Jamie Raskin

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, my colleague from California talks about defunding the police. He might want to update his talking points because look who is defunding the police. President Trump and the Republicans are defunding the police, and we know that because we debated it for hours on this floor. His DOGE agents, back when Elon Musk was still in town before he got run out of town by somebody, DOGE said a guy in the Department of Justice cut out an estimated $500 million in community project funding to police departments across America, victim rights organizations, and others receiving those grants. They have not been able to explain it. They didn't even know it was happening. Of course, they unleashed DOGE on the Department of Justice and hundreds of millions of dollars in State and local law enforcement, victim assistance, rape survivor organization grants, all of that was cut by them. Of course, they are also cutting more than a billion dollars in law enforcement funding in the DOJ appropriation this year. We don't need any lectures about defunding the police from people who are actively defunding the police and people who are refusing to follow the law in honoring the police. My friend from California refuses to utter a word about that. Could somebody please explain why they are not following the law and putting a plaque up to honor the officers who came to save our lives on January 6? Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Kamlager-Dove), who is a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from California has engaged in a spirited defense of the immigration policies of the administration. I wonder if he would clarify for us what the policy is this week, or at least today, with respect to agriculture in California or any other State. President Trump heard from the Secretary of Agriculture and large agrarian interests saying that his immigration policies were destroying agriculture in America by getting rid of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who work there and that they are disrupting the entire agricultural economy. Then, Donald Trump announced that there were some very fine, good workers within the agriculture sector, and they would not be enforcing the law there. That lasted for several days, and then there was a reversal. They went back to saying, yes, we will be doing ICE immigration crackdowns again. Then, Donald Trump heard again from the Agriculture Secretary, as I understand it, and other interests, and he said no, they would be leaving some of these people alone. I wonder if the gentleman could clarify that for us, and I wonder whether it causes him to second-guess in any way his absolute support for these policies. Maybe it suggests that there is something wrong with what they are doing and that the administration could go back to the drawing board. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Barragan).

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am glad we are getting somewhere in this debate. The gentleman concedes that it is within the discretion of the administration to decide where to target resources. I was just trying to find out where the administration is this week because we are getting conflicting accounts of whether or not they are still targeting farmworkers. We are getting reports from California, Texas, and New Mexico that entire farms are shut down because there have been ICE raids. The other workers are afraid to come to work. They are begging the President to do something. The President then said we would stop doing that. Then they reversed it when Stephen Miller got involved. I think now the agriculture interests are getting involved. They should get the policy together. It speaks to an underlying problem here, which is that the overwhelming number of arrests now are not of people who are criminal suspects for anything. Mr. Speaker, 65 percent of the people who have been taken by ICE since this administration began had no criminal convictions at all. That is why we read articles in The Wall Street Journal about small, rural towns that voted for Donald Trump. They are up in arms and are in an uproar because people who have done nothing wrong and are pillars of the community are being taken away from their workplaces, their farms, their restaurants, their businesses, and their homes. I ask the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Kiley), who I know to be a serious student of the law because he was a student of mine of the law when we were at Yale Law School together: What authorizes the government to send people out who are not identified with any law enforcement insignia, who are masked and who are in unmarked cars, to arrest people? Doesn't that set the people up for danger in America? That is what the assassins in Minnesota were doing. They showed up, dressed like some kind of vague police person without any law enforcement insignia, and in an unmarked car. That sets us up for danger. Doesn't my colleague think the law enforcement norm is for people to know who police officers are so that they know they have to submit to their authority? I would inquire if my colleague would like to answer the question. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time for closing. Mr. Speaker, there are masked agents in unmarked cars sent out, violating people's due process rights, as the courts have found. This includes all the way up to the Supreme Court. They are arresting Members of Congress. They are prosecuting Members of Congress for doing their jobs. They federalize the State National Guard when the police in Los Angeles and the elected officials are doing their jobs. This is an authoritarian attack on constitutional democracy. We must get back to the rule of law. If nothing else, the Republicans should put up the plaque they committed to put up, honoring the police officers who defended American democracy, the Vice President of the United States, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and everybody in this room during the January 6 violent insurrection which Donald Trump was impeached for having incited. