Al Green

Mr. GREEN of Texas

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

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise to a question of the privileges of the House and offer H. Res. 1486, the resolution that was previously noticed.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise unbought, unbossed, a liberated, unelected Democrat. I rise notwithstanding the fact that I have been censured but not silenced. I rise because as a person who has been censured and not silenced, I understand the value and the worth in having the opportunity to speak. I continue to speak because I made a commitment to my constituents that I would work hard as long as I am in the Congress, and I will work for them to make sure that they achieve affordability for food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, the necessities of life. That is what affordability is all about. I also, Mr. Speaker, have been a proponent of impeachment. For years, I have talked about it. As of late, I have indicated that we are in a countdown to impeachment, a countdown. The countdown continues. Mr. Speaker, I have an official notice in my hand indicating that there will be a Republican motion to table H. Res. 1486, impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States for high crimes and misdemeanors. This will take place today sometime after 1 p.m. This is the resolution that I have presented to this House. I have presented it, Mr. Speaker, because we have a President who has condoned and supported the killings of innocent people. These were people who were committing no crimes. Let us start with Renee Good. On January 7, 2026, she lost her life. We have heard little or nothing about an investigation at the Federal level, and the Federal officers do all that they can to prevent the local prosecutors from moving forward with the case. The same thing has happened with Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero. These four persons have lost their lives. Alex Pretti was on the ground, hands out, and he was shot nine times. He was shot more than nine times while he was on the ground unarmed. He was unarmed. There has not been an indication of any type of investigation that would lead to an indictment. I am here today to say that I will be voting to impeach the President of the United States. I will vote to impeach him, and I understand that anything other than a vote to impeach him is going to be a vote to support him. It will be a vote to support him. I will not vote to support a person who has, under his operation of ICE and CBP, caused four persons to lose their lives and says ugly things about them. He has called them terrorists and other ugly names. He has said that the victims were persons who were somehow at fault for the demise that they have suffered, for the death that was brought upon them. I believe that I have a duty, a responsibility, and an obligation as a sworn Member of Congress, sworn in to support and defend the Constitution. I will be voting to defend the Constitution and support it today when I vote to impeach the President. Here is one thing that I will call to everyone's attention: The families of these persons are still suffering. They expect us to do something. I do believe that we have this obligation to impeach. This is why these articles were brought. I have been saying this for some time, long before this last election wherein I was not re-elected to Congress. Those who question my motives, I didn't question your motives until you questioned mine. When you do that, you can expect me to question yours. Finally, Mr. Speaker, how many more will have to die before we will take up this cause seriously? How many more? It is hard for me to believe that we have Democrats who are going to vote to maintain the President in office.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I ask that any notice be given to my chief of staff, and I ask that I be allowed at least 30 minutes to return to the floor because there are other duties that I have on the campus.

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, point of order.

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 2(a)(1) of rule IX, I rise to give notice of my intention to raise a question of the privileges of the House. The form of the resolution is as follows: H. Res. 1486. Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors. Resolved, that Donald John Trump, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, as he has violated article II, section 1, clause 8 of the United States Constitution by failing to uphold his constitutionally mandated solemn Presidential oath of office to ``preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,'' thereby demonstrating that he is a great threat to democracy and the Constitution for current high crimes and misdemeanors not cited in H. Res. 24, under which he was impeached on January 13, 2021, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the Senate: Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, against Donald John Trump, President of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against him for high crimes and misdemeanors. article i Our country and the lives of people within it are at risk as President Donald John Trump is a great threat to the United States democratic republic, its Constitution, and democracy, violating article II, section 1, clause 8 of the United States Constitution and its mandate to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, as he is abusing the powers of the Presidency by operating United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as his vicious, quota-driven, unaccountable paramilitary police forces, transgressing with anonymity and secrecy, assaulting people, committing and covering up unjustified killings of civilians (including Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero) with impunity (acting as judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner), terrorizing communities, and brazenly and wantonly devolving the United States democratic republic into an authoritarian regime, where unjustified killings and coverups by ICE and CBP are normalized. The case for President Donald John Trump's impeachment is as follows: ``Shall any man be above justice?'' These immortal words of Constitutional Convention delegate George Mason became the impetus for adding high crimes and misdemeanors to the Constitution as grounds for the impeachment of a President who commits injustices harmful to the republic (society) or who, if left in office, would be a threat to the republic. Ahead of the 2024 election, former Vice President Dick Cheney declared, ``In our nation's 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.''. The President is reducing American democracy to an authoritarian regime. An authoritarian regime is a system of government that has no established mechanism for the transfer of executive power and limits citizens' civil liberties or political rights, often characterized by a leader with near absolute power, a powerful secret police force, low political trust, and little tolerance of dissent. The President is overseeing and defending unjustified killings. An unjustified killing is a death caused by someone--often a law enforcement officer or other authorized actor--when there was no lawful reason, immediate threat, or legal justification for using deadly force, making the act unlawful under criminal or human rights standards. The President is covering up unjustified killings. A coverup is a usually concerted effort to keep an illegal or unethical act or situation from being made public. The United States Constitution accords the United States House of Representatives the power to impeach a President for high crimes and misdemeanors committed in violation of the President's mandated oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the United States Constitution, codified in article II, section 1, clause 8 of the United States Constitution. High crimes and misdemeanors need not be criminal or statutory, and are therefore not constrained by Federal criminal or civil statutes. Impeachment is a political question, as the offenses ``relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself,'' as determined by a majority vote of the United States House of Representatives. High crimes and misdemeanors committed by the President of the United States and not addressed by this body (the United States House of Representatives) through its sovereign impeachment power, unconstrained by the ostensible will of the United States Senate, threaten the very fabric and survival of the United States Constitution and our democratic republic. After having been impeached by the United States House of Representatives on January 13, 2021, under articles of impeachment in H. Res. 24, stating that Donald John Trump, ``. . . has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.'' Dangerously, President Trump continues to be a threat to the United States, democracy, the Constitution, and the United States democratic republic if allowed to remain in office, as he has replaced those he incited to assault the Capitol with ICE and CBP. On the first day of his second four-year term as President of the United States, he made it perspicuously clear to ICE and CBP officers that he would pardon them for breaches of Federal law by pardoning more than 1,000 persons convicted of Federal crimes associated with the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. He now continues to act in a manner ``grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law'' by condoning Federal investigators withholding evidence from local investigators and engaging in coverups, thereby protecting the offending officers instead of the American people. President Trump, using the powers of his high office, individually and in coordination with officers in his administration, has transformed ICE and CBP into dangerous, unaccountable paramilitary police forces that operate without oversight and pose a direct threat to the constitutional order of the United States and the people of the United States. By such abuses of power, President Trump is brazenly and wantonly devolving the United States democratic republic into an authoritarian regime. Under President Trump, ICE and CBP operate with impunity while armed with military-grade weapons and control vast resources provided by taxpayers to fund President Trump's anti-democracy agenda. President Trump has used ICE and CBP to suppress the First Amendment rights to free speech and a free press; violate the Fourth Amendment right to privacy and protections against unlawful searches and excessive force; and defy the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection by allowing and encouraging racially targeted arrests, unjustified detentions, and unjustified killings. These unjustified killings include those of Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero. President Trump, by his conduct, continues to demonstrate that he is a great threat to democracy, the United States Constitution, and the democratic republic, by dangerously flouting constitutional rights, including: (1) enabling ICE and CBP to act as judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner by assaulting and committing unjustified killings of people with impunity, in violation of the Fifth Amendment right to due process; (2) enabling ICE and CBP to operate with anonymity and in secrecy to terrorize communities, in violation of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fifth Amendment right to due process; (3) enabling ICE and CBP to undermine civil liberties and basic freedom of speech, in violation of the First Amendment right to free speech; and (4) undermining judicial oversight. As a result, ICE and CBP, under President Trump's authority, have been converted into his militarized secret police forces (often acting as judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner) that violate and debase, instead of uphold, the rule of law by abusing and harming those they should protect, as explicated below for each of the above topics. (1) enabling ice and cbp to act as judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner when assaulting and committing unjustified killings with impunity, in violation of the fifth amendment right to due process Under President Trump's control and with the support and backing of senior officials in his administration, Federal immigration officers have conducted unjustified killings of civilians with impunity, including Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero. The Trump administration has encouraged, condoned, and covered up these unjustified killings by protecting the shooters and spreading dangerous misinformation about the shootings and the victims while obstructing State and local investigations. Preventing local investigations, congressional oversight, and judicial accountability has enabled ICE and CBP officers to act with impunity as judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner. On January 7, 2026, an ICE officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, an unarmed civilian, U.S. citizen, Minneapolis resident, wife, mother of young children, and poet. Video evidence demonstrates and witnesses confirm that she posed no threat to ICE officers when an ICE officer opened fire, shooting her three times, striking her in the head, and killing her. ICE officers failed to render any aid to Ms. Good, in violation of DHS policies, and blocked and then delayed emergency medical personnel from reaching her. This is an unjustified killing. President Trump, directly and through senior officials in his administration, including then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, immediately began to cover up the crime and protect ICE officers from being held responsible for Ms. Good's killing. They repeatedly lied about Ms. Good, the ICE officers' actions, and the events surrounding the shooting, all of which are refuted by witnesses and video evidence of the event. The Trump administration, by and through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), blocked Minnesota law enforcement from gaining access to materials and evidence related to the shooting, and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) refused to investigate the killing. Instead, the FBI and DOJ tried to force employees to investigate Ms. Good's widow, which prompted a wave of resignations. On January 7, 2026, President Trump issued the following statement on Truth Social: ``I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense. Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive but is now recovering in the hospital. The situation is being studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis. They are just trying to do the job of MAKING AMERICA SAFE. We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.''. The above statement is proof of President Trump's enabling of a coverup and condoning of an unjustified killing. Without a trial, a Federal immigration officer acted as judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner. On January 24, 2026, Federal immigration officers killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, when he was part of a small group of approximately fifteen peaceful protesters. Video and witness accounts demonstrate that immediately before the shooting, a Federal officer shoved a female observer standing next to Mr. Pretti. When Mr. Pretti moved between the officer and the woman he had assaulted, the officer sprayed Mr. Pretti with a chemical agent and pulled him to his knees. At least six other officers then surrounded Mr. Pretti, pushed him to the ground, and took possession of Mr. Pretti's gun. Officers then shot Mr. Pretti at least nine times, killing him. As with the unjustified killing of Ms. Good, the Federal officers did not provide medical aid. Although Mr. Pretti was armed--with a gun he was legally licensed to carry--he never brandished it at any point during the encounter, despite being assaulted physically, including with chemical agents, and a Federal officer had control of Mr. Pretti's weapon when he was killed. President Trump, once again, directly and through senior officials in his administration, including then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, attempted to cover up the crime, protect the ICE officers who killed Mr. Pretti, and spread dangerous and demonstrably false disinformation about Mr. Pretti, the protest, and his unjustified killing. On January 30, 2026, President Trump issued the following statement on Truth Social: ``Agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist, Alex Pretti's stock has gone way down with the just released video of him screaming and spitting in the face of a very calm and under control ICE Officer, and then crazily kicking in a new and very expensive government vehicle, so hard and violent, in fact, that the taillight broke off in pieces. It was quite a display of abuse and anger, for all to see, crazed and out of control. The ICE Officer was calm and cool, not an easy thing to be under those circumstances! Make America Great Again.''. The above statement is further proof of President Trump's enabling of a coverup and condoning of an unjustified killing. Without a trial, a Federal immigration officer acted as judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner. On July 7, 2026, an ICE officer shot and killed 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, an undocumented immigrant who had lived and worked in the United States for nearly 35 years and was the father of three U.S. citizens, as he drove his construction crew to a Houston job site. Federal officers in two unmarked SUVs drove erratically to follow Mr. Araujo, including by driving on the wrong side of the street toward Mr. Araujo's vehicle. After blocking Mr. Araujo's vehicle, Federal officers--none of whom were wearing body cameras--committed the unjustified killing of Mr. Araujo, who was unarmed and not a target of an investigation, and arrested the surviving passengers. Three witnesses have stated that the ICE officials shot at Mr. Araujo soon after they exited their vehicle and that Mr. Araujo never drove the vehicle toward the unmarked SUVs or the ICE officers. A spokesperson for DHS, echoing false claims it has made repeatedly, including to justify the killing of Ms. Good, claimed that they shot Mr. Araujo because he rammed an ICE vehicle, a claim not supported by video evidence and contradicted by witnesses. Federal officials took Mr. Araujo's belongings and sent him to the hospital as a John Doe. His sons had to learn about his death by seeing video footage of their father dying in the street where he was shot. DOJ and DHS, acting under the authority and control of President Trump, have refused to cooperate with local investigations, refused to disclose the names of the perpetrators, claimed the officers involved acted in self-defense, and are painting Mr. Araujo as an aggressor before any investigation has been completed. These self-defense claims are not supported by available video evidence and are contradicted by witnesses. Federal officials also publicly insinuated that Mr. Araujo was involved in narcotics activity by highlighting the discovery of a ``crystal-like substance'' in his vehicle. Subsequent laboratory testing confirmed that the substance was not an illicit drug, disproving those suggestions. This too is an unjustified killing. Without a trial, a Federal immigration officer acted as judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner. On July 13, 2026, ICE officers killed Mr. Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero, an unarmed man, in Biddeford, Maine, during yet another purported traffic stop in which the victim posed no threat to the ICE officers who gunned him down. DHS claims that it was surveilling the last-known address of someone with a final order of removal, followed someone who left that residence, and then, when that person drove away in the vehicle, the officer, ``fearing for public safety,'' shot and killed Mr. Guerrero, while his wife watched from their apartment building window. In fact, ICE officers were looking for someone else; Mr. Guerrero had work authorization, was a husband, and was the father of a three-year-old daughter who had to see her father lying dead in the street after being gunned down by ICE officers. This too is an unjustified killing. Without a trial, a Federal immigration officer acted as judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner. Though DHS briefly ceased non-urgent traffic stops after its officers unjustifiably killed two people within a single week, President Trump swiftly announced his support for DHS policies that have resulted in the brutal killing of civilians, via a social media post: ``The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done. We CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.'s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!'' President Trump continued to condone unjustified killings by ICE and CBP officials. (2) enabling ice and cbp to operate with anonymity and secrecy to terrorize communities, in violation of the fourth amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures and the fifth amendment right to due process Under President Trump's control, ICE and CBP officers hide their identities by wearing masks and other face coverings, failing to wear identifying uniforms, refusing to provide their names and badge numbers, and entering homes without warrants. Through government- sanctioned anonymity, officers evade accountability to the public, elected officials, and the courts. Under President Trump's direction, his administration has actively refused to cooperate with and has intentionally hampered State investigations into abuses by Federal officers, withholding important evidence to shield officers from scrutiny for unjustified killings in Minnesota, Texas, and Maine. The masks worn by officers also inspire fear and instill terror in their victims and the communities in which the officers operate. As Judge William G. Young of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts explained: ``ICE goes masked for a single reason--to terrorize Americans into quiescence. . . . [M]asks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history, we have never tolerated an armed, masked secret police.''