Jennifer McClellan

Ms. McCLELLAN

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 5103, the Make the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful Act of 2026. For this reason, and at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to committee. If the House rules permitted, I would have offered the motion with an important amendment to this bill. My amendment would stop unethical donations for Federal Government projects to alter any public property, building, or fixture at the White House, the Naval Observatory, or other public property locations primarily used by the President and the Vice President. During the longest shutdown in our Nation's history, the Trump administration clearly showed the American people where its priorities lay and began demolishing the 123-year-old East Wing to build a gilded ballroom similar to that of his private billionaires' club at Mar-a- Lago. Not only does the demolition undermine historical preservation without a public review process, but it also constitutes another ethical violation by the administration, as private donors fund the construction without input from the National Park Service. This bill is just one in a series of the majority's and this administration's misguided priorities, whereby their answer to solving our immigration problems is advancing policies that would subject the District and cities across the Nation to a brutal and indiscriminate crackdown on immigrant communities. While stating that he would go after ``the worst of the worst,'' the President has, instead, targeted families, permanent residents, refugees, students, and asylum seekers. Instead of taking actions that make us safer, the administration has opted for showy displays of force, all to jack up his detention and deportation numbers. The Trump administration, in its relentless drive to use ICE and Customs and Border Patrol as an instrument of cruelty toward immigrant communities, has abandoned the Department of Homeland Security's core mission of keeping the homeland safe. Hundreds of intelligence officers with DHS' intelligence office have been directed to focus on immigration enforcement, resulting in fewer intelligence briefs reaching local officials and police departments. At a time when the President has dragged us into his war of choice with Iran, which puts our servicemembers in harm's way with no clear long-term strategy, we absolutely cannot afford to leave ourselves so vulnerable to attack. With gas prices now on the rise and the cost of groceries, rent, and utilities skyrocketing for millions, we are left to question why this administration would rather pursue vanity projects and its campaign of terror than deliver on the promises it made to the American people. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record immediately prior to the vote on the motion to recommit.

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I hope my colleagues will join me in voting for the motion to recommit.

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Ms. McCLELLAN

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject matter of this Special Order.

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, it is Women's History Month. For centuries, Black women have led our country through social evolutions, critical periods of growth, and eras of innovation. From the civil rights movement to consistently serving as the foundation for our community success, Black women continue to push the needle. Women's History Month offers us the opportunity to uplift these monumental achievements and highlight every pivotal moment in history in which Black women have tipped the scales toward progress and singlehandedly moved our country forward. For the past year, the actions of the Trump administration have brought consequences to every vulnerable community but have specifically attacked the foundation of Black women's economic success and social impact. Hundreds of thousands of Black women have lost their jobs under President Trump's leadership, and the administration remains committed to eliminating critical programs that build a strong foundation and a pathway to economic opportunities for Black women across the Nation. During a time when Black women are under attack, the Congressional Black Caucus takes the floor tonight so that our Members can lift them up. As we commemorate Women's History Month and look back on the achievements of Black women throughout the history of our Nation, I think back to the roots of our Nation, the birthplace of American democracy and American slavery, none other than my home, Virginia. Established on July 30, 1619, Virginia boasts the oldest, continuous lawmaking body in the Western Hemisphere, the first legislative assembly in the New World, the Virginia General Assembly. One month later, a Dutch privateer arrived on the shores of Virginia with ``20 and odd'' Africans captured by Portuguese slavers in west- central Africa that were traded for provisions. Among them, there was at least one woman that we know of. Three months after that, Virginia took steps toward a permanent colony with the recruitment of English women to Jamestown to make wives to the inhabitants. Those women arrived with no right to vote, no right to hold public office, and no right to control their own property. Since 1619, Black women in America have sat at the intersection of racism and sexism. Tonight, we will uplift their stories, how we did overcome, but we still have a long way to go to truly be equal under the law, to truly take part in the American Dream. Tonight, you will hear our Members talk about the good, the bad, the ugly, the inspiring, and much, much more. Mr. Speaker, to start that conversation, I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Clarke), our chair.

