Sheila Jackson Lee

Ms. JACKSON LEE

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. JACKSON LEE

Ms. JACKSON LEE. The gentleman is always enormously courteous, and I will be brief. Since I was on the committee the gentleman might have been staff, but I know in the House, for example, we had at least 100 hearings and 15,000 pages of testimony. It was chaired at that time by Jim Sensenbrenner, a Republican, who was meticulous in making sure we had a record. So I am not sure where the gentleman is getting his information from. I will just finish by simply saying that the voter suppression laws that we are dealing with today are all engaged responding to the big lie that there was not a legitimate election in 2020, and my good friend knows that President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected in 2020. So we wonder the basis of these voter suppression laws. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I will not take more of his time.

Ms. JACKSON LEE

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2668, the ``Consumer Protection and Recovery Act'', which will ensure that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can protect American consumers and put money back in the pockets of consumers who have been the victims of fraud and other scams by amending the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act) to explicitly provide the FTC the ability to obtain both injunctive and monetary equitable relief for all violations of the laws it enforces. Specifically, this bill would: Add a new subsection (e) to section 13 of the FTC Act that specifies types of equitable relief the FTC may pursue: restitution for losses, contract reformation and recission, money refunds, and the return of property; Provide the FTC disgorgement authority to seek court orders requiring bad actors repay unjust gains acquired in violation of the law. Clarify that the FTC may seek temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions without bond and that any relief sought under section 13(b) may be for past violations in addition to ongoing and imminent violations. As the Nation's premier consumer protection agency, the FTC is directed to enforce numerous statutes: the core of which is section 5 of the FTC Act mandating the agency to prevent unfair or deceptive acts or practices and unfair methods of competition. Section 13(b) of the FTC Act authorizes the FTC to bring suit in federal courts seeking relief for consumers and is a critical enforcement tool the FTC uses to combat fraud and scams under section 5. In 2020 alone, the FTC returned more than $482 million to over 1.6 million consumer victims of fraud or illegal business practices. The FTC's restitution authority under section 13(b) was settled law for over 40 years, but beginning in 2017, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed its own precedent to overturn FTC authority under section 13(b) to obtain monetary relief and the Third Circuit soon followed. Because of these decisions, close to 48 million Americans in six states became unable to obtain monetary redress under 13(b). Then, on April 22, 2021, the Supreme Court held in AMG Capital Management v. FTC that section 13(b) does not allow the FTC to seek monetary relief or require bad actors to return money earned through illegal activity. According to Acting Chairwoman Slaughter, the Supreme Court decision ``deprived the FTC of the strongest tool [the FTC] had to help consumers.'' Mr. Speaker, all five FTC Commissioners have repeatedly urged Congress to take quick action to pass legislation reaffirming FTC authority under section 13(b). H.R. 2668 does exactly that, by restoring nearly forty years of precedent and giving the FTC the ability to protect Americans from scams and unethical business practices. Americans need this protection, because every day, and far too often, individuals in Texas and across the country fall victim to financial scammers. The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to an increase of scams and fraud that prey on consumers' fears and financial insecurities, and inaction on this issue is not an option as it will only embolden bad actors. H.R. 2668 will ensure that the FTC maintains its ability to return money to the victims of scams. Seniors especially need this protection, because they have worked their entire lives with the promise of a safe and secure retirement, but scammers and unscrupulous businesses are taking advantage of uncertainty surrounding the pandemic and working overtime to target them. Retirement accounts are not the only damage these scams cause--they damage the independence and trust of a vulnerable community. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen instances of fraud rise in unprecedented numbers, as scammers attempt to take advantage of senior citizens and deprive them of their hard-earned savings. Bad actors preying on older Americans is, unfortunately, nothing new, but in the midst of a global pandemic impacting Americans' lives and livelihoods, cracking down on those scams must be a priority. One such scam was thwarted by Houston police and the Harris County District Attorney, who made an arrest in February in an international cyber-scam that bilked unsuspecting, mostly elderly victims out of more than $1 million. One victim of the scam, Asuncion Peppers, 74, a retired medical technician knows that first hand; She was bilked out of her life savings. Hackers contacted Ms. Peppers on Facebook, pretending to be one of her Facebook friends. She was told she was eligible for a government grant of almost one million dollars and all she had to do was send a check to pay taxes. Investigators believes the scammers were operating from Nigeria, defrauding senior citizens in the U.S. and around the world. Before Ms. Peppers realized she was being conned, she sent checks totaling $87,000 hard-earned money. She said that she worked three jobs to build her life savings. Ms. Peppers and her husband are just two of 38 victims bilked out of more than $1.3 million before the fraud was discovered. This story is not an isolated incident: although 1 in 20 seniors in the U.S. is a target of fraud schemes, the National Adult Protective Services Association has found that only 1 in 44 seniors report that they are victims of a fraud scheme. During these unprecedented times, it is imperative that Congress pass legislation that protects U.S. consumers and honest businesses from wrongdoers who steal money through fraud and deception. Mr. Speaker, we need to strengthen federal prevention efforts and ensure leaders in the public and private sectors are collaborating on effective safeguards. This begins with ensuring that the FTC has the explicit authority to obtain both injunctive and monetary relief for all violations of the laws it enforces. I urge all members to join me in voting to pass H.R. 2668, the ``Consumer Protection and Recovery Act.''

Ms. JACKSON LEE

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2467, the ``PFAS Action Act of 2021'', which is comprehensive legislation to regulate Per- and poly- fluoroalkyl substances (``PFAS'') chemicals, clean up contamination, and protect public health. H.R. 2467 will provide the protections impacted communities need quickly and for the long term. Specifically, this bill will require Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use tools under several environmental statutes to: Stem the flow of PFAS contamination into the environment by requiring cleanup of contamination sites, setting air emission limits, prohibiting unsafe incineration of PFAS, and limiting the introduction of new PFAS chemicals into commerce; Identify health risks by requiring comprehensive health testing for all PFAS, reporting of PFAS releases, and monitoring for PFAS in drinking water; Inform communities of PFAS risks by requiring the EPA Administrator to develop a risk-communication strategy and establish a website with information on testing of household well water; and Limit human exposure to PFAS by requiring a drinking water standard for PFAS that protects public health, including the health of vulnerable subpopulations like pregnant women, infants, and children, and holding polluters accountable. The legislation also provides grants to impacted water systems, creates a voluntary label for cookware that is PFAS free, provides guidance for first responders to limit their exposures, and requires effluent limitations and pretreatment standards for PFAS introduction or discharge. Known as PFAS, for per- and polytluoroalkyl substances, the chemicals in this class of approximately 5,000 substances have become notorious as much for their potential danger as for their perseverance. Because the chemical bonds that hold the compounds together don't break down easily, they last a very long time--a reality that has led to a commonly used name for the group: ``Forever chemicals.'' PFAS compounds are also ubiquitous and used in a range of products from food-delivery boxes to nonstick cookware to stain-resistant clothing. But one of the most troubling routes to PFAS exposure is drinking water that has been contaminated by discharges from factories and other facilities. PFAS chemicals are an urgent public health threat, because they are persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic. PFAS have long been linked with adverse health effects including cancer, immune system effects, infertility, impaired child development, high cholesterol, and thyroid disease. PFAS have been detected in the drinking water of more than 1,400 communities in 49 states, according to research by the PFAS Project at Northeastern University in Boston and the Environmental Working Group (EWG). According to monitoring by the EPA, millions of Americans are exposed to unsafe levels of PFAS through their drinking water. Military families and communities are at especially high risk. A 2018 UCS analysis of 131 U.S. military facilities showed that nearly all had significant PFAS contamination of groundwater or drinking water, some with levels over 100,000 times the safe limit as determined by the most recent draft scientific assessment from the Department of Health and Human Services. Included in this analysis was the Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base in Houston, Texas, which tested at levels of 61,000 parts per trillion. Clear and swift action from Congress is needed to address the PFAS crisis, and we need an all-hands-on-deck effort to protect both human health and our environment. This bipartisan legislation will ensure we're treating PFAS as a hazardous chemical and giving our agencies the resources to clean up sites for the betterment of our communities. I urge all members to join me in voting for H.R. 2467, the ``PFAS Action Act of 2021.''

Ms. JACKSON LEE

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, in these tumultuous days of crisis and challenge, Members of Congress know well, perhaps better than most, how blessed our nation is to have in reserve such exceptional young men and women who will go on to become leaders in their local communities, states, and the nation in the areas of business, education, law, government, philanthropy, the arts and culture, and the military. We know this because we see them and benefit from their contributions every day. Many of them work for us in our offices as junior staff members, congressional fellows, or interns and they do amazing work for and on behalf of the constituents we are privileged to represent. Madam Speaker, I believe there is no higher calling than the call to serve a cause larger than ourselves. That is why I ran for public office. I was inspired to serve by President Kennedy who said, ``Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,'' and by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who said: ``Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. . . . You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.'' By this measure, there are several other great young men and women who served as volunteers this year in my offices. They braved the dangers of the pandemic that has wrought so much suffering and heartbreak across our nation. They cheerfully do their duty in the U.S. Capitol complex that just six months ago was the site of an insurrection attack not seen since the War of 1812. These dedicated and public-spirited men and women may toil in obscurity but their contributions to the constituents we serve are deeply appreciated. That is why today I rise to pay tribute to five extraordinary young persons for their service to my constituents in the 18th Congressional District of Texas and to the American people. They are: Alejandro Garcia Escobar Plascencia, Georgetown University; Jacqueline White Menchaca, Arizona State University; Idia Irele, Smith College and Harvard University; Anthony Collier, Texas Southern University; and Valencia Shuler, Rice University. Madam Speaker, the energy, intelligence, and idealism these wonderful young people brought to my office and those interning in the offices of my colleagues help keep our democracy vibrant. The insights, skills, and knowledge of the governmental process they gain from their experiences will last a lifetime and prove invaluable to them as they go about making their mark in this world. Because of persons like them the future of our country is bright, and its best days lie ahead. I wish them all well. Madam Speaker, I am grateful that such thoughtful committed young men and women can be found working in my office, those of my colleagues, and in every community in America. Their good works will keep America great, good, and forever young.