. (3) enabling ice and cbp to undermine civil liberties and basic freedom of speech, in violation of the first amendment right to free speech With President Trump's express support and encouragement, ICE and CBP have targeted and unconstitutionally arrested pro-Palestinian students and academics without an adequate legal basis in violation of their First Amendment right to free speech, including Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Badar Khan Suri, among others. Under President Trump's command, ICE and CBP are operating with impunity to carry out mass, unlawful arrests; illegally imprison people; illegally remove them from the country; and commit violent crimes against people in an effort to terrorize and silence the American people. In addition to conducting the unjustified killings of civilians, including Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero, ICE and CBP, as part of their normal course of activity, have violently assaulted individuals, used unnecessary force, smashed car windows, and abducted and disappeared individuals. (4) undermining judicial oversight by flouting the separation of powers President Trump, directly and through officials within his administration, has abused his power by shielding ICE and CBP officers from judicial oversight. These agencies have detained and removed individuals despite court orders blocking their removal from the country. Specifically, though not exhaustively, ICE deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador against a court order due to an administrative error, and then President Trump and his administration refused to facilitate his return for several months in defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court order. ICE also deported about 250 Venezuelan men to El Salvador without due process, directly disobeying an emergency order from a Federal judge. In a conversation with El Salvador's president, President Trump suggested detaining and sending U.S. citizens to foreign prisons: ``The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns.''. With the support and backing of President Trump and senior officials in his administration, officers and other agency employees have refused to cooperate with and have actively undermined State and local investigations into misconduct by ICE officers. Federal officials have undertaken baseless public investigations into the victims and the victims' families; they have made official (but false) assurances that ICE officers are immune from prosecution; and pursuant to President Trump's authority, both the FBI and the DOJ have not prosecuted crimes committed by ICE and CBP officers. Furthermore, ICE has blatantly disregarded court orders to release or refrain from moving detainees, again with President Trump's knowledge and pursuant to his orders and authority. The Trump administration acknowledged violating New Jersey Federal judges' orders more than 50 times over the course of 10 weeks in deportation-related cases. Minnesota's chief Federal judge, Patrick J. Schiltz, detailed in a ruling that ICE violated nearly 100 court orders and had disobeyed more judicial directives in January 2026 alone than ``some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.'' A Reuters review of court records found that hundreds of judges have ruled that the Trump administration has unlawfully detained immigrants more than 4,400 times since October 2025, and Politico compiled a database of at least 15,000 rulings against the administration since July 2025; yet, the administration continues to jail people indefinitely. In all of this, President Donald John Trump has violated the article II, section 1, clause 8-mandated Presidential oath of office to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States; has abused the powers of the Presidency by committing high crimes and misdemeanors, in a manner contrary to his trust as President; has detrimentally flouted the United States Constitution by operating vicious, quota-driven, unaccountable paramilitary forces killing people (including Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero); and is now even closer to brazenly and wantonly devolving the United States democratic republic into an authoritarian regime, where, if left in office, unjustified killings of people and coverups by ICE and CBP are normalized to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, Donald John Trump, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, at the conclusion of my 1-minute remarks, I ask to receive the attention of the Speaker to pose a clause 2(a)(1), rule IX resolution, a privileged resolution. I will bring this resolution because there is a President who is committing impeachable offenses, and this is the solution for this President. Mr. Speaker, I await recognition for my resolution.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise, and I rise as I always do, as an unbought, unbossed, liberated, and now emancipated, unelected Democrat. I rise today, Mr. Speaker, in the name of justice for the victims of persons who have died at the hands of the Federal constabulary. That would be ICE and CBP. I rise in the name of justice for these many persons, and I do so, Mr. Speaker, because Dr. King was correct: ``Injustice anywhere is indeed a threat to justice everywhere.'' So I rise in the name of preventing justice from becoming an injustice in your town, Mr. Speaker, or my town or someplace in the United States where it has not had its opportunity to visit thus far. I rise in the name of justice for the many persons who have been victims of ICE and CBP. I also rise as a person who is engaged in a countdown to impeachment. I will say more about this as I proceed. The countdown continues. For now, Mr. Speaker, I am Al Green, a person who has been censured by this House but not silenced, censured but not silenced. I use my voice to speak against injustices. I will use my voice today to speak against the injustice associated with the killings of many persons at the hands of the constabulary known as CBP and ICE. I do so to express the fact that voting for impeachment has become a matter of life and death. Voting for impeachment has become a matter of life and death. That is because the President of the United States, Donald John Trump, is covering up unjustified killings of civilians, including Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero. In doing this, the President of the United States is covering up unjustified killings of civilians, including the persons whom I have just named, with impunity wherein these persons are acting as judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner. They are terrorizing communities, and the President is wantonly and brazenly devolving the United States' democratic Republic into an authoritarian regime. Mr. Speaker, I have accused the President of the United States of engaging in a coverup. For edification purposes, I believe we should discuss what a coverup actually is. I wanted these letters to be exceedingly large so the people viewing can read along with me. A coverup: a usually concerted effort to keep an illegal or unethical act or situation from being made public. We should emphasize the fact that a coverup is an effort, it is an effort to keep an illegal or unethical act or situation from being made public. I emphasize the word ``effort'' because the effort itself, the act of getting involved and engaged and trying to prevent something from being made known, avoiding transparency, that is the coverup. Mr. Speaker, there are some people who believe that you have to succeed and prevent something from happening forever for it to be a coverup. It can be exposed. The coverup is the effort to do it. In this case we have a President who is engaged in an effort to cover up the killings of the persons whom I have mentioned. The President of the United States has control of ICE and CBP, Customs and Border Patrol. He has control of them. Immigration, customs, he has control of ICE. He is the person who has gone so far as to defend these killings. Let's just talk about this for a moment in terms of the killings. These were innocent people, persons who are not charged with crimes or were not charged at the time, and these persons have lost their lives. They were killed, and the killings have not been justified. The killings were done by people who became judge, jury, prosecutor and executioner; judge, jury, prosecutor and executioner. In many cases, in fact, in most of them, initially it was very difficult to get any information about who the actual shooters were. In some cases we have received some information, but in others there still is not information made public by an official authority, an agent of the United States Government, as to who it is who killed the people in question, some of the people in question. This concealing and preventing transparency is a part of the coverup. The coverup continues when the persons have been killed, and the President justifies the killing by saying he supports the killing that took place before an investigation has actually even begun. No investigation, just an indication from the President immediately that these persons were, in some cases, terrorists, that they were persons who were trying to harm officers, when literally we have had video to show what actually occurred in some of the cases. Literally, we have our very own eyes to depend on because it has been displayed across the globe in many cases. Let's take the case of Alex Pretti. Alex Pretti was unarmed at the time he was shot more than nine times while he was prostrate, flattened on the ground, and had officers all around him. He was shot more than nine times, and there has been no indictment. There has been no indication that there will be an indictment from the Federal prosecutors. I remember when George Floyd lost his life at the hands of a member of the constabulary. This was local police. I remember it very well, and probably most people within the sound of my voice--or if you are watching this on C-SPAN--you remember it, too. The reaction from the country and from the world was one of great, I am going to be kind and say, displeasure. People were angry and upset. People engaged in peaceful protests. People were distraught. People literally were seen to be crying and wailing and not understanding how this could possibly happen. We have not had the same global response as it relates to Alex Pretti and some others. Somehow, we are losing that special thing that is called humanity within us. We are losing our humanity as a result of these things happening with a great degree of regularity. In losing our humanity, we are sacrificing the thing that makes us different from all of the other species. It is the humanity that we have. It is the humanity that we are losing because we are allowing this coverup to continue, to continue without our taking the effort to do that which we know can make the difference. We have to expose the coverup. One would say that would be the Department of Justice. They should expose this coverup. Well, the Department of Justice is owned and operated by the person who is the mastermind, if you will, of the coverup--the chief architect, the person who gives his blessing, the President of the United States of America. He controls the Justice Department. In fact, the person who now heads the Justice Department has gone so far as to say that he is the President's lawyer, and he is acting like he believes he is the President's lawyer. One would think that the Justice Department would be out front, transparency presented, and want the American people to understand exactly what has happened and want the American people to appreciate the fact that the wheels of justice are turning in the right direction. Not so. Not this Justice Department. The courts: One would say, well, the courts can resolve this. The courts can resolve it because the courts have the power to issue judgment--only, however, when there is a case before the court. The cases for these four persons that I have called to your attention are not before the court. As a result, the court cannot act. The Justice Department can't act. The courts can't act. What about the local investigators, the local prosecutors, the local State's attorneys? Why can't they act? Because of the coverup. Because the President and his minions, the king's men, are engaged in a coverup to the extent that the local people cannot--the local investigators, the local prosecutors--they cannot acquire the evidence necessary to bring these cases before a grand jury at the county level. They can't do it because they can't get the evidence. They are trying, but they don't have it. The Justice Department belongs to the President. He owns and operates the Justice Department. The judiciary doesn't have a case before it; therefore, it cannot act. The local investigators can't act because they don't have enough evidence. Who can act when you have this kind of coverup preventing others who have the authority to act, preventing them from having the ability to act because they don't have the evidence necessary to act? Who can act? The people who come into this very hallowed space and cast their votes. The Congress of the United States of America has been empowered by the Constitution for the United States of America. That Constitution accords only the Congress the authority--the power, if you will--to impeach a President for high crimes and misdemeanors, which need not be statutory offenses. You don't have to commit a crime that has been defined by the law to commit a high crime or misdemeanor. That is not what it is about, and that is part of the confusion. Many of the people in this country think that you have to violate some crime to be impeached. Not so. In 1868, Andrew Johnson was impeached. In Article X of the Articles of Impeachment against him, Article X, for berating and demeaning--not in those exact words, but that is the import--berating and demeaning the Congress of the United States of America. He was impeached for saying ugly things about Congress. High crimes and misdemeanors are what the Congress says they are because they are not appealable to any higher authority. There would be a trial in the Senate if there is an impeachment in the House, and the Senate can determine whether a person is convicted or not. You don't appeal the decision to another authority--for example, some court. Not the case. High crimes and misdemeanors are defined right here in this House of Representatives. We have now the only place where we can receive justice, justice for the victims, justice for persons who have been killed, the only place where the coverup can be exposed and talked about, can be presented to the public so that the transparency necessary to make the case for impeachment can prevail. That place is right here in the House of Representatives. This is the place. This is also the place where we have the opportunity to bring before the public some of what appears to be evidence as to what happened. In each of these cases that I have called to your attention, the evidence is very much apparent. The evidence is there because we have seen it on television. The belief that you have to have some prolonged investigation is not correct. There is no necessity for the House of Representatives to conclude that what happened to Alex Pretti has to be investigated over some long period of time. That is absolutely not necessary. When Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868, Article X did not have a prolonged investigation. Article X moved forward to the Senate. We have the opportunity to do what we should do, and we should do it in short order because this is a matter of life and death, a matter of life and death. I am withholding bringing the articles that I have presented to this House because I want to make sure that people have an understanding of what they are voting for. At the next opportunity, the next reasonable opportunity that I have that is available to me, I plan to come before this House and read the Articles of Impeachment so that we may bring them to a vote. That is a part of the process, but the point is, this House of Representatives is now the court of last resort. The Justice Department won't prosecute. Local investigators can't prosecute because they don't have enough evidence. The Judiciary can't act because there is not a case before it. That only leaves the House of Representatives as the court of last resort. A court of last resort should not wait until it can be assured that it has enough votes to win. That is not what courts of last resort do. I will give you examples of people who concluded that they just couldn't wait; they moved forward and how they have made a difference: Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks could not wait. She could have waited for lawsuits. She could have waited for people to meet and negotiate and come to some conclusion as to why Black people shouldn't have to sit in the back of the bus at all times, and if there were not enough seats for Whites, then Blacks would have to stand on the bus. She could have waited for litigation to proceed or negotiation. No. Rosa Parks decided she would engage in a protest, a one-person protest. One person can make a difference. Sometimes it is better to stand alone than not stand at all. Rosa Parks is a supreme, superb example of what one person can do when you are engaged in a righteous cause. Rosa Parks took a seat, and in taking that seat, she took a stand that ignited a spark that started a civil rights and human rights movement right there in her town, her city, her State that became global in terms of how people view it now and understand the necessity for her to do what she did. She didn't wait until she could win. She took her seat because she saw injustice and she knew that someone had to take a stand. That is what we can do: take a stand. Don't wait until you can count on a majority of the votes. How many more lives would be lost? How many people will have to die before we would conclude that we don't have to wait until we have a majority to do the righteous thing? Not just the right thing, the righteous thing. How many lives would be lost? This is a matter of life and death. John Lewis at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. When they went to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they did not expect to be treated kindly. When they were at the Edmund Pettus Bridge marching forward, they did not expect the persons there, the police officers, the constabulary, to greet them warmly. They knew that their fate may involve brutality imposed against them, but still they went to the Edmund Pettus Bridge. As they moved toward the crest of the bridge--if you have ever been there, you can see that it has a crest. As they approached the crest, at some point they could see what was coming, but they marched on. They marched on. They didn't have a majority. They could have litigated their way through it. They could have negotiated as best as they could, but no. They chose to peacefully protest and march on. John Lewis was a friend of mine. He and I conversed many times. We conversed here on the floor on occasion. We conversed in other places, including a jail cell, and we talked about these things. He told me himself that he thought he was going to die on that bridge. They beat him brutally, and they beat the people who were marching peacefully all the way back to Brown Chapel, the church where they started. They beat them back to a church where peaceful protesters aligned themselves and were marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, peacefully. They could have waited, but they knew the necessity to act, notwithstanding having a majority on their side. Lo and behold, that act of peaceful protest was captured by cameras and exposed globally to the citizens of the world. As a result, a Texas President at the time, a former Governor of Texas, Lyndon Johnson, was able to sign into law the Civil Rights Act that probably has allowed me to serve in Congress for the many years that I have. He signed it into law because they didn't wait until they had a majority. They did the righteous thing, not just the right thing, and they moved forward. Waiting, in this case that we are presenting today, would only expose others to possible death. This is a matter of life and death. John Lewis, peacefully protesting at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, not waiting for a majority. The majority is a wonderful thing to have, but it is not necessary to expose corruption. It is not necessary to expose injustice. It is not necessary to expose a lack of transparency. It is not necessary to expose the fact that a coverup is taking place and that it emanates from the highest office in the country, the highest office in the United States of America, from the Presidency. Yes, Dr. Martin Luther King went to Birmingham, Alabama, to peacefully protest. When he went there, he didn't have a majority. When he went there, he knew that he could face certain obstacles. He knew there would be people who would try to thwart his effort. He was eminently correct