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentlewoman from New Jersey, Representative LaMonica McIver.

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman (Mrs. McIver) for her comments, and I am proud to be in this fight with her. As a Virginian, I am keenly cognizant of the fact that Virginia was both the birthplace of American slavery and the birthplace of American democracy. That dichotomy I have always found both ironic and inspiring. This year we celebrate 250 years of a document written by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence, which wrote that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yet Jefferson didn't include the men and women--he didn't include women at all in that decree, and he certainly didn't include the men, women, and children that he owned in bondage at Monticello, including the mother of his children. That ideal upon which our country was founded sparked the imagination of the men, women, and children in bondage across this young Nation. When Abigail Adams' husband was on his way to the Constitutional Convention, she said: Remember the ladies and be kinder to them than our ancestors were. The men at that convention ignored her advice. They wrote a constitution creating a government by, of, and for we the people. They didn't include women. They didn't include the men, women, and children enslaved at the home of James Madison, the architect of The Virginia Plan that led to the Constitution. In fact, those men, women, and children weren't counted as people at all. They were counted as three- fifths of a person for purposes of identifying how many Members of Congress would serve in this body. Many of those women were viewed as broodmares. Many of them were forced to care for other people's children while theirs were stolen. They forced to nurse other people's children while they ached for their own. Since the founding of our Nation, Black women at every opportunity have fought to be included in ``we the people.'' We have fought to expand suffrage beyond White land-owning men along with White women, even when we were the last throughout the South to benefit from that labor. Virginia has found herself a leading lady in the story of expanding the franchise. Often, how far we went determined whether the Federal Government did its part to expand we the people beyond those original White, land-owning men. I stand today on the shoulders of all of those who paved the way for me to be the first Black woman to represent Virginia in Congress, historymakers from all generations who fought for the right to fully participate in our democracy because they recognized that, in a government by, of, and for the people, government will only reflect the perspective of and, therefore, meet the needs of those who participate. Even as Black men received expanded suffrage during Reconstruction and in the aftermath of the Civil War, the nascent women's rights movement, which stated at its first convention in the ``Declaration of Sentiments'' that all men and women were created equal--yet, with the 14th Amendment, the seeds of division were sown. When that amendment, which guaranteed equal protection under the law, for the first time ever inserted the word ``male'' in the U.S. Constitution, a fissure began in the suffrage movement and the women's rights movement that pitted some--not all, some--White women against Black women because they would not support suffrage for Black men before White women. Yet, Black women continued to serve in these suffragette groups, oftentimes their work being ignored. I have often tried to research some of the Black women suffragettes from Virginia. They are hard to find. They are usually seen described as community leaders, not suffragettes. Yet, when you read between the lines of their papers and their work, you see what they were really up to. I am wearing red today in honor of the 22 founders of my sorority, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated. Founded 113 years ago in January 1913, in their first public act, the 22 founders marched in Washington in the Women's Suffrage Procession down Pennsylvania Avenue. Yet, they and every other Black woman who showed up to march that day were told that they had to march in the back because the organizers of that march did not want to offend Southern allies. Ida B. Wells famously refused to march in the back. She said that she was going to march with her delegation. The chair of her delegation, Genevieve Stone, was the only delegation member who said that she could march with her delegation. The 22 founders of Delta Sigma Theta marched in their caps and gowns with other university women, marking their first public act as a sorority. It is fitting that I call them out today because thousands of members of Delta Sigma Theta were on the Hill today, still fighting to preserve access to the vote as the SAVE Act is being debated down the hall, a modern-day poll tax that would require everyone to produce documents to prove their citizenship. These are documents that cost money, documents that, if they don't show the same name as on your birth certificate, aren't good enough. One of my soror Members of Congress, Joyce Beatty, told a story yesterday to those Deltas assembled about how, when she went to get her REAL ID--this is a good example of the hurdles you would have to go through to