Ms. JACKSON LEE

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I, too, want to add my appreciation to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for his leadership in moving this bill forward and certainly to our friend and one who has served this Nation in many ways, Congressman Crow, for his continued consideration of our friends in Afghanistan. As the co-chair and founder of the Afghanistan Caucus, I have gone to Afghanistan many, many times in the early years. I know the people in Afghanistan truly love democracy. I know the women and children want education, and I know that in the midst of our decision on the longest- serving war, we must find that pathway to be able to ensure democracy prevails, both in terms of the democratic leadership of government but also in the lives of the people. I hesitate to read this language: ``Gunfire erupts. At least a dozen men are seen shot to death amid cries of `Allahu Akbar', God is great. ``The victims were members of an Afghan Special Forces unit: their executioners, the Taliban. The summary killings took place on June 16 in the town of Dawlat Abad in Faryab Province, close to Afghanistan's border with Turkmenistan.'' It is, of course, a difficult thing to read and to understand. But as we begin to write the democratic principles of a constitution so many years ago--prior to this Nation going to Iraq--people were interested and excited about their life. Women were elected as parliamentarians. In fact, they prided themselves on a number of parliamentarians who happened to be women. In the instance of that leaving Afghanistan the first time, we found that those women, many going to their districts, were killed. Schools for children that girls were in, schools that I took books to, were actually burned to the ground. So those who stood by us, those who guided our troops, those who translated for us, and those who took us into the villages--because many of you know the stories of our soldiers going in with money. That was the policy at that time--this bill specifically acknowledges their leadership. I include in the Record three articles referencing this important issue. [From Human Rights Watch, Apr. 1, 2021] Afghanistan: Taliban Target Journalists, Women in Media New York.--Taliban forces are deliberately targeting journalists and other media workers, including women, in, Human Rights Watch said today. Threats and attacks against journalists across the country have increased sharply since talks began between the Afghan government and the Taliban, heightening concerns about preserving freedom of expression and the media in any peace settlement. Human Rights Watch found that Taliban commanders and fighters have engaged in a pattern of threats, intimidation, and violence against members of the media in areas where the Taliban have significant influence, as well as in Kabul. Those making the threats often have an intimate knowledge of a journalist's work, family, and movements and use this information to either compel them to self-censor, leave their work altogether, or face violent consequences. Provincial and district-level Taliban commanders and fighters also make oral and written threats against journalists beyond the areas they control. Journalists say that the widespread nature of the threats has meant that no media workers feel safe. ``A wave of threats and killings has sent a chilling message to the Afghan media at a precarious moment as Afghans on all sides get set to negotiate free speech protections in a future Afghanistan,'' said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director. ``By silencing critics through threats and violence, the Taliban have undermined hopes for preserving an open society in Afghanistan.'' Human Rights Watch interviewed 46 members of the Afghan media between November 2020 and March 2021, seeking information on the conditions under which they work, including threats of physical harm. Those interviewed included 42 journalists in Badghis, Ghazni, Ghor, Helmand, Kabul, Kandahar, Khost, Wardak, and Zabul provinces and four who had left Afghanistan due to threats. In a number of cases that Human Rights Watch documented, Taliban forces detained journalists for a few hours or overnight. In several cases they or their colleagues were able to contact senior Taliban officials to intercede with provincial and district-level commanders to secure their release, indicating that local commanders are able to take decisions to target journalists on their own without approval from senior Taliban military or political officials. Taliban officials at their political office in Doha, Qatar, have denied that their forces threaten the media and say that they require only that journalists respect Islamic values. But Taliban commanders throughout Afghanistan have threatened journalists specifically for their reporting. The commanders have considerable autonomy to carry out punishments, including targeted killings. Women journalists, especially those appearing on television and radio, face particular threats. The recent wave of violent attacks has driven several prominent women journalists to give up their profession or leave Afghanistan altogether. Female reporters may be targeted not only for issues they cover but also for challenging perceived social norms prohibiting women from being in a public role and working outside the home. Journalists outside the country's main cities are especially vulnerable to attacks because they are more exposed and lack even the minimal protection that a larger Afghan media, government, and international presence provides. However, as the fighting has increasingly encroached on major cities, these have offered decreasing protection to journalists seeking safety from the violence in their home districts. A journalist covering the fighting in Helmand province said that one of his sources told him the Taliban were looking for him and he should lie low. ``The majority of Afghan journalists feel intimidated and threatened,'' he said. ``All the journalists are scared because everyone feels like they could be next.'' Residents of Taliban-held areas have long expressed fear of retaliation if they complain about the way Taliban forces carry out military operations or enforce restrictions. In a June 2020 report, Human Rights Watch documented severe restrictions in areas under Taliban control, including limits on freedom of expression and the media. The Taliban leadership should immediately cease intimidation, threats, and attacks against journalists and other media workers, Human Rights Watch said. They should urgently provide clear, public directives to all Taliban members to end all forms of violence against journalists and other media workers, and intimidation, harassment, and punishment of Afghans who have criticized Taliban policies. The Taliban leadership should also explicitly reject violence against women in the media. The United Nations and governments supporting the Intra- Afghan Negotiations should publicly press the Taliban leadership to adopt these recommendations, and provide increased support, including protection, to independent media organizations and journalists in Afghanistan, especially those facing threats. ``It's not enough for Taliban officials in Doha to issue blanket denials that they're targeting journalists when Taliban forces on the ground continue to intimidate, harass, and attack reporters for doing their jobs,'' Gossman said. ``Countries supporting the peace process should press for firm commitments from all parties to protect journalists, including women, and uphold the right to free expression in Afghanistan.'' Taliban Threats to Afghan Media Although the Taliban routinely deny responsibility for attacks on journalists, the Afghan Journalists Security Committee (AJSC) has said: Since the beginning of the spike in targeted killings in early November [2020], supporters of the group [Taliban] have welcomed the killings of journalists on social media, calling these killings in many cases a religious duty. Taliban supporters accuse journalists of being agents of Western countries, and corrupted by Western values, thereby legitimizing any violence against journalists and the media as not only being permissible but a key part of their war. Taliban Threats Related to Reporting on the War Taliban commanders and fighters have long targeted the media, accusing them of being aligned with the Afghan government or international military forces. If journalists report unfavorably about Taliban actions or military operations, the Taliban often accuse them of being spies. District and provincial-level Taliban commanders have also criticized journalists for not reporting incidents such as civilian casualties from government airstrikes. Journalists have said that the role some of them play as influential and prominent figures in many communities has made them targets of the Taliban. By attacking them the Taliban effectively threaten all local media. A journalist in Helmand said: If the more prominent journalists are targeted first, the other journalists, who might be less influential or prominent, are automatically intimidated and fear for their lives . . . . Pro-Taliban accounts on social media . . . explicitly issue warnings to other journalists, along the lines of ``learn something from the death of this journalist''--you can be next. The effect on Afghan media has been profound. The killings and threats have generated fear among journalists and media workers, many of whom have altered their work patterns in an effort to mitigate the danger or try to be less visible. Taliban pressure on the media is an apparent part of an effort to shape public debate about the war at a time of heightened political tensions surrounding the peace talks. Local journalists said Taliban commanders and fighters call them to complain about published reports, questioning why a certain issue was covered in a certain way. A journalist in Kandahar said: The Taliban warned me about reporting on casualties related to a suicide attack. They wanted me to say that a lot of people got killed but I just reported the attacker dying . . . The Taliban threatened a couple of journalists over the last couple years for not reporting on assassinations. They say, 'Why don't you report the actual number?' When we argue with them that it is the correct number, they threaten us. When one journalist reported a Taliban attack on a civilian facility in Kandahar, he said that within minutes he received death threats and other warnings on his phone. The Taliban called him to say that they had not targeted civilians but a nearby government checkpost. The journalist said that he lives in fear that the Taliban might still come after him. Other journalists in Kandahar have reported being followed by Taliban fighters. Because of such confrontations, journalists often self-censor their stories. In Helmand, Taliban commanders targeted journalists who reported on military operations during a Taliban offensive in October. Taliban forces attacked the outskirts of Lashkargah city, overrunning Afghan government checkpoints until US airstrikes drove them back. In the months before he was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) on November 11, Elyas Dayee, a journalist, had received multiple threats from Taliban commanders in Helmand, warning him to stop his reporting on their military operations. Another reporter covering the fighting said that the morning after his report came out, a Taliban commander called and accused him of publishing reports against the Islamic Emirates and warned that he would face consequences. The Nature of the Threats In Taliban-controlled provinces, threats often come from local commanders with knowledge of the journalist's family, work habits, and movements. These commanders maintain individual contact with journalists and editors, and usually communicate these threats by phone or through social media. A radio presenter in Zabul province said that he and his colleagues routinely receive threats from the Taliban accusing them of giving the government publicity. The callers always know details about the journalists they call, including their jobs, family members' names, and often their addresses. One caller told him that he should either leave the area or work for the Taliban. When he refused the caller told him he should ``count down to his death.'' He said his relatives also receive these threats and are told to communicate them to him. In Ghazni province, reporters say that they have been threatened and intimidated by various groups and do not know who is behind every attack. However, despite official denials from the Taliban leadership, comments by Taliban commanders and fighters on social media have led journalists to suspect that the Taliban are responsible for many attacks. These commanders generally have considerable autonomy to plan and carry out military operations independently. The Afghanistan Journalists Safety Committee said that in Ghazni province, the Taliban had instructed the majority of the local media outlets that they would only be permitted to continue media activities if they followed Taliban directives. Another journalist in Ghazni said that the Taliban commanders in the province object to any content that is negative or critical about them. Journalists whose reporting is perceived as favorable to the Afghan government may immediately become a target. Leaving their jobs is often their only recourse. On December 21, Rahmatullah Nekzad, head of the Ghazni journalists' union, was fatally shot as he walked from his home to a local mosque. Although the Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, denied that the group was responsible for the attack, Nekzad had been receiving threats from local Taliban commanders since at least 2019. He said in early December, that the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS), the country's intelligence agency, informed him that he and 15 other journalists in Ghazni were at risk of a Taliban attack. He described the threats he received: I use a social media account to upload daily news. Some local Taliban called me to accuse me of running social media pages that post anti-Taliban news . . . Their argument was that every time you post something on your wall, these . . . are also your accounts. They also threatened people who commented on the post. In another case in mid-December, Taliban forces stopped the vehicle in which a local journalist was traveling. He called a contact, who then contacted a Taliban official. As a result of this intervention, the local Taliban released him. While he was in their custody, the Taliban accused him of working for the government's intelligence agency and for ``foreigners.'' Journalists have also been threatened for reporting on Taliban abuses. A radio correspondent from Badghis province said that after he and his colleagues broadcast a report about the Taliban extorting payments from highway drivers, the journalists began to receive threats: In addition to the radio, we have a Facebook page where we publish the news of the day. After I posted this story, one of the comments read: ``The martyrs of the Islamic Emirate will soon kill the employees of this media station.'' The same message came in [Facebook] Messenger. Since then, we report less news on Facebook now. Badghis's capital is a very small city. Everyone knows each other and I have no doubt that they also know the address of our office. Another journalist from Badghis said that in November, as he was traveling from Herat to Badghis province, Taliban fighters stopped him and forced him out of his car. They interrogated him about whether he had cooperated with government security forces and threatened to kill him. He said that his family was aware that he was on the road. He was finally released after local and ethnic Taliban elders who knew them mediated his release. ``I am still in fear and . . . shock from this incident,'' he said. ``Now I publish less news of the war. Whenever I go to a press conference, I am fearful and cautious. I only cover news from the capital now.'' Local Taliban fighters have assaulted journalists who have traveled into Taliban-controlled districts. A journalist from Wardak province said that a group of Taliban fighters stopped and beat him and another reporter, accusing them of spying and ``going around without the Taliban's permission to take pictures, record videos, and talk to people.'' The journalists showed their press identification but were not released until after they called a contact, who then informed senior Taliban officials, who ordered them released. Threats also come in writing. A journalist in Ghazni said that a letter was dropped by his house ordering him to meet with the local Taliban because his reports were not ``neutral.'' It warned him that if he did not change, his death was ``close.'' After the warning, he left his home district and stayed in Kabul for a few months. Eventually he returned home but avoided his office out of fear. The Taliban also send cell phone text messages to comment on media coverage, often chiding reporters that they should have included the Taliban point of view. While criticism of media reporting is not in itself problematic, when it comes from an armed group with a history of killing journalists, the messages are intimidating and create fear. ``Being a journalist is something that can put your life in danger without even doing anything specific to antagonize the Taliban,'' one journalist in Ghazni said. Journalists also receive threats when they share their political views on social media. Taliban commanders also use Facebook to issue threats. A journalist in Ghazni said that shortly after he posted a government statement on a military offensive that resulted in Taliban casualties, he received a message from a Taliban commander demanding to speak with him: He told me not to listen to what [government officials] say and ordered me to come see him. I had to comply. He came with his men in a Toyota vehicle. He threatened me and told me not to post anything more on Facebook. Another journalist in Ghazni had a similar experience after using Facebook to post his report on the police killing a suspected Taliban bomber. He received a call from a man who said he was with the Taliban and asked him why he was publishing inaccurate information. The man warned him that they would watch out for what he published and that he should not publish such reports anymore. Local Taliban commanders issue warnings about radio and television stations airing music programs, which they consider prohibited, and blame journalists for this practice. One journalist described the threats he received: Whenever the Taliban hears about music on local radio channels, they immediately start calling you, threatening to kill you. They told me many times that they held court sessions about me, proving that I am guilty of broadcasting music. They threatened to kill me. I left this job because of these threats. The journalist said that local Taliban officials had also told him not to broadcast election-related news because elections were ``US-instigated.'' He said: ``I argued with them for a couple of months that this is not my personal choice but the station's editorial decision. Then the Taliban asked for my boss' number and threatened him until he left.'' Another Ghazni reporter said he had received at least six threats in which callers warned him of vague consequences if he did not remove music or make other changes to the programs. Threatening to harm relatives is a common tactic to spread fear. A journalist in Khost said that he received threatening calls from unknown numbers, some accusing him of working for Christians, others accusing him of being a foreign spy. Some specifically warn him that they know his relatives and where he lives: I am terrified but cannot do anything about it . . . One of my relatives said that I should leave [journalism] because he is scared . . . I cannot carry on with my work. I cannot go outside freely. A caller shared a lot of information about me as proof that they have been watching me--he told me my name, my father's name, where I work, and the address of my house . . . after a few days, I got a message saying ``the path you have chosen is not the right path, so you should move on from it or else we will decide what to do with you.'' For the time being, the journalist has changed his phone hoping to prevent further threats. Taliban Threats to Women in the Media The Afghan Journalists Safety Committee reported that 14 women working for media outlets in Afghanistan were threatened or violently attacked in 2020. An increasing number of Afghan women in journalism have left the profession because of worsening security and threats, a trend that emerged after 2015 and has accelerated. The Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP), an armed group affiliated with the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), took responsibility for killing four women journalists and media workers, including Malala Maiwand, the first woman TV presenter for Enikass News, on December 10, and the March 2 killings of Mursal Waheedi, Saadia Sadat, and Shahnaz Raufi, who worked at Enikass News dubbing foreign language news reports. It is often not clear whether the ISKP, the Taliban, or other groups are responsible for some threats and attacks against women. In Ghazni province, the Taliban have instructed media outlets that the hosts of entertainment programs should not be women, and that no music should be broadcasted. Farahnaz Forotan, one of Afghanistan's best-known journalists noted for her hard-hitting interviews on Tolo News, left the country in November after hearing that she was on a Taliban blacklist and would soon be killed. She said that the Taliban: do not accept free media, and, in many events, they had rejected being interviewed by women. The reason they wanted to kill me, was because as a woman I am not accepted according to their values . . . The situation in Kabul is very scary. I know four journalists in Kandahar who left their jobs. The local media does not reflect it because they cannot. They are being threatened and the government cannot provide protection . . . Every morning I check messages to make sure that everyone is safe. I live with fear--it is very difficult to live with the fear of losing a loved one. Another Kabul-based journalist had worked as a producer for a television news outlet but left her job in mid-2020 after receiving threats. She said: The Taliban threatened me a couple of times on the phone, and they told me to leave my job. I also found a letter from the Taliban in a hole in our door. The letter repeated that I must not work anymore for news agencies because this job doesn't suit me morally. If you continue, then you have no right to complain [about the consequences].

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I support the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa program, and I support its increased numbers. I ask my colleagues: Don't stop here. Let's keep going. These are our friends, and democracy must prevail. Mr. Speaker, against the backdrop of a war that has demanded sacrifice and summoned patriotism, I rise in unequivocal support of H.R. 3985, ``The Allies Act of 2021,'' which honors the contributions of our allies in Afghanistan by strengthening the Afghan Special Immigration Visa (SIV) Program. I wish to recognize my distinguished colleague, the gentleman from Colorado, Congressman Crow, who valiantly served three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, for leading this bipartisan effort to uphold our commitment to our partners in Afghanistan. This piece of legislation, which I am proud to co-sponsor, comes as we conclude a multigenerational war that has accomplished its principle objectives: rendering justice to those responsible for 9/11 and making sure that no attack on the homeland ever emerges from Afghanistan. Over the course of achieving this mission, we found critical allies and made invaluable friends, among them those who leveraged their skills and knowledge to protect our troops from harm. The Afghan Special Immigrant (SIV) Program, created in 2009 to provide safety for Afghan interpreters, contractors, and security personnel assisting U.S. efforts in the country, is more than a program. It is a promise--a promise to our allies that when they have our back, we have theirs. Specifically, the bill improves the SIV application process by: amending the credible threat requirement; aligning applicant standards; clarifying eligibility for certain Afghans; streamlining duplicative procedures, and, increasing protections for surviving spouses. Reports on the ground indicate those Afghan nationals who worked on behalf of the U.S. Government face extreme danger. Time is of the essence, and this bill removes our friends and allies from the bureaucratic barriers of additional lengthy paperwork to establish a credible threat, when we already know that such a threat exists for individuals with verified ties to the U.S. government. Additionally, to qualify for the Afghan SIV Program under the current law, Afghan nationals who were employed by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) or Resolute Support (RS) must have performed ``sensitive and trusted'' work. This employment requirement was removed for U.S. Government employees in the FY2020 National Defense Authorization Act, but it remains for individuals employed under ISAF and RS. All current applicants must also submit an I-360 petition to USCIS after completing the State Department's Chief of Mission process. This redundancy creates duplicative applications and introduces a gap in the process that allows for fraudulent petitions, ultimately slowing down the processing time for all applicants. The Allies Act of 2021 aligns standards across all types of employment and gives the Department of Homeland Security the flexibility to not require I-360 petitions in cases where applicants have already proven eligibility through the Chief of Mission Process. By making standards uniform, clear, and nonduplicative for all applicants, this bill streamlines application processing and ensures a more efficient safety plan for all our allies. The bill also expands the types of individuals eligible for the SIV. In practice, the original Afghan SIV statute only includes Afghan nationals who worked under U.S. government contracts. Yet we received support from many Afghan nationals under nongovernmental cooperative agreements and grants, including many key contacts working on critical democracy, human rights, and governance work to assist the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. This bill makes clear that Afghan nationals that worked under such non-governmental agreements to advance the U.S. mission are eligible for the Afghan SIV program. In addition to previously excluded contractors, we must also acknowledge the danger surviving spouses face and place them at the front and center in our migration support efforts as well. Currently, surviving spouses of deceased SIV applicants are not allowed to continue through the process if the primary SIV applicant died before visa approval. The immediate families of our allies are also our allies and we must remove this dangerous obstacle for them to reach safety. The Allies Act of 2021 allows family members of deceased primary applicants to continue through the process if their spouse had applied for Chief of Mission approval. We cannot leave our Afghan allies and their spouses vulnerable to the imminent threat of revenge from the Taliban. They simply are not safe at home and they need our help. The adaptations and amendments that this act offers would facilitate a path to safety and freedom for nearly 20,000 of on-the-ground partners whose work made possible all our advancements in that country. Madam Speaker, I urge us to act with compassion and honor our core American value of promoting freedom for all, for it was our reverence for this value that characterized our extended presence in Afghanistan in the first place. It is time for us to ensure the safety and lives of our friends and allies in Afghanistan.