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. With this strained legislation, we are bumping into two major social problems: deadly drunk driving on our roads and a broken immigration system. Alas, we are not doing anything to solve either problem. The bill pretends to do something about both of them, but it really does little or nothing about either of them. We lose 11,000 people a year to drunk driving crashes. More than a million people are arrested on DUI charges every year, Mr. Speaker. I lost a beloved cousin of mine in Florida who was in the prime of her life just after graduating from college when she was killed by a drunk driver while she was riding a bicycle on the roads of Florida. I take this issue of drunk driving very seriously. I have worked on it fastidiously for a long time in my career. There is a lot we could do in Congress to improve safety on the streets, including imposing a nationwide mandatory ignition interlock device on the cars of all convicted drunk drivers. We did that in my State of Maryland after fighting the liquor lobby for a long time, but we finally got that done. We could also pass my bill, the Sarah Debbink Langenkamp Active Transportation Safety Act, which would support State and local government efforts to build safer transportation networks for bicyclists and for pedestrians. Unfortunately, this bill does not do anything like that. Indeed, it is hard to see how it will reduce drunk driving at all. It is obviously not a serious attempt to address the social problem of drunk driving. It does not increase criminal penalties for DUI anywhere in the country. It does nothing to promote public education about the dangers of drunk driving. It will, sadly, improve nothing on the roads. As an immigration law, it does nothing to make it more difficult for undocumented people to enter our country unlawfully, nor does it make it easier for people to acquire the documents to enter the country legally. It is a purely punitive measure, and it is both radically underinclusive and radically overbroad. It only targets the very tiny fraction of all DUI violations in the country committed by noncitizens and does nothing to crack down on drunk driving by citizens, who are responsible for the vast majority of it. Immigrants who drive drunk are already covered by the criminal law, and the undocumented ones are already categorically deportable. They don't need to drive drunk to be deported. They are deportable now because they are not in the country lawfully. Additionally, because of the breadth of DUI statutes around the country, this legislation will render deportable people who never drove drunk at all without any opportunity for judicial discretion or waiver. Under current immigration law, undocumented people are already both inadmissible and deportable. Furthermore, conviction for serious DUIs already render even lawful permanent residents who have been in the country for decades potentially deportable and inadmissible in the first instance. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, any noncitizen who is convicted of or who admits to a crime involving moral turpitude, a so- called CIMT, is generally inadmissible to the country. Likewise, any noncitizen who is convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude where a sentence of 1 year or longer may be imposed is deportable from the country. Serious DUI offenses are already deportable crimes under current law. The following DUI offenses are all considered crimes involving moral turpitude: any DUI where the maximum possible penalty is a year or more and where there is serious bodily harm, hit-and-runs, any aggravated DUI, and any DUI involving driving with knowledge of having an invalid, suspended, or revoked license. This bill goes far beyond even this very stringent current law by making permanent resident green card holders deportable for a single infraction even where no one is hurt and no property is damaged. This will lead to some very harsh results. In Arizona, sleeping in your car while drunk without even starting the car can get you convicted of a misdemeanor DUI. Under this bill, a single conviction for even that offense would make a 20-year permanent resident of America, a green card holder, deportable from the country. That person is rightfully deportable if they engage in an act of drunk driving that hurts someone or kills someone or if they drive drunk without a license, but that is the law today. An undocumented alien is, of course, deportable in all cases. You don't need a statute to deport them for falling asleep drunk in their car. Today, there are nearly 13 million green card holders, permanent residents, in the United States. These are people who have followed all the rules. We are not talking about undocumented people, the people who are here unlawfully. They are already taken care of. There are 13 million green card holders in the United States with 9 million eligible to become citizens now. Categorically deporting individuals who are convicted for any DUI offense without any regard for the severity or consequence simply defies common sense. This legislation on a tiny subset of criminal events distracts from the real problem. My distinguished colleague has invoked several terrible drunk driving incidents by repeat offenders who are undocumented. They should have been deported from the country long ago. My colleague is talking about people who drive drunk and kill people. That is already a deportable and inadmissible offense. That is not what the meaning of this legislation is. Let's look at a tiny slice of the criminal events we are talking about and ask whether, in fact, that is something that advances public policy. I don't think it does. Let's work together to impose compulsory ignition interlock devices on the cars of all convicted drunk drivers, including the overwhelming majority who