meet the requirements of the SAVE Act--she showed up with her birth certificate and was told that it was not good enough. It is a copy. You need the original. Not living in the State where she got her original, she had to go get another copy of the original and brought that back. That is not good enough. The name on her birth certificate is not the name on her driver's license because she was married. She had to go back and get another original copy of her marriage certificate. That wasn't good enough because the name on the marriage certificate still didn't match the birth certificate because she had been married before. She had to go get a copy of that marriage certificate and the divorce decree and show the chain of custody of her name just to be able to get a REAL ID to prove that she was a U.S. citizen who could fly. Yet, that REAL ID wouldn't be good enough for her to register to vote under the SAVE Act. She would have to go through all those same hoops all over again. The history of suffrage in this country is the history of Black women confronting obstacles, going over them, around them, through them, for that sacred right to participate in a government by, of, and for the people. When the 19th Amendment finally gave women the right to vote in our Constitution, my grandmothers, my mother, and my great-grandmothers didn't benefit. They all lived in the South. Through poll taxes, literacy tests, and other mechanisms, they were still denied access to the ballot. Many Black women fought against these obstacles. Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper from Mississippi, was jailed, evicted from her home, fired from her job, and severely beaten for daring to try to register to vote. Hamer cofounded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to challenge an all-White delegation to the Democratic National Convention. Ella Baker, whose legacy is often overshadowed by Black male figures of the civil rights movement, played a crucial role in organizing the Montgomery bus boycott, which was inspired by another woman, Rosa Parks, who herself made waves when she refused to give up her seat on the bus for a White passenger and was arrested. Baker later founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, and encouraged students to take charge of their activism and continue to make their perspectives heard. Another SNCC leader, Diane Nash, became one of the most well-known figures in Nashville and helped to organize sit-ins and sustained Freedom Rides throughout the Deep South. Another Delta, Dorothy Height, whose birthday is today, was one of the Big Six of the civil rights movement. She was one of the leaders of the six organizations that planned the March on Washington. Yet, she was the only one of the six who didn't speak that day because the five male leaders excluded women from the speaking program. Dorothy was there anyway and continued to fight for Black women to be able to vote and to overcome the intersection between racism and sexism. These are just a few of the women who fought for the right to vote. There are other rights that women were denied, particularly Black women, solely because of the color of their skin. Everybody knows about the great progressive movement that expanded worker rights to many, many workers. What most people don't know is that those rights explicitly excluded so-called Jim Crow jobs, domestic workers as the main example. Those jobs were jobs that once were performed by Black men and women for free during slavery, then from very low wages because they were the only jobs available to Black people, particularly in the South. My mother's family saw this firsthand. My mother grew up in the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, a little town called DeLisle. DeLisle had no school for Black children because the State of Mississippi didn't think them worth educating. She was the third youngest of 14 children. She was born in 1932, her oldest sibling born in 1918. There was one school that would teach those children. It was the Catholic Church, but it only went to the eighth grade. When her brothers graduated eighth grade, the only jobs available to them were as laborers. When her sisters graduated, the only jobs available to them were as domestic workers or home care workers. Her siblings, her sisters, her mother, her grandmothers, her great-grandmothers were domestics. She wanted more. She had to leave her hometown to go to high school. She had to leave her State to get a job, but she did it. By the time I came along in the 1970s, she was running the TRIO Programs at Virginia State University, three federally-funded programs that helped first-generation and at- risk students get to, thrive in, and graduate from college. Those three programs are now under attack by the Trump administration as it works to dismantle the Department of Education. The Department of Education which was created to fill gaps that State and local governments refused to fill, particularly to meet the educational needs and protect the civil rights of students with disabilities. My mother is an example of the obstacles that had to be overcome because the rights that many of us take for granted, minimum wage, overtime protections, wage theft protections, antidiscrimination laws at the Federal level and in most States, guess who is excluded. Domestic workers. As a result, thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of mostly Black and Brown women across the country struggle to take care of themselves and their own families as they take care of the needs of others. I was proud as a member of the State senate to pass--and make Virginia the first State in the South to do it--the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, to remove these outdated, antiquated, and racist exclusions. Those exclusions still exist in Federal law. I am proud to be among a long line of Black women in Congress who owe our very existence here to Shirley Chisholm, who in 1968 became the first Black woman elected to Congress, representing New York's 12th Congressional District. She didn't get a warm welcome here. She decided not to abide by longstanding expectations that first-term Members fly under the radar. ``I have no intention of just sitting quietly and observing,'' she said. ``I intend to focus . . . on the Nation's problems.'' So she and 12 other Members of Congress founded the Congressional Black Caucus, the conscience of the Congress, which 55 years later stands at 66 members strong; 32 Black women, the most in history, two for the first time ever serving in the United States Senate. Shirley Chisholm became the first woman and Black candidate to seek a major party's nomination for President the year I was born, in 1972. While she lost the primary in that race, she continued to serve in Congress for another 11 years. She served on the Committee on Agriculture, and she used that role to expand access to nutrition to millions of poor men, women, and children through the SNAP program, which last year faced the largest cuts in American history and threatened to take food out of the mouths of 42 million Americans. Shirley Chisholm remains a symbol of strength and profound courage in the face of the intense objections her very existence in this body inspired in some people. She famously said: ``If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.'' Thanks to that folding chair, I and 31 other women stand on her shoulders. She, alongside of Carol Moseley Braun, the first Black woman elected to the United States Senate in 1992, and so many others have allowed little girls everywhere to look at this Capitol and finally say: I belong there too. We have made a lot of progress towards the ideal upon which this country was founded. Yet, every time we have made progress, there has been a backlash that has involved violence, voter suppression, and propaganda. We are living through the mother-of-all backlashes. I think back to what my great-grandparents saw--my great-grandparents who grew up in the first generation after the Emancipation Proclamation--men who gained the right to vote, who gained the opportunity for social and economic wealth. Black women were there every step of the way in that progress. They also were among those who were lynched for it. They were also among the ones who were beaten for it, but they persevered anyway. Today, we are facing another backlash to progress. It has pushed 300,000 Black women out of the Federal workforce by an all-out assault by the Trump administration through DOGE. We have seen millions at risk of losing their health insurance through devastating cuts to Medicaid and the expiration of the Enhanced Premium Tax Credits under the Affordable Care Act, which turned 16 yesterday. That was personal to me. I was pregnant. Matter of fact, I was the first member of the Virginia House of Delegates to be pregnant while in office 16 years ago when Congress passed the Affordable Care Act. I remember how excited I was that this law could move mountains in solving the maternal healthcare crisis, which was on my mind in my first trimester of pregnancy. I was so excited that for the first time prenatal visits, postnatal visits, and breastfeeding counseling and equipment would be covered by health insurance. I was excited that for the first time pregnancy would not be a preexisting condition that could lead to the denial of health insurance for a woman. I was excited that Virginia had an opportunity to expand Medicaid and create our own State-based healthcare exchange. So you can imagine my frustration when my Republican colleagues who were in control at the time said we are not doing that. But like many Black women before me, I persisted. We fought and fought until we finally convinced enough Republicans in 2018 to expand Medicaid. In 2020, we finally created the Virginia-based healthcare exchange, and we saw health outcomes improve, particularly for pregnant and not pregnant Black women. We saw the statistic begin to turn around where no longer would a Black woman be three times more likely to die within a year of childbirth because before she was pregnant she got connected to a medical home and could get the care she needed for underlying healthcare conditions that made the pregnancy more risky. All of that is now under attack. On Monday, I checked to see the impact that the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits had on the Virginia marketplace now that we have had our first open enrollment since they expired. Mr. Speaker, 19,000 Virginians didn't renew because they couldn't afford the premium. About 20,000 Virginians renewed but then terminated their coverage because they couldn't afford the premiums. Families like Lester and Yolanda