Ms. JACKSON LEE

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, it is always important to have an opportunity to speak to our colleagues and as well the American people. Tonight, I will dwell on questions of human rights, challenges to those human rights and the legacy of the undermining of human rights even in America that will include aspects of such indignities around the world. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Sarbanes) who will start with a discussion on a longstanding and well-known historic violations of human rights.

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership. We must always remember that human rights are equal to human dignity. So it is my privilege tonight to stand to discuss the value of recognizing human dignity. As I do so, let me add to an earlier discussion that reflects on giving our children human dignity. Isn't it amazing how children have suffered in the course of the most recent history depredation of wealth, and so they have been ensconced in poverty, they have been hungry, and they have been without a good education? These are children in America. We can speak about children around the world. They have had little access to broadband technology, and they have suffered in their housing provisions, if you will. So I am very proud to just start out by, again, applauding the American Rescue Act and also the life-changing impact of the child tax credit. I don't think we can do that enough. And children of color have been at the front of the line and we are able to help with food and childcare, diapers, healthcare, clothing, taxes. Poor, working, and middle class families are able to receive the same amount. You will see, Mr. Speaker, where I am going on this because we don't do this in anger. We don't do this because we are mad. We do this because it is righting the wrong, as one of my colleagues said. This will provide $250 per month, per child and $300 per month for every young child. That means children under 5. All families in my district will be able to feel more secure. Let me run through these numbers because they are stunning. The 18th Congressional District in Houston, Texas, Mr. Speaker, 91.7 percent of children in my district will gain from the expanded and improved child tax credit. I know that because I have been immersed in childcare education events. We have been in a church, we have been at my Federal building, we have been up and down on the radio, we have been everywhere we could be to ensure that we did it with humor, with seriousness, with compassion, being out on the street corners along with trying to encourage people to get vaccinated. We have been saying: Get ready for the child tax credit President Biden and the Democratic Congress worked so hard on. Mr. Speaker, 91.7 percent of the children will gain in my district. That is 202,800 children. I have schools in my district that are 100 percent at risk, and they eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There is no shame to helping children. Behind those children are parents who are suffering. These dollars will help these parents have dignity, their children have dignity, and their children have resources. The average benefit for 56,700 households in my district--Houston, I hope you are listening--is $3,500. If you have not filed your taxes in the 2019 year, you can immediately get help from my office at 713-655-0050 or the IRS tax advocacy team, also in my building of 1919 Smith Street in Houston, Texas. Don't miss the opportunity for your own human dignity. It is not a handout. It is a hand up. The expanded and improved child tax credit lifts 21,800 children in my district out of poverty. Because of the larger benefits for the youngest, 8,400 kids under the age of 6 are raised out of poverty. That has expanded across America where millions of children face a new day. Families with children in poverty receive $5,300 on average, and they are getting some 6,500 children in my district out of deep poverty. We know now that we are engaged in the appropriations process. I thank Chairwoman DeLauro and all of the appropriators for their work. We know how important it is if you are going to do something in life, this year, 2021, in the aftermath of COVID-19, this is the year to do it with the appropriations bill. This is the year to do it. Again, my theme: a sense of dignity. And where does that take me now? Well, I must deviate for a moment, Mr. Speaker, to just indicate that I think the Biden-Harris team has brought to America a sense of compassion. It has turned anger and ugly words into reaching out to people where they are. That could mean people who oppose them. But they reach out to them where they are, and they reach them with a sense of understanding and acceptance that they must cast leadership for all of America, even if people disagree with them. So my good friend was here on the floor--I am sorry that he has left--but I want to emphasize that Vice President Kamala Harris is doing an excellent job on some very tough issues. She is meeting on voting rights and meeting with any number of persons. I want to remind America that Texas Democratic State representatives who had some medical mishaps here or medical circumstances with COVID-19--no one is immune--are still here fighting so that we can have voting rights. She has met with all of them. She is deeply engaged in making sure that we work together as a Congress to get voting rights done along with the Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Beatty and all of us as Members who are standing ready. So she is doing an excellent job. And I will tell you, living on the border myself, living in Texas, in the region, having gone to the border over and over again, she is doing a job that should be done that others are not doing, getting into the weeds and understanding what the President's path should be as we go forward on immigration reform. She has been to the Northern Triangle. That is the heart of where the issues start, and they are working to discern how they can best stop the massive flow of migrants, immigrants, who are in fear of their lives living in the countries that they are living in. These are tough issues, and I just want to say thank you to Vice President Kamala Harris, because some people misunderstand and think that it is just an easy thing to do. My word from Texas on her trip was excellent, and that people were receptive to her intellect, her compassion, and her willingness to get the job done. And the job will be done. So as I say that, I indicated this will be a night about human rights. And so I want to give you a little education about legislation that we are so pleased about. Can you imagine, H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans having nearly 200 sponsors, cosponsors of individuals who have come from many parts of the country. And so I am speaking to my colleagues who happen to be Republicans, and I want to give them the opportunity to realize just what this bill is. I heard someone say ``restoration,'' and I heard someone say ``repair,'' and they are right. My good friend, the Honorable Barbara Lee, we are working in tandem together, working in tandem on H. Res. 19, which is reconciliation and restoration, and then the bill, H.R. 40, legislation to create a commission that would study effectively slavery, and as well then develop reparation proposals. Again, restoration, repair. Let us remove ourselves from any sort of shackle on the question of reparations. Let us be understanding of someone else's pain, someone else's history; that is, in fact, American history. So I hold up this bill, because I said I would do show and tell, H.R. 40. Look at the pile of Members here as original cosponsors, and they have been coming on and on, and I want to just say thank you to my friends and colleagues who have thoughtfully felt the need to say how do we heal America's systemic racism; and how do we heal institutional racism; how do we ignore what is, in fact, truth. Now, I think most of you know I could not stand here without saying thank you to the 415 Members of Congress who voted along with the United States Senate on Juneteenth. Do you realize that Juneteenth is the first time America has acknowledged the history of slavery? In 1865, those of us west of the Mississippi just got the word from the Union soldiers with General Granger that we were free by General Order No. 3. Juneteenth is a commemoration of that. And I want everyone to know that, frankly, 47 States have already been celebrating in their own way Juneteenth. After 38 years, we have a new Federal holiday called Juneteenth, which gives America and little schoolchildren the opportunity to ask their dad or their teacher: What is Juneteenth? That was holding people in bondage, but it was setting them free. After the bloodiest war, brothers against brothers, the Civil War, where Abraham Lincoln so emotionally indicated: ``A house divided cannot stand,'' but General Granger came and Sam Collins held a magnificent celebration on June 19 in Houston, in Galveston, in that region where I represent, and the mural was unveiled by a magnificent artistic team led by Reginald Adams out of Third Ward, Texas, which is Houston, which is where my congressional district is, and it told the story of the freedom of these slaves. And we repeated General Order No. 3 which says, ``equality of personal rights'' but the biggest thing it said was, ``the slaves are free.'' And that we insist upon equality of rights. That is all that H.R. 40 is about. Are we to deny equality of rights? That was in General Order No. 3. That is what the President, unfortunately, being assassinated, President Abraham Lincoln sent General Granger down to read to the slaves who had worked and been beaten for 2\1/2\ more years. It is important that we not ignore what slavery was all about. This is the whelped and beaten back and scarred back of a slave. Let us be clear. Bondage, we are the only group of Americans that have been held in bondage in this Nation, and we have been held or were held in bondage longer than this country has been a nation. For 246 years, we were held in bondage, and we only celebrated our 245th birthday. So I am here to be able to, very briefly, run you through a brief history. Let me do this. Let me first of all talk about the words of Gary Abernathy, who proudly says that he is a conservative. And Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining, please?

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate it, only to make sure that I can now flow with the concept of the time. But the headline reads: ``Why I support reparations--and all conservatives should.'' I know my friends are listening here on the other side. Gary Abernathy. And I will take some excerpts from this. He acknowledges that he is a conservative. And I can venture to say that his credentials can be documented. But he says, in spite of the bill that I have offered--has an apology--he takes note of that, he even indicates that he may not be that enthusiastic about that. But he says, ``In fact, it could be argued that the idea fits within the conservative philosophy,'' meaning that the notion of reparations is worth discussing because he says, ``In fact, it could be argued that the idea fits the conservative philosophy.'' He goes on to say, ``But it is undeniable that White people have disproportionately benefited from both the labor and the legacy of slavery, and--crucially--will continue to do so for generations to come.'' None of this is said with anger. It is only setting forth facts. When slavery was abolished after a bloody Civil War, African Americans were dispersed into a world that was overtly hostile to them. ``Reconstruction efforts were bitterly resisted by most Southern Whites, and attempts to educate and employ former slaves happened only in fits and starts.'' Remember, this is a group of people in the millions who simply were set free. Freedom is precious. We cannot deny how precious freedom was, how sweet it was, but they were given nothing; nothing to start their lives, and they came into the hostility of people who really didn't want them to be free. That was the bulk of the South, and many parts of the North. ``The government even reneged on its `40 acres and a mule' pledge. After slavery, prejudice and indifference continued to fuel social and economic disparity.'' Be reminded of the whipped back of this Black man, this slave. And there were whipped backs of women and children. They lived through this through no fault of their own. They worked and toiled in the fields. They made cotton king. They built the economic engine of this Nation. They created a transatlantic slave trade. They sent millions of dollars from the South to the Wall Street banks, and we built America. They built this place where I stand, the United States Capitol, with their bare hands, and they built the White House. What else could they have built? And so when slavery was abolished, there was silence. It has been represented that there is a gap of $17,600 shows the median Black household net worth, to a $174,000 wage of the average American or White family. When parents offered gifts to help children buy a home, avoid student debt, or start a business, those children are more able to retain and build on their wealth over their lifetimes. I think we just saw a very unique occasion today regarding space. I would not in any way say anything but congratulations, but one of those persons paid $27 million to be on that historic moment. Calculate that. It is a personal payment. It wasn't government. And, again, I celebrate the occasion, but juxtapose that against where we are or where African Americans are. Randall Robinson made the point that even affirmative action would never close the economic gap. ``Blacks, even middle-class Blacks, have no paper assets to speak of. They may be salaried, but they're only a few months away from poverty if they should lose those jobs . . . '' And many times the ravages of discrimination and segregation are intertwined in law, and they may lose their jobs. And so this conservative author believes in reparations. And he believes that this can be done with a fair amount of dollars, but there is more to it, as you will hear me say, because it is not about money. He concludes by saying: ``It is a tenet of conservatism that a level playing field is all we should guarantee. But that's meaningless if one team starts with an unsurmountable lead before play even begins.'' I think LBJ said: If you want to tell people about a fair race, meaning a running race, and one fellow or lady has shackles around their ankles and the whistle blows, get ready, go, it is not a fair race because one runner is freed and has all of the elements of freedom, and the ability to do great things, and one is running with leg irons on. So as we look at how we can as a nation, a community come together, I don't know how many times I want to raise the question that we are not doing this in anger. H.R. 40, first introduced by John Conyers, is an international concept. It just means repair. It means doing the right thing, healing, dealing with injustices. It will not be painful. But let me tell you why this legislation is not painful, because it is a study that will give us a roadmap and it will be done with academicians and those who are appointed by government leaders, and they will be balanced and they will be responsible and they will be thorough. Why do we think we need it? Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the article from Gary Abernathy, Washington Post contributing columnist. [From the Washington Post, Apr. 22, 2021] Opinion: Why I Support Reparations--and All Conservatives Should (By Gary Abernathy, Contributing columnist) Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) is among the progressive lawmakers whose blunt, liberal outspokenness regularly annoys me. Recently, she particularly upset me while discussing the latest congressional study of reparations for descendants of enslaved people, when she said, ``If you through your history benefited from that wrong that was done, then you must be willing to commit yourself to righting that wrong.'' Only this time I was bothered because her comments hit home. Like most conservatives, I've scoffed at the idea of reparations or a formal apology for slavery. I did not own slaves, so why would I support my government using my tax dollars for reparations or issuing an apology? Further, no one in the United States has been legally enslaved since 1865, so why are Black people today owed anything more than the same freedoms and opportunities that I enjoy? I remain unconvinced that an apology would have much real value, but the more substantive notion of reparations is worth discussing. In fact, it could be argued that the idea fits within the conservative philosophy. We'll come back to that. But it is undeniable that White people have disproportionately benefitted from both the labor and the legacy of slavery, and--crucially--will continue to do so for generations to come. When slavery was abolished after a bloody civil war, African Americans were dispersed into a world that was overtly hostile to them. Reconstruction efforts were bitterly resisted by most Southern Whites, and attempts to educate and employ former slaves happened only in fits and starts. The government even reneged on its ``40 acres and a mule'' pledge. After slavery, prejudice and indifference continued to fuel social and economic disparity. The result is unsurprising. As noted by scholars A. Kirsten Mullen and William A. Darity Jr., co-authors of ``From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty- First Century,'' data from the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances showed that median Black household net worth averaged $17,600--a little more than one-tenth of median White net worth. As Mullen and Darity write, ``white parents, on average, can provide their children with wealth-related intergenerational advantages to a far greater degree than black parents. When parents offer gifts to help children buy a home, avoid student debt, or start a business, those children are more able to retain and build on their wealth over their own lifetimes.'' Black author and activist Randall Robinson has argued that even laws such as those on affirmative action ``will never close the economic gap. This gap is structural. . . . blacks, even middle-class blacks, have no paper assets to speak of. They may be salaried, but they're only a few months away from poverty if they should lose those jobs, because . . . they've had nothing to hand down from generation to generation because of the ravages of discrimination and segregation, which were based in law until recently.'' In addition to the discrepancy in inherited wealth, even conservatives should be able to acknowledge that Whites enjoy generational associations in the business world, where who you know often counts more than what you know--a reality based not so much on overt racism as on employment and promotion patterns within old-school networks that Blacks lack the traditional contacts to consistently intersect. For now, support for reparations is anemic. A House Judiciary Committee bill creating a commission to merely study the idea was opposed last week by 17 Republicans, though all 25 Democrats on the committee voted for it; and just 1 in 5 respondents in a Reuters/Ipsos poll last June agreed that the United States should use tax dollars for reparations--not shocking, when a price tag of $10 trillion has been suggested. The cost can be debated, along with the mechanics of a compensation package. But in the current drunken haze of government spending, appropriating trillions for the noble purpose of bringing Black Americans who remain economically penalized by the enslavement of their ancestors closer to the fiscal universe of White citizens surely seems less objectionable than some recent spending proposals. It is a tenent of conservatism that a level playing field is all we should guarantee. But that's meaningless if one team starts with an unsurmountable lead before play even begins. It's not necessary to experience ``White guilt'' or buy into the notion of ``White privilege,'' a pejorative that to me suggests Whites possess something they should lose, when in fact such benefits should extend to all. Supporting reparations simply requires a universal agreement to work toward, as Jayapal said, ``righting that wrong.''