are U.S. citizens. Let's really make the roads safer and stop the repetitive scapegoating of immigrants. We can address DUIs in a serious way here in Congress if we are serious about the issue. That is what I did as a State senator in Maryland. We could do that across the country, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, the distinguished gentleman from Georgia has just offered us a vivid demonstration of what is wrong with this bill and how the rhetoric supporting it doesn't support the bill. He describes an indescribably tragic, terrible case where an undocumented alien is driving a car and kills people in the gentleman's district. First of all, that person already could be deported just by virtue of being undocumented. Secondly, under current law, having killed someone, he would be immediately deportable. He was convicted of his offense, sentenced to jail, and he would be deported immediately upon leaving. In fact, the President could commute his sentence, which is what he has been doing, and have him deported right now. You don't need this bill in order to make that happen. That is a demonstration of why this is superfluous legislation. All it does is to say in a case where, say, nobody is hurt at all, the case of somebody who is asleep in their car in Arizona, for example--there are statutes like that where you don't even have to be in a moving vehicle. If someone is drunk inside a vehicle, nobody is hurt, and there is no property damage, that person could be deported as a permanent resident even if they have been here for 20 years with kids in school and nothing else on their record. That is all this bill is doing. It is an opportunity to get up and make speeches about how we are going to get rid of people who kill people in their cars as drunk drivers. That is already the law. What I am saying is if we are going to take the time on the floor to deal with the problem of drunk driving--and, again, I take this very seriously because I lost a cousin to a drunk driver who is a U.S. citizen, not a noncitizen. The vast majority of drunk driving incidents occur because of citizens, not because of noncitizens, because the vast majority of the people in the country are here legally as citizens. Let's do a serious thing. Let's say anybody convicted in the country--a U.S. citizen, a permanent resident, or an unlawful person who is somehow still in the country--must have a permanent ignition interlock device put on their car. Obviously, the undocumented person is going to be deported. Fine. Now, what about everybody else? Should convicted drunk drivers be able to just go back out on the road? This is the fight I had with Republicans in Annapolis when I was a State senator. They were the ones saying that is too harsh a punishment. I am saying to them, no. Maybe it is painful that you have to go through the ignition interlock device, which says you do the Breathalyzer in your car before you can drive again. They say that it is painful to have to do that every morning and going back from work. That doesn't compare to the pain of someone who loses a mother, a father, a son, a daughter, a cousin, an uncle, an aunt, or what have you. If we want to deal with drunk driving, let's seriously deal with drunk driving. This legislation is not the way to do it. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal).

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Washington.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, one can only regard with amazement the high indignation with which the previous gentleman speaker just mobilized against the Democrats in Congress. He accuses us of not taking DUIs seriously, and nothing he said could provide a more striking contrast between the parties. I am afraid I have to go there. I was hoping not to have to go there. I seem to remember when we met in joint session at what would have been the State of a Union address in this year of 2025. We left the Chamber after several years of--it seemed like years-- several hours of President Trump's speech. We got outside. Then a car plowed into the back of a parked police cruiser. The police descend on this situation. The door opens up. The driver staggers out. It turns out it is the chief of staff to Speaker Mike Johnson. He is then administered the Breathalyzer test. He got a DWI. He is driving while drunk. Maybe it is a DUI, driving under the influence, in the District of Columbia. Speaker Johnson immediately said that everybody deserves a second chance and we should forgive him. We didn't make a big deal out of that. We have a law right now which allows for the deportation and the inadmissibility of anybody who goes out and drives drunk and injures somebody. If they are here unlawfully, they are kicked out anyway. We are talking about permanent residents to the country. If they go out and get a DUI and injure somebody, they are immediately deported from the country. They talk about all those cases. Those cases are already covered. We are talking about those cases where somebody is not injured at all and there is no property damage at all. They want to deport those people, even if they have family and even if they have been in the country for 15 or 20 years. They don't even want to give any discretion to the judge to decide. That is what the disagreement is about. It is about this very small matter in a small number of cases where nobody is injured. If the distinguished gentleman and his colleagues are really interested in doing something about drunk driving in America, let's use this as the occasion to do it. We have a bill, which is a bipartisan bill, called the End Driving While Intoxicated Act. It has been introduced by Mr. Mann, my colleague from Kansas; my colleague from New Hampshire, Mr. Pappas, who is in my party; my colleague from New Jersey, Mr. Smith, who is in the Republican Party; and by myself. We are the lead cosponsors. What it says is if a State is going to get Federal funding for highways and then if somebody is convicted for drunk