Jamie Raskin

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the bill (S. 5036) to amend the Overtime Pay for Protective Services Act of 2016 to extend the Secret Service overtime pay exception through 2023, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Huffman) for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise in favor of H.R. 970, and I salute my colleague, Congressman Brown, for his exemplary leadership on this issue. Mr. Speaker, I cannot find a single case of any other country on Earth where monuments and memorials are put up to honor the generals of enemy forces in a civil war or any other war. Maybe another such case exists, but I can't find it. And there is no denying that there is something freakishly unusual about this practice, but you cannot blame Americans from the 19th century. In this case, you can't even blame Americans from the 20th century. This statue of Robert E. Lee went up in 2003, not even 2 decades ago. The bizarre and stubborn impulse to honor Confederate military traitors to the Union on the very battlefield where they fought to destroy our Union and to kill our soldiers waving the Union flag reflects the hold of the so-called ``Lost Cause'' ideology, the myth which returns in times of resurgent racism, that the Confederate cause was heroic and noble, that slavery was a benevolent institution, and that treason was somehow justified. This kind of derangement from reality and from American constitutionalism has set the pattern for a paranoid style in American politics, which continues to this very day. Mr. Speaker, in 2020, we have a President of the United States who refuses to accept his defeat in the election by more than 7 million votes and by a margin of 306-232 in the Electoral College--a margin he declared ``a landslide'' when he won by that very same amount. A big defender of the Confederate statues, the President from New York is busily constructing a new romantic ``Lost Cause'' mythology about his loss, despite the fact that more than 40 courts have rejected all of his claims about the election. Mr. Speaker, let us put an end to this strange practice of honoring the military enemies of the United States. Let us put an end to the ``Lost Cause'' mythology, which has been such an abscess and such a danger to the Republic.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Trone for yielding, and I want to thank our distinguished majority leader for sponsoring this special hour devoted to honoring the great Senator Sarbanes. Along with Senator Mikulski, Senator Sarbanes was the first Senator I ever had. And because he served for 30 years in office, he was actually my Senator for most of my life already. He will always be, in my mind, the image of what a Senator is: someone of immense erudition, character, intelligence, and commitment. But I got to know him primarily as the father of my friend and now my colleague, John Sarbanes, whom I have known since law school, and, therefore, I have known him for most of my life as well. I can feel the tremors and the shock of this enormous loss for the people of Maryland. I feel deeply for my friend John and for Dina, and for everyone in the Sarbanes family. I see a lot of his father in John Sarbanes, just to echo what Congressman Brown just said. Paul Sarbanes was a family man who loved, deeply, his children, John, Michael, and Janet, and his big brood of grandchildren. Nothing brought that famous twinkle to his eye more than being in the presence of his beloved kids and grandkids. And, of course, the love story between him and Christine is legendary in our State. Paul Sarbanes was a man of exquisite character who loved public things. He loved public schools, public universities, public parks. He loved public museums. He loved the res publica, the public thing, and he thought that there was no greater honor than in being a public servant. I remember he once came out and spoke at an event that I had in Montgomery County, and he said--it really stuck with me. He said, there are many public goods that we try to protect--clean air, clean water, a beautiful bay, good schools, smooth roads--but we should never forget perhaps the greatest public good: the good of being well-governed. This is what allows us to sleep at night. And he showed us every day in his career in public life the difference between being a public servant who instills justice in our institutions and being one who goes out to exploit public office for private gain. Those are simply in two different galaxies of human experience. He showed us that those of us who aspire and attain the public office are nothing but the servants of the people in a democracy. We are here only to serve the people and the common good the very best that we can. And the moment that we begin to act like the masters of the people rather than the servants of the people, that is the moment to evict and eject and reject and impeach and remove. Indeed, of the many extraordinary moments in Senator Sarbanes' career, we should never forget that he was the first one to introduce Articles of Impeachment against Richard Nixon during the Watergate affair. Even in the age of celebrity and the lifestyles of the rich and famous that he came to inhabit, an age of vast economic inequality and adoration of wealth, Senator Sarbanes knew what true wealth is, and he knew what it meant to truly be happy. He loved the Greek philosophers, of course, and as a Greek-American philosopher himself, he showed us the meaning of what a lot of the Greeks tried to demonstrate in their writings. He was always the poorest Member of the U.S. Senate in financial terms--nobody even came close, if I remember correctly. Not only did he not trade in the stock market on a daily basis, I don't even think he ever invested in the stock market. He had a savings account. Now, I am recalling this from memory. Perhaps he did end up with a mutual fund or something. I know that he was recorded, in term after term, the poorest Member of the Senate, financially. But Senator Sarbanes knew what true wealth is: a Sunday night family dinner, the love of your children, friendships that last over decades across the centuries, the merriment of little children, the thrill of being able to deliver a Social Security check or a VA check to someone who couldn't get it, showing respect for elders, teaching young people the value of education and hard work, having a wife who is your life partner and your soulmate and your equal in all things. A man of extraordinary character and integrity who was interested in not what was popular, but what was right, Paul Sarbanes, to me, embodied a certain kind of politician. When I first got into politics, I quickly recognized two different kinds of politicians. There were justice politicians and there were power politicians, and Paul Sarbanes, to me, epitomized what it meant to be a justice politician. We, in Maryland, have suffered a great loss with the passing of Senator Sarbanes, but he has instilled in his family and in his staff and in everyone who learned from him a love for public things, and we can continue the passionate mission that he had in his life.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume for the purpose of closing. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his very thoughtful and eloquent statement in defense of religious freedom, the value that unites us behind this powerful resolution, which will put the government squarely back in the fight to defend religious liberty all over the world and to oppose the spread of these blasphemy laws that are being used to persecute innocent people all over the globe. Mr. Speaker, in our country, the religious Free Exercise Clause and the clause against establishment of religion stand best when they stand together because they both stand for the principle that no particular religious sect can seize control of state power and then persecute members of other religious groups, but that is what is happening in so many places all over the world. Mr. Speaker, our experience in the separation of church and state and standing up for the free exercise of religion is something that we can continue to proudly promote to the rest of the world, and we do have something that we think we can teach other nations that want to follow the path of democracy and freedom. As the U.S. works to advance human rights, it is critical that we put this question of freedom of thought, freedom of conscience right at the heart of our efforts. Everyone must be able to practice their faith--or no faith at all--without the threat of government violence and persecution. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to support this excellent measure, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, in this age of partisan division, one of the foundational American values still has the power to bring us together across the aisle: the defense of every human being's freedom of religious conscience and freedom of thought against government persecution. With H. Res. 512, we act today to stand up for religious and intellectual freedom in a world gone mad with religious discrimination, religious oppression, and religious violence. H. Res. 512 calls for global repeal of laws punishing blasphemy, heresy, and apostasy, three religiously defined thought crimes that have no actual victims and, thus, no place in the criminal law of free nations. Yet governments in 84 countries, from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Somalia to China, Russia, and Bangladesh, still use laws like these to intimidate, arrest, prosecute, and incarcerate members of minority religions, disfavored faiths, and freethinkers. Putting people in jail or even condemning them to death for religiously subversive speech was not unknown in American colonies. In Massachusetts, Puritan Governors hanged Quakers for their heretical lectures in town squares. But our enlightenment Constitution, especially our First Amendment free exercise and antireligious establishment clauses, put us squarely on the path of rejecting blasphemy laws and these other relics of inquisition, holy crusades, and New England witchcraft trials. Our law has gotten rid of obsolete offenses like blasphemy and apostasy because they have a purely religious character and do not refer to empirical social harms. Blasphemy is making impious or sacrilegious statements about established churches or doctrines. Heresy is taking religious or intellectual positions at odds with an established religious orthodoxy. Apostasy is breaking away from a religious orthodoxy or a church. As offensive as we might consider other people's religious views and utterances, in America today, people's thoughts and words about religion are absolutely protected by the First Amendment. But in many parts of the world where religion is still actively weaponized by theocratic and authoritarian governments, these imaginary offenses can still get you thrown into jail, harassed, and executed, or simply stopped and torn limb from limb by state-sanctioned lynch mobs. Religious people of the wrong faith are the most common victims of blasphemy and heresy laws. You might be a practicing Christian or Hindu, Mr. Speaker, in an officially Muslim state like Libya or Afghanistan or a devout Muslim in a Hindu society like India. You might be a nonreligious person targeted by your enemies or state authorities. You might be a 22-year-old Nigerian gospel musician like Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, who was convicted of blasphemy in a state sharia court in Kano State on August 10 and has been sentenced to death by hanging for something he said on a WhatsApp group on the internet. Mr. Speaker, you might be a Sudanese Christian like Mariam Ibrahim, who was jailed for apostasy because, although she had been a devout Christian for her entire life, government officials demanded that she follow her absent father's Muslim faith. She was held in jail with her 20-month-old son and forced to give birth to her daughter in prison while her legs were shackled to the floor. Mr. Speaker, you might be a 13-year-old Muslim boy in Nigeria like Omar Farouq, who was sentenced to 10 years at hard labor for blasphemy when he said something about Allah in an argument with friends, a brutal miscarriage of justice condemned by UNICEF and child advocates all over the world. You might even belong to the wrong sect of the official state religion. In the Islamic State of Pakistan, for example, people belonging to the Ahmadiyya Muslim faith are being persecuted as heretics and apostates as if this were the Middle Ages. At least five Ahmadiyya Muslims have been killed in Pakistan this year alone because of their faith, including Tahir Ahmad Naseem, an American citizen who was murdered in broad daylight in a courtroom while standing trial for blasphemy charges just for practicing his own religion. While his teenage killer was arrested, he is being celebrated now as a martyr by the media and members of the police service who watched him kill Naseem. Mr. Speaker, the global assault on religious and intellectual freedom today is taking place in many of the world's largest countries: China confines millions of Uighur Muslims in miserable reeducation camps and forces them into slave labor in Xinjiang province; Russia has decreed that Jehovah's Witnesses are an extremist group and confiscated their property, jailed their members, and even allegedly tortured some of them; India recently passed draconian laws burdening the rights of disfavored Muslim minorities. With this resolution, Mr. Speaker, against the new wave of global religious oppression and persecution, America can once again take the lead in defending the basic human rights of religious and intellectual freedom all over the world. James Madison, the author of our First Amendment, denounced that ``diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution,'' and he stated in his remonstrance against religious assessments that ``the religion . . . of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man.'' Let us share this principle with the nations of the world with this resolution. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Res. 512.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 512) calling for the global repeal of blasphemy, heresy, and apostasy laws, as amended.