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a Washington Post article, ``U.N. rights chief: Reparations needed for people facing racism.'' [From the Washington Post, June 28, 2021] UN Rights Chief: Reparations Needed for People Facing Racism (By Jamey Keaten) Geneva (AP)--The U.N. human rights chief, in a landmark report launched after the killing of George Floyd in the United States, is urging countries worldwide to do more to help end discrimination, violence and ) systemic racism against people of African descent and ``make amends'' to them--including through reparations. The report from Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human rights, offers a sweeping look at the roots of centuries of mistreatment faced by Africans and people of African descent, notably from the transatlantic slave trade. It seeks a ``transformative'' approach to address its continued impact today. The report, a year in the making, hopes to build on momentum around the recent, intensified scrutiny worldwide about the blight of racism and its impact on people of African descent as epitomized by the high-profile killings of unarmed Black people in the United States and elsewhere. ``There is today a momentous opportunity to achieve a turning point for racial equality and justice,'' the report said. The report aims to speed up action by countries to end racial injustice; end impunity for rights violations by police; ensure that people of African descent and those who speak out against racism are heard; and face up to past wrongs through accountability and redress. I am calling on all states to stop denying--and start dismantling--racism; to end impunity and build trust; to listen to the voices of people of African descent; and to confront past legacies and deliver redress,'' Bachelet said in a video statement. While broaching the issue of reparation in her most explicit way yet, Bachelet suggested that monetary compensation alone is not enough and would be part of an array of measures to help rectify or make up for the injustices. ``Reparations should not only be equated with financial compensation,'' she wrote, adding that it should include restitution, rehabilitation, acknowledgement of injustices, apologies, memorialization, educational reforms and ``guarantees'' that such injustices won't happen again. Bachelet, a former president of Chile, hailed the efforts of advocacy groups like the Black Lives Matter movement, saying they helped provide ``grassroots leadership through listening to communities'' and that they should receive ``funding, public recognition and support.'' The U.N.-backed Human Rights Council commissioned the report during a special session last year following the murder of Floyd, a Black American who was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020. The officer, Derek Chauvin, was sentenced to 22-1/ 2 years in prison last week. Protests erupted after excruciating bystander video showed how Floyd gasped repeatedly, ``I can't breathe!'' as onlookers yelled at Chauvin to stop pressing his knee on Floyd's neck. The report was based on discussions with over 340 people-- mostly of African descent--and experts; more than 100 contributions in writing, including from governments; and review of public material, the rights office said. It analyzed 190 deaths, mostly in the U.S., to show how law enforcement officers are rarely held accountable for rights violations and crimes against people of African descent, and it noted similar patterns of mistreatment by police across many countries. The report ultimately aims to transform those opportunities into a more systemic response by governments to address racism, and not just in the United States--although the injustices and legacy of slavery, racism and violence faced by African Americans was clearly a major theme. The report also laid out cases, concerns and the situation in roughly 60 countries including Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Colombia and France among others. ``We could not find a single example of a state that has fully reckoned with the past or comprehensively accounted for the impacts of the lives of people of African descent today,'' Mona Rishmawi, who heads a unit on non- discrimination in Bachelet's office. ``Our message, therefore, is that this situation is untenable.'' Compensation should be considered at the ``collective and the individual level,'' Rishmawi said, while adding that any such process ``starts with acknowledgment'' of past wrongs and ``it's not one-size-fits-all.'' She said countries must look at their own pasts and practices to assess how to proceed. Rishmawi said Bachelet's team found ``a main part of the problem is that many people believe the misconceptions that the abolition of slavery, the end of the transatlantic trade and colonialism have removed the racially discriminatory structures built by those practices. ``We found that this is not true,'' said Rishmawi, also denouncing an idea among some ``associating blackness with criminality . . . there is a need to address this.'' The report called on countries to ``make amends for centuries of violence and, discrimination'' such as through ``formal acknowledgment and apologies, truth-telling processes and reparations in various forms.'' It also decried the ``dehumanization of people of African descent'' that was ``rooted in false social constructions of race'' in the past to justify enslavement, racial stereotypes and harmful practices as well as tolerance for racial discrimination, inequality and violence. People of African descent face inequalities and ``stark socioeconomic and political marginalization'' in many countries, the report said, including unfair access to education, health care, jobs, housing and clean water. ``We believe very strongly that we only touched the tip of the iceberg,'' Rishmawi said, referring to the report. ``We really believe that there is a lot more work that needs to be done.''

Ms. JACKSON LEE. This report came from the United Nations because reparations is a universal concept of repair, repairing, and human rights. This report from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights is big stuff. It ``offers a sweeping look at the roots of centuries of mistreatment faced by Africans and people of African descent, notably from the transatlantic slave trade.'' Does that sound familiar? Back and forth across the ocean. ``It seeks a `transformative' approach to address its continued impact today.'' In its report, it says: ``I am calling on all states to stop denying, and start dismantling, racism; to end impunity and build trust; to listen to the voices of people of African descent; and to confront past legacies and deliver redress.'' This is what this report from the United Nations has said. It goes on to say: ``Reparations should not only be equated with financial compensation.'' This is what I have been saying. I say that when I go on the floor and ask for my colleagues to support it. Thank goodness we understand it. We get it. I am looking for my Republican friends to join us. ``Adding that it should include restitution, rehabilitation, acknowledgment of injustices, apologies, memorialization, education reforms, and `guarantees' that such injustices won't happen again.'' Does that sound unfair? ``We could not find a single example of a state that has fully reckoned with the past or comprehensively accounted for the impacts on the lives of people of African descent.'' This individual, who was head of the unit on nondiscrimination, said: ``Our message, therefore, is that this situation is untenable.'' This is the report from the U.N. ``A main part of the problem is that many people believe the misconceptions that the abolition of slavery, the end of the transatlantic trade, and colonialism have removed the racially discriminatory structures built by those practices.'' Absolutely wrong. The report found that this is not true, ``also denouncing an idea among some `associating blackness with criminality.''' That has gone on in many places around the world, including the United States. This report also ``decried the `dehumanization of people of African descent' that was `rooted in false social constructions of race' in the past to justify enslavement, racial stereotypes, and harmful practices as well as tolerance for racial discrimination, inequality, and violence.'' Do we realize that that hurts all of our children? Children who are White and non-White are hurt by the definitions of color and Africans and people of African descent. We face inequalities, meaning those of African descent, and ``'stark socioeconomic and political marginalization' in many countries, the report said, including unfair access to education, healthcare, jobs, housing, and clean water.'' What the commission could do is to give peace and understanding of the very fact of what would be a positive response to this question of discrimination. I want to add some real scientific evidence that I am not here on the floor complaining. I am giving an opportunity, along with the infrastructure bill, along with the budget reconciliation, because I am on the Budget Committee, along with voting rights, after 30-some years when this bill was first introduced in 1989, after the Japanese received reparations in 1988, of which we supported. Thank you to the Japanese American Association. They are strong supporters of H.R. 40. They got reparations for their false and unfair internment in the 1940s during World War II. We celebrated it. We worked with them and helped them construct that, those who were in Congress at that time. John Conyers filed this bill shortly after 1989, and I am honored to have been given this challenge and opportunity by him upon his retirement. I will not let the Nation down. I say the Nation because a definitive study is worthy. It I might show you that the idea of reparations is to suggest a continued, systemic impact, a continued, systemic impact that is going on, even in this moment. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record this article that is part of the Harvard Medical School's continuing coverage of medicine, and you would not believe it. [From Harvard Medical School, Feb, 10, 2021] Anti-Racist Epidemiology--Research Suggests Reparations for Slavery Could Have Reduced COVID-19 Infections and Deaths in U.S. (By Jake Miller) This article is part of Harvard Medical School's continuing coverage of medicine, biomedical research, medical education and policy related to the SARS-Co V-2 pandemic and the disease COVID-19. Civil rights activists have long called for monetary reparations to the Black descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States as a financial, moral, and ethical form of restitution for the injustices of slavery. Now, a study led by Harvard Medical School researchers suggests reparations could also have surprising public health benefits for Black individuals and the entire nation. To estimate the impact of structura inequities between Black and white individuals, the researchers set out to capture the effect of reparation payments on the Black-white wealth gap in the state of Louisiana. Their analysis, published online on Feb. 9 in Social Science & Medicine. suggests that if reparations had teen made before the COVID-19 pandemic, transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the state's overall population could have been reduced by anywhere from 31 percent to 68 percent. The work was done in collaboration with the Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice. ``While there are compelling moral and historical arguments for racial-injustice interventions such as reparations, our study demonstrates that repairing the damage caused by the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow racism would have enormous benefits to the entire population of tbe United States,'' said study senior author Eugene Richardson. assistant professor of global health and social medicine in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School. The disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on racial minorities--Black individuals in particular--have been well documented. Black people get COVID-19 at a rate nearly one and a half times higher than that of white people, are hospitalized at a rate nearly four times higher, and are three times as likely to die from the disease, according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. The greater disease burden among Black people has caused tremendous loss of life and unspeakable suffering across these already vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. Notably, these effects have also spilled over and are driving transmission rates of the virus in the overall population, the study authors said. Addressing the structural inequalities at the roots of this disparity through monetary reparations would not only radically decrease the impact of COVID-19 among the people who received reparations, tbe authors said, but would reduce the overall toll of the disease on a broader scale, benefiting the entire population. The findings, the researchers said, powerfully underscores the truly global nature of the pandemic and the notion that a society is only as strong as its most vulnerable members. ``If we extrapolate these results to the entire United States, we can imagine that tens or hundreds of thousands of lives would have been spared, and the entire nation would have been saved much of the hardship it has endured in the last year,'' said Richardson, who is also the chair of the Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice. For their analysis, tbe researchers paired sophisticated data analytics and computational tools with commonly used epidemiologic modeling methods to calculate the impact of structural racism on infection rates among Black and white populations in Louisiana. They chose Louisiana as an exemplar of the impacts of structural racism in the U.S. because it was one of the few states that reported infection rates by race in the early stages of the pandemic. For a control group, the researchers chose the relatively egalitarian population of South Korea. The researchers noted that although modeling is used to understand many factors in the spread of an infectious disease, such as differences in infection risk based on whether passengers on a train sit with windows open or closed or individual variations in mask-wearinq habits, it has rarely been used to capture the effects of social factors that can create vast disparities between populations, such as those seen between Blacks and whites in the U.S. Richardson's recent book Epidemic illusions explores the ways conventional epidemiology is constrained from proposing solutions that address the root causes of health disparities derived from the combined weight of centuries of racism, imperialism, neoliberal politics, and economic exploitation. One of the goals of the paper is to challenge the narrow ways people who work in medicine and public health measure and think about problems and solutions and to broaden the public imagination, thus opening new conversations about what challenges and opportunities are worth considering in global health and social science, Richardson said. The study examined the initial period of the outbreak, before infection control measures were implemented, so any differences in infection rates between populations at that time would have been driven mainly by differences in the social structures, the researchers said. For example, Louisiana has a population heavily segregated by race, with Black people having higher levels of overcrowded housing and working jobs that are more likely to expose them to SARS-CoV-2 than white people. In comparison, South Korea has a more homogenous population with far less segregation. To probe how such structural inequities impact transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the researchers examined infection rates over time for the first two months of the epidemic in each location. During the initial phase of the outbreak in Louisiana, each infected person spread the virus to 13 to 2.5 more people than an infected individual durinq the same phase of the outbreak in South Korea, the analysis showed. The study also showed it took Louisiana more than twice as long to bring the early wave of the epidemic under control as South Korea. Next, the researchers used next-generation matrices to gauge how overcrowding, segregation, and the wealth gap between Blacks and whites in Louisiana could have driven higher infection rates and how monetary reparations would affect viral transmission. The model showed that greater equity between Blacks and whites might have reduced infection transmission rates by anywhere from 31 percent to 68 percent for every person in the state. This research comes at a time when many Americans are already thinking about the larger societal costs of structural racism, the researchers said. They noted, for example, that the nationwide movement to protest police brutality against Black people has been fueled by many of the inequitable outcomes exemplified so painfully by the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. ``This moment has made it possible for a lot of people who had no reason to think about these inequalities to be very aware of them,'' said study co-author and Lancet reparations commissioner Kirsten Mullen, who was a member of concept development team for the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Anti-racism in action Richardson said that the research was designed to explore how reparations payments might have altered the trajectory of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. and how a different response to the disease could have helped mitigate the disparities fueled by social conditions that are vestiges of slavery. Such conditions, Richardson noted, include ongoing discrimination and structural racism in the form of redlining, overcrowding, over-incarceration, and the heightened use of lethal force in policing experienced by Black people. Richardson said that historian and anti-racist scholar Ibram X. Kendi's description of the differences between racism and anti-racism were helpful in designing the study. According to Kendi, a racist policy is any policy that produces or sustains inequality or promotes the power of one racial group over another, whereas an anti-racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains equity between racial groups. Richardson said that one important goal of the project was to attempt to harness the power of mathematical modeling for an anti-racist response to the coronavirus and beyond. ``When you look at a formula for transmissibility, it looks like an objective calculation,'' he said. ``But where is lethal policing in that formula?'' Richardson noted that it was important to call attention to the systemic and structural elements of racism that can get lost in simplified models of disease. What are reparations? Mullen and study co-author William Darity, who recently published a book on reparations and have written in the press about the case for using reparation payments to fight COVID- 19, defined reparations as a program of acknowledgement, redress, and closure for a grievous injustice. In this case, Mullen said, the atrocities are associated with periods of enslavement, legal segregation and white terrorism during the Jim Crow era, and racial strife and violence of the post- Civil Rights Act era, including ongoing inequities in the form of over-policing, police executions of unarmed Black people, ongoing discrimination in regard to incarceration, access to housing, and, possibly most important, the Black- white gulf in wealth. Successful reparations programs include three elements: admission of culpability on behalf of the perpetrators of the atrocity; redress, in the form of an act of restitution; and closure, wherein the victims agree that the debt is paid and no further claims are to be made unless new harms are inflicted. In this case, Mullen said, reparations would take the form of financial restitution for living Black individuals who can show that they are descended from at least one ancestor who was enslaved in the U.S. and that they self-identified as Black on a legal document at some point during the 12 years prior. The financial restitution is designed to help close the Black-white wealth gap. Darity noted that it is important to distinguish wealth from income. Wealth is how much you own, and income is how much you earn. Greater wealth translates to greater stability for individuals and families across time. Greater wealth is also more strongly associated with greater well-being than greater income, Darity said, and disparities in wealth manifest as health disparities. Wealth is more strongly associated with familial or individual well-being,'' said Darity, who is the Samuel DuBois Cook Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at Duke University and a Lancet reparations commissioner. He noted that, according to the Federal Reserve Board 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances, the average Black household had a net worth $800,000 lower than the average white household, and that Black people, who represent 13 percent of the U.S. population, only own 3 percent of the nation's wealth. ``This dramatically restricts the ability of Black Americans to survive and thrive,'' Darity said. To assess the effect of reparation payments on the trajectory of the pandemic, the researchers based their calculations on a model that would pay $250,000 per person or $800,000 per household to descendants of enslaved individuals--one of several proposed reparation models. Every transmission is a social transmission ``Every transmission has a social cause,'' said study co- author and Lancet reparations commissioner James Jones, associate professor of Earth System Science and a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. For a brief moment when AIDS was in the spotlight during the late 80s and early 90s, people interested in social behavior became interested in mathematical modeling of disease, Jones said. While that interest largely waned, the COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the need to think about social science, inequality, social structure, behavior patterns, and behavior change, as well as how they fit together with how we understand and respond to epidemics, Jones said. Even the simplest model must account for a rudimentary social structure, Jones said. At its most basic, this can be represented with a generalized estimate of how likely an infected person is to come into contact with a susceptible person. He explained that this number, R0 or ``R-naught,'' is the average number of people an infected individual transmits the virus to. When R0 is less than one, no epidemic is possible because the number of people infected decreases. When R0 is greater than 1 an epidemic is possible. R0 also determines the total number of people who could potentially become infected or how many people would need to be vaccinated to end the epidemic. It can also be used to calculate the so-called endemic equilibrium--which determines whether a disease will continue to exist within a population, simmering constantly in the background or bubbling up seasonally, like influenza. ``That's the theory of infectious disease control in a single parameter,'' Jones said. That seeming simplicity can make it hard to focus on the complex ways that infectious diseases move through the real world, the researchers said. ``It's important to highlight that R0 is not simply a function of the pathogen,'' Jones said. ``It's a function of the society.'' Social and environmental factors like mobility, segregation, and the nature of the built environment help determine rates of infection, he said. This is one important reason that diseases don't hit all people the same. Global R0 is an average of very different R0s for different groups of people. Some groups are more likely to interact only with members of their own group, some groups are more likely to come in contact with infected people, and some are more susceptible to the disease for other reasons, Jones said. In this case, the researchers used mathematical models to help understand the differences in R0 for Black people and white people in Louisiana and to help think about how things would change if racism were less prevalent in America. Absent those interventions, the researchers noted that Black Americans remain at an elevated and inequitable risk of becoming infected and dying during the COVID-19 pandemic and that this inequity will continue to fuel the pandemic for all Americans. ``Increasing equality would have huge benefits on infection rates for everyone,'' said co-author Momin Malik, who was a data science postdoctoral fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University at the time the study was conducted. This research was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (grant R01 GM130900), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (grant K08 AI139361), National Institute of Minority Health Disparities (grant R01 MD011606), National Science Foundation Division of Social and Economic Sciences (grant 1851845), Institute of Education Sciences (grant R305A190484), and the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund.