because he was incarcerated in the Birmingham jail. He wasn't there to break the laws that were righteous. He was there to protest, and as a result, an unjust law caused him to be placed in jail. It was a wonderful thing. For some things that appear to be so unjust that you can't imagine them happening, but there is a way sometimes--for time, some would say God--for time, God, for something to happen to allow a greater thing to happen. While he was in that jail, it afforded him the opportunity to communicate with the persons who wrote the letter. If you want to read the letter that Dr. King wrote in responding to the protests, the persons who were protesting against his being there, they were members of the clergy protesting his coming. These were upstanding persons in the community. They were protesting, and they did it in writing. He wrote a letter from that jail in response to their protests, and in doing it, it has become one of the great reads of all time, his letter from the Birmingham jail where he explicates what invidious discrimination, known as segregation, was really all about. I don't know that we would have the equivalent of the letter from the Birmingham jail without Dr. King having gone to the Birmingham jail. That letter is something that I think was inspired within him because of what had happened to him, the letter from the Birmingham jail. If you haven't read it, you should, but before you read it, read the letter that the persons wrote who were protesting against Dr. King's coming. By the way, they had every right to protest. Dr. King didn't wait. We cannot wait until we have a majority. This is not disrespecting anyone else. This is what we have to do to let a reckless, ruthless, lawless President know that, even if we don't succeed, we are going to expose. We are going to expose the coverup. We are going to expose what is happening. That exposure can prevent, I say possibly prevent, this President from continuing with the reckless, ruthless behavior that we are calling to his attention in the Articles of Impeachment. That exposure says people are watching you. We are going to stop you. This President deals in what I call fait accompli politics. He does things until you stop him. Then you can sometimes wait too long to try and stop him, and the injustice that has been perpetrated cannot be undone. You can't bring back these lives, but you can prevent other lives from being lost. You cannot bring back what only God can give, and that is the gift of life. You can't bring it back once it is gone. We have the duty, responsibility, and a moral obligation to check this President at every point. We ought to file Articles of Impeachment regularly because the impeachable offenses are there. We have to do this. We have to expose fait accompli politics. Here is a good example of what fait accompli politics is all about: Decide that you, as President, want a ballroom, so you decide that you are going to raze, destroy, if you will, a portion of what we call the White House so that you can construct your ballroom. In constructing your ballroom, you decide that you are just going to demolish, to raze a portion of the people's House without the consent of Congress, which is what he has already done. So you decide to do it, and you move forward expeditiously, posthaste, without any reservations. People decide they are going to sue and bring it to the attention of the courts. You use every tactic that you can to prevent it from getting to a court that might give some semblance of justice. But by the time it finally gets to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court now has to grapple with a project that they say--this is the President--is some 60 percent finished. So, as a result, the President is saying: Hey, too late, too late. You have to let me finish because we have this big hole in the ground. You have to let me finish because we need this basement to secure the President and others if there is some sort of attack on the Capitol or on the White House itself, so you have to let me finish. This is the President speaking now: Let me finish. This is fait accompli politics, to put yourself in a position where you can say to the Supreme Court of the United States of America: You can't stop me now. We have crossed the Rubicon. We have gone past the point of no return. We can only go forward now. But the Supreme Court could have stopped him. The Supreme Court should have said to the President: Mr. President, you stop now until you get the consent of Congress. Stop. And if you don't have the consent of Congress, don't move forward. But the Supreme Court is afraid to say that. Why? Because they don't want to confront a President who might defy an order of the Supreme Court, and then we would see truly who this President is--an authoritarian who cares less about the Constitution than he does about the paper it is written on. He doesn't care. This is just words to him. This is advisory--the Constitution. It is not mandatory to him. This is fait accompli politics at its worst--fait accompli. And the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court did side on the side of those who were saying that we have to stop this--I suppose is what they would ultimately say--but the Court decided, no, it wouldn't do this. It wouldn't tell the President to hold up because it didn't want to confront the President who has control of the Department of Justice, the President who has control of the military. What do you do when the President says: Stop me. He tells the Supreme Court: I dare you, stop me. I am going to complete my ballroom. Now, what are you going to do? So they avoid that confrontation, but that confrontation would let the American people know who we are dealing with--a reckless, ruthless, lawless authoritarian. That is what he is. The Supreme Court could have stopped him, and he would have to either have this Congress, or maybe when he is out of office, then the next Congress could proceed with a President who would come to the Congress and ask for its righteous opportunity to give the word to spend the money necessary to do what the President is attempting to do. It could have been done. How does all of that relate to what I am saying? Because the President is dealing with fait accompli politics here. He is, at some point, going to wait long enough before there is some announcement made, and at that point, the locals won't have enough evidence to do anything. Only the Federal authorities can do something if something is to be done. As a result, he can say to them: This is about nothing. This is not about anything. We have examined this--and they always give very few facts to support their commentary, their contentions. This is about nothing. It is all over. We have waited a long time. Don't worry about it. It is all over. Well, it is not all over for those persons who lost their lives. It is not over for those family members. For informational purposes, I have found no place where the President has called the family members who are the survivors of the victims--at least a phone call, no expression of sympathy to those families, nothing said that I have found. If I am wrong, I am sure that there will be people who will correct me, and I would gladly have the correction made. I know of at least one family where it hasn't been done. The President was in Houston, Texas. The President could have gone by the family of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. He could have gone by. He didn't do it. He could have said: Come over where I am. I have no evidence of it. If there is evidence of it, I am sure it will be exposed when appropriate. I will then gladly thank the President for doing it, but right now I condemn him for not doing it based upon the evidence that I have. So he engages in this kind of politics where at some point he can say: No, nothing to see here. Or, if there is something to see here, the Federal authorities can try and convict, and then the President can do what he did on day one of his second time in office. On day one, he pardons more than a thousand people who assaulted this Capitol--insurrectionists. He pardoned them. He pardoned them and then tried to set up a fund so that he could pay them. That is at least what is being reported. He pardoned them. So he can then, if there is a Federal conviction of these people who killed these persons, if there is a Federal conviction, he can pardon them. And they know that he can do it because he did it on the first day in office for these insurrectionists. They are very much aware that the President has their backs, and because he has their backs, they can do these dastardly deeds. They can take lives with impunity. They can be judge. They can be jury. They can be prosecutor. They can executioner, knowing that if ever they are convicted in a Federal court, the President can give them a pardon. If they are convicted in a State court, the President cannot. That is why the President withholds evidence from the State courts so that they cannot convict, and if there is to be a conviction, it will be in a Federal court. Then he will take the magic wand, the magic pen, and use it to exonerate them, in a sense, with a pardon. This is the way the President perceives the world. It is all within his hands, within the hands of a person who has the pen that can pardon, without giving any reasonable explanation as to why. That is where we are. Now, there is a lot of talk about affordability. I think I need to address affordability as it relates to what is happening to these persons that I have just talked about. Affordability, this is so important that I think I will hold it in my hand. Affordability, I support affordability. I have been supporting affordability all of my life because all of my life, most of it, I should say, I couldn't afford a good many of the things that others took for granted, but I have been blessed. I have been blessed. Not everybody has been as blessed as I am, and I ought not assume that because I have been blessed and I have had opportunities, that everybody else is going to have the same opportunities that I have had. Life isn't that way. In any event, I am for affordability. Affordability is about the necessities of life. Affordability is about food, water, shelter, clothing, healthcare, among other things. People ought to be able to afford these things. In the richest country in the world, people should be able to have healthcare for everybody. If you are sick, you get healthcare because you are sick and not because you can buy it. It is because you are sick. There is a way to have the healthcare, and I won't go through that issue today, but healthcare. Everybody has to have clothing. Everybody has to have shelter, water, and food. That is what affordability is all about. Affordability is about the necessities of life, and we ought to have it. There is also something called accountability, and you can have affordability and accountability at the same time. Do not believe that Congress cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. Do not believe that, on a daily basis, we don't do many different things at the same time, every day. There are some people who would have you believe that you have to sacrifice accountability to have affordability. It is not true. Let's talk about accountability as it relates to the topic today. Accountability is about saving lives. It is about lives that are lost. It is about Renee Nicole Good, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero. By the way, Nicole lost her life on January 7, 2026. There has been no justice, no justice for her; no indication that justice is over the horizon, none; no indication that there is an indictment or that there is some rationale for just moving forward. Just let time pass, and eventually, enough time will pass such that these issues won't be as important and you can announce that, for whatever reasons, the officers acted appropriately. We saw what happened to Nicole. We saw what happened to Ms. Renee Nicole Good on January 7, 2026. We are now in the month of September. No justice. Alex Pretti lost his life on January 24, 2026. We saw what happened to Alex Pretti. No justice. These victims deserve justice. Their families deserve justice. I rise today in the name of justice for the victims: Lorenzo, July 7, 2026--no justice, no justice. In fact, in Houston, Texas, one of our newspapers managed to get some information about the case. In getting that information, the U.S. attorney protested and did not want the information revealed. They are trying to secret the information, and they are doing it openly and notoriously because the President has their backs. Johan Sebastian died on July 13, 2026--no justice. No justice for any of these people, among others, I might add, but no justice. There has to be justice for these victims. There has to be. We cannot have a society where members of the constabulary have become a paramilitary force, a paramilitary force acting in such a way as to be judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner. It is unbelievable that we would tolerate such a thing, this paramilitary force. Let me just read a little bit more here for you. This paramilitary force that the President is operating, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE; and Customs and Border Protection, CBP, as his vicious--and they are vicious. Look at the behavior. Look at the way that they talk about how they will treat people. They are bullies. I am not saying all people in these departments are bullies, but I am saying the ones that have shown themselves to be bullies ought to be identified, and it should be said that they are, because they taint the image of the ones who are not. In any event, vicious--they are acting as his vicious, quota-driven-- they have a quota. They are trying to reach a quota of 2,000 per day. If you are in Houston, Texas, and you have a white van and you look like you are Latino, you are suspect. You are suspect, and you are going to have to show your papers. That is what happened to Lorenzo. He was driving a white van. There was no warrant for his arrest. He hadn't been charged with anything. This man was on his way to work. He was on his way to work with others in the van with him. These were persons who work out in the sun, persons who do the labor, the hard labor, but they were working. He was taking care of a family, raising children. This man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, is the kind of person who we want in the United States of America. He is the kind of person who this country ought to be looking for. We have to pay some taxes so that we can take care of some Social Security issues that are going to manifest themselves around the year 2033. This man is paying into that system. He could be paying into that system. He was trying to get his documentation so that he could move forward and become a citizen. This man did not deserve the death that was imposed upon him by these officers. We, last time I looked, did not know the names of the persons involved. We don't know who killed him, but there should be some justice for him. July 7, 2026--nothing said. Mr. Johan Sebastian Duran, the allegation that I have read is that he was moving away, so he was no threat to the officer, but the officer had concluded that he might be a threat to the community. No arrest warrant for him, no arrest warrant. We cannot allow this to happen. This is an injustice. These are all injustices that have been perpetrated, and they have all been perpetrated this year, and the courts can't deal with it; the Justice Department won't deal with it; and the local constabulary can't because they don't have the evidence. We have to take it up. We are the court of last resort. To say that we can wait until we get a majority, or to say that, no, we are not going to address these issues at all, how can we say this knowing that we have a Constitution? Are we saying that we will allow impeachable offenses to just go on and nothing happen? You are shredding the Constitution. It will be meaningless. These lives have been lost, and there must be justice for these persons. Accountability and affordability can occur at the same time, the same time. We had accountability right here in this House just yesterday. A vote was taken as it relates to a Member. No details will be given, not necessary, but a vote was taken. This was accountability. We dealt with accountability while we were dealing with affordability. We can take another vote. We are talking about a vote in the Congress of the United States of America for righteous Articles of Impeachment, for lawful Articles of Impeachment, but there won't be this vote if the people have their way. There won't be the vote because there will be people who are going to say: Let's table it. How can you table the injustice that is taking place? How can you table this? What is wrong with you? You are going to vote to table these lives that have been lost--this is an injustice--one, two, three, four of them. At some point justice has to prevail. No. There will be Republicans and Democrats who are going to vote to table these lives. What is wrong with us? Once they are tabled, they will go into a never-never land, a committee, never to be heard from again, or when we have a majority, when we can win, then we will take them up. No. We may take them up, but we won't avoid the vote. There has to be a vote. Here is why there has to be a vote. Many people like to quote Dr. King. They like to talk about Dr. King's quote, wherein he proclaimed: Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter. Many people like to quote this: Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter. Well, actually, that is not Dr. King's quote. Let's just say it is. It has been paraphrased. This is not his quote. Someone has paraphrased it. You can do the research. I am going to give you Dr. King's actual quote now. Dr. King had a powerful quote that has been reduced to these words. Here is the quote of Dr. Martin Luther King. Dr. King reminds us--I think I will hold this one. This is a precious quote. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., March 8, 1965--a significant day, because on March 8, 1965, it was the day after Bloody Sunday, the day after Bloody Sunday. These are the words of Dr. King. He proclaimed: ``A man dies''--I would paraphrase and say a person. ``A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right.'' When he refuses to stand up for that which is right, a man dies. Well, I think that standing up for justice for the four persons that I have called to your attention is right. Standing up is right. I think we should take a stand. Dr. King goes on to say, ``A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice.'' That is what we have been talking about: Justice for persons whose lives were taken at the hands of a paramilitary force, a vicious paramilitary force, a vicious paramilitary force driven by a quota system, a quota system that has caused persons to lose their lives at the hands of persons who were judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner. That, my friends, is an injustice. So when a man refuses to stand--I would say person--refuses to stand for justice, the man is dying, or has died in some cases, I suppose. But Dr. King then goes on to say, ``A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.'' ``A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.'' Friends, I have spoken truth not only to power but about power today. The truth is, the President is engaged in a coverup--in a coverup. The President knows that he should not have spoken so quickly about the lives that were lost. Before there was any investigation, he proclaimed the officers innocent--not with those exact words, but by talking about them and demeaning the victims, proclaiming that the officers, in some cases, were victims. Those people who lost their lives, their families are still suffering. So the President, having done this--and I have given you the truth today--the question becomes: What are we going to do? What are we going to do? I enjoy quoting Dr. King, as you can see. He has another quote that I will paraphrase, that I am quite fond of. Dr. King reminds us, in one of his better known quotes, that ``injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'' Injustice for these four people is a threat to justice in your community and to you. To know that it can be covered up ought to be an affront. I suppose, when the first person's life was taken, we bemoaned it, and we were very much upset about it. That was Renee. At that point, we didn't know that there would be Alex to follow. We didn't know that there would be Lorenzo. We didn't know that there would be Johan. Injustice against Renee was a threat to justice against the other three. We didn't know it at the time. ``Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'' We know not for whom the bell will toll next as it relates to these injustices. We have got to stop it. We can't wait until we have a majority to stop it. I would also call to your attention another quote from Dr. King. He reminds us that the truest measure of the person--Dr. King spoke a lot about truth. He reminds us that the truest measure of the person is not where the person stands. He didn't say person. He said man. The truest measure of the person--I am paraphrasing. The truest measure of the person is not where the person stands in times of comfort and convenience. The truest measure is, where do you stand in times of challenge and controversy? Where do you stand when four lives have been taken without justification, when the President himself is engaged with the officers and others in a coverup, when they are hiding information and preventing it from being exposed? That is a coverup. There are many of us who are too afraid to say it. We would rather say: Well, he is blocking; they won't let us see; there is a lack of transparency. Well, that is the coverup. It is okay to say it. So he is engaged in this coverup. Where do you stand? Where do you stand in times of challenge and controversy, not in times of comfort and convenience, when all of your bills are paid, all is right with the world, and you are on vacation. That is not the truest measure. Where do you stand in times of challenge and controversy, when lives have been lost, when people have died at the hands of officers who were judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner? Where do you stand? That is the question before this House today. Where do you stand? Will you stand with the lives that have been lost, to bring some justice to them? Will you stand for justice for the families of these victims? Will you stand for justice, or are you going to stand against the victims? When you take that vote to table, just remember: If you vote to table, you are standing against these victims. You are standing with the President if you vote to table. If you vote to table, you are standing for the injustice that has been perpetrated. If you vote not to table, then you are standing with these victims-- justice for them. You are standing for justice for the families of the victims. I say to you, my dear brothers and sisters, my friends, my fellow Members of Congress, vote for justice. Vote not to table so that there can be some justice for these victims and their families. Otherwise, you are voting with a President who is engaged in a coverup, and you are voting to table the lives that have been lost. I can tell you, I will stand with the victims. I have been censured, not silenced. I will stand with the victims. I will stand with their families. I will do so because Rosa Parks was right: On some issues, it is better to stand alone than not stand at all. I will feel good about myself. How will you feel about yourself if you stand with the President and against these victims and their families? Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise, and for this one moment, I have a very terse and laconic message. For this one moment I would simply say: If you cannot peacefully protest the genocide that took place in Gaza, if you cannot peacefully protest this, what can you peacefully protest under the Constitution of the United States of America? I voted against this effort to prevent people from peacefully protesting what they see as an injustice. What took place in Gaza was collective punishment. It was ethnic cleansing, and it was genocide. In this country, the Constitution allows one to peacefully protest such injustices.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, still I rise, and I rise tonight on behalf of the community in Houston, Texas, where the Nepalese community resides. They have suffered a great disaster in their country, and we have been helping. We provided some millions of dollars. However, the amount of damage, the number of lives lost, and the help that will be needed will far exceed what they have received. I am just hoping that our country will be able to do more. This is a time when what we stand for globally can mean something in the lives of the people of Nepal. I pray that they will receive the help they need.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise. And I rise today as I always did, censured but not silenced, a very proud, unbossed, unbought, liberated, and unelected Democrat. And I rise today to bring two things to the attention of the House and to the people of the United States of America. The first is a brief update on ICE, and the second is an explanation related to crypto crony capitalism. Let us begin. With reference to ICE, Mr. Speaker, we had a briefing just yesterday, and at that briefing some things were discovered and other things were uncovered. What we found, of course, we knew, and that is that there was not a body camera on the ICE officers who took the life of Mr. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. Officers did not have body cameras on, and there was not a dash camera in the vehicle. The video that we have seen was taken by some public device, and that video, of course, has given us reason to understand that Mr. Salgado Araujo was not committing what I perceive as an infraction related to the law. He was not. The evidence that we heard yesterday gave us good reason to believe that there would be body cameras. And these body cameras would be in place on all officers who are performing this type of activity where they are taking people into custody or desire to take people into custody for various reasons associated with immigration, that these officers will all have body cameras. I brought up the question of dash cameras, and they indicated to me that that would be given consideration. So I am very proud that the persons who were available indicated that they would not only give us the body cameras in 60 days, but they would also consider dash cameras in the vehicle itself. I think these things will help not only the public but also the officers because the officers can immediately have the evidence to exonerate themselves when there is some question as to whether or not the officers have committed an infraction of the law. I am very proud to know these things will happen, but there will be a follow up to make sure they do happen. I am also proud to tell you that tomorrow there will be in Houston, Texas, a forum, a forum wherein we will have an opportunity to have a discussion about these issues associated with Mr. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo's death. We will have an opportunity to ask questions of people who can give us more information. These things are important. Finally, on this question of ICE, I would only make this point that we will get the body cameras. I believe we will get the dash cameras in time. Here is what I know: I know that we will have them because lives were lost. And I regret that it has taken the loss of lives--the loss of lives--to have us do what ICE should have been asking us to do. We should not have been asking that these things be done. One would think that the officers would say: These body cameras are going to benefit us, would you please, Congress, give us body cameras? That was not the case. And because it was not the case and because Mr. Pretti lost his life, Ms. Good lost her life, Mr. Salgado Araujo lost his life, and we have a person in Maine who lost life, these four persons, all of these things occurring within this year, these issues, these persons losing their lives will now give us the opportunity to have body cameras. It is a disgrace, a shame, and a sin to have to conclude that lives have to be lost for us to do the right thing. I want the world to know that I will never, ever stop the challenge that is before us to make sure that ICE is an institution, as it were, an organization, if you will, that will treat people fairly and justly. Not all of the ICE officers are engaged in illegal activities, and some of the activities are illegal when they engage in extrajudicial killings, but not all of the officers are doing this, so I am not painting everybody with the same brush. I am saying that enough of them are doing it for us to demand some additional reforms with ICE. Of course, we are still demanding that they have uniforms that are indicative of the work that they do, that their names be displayed on those uniforms, and that they not enter property without a proper warrant. These are the things that we would just take for granted that the Constitution would afford us and would be recognized by officers of the law. I promise you, Mr. Speaker, I am going to stay in this fight, and we are going to get positive results. Now, moving on to the crony crypto capitalism. For those who do not know, the President has a meme coin, and the President's meme coin has done quite well. The President's meme coin, the dollar sign Trump meme coin, that meme coin has made $1.64 million per day over a 1-year period of time. Over that same 1-year period of time, nearly 1 million people lost $3.8 billion. Let me repeat that: Over that same period of time, nearly 1 million people lost $3.8 billion. How did this happen? It happened because the meme coin that the President has is a part of a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is a means by which a person can convince people that they should buy something that does not have any worth except for the purchase of that thing itself, which is nothing in this case. Mr. Speaker, you purchase nothing with the belief that someone is willing to pay more for nothing than you paid for nothing, and, as a result, the value is increased for you if you paid nothing at a lower price than someone else is going to pay for this same thing for nothing. The President has sold nothing to nearly 1 million people who lost $3.8 billion. The President made $1.74 million per day on the deal, pumped it up, took his $1.74 million per day and left nearly 1 million people to lose $3.8 billion. That, Mr. Speaker, is the President's Ponzi scheme. One would ask: How can this be? It exists because we have a President who lives without the law by causing certain persons to believe that things should be legal that clearly have not been and should not be. Ponzi schemes have been illegal in this country. The President has managed to get his persons who are in charge to indicate that this is not illegal, that this Ponzi scheme is not, and others still are. I am mentioning this to you, Mr. Speaker, because this scheme, this whole scam, is having an impact on capitalism. There are people who are now starting to see this as a part of capitalism, the Ponzi scheme, a means of making money on what is called a free market. They believe that the free market is designed in certain places to benefit very wealthy people. They have breaks in benefits from capitalism by having laws passed to benefit them and by engaging in things such as this Ponzi scheme that benefit them. In a sense, this is harming the concept of capitalism. One should be able to understand why some people are looking at other options. If this is the way we are going to manage capitalism, by having your cronies do quite well while millions of others are taken advantage of, this is one example of why people would say: Maybe this is not working well enough, and we will try something else. My hope is that we can correct these things, especially this thing associated with the President and his Ponzi scheme. My hope is that we can correct these things and let people see that truly we can have an economic order that treats people with the kind of justice that they deserve. This is an unjust system, the Ponzi scheme, and we have to bring justice to it. Probably the best way to bring justice to it is going to be to see this President walk away and then, thereafter, do some serious investigations, serious hearings, and get to the bottom of things, not only associated with the Ponzi scheme but other things, as well. I regret that some people are not going to get their money back. My hope is that there would be some way to reverse it, but my belief is that a good many people are just going to suffer and will not get their money back. I also know this: That, as I am speaking now--and I am telling people this is the case--the Ponzi scheme continues. People are going to buy into nothing and expect to get something. You have been noticed. Please understand that the President is just taking advantage of you. He is. Not only is he doing it in this area, there are many others. I am just talking about this today. I will talk about others at a later time. He is taking advantage of you. You can stop it by not buying into this Ponzi scheme. Capitalism is taking a hit, and it is for many reasons but the chief reason, I think, being the President who is doing things to aid and abet his friends, allowing people to make contributions and then have certain benefits. A President who clearly has lived beneath the law and above the law. Beneath it in the sense that he doesn't believe it exists so he pushes it aside. Above it in the sense that he doesn't get charged for his criminality the same way other people would be charged if they were doing similar things. My belief is that we have time to cure some of the harm, but time is not on our side. Every day the President continues to find new ways to take advantage of the economic order that has been in place in this country since its inception, for the most part. I would only say to you this: One of the remedies that we have available to us is one that I will pursue. I said we needed to wait until we could get control of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, yes. People want to know: What are you going to do now? I have said, and I continue to say, that we are in a countdown to impeachment. My desire will be to do this: When next we are in session, for all to know, Articles of Impeachment will be filed. The countdown will continue, but it will become that which will be brought to the floor of the House of Representatives when next we are in session. When next the House of Representatives is in session, I will take the Articles over to the clerk, they will be filed, and at some time thereafter--a reasonable amount of time thereafter, to give Members a chance to see exactly what I have filed, although I plan to publish the articles before they are filed so people will know what we are going to file--file these Articles of Impeachment. That will give them plenty of time to prepare the defense of, well, it is too soon. The Senate won't take up the articles seriously. You don't have enough senators there to convict. Let's see, what else will people say? Always, whatever it is, is not impeachable until maybe they decide that they want to file Articles, and then it becomes an impeachable offense. Let's be reminded of what President Ford said: An impeachable offense--meaning impeachment--is whatever Congress says at a given time. Whatever given Congress says at a given time. It is not appealable. It is not something that will require you to report how you came to your conclusions. Really, it is a matter of conscience for me, and I hope for others, as well. We will file the Articles of Impeachment. We will notice them prior to them being filed. People can start preparing now your arguments for why you can't support the Articles of Impeachment. Here is what I do know: Posterity is not going to look favorably upon us for allowing a President to commit impeachable offenses and do nothing. Of course, someone would say, but we will do something when we are in the majority. Now, that is another interesting question, as I close. I have been out on the campaign trail, and I hear the people talking about all of these things that they are going to do when they get to Congress. Well, I have seen at least one example of the person getting to Congress and concluding: I will be doing something next year when we have the majority. Run on doing something great now but get here and realize that you don't have the power to do what you thought, so you will do it next year. Well, I am going to do things now. I am not going to wait until next year. I am a right-now kind of guy. As a right-now kind of person, I will bring the Articles of Impeachment. Mr. Speaker, this is what the Constitution requires. It is what I will do because, again, I am an unbought, unbossed, unafraid, unelected, liberated Democrat. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise, and today, in the name of we the people. I rise censored, Mr. Speaker, but not silenced. I rise as a unbought, unbossed, liberated Democrat--some would also add unelected liberated Democrat. My friends over on the racist radio say that proudly, and they have a lot of alacrity when they say it. They seem to say it because they seem to think that somehow they played a role in it happening. Well, be that as it may, I still rise in the name of we the people. I rise in the name of we the people today, Mr. Speaker, because of concern that I have with the killing that took place in Houston, Texas. As a result of some other things that happened, there was a killing in Maine. I sent out a tweet, as it were. I am not sure that they are called tweets anymore, but a message by way of the electronic social media. I would like to read this message because it is the essence of my message today. It reads: @realDonaldTrump--I am told that by saying ``@realDonaldTrump'' in this message, the President should have an opportunity to hear about it and possibly read it himself. ``@realDonaldTrump, your ICE force has killed a person in Maine. After the killings of Good, Pretti, and Araujo, without accountability, we cannot trust your Homeland Security or Justice Department to investigate ICE. `We the people' demand accountability and congressional oversight.'' I rise in the name of we the people to demand accountability and oversight. I do so because, quite frankly, I am concerned about the possibility of a cover-up, and I am also concerned about the possibility of a clean-up. Let's start with the clean-up, and then I will move into the cover-up. The clean-up. You might recall, friends, that there was an assault on the citadel of democracy, this Capitol. You might recall, also, that there were persons who engaged in this dastardly act of cowardice. They were here to prevent the peaceful transfer of power at the insistence of the President, it seems. He delivered incited commentary that caused much of what happened that day to take place. They were here and did some things that were unlawful. They were unlawful, and we know they were unlawful because they were prosecuted, many of them--not just 5 or 10, not just 20 or 30, not just 100 or 200. Hundreds of them were prosecuted--after they were prosecuted, convicted and sentenced. We also know that the President, upon being reelected--upon being reelected, one of his first acts as a new President for a new term of office--this was not his first term, his second term--his first act was to pardon the people who assaulted the citadel of democracy at a time when there was an attempt to engage in a peaceful transfer of power, something that our country is known for far and wide. We are known for the peaceful transfer of power. After he pardoned them, they were able to walk freely. They were pardoned. Now, let's bring that forward. Given what has happened to the persons who were here to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, who were convicted and who were pardoned by the President. The people who are a part of the ICE force are very much aware of what happened, and they know that the President--who gave a pardon to those persons who assaulted the Citadel of Democracy--they know that this President can provide them a pardon if they are charged with a Federal offense. Because they know, it is my belief that this somehow has caused some of them to believe that they have a license to exceed what the law allows--some of them, not all. This is not a condemnation of everybody. This is about the people who have done things that are unlawful, in my opinion. They know this. As a result of knowing it, I think they take liberties that they should not because they know that the President--to borrow a term that we use in my hood--will have their backs. They know. Let's now examine a rationale for my being concerned about the possibility of a cover-up. That was the clean-up, by the way. The clean-up occurred when the President had those persons released--after he pardoned them, of course--who had been found guilty. They were released. They are walking freely. By the way, that was lawful. The President has every right to pardon people, and he doesn't really have to give a rationale for it. That was a clean-up of what he started when he engaged in this movement to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for the country, it did not succeed. So now, back to where I was. After the cleanup having occurred and these officers now understanding that the President has this authority, then we have to examine what happened next with Ms. Good. Let's talk about Ms. Good first. We, with our very own eyes, saw most of what happened with Ms. Good, and we can say, because of what we saw if we want to believe our eyes, that Ms. Good was not there to harm anyone. She was unarmed. She was an American citizen. She was engaging in a peaceful protest--unarmed American citizen, and engaging in peaceful protest--when confronted by officers who were making demands. If you saw what happened, you know that it ended with her losing her life. She said kind things, by the way, to the officers, kind things, but she lost her life. We saw this with our own eyes. We saw it. Let's move over to Mr. Pretti. We saw Mr. Pretti as he was prostate. He was sprawled on the ground and an officer removed a weapon that he had, but it was after the removal of the weapon that he was shot. He lost his life. He was an American citizen, not armed at the time his life was taken. He was an American citizen engaging in peaceful protests. These two cases are worthy of following because to this day, we don't have credible information about what has happened. We don't really know when or if there will be charges that will be brought before a court of law such that there would be a trial. These cases are evidence of the fact that at least these investigators are taking an unusual amount of time to bring these cases to the attention of the public in a fashion such that the public will understand that there will or will not be prosecution. I happen to think there should be prosecution, but if there