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 for the purpose of closing. Mr. Speaker, I, too, thank Mr. Deutch and Mr. Wilson for their hard work on this important resolution. Mr. Speaker, American foreign policy must work to advance and protect basic human rights around the world, including religious freedom and the rights of religious minorities. When we see human rights violations, like the ones the Iranian Government has inflicted on the Baha'i community, we must speak out. We must pursue justice for the victims and we must hold the perpetrators accountable. We must defend people nonviolently exercising their faith against governments violently imposing their will on the public. Mr. Speaker, this resolution is a step in the direction of aggressive defense of human rights, and I am pleased to support it. I urge all of our colleagues to support this bipartisan measure. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution condemning the government of Iran's persecution of its besieged Baha'i minority. I thank all of my colleagues who have worked on this, including on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mr. Deutch and Mr. Wilson, for their leadership on this measure. Mr. Speaker, the Government of Iran has carried out an inhumane campaign of religious persecution against the Baha'i minority, its largest nonMuslim religious minority in the country. The regime has closed Baha'i-owned shops and stores, forbidden Baha'i citizens from holding government jobs, and denied Baha'i children access to school. Members of the Baha'i community have been unjustly arrested and prosecuted and executed, targeted solely for their religious beliefs. Mr. Speaker, the U.S. stands for the freedom of religious exercise, and we must speak up in the face of this theocratic injustice. We cannot forget those who struggled for their basic religious freedom and civil liberty in Iran. Mr. Speaker, this resolution sends a strong message to the Iranian Government that the Government of the United States will not remain silent in the face of such terrible oppression. It calls for the immediate release of all imprisoned or detained Baha'is, and urges sanctions on Iranian officials and others who are responsible for these human rights abuses, including abuses against the Baha'i community. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this bipartisan resolution, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Res. 823.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 823) condemning the Government of Iran's state- sponsored persecution of its Baha'i minority and its continued violation of the International Covenants on Human Rights, as amended.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to include any extraneous material on H. Res. 1100, as amended.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 1100) reaffirming the strategic partnership between the United States and Mongolia and observing the 30th anniversary of democracy in Mongolia, as amended.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume for the purpose of closing. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to strongly support H. Res. 1100, which recognizes Mongolia's commitment to democracy, security, cooperation, and respect for human rights and reaffirms the important growing partnership between our two nations. Mr. Speaker, I would like to, once again, thank Ms. Titus and Mr. Yoho for their leadership on this resolution. I urge all Members to join us in supporting it, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this year marks 30 years since Mongolia's democratic transition. Mongolia is a true success story, a landlocked country squeezed between two huge neighbors, China and Russia, that has nonetheless become a shining democratic breakthrough story in Asia. As Mongolia's so-called third neighbor, the U.S. should continue to build upon our shared interests and commitment to democratic values and further advance our strategic partnership. From national security to economic stability, Mongolia has demonstrated its commitment to our partnership by hosting annual peacekeeping exercises and participating in U.S.-led programs like the House Democracy Partnership and the Open World Leadership Center. Our countries must also continue to partner closely on global warming. Climate change is a pressing concern for all the world and has already gravely affected the livelihood and well-being of the Mongolian people, who now face widespread livestock and crop losses, as well as escalating extreme-weather events. This resolution urges the expansion of U.S.-Mongolia economic ties and encourages the Mongolian Government to continue to increase transparency, freedom, and good governance. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Titus for her work on this bipartisan resolution. I urge all Members to support it, and I reserve the balance of my time. Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, December 7, 2020. Hon. Eliot L. Engel, Chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Washington, DC. Dear Chairman Engel: In recognition of the desire to expedite consideration of H. Res. 1100, Reaffirming the strategic partnership between the United States and Mongolia and observing the 30th anniversary of democracy in Mongolia, the Committee on Ways and Means agrees to waive formal consideration of the resolution as to provisions that fall within the rule X jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means. The Committee on Ways and Means takes this action with the mutual understanding that we do not waive any jurisdiction over the subject matter contained in this or similar legislation, and the Committee will be appropriately consulted and involved as the resolution or similar legislation moves forward so that we may address any remaining issues within our jurisdiction. The Committee also reserves the right to seek appointment of an appropriate number of conferees to any House-Senate conference involving this or similar legislation. Finally, I would appreciate your response to this letter confirming this understanding and would ask that a copy of our exchange of letter on this matter be included in the Congressional Record during floor consideration of H. Res. 1100. Sincerely, Hon. Richard E. Neal, Chairman, Committee on Ways and Means.