Ms. JACKSON LEE. It states: ``Civil rights activists have long called for monetary reparations,'' this report opens up. This is a scientific, vetted report from the Harvard University Medical School. It is titled ``Anti-Racist Epidemiology: Research suggests reparations for slavery could have reduced COVID-19 infections and deaths in the U.S.'' This was published online on February 10. It says: ``To estimate the impact of structural inequities between Black and White individuals, the researchers set out to capture the effect of reparation payments on the Black-White wealth gap in the State of Louisiana.'' This is an important report. ``The disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on racial minorities-- Black individuals in particular--have been well documented. Black people get COVID-19 at a rate nearly one-and-a-half times higher than that of White people, are hospitalized at a rate nearly four times higher, and are three times as likely to die from the disease, according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. ``The greater disease burden among Black people has caused tremendous loss of life and unspeakable suffering across these already vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. Notably, these effects have also spilled over and are driving transmission rates of the virus in the overall population.'' They did their study in many places, but I will read a portion. ``The study examined the initial period of the outbreak, before infection control measures were implemented, so any differences in infection rates between populations at the time would have been driven mainly by differences in the social structures.'' ``Louisiana has a population heavily segregated by race, with Black people having higher levels of overcrowded housing and working jobs that are more likely to expose them,'' and they found that if reparations had been given, they would have done better. I conclude, Mr. Speaker, by just saying that you see a picture of the Tulsa race riot. That is why I stand here today to say that Tulsa Greenwood needs reparation. H.R. 40 needs to pass. Why don't we do it together? Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. JACKSON LEE

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I want to rise today to inform everyone who might be listening that the filibuster is not in this little book that has governed this great Nation, the Constitution of the United States. In fact, the 15th Amendment, as it relates to voting, says: ``The right of citizens of the United States to vote should not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,'' which means we should move forward with certain things. One, we need to move forward with the infrastructure bill. We must move forward with the budget and budget reconciliation. We must ensure that voting rights are protected in this Nation. Again, the filibuster is not a constitutional provision, and therefore, we must govern. Madam Speaker, I want to express my knowledge and concern of the crime and violence across America. It is facing us in Houston as well. I was delighted to bring almost a million dollars to help our victims of crimes and the victim advocates program for HPD. It is time now to stand up for America.

Ms. JACKSON LEE

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York for her leadership on the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Innovation. Madam Speaker, I rise to support the State and Local Cybersecurity Improvement Act. I particularly emphasize the fact that we are the United States of America, but the cyberattacks occur in our neighborhoods, our hamlets, our cities, our counties, and our States. They occur right under our noses, and they impact our constituents by taking their personal records from the Texas Medical Center, for example, impacting the medical care of people, interfering with various diagnostic machines, and dealing with the energy infrastructure, such as the Colonial Pipeline incident. These are happening in our neighborhoods. The State and Local Cybersecurity Improvement Act will make $500 million available in grants from the Department of Homeland Security to State, local, and Tribal entities over the next 4 years as they address critical cybersecurity risks facing information systems. I will soon rise to the floor on legislation that I have authored, and I will make this point, Madam Speaker: It is crucial that the other body begins to address the legislation that this House is able to pass because we are passing innovative, corrective, and needed legislation. Cyber is not a joke, if I can say that. Neither are the attacks on our cyber infrastructure. However, the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002 to bring together the expertise of several different government entities to protect against foreign threats. At that time, the Nation's main concern was protecting our citizens and residents from another large- scale terrorist attack, one that we had never seen before: attacking tall buildings with airplanes. We had never seen it. But, today, 2021, is not 2001. It is not 20 years ago, and the landscape of terrorism has changed enormously. With rapid advancement in technology and malign foreign cyber aggression in nation-states that are not engaged, this bill is important. Madam Speaker, I ask my colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation, H.R. 3138, that will provide us a way to address this issue.

Ms. JACKSON LEE

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York for her leadership, and I thank the ranking member of the full committee and the chair of the full committee for bringing these matters to the attention of the Nation. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of my bill, H.R. 2980, the Cybersecurity Vulnerability Remediation Act, which authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to take actions to counter cybersecurity vulnerabilities in our Nation's critical infrastructure. Interestingly enough, when we introduced this bill some years ago, we called it the zero-day bill, which was to presuppose what would happen when everything collapsed. When we introduced it, it was before the Colonial Pipeline, it was before the Solaris attack, it was before knowing about the gangs in Russia, cyber gangs that proliferate before the activity of China. I thank Chairman Thompson and Ranking Member Katko for their leadership in putting the security of our Nation's cyber access first, whether they are computing resources used in voting technology or industrial control systems that support delivery of electricity, oil, and gas, or management of transportation systems that are vital to our Nation's economic health. The Cybersecurity Vulnerability Remediation Act was introduced, as I said, and passed the House during the 115th and 116th Congresses and has been updated again in the 117th Congress to meet the ever-evolving nature of cyber threats faced by Federal and private sector information systems and our Nation's critical infrastructure. As I said before, it will be very important that the other body seriously considers the cyber threats against this Nation. This bill goes significantly further than the first cybersecurity vulnerability act that I introduced in the 115th Congress to address the instance of zero-day events that can lead to catastrophic cybersecurity failures of information and computing systems. It is estimated that 85 percent of critical infrastructure is owned by the private sector, and for far too long this fact has hampered efforts to establish stronger requirements for cybersecurity by owners and operators. Private sector critical infrastructure failure due to a cyberattack is no longer a private matter when it can have massive impacts on the public, such as disruption of gasoline flowing to filling stations, which we saw recently. My bill, the Cybersecurity Vulnerability Remediation Act, will expand the definition of security vulnerability to include cybersecurity vulnerability; add sharing mitigation protocols to counter cybersecurity vulnerabilities; establish protocols to counter cybersecurity vulnerabilities involving information system and industrial control systems, which will include vulnerabilities related to software or hardware that is no longer supported by a vendor; direct the undersecretary for DHS Office of Science and Technology to stand up a competition to find solutions to known cybersecurity vulnerabilities; provide greater transparency on how the Department of Homeland Security CISA is coordinating cybersecurity vulnerability disclosures through the sharing of actionable protocols to mitigate cybersecurity vulnerabilities with information systems and industrial control systems owners and operators. H.R. 2980 bolsters the efforts to engage critical infrastructure owners and operators in communicating cybersecurity threats and lays the foundation for greater transparency on the real threats posed by cyberterrorists to private and government sector critical infrastructure and information systems, which impact the people of this Nation. This legislation allows the science and technology director, in consultation with CISA, to establish an incentive-based program that allows industry, individuals, academia, and others to compete in identifying remediation solutions for cybersecurity vulnerabilities to information systems and industrial control systems, including supervisory control and data acquisition systems. This bill, when it becomes law, will put our Nation's best minds to work on closing the vulnerabilities that cyber thieves and terrorists use to access, disrupt, corrupt, or take control of critical infrastructure information systems. In addition to these changes, the bill requires a report to Congress that may contain a classified annex. The report will provide information on how DHS coordinates cybersecurity vulnerability disclosures and disseminates actionable protocols to mitigate cybersecurity vulnerabilities involving information systems and industrial systems. Congress needs to know how prevalent and persistent cybersecurity threats targeting critical infrastructure and information systems might be, especially if those threats result in a payment of ransom. They need to know about a payment of ransom. Paying a ransom for ransomware emboldens and encourages bad cyber actors and places everyone at greater risk for the financial and societal costs of increases in threats as others seek payouts.

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, as long as there is silence about cyberattacks like ransomware, the criminals and terrorists will remain out of reach and continue to feel safe and emboldened in carrying out these attacks, often from the soil of our enemies or peer competitors. I applaud and thank the Biden administration for its quick action in responding to the attack against Colonial Pipeline, but it did shut down the whole East Coast, and he did it by an executive order. Today, our Nation is in a cybersecurity crisis. The attacks against Federal, State, local, territorial, and Tribal Governments, as well as threats posed to private information systems and critical information systems make this bill necessary. So I am hoping, along with those who have been attacked, like the Metropolitan Police Department, the medical system in Houston--the gang known as the Babuk group released thousands of Metropolitan Police sensitive documents, and it goes on and on. Madam Speaker, I include in the Record four articles regarding this issue. [From the Forbes Magazine, July 20, 2021] Turning Up The Heat: A Ransomware Attack On Critical Infrastructure Is a Nightmare Scenario (By Richard Tracy, Forbes Councils Member) Ransomware attacks in 2020 were up more than 150% compared to the previous year, while ransomware payments were up over 300%. Over the past six months, we've seen a number of ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure--from a water treatment facility to a gas pipeline and multiple food distribution companies--all of which present clear and present danger to society. The impact was so dire--with recent research finding over seven ransomware attacks per hour--that the Department of Justice elevated ransomware attacks to a similar priority as terrorism. The recent Colonial Pipeline hack, in particular, appears to have struck a nerve, as there is finally discussion about cybersecurity standards for the pipeline industry. That would be a good start and one that is long overdue considering the importance of fuel distribution for our economy and overall way of life. However, the oil and gas industry is just one element in a single critical infrastructure sector--the energy sector. DHS has defined sixteen critical infrastructure sectors, and each is deemed critical for the proper functioning of our society. Due to the connected nature of everything these days, each sector is a potential cyber target. Disruption to any critical infrastructure segment has potentially dire economic, safety and national security consequences. As such, it only makes sense to address cybersecurity risk management for all sectors, not just oil and gas. The threat goes beyond the pipeline. To better understand the need to focus on all critical infrastructure, let's look at the power grid. Imagine a ransomware attack against the power grid that services highly populated areas in the desert southwest. Now, imagine this attack takes place during the hottest part of the summer. Think about the heat-related deaths that would likely occur and the impact on medical supplies that require refrigeration. Yes, there are generator backups in hospitals where supplies are stored, but we already know from the pipeline hack that the fuel needed to run these generators can be disrupted too. It's also important to note that hospitals, also considered critical infrastructure, have also suffered from ransomware attacks. In fact, hospitals have had an even bigger target on their backs in recent months. The connected nature of our critical infrastructure compounds the problem and potential impacts. To further illustrate how important the power grid is to our citizens, Protect Our Power, an independent, non-profit advocacy and educational organization focused solely on driving increased resilience of the U.S. electric grid to attacks, recently conducted a public opinion poll of 1,095 Americans. Most notably, the study found: 86 percent of Americans are concerned that the grid is vulnerable to a serious cyberattack. 70 percent say they would feel unsafe in the event of an extended power outage of two weeks or more. 66 percent believe their quality of life will suffer from an outage lasting more than seven days. 64 percent say they are unprepared for an extended power outage that will last more than two weeks. 70 percent say the infrastructure bill should include funding to address this important issue. Only 16 percent believe the federal government is doing all it can to prevent an attack on the grid. As most Americans agree, the federal government can and should do more to help secure all of our critical infrastructures. Recent ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure help us understand standards and practices that would have helped. For example, multi-factor authentication (MFA), a widely recognized best practice, may have prevented the Colonial Pipeline hack. According to GAO, greater and more consistent adoption of the NIST CSF, which was specifically developed to help critical infrastructure manage cyber risk, would benefit cyber risk management efforts across all critical infrastructure sectors. In summary, we need to secure all critical infrastructure sectors. The power grid example used here illustrates how dire the consequences could be. It's time to move. Summer is upon us, and the desert southwest is getting hot.