Johnson and their 9-year-old daughter have seen their premiums go from roughly $600 to over $1,000. I can understand why so many of them are struggling to decide: Can I afford that health insurance premium? As the President's war of choice in Iran has seen gas prices spike, they are wondering: Can I afford to put gas in my tank? Can I afford that plane ticket? Can I afford that energy bill? As the tariff policies and this trade war continues to wreak havoc on grocery prices, they are wondering which of these bills is going to give, and unfortunately, they are gambling that they are not going to get sick or injured. They are still going to get sick or injured, and when they do they are going to show up at the hospital. They are going to be treated. Somebody is going to pay for that, and that is the rest of us. Whether it is access to healthcare, access to the vote, access to worker rights, access to equal pay, access to equality under the law, we have made a lot of progress, and all of that progress is being chipped away as we speak. But the women of the Congressional Black Caucus are persistent. Yes, we are fighting the same fights as other mothers, our grandmothers, and our great-grandmothers, and we could be angry about that. We would have every right to be. We could be despondent. We could give up, but we don't because we fight those fights from a position of more strength and power than our ancestors ever imagined. We fight those fights so that our daughters and our granddaughters and our great-granddaughters don't have to, but if they do, they will fight those fights from a position of more strength and power than we can imagine. As for me personally--and this is why the President's assault on our history is so offensive to me personally because we are telling those stories in my family, but they weren't told in my history books. For a long time they weren't told in our public museums and our public spaces. Now, we have begun to tell the stories. Under the President's DEI executive order many of those stories are being removed. The President seems obsessed with slavery and not wanting anybody to talk about it. He thinks we talk too much about it. But slavery is the original sin of this country. Slavery is the original wound that is still gaping in this country because it never healed. It never healed because we didn't talk about it, and we didn't address it. And just like any wound caused by a family member, if you don't talk about it and then address it, it festers. It festers until it is infected, and then comes death. What the President misses about that history is how it inspires and how it can keep us going. My family is coming here for spring break on Friday. My kids came last year, as well. It was a vote week. So, as we always do, we went to all of the Smithsonian museums. We went to The National Museum of African American History and Culture, and we went to the exhibit on slavery. We went to the exhibit on the middle passage. As I stood in that exhibit, I imagined what it must have been like to be stolen from your home and your family, placed on a ship, the bowels of a ship, in inhumane conditions, treated like animals. I imagined how many people chose to jump because the alternative they feared when they arrived at these shores was worse than death. How many died because they couldn't hold on? A year ago as I stood in that exhibit, a voice came to me and said: Somebody survived that so that you can be here in this moment in this fight in this time. That is what keeps us going. We remember the pain and the joy and the fight and the progress of our ancestors. We owe it to them to build on their success and to tell their stories even when they are uncomfortable, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Black History Month and Women's History Month and every other history month allows us to focus in on stories that for too often in our history went untold. Yet, we have agencies at the Federal Government from the Department of Defense on down that don't even recognize those months or allow their employees to. We have an administration that threatens and bullies private companies if they try to. We have to tell the story. We owe it to those that came before us who lived it to tell the stories because how many people do you think knew when they voted for the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights that the women who held those roles who were mostly Black and Brown didn't have the same rights that they took for granted? I can tell you very few did until they were told. They had no reason to. We are going to continue to tell these stories. We are going to continue to fight for that progress. We are going to continue to be the conscience of the Congress even when the Congress doesn't want to hear from us. We are going to hold this President accountable, and we are going to make him listen to the stories even when he wants to shut us up because that is why we are here. Shirley Chisholm told us that if they don't create a seat at the table, bring a folding chair. She didn't want us to just sit there and be quiet. She wanted us to speak truth to power. She wanted us to continue her work and the work of everyone that came before her. We are going to do that. Mr. Speaker, I thank everyone for their attention tonight, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. McCLELLAN