is not going to be prosecution, if they found some evidence beyond what we have been able to see and hear, then I think they should bring this evidence forward and let us have an opportunity to review it so that we can, again, have the transparency necessary for the public to have the knowledge that it is entitled to when an American citizen has been killed at the hands of the constabulary. We should know. We should have the opportunity to be told by credible sources what the final decision is, whether we are moving forward with trials. With this happening the way it is happening and given that we were able to see in these two cases most of what happened--didn't see all of it, but most of what happened--in fact, I would say we saw the relevant portions, but there may be something else that is there that we need to see, but we saw relevant portions. Having to see that and not seeing any action taken after all of these months have passed that causes me the consternation and concern that I placed in my message to the masses today indicating that I am concerned about and would be addressing a possible cover-up. We live in a world where it is not enough for things to be right, they must also look right. It doesn't look right for these two cases to be pending. We have two additional cases now, and we also have very little evidence of what actually occurred in one of these cases, and that would be the case with Mr. Araujo. We don't have all of the evidence of what occurred. We saw enough to get some sense of what is likely to have happened, but because we don't have enough evidence--we are told that there were no body cameras. There were no vehicle cameras. We don't have any evidence from the side that should produce evidence because they should have had their body cameras on. There was $20 million accorded to them for body cameras. They should have had vehicle cameras. There should have been cameras, but they don't have the cameras. They don't have the cameras. Now, why would I believe, as in the case with Mr. Araujo, why would I believe the story that the person who is deceased, Mr. Araujo, tried to assault officers with a vehicle? Why would I believe that given that we have seen stories manifest themselves about the cases that we actually saw wherein the original stories told were not in conformity with what our eyes allowed us to see. Immediately after the shooting of Pretti, immediately after the shooting of Good, there was a story put forth that was not in conformity with what we saw. If we know that you will send us a message, a false message, about things that we saw, you send a false message about things that we saw, a prevarication about things that we saw, why should I believe that you are going to do anything less in a case where we didn't see everything? I am concerned about a cover-up. I am concerned about a cover-up because, as I have explained, these officers are aware that there will be a cleanup. If the President is true to his words and he honors what he says he will do, he has given hints to officers in his prior administration about how they should conduct themselves when arresting people. He told their officers, you don't have to be nice, words from the President of the United States of America about making an arrest. You don't have to be nice, implying that he had their back. He was implying that we are not as much concerned about law and order as we are about order and law. Law and order means you are going to follow the law to bring about the order necessary. Order and law means you restore order and I will provide the law--this is the President, not Al Green--I will provide the law necessary to protect you. Why should I believe the stories that are being told when we don't see evidence of the cars having collided? Why should I believe when the officers who were engaged in this circumstance that cost the life of a human being in Houston, Texas--they have been secreted away, why should I believe when you have shut out the engagement of other members of the constabulary, of the Houston Police Department? You have said, apparently based upon what I have been told and heard, that the Houston Police Department should not attempt to engage because you are going to take care of this yourselves. The Houston Police Department investigates. It doesn't prosecute, but it has one of the finest homicide departments in the country. It investigates homicides. The Houston Police Department has investigated police shootings in the past. The Houston Police Department has investigated circumstances where officers who were not in the Houston Police Department, but officers of the law, have been investigated. The Houston Police Department is capable, competent, and qualified to have this investigation, but you are shutting out the Houston Police Department wherein we could get some scintilla of transparency by virtue of having another authority engaged in the process of investigation. You shut them out. You have gone so far as to shut out the district attorney in Harris County. They can't get the information that you have such that they can give an analysis. They haven't talked to the officers who were engaged in the shooting. They haven't been able to assess the value that you place on what you now are saying appears to be some sort of drugs that were in the vehicle, the vehicle that Mr. Araujo was driving. Yes, for those who do not know, the allegation is being made now that there may have been drugs in the vehicle. They saw this substance in there and they are contending that it might be some form of illegal drugs. Why do we believe all of these things when we were told not to believe our eyes in the case of Pretti and Good? Why would we not have some degree of suspicion? Why would we not think that you are, Mr. President, in charge of this ICE force? You, Mr. President, after the person who is now heading Homeland Security, Mr. Mullin, why would you countermand what he has done? Mr. Mullin, as I understand it by way of news reports, was going to put a pause on stopping cars. Mr. Mullin was going to give a moment of opportunity to take a look at circumstances and see if there is a better way to do what you are doing, but you, Mr. President, yourself, countermanded what came from your Department of Homeland Security. You did it knowing that he had done this because of the way your language was couched as you presented your command that the officers go back to stopping cars. You made that very clear, that they should do that, that this was something that they should continue to do. You use the term ``weak,'' don't want them to look weak, Mr. President. We have to ask why would we the people believe that there will be justice served given that we know that you tend to want to decide without having the opportunity to see what actually occurred? You tend to want to decide before seeing and making your decisions about what the officers have done, and then moving from there, it seems, by and through your agents in the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, by and through what they say. They are at your command. We should make no mistake about it. You are in control. The Supreme Court has given you the green light. You have taken advantage of it. That is why you sent out your message by way of your Truth Social, indicating that you were countermanding the order from the person that you just installed as your person who is in charge of Homeland Security. Why would we believe? Why should we believe that you are going to do all that you can to ensure transparency? To the contrary, it would not be unreasonable for a person to believe that there may be a coverup, and if not a coverup, if there is a conviction, that there would be a cleanup. You will try first to do all that you can to exonerate the officers, make sure that the investigation centers around whether the person who is deceased, the victim, was trying to harm the officers. That is what has been said: make sure the investigation is on whether the victim was trying to harm the officers. I have not heard to date--and I know that initially it was not said-- that there would be an investigation as to whether the civil rights of the victim had been violated, no investigation about the civil rights of the victim being violated, but whether the victim was making an effort to assault the officers. The visceral reaction is let's protect the officers, not let's have a free, open, fair investigation. When I say ``free,'' free for other persons to see and to be a part of. Have a parallel investigation with the Houston Police Department. There was none of that, none of that, just immediately decide that you are going to investigate the person who has lost his life without some indication that there would be an investigation as to whether or not the person who lost his life had his civil rights violated, the right to life, whether that has been taken away from him unlawfully. So, here we are now. We have Mr. Araujo in Houston. We have two other persons in Minnesota. We have a person in Maine. We have a President who has taken control himself, has hands-on experience with what is happening in these Departments. Nobody can deny that he is without knowledge of what is going on. His latest messages are indicative of his level of engagement and of the knowledge that he has as it relates to these circumstances. He is in charge. This is his Department of Justice. It is his Office of Homeland Security, and these people do believe that they work for him. What makes you say this, that they believe they work for him? Well, just yesterday, Mr. Vought, who is with the CFPB, indicated at a hearing that he works for the President. Just as recently as yesterday or the day before--I believe it was yesterday--we had the person who is auditioning before the Senate for a position with the Department of Justice. This person made it very clear that he works for the President, or at least he did. He said he was the President's lawyer. Maybe it was a Freudian slip, but he said he was the President's lawyer. So you have people who tend to do whatever you say. When your Cabinet meets, there is an effort to see who can give you the most praise. You have them all under your thumb. They are all under your control. They all bend a knee to you. They all kiss the ring. They are your people who serve you, not the country. The country is not primary. It may be secondary. It may be tertiary. It could even be quaternary, but it is not primary. They believe in you and report to you. Given these circumstances, why should we believe that you are going to cause the right thing to be done? Mr. President, others have said, and I have said--and I say it now-- the blood of the people who I have called to your attention today, the blood of these persons is on your hands. It is. Other people are saying it. Other people are linking you directly to what has happened. I think they should, given that we know that you are in control, in command, in authority, and that you have knowledge. You are not like a typical President who leaves things to others to do and decisions to be made. When there is a crucial decision to make, you make it, as evidenced by what you have done with your Truth Social and the case of the gentleman who was killed in Maine. You made the crucial decision as to how the officers will behave when they encounter the opportunity to observe, make an arrest at a later time, as opposed to rush in with guns blazing. You have made the decision that they can continue to do what they have been doing, but you do try to cover yourself by using the term ``judiciously,'' that they should behave judiciously. That is only to cover. We understand what is going on, Mr. President. It seems to me that it would not be unreasonable for a reasonable and prudent person to conclude that there may be a coverup in this case, and if there is a conviction in the Federal court, there will be a cleanup--may be a coverup and will be a cleanup if you find--if the courts find, I should say--I shouldn't say ``you.'' You haven't taken complete control of the courts. You do have an outsized amount of influence, it seems. If the courts find that there is a Federal crime, I am saying here and now, without question, reservation, or hesitation, I believe that you, Mr. President, will pardon the persons who have taken these lives. I believe that you want to send a message to others, as you did on your first day in office when you pardoned the persons for what happened here at the citadel of democracy when there was a peaceful transfer of power taking place. You want to send a message and let officers know that you have their backs. You do this because you want to complete your mission of removing persons from this country, many of whom are not the worst of the worst. You want to send a message that you are going to remove and people should be intimidated, they should be terrorized, and they should leave the country of their own volition before you have the opportunity to send your agents out--your ICE agents--with masks, with no body cameras, and with, sometimes, malice aforethought, in my opinion. Not all the time, but sometimes. Mr. President, we, the people, are not going to allow you to continue with this kind of behavior. We, the people, are not going to allow you to continue to do this. While you are President of the United States and the Supreme Court has given you a certain amount of immunity, allow me to place another poster before you. Mr. President, this is real. This is real, Mr. President. There is a countdown to impeachment. I have been very patient in waiting. I thought others might want to do what has to be done, and I say it has to be done. People can differ with me. I say it has to be done. It is the only tool that we have to bring you under control, to let the world know that we are opposed to what you are doing, and we are willing to take action against you. This is it, this one word: Impeachment. Mr. President, I assure you that Articles of Impeachment are going to be filed, and they are going to be filed in the very near future because we cannot allow the world to believe that the Congress of the United States of America will do nothing when people are being killed in the streets under circumstances that are clearly questionable and clearly unlawful in the minds of many people. I am one of them. Under these circumstances, we have to take action, and the only action is impeachment. We in Congress can talk about a lot of things that we will do next year. By the way, I marvel at people who will run for office on what they are going to do, and then when they get here, they talk about what they will do next year. They give people the impression that they are going to come here and change things, that they know things that other people don't know about the process, that they have something called a strategic approach, and this strategic approach--they never say what it is going to be, but this strategic approach is supposed to make a difference, that people who have been here for years and years and studied these things can have it made. And then when you get here, you talk about next year, we are going to be really tough. We are going to be really tough when we take back the House next year. Some of us don't buy into waiting until next year. Some of us believe that the time is always right to do what is right, and it is right to bring impeachment against this President of the United States of America. We don't have to wait until next year. Do what you want next year when you have the power to investigate, when you have subpoena power, but most of the public wants to know what you are going to do right now. Here is what will happen right now, and it is going to happen very soon. How soon? Within weeks. Within weeks, it is going to happen. There will be Articles of Impeachment, and they will be brought to a vote, not just filed. We are going to vote. This is a question of conscience. I want to live with myself. I want to be able to say to myself, to me, that, on my watch, I did all that I could to stop a reckless, ruthless, lawless President from taking the lives of the American people. I am Al Green, a liberated Democrat, unbought, unbossed, unafraid, and unelected. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to including funding for Israel's military in the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Program Appropriations Act. I respectfully request that funding for Israel's military be considered through a standalone bill, allowing Members to vote separately on question. I first made this request in December 2025, when I opposed legislation linking funding for our military with funding for Israel's military. My position has not changed. Today, I again respectfully request that funding for the Department of State and related programs not be linked to funding for Israel's military. Accordingly, I include in the Record the text of my December 10, 2025, letter to Speaker Mike Johnson. I now believe there should be a standalone vote on all funding to Israel: Dear Speaker Johnson, I ask that funding for our military not be linked to funding Israel's military. I support our military. I do not approve of attaching my support for our military to Israel's military. We who support our military should be allowed to do so without having to fund Israel's military. Those who support Israel's military should be able to do so in a standalone bill. I cannot in good conscience vote to authorize sending our tax dollars to a military whose prime minister has been accused by the International Criminal Court of ``the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts;'' to a military that has killed more than 70,000 thousand Palestinian men, women, and especially children in Gaza. If my request to detach funding our military from funding Israel's military in legislation is not granted, I will oppose the legislation. While I believe Israel should have a military, I will not vote to support funding Israel's military. I make this request on behalf of myself and no one else. On some issues it is better to stand alone than not stand at all. SincereIy, Al Green, Member of Congress, Scion of the Enslaved Africans, Sacrificed to Make America Great, Progenitor of August and August 20th as Slavery Remembrance Month and Day.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank those who had the foresight to declare that all persons are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among them: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You are not giving up your constitutional rights when you are doing what you can to protect life. I have been to the funerals. I have seen the people who have lost their loved ones to gun violence. At some point we have to do more than contend that privacy trumps the right to life. The person's right to life trumps privacy, especially when no court has said that this is unconstitutional. Mr. Speaker, that is pure speculation on behalf of some people. I believe that the right to life trumps this right to privacy that they are contending.