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I ask my colleagues to support this legislation because there is a known list of these attacks from the ISS World to the $50 million paid. I ask my colleagues to support this legislation, and I ask my friends in the other body, to pass this legislation so it becomes law. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 2980, ``The Cybersecurity Vulnerability Remediation Act,'' which authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to take actions to counter cybersecurity vulnerabilities in our nation's critical infrastructure. I thank Chairman Thompson and Ranking Member Katko for their leadership in putting the security of our nation's cyber assets first, whether they are computing resources used in voting technology or industrial control systems that support the delivery of electricity, oil and gas, or management of transportation systems that are vital to our nation's economic health. The Cybersecurity Vulnerability Remediation Act was introduced and passed the House during the 115th and 116th Congresses and has been updated again in the 117th Congress to meet the ever-evolving nature of cyber threats faced by federal and private sector information systems and our nation's critical infrastructure. This bill goes significantly further than the first Cybersecurity Vulnerability bill that I introduced in the 115th Congress, to address the instance of Zero Day Events that can lead to catastrophic cybersecurity failures of information and computing systems. It is estimated that eighty-five percent of critical infrastructure is owned by the private sector and for far too long this fact has hampered efforts to establish stronger requirements for cybersecurity by owners and operators. Private sector critical infrastructure failure due to a cyberattack is no longer a private matter when it can have massive impacts on the public such as the disruption of gasoline flowing to filling stations. The Jackson Lee Cybersecurity Vulnerability Remediation Act will: Expand the definition of security vulnerability to include cybersecurity vulnerability; Adds sharing mitigation protocols to counter cybersecurity vulnerabilities; Establish protocols to counter cybersecurity vulnerabilities involving information systems and industrial control systems, which will include vulnerabilities related to software, or hardware that is no longer supported by a vendor; Direct the Under Secretary for the DHS Office of Science and Technology to standup a competition to find solutions to known cybersecurity vulnerabilities; and Provide greater transparency on how the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) is coordinating cybersecurity vulnerability disclosures through the sharing of actionable protocols to mitigate cybersecurity vulnerabilities with information systems and industrial control systems owners and operators. H.R. 2890 bolsters the efforts to engage critical infrastructure owners and operators in communicating cybersecurity threats; and lays the foundation for greater transparency on the real threats posed by cyberterrorist to private and government sector critical infrastructure and information systems. The legislation allows the Science the Technology Directorate in consultation with CISA to establish an incentive based program that allows industry, individuals, academia, and others to compete in identifying remediation solutions for cybersecurity vulnerabilities to information systems and industrial control systems including supervisory control and data acquisition systems. This bill when it becomes law would put our nation's best minds to work on closing the vulnerabilities that cyber-thieves and terrorists to use them to access, disrupt, corrupt, or take control of critical infrastructure and information systems. In addition to these changes, the bill requires a report to Congress that may contain a classified annex. The report will provide information on how DHS: Coordinates cybersecurity vulnerability disclosures; and Disseminates actionable protocols to mitigate cybersecurity vulnerabilities involving information system and industrial systems. Congress needs to know how prevalent and persistent cybersecurity threats targeting critical infrastructure and information systems might be, especially if those threats result in a payment of ransom. Paying a ransom for ransomware emboldens and encourages bad cyber actors and places everyone at greater risk for the financial and societal costs of increases in threats as other seek payouts. As long as there is silence about cyber-attacks like ransomware the criminals and terrorists will remain out of reach and continue to feel safe in carrying out these attacks often from the soil of our enemies or peer competitors. A company cannot stand up to Russia or China, but the United States can and has done so to protect our national interest. I applaud and thank the Biden Administration for its quick action to respond to the attack against Colonial Pipeline in issuing a new Executive Order. Today, our nation is in a cybersecurity crisis. My concern regarding the security of information networks began in 2015 when the Office of Personnel Management's data breach resulted in the theft of millions of sensitive personnel records on federal employees. The attacks against federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal governments, as well as threats posed to private information systems, and critical infrastructure systems makes this bill necessary. On May 13, 2021 it was reported that the DC Metropolitan Police Department had experienced the worst reported cyberattack against a police department in the United States. The gang, known as the Babuk group, released thousands of the Metropolitan Police Department's sensitive documents on the dark web because the department would not pay. Cyberthreats are not limited to information related to government employees. In February 2021, a cyberattack on an Oldsmar, Florida water treatment facility involved increasing the levels of sodium hydroxide from 100 parts per million to 11,100 parts per million in drinking water. However, the levels of this chemical in the water produced by Oldsmar, Florida was increased to levels that would cause harm to people if they drank or used it. This is just one example of how terrorists can attack critical infrastructure and cause threats to health, safety and life. Cyber terrorists and cyber criminals are also motivated to attack information networks in exchange for money. The sources of revenue from cyberattacks has moved from demands of payment for thieves not to release information--to the sale of stolen information on the dark web and now to a sophisticated denial of service attack in the form of ransomware that locks a system using encryption until the victim pays. A list of known ransomware attacks in 2020 that are suspected of paying ransoms, included: ISS World (Denmark) paid an estimated cost: $74 million; Cognizant (US) paid an estimated $50 million; Sopra Steria (French) paid estimated $50 million; Redcar and Cleveland Council (UK) paid an estimated $14 million; and University of California San Francisco (US) paid an estimated $1.14 million. There are likely many other attacks that are not publicly known and this must change if we are to defeat this threat. Ransomware is becoming the tool of choice for those seeking a payout because it can be carried out against anyone or any entity by perpetrators who are far from U.S. shores. The Colonial Pipeline incident is just one in a long line of successful attacks or infiltrations carried out against domestic information systems and critical infrastructure with increasing consequences for the life, health, safety, and economic security of our citizens. CEO Joseph Blount testified before the U.S. Senate that the attack occurred using a legacy Virtual Private Network (VPN) system that did not have multifactor authentication. In other words, hackers were able to gain access to this critical infrastructure as a result of a single compromised password. There would be no need for the Cybersecurity Vulnerability Remediation Act if owners and operators were succeeding in meeting the cybersecurity needs of critical infrastructure. I know that there is more that should and ought to be done to address the issue of cybercrime and I will be pursuing this avenue under the jurisdiction of the House Judiciary Committee, as the chair of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security. Madam Speaker, I ask that my colleagues vote in support of H.R. 2890.

Ms. JACKSON LEE

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the gentlewoman from North Carolina as she manages this rule and does it in an excellent manner. Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the underlying rule and to mention that H.R. 2467, known as the PFAS Action Act, is an important step in the right direction in providing safe and proper use of these chemicals. As well, I rise in support of H.R. 2668, which is dealing with reinforcing the authority of the Federal Trade Commission. Likewise, I rise in support of H.R. 3985, and I thank Jason Crow for his leadership. That is, of course, expanding the Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2009 to expedite the Special Immigrant Visa process for certain Afghan allies, and for other purposes. Mr. Speaker, we could not be making a more important statement and doing a more important act. We are making a statement that says that we do not forget our friends, our allies. As a Member of the United States Congress since before 9/11, and having interacted with the Afghanistan Government during the early years, the creation of that government in Kabul, going to Kabul and talking to the beginning, the embryonic parliamentarians, where there were any number of women there in those early years after the war as they began to set up their government, being a part of looking at their constitution and having input into its democratic ideals, I know what can happen when America leaves. What happened when America left after the Iraq war? Schools with girls were burned. Parliamentarians that were women lost their lives. This is a dangerous condition, sadly. Those allies who provided us services, who were translators, who provided the civilian services, they are in danger. This is the right direction. I thank the administration for working with us and working with Mr. Crow. I am a cosponsor of this legislation. It is time to move this now. I really hope the other body seriously takes into account that we are saving lives. As the co-chair of the Afghan Caucus, I think it is crucial for us to save lives. This is an important initiative. We need to do more. I think there are 8,000 visas. We need to do more, but this is an excellent step. I really support the efforts of Mr. Crow and thank him for his leadership. We are going to be monitoring this. We must monitor what the Taliban is doing, and we must make sure that lives are saved.

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the rule governing debate of H.R. 2668, the ``Consumer Protection and Recovery Act'', which will ensure that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can protect American consumers and put money back in the pockets of consumers who have been the victims of fraud and other scams by amending the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act) to explicitly provide the FTC the ability to obtain both injunctive and monetary equitable relief for all violations of the laws it enforces. Specifically, this bill would: Add a new subsection (e) to section 13 of the FTC Act that specifies types of equitable relief the FTC may pursue: restitution for losses, contract reformation and recission, money refunds, and the return of property; Provide the FTC disgorgement authority to seek court orders requiring bad actors repay unjust gains acquired in violation of the law. Clarify that the FTC may seek temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions without bond and that any relief sought under section 13(b) may be for past violations in addition to ongoing and imminent violations. As the Nation's premier consumer protection agency, the FTC is directed to enforce numerous statutes: the core of which is section 5 of the FTC Act mandating the agency to prevent unfair or deceptive acts or practices and unfair methods of competition. Section 13(b) of the FTC Act authorizes the FTC to bring suit in federal courts seeking relief for consumers and is a critical enforcement tool the FTC uses to combat fraud and scams under section 5. In 2020 alone, the FTC returned more than $482 million to over 1.6 million consumer victims of fraud or illegal business practices. The FTC's restitution authority under section 13(b) was settled law for over 40 years, but beginning in 2017, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed its own precedent to overturn FTC authority under section 13(b) to obtain monetary relief and the Third Circuit soon followed. Because of these decisions, close to 48 million Americans in six states became unable to obtain monetary redress under 13(b). Then, on April 22, 2021, the Supreme Court held in AMG Capital Management v. FTC that section 13(b) does not allow the FTC to seek monetary relief or require bad actors to return money earned through illegal activity. According to Acting Chairwoman Slaughter, the Supreme Court decision ``deprived the FTC of the strongest tool [the FTC] had to help consumers.'' Mr. Speaker, all five FTC Commissioners have repeatedly urged Congress to take quick action to pass legislation reaffirming FTC authority under section 13(b). H.R. 2668 does exactly that, by restoring nearly forty years of precedent and giving the FTC the ability to protect Americans from scams and unethical business practices. Americans need this protection, because every day, and far too often, individuals in Texas and across the country fall victim to financial scammers. The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to an increase of scams and fraud that prey on consumers' fears and financial insecurities, and inaction on this issue is not an option as it will only embolden bad actors. H.R. 2668 will ensure that the FTC maintains its ability to return money to the victims of scams. Seniors especially need this protection, because they have worked their entire lives with the promise of a safe and secure retirement, but scammers and unscrupulous businesses are taking advantage of uncertainty surrounding the pandemic and working overtime to target them. Retirement accounts are not the only damage these scams cause--they damage the independence and trust of a vulnerable community. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen instances of fraud rise in unprecedented numbers, as scammers attempt to take advantage of senior citizens and deprive them of their hard-earned savings. Bad actors preying on older Americans is, unfortunately, nothing new, but in the midst of a global pandemic impacting Americans' lives and livelihoods, cracking down on those scams must be a priority. One such scam was thwarted by Houston police and the Harris County District Attorney, who made an arrest in February in an international cyber-scam that bilked unsuspecting, mostly elderly victims out of more than $1 million. One victim of the scam, Asuncion Peppers, 74, a retired medical technician knows that first hand; She was bilked out of her life savings. Hackers contacted Ms. Peppers on Facebook, pretending to be one of her Facebook friends. She was told she was eligible for a government grant of almost one million dollars and all she had to do was send a check to pay taxes. Investigators believes the scammers were operating from Nigeria, defrauding senior citizens in the U.S. and around the world. Before Ms. Peppers realized she was being conned, she sent checks totaling $87,000 hard-earned money. She said that she worked three jobs to build her life savings. Ms. Peppers and her husband are just two of 38 victims bilked out of more than $1.3 million before the fraud was discovered. This story is not an isolated incident: although 1 in 20 seniors in the U.S. is a target of fraud schemes, the National Adult Protective Services Association has found that only 1 in 44 seniors report that they are victims of a fraud scheme. During these unprecedented times, it is imperative that Congress pass legislation that protects U.S. consumers and honest businesses from wrongdoers who steal money through fraud and deception. Mr. Speaker, we need to strengthen federal prevention efforts and ensure leaders in the public and private sectors are collaborating on effective safeguards. This begins with ensuring that the FTC has the explicit authority to obtain both injunctive and monetary relief for all violations of the laws it enforces. I urge all members to join me in voting for the rule and the underlying legislation, H.R. 2668, the ``Consumer Protection and Recovery Act.''

Ms. JACKSON LEE

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, most of the colleagues of this House know that I have introduced H.R. 40, the Commission to Study Slavery and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, which can be defined as repairing. I read to my colleagues an assessment of the U.N. Human Rights chief in a landmark report, launched after the killing of George Floyd in the United States, urging countries worldwide to do more to help end discrimination, violence, and systemic racism against people of African descent and to make amends to them, including repair, reparations. That word strikes fear in most people's hearts and minds because they don't take a moment to understand what ending systemic racism and institutional racism is or what repairing is. Repairing is a global concept. It means that if you have been harmed or there is something broken, you fix it. When you think about racism in the United States, it is something broken. There are many ways to address it: dealing with education and healthcare, dealing with the economy of people who have an enormous wealth gap, but breaching the gap and bringing people together. I ask my colleagues for us to move forward on H.R. 40 because it is healing legislation, and it will bring Americans together.