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

Ms. McCLELLAN

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and celebrate the 100th anniversary of WRVA, one of the most historic radio broadcasting institutions in the Commonwealth of Virginia and a pillar of American radio for a full century. WRVA first went live on the air in 1925 in Richmond, Virginia, and quickly became a trusted voice for listeners across the Greater Richmond Region and Mid-Atlantic. The station has since served as a vital source of local and state news, public affairs, emergency information and community storytelling, connecting generations of listeners through moments of triumph, hardship and everything in between. As one of the country's oldest radio stations, WRVA helped shape the golden age of American broadcasting. From early music and variety programming to farm reports and civic discussions, the station reflected the culture and concerns of its community. Through the years, it has adapted to every era of media and continues to inform and engage audiences, while maintaining the reliability and credibility that listeners have come to expect. WRVA has also played a critical role during times of crisis, providing essential updates and guidance during extreme weather events, public emergencies and major regional developments. In these moments, radio remains one of the most dependable forms of communication, and WRVA has consistently fulfilled that responsibility with professionalism and dedication. The journalists, broadcasters, engineers and staff members over the years have built and sustained this institution into what it is today. Their commitment to public service, accurate reporting and meaningful dialogue ensures that WRVA remains an enduring and trusted voice in our Commonwealth. Today, as WRVA marks 100 years on the air, we celebrate not only the station's longevity but also its continued role in strengthening civic life and local connection. In a rapidly evolving and ever-changing technological and media landscape, the station's century-long legacy stands as a testament to the enduring importance of local broadcasting, local journalism and the institutions that breathe life into our communities. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating WRVA on its centennial anniversary, and in honoring its lasting contributions to the Commonwealth of Virginia and the broader history of American broadcasting. May the next century of WRVA continue to inform, connect and serve the people of Virginia with the same dedication that has defined its first hundred years.

Ms. McCLELLAN

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life, legacy, and extraordinary service of Thelma Pettis, a distinguished leader of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, whose passing is deeply felt across the Commonwealth of Virginia and throughout the South Atlantic Region. Soror Pettis devoted more than eight decades of faithful service to Delta Sigma Theta, exemplifying the sorority's highest ideals of sisterhood, scholarship, service, and social action. Just recently, she was lovingly celebrated by the Richmond Alumnae Chapter for her remarkable 80 years of membership and was honored as a panelist during ``Delta Days'' in the Virginia General Assembly, continuing her commitment to civic engagement and public service until her final days. From 1986 to 1989, Soror Pettis served as the ninth South Atlantic Regional Director, leading with wisdom, grace, and an unwavering dedication to strengthening chapters, developing leaders, and advancing the sorority's mission. Her tenure left an indelible mark on the Region, and her leadership continues to inspire generations of Delta women. At the local level, Soror Pettis twice served as President of the Richmond Alumnae Chapter, where under her leadership, she deepened the chapter's impact and reinforced its role as a pillar of service in the community. She also played a pivotal role in helping to charter the Rho Rho Chapter at University of Richmond, extending the reach of Delta Sigma Theta's mission to a new generation of student leaders and ensuring the sorority's legacy of excellence and service would endure on campus and beyond. As a charter member of Rho Rho, I benefited greatly from her leadership and kindness. Soror Thelma Pettis lived a life of purpose and principle. Her legacy is one of service rendered with humility, leadership exercised with compassion, and commitment sustained across a lifetime. She will be deeply missed by her sorors, her community, and all who had the privilege of knowing her. I extend my heartfelt condolences to her daughter, Soror Karen Pettis Walden, her family, loved ones, and the members of the Richmond Alumnae Chapter. May they find comfort in knowing that Soror Pettis' life had a profound impact, and that her legacy will continue to guide and uplift generations to come.