driving in their State, there must be a compulsory ignition interlock device installed in the car. What does that mean? For a period of time after someone has been convicted for drunk driving, they have to breathe into a Breathalyzer machine before their car will start. Some of our colleagues say that is too much or that it is too painful for them to go through that. No, it is too painful for us to lose thousands of people on the streets every year to drunk drivers. If we are serious about the problem and the gentleman invites us to be serious about it, let's be serious about it. Let's do what a majority of the States have done. Let's make this a nationwide program. A compulsory ignition interlock device is saving lives across the country. I think it is in 31 States now and in the District of Columbia. Why don't we do that? Why don't we do something real, rather than talk about cases that have nothing to do with the bill? Already if a person goes out and kills somebody in their car, they will be deported from the country. Whether they are a lawful permanent resident or an undocumented person and they could have been deported anyway, that is already taken care of. I know that those are the lurid episodes that we want to invoke for this legislation, but that is not what this legislation is about. In any event, it doesn't do anything to reduce drunk driving in America. Let's reduce drunk driving in America. Could we get behind that bipartisan legislation? Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Madam Speaker, forgive my emotion. For those of us whose families have experienced it and who have lost people on the roads, drunk driving is a problem of immense magnitude and seriousness. It changes the lives of families all across the country all the time. I wish our colleagues on the House Committee on the Judiciary would bring out the End Driving While Intoxicated Act legislation to spread the compulsory ignition interlock device around the country. A majority of States and jurisdictions are using it right now. It is working. It should be nationwide. We can save literally thousands of lives by doing that because it is a very, very small percentage of the population that engages in the profoundly antisocial act of driving drunk. For those who are undocumented, they are already covered, and they are already gone. For those who go out and seriously hurt people or kill people, they are already gone. That is already deportable. That is already inadmissible. In an effort to try to find another way to go out and demonize and vilify immigrants, this legislation is now picking on people who are permanent residents of the country and could have been here for decades with their families. They get a DUI, which is a terrible thing regardless. They get a DUI, nobody is hurt, and there is no property damage. Then they want to deport those people from the country. They want to kick those people out of the country. I presume they have got their votes together. They will vote for it. I presume it passes. It doesn't do anything to deal with the problem of drunk driving in America. The vast majority of drunk driving episodes have nothing to do with a permanent resident who drives drunk and doesn't hurt anybody. That is not where we are losing lives. We are losing lives because there is a small percentage of people who drive drunk repeatedly. The vast majority of them are citizens. We are not taking that seriously enough, but a lot of States are. In fact, a majority of the States have now imposed the compulsory ignition interlock device on people who have driven drunk and are convicted of it. That is what we should be working on. That is something that will actually effectuate a change and make a difference. Why can't we do that? That is all I say to my colleague. I hope they will join us in this legislation. It is bipartisan legislation that comes from the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Mann) and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith). I am on it. We have Republicans. We have Democrats. Why don't we do something real to make the roads in America safer? Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, it is telling that President Trump and his cult followers have chosen to name their bill after its size and looks instead of its contents and values. They don't want anybody looking inside this monstrosity. There is nothing beautiful or big about stripping 14 million Americans of their healthcare or removing food security from 11 million people, including 4 million kids. That is ugly. That is small. I know Donald Trump has increased his net worth by more than $3 billion since taking office from his global crypto scam and that yesterday he brought home a $400 million jumbo jet from the monarch dictator of Qatar, a flying constitutional violation packed with threats of espionage and surveillance. There is nothing big or beautiful about plundering the wealth of the people of America to give to the people who have already profited from Donald Trump's prior schemes. Let's vote this whole monstrosity down.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition. I thank my colleague from South Carolina for his excellent presentation, but this bill is a case study in a legislative majority that is in search of not common ground and common sense but rather extreme measures that divide and polarize the Congress and the people. Once upon a time this was a sensible, bipartisan bill led by our Democratic colleague, Val Demings from Orlando, Florida, who had been a police chief. Her bill allowed Federal agencies to sell handguns that they were no longer using to the active-duty officers, who previously carried those handguns, for fair market value as long as they completed a background check like everybody else in America. Mr. Speaker, last Congress, Republicans weakened that bipartisan bill, which I think commanded unanimous support in Congress, by stripping the background check requirement while still restricting the bill