Ms. JACKSON LEE

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, thank you for your courtesies. And I begin with a clarion call. The Speaker wears many hats, and we have been in meetings where we have focused our legislative prowess, legislative questions, on voting rights. So, I think it is appropriate to begin today to say that a crisis is pending. I am stunned by this decision. I am aghast. I will not use the word ``enraged'' because action requires a calm and contemplative mind. Today, the Supreme Court upheld voting restrictions. They might have written it and said they upheld voting laws. They upheld voting restrictions in Arizona and signaled that challenges in new State laws making it harder to vote--my God, I am going to say that on this floor--making it harder to vote in spite of the constitutional privilege that is ensconced in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments that generates into the States the dignity of humanity, that citizens' birthright is the right to be precise in your desires of your representation. And then, it signaled in this article that challenges to new State laws making it harder to vote would have a hostile reception from a majority of the Justices. The vote was just as we expected. All the Court-packing--all the Court-packing--has borne fruit. Forgive me. I wanted to be on this floor speaking eloquently, if you will, about a myriad of things, but a 6-3 vote, not even a light of difference: three who were not appointed by Republican Presidents, and then, of course, the packing by the former President of the United States. By the way, I just want to make a public statement. I know the First Amendment has its privileges. I ask the media to call the former President ``the former President.'' He is not the President of the United States. He is not ``President'' and his name. He is the former President. He is not ``President'' and his name at the border. He is the former President at the border, creating havoc. And havoc was created with this 6-3 vote. The decision was the Court's first consideration of how a crucial part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to voting restrictions that have a disproportionate impact on members of minority groups. It was issued as disputes over voting rights have taken center stage. We are still suffering from the Shelby case of 2013 that indicated that the Section 5 provision is unconstitutional and has left us with no tools to deal with this. As Republican-controlled State legislatures increasingly seek to impose restrictions, new voting rules, we are in the fight of our life. I am on the floor of the House today to indicate that there is no divide in any of us, thanking the Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Beatty on the urgency of voting rights, and the Judiciary Committee and the chairman of that committee, the subcommittee chairmen of that committee, and all the Members and staff, we needed this decision to be able to craft the record that is going to withstand and fight the battle and be able to pass what the Supreme Court cannot undermine with its decision. In fact, we must thwart its decision. We must protect the vulnerable. We must not allow the disabled to be videotaped in Texas. We must not allow the hungry and thirsty to be denied water and food in Georgia. We must not allow judges to overturn willy-nilly the elections in Texas. We must not allow, if I might, the idea of a former officer of the United States--in fact, the Chief Officer of the United States. We must not allow that person to make a mockery of the order of government. There is but one President of the United States. That is President Joe Biden. There is but one Vice President, Vice President Kamala Harris. And they are effectively leading this government and this Nation. They are caring people. President Biden is, as we speak, either there or en route to the enormous tragedy in Surfside, Florida, to provide comfort but also to provide the strength of the Federal Government in any investigation that will proceed. That is the able work of the Florida delegation and this President. They will do their job, particularly those Members who represent that area, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and many other Members. But it is challenging to be thwarted in voting and to ignore the Constitution, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. So, today, I want to proceed with what I think is a necessary agenda that is so important to this Nation. I will talk about so many different aspects of the issue of governance, why voting is so important, and why we need to close the social and racial divide, or racial and social equity should be intertwined. Let me emphasize, if you will, the enormous difference that what we are going to be working on over the next couple of weeks is going to make in lives, and that is, of course, the child tax credit. Votes and winning the majority in 2020 of the House and Senate by Democrats, and, of course, the new President and Vice President, led us to the expanded and improved child tax credit. It is a historical change that is a lifeline to the middle class and cuts child poverty. It provides children and their families with additional payments through the year that help them with the cost of food, childcare, diapers, healthcare, clothing, and taxes. I will be in my town, Houston, Texas, on July 3--yes, the Independence Day weekend--to be able to open the eyes of my mothers and fathers caring for children, that this is their legitimate opportunity to receive monthly payments, $250 per month per child and $300 per month for every young child. All the families in my community can feel more secure and better able to deal with the burdensome expenses that face them weekly and monthly. Let me be very clear: This brings America together, this idea of the child tax credit. But, let me remind you, it was because of our votes that elected a Democratic majority, not a majority that does not include a desire to work in a bipartisan manner. We do desire that. I think this is the first opportunity that I have had since the historic passage--maybe the second--a moment that I can say to the Chamber and to this historic Congressional Record a large thank you for bipartisanship that has brought about, after 38 years, the historic Juneteenth holiday that was celebrated because it was signed on June 17th, the first historic holiday on June 18th. Thank you to Opal Lee. Thank you to the initiator of the State holiday in Texas, Al Edwards. But more importantly, thank you to that teacher in the airport who stopped me and said: Thank you for Juneteenth. I can now teach the original sin of slavery to even elementary schoolchildren, not out of anger and hatefulness, but the whole story of America's original sin and what liberation, emancipation, and freedom represent. Thank you for the quote about President Joe Biden that said: He may be known for many things in his administration, but he will probably be remembered for signing the Juneteenth holiday. I am grateful to my colleagues for allowing me to lead, to have introduced that bill, the first Member of Congress to do so. I am grateful to Members of the other body--Senator Markey and Senator Cornyn--who rallied so that the Senate could move and that, in 1 day, we could pass it in the House, the bill that I introduced that the Senate then took. To the leadership here, how much we exalted this body when it was a 415-person vote. I hope with that vote that there are those thinking that: Wow, I voted for that. I am not finished because we are not finished. If anything reinforces that our journey is not finished, it must be the idea that, today, the Supreme Court rendered a decision that completely turns upside down the writing of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, led so ably by my colleague and friend Congresswoman Terri Sewell, a bill that will come through the House Judiciary Committee. We will be able to be the fixers, the doctors, those who will hold the Constitution and say: The Supreme Court, though the highest body in the land, in this instance, because of the Court- packing, is wrong because the Founding Fathers did not intend for us to have a restraint on that unfettered right of voting. My friends, we would not be in the midst of the debate right now on the INVEST Act that is going to provide such a new difference in our lives. That is because of the vote. I thank the chairman of the Transportation Committee, Mr. DeFazio, because now that first step will be toward rebuilding the Nation's roads, bridges, transit, rail, and we will be fighting against climate change. Look at our Western region, where hundreds are impacted, thousands, millions, but then they have lost tens upon tens, maybe hundreds of people, maybe, but certainly numbers who died from the enormous heat. We actually passed that historic bill today. I am very proud that part of it, working out of Energy and Commerce and working with Chairman Pallone, we have provided real dollars to communities for wastewater infrastructure. You know that is important. We have done that through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. We have provided, I want you to understand, the historic funding level for drinking water, the State revolving fund, making improvements to prioritize replacing lead service lines that have plagued so many of our Midwestern States and Southern States, our public housing, improving water quality in schools. I know it well because my schools are old. Children before bottled water, with the historic water systems, were drinking out of those old water fountains and addressing needs in territories, reforming the broken standard-setting to make it work better as it relates to public health and to eliminate toxins. The vote, the right to vote, is an extremely vital part, and as we have had the right to vote, and each Member has had the right, I am glad to publicly announce that I will have complete reformation of a historic street in my district, Scott Street--the right to vote--with the grant that was awarded through me to Houston and metro and the city of Houston, which we will be announcing soon. Those of you living in and around Scott Street, the University of Houston, Texas Southern University, there will be a new light, a new opportunity. And then we will be able to expand on the Greenways project, neighborhood greenways. I have heard you. I have heard the neighborhood. And so we will have that opportunity. And through voting, the Jackson Lee-Espaillat amendment, it is in now, it is law, and it is going to the Senate to be finally passed. And I am going to be an optimist that we were able to have an amendment in the Safe Streets program where funds are spent to give local governments more control over where the funds for the new Safe Streets program are spent by requiring the State Department of Transportation that ignores local government. They are ignoring local governments right now in my community on I- 45. They ignore them by expanding I-45 and taking out houses and schools and buying up historic neighborhoods. They are wrong. TXDOT, you are wrong. And we will continue to investigate until you realize that you are wrong. But I have an amendment now that says that local governments must be heard, and they must be consulted with on the amount of dollars to help them carry out Safe Streets projects, and that is to use a Safe Streets program to set aside safety funds to reduce fatality and serious injuries on public roads with a focus on vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, bicyclists, scooters, and motorcyclists. Why? People are dying. In my district, a woman stopped her car to help a handicapped person in a wheelchair get across the street, and another car hit her and the handicapped person and killed them without even stopping. Who needs to have the resources, but our local government? And then, of course, we have seen death take a toll on motorcycle riders. Bike Texas has been fighting for this. And we lost a young man a few years ago as he was riding his bike in the Heights area. He lost his life. I promised his family. The lady who lost her life pushing the wheelchair was Lesha Adams, 54, and she was helping Jesus ``Jesse'' Perez to cross. Ms. Adams pulled over and got out, and as I said, another vehicle struck them. And they were both killed. And on March 7, 2019, right before the pandemic, I went to the spot where David Leon Loya was killed in a collision with a school bus while riding his bicycle. That was the way he got around in the Heights. This is in their name, to make local governments take charge of those dollars and to help stop that kind of violence, which it is. And then the motorcycle riders, they have motorcycle clubs, and they are ignored. And in the name of Jamal Harris that was killed around Mother's Day or in May, this amendment was put forward. In the freeze we have suffered. People died. And so I have an amendment that was passed and will now become law that requires the EPA administrator to initiate a study on the distribution of wastewater infrastructure funds to rural communities, economically disadvantaged communities, and Tribal communities during the 20 fiscal years preceding. And the reason is, there has been the understanding that wastewater resources in inner city infrastructure and rural areas is poor, not working, and you feel the impact. I am grateful. But again, I am going to say voting. And then, of course, we know the freeze. So many died in early February. The President came to acknowledge something that we had never experienced. Our whole grid shut down, which is why we need the American Jobs Plan in its totality. I stand with my friends in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Budget Committee, and the Congressional Black Caucus, and all of the Democratic Caucus that we must go big. We must work with this bipartisan legislation, but we must get climate change. We must get the care economy. And we must deal with the broadband and cyber. But the electric grids have been failing. And so my particular amendment implements a program under which the administrator may award grants to community water systems to carry out activities to educate and assist persons by the community water system in adapting and responding to bad acts and natural disasters, including sub-zero temperatures. What does that mean? It means that our pipes froze. People were still suffering from freezing, and those pipes burst and destroyed homes. Not only did people die, they frozen to death because they had no electricity, and they had no water. And I remember standing and giving out water to thousands, being part of giving out water to thousands all over our community. We were giving out water in 2021. They had no water. Not only did they have no water, but it took a very long time. I will include a study to show you why wastewater is so important. The groundbreaking 2019 study and report is ``Flushed and Forgotten: Sanitation and Wastewater in Rural Communities in the US.'' And it was conducted by the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise and the Columbia University Institute for the Study of Human Rights. It indicated, sanitation is essential to everyday functions such as urination and defecation. Without a system in place to dispose of wastewater, individuals experience environmental contamination. The perpetual appearance of wastewater in and around homes that occurs when systems are absent or failing takes a significant toll on mental health and the ability of individuals to live in dignity. Do you realize that that is occurring in America? That is why I am here today. And I am here today because no one is going to tell me with conditions like this that we don't need the American Jobs Plan and that we don't need the dollars that will stop flooding in Houston, which we have built up enormously. No one is going to tell me that we don't need the child tax credit for each and every one of you. That is why we will be in Houston on July 3. We will be in Houston July 3 because these children need these resources. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining, please?

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I want to take a moment to physically hold this poster up and to emphasize how important our children are before I raise another very vital point. One, it was because of votes that we got the Children's Health Insurance Program. And it will be because of votes that we got the pandemic child tax credit that you will get $250 for older children and $300 for younger children every single month. Meet me at the Saint John's Church at 10 a.m. on July 3 to ensure that you get the right information. This is not a sales job. This is what voting and representation is all about. I will conclude my remarks with something that has been, Mr. Speaker, very important, and I hope that its explanation is one that is taken not historically in the way that it should, and we ought not ignore the attack on democracy and to acknowledge the leadership of this House for the January 6 committee. I have worked on the select committee. I am a Member who was here for 9/11. And when I say ``here,'' I was literally in this Capitol and among others that fled out of this Capitol and watched the billowing smoke that was a result of the hit at the Pentagon as we were escaping. And so I take very seriously the issues of January 6. I will also briefly acknowledge the work that we have done with ensuring that Confederate statues were removed and put in a place of history but not a place that is a citadel of democracy when there were those that stood up against that democracy. I acknowledge the validity of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and pay tribute to his family who has sacrificed so much to try to make things right. But now I will proceed with what I think must be our next step with voting, and that is H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. I want to take away any glare or misunderstanding that this is a figment of our imagination, this is something that we should do in passing, it is an impossibility, it is a third rail, if we do this, something will happen. I welcome, and I am here, present, to speak to all of my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, but I want you to look at the back of this slave. The silence is deadening as to what occurred for almost a quarter of a thousand years; in bondage over 200 years. We have difficulty in detailing the actual facts of the precise brutality in every plantation and every nuance and every northern State and every southern State and every western State and every eastern State because it was prevalent everywhere. There were different times when it ended. Certainly, December 1965 was when the 13th Amendment was so eloquently debated with difficulty, and it was passed. But H.R. 40 is the distinct opportunity internationally for America's presence to be known that we are back, that we are willing to acknowledge the original sin. We are not here accounting for my neighbor, who will tell me that he or she did not have slaves. That is not the accounting that we are, in essence, looking at. We are not looking to be able to see whether or not my other neighbor just left slavery. Slavery is a part of America's history. The DNA and the progeny of slavery are here in America. You cannot ignore them. They are the foundation of this Nation. They built the place I now stand. Slaves. They built the White House. Slaves. They built infrastructure. They created cotton and made it king, never to be given any compensation for years of work. No health insurance. No insurance. No workmen's comp. No salary. But as the U.N. Human Rights Council has said, reparations should not only be equated with financial compensation, it should include restitution, rehabilitation, acknowledgment of injustice, apologies, memorialization, education, reform, and guarantees that such injustices won't happen again. The legislation itself is a nonthreatening and serious legislation. It is a reflection of what General Sherman tried to do. He tried to remedy the back that we see here today. He tried to give 40 acres and a mule. Can you imagine the conglomerate that would have occurred if 5, 6, 10, 20 slaves had come together with that? And believe me, slaves did not ask in anger. In fact, as they did not get it, they made their way. But as they made their way, we can cite 19 sites, almost, in America where what slaves built were destroyed. Greenwood, 100 years, is an example. Greenwood is an example of a cry for reparations. Mother Fletcher and Mother Randall. And our sergeant, her brother, articulate that they never got anything and all that they had in Greenwood was taken from them. What an unbelievable scenario that we are facing. Mr. Speaker, so my plea today is that as you've listened to me, I leave here to go fight for voting rights. But I also leave here with a challenge and an encouragement for the understanding of all that I have said. But, more importantly, as I close, H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals, I look forward to working with our leadership and all others to ensure that we do make this an important step forward. Mr. Speaker, thank you for recognizing me for this Special Order during which I will discuss the removal of statues glorifying Confederate traitors from places of honor in the Capitol, the removal of the bust from the Old Supreme Court Chamber and replacing it with a bust civil rights icon and legend, the late Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall. At the outset, Mr. Speaker, let me make this brief comment. Many of friends across the aisle, including Republican Leader McCarthy, have noted the fact that all of the persons affected by H. Res. 503 were Democrats and none were Republicans. This is hardly revelatory. After all, the Republican Party was founded in the 1850s because of its opposition to slavery that Southern Democrats like future Vice President of the Confederate States of America Alexander Stephens boasted was the ``cornerstone of America.'' In 1861, after the election of Abraham Lincoln as President, the eleven slave-holding states seceded from the Union, not to preserve their heritage, but to keep their slaves. That led to the Civil War, in which more than 600,000 persons on both sides gave their lives and ended in the utter defeat and unconditional surrender of the Confederate Army led by its traitor general Robert E. Lee. Also, as a consequence of the Civil War, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were passed and ratified. Mr. Speaker, I am grateful that at the time when it was needed most, the Republican Party was born and committed to the extinction of slavery. It was the pro-freedom, pro-civil rights party. The Democratic Party in those nightmarish days was centered in the ``Solid South,'' and proudly wore the label of the pro-slavery, white supremacy party. This was not lost on the American people, and for a century Black Americans overwhelmingly self-identified with the pro-civil rights, anti-white supremacy Republican Party. Even after the national Democratic Party renounced de jure racism and ``states rights'' at the 1948 DNC in Philadelphia, resulting in Strom Thurmond leading his fellow Dixiecrats out of the convention and running a failed bid for the presidency, Black Americans remained a core constituency of the Republican Party, while nearly all whites in the southern states were Democrats, distinguishing themselves from northern liberals by calling themselves ``Southern Democrats'' or ``constitutional Democrats''. All of this changed in 1964. That was the year the Republican Party nominated for president Sen. Barry Goldwater, an active and die-hard opponent of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Southern Democrats saw in Goldwater's support for `states rights' a kindred spirit and vehicle to halt the federal government's commitment to extend the writ and guarantees of the Constitution to all persons in all regions of the country. Mr. Speaker, the result of that realigning election remains with us to this day. Before the Great Depression and the election of Franklin Roosevelt, the overwhelming majority of votes cast by Black Americans were for Republican candidates. Even in the election of 1960, the parties closely competed for the votes of Black Americans, with Republican Richard Nixon winning more than 35 percent. Fast forward to 1964. Republican Barry Goldwater was routed 486-52 in an electoral college landslide and lost 43 states; Lyndon Johnson won the popular vote by 16 million votes (61-38 percent). Goldwater won only his native state of Arizona and five Deep South I states--Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina. It is interesting to note that the five Southern states that voted for Goldwater swung over dramatically to support him; for example, in Mississippi, where Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt had won 97 percent of the popular vote in 1936, Goldwater won 87 percent of the vote. Lyndon Johnson would say the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would cost Democrats the South for 50 years but it was worth it. What accounted for this change in voting allegiance, which persists to this day? The answer is simple and obvious, beginning in 1964 the Democratic Party became, and was perceived by Americans, as the party of civil rights; the Republican Party not so much. So, Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is that yes, the Confederate traitors whose statues are being removed from the Capitol were then members of the southern Democratic Party. The difference is that white supremacists have not been welcome or embraced by the national Democratic Party since 1948 and have been pariahs since 1964. We Democrats are not reluctant to remove and banish those who bring shame and dishonor to our cause of advancing equal justice for all Americans. I challenge our friends across the aisle to stop glorifying as `heritage' a history of terror, injustice, violence, and racism represented by the persons whose statues are being removed and anyone who proudly waves a Confederate flag, like the one that disgraced the Capitol when it was paraded by domestic terrorists during the January 6 insurrection and attack on American democracy. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. JACKSON LEE