Ms. McCLELLAN

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, voting rights are sacred. Many members of my family fought tooth and nail to be able to exercise that sacred right. History may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme. My great-grandfather, at the turn of the 19th century, in the name of making sure that citizens voted and election integrity, had to take a literacy test and find three White men to vouch for his character. He got all the questions right. Because his name was on a list of people that the State of Alabama didn't want to register to vote, the registrar said: ``I need more questions because this nigger got them all right.'' He got all of them right, and he registered to vote. Yet, my father and my grandfather had to pay poll taxes to be able to vote in Tennessee. All of this was done to make sure that local election officials could deny people they didn't want to vote the ability to vote. I took my oath of office on the Bible where my father kept his poll tax receipt, which is behind me. He kept it in there because it was a sacred right. I swore to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, all of it. That includes the 24th Amendment, which banned poll taxes. Yet, the SAVE America Act is a modern-day poll tax because every ID that you would have to use to register and to vote, with maybe one exception, costs money. The one that is free is a military ID. For our military who are overseas or not able to get home to register in person, it is an added burden. For rural communities, it is an added burden. For people of color, it is an added burden. For the 21 million American citizens who don't have ready access to these documents, it is a burden. The right to vote is sacred, and I will fight any effort to put more barriers in citizens' way to exercise it, and that is exactly what the SAVE America Act does. That is why I will oppose it.

Ms. McCLELLAN

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor and celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association (VHHA), a century of partnership, leadership, and dedicated service to improving health and health care for all Virginians. Since its founding in 1926 as a trade association of Virginia hospitals, VHHA has grown into a statewide leader, representing 26 member-health systems and 117 community, specialty, and psychiatric hospitals that deliver comprehensive care to individuals and families across our Commonwealth. For the past 100 years, VHHA has worked collaboratively with hospitals, health systems, policymakers, and community partners to ensure the sustainability of Virginia's health care system, to transform care delivery, and to advance public health and health equity. At the heart of its mission is the vision of making Virginia the healthiest state in the Nation by driving policies and programs to improve quality, expand access, and promote patient-centered care. Founded in 1926, VHHA has spent the past 100 years supporting the essential work of Virginia's hospitals and health systems to protect health, enhance access to care, and strengthen our economy. Today, VHHA represents 26 health systems and 117 acute care, children's, psychiatric, long-term care, rehabilitation, and specialty hospitals serving communities throughout Virginia. For a century, VHHA has worked in close partnership with policymakers, health care leaders, and community stakeholders to advance high-quality, patient-centered care and to ensure the long-term sustainability of Virginia's health care system. Guided by its mission to improve the health of Virginians and its vision of making Virginia the healthiest state in the Nation, VHHA has played a central role in shaping health policy, supporting innovation, and responding to the evolving needs of patients and providers alike. Virginia hospitals contribute $4.5 billion annually in community support and generate $68.8 billion in positive economic activity statewide. They directly employ more than 138,000 Virginians, provide over $13 billion in annual payroll, and serve as anchor institutions in cities and rural communities across the Commonwealth. Each year, VHHA member hospitals accommodate more than 4.45 million patient days, deliver over 86,000 babies, and handle 92 percent of all voluntary and involuntary inpatient behavioral health admissions in Virginia. These figures reflect not only the scale of care provided but also the critical role hospitals play in meeting urgent health needs, supporting families, and responding to public health and behavioral health challenges. Throughout 2026, VHHA is honoring this remarkable centennial with events that recognize its past achievements and look forward to the future of health care in Virginia. As we confront ongoing challenges, from rising demand for health care services to workforce shortages and health disparities, VHHA's century of experience and commitment to innovation remains invaluable. I commend the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association, its members, and its leadership for their steadfast dedication to improving the health and well-being of all Virginians.

Ms. McCLELLAN

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include any extraneous material on the subject of this Special Order.

