeated--and I know she didn't mean it to intentionally misrepresent the facts, but she did in saying that no one has been arrested from one of those seven countries for any terrorist activity. Or maybe she said not committed any. So it seems that it is worth taking a look at Neil Munro's article from Breitbart: ``Seattle Judge Was Ignorant About Jihad Convictions Prior to Imposing Refugee Reform Ban.'' ``The Seattle judge who temporarily banned the White House's refugee reform plan acted after mistakenly claiming the federal government has not arrested jihadi migrants from the seven Muslim countries covered by the reform. ``But the federal government has arrested and jailed at least 76 people since 2001 from the seven countries covered in the first stage of the president's reform, which was announced late January. ``That fact means there is a huge error in the judge's rationale for imposing a `Temporary Restraining Order' ban on the president's popular reform of the expensive refugee and immigration programs. ``In a hearing before the decision, Judge James Robart told a lawyer from the Department of Justice that the federal government has not arrested people since 2001 from any of the seven countries named in the reform, since the 2001 atrocity in New York. `How many arrests have there been of foreign nationals for those seven countries since 9/11?' he asked. ``The justice department's lawyer replied, `Your Honor, I don't have that information,' prompting Robart to answer his own question.'' The judge said: ``Let me tell, you, the answer to that is none, as best I can tell. You're here arguing on behalf of someone that says we have to protect the United States from these individuals coming from these countries and there's no support for that.'' All of us are ignorant of some areas. What is incredibly problematic is when you have a judicial official, a Federal judge with a lifetime appointment not only ignorant, but uses his ignorance as the basis of an illegal, unconstitutional order and then adds arrogance to his ignorance. This is shear, unadulterated, arrogant ignorance by Judge Robart. So, as a former judge and chief justice, I can sure understand someone who is not a lawyer or somebody who was a lawyer and somebody who was a former judge or even a current judge saying this is a so- called judge. You would like to think that judges, if they are going to be arrogant, they will be arrogant about their knowledge in some area that others don't have, instead of being arrogant about ignorance that puts the American public in jeopardy. The Constitution and the laws passed by this Congress and signed by our President make clear that the President has the authority to do exactly what he did. Whether you like it or not, whether I like it or not, he does have that authority, based on our national security, because we gave it to him. What we did not give the President was authority to do an amnesty program, as President Obama pointed out more than 20 times. He just didn't have authority to do what he ultimately did when he realized the Senate would not work with the House to stop him. A judge who should know better and who is allowed to remain a judge only so long as he is acting in good conduct appears to be acting in very bad conduct. A database was built by the Senate's Immigration Subcommittee. Why would they have to build this? Because President Obama made sure that his administration kept as much secret as they could about who was operating as terrorists in America. Not only that, when some of us would try to gather such information like my repeated requests to the Obama administration and to the Justice Department, Would you let Congress have the documents that you gave to people convicted of terrorism in the Holy Land Foundation discovery phase, we repeatedly were shunned, and there was just repeated obfuscation. They did not produce what they should have, and America is more at risk now than it has been in a long time. So what can we expect from the Ninth Circuit? Well, they have a history of not following the Constitution, not following precedent. They are rather liberal. I am hoping we can do something about that circuit. I would like to restrict their jurisdiction to controversies that arise in their building. We have total authority to eliminate them. I see I am joined by my friend, Mr. Rohrabacher. I didn't know if the gentleman desires to speak.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. If the gentleman might take a question. I appreciate that clarity. It is clarity that has been missing for a long time. We have people screaming that President Trump should not have put a temporary pause that was half as long as the pause President Obama put on. I understand there is so much stress and pressure when you are President; he probably just forgot he put a 6-month ban, previously, on a Muslim nation sending people in. You made so clear the case for concern about Iran, and I am with you. I am thrilled that we have a President that is not choosing to give our lunch money, figuratively speaking, to the big bully in the schoolyard. I don't know if my friend from Florida ever got bullied in elementary school. I did. I learned early on that it doesn't help to give bullies money. They are not going to leave you alone until you stand up to them. Maybe they whip you, but they don't want to go through what you put them through again by standing up to them, so they leave you alone. In our case, we are strong enough to take on any bully; but instead, we paid the big