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise. And still I rise, unbought, unbossed, unelected, liberated Democrat. And I rise today, Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding the fact that I have been censured by this House, censured but not silenced. And I rise today, Mr. Speaker, because the housing crisis that we confront has taken on a new dimension. I am in full support of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, full support of it. Many others are, but I rise today to announce that this is now the Trump housing crisis. It is the Trump housing crisis, and I should like to present evidence to substantiate my claim. It is the Trump housing crisis because, yesterday, the President declined to sign the bill that was voted on in this House and passed and in the Senate and passed, a bicameral bill. Rarely do we get such a thing, but this one also is bipartisan. It has huge Republican support and huge Democratic support. Let me read from an official document. This is from Congress.gov. The indication here is that this piece of legislation had 191 Democrats vote for it and 166 Republicans, a total of 358 for the legislation. That is the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. In the United States Senate, it had 85 yeas and only 5 nays. It had overwhelming support, the kind of support that would cause people to come to the floor of the House of Representatives, as they did. I was here. I came to the floor of this House of Representatives, and many persons on both sides of the aisle talked about the collegiality--perhaps not using that exact word, but the collegiality-- and talked about how this was one of the rare moments when we have received bipartisan, bicameral support for a piece of legislation--a great piece of legislation, I might add. It is a piece of legislation that was a long time in the making, a piece of legislation that this House passed and the Senate passed, as I have indicated before, by large margins. I heard persons stand here at this podium, at that podium, and the podium in the well and proclaim that this piece of legislation was indicative of what we can do when we work together, the symbiosis that was created by Democrats and Republicans working together. Everyone was in a great mood, a celebratory mood. Persons were ready to move on to the next phase. After all, you have to have the House and the Senate to pass a piece of legislation, and there are many people who say that before you can get a House and Senate to pass a bill, they first have to have the will. They demonstrated the will after having negotiated for some time. That was the first phase of it. The first phase of it included some persons who are of note and should be mentioned. The Honorable Maxine Waters should be mentioned and the Honorable Elizabeth Warren. The two of them worked together to bring this to fruition. They worked together after a chasm had erupted as it relates to the bill. There was a chasm that many thought would be impossible to span, but I called them the Ws: the Honorable Maxine, I always say that because I have such great respect for her, and the Honorable Elizabeth Warren. I have great respect for the Honorable Elizabeth Warren. They were able to span this chasm and make this difference. I would also mention that in the Senate it had bipartisan support because the majority leader and the leader of the Senate, the majority leader and the minority, they both signed off on it. This was something that took great work to accomplish. I would also add this: It took people who were experienced. This is one of those times when experience with legislation made a difference. I am not sure that a neophyte could pull off what they were able to accomplish, and I am very proud to say that I support what we have done, and I support the bill. So with all that said, everybody was prepared for the signing ceremony. It was going to be a celebratory time, and everyone prepared to receive an indication that the President was going to sign it at the White House. I think everyone was, I was, surely, prepared for this. The President, in his own way, indicated that, no, it would not be signed at the White House. The President said that he would come to this Capitol and he would sign it here. Of course, the Speaker, in preparation for the President's arrival, decided to do all of the things to make sure that we had the proper pomp and circumstance available to the President, the President of the United States. Everything was set. The flags were in place, the table was arranged, and people were notified. Everyone was prepared for the signing of the legislation saving the President. The President sent a message indicating that he would not, N-O-T, would not sign this piece of legislation. The President indicated that he would not sign it and he had some things to say about it that were not flattering. He diminished the magnitude of the legislation. He went on to indicate that this was not something that he thought was appropriate. I don't know what his rationale was. It never comes through clearly because the President contradicts himself in the sentence where he makes any given statement at any given time. I have no idea what that was all about, but I do know this: When he decided not to sign the legislation, when he decided that he would literally allow it to just linger in limbo, I suppose, when he decided to do this, he then took on the housing crisis. The housing crisis is now that of the President of the United States. It belongs to the President of the United States. He decided that he would not sign legislation that is much-needed in this country, legislation that can make a difference in the lives of people in this country. He put in petty politics above a piece of legislation that can make a profound difference, petty politics above a profound difference that can be made by him by only affixing his signature to a piece of historic legislation, landmark legislation in my world. When he decided he wouldn't do it, here is what he also decided: He decided that he was not going to concern himself with the many people who cannot afford a home right now. Many people cannot afford a home. Affordability is a problem. It is a crisis. The President is well aware of this. He either knows or should know that this is a part of the solution, this bill, and he has not given a rationale, a clear rationale, for why he would not sign it. However, he took on the notion that people who cannot acquire a home, that this is now a problem for him to have to resolve in some other way I suppose. I doubt that he will figure out a way to do it. But he is not supporting those people who are in need of a home. There are people who live in areas where the homes are being purchased by corporate America, not all of corporate America, but various companies that are in the business of purchasing homes and then leasing or renting these homes. He is not supportive of this. In something that he said, he was antithetical to that, he was opposed to, but he is now supportive of this because he won't sign the bill that deals with this very issue, the issue of the homes that could go to first-time home buyers being purchased by corporations. As a result, those homes are now being placed on the rental market. The United States would become a country where the American Dream is a dream to rent a home if the President does not sign this bill. He now has embraced these people who would prevent persons from acquiring a home by simply buying up the property and leasing it. He also has done something that I never thought I would see him do because he is, generally speaking, supportive of the construction industry. He says he is a person of great knowledge when it comes to construction and the whole notion of being a great builder. He considers himself a great builder. He now is at odds with the builders in this country. The builders in this country are ready to build more homes. This bill would allow them that opportunity because it eliminates a lot of the red tape. I have had the builders come to me and tell me about the red tape they encounter when they are attempting to build a home on a piece of property. There is red tape associated with the codes across the 50 States, and this red tape associated with these codes across these 50 States is something that they encounter that makes it difficult for them to move expeditiously and construct homes. This piece of legislation deals with this notion that 50 States are going to have 50 different means of getting something done, and it incentivizes the States to allow these homebuilders to have the opportunity to do what they do best, and that is construct homes for persons to purchase and some, of course, for rental purposes, but it would allow the construction process to move forward expeditiously. It may not be as fast as they might want it to move or I might want it to move, but faster than it is moving currently. This would be the case, but the President now is at odds with the builders. He is at odds with those who want to buy homes. He is at odds with those who would like to build homes because he won't sign the bill that would make it easier for the builders to do what they do and for persons who desire to purchase homes for the first time to have the opportunity to do so. This President is going to find himself helping persons who would like to avoid seeing this whole process develop because somehow they believe that if this process develops it will somehow hurt them politically. I don't see that, but the President seems to be siding with them. He is, in fact, not only siding with them, he is making it possible for the bill not to pass and not to go on to become law because he won't sign the bill. He won't sign it into law, so he is siding with those people who, for political reasons, simply believe that this bill is politically unacceptable for reasons that have not been explained. Mr. President, here is also something that is important for you to consider: If you pass the bill by virtue of signing it and placing it into law, then you have an opportunity to vote on its final passage because you have a vote in this process. If your vote is ratified by your signature, if you do this, then people will have more jobs. You will, in fact, help to increase the number of persons who are not only seeking jobs, but are acquiring jobs. Those people will be able to get jobs. You can't build millions of homes and not have these contractors and builders acquire additional personnel to help facilitate the work that has to be done. This will happen. We will have more people employed. You are going to help with the unemployment issue in the country if you sign the bill. By not signing the bill, you are, of course, continuing with the unemployment issue. In fact, you are facilitating the unemployment of Americans because they could have jobs but for your failure to sign the bill. Your failure to sign the bill then would cause persons not to be able to sell some of the things that would be in a home if it is constructed. For example, you build a home. You are going to have carpet in many of them. Well, the people who sell carpet will not have the opportunity to prosper even more because of these millions of homes. The people who sell the washers and the dryers and the drapes will not have the opportunity to prosper as a result of your not signing the bill, and the people who build the homes will also make these homes a place such that persons will acquire equity for the future. These homebuilders are building places that allow equity to be acquired by the home purchasers. This equity is something that can be used for many reasons and many things. It can be used to help a child go to college. The equity can be used in an emergency, some family emergency. Your equity in the home can be there for you, but it can also be the means by which you can pass on wealth to the next generation. The wealth that you can pass on to the next generation is something that helps them get a start, a leg up in life, if you will. This won't happen if we don't sign the bill. Mr. President, you can sign this bill and help those who would have the opportunity to acquire equity, help those who are in the marketplace selling the various pieces of paraphernalia, the various things that are necessary to have a home develop into the place that you consider livable: the washers, the dryers, all of these things. You are also going to prevent people from literally having the roof over their heads and a place that they can settle in and not find themselves moving about from one place to another, a place to call home. Also, if you would sign the bill, Mr. President, you will find that this will give the country the opportunity to move forward away from this housing crisis and do some of the other things that are very important for us in the country. There are things that can be done, but this bill itself was something that took up an inordinate amount of time. We would be free of having to deal with it and we can deal with implementation. This bill also, Mr. President, would allow persons who suffer from natural disasters--their homes are damaged. The roofs are torn. I have seen it in many cases. When Katrina came through, I saw the damage that it did. I have seen the damage that Harvey did. This bill would help persons when they are confronting these natural disasters and they are suffering as a result of harm having been done to their property, this bill would help them because the bill has within it the Reforming Disaster Recovery Act, something that I am proud to say I am a sponsor of. This bill has that act within it, and this act within it, this legislation within it, would allow persons to recover faster. The process that we have currently is one that has not been codified. After each natural disaster, we find ourselves having to--to borrow a term--``reinvent the wheel.'' We find ourselves having to start all over again after each of these natural disasters, and we have them across the country. We have the weather on the coast and then we have the tornadic activity. We have the fires. When we have these man-made--not man-made. Some of them are, but we will call them acts of God. Sometimes they are simply things that people don't perpetrate. There are things that nature itself will visit upon people. As a result of these things happening and people suffering from them, this legislation will allow them to recover faster because there would be a codified process that allows money to be acquired faster. Money meaning the money that persons will need to restore their lives to some degree of normalcy. You don't have that currently. This bill provides that. It provides for a means by which money can be processed through the system. It can be acquired by simply following something prior to--a process in place prior to the disaster occurring and helping people to understand how they can acquire the necessary help that they will need. This would be something that would be made known to States, made known to the persons who, in various municipalities, are in control. That would usually be your county judge in certain places, your mayors, but there would be legislation that they could look to to get a better understanding of what the process will be like in the recovery phase after a natural disaster. I am very proud that this legislation is there. By signing the bill, yes, Mr. President, you would be signing a bill that has legislation in it that Al Green has sponsored. You know what, Mr. President. You are big enough to do that. You can do it. I know it would be hard for you, but give it a try. I am going to be proud to say that you signed it and you ought to be proud to know that I voted for it, and this would be one of the few times that you and I would probably be on the same page, Mr. President. That in and of itself should be reason for you to sign the legislation so that we can both say that we did something together. Wouldn't that be wonderful, Mr. President? Al Green and the President of the United States of America working together. It can happen, Mr. President, but it is up to you, not to me. I have done my part. It is now time for you to do yours, and you can. You can. I know. Just think about it. It can happen. Continuing, though. Mr. President, finally, as I come to my closure here, I must tell you that you have a great responsibility. The Framers of the Constitution were some brilliant people. They did prepare us for a time such as this and a President such as Trump. Mr. President, these are some brilliant people. They knew that we might encounter a President who would not want to sign a piece of historic legislation, so there is a means by which we can move forward and that means is without your signature. That means is simply this: You don't sign it. Once it is delivered to you, once you receive it, once it is sent to you, then 10 days later, if you don't sign it, it becomes law. Ten days later, it becomes law, not counting Saturdays and Sundays. Ten days later, it becomes law. Then when it becomes law, Mr. President, you didn't sign it so that gives you a way out. You didn't sign it. It became law, and you can go out and tell people how you were opposed to the many things that I mentioned. How you were opposed to helping people who are renters acquire a place to call home. How you were opposed to helping the builders construct more homes so that people can have a place to call home. You can go out and talk about that in your very own way. So you don't have to sign it, but it does have to arrive in your space. You have to receive it, and it has to be sent to you. If it is sent to you, then the 10 days will start from the day that it is forwarded to you. My hope is that it would be done if it hasn't been done and that the 10 days would run. I know, Mr. President, that you enjoy having other people take responsibility for your inactions and your actions. Since you enjoy it very much, my fear is that you will encourage that it not be sent to you. You will push back on it being sent to you so that later on, you will be able to say: Oh, I never got it, so I couldn't sign it. That would give you your way out. You would push back. Well, I would hope that that pushback won't be sufficient. I would hope that you would receive it so that either you will sign it and move on, or it is not signed and it passes, or you can veto it. If you veto it, I believe that with the number of votes that I have called to your attention for passage in the House and Senate, that veto can be overridden. Again, you are off the hook. You are off the hook, but my fear is that knowing you, you are going to do everything that you can to avoid having that get to your desk so that you can then blame someone else for your inaction, which really would be your actions because you would have rejected having it being sent to you in the first place. Mr. Speaker, I close with this. I am proud to have been a person to vote for this piece of legislation. It is landmark. It is going to make a difference in the lives of people once it becomes law. My hope is that it will become law expeditiously because there are many aspects of it that will have to be activated, and it will take time for these things to be properly activated so that they become meaningful and can function. I am hoping that you will sign it, but, Mr. President, if you don't sign it, here is what you are doing. You are providing another piece of ammunition for the countdown to impeachment. Now, why would I say this? Because, Mr. President, you have angered a good many Senators. A good many of them who might have considered other things will give some consideration to this word: impeachment. Impeachment starts in the House. It is the Senate that will vote to determine whether you are a person who should be actually convicted of the charge. The House acts as sort of a grand jury--not the same, but similar to. You have caused a lot of people in the House, Mr. President, who are going to give consideration to this word. Now, you may not be impeached for this bill, but you are giving people reasons to consider your impeachment for legitimate reasons that already exist, by the way. For legitimate reasons, you should be impeached already, but you haven't been. The countdown is still on. What you are doing is adding fuel to the fire of impeachment that may, at some point, become more than you can manage. I really do believe, Mr. President, that this act can help you by signing it, this bill. It is going to hurt you immensely if you don't sign it, not physically. I don't want your FBI concluding that somehow I would cause you any harm. I would never want to see you harmed, and anybody that would want to see you harmed, I am absolutely opposed to whatever they might do. You deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I can tell you this: You also deserve impeachment. The countdown will continue. I trust that you will stall it and do something to benefit yourself by simply signing a piece of legislation that the American people want. The American people want it to the extent that the builders, Mr. President, are going to contact you, or some aspect of your administration, about it. You are going to have citizens calling your office at the White House. You are going to have people writing you letters. You are going to have plenty of communication to contend with because this piece of legislation is pervasive. It is huge. You are going to have people who have a vested interest in this legislation contacting somebody to let you know that you should sign this legislation. And still I rise, an unbought, unbossed, unelected, liberated Democrat. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ms. Waters and Mr. Hill for honoring their commitment to make sure that H.R. 8291, the Reforming Disaster Recovery Act, was a part of this legislation. I believe that there are many ways that it could have been done, but I also believe that there are only two people who could have gotten it done. That would be Mr. Hill and Ms. Waters, of course, working with our colleagues in the Senate, Mr. Scott and Ms. Warren. This is a historic piece of legislation. It does what has never been done before. I am talking about H.R. 8291. It will authorize Community Development Block Grant disaster recovery for 3 years and reform the program to help the most marginalized persons. It provides flexible funding, primarily for low- and moderate-income communities recovering from major disasters. Again, I thank the ranking member and the chairman. I am most appreciative that this bill will contain this legislation.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I greatly appreciate the way Mr. Veasey has conducted this time, and I wish him the very best. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise. And I rise, Mr. Speaker, as I always do, unbought, unbossed, unafraid, and now I must also add unelected, a liberated Democrat, truly liberated, liberated to the extent that while I have been censured, I have not been silenced. While I have now been unelected, I will not be silent. My agenda remains the same. It is still the agenda that deals with the voices of those that are not heard in this House as they should be, the voices of the least, the last, and the lost--the least among us, persons who don't inherit a legacy of much, but actually a legacy of poverty, not plenty; persons who are among the lost in a society as rich as ours where persons find themselves lost in places of despair, living in places that you and I would not consider a place habitable. The least, the lost, and, of course, the last. The last would be those persons who are the last to be hired and the first to be fired--the least, the last, and the lost. But I also represent other people, and I will continue to do so. I represent those persons who suffer invidious discrimination. They are among the LGBTQIA+ community. They are women. They are persons who are of the Islamic faith. They are persons who are currently suffering from anti-Semitism. They are persons who are suffering because of the color of their skin. Today, I rise to speak on the topic of invidious discrimination emanating from the Presidency. I call to the attention of the listening audience and viewing audience an article from the Huffington Post, the HuffPost. This article is titled: ``Trump Used His Go-To Insult In Interview After Knicks Loss''--that would not be the last game, of course, the game prior to this one--``And Experts Say It's A Pattern.'' We are talking about his go-to insult, and I must commend Ms. Katie Mather for the outstanding job she has done with this article. It has the date June 9, 2026, as its date of publication. I would like to read some excerpts from this because I think it would give us an opportunity to understand how the Trump Presidency has not only impacted what he does but also some other aspects of society. So this is truly invidious discrimination emanating from the Presidency. Let me read some excerpts. The first reads: ``'First Take' host Stephen A. Smith slammed President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning after Trump told reporters on Monday night that Smith wouldn't be a good fit to run for President because `you need a high IQ.' '' My dear friends, if I may say brothers and sisters because I truly believe that there is but one race, and that is the human race, so if I may just say, my dear brothers and sisters. Friends, you may call Stephen A. Smith many things. I probably would not agree with anything that is negative. I don't know a negative side of him. I know that he is opinionated, but that is not unusual in the United States of America to have people who are opinionated. It is especially not unusual here in the House of Representatives. So you might call him many things, but I don't believe that you can call him a person in need of a high IQ, implying that he has a low IQ, and it goes on to say this in this article. Stephen A. Smith is brilliant, and I say this without question, reservation, or hesitation. He is one of the most brilliant people who I have seen in the sports arena, but he goes beyond sports. He talks on a multiplicity of subjects all the time, and he equips himself well on every topic that I have heard him speak on. Now, you don't have to agree with a person to understand the brilliance of the person. He has a brilliant mind, and I do believe that the President made this comment for dubious reasons. So let me continue reading from excerpts in the article: ``Trump's `low IQ' comment against Smith has racist implications . . . '' This is what the article says: `` . . . racist implications and is referred to as a `racial dog whistle' by linguists and political experts, said Dr. Karrin Anderson, a communications studies professor at Colorado State University.'' This professor is making the point that when the President says these things about persons with low IQs, he is actually signaling to others. It is a racist dog whistle. The article goes on to say: `` `What distinguishes a dog whistle from just an insult is it is designed to sound innocuous . . .' '' the dog whistle is designed to sound as though, oh, it is harmless, just another thing someone is saying to be funny or cute. Well, not this dog whistle. The article goes on to say: `` `. . . Anderson, who teaches courses in rhetoric, political communication, and gender and communication, told HuffPost: `It is meant to be deniable. The virtue, the rhetorical appeal of a dog whistle, is you can deny that it functions in the way that it is actually designed to function.' '' So this dog whistle is designed to appear to be innocuous and harmless, but its functionality is rooted in something else. He goes on to say: ``It's a term that white supremacists have historically used against people of color, and it's not the first time the President has publicly used it. Last month, he called House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries a `thug' and a `low IQ' person on Truth Social.'' This is where he speaks much of what he says to the public. But this term ``thug,'' let me focus on it for just a moment. Hakeem Jeffries, he calls a thug. That is demeaning. He does this to demean people of color, but then he adds the injury to this insult of low IQ. You can accuse Hakeem Jeffries of many things, but you cannot, in any way, produce the empirical evidence to show that he is a person with a low IQ. He is a brilliant man, a brilliant person who has the appeal that most people understand to be that of a person with great intellect. So when the President calls him a thug and a low-IQ person on Truth Social, and he did this in April, this was a means by which he could demean and insult and use the term that those who live in the world of white supremacy embrace. This is something that they readily embrace, and they understand the dog whistle. They understand what the President really means when he says ``thug'' and ``low IQ.'' Let me go on. ``In April, he called Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson the `new low-IQ person on the Court.' '' The `new low-IQ person on the Court.' ``During the 2024 Presidential election, Trump repeatedly described former Vice President Kamala Harris as a `low-IQ individual.' '' Note what all of these people have in common: color. African Americans, persons who have reached great heights in terms of their professions, persons who are making a difference in a very positive way in our country. But the President would demean them by challenging their intellect and, in so doing, appeal to white supremacists who still believe that people of color have low intellect. Reading on: `` `He applies it . . .' '' meaning his low IQ comment, `` `. . . indiscriminately to Black people in different walks of life and professions.' '' This is what Anderson said. `` `That's where it reveals that it is a racist dog whistle because it doesn't relate to anything else.' '' It goes on to say: ``Experts say the `low IQ' insult has a storied past. ``There is a long history in the U.S. of this `low IQ' dog whistle.'' This is Anderson speaking again. It goes on to say: `` `During the colonial era, White male elites took for granted that they were cognitively superior to women and people of color, and thus, divinely appointed for leadership.' '' Well, that explains a lot of the sexism that we have seen. That explains a lot of what we have seen when persons decide that they are simply going to reduce you to something less than human by assigning you to the primate family and calling you an ape or saying that you are related to the apes or somehow you are an ape, reducing people of color to animals that are not as superior life forms as some others. These animals are not persons. They exist, and we want them to exist, but we don't want people to compare human beings to these animals, and the President does this. He has compared a former President and First Lady to apes. We don't like to talk about this, I have found, but there are many people who would rather just see this kind of go away and let's let that just be something that he has done. Well, the President never apologized for it after saying that. Someone else actually posted it, but he never apologized. By the way, I don't ask him to apologize. I ask him to just tell the truth: That this was wrong, that it should not have been posted, and that he would not allow this to happen again. That would be more suitable for the means by which he can atone for his transgression, but he hasn't done any of that. He tends to double down. Well, this article goes on to remind us: `` 'IQ was used to justify heinous behavior like racial segregation and forced sterilizations.' '' Now, this is something that another social scientist, Figueroa, has called to our attention in this article. Forced sterilization because of IQ actually happened in the United States of America. We have much to atone for. As we approach this great anniversary, we would have people believe that all is well. All is not well. All won't be well until some of our transgressions have been properly addressed. This notion that you should sterilize a woman because you believe that she has a low IQ is more than simply a crime that is statutorily illegal. It is really a crime against humanity to engage in this kind of conduct. It actually happened. After we ended the enslavement of African Americans in this country, Africans from America, living in America, who were, at the time, and much of the time not declared citizens--so let's just say Africans in America. After slavery was ended, the enslavement of people after some 240 years, the people who had a hand in building this very facility, the Capitol, the White House, the ones who built roads and bridges, the people who planted seeds and harvested crops, they were the economic foundational mothers and fathers of the country. After we ended the enslavement of these persons, then we embarked upon convict leasing, which is another form of racism. Slavery itself was rooted in racism. This whole notion of convict leasing allowed people who violated some code to be placed in the hands of other persons, to be leased out from the government or some arm of the government. Many of them died as leased persons, those convicts who had been leased. There is a grave near Houston, Texas, with 95 bodies in it, persons who were convicts and leased, all in a common grave. This kind of behavior was justified based upon IQ. They were less than human. They were akin to the lower forms of animals that we would call primates. As such, you can do almost anything to them that you would like, and people did. This forced sterilization and this segregation was a form of invidious discrimination and was rooted in racism. Many of us alive today in this country experienced lawful racism in the form of segregation. Many of us went to back doors, drank from colored water fountains, sat in the back of the bus, and were locked up in the bottom of the jail. Many of us suffered this form of invidious discrimination, known as segregation, which is rooted in racism. We the people decided that we would no longer have this form of invidious discrimination exist lawfully. We ended it lawfully. We didn't end it as it relates to the practice. Invidious discrimination against people of color still exists to this day in this country. People who would say that it doesn't exist, and say that repeatedly, those who are in high places, those comments are based in racism. If you are saying repeatedly that people of color are not discriminated against in this country, and you are repeatedly saying it in public spaces, you, my friend, are a racist. You are. Nobody bothered to tell you before now. I know you didn't get the word. I am here to tell you that people who do this, to demean other people, to say that they are less than, that is racist rhetoric. Persons who do this regularly, with intentionality, you are a racist. As I indicated, IQ was used to justify heinous behavior, like racial segregation and forced sterilization. ``That thinking,'' it reads here, ``was amplified in the late 1900s by a popular book titled `The Bell Curve,' which falsely claimed that IQ differences between racial groups were biological. ``Phrenology, another form of race science that claimed skull shapes determined intelligence, has also been completely discredited by the scientific community because of how often it was used to uphold scientific racism and gender stereotypes throughout the U.S. and Europe.'' Friends, people of color and women have suffered greatly in this country under the color of law, under the guise of science that was rooted in racism. We have to change this. This cannot continue in this country. Until we change this, we cannot truly say that all persons are treated equally. Although they are created equally, they are not treated equally. We cannot say that liberty and justice for all exists when we address ourselves and the Pledge of Allegiance. It just doesn't happen. It is not the case. There is not liberty and justice for all in the United States of America. Let us continue. It reads: ``Roughly 8 in 10 of Trump's `low IQ' attacks target Black and Brown people, data shows.'' We are talking about empirical evidence. ``Trump has been using this dog whistle frequently. Between January 20, 2025, and April 25, 2026, Trump posted `low IQ,' or a variation of the phrase, 24 times.'' Let me stop for just a moment and deal with the variation of the phrase. There are some people who don't say low IQ. They will say stupid. They will say: Oh, Black people are stupid, or they will say a particular Black person is stupid. In so doing, they will say: Now, I really mean this in the sense of the way the word stupid is defined. They use stupidity. They use this in the sense of referring to the person's intellect. Again, it is another means by which persons are using dog whistles to demean people of color. This dog whistle that the President uses has permeated what I call racist radio. Yes, racist radio exists. Not all radio is racist, but there is a large segment, a subset of radio, that is racist. They are on the air daily, utilizing terms such as stupidity, depicting people of color as less than human beings. They have done it to the extent that they have normalized it within the circle that they reside in. They have normalized it. People just come to accept it. Well, I don't. I refuse to accept what racist radio does routinely. The President, who is at the top of this chain of unscrupulous behavior, shapes the tone and tenor for all of these things that happen beneath him. Much of what we are seeing today is being perpetrated and perpetuated because the President does it. Why can't others do it? People see it this way. We have this racist radio that is constantly perpetrating and perpetuating racist dog whistles in the form of IQ, in the form of depicting persons as less than human, who are persons of color, and in the form of using language other than low IQ, such as stupid. Stupidity has become another dog whistle for racist radio. They know that I speak truth. They rarely have the truth spoken such that they are exposed. Those of you who are listening to it and enjoying it, you are enjoying racism. As long as you continue to enjoy it and support it, buy the products being advertised on those stations, you are supporting racism. Racism exists in the public arena because, in many instances, people are buying the products that the racists purvey. The racists sell the products on their radio stations. They advertise the products. You buy them from those stations, and as a result you are supporting racism. I refuse to do it. Racism is something that we have to combat along with sexism, anti- Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, all of the various invidious phobias. Let me repeat this. It bears repeating. ``Roughly 8 in 10 of Trump's `low IQ' attacks target Black or Brown people, data shows.'' It goes on to say: ``Trump has been using this dog whistle frequently. Between January 20, 2025, and April 25, 2026, Trump posted ``low IQ,'' or a variation of the phrase, 24 times, according to a study by Truthout, a nonprofit news organization. Eight out of every 10 posts were directed at Black or Brown people. In the first 10 months of his second term, Trump did not refer to any White person as someone with `low IQ.' '' I am going to repeat that. ``In the first 10 months of his second term, Trump did not refer to any White person as someone with `low IQ.' '' These are the kinds of things people don't want to hear, but you have to know the truth so that you can free your minds. I read someplace that if you know the truth, it will set you free. I want to free your minds. This will free you, some of you. Some of you choose not to be free, and there is nothing that will be said to free your minds because you choose not to be free. There is no one so blind as he who chooses not to see. Not as he who cannot see, but he who chooses not to see. There are many people who choose not to see. No White person referred to with ``low IQ.'' The article goes on to indicate: ``It is designed to signal to a specific audience that a speaker shares their ideology or belief systems.'' That is what these dog whistles are designed to do, to say to other people, hey, don't worry, I have got your back, I believe, just as you believe, that they have low IQs, so it is okay for you to say it on racist radio now. It is all right. You can call persons stupid. You can say low IQ. You can do it with impunity because the President is doing it. Well, it is not all right, and you are not going to do it with impunity because you are going to be exposed. This goes on to indicate that: ``[Trump] uses it to refer to Black people and, predominantly but not exclusively, Black women.'' ``Predominantly, but not exclusively, Black women.'' I stand in defense of Black women. I stand in defense of the Black women that he has called persons with low IQs. I defend Maxine Waters. I defend Vice President Kamala Harris. I defend Jasmine Crockett. I defend the women that this President would demean with a racist comment, and that is what it is. It is racist. Racist commentary constantly repeated over the airwaves. It goes on to say: ``I think, in his mind''--this is a person speaking now of the President--``I think in his mind, because it doesn't explicitly refer to race, he feels that it is easy to deny that it's a racist label.'' My friends, he can deny it, but there are some of us who see through it. I am here to tell you that it is racist, and it is a racist label. This article concludes with this language: ``By repeating the phrase openly''--as is done on racist radio quite regularly. Remember, we are talking today about invidious discrimination emanating from the Presidency, and I chose this topic, emanating from the Presidency, because I wanted to talk about how it has permeated society. It starts there at the top with this President, and it permeates society. Now, the argument can be made that it was here, and it was, before this President took office, but he has popularized it. He has normalized it. He has made it such that people in racist radio use it regularly and feel as though they are doing something noble by demeaning people of color and women and others as well, members of the LGBTQIA+ community. He says: ``I think in his mind, because he doesn't explicitly refer to race, he feels that it's easy to deny that it is a racist label.'' The final comment: ``By repeating the phrase openly, the practice further popularizes the concept.'' By repeating it, he popularizes the racist comment. As another person who spoke--Harris--once put it, ``Trump's language seems to have become less a dog whistle and more a bullhorn.'' ``Less a dog whistle, more a bullhorn.'' So, friends, here we are. We have a President of the United States of America who routinely uses racist commentary to refer to people of color. Routinely. He does it without a thought as to how it impacts the lives of the people he refers to, the persons that he is calling low IQ. He doesn't really understand--maybe he does understand and doesn't care, but he should consider how it impacts the lives of people, how it signals to other people that the persons are less than, and how it can cause some people to respond to them in a very adverse way. However, we have to say to the President--and I do so today--Mr. President, if you are using this kind of commentary, as you do, and you continue to do it routinely, someone has to tell you what you are doing. Here is what you are doing, Mr. President: You are bringing the country itself, the country itself to a level of concern for others such that we are not seen as we were once seen--as we were once seen as a country with the Statue of Liberty, the notion that there is liberty and justice for all in our Pledge of Allegiance, the notion that we truly respect all people, and that all persons are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You are causing people across the globe to see us differently. You are causing people across the globe to understand that the United States is undergoing something that they never thought they would see and, quite frankly, I am amazed myself. Therefore, Mr. President, there is only one thing I can say to you: When you do this, you are not only using a racist dog whistle, you are a racist. That kind of terminology utilized the way you do it regularly makes you the racist who has now given other racists the license to say what they say openly and notoriously, normalizing racism. As we approach the 250th anniversary, Mr. President, you should be ashamed. However, there is no shame in you. You have already demonstrated this with your behavior over the many years that you have had a public voice. You have already demonstrated there is no shame in you, so because you have no shame in you, Mr. President, I would call to your attention that while I am unbought, unbossed, unafraid, and unelected, censured but not silenced, Mr. President, there is still a countdown to impeachment. Mr. President, it is just a matter of time. Your day of reckoning will come. Someone is going to stand in the well of this House of Representatives and is going to introduce Articles of Impeachment against you. These articles are going to pass in this House of Representatives, but before that person does it, however, I believe that there will be someone who will introduce articles to lay the foundation for the actual articles that will later on pass the House of Representatives. There is always someone who lays the foundation for things. A foundation was made at the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A foundation was laid to eliminate invidious discrimination in bussing on bus lines when Rosa Parks took a seat and ignited the sparked that started the civil rights movement. Someone is going to lay the foundation. Mr. President, you should know you will be impeached again. You will be three times impeached. Mr. Speaker, with that said, I, Al Green, a proud, unbought, unbossed, unafraid, unelected, and truly liberated Democrat, yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise with much to say, but before going into my message, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Veasey), a colleague who has done an exceptional job representing the 33rd District in the State of Texas. After he has finished, I will then continue with my message. Recognizing the Life and Legacy of Sylvia Collins