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today on the first weekday of Black History Month to anchor the Congressional Black Caucus' commemoration of Black History Month. Mr. Speaker, 2026 marks a century of public commemorations of Black history, which began in 1926, founded by historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. It was originally conceived as a weeklong celebration called Negro History Week, expanded to the full month of February by President Ford in 1976. Why February? To coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. In his book, ``The Mis-Education of the Negro,'' Woodson wrote: ``Those who have no record of what their forebearers have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from teaching of biography and history.'' Said another way: If you don't know where you come from and you don't know where you have been, you don't fully understand who and where you are, and you don't know where you are going. I grew up a student of history. My father would be 101 years old this year. He grew up under the tyranny of Jim Crow in Tennessee and in Alabama. My mother grew up under the tyranny of Jim Crow in Mississippi. I grew up listening to the stories of what their life was like, when they saw the best of government through the New Deal in the midst of the depression and they saw the worst of government in Jim Crow. They told stories, particularly on my father's side, of his father and his grandfather. We didn't know who his great-grandfather was because whatever plantation he was born on in Montevallo, Alabama, didn't think him worthy enough to record his name or his birthday. We were fortunate enough to know who the first James Finnemore McClellan was, also born in Montevallo, but because he died when my grandfather was 10 years old, we know very little about him. What we do know about him we got from family lore. My step-great- grandfather wrote a book called ``Inching Along.'' It is through that book that I fully came to understand my family's history, which was Black history, which was American history. It told how my great-grandfather had to take a literacy test and find three White men to vouch for his character to be able to register to vote after Reconstruction ended. It told how my father and my grandfather had to pay poll taxes, despite the 15th Amendment saying all of them could vote, just to be able to register to vote. It told how my mother, my grandmothers, and my great-grandmothers didn't get to vote until after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The horror that I felt watching the murder of George Floyd on the internet in 2020 was the same horror that my parents felt watching the aftermath of the murder of Emmett Till. That is because history may not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Through my family's history and through the study of American history, I recognized the pattern. I was born and raised in Virginia, the birthplace of American democracy in July 1619, when the first representative legislature in the Western Hemisphere met in Jamestown. A month later, Virginia became the birthplace of American slavery when a ship of men and women who were stolen from their home in Angola were then stolen again by pirates, brought to the shores at Point Comfort, and sold and traded for supplies. A few short years later, maybe a little over 100, a Virginian penned the words that we will celebrate this July: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men''--and he meant men--``are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights'' of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He didn't mean all men. He didn't mean the men who were enslaved at his plantation. The idea of the founding of this country has been one that African Americans have strove to make true for everyone. Every time we have made progress in making those ideals a reality, there has been a backlash. That backlash involves three things: violence, propaganda, and voter suppression. My great-grandparents saw the first backlash. My grandparents and my parents saw the second backlash. My generation is living through the third. Yet, we have a President who doesn't want us to talk about the bad parts of our history, but they inspire me. This past spring, I took my children to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, not for the first time. I stood in the exhibit on the Middle Passage, which I had been in many times before. It is a heavy exhibit. It is an ugly part of our history, but I felt hope because that time I realized that somebody survived that hell so that I could be here in this body in this fight. It is a fight they never could have imagined. While I fight the same fights as my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, and whoever survived that voyage, I do so from a position of strength and power they never imagined. I fight those fights so that my children and my grandchildren don't have to. I am proud to be in this fight as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. We will fight the erasure of our history, and we will celebrate it every single day. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Clarke), our chair.

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairwoman for her remarks. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the Fourth District of Georgia (Mr. Johnson).

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the Seventh District of Maryland (Mr. Mfume).

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn).

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Alabama (Ms. Sewell), the Congresswoman from Alabama's Seventh District.

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Kelly), the Congresswoman from Illinois' Second District.

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to our former chair, the gentleman from the Fourth District of Nevada (Mr. Horsford).

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Brown).

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson).

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I now, as one Black history maker, yield to another, the first Black Member of Congress from Oregon, Ms. Janelle Bynum.

Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the Congressman from Maryland, Glenn Ivey.