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, in September 1969, Senator Birch Bayh, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, introduced a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College. The amendment passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the House and with support from President Richard Nixon. But on this day 50 years ago, the amendment was blocked by a filibuster in the Senate. The author of two successful and important constitutional amendments (the 25th and 26th), Senator Bayh was an eloquent and learned champion of sweeping institutional reform to make sure that the Constitution safeguards democratic principles rather than antiquated structures rooted in an undemocratic past. At this moment of profound constitutional stress and recurring global and domestic threats to democratic values and practices, we should remember the Senator's passionate commitment to building democratic self-government that serves as an instrument of the common good. Senator Bayh recognized that, in order to make sure that all votes count in our presidential elections and all votes count equally, it will be necessary to abolish the electoral college--or at least transform it through the National Popular Vote interstate agreement. I was honored to work with Senator Bayh, who was a great gentleman and patriot, during my time as a State Senator and he definitely helped us to make Maryland the first state to pass the National Popular Vote Agreement. Madam Speaker, I wish to include in the Record a speech by New York Times Editorial Board Member Jesse Wegman for the annual Birch Bayh Lecture given at University of Indiana McKinney School of Law in honor of Senator Bayh's historic efforts towards electoral reform and in recognition of the melancholy day of defeat of the popular vote in the Senate on September 29, 1969. The Birch Bayh Lecture (By Jesse Wegman) I'd like to thank everyone for having me today: the McKinney School of Law community, Dean Bravo, Assistant Dean MacDougall and, of course, the Bayh family, especially Kitty Bayh, who has been so generous with her time, her assistance and her memories over the past few years. I am honored to give the first Birch Bayh lecture since his passing in March of last year. And while I'm sad not to be with you in person, I think it's very appropriate for this talk to be taking place on September 17, Constitution Day-- the day in 1787 that the framers in Philadelphia signed the charter they had spent the past four months drawing up, arguing about, threatening to walk out over--and yet still, in the end, agreeing to sign and take the next step in this audacious new experiment in self-government. It's appropriate because in any conversation about the nation's founders, we must include the name Birch Bayh. He shares with James Madison, the father of the Constitution, the distinction of being the only Americans to have authored more than one successful amendment to that document. This is not an easy task. More than 11,000 amendments have been proposed over the centuries, and only 27 have been adopted. I will note that when Birch Bayh pushed through his first amendment, the 25th, he was just 36 years old--the same age Madison was that summer in Philadelphia. So, now that we've put Senator Bayh in his proper place in American history, I'd like to begin by reading you a short section of my book. (To be fair, this is not included in the book, although as I'll explain, I really wish it had been.) The Aero Commander 680, a twin-engine prop, descended through heavy fog as it approached Barnes Airport, in western Massachusetts. It was late Friday evening, June 19, 1964. On board were two junior United States senators, Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Birch Bayh of Indiana, along with Bayh's first wife, Marvella, and an aide to Kennedy named Ed Moss. The four were en route from Washington, D.C., to the Massachusetts Democratic Convention in Springfield, where Bayh was to give the keynote speech. They had planned to leave the capital earlier in the afternoon, but were held up by the Senate's long-delayed vote on the landmark Civil Rights Act, which finally passed at around 7:40 p.m. (Both Kennedy and Bayh voted yes.) By the time the Aero Commander took off, the day's calm weather had turned. Thunderstorms dotted the route, and the pilot, Ed Zimny, had to weave his way around the rain and winds. As the plane descended, it was knocked around like a pinata. ``It seemed so dark and foggy,'' Marvella told a reporter a few days later. ``I whispered to my husband, `Aren't we in trouble?' '' He replied, ``Oh, no, we're doing fine.'' As soon as they broke beneath the cloudline at 600 feet, it was clear something was very wrong. Bayh looked out the window and saw a black line approaching. ``I thought it was another storm, but it was the tops of trees,'' he said. They had flown directly into an apple orchard. The plane skidded along ``like a toboggan,'' as Kennedy put it, until the left wing snagged on a larger tree, cartwheeling the aircraft to the left and shearing off parts of both wings. The plane came to a stop on a hill three miles short of the runway, its illuminated beacon slowly spinning, its nose crumpled like a soda can. ``I remember mosquitoes coming in and absolute silence,'' Kennedy recalled. The silence was broken by the sound of Marvella's voice calling out for her husband, who had managed to free himself from his seat belt and escape through a broken window. Bayh's stomach was badly bruised and his right arm was numb, but with his left arm he dragged Marvella out through the window and laid her on the grass. He then returned to the plane and called out, ``Are you all right up there?'' Kennedy could hear, but he couldn't move or answer. Bayh headed off to find help, then became aware of the smell of gasoline. ``The plane might catch on fire,'' he said, running back. Hearing this, Kennedy found his voice. ``I'm still alive!'' he cried. Bayh reached in and maneuvered him out through the window, probably saving the 32-year-old's life. ``It's not the kind of crash you're supposed to walk away from,'' Bayh told reporters afterward. Years later, he still couldn't believe what he'd done. ``We've all heard adrenaline stories about how a mother can lift a car off a trapped infant,'' he said. ``Well, Kennedy was no small guy, and I was able to lug him out of there like a sack of corn under my arm.'' After extracting his wife and his fellow lawmaker, Bayh limped down to the road and tried to flag down a passing car. Nine drove by before a pickup truck stopped. Ambulances soon followed, and took the passengers to a nearby hospital. Zimny, the pilot, was dead on arrival. Kennedy's aide, Ed Moss, died a few hours later. Kennedy's back was broken in six places, his lung was collapsed and he had significant internal bleeding. He would remain in the hospital for six months, much of it in traction. Birch and Marvella Bayh were shaken and bruised, but basically unhurt. Okay, so I thought that was a fun way to start a chapter: a plane crash! Two US senators! Dragging people to safety! My editor read it and said, no. As anyone who's a writer knows, ``No'' is often the most painful and yet most necessary word you can hear. So naturally, I pushed back, pleading to keep this story in. My editor said, Jesse, all the parts of your book need to contribute to the central argument. This does not do that. It's not relevant. You know how it would be relevant? If Birch Bayh crawled out of the smoking wreckage and said, by God, I have to abolish the Electoral College! It was hard to accept, but he was right. All stories need to be streamlined, to be directed so the listeners can follow along. In that regard, editors are essential. They help you find that central thread and follow it, always focusing on what's important. The problem for Birch Bayh was that everything was important. For him, all the parts *did* contribute to the central argument. Imagine an editor confronting this: The youngest Speaker in Indiana history; the author of two constitutional amendments; the Senate sponsor of the Equal Rights Amendment; the author of Title IX; the Bayh-Dole Act; and on and on and on. And on top of that, he