bully, Iran, as you pointed out, massive amounts, billions and billions of dollars. We agreed to pay them up to $150 billion. We have got some friends here in Congress in the House and Senate that were so upset with the President having this 90-day pause on seven countries. They didn't realize--I know we get so busy here that we don't notice a lot of other things, but they apparently hadn't realized that those seven countries were designated by the Obama administration. One of them, Iran, a country you have talked so eloquently about, we have people here in this body that don't think we should hold up refugees from Iran. As the gentleman was talking about, the Government of Iran has not shown any good faith at all. Would the gentleman be concerned about having people that the Iranian Government allowed to slip out of the country and come into the United States? Do you have any problem with President Obama's pause on that refugee surge into the United States?

Mr. GOHMERT. Those are such great points. The counterargument is made often to us: ``Other than the San Bernardino shootings, has there been a terrorist attack involving a non-U.S.-born attacker since 9/11?'' There was a great article in The Federalist by Kyle Shideler on January 30. He answers: Yes, but first of all, why exclude the San Bernardino killers, terrorists? Tashfeen Malik was born in Pakistan, and that attack killed 14. As Phil Haney, the whistleblower from Homeland Security, pointed out, if he had not been removed from the line, he would have been allowed to secondarily question someone like Tashfeen Malik. It is worth noting, under the Obama administration, under Jeh Johnson, and before him, Janet Napolitano, they punished people who pointed out radical Islamists rather than giving them positions where they could recognize radical Islamists. Phil Haney points out that Tashfeen Malik is actually a man's name. The woman came, and if she had come through him, he would have asked: Well, why do you have a man's name, and it happens to be a man who was a terrorist centuries ago? Well, to ask a question like that, you have to be well educated into the history of radical Islam. Not Islam, but radical Islam. We have spent so much money as a country and even as a Congress on countering violent extremism. We hear from Homeland Security whistleblowers--some of them don't want to go public yet, but we hear from them that so much of that money was spent on conferences and seminars teaching our Homeland Security agents, our FBI agents, our State Department people, our intelligence people to spot Islamophobes. They would teach them the phrases to look for when someone reported a potential radical Islamist so that they would know that that is an Islamophobe. That is exactly why in San Bernardino, when someone reported this guy as a potential radical Islamist, that he was crazy, that he was going to hurt somebody, they wrote him off as just being prejudiced against Islam. It is because of the money spent by this government intimidating people into refusing to notice radical Islam and getting them punished. If they didn't find people who they named Islamophobes, their career was over.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, here it is, Friday. It has been a good week in Washington. We have gotten some of President Trump's nominees approved and through the Senate. Call them like you see them, I think. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has done a great job this week. I applaud his efforts. And as a result of what President Trump has been doing--and actually part of it is just his getting elected--has done for our economy because people know--at least a lot of people know--he is going to keep his word. He is already showing he is doing that, and he has repealed some of the executive orders that have been doing so much damage to our economy. And when we say economy, what we mean is, the rank and file people, the backbone of America who have been struggling, who have made less money than they did 8 years ago when adjusted for inflation. Those are the people we are talking about; those who have been out of work, the 94 or 95 million who have become so desperate, they pulled out of even applying for work. I enjoyed, to an extent, the exchange between my friend, Kevin McCarthy and my friend across the aisle Leader Hoyer. And I get amused when I hear Democrats quoting Senator McCain and Senator Graham-- wonderful people. Lindsey Graham, it is a real joy to be around talking to Lindsey Graham. But if you look at positions they have taken, it would make you think twice about quoting them as positions you wanted to have supporting yours. I mean, nothing stands taller than the 30 million of the 90 million or so living in Egypt, when they rose up that June because a Muslim brother named Morsi was seizing power. He was on his way to becoming the Chavez in North Africa, and the people rose up. It was not only the largest peaceful demonstration in the history of the world, it was the largest demonstration in the history of the world. All over Egypt, moderate Muslims, Christians, Jews, secularists, they all rose up, went to the streets and demanded the removal of the man who would be king, the Muslim brother named Morsi. The difference in this king is, as many of the Egyptians have pointed out when I have been in Cairo and other places, he wasn't just going to be king. He was going to be the puppet of the spiritual leader of Islam in Egypt. Some of my Egyptian friends, when I have been over there, say: yeah, we have seen video of him taking his orders from the spiritual imam, and he followed his leadership. So if that is true, then he wasn't just going to be king. He was going to be a king puppet. But the Muslim brother was removed as a result of 30 million people rising up peacefully. Morsi only, allegedly, got around 13 million to claim the win and made clear his opponent knew--for the original Presidential election--that if he raised a stink about any votes being fraudulent, they would burn the country down--that was some of his supporters. Because the Muslim Brotherhood, if you go back and check, when churches are burned, it is normally the Muslim Brotherhood over there. In Egypt, they had been anathema to representative government, to civilized government, to nonsectarian government. They want a new caliphate to start with basically the old Ottoman Empire and Erdogan in Turkey; he is undoing all of the great reforms made by the great Ataturk nearly 100 years ago, and he is undoing them. There are those in Turkey who would like to see a caliphate--a new Ottoman Empire--and it have its leadership in Turkey. They long for the days when they ruled an expansive caliphate. I had a reporter say: Why would you say that? I said: Go look at a map. I know you weren't ever taught what the Ottoman Empire was. Go look at a map and look at the countries where our President is supporting an uprising that eventually, if we don't stop it, will become anarchy or it will become part of the caliphate. The new jobs report that is just out: 227,000 new jobs. And from what I'm hearing from constituents, these aren't just the part-time jobs or the minimum wage jobs that the previous President bragged about. He had to brag about it because he didn't have anything else to talk about. People lost their full-time jobs and could only acquire part-time jobs, and this administration bragged about those. If they got two part-time jobs to make up for losing their full-time job, this Administration bragged: We created two jobs. I would submit that when you are creating two jobs by causing a person to lose all of their benefits and full-time employment, you haven't done such a good thing. Fortunately, the people of Egypt did not listen to Senator McCain and Senator Graham when they flew to Cairo and begged for the people of Egypt to return the Muslim ``brother who would be king'' back into his royal kingship. I know they weren't intentionally supporting an evil ruler; it is just they didn't know. So, hopefully, they will become more aware that it is not a good thing to support the Muslim Brotherhood. With regard to Australia and the alleged news about President Trump getting into it with the leader of Australia, well, to whom is the leader of Australia accountable? To whom does the leader of Australia owe his allegiance? It is the people of Australia. So when he calls or talks to President Trump and begs or demands Trump to take these refugees that the Prime Minister in Australia knows are a threat to the safety of the Australian people, when he wants them out of Australia, there is a reason--because his allegiance is not to the people of the United States--his allegiance is to the people of Australia. So, naturally, being allegiant to the people of Australia, he wants the dangerous refugees out of Australia. President Obama, basically by his actions, in effect, was saying: Give us not your tired, your poor, the people yearning to be free, but give us your people that yearn to destroy America because we're going to bring them in. We're not going to vet them properly because we have got no information to properly vet them. That's how we have been able to let people in who had their fingerprints on IEDs that killed Americans, and maimed Americans because we are not properly vetting them. Oh, yeah, we compare any information we have against what we've got. But don't forget, as Phil Haney, the whistleblower from Homeland Security, pointed out, he was personally required to delete massive pages of information about terrorist ties of people coming into the United States because they did not want those terrorist ties in the Homeland Security database. Then he also, of course, was on his computer when he saw somebody above his pay grade deleting things that he personally put in about terrorist ties. They were deleting them. So when Janet Napolitano talks about, We get a ping and we connect the dots, she caused massive numbers of dots to be deleted. They are not there. We don't know who we are getting. When anyone comes from Syria--we know ISIS has taken governmental printing areas before. They can produce official Syrian passports not with the support of the Syrian Government, but just because they have the equipment to do it. So when we get information saying, I am from Syria, maybe they are, and maybe they're not. We don't know where they're from. The FBI Director created one of the most incredible political stunts of any FBI Director in history last summer when he stepped up and outlined that a crime had been committed by Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. But then he goes on to say: But no reasonable prosecutor would pursue this. It is incredible the extent he went to to help Hillary Clinton. I know there were some of my Democratic friends that got mad at him when a week before the election he said that they were reopening the investigation. But if you look at the circumstances, it was information that we had FBI agents who were so upset that Comey wouldn't reopen the investigation. When