to handgun sales to current law enforcement officers only. So we were willing to go along with that compromise. We accepted that in the last Congress. When the bill came to the floor for a vote, however, Republicans filled the bill with a menagerie of more outlandish and extreme provisions, and that is the version that they started with in this Congress which is before us today. When we marked up this legislation, we offered an amendment that would allow them to go back to the compromise version of the bill, a version of the bill that they themselves had introduced and that we support, but they refused to do it. So today, in place of a reasonable, commonsense, and common-ground bill, Republicans are dug in on another extreme proposal that riddles our gun laws with loopholes and politicizes what should have been a simple, bipartisan measure. The bill before us today would allow surplus firearms to be sold not only to active Federal law enforcement officers in good standing, but also to retired law enforcement officers. Because the bill now has no background check requirement, it could create a situation in which it would be possible for an officer to retire and commit a crime, such as domestic violence or assault, that would ordinarily render him or her ineligible to purchase and possess firearms but then still be able to buy a firearm from the Federal Government without any background check at all. While the bill includes a good standing requirement, as they remind us, this is plainly meaningless as applied to retired officers who may have left the department in perfectly good standing but could not pass a background check today. Agencies can certify that an officer is in good standing when they retire, but they have no way to track the behavior of their former officers after that if they cannot do a background check. So an agency could unknowingly sell a surplus firearm to someone who cannot lawfully buy a gun, and all of this would occur under the statute without any background check at all. The bill also allows for the sale of any firearm except machine guns. That includes not just handguns, but also assault weapons, destructive devices like hand grenades, and even firearms that are subject to heightened restrictions under the National Firearms Act. Moreover, it allows them to be sold at salvage value, effectively making it so that the Federal Government and the taxpayers would actually be subsidizing gun sales. They replaced fair market value with salvage value. My colleagues have claimed that the bill would not really allow for the sale of all of these types of firearms because it only applies, they say, to service weapons. However, they need to read their own bill. It allows for the sale of any firearm other than a machine gun that is issued to an officer. That means if an officer uses not just a handgun, but an assault rifle, a grenade launcher, or anything classified as a destructive device, any firearm or destructive device used by a SWAT team, any firearm or destructive device used by the Secret Service, so long it is not a machine gun, if issued to an officer, can be sold back to him or her without a background check under the bill at salvage value. If that is not what they mean, and they have been scrambling to deny it, then they should change the language of the bill because that is plainly what the bill says. Forgive me for insisting on scrupulous attention to words, Mr. Speaker, but that is the business we are in when we enter the legislative process. Taken together, the bill makes it so that an officer could retire, commit a crime, become a person who may not legally own firearms under Federal law, then buy from the Federal Government a handgun, a semiautomatic assault rifle, a sawed-off shotgun, or even a grenade launcher, at a discount, with no background check at all. Now, Mr. Speaker, this is a famously do-nothing or do-very-little Congress. They don't have much on their agenda other than slashing $880 billion from Medicaid, SNAP, Meals on Wheels, Head Start, and the other programs that actually serve Americans who don't live like Elon Musk and Donald Trump. However, Mr. Speaker, you would think they would have the time at least to write a bill that would not permit these kinds of things to happen. These are unacceptable risks of dangerous weapons being sold to a person who may not legally have one. So reluctantly, I must oppose this bill which began as a Democratic bill which commanded unanimous, bipartisan support before. Nothing in this bill is going to help law enforcement officers actually do their jobs, which was how all of this was introduced when we first started out today. Indeed, it doesn't provide a single Federal dollar to help local law enforcement. In fact, our colleagues have not advanced a single bill during this entire Police Week or even this entire session of Congress to increase funding to State and local police. In fact, the party that now controls the White House and both Chambers of Congress is now letting DOGE, Elon Musk, and their midnight crew of computer hackers dismantle entire agencies, fire thousands of Federal workers without cause, and generally wreak havoc across the government. Last month, DOGE decided unilaterally to cancel more than $500 million of Department of Justice grant funding for local law enforcement, public safety, and crime prevention programs all over the country in our communities. What did we hear from our colleagues across the aisle? Did they stand up to DOGE and object to this defunding of the police? No, Mr. Speaker. Our colleagues said absolutely nothing, and I mean that literally. During the Judiciary Committee markup of the reconciliation bill, Democrats offered a simple amendment to immediately restore hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for the police and for hundreds of other essential public safety grant programs dismantled by, as far as we can tell, one employee at DOGE. Every single one of our GOP colleagues voted against that amendment, but