literally walked away from a plane crash? I mean, come on. He pulled his wife out of the burning wreckage. He pulled out Ted Kennedy. He saved lives. An editor would say, stop! Hold up! No one will be able to follow all this. Cut. Birch Bayh didn't cut. He just kept adding. His life filled with a spirit of democracy and inclusion, a commitment to a better, fairer, more just, more humane, more equal America. So while I'm a firm believer in strong editing, I'm grateful Birch Bayh didn't have an editor. And I keep coming back to that night in June 1964. The accident made the front page of the next morning's New York Times, right next to the lead report on the Senate's passage of the civil-rights bill. The headline read: ``Senator Kennedy Hurt In Air Crash; Bayh Injured, Too.'' Of course Kennedy got top billing. He was the brother of a fallen president and a rising member of the nation's most prominent political dynasty. Bayh, despite his late-night heroics, was unknown to most Americans. At 36, he was not yet two years into his first term as senator. Had he died that night, like most people do when their airplane crashes, he would have been remembered as a genial, progressive Indiana politician who got along well with his colleagues. But he didn't die. And the fluke of his survival turned out to be one of those moments on which history pivots. Over the decade following the crash, Bayh would find himself at the center of the nation's biggest constitutional debates, and in the process he became one of the most influential lawmakers in American history. As I said, Birch Bayh holds a rare distinction: he is the only American other than James Madison to have spearheaded multiple successful amendments to the Constitution. He has two under his belt so far: the 25th, adopted in 1967 to lay down clear rules for replacing a president or vice president who dies, resigns or becomes unable to govern; and the 26th, adopted in 1971 to lower the voting age to 18 from 21. He may yet to claim credit for a third--the Equal Protection Amendment, which would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, and for which Bayh was the lead Senate sponsor. With his help, the ERA passed Congress in 1972. Last year it got its 38th state ratification--enough (in theory, at least) for it to become the 28th Amendment. Bayh's almost unequalled record of constitutional reform speaks for itself, but the amendment that would have had the most profound effect on the structure of American government and society was the one he failed to pass--the one that got away, as his staffers called it. Between 1966 and 1970, the young Indiana senator led a vigorous, high-profile campaign to abolish the Electoral College and elect the president by direct popular vote--a goal he came closer to achieving than anyone since the 1787 convention in Philadelphia. Back then, it was a Pennsylvania delegate named James Wilson, the most respected lawyer in the country, who pushed throughout the summer for a direct vote. Like Wilson, Senator Bayh fought hard and came up short. Like Wilson, he was blocked by southern politicians intent on protecting their outsized power, which they had seized and maintained through two centuries of systematic racial violence and subjugation. Unlike Wilson, however, Senator Bayh didn't start out as a believer in the popular vote. He favored modest tweaks to the Electoral College, not a complete overhaul. Then he learned more about the College's historical unfairness and the harms it continued to inflict on American politics. Within months, he became a convert to the cause of a direct presidential election. And but for a handful of Senate votes one late September afternoon in 1970, he may well have converted the nation. Did you know about any of this? I didn't. Nor did most of the people I've asked over the last few years, many of whom were politically active adults in the late 1960s. What explains this mass amnesia? An effort like Bayh's on an issue like the Electoral College should be burned into America's history books. But like Wilson's valiant but unsuccessful push for a popular vote in Philadelphia, Bayh's has almost completely disappeared down the public memory hole. I'd like to pull it back up and see what it can teach us. I've spoken about Birch Bayh's astonishing record of accomplishment. But as someone who grew up following Boston sports in the 1970s and 1980s, I have always been less attuned to the successes than to the failures, to the near misses. So in this talk I want to focus on the one that got away: The Electoral College amendment. Obviously this matters to me because I wrote a book about it. But, if I may, I also feel a sort of kinship with Senator Bayh. He did not begin as a radical constitutional reformer. After several years, however, he found himself where virtually everyone who spends that much time studying the electoral College does: as an unabashed advocate for a popular vote. In following his journey of discovery into the way we choose our president, I found myself on a similar track: one of skepticism that transformed into full-on belief. I will start in the early 1960s, with Birch Bayh as a first-year senator from Indiana looking to make a name for himself in the world's greatest deliberative body. I'm going to tell a shorter version of the story that's in Chapter 5 of my book: Despite its important-sounding name, the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments was a sleepy affair in 1963. In theory it had a significant role to play--drafting amendments to the Constitution and introducing them into Congress to be voted on--but in practice the subcommittee had done little of note since the days of Prohibition. When its longtime chair, Estes Kefauver, died of a heart attack that August, no one immediately stepped up to take his place. The job wasn't that appealing. ``It was a graveyard,'' Bayh recalled years later. ``How often do you amend the Constitution, for heaven's sakes?'' (For the record: 27 times, the first 10 of which, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, were adopted almost before the original Constitution's ink was dry. Since then, we've ratified a new amendment on average once every 13 years.) Bayh also knew that sitting on a committee was the best way for a young senator to gain power and influence. By the middle of 1963, only a few months after getting elected to the Senate for the first time, Bayh had maneuvered his way onto the Judiciary Committee. It was a prestigious post that involved interviewing Supreme Court nominees, among many other high-profile responsibilities. The problem for Bayh was that he didn't want to be just a member of a gang; he wanted to lead one, and all the Judiciary's subcommittee chairmanships were spoken for. Then Estes Kefauver died. Bayh didn't volunteer to take over Kefauver's seat at first, because it wasn't being offered. James Eastland, the Judiciary Committee chairman, had begun the process of shuttering the subcommittee entirely. By chance, Kefauver's former chief of staff knew of Bayh's ambitions and suggested that he go to Eastland in person and make the case for saving it. In a 2009 interview, Bayh remembered his first meeting with Eastland, a staunch