they knew some of what was in the computers that they had gotten ahold of belonged to Anthony Weiner and Hillary Clinton's closest adviser and confidante, Huma Abedin Weiner, the word was we had FBI agents saying that: If you don't reopen, we're going to have a press conference, we're going to resign, and we're going to out you that you're protecting Hillary Clinton. So what could he do to help Hillary Clinton but say: ``I am going to reopen the investigation?'' I commented to somebody in the media back then: Well, of course, it may appear to help Hillary. We will know whether that was his intent or not because you can't examine tens of thousands of emails adequately. You can do an algorithm search, but you can't adequately investigate them for a crime, including false statements to the FBI, within a week. So if he comes out before the election and says that there is nothing here, then we know why he came out and said that we are reopening. It was to stop FBI agents from resigning and from outing him for protecting Hillary Clinton. So what happens? Two days before the election, he said: Yeah, we checked it all out. He couldn't possibly have. He said: We checked it all out, and there is nothing here to prosecute. So that same FBI Director, though, didn't help the Obama administration. On occasion, he was calling them like he saw them; and that is: Yeah, we will vet these people, but when they give us information from Syria, we have no information against which to vet that. We have to accept it for what it is because, yeah, we're technically vetting it against what we have, but we have nothing, so we don't know who these people are. So, in the meantime, the economy is turning around. How sad is it when we have just lived through 8 years under a President's policies that were so abysmal for the good of America that the economy, when adjusted for inflation, was slower than it was in the 4 years of Jimmy Carter? I know there are some in the media that would grab 1 month and say: See, this was a good month. Let's look at the 8 years compared to the 4 years of President Carter, 4 of the worst years for the American economy in history since the Depression. President Obama, over 8 years, had a slower economy when adjusted for inflation. That is pretty sad. It is also sad this week to read this article from The Daily Caller: ``Laura Wilkerson, whose teenage son was tortured and murdered by an illegal alien in 2010, got into an emotional confrontation with House Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at a CNN town hall event Tuesday night. ``Wilkerson told Pelosi, `In 2010, one of the illegals slaughtered my son. He tortured him, he beat him, he tied him up like an animal, and he set him on fire. And I am not a one-story mother. This happens every day because there are no laws enforced at the border. We have to start giving American families first.' ``On the issue of Pelosi and Democrats' support for sanctuary cities, Wilkerson asked, `How do you reconcile in your head about allowing people to disavow the law?' `` `There's nothing, I'm sure, that can compare to the grief that you have, and so I pray for you,' Pelosi said.'' Pelosi went on: ``But I do want to say to you that in our sanctuary cities, our people are not disobeying the law. These are law-abiding citizens. It enables them to be there without being reported to ICE in case of another crime that they might bear witness to.'' ``Pelosi then asked if her son was murdered in a sanctuary city. Josh, Wilkerson's son, was murdered just outside Houston, Texas, which is a sanctuary city.'' So I believe in the power of prayer. I think it's one of the greatest gifts God gave us. C.S. Lewis talked about we are here on Earth behind enemy lines, if you would. Can you imagine being behind enemy lines and getting messages from your home headquarters and you refuse to open them and read them? He says that we have a Bible. Those are messages from our home headquarters. We ought to be reading them. I do believe in the power of prayer, just like our minority leader, Ms. Pelosi; but we need to distinguish between things that we should pray for and things that we can fix ourselves. Things that are outside our control, we ought to be praying about. Those things which are in our control--when it is within your control--to return to the rule of law, enforce the laws that exist, treat everybody fairly under the law, that's something you don't really have to pray about. You just help us do it. I have not met Tommy Nelson, a pastor in Denton, Texas, but I listened to a 12-hour Bible study he did; and one of his comments on that study in Ecclesiastes was basically what so many people say: We don't have to worry; God is in control. Tommy Nelson said: Yeah, God is in control, but just because He is in control doesn't mean He wants us to lean on our shovel and pray for a hole. When you have got a shovel in your hand, you don't have to pray for a hole; you just start digging. When you have got the tools to protect the American people and enforce the rule of law, you just do it. Now, you can pray for wisdom to help you as you go. I know it may have been a Freudian slip--may not have been--but when Minority Leader Pelosi was asked about illegal aliens, she referred to them as ``our people.'' I don't know; could that be because they know when illegal aliens vote, they vote Democrat? We know that most dead people vote 100 percent Democrat. I have encouraged the Republican Party: Let's don't have any group that we're not willing to