they refused to utter a word in favor of Elon Musk's chainsaw massacre of local law enforcement and public safety programs. They don't want to be quoted supporting DOGE, but even if their quotes don't support DOGE, their votes support DOGE, and they have voted not to restore hundreds of millions of dollars that DOGE cut from our State, local, and county law enforcement and public safety organizations. In case some of our colleagues haven't heard yet from their outraged constituents about this, let me offer just one example of more than 365 grants that were abruptly terminated by DOGE. That is one grant program per day all across the country. DOGE cut funding for a program called the Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative, which provided funding to dozens and dozens of rural law enforcement agencies across America allowing them, with their strapped budgets, to hire more officers and purchase up-to-date equipment and technology. They also supported rural victim services and crime prevention programs. This program was created to assist small, rural agencies that need Federal funding but are so small, short- staffed, or underresourced, they wouldn't even have the ability to apply for the funding. One such recipient of this grant from the Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative was the Shawano, Wisconsin Police Department, which was using the funding to pay for a detective dedicated to investigating and solving unsolved violent crimes and to stop narcotics trafficking in their community. The police department said that the additional detective would build trust with community members, increase patrols in hot spot areas, enhance crime prevention, and sustain a reduction in violent crime in narcotics-related crime. This is just one of the hundreds of rural police departments and other agencies using this funding from this one grant program from 365 that were suddenly terminated by one DOGE employee running amuck in the Department of Justice. This is funding, Mr. Speaker, that we in the House of Representatives voted for on an overwhelming bipartisan basis and that the Senate overwhelmingly voted for on a bipartisan basis. We had bicameral passage and presentment to the President. The President signed it into law. The Department of Justice got the funding. The Department of Justice programmed the funding, and the Department of Justice awarded those grants all across America. Mr. Speaker, guess who stopped it without my knowledge, without their knowledge, and without anybody's knowledge? It was one DOGE employee, one of Elon Musk's junior lieutenants who spent his career at Tesla, and then he decided he was going to wipe out hundreds of millions of dollars going to our people. Mr. Speaker, are our colleagues going to allow DOGE to get away with this critical destruction of law enforcement in rural communities, urban communities, and suburban communities across the land? Apparently so. They remain silent on it. They won't utter a word in favor of it, but they don't utter a peep against it. They just vote for it. They just sheepishly get in line and support this destruction of what we had already voted for to put into action. Mr. Speaker, I oppose this legislation, which is a trivial distraction from what is really going on in America today. They are dismantling the priorities of the people as passed through the people's House and through the Senate and signed into law. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join us in actually standing up for law enforcement, for the police, and for community safety. I would invite them to join us in actually standing up for the Article I powers of Congress. I hope they will join us in rejecting DOGE's deranged funding cuts that are undermining public safety and harming law enforcement across the land. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, perhaps my friend from South Carolina would indulge me a few questions because I am puzzled by some of the representations that were just made. The gentleman answers a point I didn't make. He said that the officer must be in good standing in order to be sold the gun. That is true if they are an officer. What if they are a retired officer? What does it mean to be a retired officer who is in good standing when that person no longer has a record and the department is not keeping track of them? That is why the original legislation insisted that there be a background check. I am wondering if the gentleman would answer that question. Well, you get that one. Let me ask another question. The gentleman says that only handguns would be issued to officers, whether they are currently officers or whether they are retired, but SWAT teams are included by your legislation, I believe. Are not members of SWAT teams issued semiautomatic weapons and other kinds of guns? Are you saying that this applies only to handguns? If so, why didn't you write it to apply only to handguns?

Mr. RASKIN. I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina for the purpose of a colloquy.

Mr. RASKIN. Even in the case of a SWAT team, the gentleman is saying that a member of a SWAT team would not have a semiautomatic weapon?

Mr. RASKIN. Are they not issued to the officer?

Mr. RASKIN. That is while you are an officer. Now let's say you retire and you commit domestic violence or assault or battery or some other offense 2 years later. The department is not notified of that, is not keeping track of it. What does it mean to say a retired person is in good standing if they have committed a crime in the meantime?

Mr. RASKIN. There is nothing that would actually prevent the sale actually by GSA, right? Who would effectuate the provisions of the prohibited purchaser statute?

Mr. RASKIN. Then we are establishing legislative history that, according to the gentleman, this legislation is designed to apply only to handguns and not to all of these other things which the gentleman says are irrelevant. Is that right?

Mr. RASKIN. Then why is it in this bill?