segregationist from Mississippi: So I got an appointment and saw Senator Eastland. He got a little scotch and ice. I didn't really drink at the time, but I may have taken a sip or two of it. And I made my pitch: ``Mr. Chairman, when I went to law school, constitutional law was my most exciting subject. Boy, it would be my dream come true if I could be Chairman of that Subcommittee.'' He said, ``Well, Birch, I hope you understand here, but Allen Ellender [a conservative senator from Louisiana] has been giving us a rough time. I sort of told him I'd close this down. I hope you understand, boy.'' I said, ``Mr. Chairman, I'd even put one of my own staff people there. It wouldn't cost you a nickel.'' ``I just made up my mind, Birch. I hope you understand.'' ``Thank you, Mr. Chairman,'' and I left. The next morning, 9:00, my secretary said, ``You've got Chairman Eastland on the phone.'' ``Birch?'' ``Yes, Mr. Chairman.'' ``I want you to be Chairman of that Subcommittee. I think you'd be a good one.'' Click. Whenever else could a plantation owner, one step away from being a slave master, an avowed segregationist, ever do anything to get a little chit with a liberal young turk like me? If Bayh had any pretensions about the new job, they were snuffed out fast. Eastland, who had apparently taken Bayh's won't-cost-a-nickel promise literally, parked the subcommittee and its small staff in a converted men's room on the third floor of the Capitol building. Jay Berman, an aide and later the senator's chief of staff, described it to me. ``It had no windows and it was very small. No claustrophobic could've worked there.'' On the plus side, the toilets had been removed. In politics as in life, everything can change in an instant. Bayh was officially named chair on September 30. Fifty-three days later, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And just like that, a graveyard job run out of a bathroom was about to become one of the most important in the country. Bayh was faced with a suddenly urgent challenge: what to do if a president becomes incapacitated while in office? Previous presidents had informal arrangements in place to deal with such a scenario, but the Constitution itself provided no next steps. It said only that if a president can't serve, the vice president takes over, and any further details can be hammered out by Congress. The nation was still absorbing the shock of Kennedy's death when Bayh got to work. On December 12, he introduced a resolution to amend the Constitution by adding clear rules for presidential and vice presidential succession in cases of emergency. Under Bayh's guidance, the bill passed both houses of Congress and went out to the states for ratification. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment went into effect a little more than three years after Bayh first introduced it. It was a remarkable accomplishment for a junior senator who, in the words of a 1970 New York Times profile, ``had flunked his bar exam the first time and had practiced law only a couple of months before coming to Washington.'' Bayh's success on the Twenty-Fifth Amendment transformed him into a respected lawmaker whose opinions mattered, particularly when it came to the Constitution. That's why President Lyndon Johnson turned to him for his next big project: amending the Electoral College. There have been, since the nation's founding, roughly 800 attempts to amend or abolish the Electoral College. With the exception of one--the 12th Amendment--all have failed. So what was Lyndon Johnson trying to do? He was trying to save the Democratic party from insurgent southerners who were peeling off as the party turned against segregation and toward civil rights. Longtime Democrats like Strom Thurmond in South Carolina were not fans of racial equality, and they were running third-party campaigns to try to undercut the national party. Across the south, they urged electors to be ``faithless''-- that is, to break their pledges to vote for the Democratic nominee in favor of third-party segregationist candidates like Harry Byrd. This alarmed the leadership of both major parties, and especially President Johnson, whose support depended on southern Democrats. So he asked Birch Bayh to take the lead on drafting an amendment that would eliminate the risk of faithless electors. Senator Bayh took up the challenge. In February 1966, he held the subcommittee's first hearing on amending the Electoral College. Right out of the gate, he shot down any prospect of abolition. ``Putting it optimistically,'' he said in his opening remarks, the chances of Congress passing a popular- vote amendment were ``extremely slim, if not hopeless.'' And yet, a few months later, after questioning multiple witnesses, reading thousands of pages of archival and statistical documents, Senator Bayh realized he had been wrong. He was aiming too low, getting trapped in the details of endless debates about ratios and percentages. He was missing the bigger picture. Bayh had come to see, as he would later quote from the historian John Roche, that the College was ``merely a jerry- rigged improvisation which has subsequently been endowed with a high theoretical content.'' On top of that, the nation in the early 1960s was in the midst of a democratic awakening. From the civil rights movement to the one-person-one-vote cases at the Supreme Court, from the abolition of the poll tax to the Voting Rights Act, America's long history of racial discrimination and exclusion from the ballot box was being challenged like never before. Birch Bayh wasn't just sensitive to all of this, he was energized by it. And when he looked at that bigger picture, the problems with the Electoral College seemed much more serious. Jay Berman, Bayh's staffer, recalled to me the feeling that emerged after months of hearings. ``All of a sudden, you're in the weeds and people are saying, `You're amending the Constitution for this?' Look, we have fundamental issues here. We've expended so much time and effort to expand the franchise. You've been involved in all these civil rights bills. What are the consequences for the present system if the person with the most votes doesn't win? What was all this about if it doesn't mean that every vote should count?'' On May 18, after months of hearings and expert witnesses and statistical reports, Birch Bayh stood up on the floor of the Senate and gave what I consider one of the strongest and most eloquent arguments for the popular vote in the nation's history. I will quote from it at length, because his words are full of hope and inspiration, and they deserve being repeated. Mr. President, from the inception of our nation, controversy and complexity has surrounded the question of how to choose the President of the United States. Indeed, one of the framers of the Constitution, James Wilson, described this problem as ``the most difficult of all'' to resolve at the Convention. . . . Bayh acknowledged the hundreds of failed efforts to fix the system, then he said, Today, Mr. President, the situation is different. Today, for the first time in our history, we have achieved the goal of universal suffrage regardless of race, religion or station in life . . . . Today, the next logical outgrowth of the