recruit votes from, and traditionally dead people vote 100 percent Democrat. Perhaps it's time that some of them started voting Republican for a change. In any event, the minority whip, Mr. Hoyer, was talking about a fellow with tears in his eyes saying: Please don't repeal ObamaCare because my son will be unable to get insurance if you repeal ObamaCare. Well, that gets to all of us when somebody with tears in their eyes comes to us and begs for help. The only reason he had tears in his eyes is because of the false information being put out by the Democratic Party, because when we repeal ObamaCare, people are not going to lose their insurance. Some Americans have a right to be skeptical because they were told by President Obama and all of the Democrats: No, no, when we pass ObamaCare, nobody loses their insurance. Well, we found out that that was a lie to millions of Americans. Some of them were able to get insurance. Some of it ended up being Medicaid. Most of the new people got Medicaid, which is not really the insurance they were hoping for, but that's the insurance most people got. I had 17 people come to my office in Lufkin. They were looking to make a show and not so much to give information; otherwise, they would have called for an appointment. My district representative there was at a service honoring her late father at a hospice and she forgot, in her emotional state, to put a note on the door that she was running to that. Anyway, they made a big deal, here is an office not occupied. Hopefully, they will have a little sympathy for somebody in her situation. But they weren't looking to get information to me. That is why the reporter had more information about the meeting when my office had no information about the meeting. If they want an appointment, we make appointments. I am here most of the time, so I can't be there. I have got people to meet with them. This article, February 1, Melissa Quinn, Daily Signal: ``Pamela Weldin's experiences with ObamaCare can be boiled down to just a few numbers. Since the health care law's implementation 3 years ago, Weldin, 60, has lost her insurance four different times''--under ObamaCare. ``And the Nebraska woman is currently enrolled in her fifth new insurance policy in four years.'' She said: `` `Yet again, and through no fault of my own'. . . . `I'm just sitting here minding my own business, and here we go again.' '' She gets thrown off another insurance policy. Anyway, she goes on to explain she has been denied coverage because of a preexisting condition related to her career as a dental hygienist. People are not going to lose their insurance. All we are going to do is create the opportunity to have far better insurance policies than you have got under ObamaCare. You are not going to get a penalty for having better insurance than what ObamaCare required. So you don't have to pay a penalty, and you can have good insurance and you won't be taxed for having better insurance. It is going to be a great day for America to do that. That brings me to a point I want to get to next about the wall. An article here, February 1, Virginia Hale from Breitbart, says: ``Smuggling Migrants to Europe Now a Major Funding Source for Islamic State.'' Well, it only makes sense that the Islamic State would figure that out, because we had information they consulted with the drug cartels in Mexico. As the Border Patrolmen have told me during the middle of the night the times I have been down there, there is not an inch of the Mexican border that is not controlled by some drug cartel. Nobody crosses that border illegally without paying something to the drug cartel or promising to work for them when they get to America. What a great business model. You are selling drugs, making billions of dollars getting it across the border illegally into the United States, and, unlike most businesses where you have to pay the employee, they get the employee to pay them as part of their debt repayment to get them into the United States. So, what a business model, making billions from selling drugs illegally gotten into the United States, and then the Department of Homeland Security, as one told me down on the border: They call us their logistics, in the drug cartels, because we ship people all over the country to cities where they need drug sales, prostitutes, mules. We send them there, and then they have got people selling drugs for them. If we build a wall--and I know there are areas like where the Rio Grande is so wide you don't need a wall, you just have people guard the border--it cuts off the massive flow of drugs into the United States. It means the billions of dollars going to the drug cartels that they can use to corrupt the Mexican Government will dry up to thousands. Drug cartels know it. So I would submit, Mr. Speaker, the only Mexican leaders that object to a wall and total security of our border between Mexico are either ignorant--they don't understand that the reason they are 60-something in world economies instead of being fourth or fifth or sixth is because of the corruption that comes from the drug cartels. You dry up the billions of dollars they are making with a wall and border security, and Mexico gets in the top 10 economies. But, yes, it means the drug cartels dry up. They are either ignorant of what will really happen when we secure the border or they are in the pocket of the drug cartels. Those are the only two choices. If you are a Mexican leader and you oppose the United States enforcing our border, you are in the pocket of the drug cartels or you are just ignorant of why your economy is not one of the top 10 in the world. You have got the best location. You have got two continents north and south above you. They would be great markets. You have got two great oceans on either side to ship. You have got incredible natural resources. You have got some of the hardest working people in the world in Mexico. So why is it so far down the chain of economies? Well, drug cartels. The wall and border security will dry them up and the Mexican people will be free with a vibrant economy, and they will take their appropriate place in the great economies of the world. I have been joined by my friend from Florida, and I mean that truly. I think the world of Matt Gaetz. I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Gaetz).