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, as a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3005, which directs the Joint Committee on the Library to replace the bust of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney in the Old Supreme Court Chamber of the Capitol with a bust of civil rights legend and former Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall. The legislation also directs the Joint Committee on the Library to remove statues of individuals who served voluntarily at any time as a member of the Armed Forces of the Confederate States of America or of the military of a State while the State was in open rebellion against the United States, and any individual who served as an official of the Government of the Confederate States of America or as an official of a State while the State was in open rebellion against the United States, is deserving of a place of honor in the Capitol of the United States. Madam Speaker, it is long past time that Congress take this fitting and appropriate action. Hallowed places in the Capitol should be reserved for persons recognized for their contributions to the defense, protection, and advancement of the American experiment in democracy--what President Lincoln called the `testing of the proposition' whether a nation conceived and dedicated to the principle of equality can long endure. Simply put, Roger Brooke Taney does not meet this test; Thurgood Marshall easily exceeds it. At a moment of crisis in challenge for our young nation, Chief Justice Roger Taney faced a critical decision and he chose poorly and to his everlasting shame. The decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856), which he authored is perhaps the most offensive, pessimistic, and racist decision ever handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court, far worse than the infamous decisions in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), and Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), and Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013). Dred Scott was a slave in Missouri, who from 1833 to 1843, resided in Illinois (a free state) and in the Louisiana Territory, where slavery was forbidden by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. After returning to Missouri, Dred Scott filed suit in Missouri court for his freedom, claiming that his residence in free territory made him a free man. Dred Scott's master maintained that no ``negro'' or descendant of slaves could be a citizen in the sense of Article III of the Constitution. In ruling for the slave master, Roger Taney wrote to his eternal shame: ``The [negroes] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.'' According to Chief Justice Taney, black persons were not, and could not be made to be, citizens of the United States under the Constitution. The decision in Dred Scott was a major factor leading to the Civil War because Chief Justice Taney's opinion also held, obiter dicta, that Congress lacked the power under the Constitution to prohibit slavery in territorial areas of the United States, which vitiated the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Madam Speaker, to anyone who professes to doubt the existence of white supremacy or claims not to understand what it means, I would recommend they actually read Chief Justice Taney's opinion in Dred Scott; they will be disabused of any pretension that the danger of white supremacy is a figment of the imagination. In contrast to Roger Taney, Thurgood Marshall represents everything that is good and decent and optimistic about our country. Madam Speaker, in this nation's new birth of freedom that was prophesied by President Abraham Lincoln, Thurgood Marshall was perhaps the principal architect of equality, working through the judicial system to eradicate the legacy of slavery and destroy the segregation system of Jim Crow. Before Thurgood Marshall ascended to the federal bench as a Circuit Judge in 1961 and later to the Supreme Court as the nation's first African American Associate Justice, he was Solicitor General of the United States and would argue 32 cases before the Supreme Court, winning 29 victories, more than any other individual in history. For more than a half century, Thurgood Marshall championed the cause of justice and equality in America, fighting valiantly and tirelessly on behalf of African-Americans and others to secure their civil rights and liberties and the full measure of justice and equality for all. At a time when African-Americans were treated as second-class citizens and the scourge of slavery was still rampant, Thurgood Marshall worked against overwhelming odds to ensure that the rights, interests and voices of African-Americans did not go unheard. Thurgood Marshall is perhaps best known for the practice he pioneered with the legendary Charles Hamilton Houston of ``impact litigation,'' the strategy of bringing carefully selected cases to court to establish legal precedents of beneficially affecting thousands, and frequently millions, of persons beyond the immediate parties to the case. Among the historic victories won by Thurgood Marshall and his lawyer colleagues at the NAACP were: 1. Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940), which established that confessions obtained as the result of police coercion are inadmissible at trial; 2. Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944), which outlawed the South's ``white primary''; 3. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), which ruled racially restrictive covenants and unconstitutional and legally enforceable; 4. Sweatt v. Painter 339 U.S. 629 (1950), and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 309 U.S. 637 (1950), which held that separate law and graduate schools are inherently unequal and thus constitutional; 5. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), the landmark case overruling separate but equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson; and 6. Browder v. Gayle, 352 U.S. 903 (1956), which outlawed the practice of racial segregation on buses and led to the end of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. As Chair for the Congressional Children's Caucus, I am especially concerned with fair access to quality education for today's youth and am personally grateful to Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP for its leadership in winning the greatest legal victory for civil rights in American history, the 1954 landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), in which the Supreme Court struck down de jure segregation in elementary schools. NAACP General Counsel Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first African American Solicitor General and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, forcefully argued and persuaded the Court to rule unanimously that in the field of public education, ``separate but equal'' was inherently unequal. That decision gave hope to millions of Americans that their children might enjoy the full promise of America that had been denied their forebears for more than three centuries. There is still a need for justice and equal treatment for African Americans and other vulnerable populations in our country, and thankfully, we still have leaders following in the footsteps of Thurgood Marshall as we make our way on the path to a more perfect union. It is therefore fitting that the bust of the great Thurgood Marshall adorns the Old Supreme Court Chambers in the U.S. Capitol as a rebuke to Roger Taney and a symbol of the commitment of the Constitution and of American democracy that in this country all persons are equal before the law and entitled to equal justice. Madam Speaker, Thurgood Marshall famously said: ``I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust . . . We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.'' The refusal to tolerate injustice is what led millions of persons of goodwill across the nation to take to the streets in peaceful protest to demand equal justice for all and an active, engaged commitment to making the promise of America real for all Americans. Equality requires unity of purpose and unity requires reconciliation, which requires accountability which requires truth. Thurgood Marshall recognized, as President Lincoln recognized, the truth is that slavery is America's Original Sin, a crime against nature and humanity so horrific and understood that the Almighty gave to both North and South this terrible war and may will it continue ``until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.'' And if that happened Lincoln told his countrymen that ``as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said `the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' '' That debt remains to be paid, which is why African Americans have always peacefully petitioned the government for the redress of its grievances. Madam Speaker, Juneteenth celebrates African American freedom while encouraging self-development and respect for all cultures. But it must always remain a reminder to us all that liberty and freedom are precious birthrights of all Americans, which must be jealously guarded and preserved for future generations. In 1852, Frederick Douglass famously asked: ``What to the slave is the 4th of July?'' In 2021, we can reply that it is the beginning of the American Promise that would be fulfilled and made real for all Americans, including the descendants of slaves, on June 19, 1865, `Juneteenth Day.' The Bible teaches that ``To every thing there is a season,'' and to every generation there comes a day of reckoning for the original sin of American slavery. That is why I have introduced H.R. 40, which establishes a national commission to examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies. Among other requirements, the commission shall identify (1) the role of federal and state governments in supporting the institution of slavery; (2) forms of discrimination in the public and private sectors against freed slaves and their descendants; and (3) lingering negative effects of slavery on living African-Americans and society. ``Official slavery ended with the Civil War and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. But unofficial slavery was continued with the new institution of share-crop farming, a criminal justice system that would press convicts into work once done by slaves, and labor policies that dictated income for work done based upon skin color. And, of course, all of this was reinforced by the systematic disenfranchisement of black Americans, the ``discrete and insular minority'' excluded from ``those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect'' them, to quote Chief Justice Hughes' famous Footnote 4 in United States v. Carolene Products, 304 U.S. 144 (1938). The history of the United States is intertwined with the history of enslaved Africans in the Americas. There is blood and there are tears, but there is also redemption and reconciliation. But to get there, we must have the complete truth and lay our history bare. It is the light that sheds the way to the more perfect union all Americans want. Thurgood Marshall would want us to pass H.R. 40 and create the Commission it empowers as a necessary first step in that effort to get to truth and reconciliation about the `Original Sin of American Slavery' that is necessary to light the way to the beloved community we all seek. Madam Speaker, I also support H.R. 3005 because it puts Congress squarely on record behind the principle that no individual who served voluntarily at any time as a member of the Armed Forces of the Confederate States of America or of the military of a State while the State was in open rebellion against the United States, and no individual who served as an official of the Government of the Confederate States of America or as an official of a State while the State was in open rebellion against the United States, is deserving of a place of honor in the Capitol of the United States. I urge all Members to join me in voting for H.R. 3005, which replaces the bust of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, a symbol of the dark days of the nation's past, with a bust of Thurgood Marshall, the personification of our nation's belief in a bright and shining future.

Ms. JACKSON LEE

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank my friend who is managing on the other side. Madam Speaker, I wanted to come just for a brief minute to clarify what I heard on this floor. There is not a self-serving mindset today. There is a serving of the American people, because the American people have cried out for the reasons why domestic terrorists attacked this place. So I say that the Speaker worked bipartisan with Mr. Katko and Mr. Thompson and gave us an independent commission, but that was not accepted. So, today, we come because it is not our voices that are demanding it, it is the American people. Madam Speaker, I just want to say that I was here for September 11, and it was the Democrats who had to push for the 9/11 Commission. But even on that day, there were no Republicans or Democrats. There were no Northerners or Southerners or West Coast or East Coast. We were not red State or blue State. We were all simply Americans. And that is where we find ourselves today. Madam Speaker, I experienced at that time a gamut of emotions, as I did on January 6. Because of the Constitution, it is necessary that we move on this bill today. Madam Speaker, as Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Homeland Security, and Terrorism, and a senior member of the Homeland Security, and Budget Committees, I rise in strong support of H. Res. 503, which establishes a Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the Capitol Complex Act and charged with investigating and reporting upon the facts and causes of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as well as the influencing factors that may have provoked the attack on our democracy. Specifically, the Select Committee's mandate includes: 1. examining and evaluating evidence developed by relevant Federal, State, and local governments, in a manner that is respectful of ongoing investigations, regarding the facts and circumstances of the attack; 2. building upon other investigations regarding the attack and targeted violence and domestic terrorism related to such attack; and 3. reporting its findings, conclusions, and recommendations for corrective measures taken to prevent future acts of targeted violence and domestic terrorism and improves the security posture of the United States Capitol Complex in a manner that preserves the accessibility of the Capitol Complex for all Americans, and strengthen the security and resilience of nation and American democratic institutions against domestic terrorism. H. Res. 503 establishes a 13-person committee appointed by the Speaker, with five members appointed after consultation with the House Republican Leader. The Select Committee is authorized to issue subpoenas to secure information to carry out its investigation and is be required to issue a final report with findings regarding the facts and causes of the attack, along with recommendations to prevent future attacks on our democratic institutions . Like September 11, 2001, we cannot and must not ever forget the existential threat faced by our democracy on January 6, 2021, when thousands of domestic terrorists inspired by the 45th President stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent, crazed, and desperate effort to disrupt the Joint Meeting of Congress prescribed by the Constitution to tally the votes of presidential electors and announce the results to the nation and the world. Madam Speaker, the morning of September 11, 2001 is, and will always be, a day like no other. It is a day all living Americans will remember because not since Pearl Harbor had there been such a dastardly and deadly attack on American soil. My heart still grieves for those who perished on flights United Airlines 93, American Airlines 77, American Airlines 11, and United Airlines 175. When the sun rose on the morning of September 11, none of us knew that it would end in an inferno in the magnificent World Trade Center Towers in New York City and the Pentagon and in the grassy fields of Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, as hard as it is to believe, out of a tragedy so overwhelming and horrific, something good and great emerged in the aftermath of September 11. On that day there were no Republicans or Democrats; there were no Northerners or Southerners or West or East Coasters. We were not Red State or Blue State; we were all simply Americans. On that day, we were united in our shock and anger and sadness and in our resolve to defend our country and protect the freedoms that has made America the greatest country in the history of the world. I experienced the same gamut of emotions on January 6: grief, hope, resolve, and fierce commitment to protect our country. Madam Speaker, the assault on the U.S. Capitol by domestic terrorists and insurrectionists rightly takes its place as one of the darkest moments in our nation's history since the Civil War. Madam Speaker, the January 6 insurrection caused tragic loss of life and many injuries, while leaving behind widespread physical damage to the Capitol Complex and emotional trauma for Members, Congressional employees, and the Capitol Police. It bears repeating often that the Congress and the nation owe undying gratitude to the men and women who answered the call of constitutional duty and heroically won the day on that bloody and deadly afternoon. That is why I introduced H. Res. 169, a resolution commending the officers of the United States Capitol Police Department, the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, DC, and other law enforcement personnel for their selfless and heroic service in defense of American democracy in responding to the assault on the United States Capitol by domestic terrorists on January 6, 2021. H. Res. 169 notes that the January 6, 2021 siege of the Capitol assault resulted in one of the worst days of injuries for law enforcement in the United States since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks but that the officers of the United States Capitol Police Department, the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, DC, and other uniformed law enforcement officers stood their ground in defense of American democracy while being attacked metal pipes, discharged chemical irritants, and other weapons. The resolution conveys the thanks and appreciation of a grateful nation to them for their selfless and heroic service, encourages all educational and media institutions throughout the United States to teach and celebrate the story of their heroism and patriotism; and calls upon all Americans to read, celebrate, and revere the Constitution of the United States, fidelity to which is the surest best means of forming a more perfect union, establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessing of liberty to them and their posterity. Madam Speaker, the domestic terrorists and seditionists who attacked the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 were not, as some of their ardent defenders and apologists across the aisle have stated falsely, on a ``normal tour visit''; nor was their effort to lay siege to the Capitol and disrupt the processes of government an act of persons who love their country. And it is absurd to suggest that it was a celebration of the United States and what it stands for when the leading edge of terrorists desecrated the Capitol by offensively parading the treasonous Confederate flag through the building and when, because of their insurrection, several members of law enforcement made the supreme sacrifice and scores more were seriously injured. Madam Speaker, I would like to take a few moments to explain why the intended purpose of the January 6 insurrection--to disrupt the Joint Meeting of Congress to tally the votes of presidential electors and announce the results to the nation and the world--was the greatest threat to the American Experiment since the Civil War when the proslavery forces would rather make war than let the nation survive and the pro-freedom forces would accept war rather than let the nation perish. Madam Speaker, the Framers had first-hand experience with the types of abuses and usurpations committed by political leaders who ruled them but were not accountable to them and detailed many of those wrongs in the Declaration of Independence. The Framers understood and declared to the world that democratic governors derived their powers from the knowing and voluntary consent of the governed as expressed in free, fair, and unfettered elections unmarred by the influence or sabotage of any foreign country or entity not a member of the political community. The Framers understood that if elections are influenced by foreign actors or authoritarian forces within, then voters are reduced from the great role of citizens to mere subjects, and government for and by the people is a sham. The most important feature of a democracy is that it is the voters who alone can confer the legitimate consent and authorization necessary to govern upon the governors who are then duty-bound to represent the voters' interests, and only their interests. Madam Speaker, the fundamental democratic compact between the governed and the governors is that the latter's authority and continuance in office comes exclusively from the governed and allegiance is owed exclusively to the governed. This agreement can only be reached through free and fair elections, a breach of which threatens the vitality and viability of the social contract upon which democratic self-rule of, by, and for the people depends. Madam Speaker, President Lincoln called the United States the ``last best hope of man on earth'' and stated at Gettysburg the importance of finishing the work we are in to ensure that ``government of the people, for the people, by the people does not perish from the earth.'' By our actions in voting to establish and empower a Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the Capitol Complex, we are taking an indispensable step in ensuring the preservation of our democracy, which has been the envy of the world for than 240 years. I urge all Members to join me in voting for H. Res. 503, establishing a Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the Capitol Complex Act.