persistent and inevitable movement toward the democratic ideal is the popular election of our national officers--an election in which each person has the right to vote for President without an artificial barrier separating him from the choice of his Chief Executive. . . . Bayh then noted that the subcommittee had considered many different amendment proposals, before rejecting them all. It may well be that mere procedural changes in the present system would be like shifting around the parts of a creaky and dangerous automobile engine, making it no less creaky and no less dangerous. What we may need is a new engine, Mr. President, because we are in a new age. . . . Some may say this proposal is too new, too radical a break with tradition. In all honesty, Mr. President, I was among that number only a few short months ago. Then, we began hearings on the problem. I consulted with scholars in the field. I did a great deal of study and reflection. I came to the conclusion that this idea was not truly a break with tradition at all. It was, in fact, a logical, realistic and proper continuation of this nation's tradition and history--a tradition of continuous expansion of the franchise and equality in voting. He ran through the list: ending property qualifications and giving the vote to poorer white people; the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of blacks . . . of women, of Jews and Catholics . . . Today, we have witnessed the climax of the long struggle to guarantee Negroes the right to exercise the franchise--the 14th, 15th and 24th Amendments; the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960 and 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In fact, we have only one election remaining, Mr. President, wherein some votes are not equal to others and wherein millions of votes do not count in the final result-- and that is in the election of the most powerful political officer in the world, the President of the United States. It is not radical to suggest that we abolish the Electoral College and elect our President by direct popular vote--no more so than if we suggested the advantages of grounding an open-cockpit biplane in favor of a supersonic jet. Direct election of the President would make that office truly national. We elect our local official locally; our Congressmen by districts to protect district interests; our Governors and Senators statewide. Why should we not elect the President and Vice President nationally? The President has no authority over state government. He cannot veto a bill enacted by a state legislature. Why then should he be elected by state-chosen electors? He should be elected directly by the people, for it is the people of the United States to whom he is responsible. Direct election would greatly encourage voter participation. Today, if a state votes traditionally in the column of one party, voters of the other party correctly assume that their vote will count for naught. Under direct election, these votes will be as important as votes cast anywhere else. In sum, direct popular election brings with it many virtues and no vices; it would substitute clarity for confusion, decisiveness for danger, popular choice for political chance. Bayh finished with what we would today call the ``mic drop'': James Madison, the father of our Constitution, knew that the President had to be independent of the Congress. He knew, also, that in deciding upon a means of choosing a President some compromise would be reached. But he had his own ideas as to how the President would best be elected. Madison said that ``the people at large . . . was the fittest in itself.'' We are at long last arriving at the place and time in our history where meaning has been brought to the preamble of our Constitution--``We, the People of the United States . . .'' Today we are, indeed, ``We, the People . . .'' If there was doubt about it in the early years of the Republic, there can be no doubt today. Let us echo Madison. Let us put our trust in the people. This was the key. More than any political or partisan advantage, Senator Bayh wanted what was best for the American people. And he people, as it turned out, felt the same way. On the same day as Bayh's speech, Gallup's first-ever national poll on a direct vote for president found that sixty-three percent of Americans said they favored dumping the Electoral College for a popular vote. Twenty percent opposed it, and 17 percent had no opinion. Soon the movement had support from across the political spectrum--from the Chamber of Commerce to the League of Women Voters, from organized labor to the American Bar Association. In a report that would later be quoted in the New York Times, the ABA called the Electoral College ``archaic, undemocratic, complex, ambiguous, indirect, and dangerous.'' The range and depth of support for a popular vote gave Bayh the confidence that he was on the right track. Still, he moved cautiously. As the 1968 presidential race heated up, he pulled back on the popular vote campaign. Merits aside, any debate over how America might choose its president in the future would surely get tangled up in the politics of how America was choosing its president in 1968. What Bayh couldn't know was how much that year's election-- and the collective heart attack it gave the nation--would help his cause. The 1968 election was primarily between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. But it was a third-party candidate--George Wallace, the former Alabama governor and arch- segregationist--who nearly managed to deadlock the vote and force Congress to pick the winner. Wallace won the most votes throughout the deep South, and earned 46 electoral votes, the last time any third-party candidate has won any at all. His aim was not to win the election outright, but to prevent either Nixon or Humphrey from winning a majority of Electoral College votes. In that scenario, the Constitution orders the House of Representatives to choose the president, with each state getting a single vote. Wallace thought that if both candidates needed him to help push them over the top, he could make whatever demands he wanted. Wallace failed in the end. Nixon won a majority of electors. But he succeeded in highlighting just how bizarre and dangerous the Electoral College could be. It was the first time millions of Americans had given the system a thought. The prospect of an unreconstructed racist extorting the presidency horrified them. The best-selling author James Michener wrote a whole book advocating a switch to the popular vote. He called the Electoral College a ``time bomb lodged near the heart of the nation.'' Meanwhile, Birch Bayh was riding the wave of the 1968 election, gathering support across the country for a major constitutional reform. By the end of that year, polls showed more than 80 percent of Americans in favor of a national popular vote for president. In September 1969, the House voted overwhelmingly to abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a direct popular vote. It was a bipartisan effort. Even President Nixon got on board, and polls of state legislatures suggested strong support throughout the country. All signs pointed to another successful amendment for Mr. Bayh