Mr. GOHMERT. I thank the gentleman. I would also note, as this Federalist article points out, yeah, of course, when there is a terrorist attack, it also affects the economy. That is why Osama bin Laden wrote about how they had only spent a tiny amount of money to train their people from 9/11 and that it had clearly cost America trillions of dollars, that even if they couldn't bring us down any other way, if they could do other attacks like that, costing relatively low amounts to them but costing us billions and trillions, they could bring us down economically. So it only makes sense, though, Iran wants to bring us down, so they ought to be one of the seven that the Obama administration named as a threat, and they were. But even just recently at Ohio State University, Abdul Razak Ali Artan ran over several students with a car before attacking them with a butcher knife. That was a refugee born in Somalia, one of the seven countries that the Obama administration named as a threat, and so President Trump took the Obama administration seriously and named them as one of seven, that we would have not a permanent ban but a temporary ban for 90 days. The guy ran over numerous students at Ohio State, but our friends on the other side of the aisle and their friends in the mass media, they refuse to notice what is going on. Look at Tsarnaev, the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston. As we know, Russia notified the United States not once but twice that the older Tsarnaev had been radicalized, and he had been to a country, and the people he hung around with were radicals, and it seemed like they probably radicalized him. So what happens? Well, they get information to our intelligence community, and, since, they have been trained for the last 8 years to only notice Islamophobes. You can tell someone is an Islamophobe if they complain about a radical Islamist, then you know you have got an Islamophobe. So of course if they want to stay in the intelligence community, they are not going to be looking. They are going to follow their training, look for Islamophobes instead of looking for radical Islamists. I am sure they looked into it, but, based on their training, they have no basis to work with. So what happens? Russia notified us again. As I understand, they notified the FBI. And as the FBI Director commented, look, we sent an FBI agent to interview him, and he said, basically, he wasn't a terrorist, he was a good guy. Wow. Imagine that. Somebody who wants to kill Americans might also lie. Who would have ever thought? Except American juries. I have seen it as a judge. I have seen juries find that if you will lie to them, you may do a lot worse things as well. Well, the reverse is also true. Often, if you are willing to take someone's life, you might just be willing to lie about it as well. So the FBI didn't even stop there, taking the word. They didn't take the word of Tsarnaev. They went to his mother, and apparently his mother said: No, my son is not a terrorist. He is a good boy. He is a good boy. There you go, full FBI investigation. Not under the old FBI. Not the way most FBI agents have ever been trained. But, of course, under the last 8 years of training of the FBI, they were afraid to ask the tough questions. The truth is, they don't know the questions to ask. They don't know that you should ask about whether there has been a tremendous increase in the amount of study of the Koran and a massive increase in the memorization of the Koran, and a change in the appearance, and knowing what to look for, and asking questions like: What do you think about Qutb, the Egyptian martyr, the Muslim brother who wrote the little book ``Milestones'' that Osama bin Laden said, along with Mr. Nasif, for whom Huma Abedin worked at one time according to the masthead of the publication, he credited Nasif and also Qutb's book ``Milestones'' to radicalizing him. If you haven't been trained with Kim Jensen's 700 pages, which were outlawed by the FBI for a while, because he clearly explained what FBI agents should be looking for. Mr. Jensen told me that they banned his information, they struck it, and wouldn't allow anybody to be trained. Under incident information, they train people what to look for in a radical Islamist. But then they brought it back, but only for some of the leaders. The rank and file for so long under this administration did not get the benefit of his 700 pages that would help train. Why? Because CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, who had implications in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the biggest supporter of terrorism ever prosecuted in the United States, convictions all around in November of 2008, and they should have gone on to prosecute the named co-conspirators. The only reason they didn't is because a new administration came in. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--the mastermind of 9/11, of the brutal killing of about 3,000 Americans and other foreigners, innocent victims--has bragged about his planning. In a guilty plea where the judge went through, as I used to, to make sure they understood their rights, he bragged about that and some terrorist attacks they didn't even know he had involvement in. He was bragging. And he says, if we have terrorized you, then praise be to Allah. And he says such things as we deserve attack, we deserve to be killed in America, anyone who is a low-life Jew or says that God has a Son. So those of us who believe God had a Son, and He loved the world so much He sent His only begotten Son and whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life, anybody who believes that is worthy of death under the Koran, according to the brilliant teacher and mastermind of the 9/11 attack. And then he quotes from the Koran that anyone who tries to combine someone with Allah is worthy of death, and that means any Christian. They have explained these things. But Khalid Sheikh Mohammed went through an expansive hearing with a judge explaining what all he was involved in and why he was guilty of 9/11 and praise be to Allah for all of the people that were killed on 9/11 at the Pentagon, at the World Trade Centers. Why was he not sentenced? Because we had an election in 2008, and before the plea was made final, we had a new Attorney General named Eric Holder. At that point, all bets were off. They didn't follow up the plea was withdrawn, and he still hasn't been sentenced for the things he admitted to over 8 years ago. Had they simply moved forward with the guilty plea, if we had had a President for the last 8 years that made clear ``you might as well plead guilty because nobody else is going to let you out,'' then we would have finished the guilty plea, and he would have been appropriately sentenced. But instead, this administration chose to send hope to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed he might end up being one of the people they release; because, if they close Guantanamo Bay, he either gets moved to the United States or we let him go, maybe like we have for some who went to Yemen and are back in the fight, or other people like Saudi Arabia and are back in the fight. He had real hope once President Obama came in and Eric Holder became Attorney General, and Loretta Lynch after him, that he might get released even after he admitted to the most important role in the killing of 3,000 people on American soil on 9/11. He still has not been prosecuted. They didn't follow up on his guilty plea. The plea was withdrawn. That man should not be allowed out of prison. He is a threat to the world, and he is a valuable tool in the hands of radical Islam. Well, thank God, as President Obama said, elections have consequences. We have a President who didn't take an oath of office to protect all of the people of Australia. He made clear that our friends will know they are our friends, and I can see him working very closely with the Prime Minister of Australia in the future. But leaders around the world are now taking notice: Wait a minute. America has a President that is not coming to us and apologizing for America's goodness and their pursuit of freedom for as many people as they can--not apologizing. He is making clear, if you are our friend, you are going to feel it. If you are our enemy, you are going to feel it. So I think Iran may have finally met their match. We don't have an apologist to come in and apologize for America's efforts, the blood, the treasure that has been spent on behalf of people around the world. And now even our Australian Prime Minister understands: Look, I want to work with you--President Trump feels that way; he wants to work with them, and he will work with them--but my oath is to the United States of America and I know your oath is to Australia. I know because of your oath to help and protect the people of Australia you want to get rid of those refugees, some of whom may be dangerous. I know President Obama said: Yeah, we will take the dangerous people that may hurt Australians. Never mind we have got Americans being hurt. We will take them. Well, there is a different sheriff in town here in Washington, and leaders around the world need to know that starting on January 20, the United States is no longer going to take actions that are detrimental to our own well-being, to the well-being of Americans, and to the security of the United States under our Constitution. So thank God, thank Trump, thank those that are seeing with clarity what is going on. We will look forward to working with the Mexican leaders that realize the only way Mexico ever achieves its rightful economic place in the world is if a wall is built where it can be so that our border is enforced and the drug cartels are impoverished. Then Mexico can be one of the top economies in all the world because of the best workers, some of the best workers in the world, and massive natural resources with which they have been blessed. They just, so far, have not had America be the kind of good neighbor that would help them stop the drug cartels. Instead, we would have Presidents, administrations like the past one, that would send 2,000 weapons to the drug cartels instead of stopping them. It is a new day. Thank God it is. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.