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank my very dear friend from Virginia for allowing me the time. I shall return some of it to the gentleman. First, an acknowledgment: I am a dues check-off member of AFSCME. I am proud to have been a member of this union for more than 20 years, and I rise to say that I support the legislation. More importantly, I rise to say that we should not engage in insidious prevarications to solicit the support of legislation. It is not true, and I defend all the unions, especially SEIU and AFSCME. It is not true that any of those unions support Hamas. That is below the belt. There is no empirical evidence to indicate that any of the unions support Hamas. When I heard that, it really touched a nerve. We can debate these issues without the prevarications that can become incitive. This is about whether we should have collective bargaining, that it should be fair, and that the industry and labor should compromise and work together. I can support compromise, but I cannot support language indicating that labor unions are supporting Hamas. It is not true.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise, a proud, unbought, unbossed, liberated Democrat. I rise today, Mr. Speaker, with a heavy heart. I rise as an ally of the LGBTQIA+ community. I rise today to say just a few words about a member of that community who has gone on to glory. I rise to recognize the greatness and the brilliance of the honorable Barney Frank, the first person as a Member of Congress to voluntarily announce that he was a gay person. I rise to honor him and his brilliance because I had the preeminent experience of sitting right in front of him for a good deal of time on the House Financial Services Committee. The Honorable Barney Frank was brilliant in the sense that he knew the subject matter. Not only did he know the subject matter, but he could present it with a great degree of eloquence and a certain amount of humor. He did it with style, and he did it without any notes. He never came to a hearing with notes. He could talk about the derivatives. He could talk about credit default swaps. He could talk about the 3/27s and 2/ 28s, all without a single note. I never saw him bring notes to one single hearing. He was brilliant, one of the great minds of our time, Mr. Speaker. I rise to salute him because he not only helped to shape the destiny of this country with Dodd-Frank, but also because he helped to shape the destiny of my path in Congress. He was a great mentor. He was someone who was well respected and that all the members of the committee, regardless of party affiliation, looked up to. He truly had something special--I believe the French call it je ne sais quoi--just something very unique, something that you just don't see in people, generally speaking. I am proud to call him a friend. I am proud to say that as a friend of the community, I, Al Green, an ally of the LGBTQIA+ community, present the Pride resolution annually in the Congress of the United States of America. In so doing, I have made the Honorable Barney Frank an honorary sponsor of that resolution. I will continue to do so in H. Res. 550. He was an honorary cosponsor, and I shall continue in his absence to do so. Dear brother, Barney Frank, you have made a difference, and that difference is known to many; unfortunately, unknown to many others. Today, I rise to salute you and pay you the respect that you have earned as a great and noble American. God bless you, dear brother. Rest in eternal peace.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise, a very proud, unbought, unbossed, liberated Democrat, a Democrat who has been censured in this very House, censured but not silenced. I am proud to say, Mr. Speaker, that I recognize and respect freedom of speech in this country. It is at the very foundation of our freedoms, the ability to express one's opinions. The Constitution protects freedom of speech, but it does not say that some speech, which can be hateful speech, is speech that cannot be condemned. Tonight, Mr. Speaker, I rise in this the 119th Congress, First Session, to present H. Res. 1313, Mr. Speaker. I shall read what it says, and I take no delight in reading this resolution because it does deal with free speech, but it also deals with consequences, and I well know consequences. Remember, unbought, unbossed, censured, but not silenced. As an unbought, unbossed, censured, but not silenced Member of this Congress, I have filed H. Res. 1313, and it reads as follows: ``Condemning the hateful comments of Texas congressional candidate Maureen Galindo. ``In the House of Representatives: Mr. Green of Texas submitted the following resolution: ``Resolution. Condemning the hateful comments of Texas congressional candidate Maureen Galindo. ``Section 1. Short Title. This resolution may be cited as the `Original Resolution Condemning the Hateful Comments of Texas Congressional Candidate Maureen Galindo.' ``Section 2. Findings. The House of Representatives finds the following: ``Whereas on May 13, 2026, referring to herself, Texas congressional candidate Maureen Galindo posted on Instagram, `When Maureen gets into Congress, she'll write legislation so that all Zionism is undoubtedly Anti-Semitic, since it's Zionists harming the Semites.'' She goes on to say in these quoted words: ``She'll turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking. (It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists).''' I find this to be unacceptable and abhorrent and condemnable. This resolution continues: ``Whereas Ms. Galindo's comments advocate the imprisonment of Americans based on their ideologies and associations and endorse the use of detention facilities as institutions for political punishment. ``Whereas throughout history, some governments have used detention camps and prisons to persecute individuals because of their race, religion, ethnicity, political beliefs, or perceived affiliations. ``Whereas during World War II, Nazi Germany established concentration camps that imprisoned and murdered millions of people, including six million Jews, who suffered the horrors of the Holocaust. ``Whereas among the lessons of the Holocaust is the demonstration of the dangerous consequences of targeting individuals or groups for detention based on identity, beliefs, or associations. ``Whereas calls for the imprisonment of persons possibly associated with Jewish identity evoke some of the darkest chapters in human history and are deeply offensive to Holocaust survivors, their descendants, and the families of those who suffered religious persecution. ``Whereas the First Amendment to the Constitution protects freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association for all people in the United States; it does not, however, protect persons from the condemnation of their hate speech.'' Some things bear repeating: ``It does not, however, protect persons from the condemnation of their hate speech.'' ``Whereas, calls to imprison and castrate Americans because of their ideologies or affiliations are contrary to the idealized principles of liberty and justice enshrined in the Constitution, now therefore be it Resolved that the House of Representatives--(1) Condemns the hateful comments of Texas congressional candidate Maureen Galindo, advocating the imprisonment and castration of Americans based on their ideologies or associations.'' Mr. Speaker, we cannot allow this type of behavior, this type of speech to become normalized. If we do, we will find ourselves with more than just any one group or any two groups. All persons may become subject to the message contained within this hateful speech. Mr. Speaker, we have to stop it now before we arrive at a point in our history where we cannot. We must end it or it may be our end. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise. And still I rise, unbought, unbossed, unafraid: a liberated Democrat. I rise as an unbought, liberated, and unafraid Democrat. I am unbought by crypto cash, unbought by the millions of dollars that the crypto industry spends to elect people to Congress so that they can have influence over legislation, and unbossed by the cryptocrats, the people who are among the greediest when it comes to controlling money and who desire to not only avoid taxes but to evade taxes. I am unbossed, unbought, and unafraid; unafraid to speak truth to the powerful crypto industry and unafraid to speak truth about the powerful crypto industry. Mr. Speaker, you can speak truth to power by simply saying: Power, there is a problem. Let's solve it. I speak truth about power because I say to power: There is a problem, and you are it. Today, as a censored but not silenced--censored but not silenced-- Member of Congress, I will today speak truth not only to power but also speak truth about power. As I do so, and I will use my pointer as I customarily do, my cane. By the way, this cane is not to help me ambulate. I am quite ambulatory. This cane is a rod and a staff that comforts me in the presence of my enemies when I don't have the protection that Congress is providing us, and I don't always have it. Today, as I speak truth unbought, unbossed, unafraid, and censored but not silenced, I want to call several things to your attention, Mr. Speaker, under the topic of the dangers of unregulated cryptocurrency. There are dangers associated with cryptocurrency when it is not properly regulated. Let's start with the memecoins. Mr. Speaker, if you own a memecoin, you own nothing. You have bought nothing. You have paid for nothing, and at some point, some of the owners of memecoins will get exactly what they paid for: nothing. A memecoin is a fiction that requires the person who buys initially at some point to hope that there is another person who will buy at a higher price and that the money between the price paid for and the price you can sell for, the higher price, becomes your profit. In the parlance of those who do much of this at a street level, that is called the greater fool theory: buying in and believing that there is a greater fool who will come along and cover your possible losses. If you own a memecoin, Mr. Speaker, you own nothing. The President is one of the great purveyors of memecoins. The President has a coin, the $TRUMP Coin, and this coin he can pump up, and he can dump and leave those who are part of the higher price holding the bag. The President pumps and dumps. This is a scam. I am speaking truth about power, not just to power. Yes, Mr. President, you are the problem. You have taken advantage of many people with your scam wherein you can make comments and tell people to come down to Mar-a-Lago, come on down, and those who have the greatest investment, you will be allowed. Those who are buying in at a cheaper level won't be allowed. Therefore, people can go out and buy so that they can be among those who will come to Mar-a-Lago and as a result, he pumps up the value of his memecoin, which is nothing. He pumps up the value of nothing, and then at some point he can sell at this higher price and make an amount of money. This is really insider trading that is transparent. I don't think the President ought to be able to own memecoins. I don't think the Cabinet should own memecoins. I don't think Members of Congress should own memecoins. I think that Members of Congress, the President, and the Cabinet have advantages that other people don't have. We talk to each other. The President can tell people when to buy and when to sell because he is going to pump and then dump or allow you to dump. I believe the law ought to regulate such that memecoins cannot be owned and sold by Members of Congress, members of the Cabinet, the President, and possibly some others that I shall not name at this point. I believe that we have to properly regulate the memecoin. That is why the cryptocrats want to get me out of Congress because they know I fight them. I stand in the way of what they attempt to do to people who are not knowledgeable about how this can be pumped and dumped and how people can be taken advantage of. I am in the way, yes. Come and get me. I understand it. Come and get me. As long as I am here, I am going to stay in the way. I want to protect the American people from this kind of insider trading, this kind of selling of nothing, and being taken advantage of by those who happen to buy nothing and assume that they can sell it for something. Yes, the memecoin is a problem. Those who sell it and create it are a part of the problem when it is not properly regulated. Mr. Speaker, I want to call to your attention the decentralization of cryptocurrency. The cryptocrats want to decentralize cryptocurrency so that they can have peer-to-peer transference of dollars, huge sums of dollars, untold amounts of dollars, peer-to-peer transfers. Why is this so important to them? If you can transfer peer-to-peer, you can engage in tax evasion--more than tax avoidance. Tax avoidance is legal. Tax evasion is illegal. You can transfer huge sums of money from one person to another without some central entity that can be there to make sure that it is properly regulated. That is what the cryptocrats want. They want to be able to just transfer money. That way, you can avoid taxes. You can also do something else when you have this peer-to-peer transference. You can also transfer that money at a speed that is unbelievably fast. You can transfer it to a terrorist organization. It can be received by those who would do us harm, those who would disrupt our society, and those who would disrupt the democracy that we cherish. Yes, the cryptocrats are in the business of buying and selling. They are also in the business of contributing to those who would agree with what I am antithetical to. Those who would agree with what I am antithetical to would allow them to have peer-to-peer transfers and allow them to have memecoins that are meaningless, nothing but a thought, a fiction. I am speaking truth about power, not just to it. Yes, decentralization without regulation is a problem. Of course, the cryptocrats, whether wittingly or unwittingly, are moving in the direction of creating something akin to the demise of the almighty dollar. Cryptocrats would, if they could, have cryptocurrency become the preeminent currency. There is a war for currency supremacy going on across the globe. The dollar is the supreme currency across the globe. It is the reserve currency of choice across the globe. The cryptocrats would have the cryptocurrency become the currency of choice. Use the cryptocurrency. Use it, and you don't have to have it go through some centralized location. Just transfer your money like you please. In fact, if they had their way, cryptocurrency would be tantamount to banks. They would have unregulated banks. The sad thing about what I have just said is that the banks don't know who their friends are. They don't understand, it seems, that there are some of us who are fighting this. They don't seem to understand that. Well, I can tell you this: I am going to protect the American banking system, whether the banks will join in and help or not. I am going to protect the American banking system because, in so doing, I am protecting the American dollar, and in so doing, I am helping to protect American democracy to a certain extent. If the banking system fails, people lose trust. They lose trust in the economy. That impacts the democracy in the sense that we allow people to be placed into office who would facilitate this decentralized transfer of money. I am opposed to it. I am going to protect the banks in this country, a system that has functioned. It has allowed the dollar to be the supreme currency of choice globally. We have to protect the American dollar. I am going to do that. The cryptocrats, if they had their way, would own every Member of Congress, but there are some who resist. I am a part of the resistance. As a matter of fact, I may be at the tip of the spear of the resistance, a part of the avant-garde. I am the resistance, to a certain extent. There are others, but I assure you that I am going to remain the architect of some portion of this resistance as long as I am in Congress. Therein is the operative phrase for the cryptocrats: He said as long as he is in Congress. Well, if we just get him out of Congress, we don't have him to contend with. Well, you can do that, but there are others who will follow. There are. There are others who are already in the fight. They are. They are there. I can assure you of this: I am going to fight you to the bitter end. Until my last days, I will fight what I see as a demise of the dollar, a peer-to-peer transference of money such that you can avoid taxes, and the creation of nothing and selling it as something. This is the epitome of ridiculosity, to allow such things to occur and not challenge them. I assure all who listen that I am going to protect your wallet. There are people who say they want to put more money in your wallet? Well, I am going to protect your wallet and make sure that you can get money in your wallet and not allow people to cleverly disguise themselves as persons who want to regulate when, in fact, they just want to pass something under the guise of regulation so that the cryptocrats can continue to move in the direction of dominance with the cryptocurrency, the crypto dollars, as it were. This is not something that we should take lightly, and I do not. I want to assure you that I am censured but not silenced. I also want to assure you of something else: The countdown to impeachment continues. What the President has done as it relates to wars, as it relates to pumping and dumping, which I have explained earlier, and as it relates to his disrespect for the Constitution of the United States of America, he has done things that are clearly impeachable. It is just a matter of time, Mr. President. Your day will come. Someone is going to stand in the well of the House of Representatives and read Articles of Impeachment to remove you from office. It would be the thing that this country should do so as to prevent another cryptocrat, such as yourself--yes, the President is a cryptocrat--to prevent another cryptocrat such as yourself from assuming power. We have to protect American democracy from the cryptocrats. We have already had a former Vice President say that this President is a great threat to the Republic. I think he said the greatest threat to the Republic. President Donald John Trump: a threat to the Republic and a threat to democracy. Cryptocracy is his main concern, it seems, because it is a family business that he has brought to the White House, and they are using this family business to make billions of dollars at the expense of unsuspecting Americans and people of other stripes, as well. I am censured, not silenced, and I am engaging in a countdown to impeachment. I know that there are people who want to know when. It will happen when it happens, and I assure you it is going to happen. Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the time. I am proud to say that I am Al Green, the OG Al Green, unbought, unbossed, unafraid, uncontrolled by the cryptocrats. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GREEN of Texas

Mr. GREEN of Texas. And still I rise, Mr. Speaker. I must applaud the gentlewoman from California and associate myself with her remarks. As I do so, I will remind us that, yes, the Voting Rights Act was signed by Lyndon Johnson. He did sign it in ink; but the truth be told, it was written in blood. It was written in the blood of those who crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, the blood of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney. It was signed in ink but written in blood. This is bigger than that. Yes, this is of paramount importance. It is also about something else that is taking place at the very same time that we are losing our voting rights and many of our Members of Congress. That other thing is seniority. Seniority is under assault in the Congress of the United States of America. It was the Congressional Black Caucus that fought to maintain seniority. If we lose seniority on our watch after the suffering that they went through and all that they did to protect it, what can we say about ourselves? Seniority, the means by which many of the people who hold committee chairmanships right now who are members of the Congressional Black Caucus, they had those chairpersonships because of seniority. Seniority has made a difference because seniority has the power. This is a power grab in the sense that it is a power grab to take seats away, but it is also a power grab to take seniority away. When seniority is no longer the means by which we have upward mobility--some things bear repeating. When seniority is no longer the means by which we will have upward mobility, money will rule, and we will lose. We will lose. Maxine Waters became chair, the only woman ever of any hue to chair the Committee on Financial Services, because of seniority. Bennie Thompson was the chair of the Committee on Homeland Security because of seniority, and the list goes on and on. My closing words are these: I want my record to show that when seniority was at risk, I did everything that I could to protect it. I am going to fight to protect the seniority system because that is the system that allows us to deliver more goods and services to our communities. Yes, there are exceptions, Barbara Jordan being one; but exceptions don't make the rule, they prove the rule. Seniority must stand, and I stand with seniority.