Mr. RASKIN. Neither are machine guns. The gentleman excluded machine guns.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I will reclaim my time, and I yield myself the balance of my time. They went to the pains of excluding machine guns, saying that they didn't want a retired officer to be able to purchase a machine gun, but then they are allowing grenade launchers, semiautomatic weapons, and all these other weapons. I don't understand why, when the gentleman now is vigorously protesting that that is not the intention of the statute, that is not the intention of the legislation. Please rewrite the bill to be in accord with what you are saying, which is that this applies only to handguns. Otherwise, you are just multiplying the proliferation of regulations which I thought you were opposed to. Now you are saying we want the GSA to issue a whole bunch of regulations to do the work that Congress refuses to do. I think you are moving a little bit closer to what Congresswoman Demings' original legislation was if you limit it to handguns. What she said is: Obviously, someone who retires from the force can go out and purchase whatever weapons they want. This was the sentimental value of allowing an officer to purchase a gun that he or she used when they were actually in service, at fair market value. Now you have riddled it with all of these other exceptions and completely changed the meaning of the legislation in a way that moves us backwards in terms of public safety. In America, 80 or 90 percent of the American people want a universal violent criminal background check. We think we have enough loopholes as it is, with the internet loophole, which the majority refuses to close; with the private gun show loophole, which the majority refuses to close; with the person-to- person private sale loophole, which the majority refuses to close. We don't need more loopholes. America already stands out as an outlier in the world among advanced industrialized countries. We have rates of gun violence and gun homicide that are 10 or 20 times higher than Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Israel, and Japan. You name it, nothing comes close to us. Instead of helping police officers by getting guns out of the hands of criminals, our colleagues are just looking for ways to create more loopholes in the laws for purchasing guns. Mr. Speaker, again, I just wanted to nail down into the weeds here exactly what the legislation says. The term ``firearm'' is the meaning given that term in section 921(a) of Title 18, excluding any machine gun. They have properly decided that we should not put more machine guns into the stream of commerce. What is still swept within it? Any explosive, incendiary, poison gas, bomb, grenade, rocket, missile having explosive or incendiary charge of more than \1/4\ ounce, mine, device, and so on. Why would we open this up if that is not the intention of my colleague? I take him completely in good faith at his word. Let's write that out of the bill because what we have seen is that people who mean to do harm to other people will exploit any other opportunity to do it. I don't understand the logic of excluding machine guns but then sweeping in all of these other dangerous weapons. I am happy to yield to my friend if he wants to elaborate on that, or I will reserve my time. Maybe he can use some of his time. Mr. Speaker, there is another bit of business we need to clean up here, and I would invite my distinguished colleague from South Carolina to join me in this. We voted back on March 15, 2022, to erect a plaque in the Congress of the United States to honor the police officers who fought tooth and nail, with valor, courage, and heroism, to defend us against mobs of thousands of marauding rioters and insurrectionists, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, who came to try to overthrow a Presidential election. They stormed the Capitol. They injured, wounded, hospitalized, brutalized more than 140 officers, many of whom are still suffering from the physical and mental wounds today. We voted back on March 15, 2022, to put a plaque up in Congress to honor them, and it reads: ``On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6, 2021. Their heroism will never be forgotten.'' Alas, Mr. Speaker, their heroism seems already to have been forgotten by some of our colleagues. The plaque exists. We have the plaque. It has been produced. Yet, the Speaker of the House refuses to put the plaque up 2 years later. Why? Why will we not honor the police officers, like Sergeant Gonell who was forced to leave the police force because of the severe injuries that he suffered then and is trying to support his family on around half the salary that he had before? Why would we not honor the officers like Michael Fanone, who wasn't even on duty that day, but he heard about the riots at the Capitol, and he came down to join the fight with his brothers and sisters in blue and was nearly killed? He begged for his life to the mob, saying he had four daughters of his own. He had a heart attack. Will we not honor Michael Fanone? Will we honor Officer Harry Dunn who fought for hours and hours, enduring not just other physical attacks but savage racial epithets and abuse? Will we honor Officer Hodges who nearly died trying to stop the mob from entering the Capitol? He got caught in the doorway on the western front of the Capitol. He was tortured in front of the eyes of the world. You have probably seen the pictures of him being caught and beaten by the mob, which that day was wielding Confederate battle flags, American flags, baseball bats, steel pipes, broken furniture, you name it, to attack our officers. These people gave blood, sweat, and tears. Several officers died in the aftermath, including Officer Brian Sicknick who died the very next day after receiving grievous wounds and injuries. We could be doing a lot more for them. President Trump wants a fund for January 6. That is good, right? No. He wants a fund for the rioters' families. He wants a fund for the insurrectionists that he pardoned, not for the police officers. Will my colleagues say anything about that? At the very least, let's put up the plaque to honor these officers. Not a single Member of the majority has given us one reason why this plaque, which is completed, has not been hung in the Capitol of the United States. Why not? If you don't respect the law enforcement officers and the police who fought tooth and nail for us that day, at least respect the rule of law. This was supposed to be up 2 years ago. Mr. Speaker, forgive my passion, but I was there. I was here on January 6, 2021. I heard them chanting: ``Hang Mike Pence.'' ``Hang Mike Pence.'' The words are still echoing in my mind from that day. They were looking for Nancy Pelosi. They were quoted as saying they wanted to assassinate Nancy Pelosi. They stormed her office. They took over her office. Do we honor police officers for real, or do we only honor them if it is politically convenient for us to honor them? Like the prosecutors, the new Attorney General got in. The new Acting U.S. Attorney, Ed Martin, got in. They were forced to withdraw that nomination after it turned out he had appeared 150 different times on Russian propaganda networks, like Russia Today and Sputnik, and after it turned out he had all kinds of Neo-Nazi affiliations and friendships. Anyway, he got in. You know what he did? They fired more than a dozen of the most experienced veteran prosecutors in the Department of Justice. Why? Because they did their jobs, because they prosecuted the people who committed that massive assault on American democracy. The greatest mass assault, violent assault on the Capitol in the history of the United States. We have never seen anything like it. This administration not only pardoned more than 1,500 people who participated in that brutality, in that attempt to overthrow an election, which Joe Biden won by more than 7 million votes, 306-232 in the electoral college, not only did they pardon all of those offenders, whether they were nonviolent or violent--and a lot of them have already gone on to reoffend since they got their pardons from Donald Trump--not only did they do that but they wanted to sack the prosecutors for doing their jobs. Is there anybody on that side of the aisle who will speak out against this obscenity? No, I don't think so. Is there anybody on that side of the aisle who is uttering support for law enforcement during our law enforcement week who will say it is time to put up the plaque in honor of the officers who defended us? Mr. Speaker, I hope my colleagues have some good reason for doing what they are doing. The Framers of the Constitution thought that people who participated in the government would come to identify with their branch of government. That is why I thought, well, when they stormed the Capitol and Donald Trump incited a violent insurrection against us, we would, in bipartisan unison, denounce it and vote to impeach and convict. Ten Republicans did join all the Democrats in doing that. That was historic. Seven Republican Senators voted to convict after seeing overwhelming evidence. Mitch McConnell also found the evidence completely convincing, but he said that he didn't think the Senate has jurisdiction to try to convict a former President, despite the fact that that contradicted two centuries of precedent, and the Senate ruled on the very first day against that motion to dismiss the charges. He said there was nothing that could be done, even though Donald Trump was actually, factually, ethically, and morally responsible for everything that happened. When will my colleagues finally break from the cultish obedience to Donald Trump, who is now over in the Middle East on what looks like a business trip for him and his family? They are all raking in not just hundreds of millions of dollars but billions of dollars with their business deals. My colleagues are back home doing his bidding, trying to slash $888 billion from Medicaid and the programs that the American people have built. Our parents and grandparents built those programs so we can take care of ourselves. The richest man in the world and Donald Trump have another agenda. They have left your agenda behind. They left you guys to do the dirty work. Donald Trump is collecting a $400 million flying grift gift from Qatar. They are giving him bribery force one. Nobody has ever seen anything like this in the history of the United States. They are trying to give him a jet plane. It is humiliating for the American President to be flying around in a plane created by the dictator, the theocratic monster of Qatar, while they are collecting billions of dollars. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has gotten $2 billion from Saudi Arabia. This is totally in violation of the Constitution. Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 says that nobody holding an office of trust under the United States shall, without the consent of the Congress, collect a ``present, emolument, office, or title of any kind whatever from any king, prince, or foreign state.'' That is Donald Trump's new business, to go collect foreign government emoluments. I hope my colleagues will join us in demanding that he come to Congress to ask for permission to keep that $400 million bug-riddled airplane that he wants to fly around on somebody else's tab. It is absurd, the lengths that they have gone to, to mangle and trample our Constitution. Let's get back to law enforcement and the rule of law, starting with the Constitution of the United States of America. The President wants to keep all of these gifts from foreign dictators. Come to Congress. That is what Abraham Lincoln did. The King of Siam gave Abraham Lincoln elephant tusks. This is in the middle of the Civil War. Check out the descent of honor and integrity in our country. In the middle of the Civil War, President Lincoln comes to Congress and says: Can I keep those elephant tusks? Congress comes back with a message: We love you, Honest Abe. You are doing a great job in the war, but no. Turn those over to the Department of the Interior. My colleagues will not even demand that Donald Trump bring his corrupt gifts, his royal spoils, to the Congress of the United States to ask our consent. Every President has done it up until this one. Let's get back to the rule of law. Let's enforce the Constitution. Let's honor the police officers who defended us. Let's stay away from bills that just put a lot more guns into traffic to make life more dangerous for police officers and for everybody in America. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.