and a radical change in the way Americans chose their presidents. All signs but one. As soon as the amendment reached the Senate, it was blocked by Southern segregationists, led by Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who were well aware that the Electoral College had been created to appease the slaveholding states. They were also aware that it continued to warp the nation's politics in their favor, since millions of black voters throughout the South were effectively disenfranchised by restrictive registration and voting laws. Even those who were able to vote rarely saw their preferences reflected by a single elector. A popular vote would make their voices equal and their votes matter--and would encourage them to turn out at higher rates. The Southerners delayed and filibustered the amendment for months. On Sept. 29, 1970--50 years ago this month--the last attempt to end the filibuster failed by five votes. It was another echo of the way the Electoral College had been preserved for the benefit of white political power, particularly in the south. Now here's the really interesting part. The segregationists had help from a key constituency: blacks and ethnic minorities in northern cities like New York City and Chicago. Why? Because at the time, New York was the nation's biggest and most important swing state. And racial and ethnic minorities in the big cities decided how it swung. These voters understood that the Electoral College, using statewide winner-take-all laws, gave them disproportionate power in choosing the president. They didn't want to give up that power any more than the southerners did. Strom Thurmond took advantage of this fact. He sent personal telegrams to prominent black and Jewish leaders, warning them of the consequences of supporting a direct popular vote. This made Birch Bayh furious. Here's what he said in a 2009 interview: He told these groups, ``What you're going to do is, you're going to give up your advantage to have influence to sway these large electoral votes if you have a direct popular vote. It will just be confined to one person, one vote. You won't be able to sway that whole group of electors,'' which is true, of course. A couple of these guys . . . came to my office and said, ``You're going to have to back away from this.'' I said, ``What do you mean?'' They said, ``Well, it would give us less power.'' I finally said--the only time while I was there, in my eighteen years--I said, ``Look, I busted my tail to see that each of you and your constituencies got one person, one vote. Now you're telling me that if you have 1.01, you want to keep it? Get your rear ends out of my office and don't come back.'' Senator Bayh reintroduced his Electoral College amendment in every session of Congress through the 1970s, until he lost re-election in 1980. With Bayh's departure, the Senate lost its best advocate for a national popular vote. ``No one was a better legislator than he was and he couldn't get it done,'' Jay Berman told me. ``It's just such an empty feeling because it was so right to do. And we couldn't do it.'' For the final portion of this talk, I'd like jump forward a half century, to today. The 21st century is barely two decades old, and yet it has already been defined by the Electoral College's anti-majoritarian distortions. It happened first on Nov. 7, 2000, when Vice President Al Gore was the choice of the American people, with more than half a million more votes around the country than George W. Bush. But Bush won the White House thanks to a few hundred ballots in Florida, and a recount stopped short by the Supreme Court. It happened again in 2016. Two times in less than two decades. And there's a very plausible chance it could happen again in November. If Senator Bayh were here, I know he would say this is a crisis for our democracy. It is a crisis for our republic. In fact I don't have to speculate. He stayed deeply involved in the politics of electoral reform after leaving the Senate. In 2005, a team of lawyers and activists devised a plan to elect the president by a national popular vote, not by abolishing the Electoral College but by using it exactly as it was designed in the Constitution. They came to Washington to test the political waters, to see whether they could get support for this plan. The first person they spoke to was Birch Bayh. I was lucky enough to meet the senator--two years ago this week, at his home on the eastern shore of Maryland. It was the last interview he gave before his death. We were joined by his wonderful wife, Kitty, and Kevin Feely, one of his longtime Senate staffers. When I asked him about his early life, he recalled a childhood spent working on his grandparents' farm in Terre Haute. ``Nobody in my family background had ever been involved in politics,'' he said. ``When my father found out what I was doing, I think he wondered what he'd done wrong as a parent.'' On the topic of the popular-vote amendment, the pain of the loss was still there. If anything, it was keener, now that the Electoral College has awarded the White House to two popular-vote losers in the past two decades. ``I don't know,'' he told me when I asked how he thought of the issue today. ``I like to think as a country, as we grow older, we learn. It just makes such good sense.'' I asked about the familiar charge that eliminating the Electoral College would lead to ``mob rule.'' He was nonplussed. As he saw it, the ``mob'' was the American people. He said, ``That, to me, is the positive end of it. Why shouldn't they be able to determine their own destiny?'' This was emblematic of Bayh's broader commitment to fairness, equality and inclusion. Birch Bayh's America is a big, open, welcoming place. It has room for everyone, and it treats all of us as equals. I think it's fair to say that Birch Bayh was one of this nation's founding fathers. He changed the country for the better, and he would have done even more if he could. The fact that he didn't succeed in changing how we choose our President . . . well, Madison didn't get everything he wanted either. But the seeds have been planted. Speaking of seeds, I found a short article about Senator Bayh in a Reader's Digest from November 1948. It was titled ``GI Ambassador.'' Of course, we know that the senator was raised in a farming family, and had a knack for the work. When he was a teenager, he won $200 for the best teenaged tomato patch in the state. So, when he joined the army and learned he was being shipped overseas to help with the recovery effort, what's the first thing he did? He ordered seeds. ``Please send at once $4 worth of vegetable garden seeds,'' he wrote to the county agent in Terre Haute. ``Be sure to put in some sweet corn.'' He got 18 packets in the mail. But when he showed up for inspection, he nearly lost them all. ``Regulations state that you can take only military equipment and personal belongings,'' his sergeant said. ``But vegetable seeds--get rid of 'em!'' So he broke open each packet and emptied its contents into a different pocket on his uniform. When he arrived in the small German village where he was stationed, he slowly redistributed the seeds into their 18 packets. ``It was quite a job,'' he said. ``But I did want a garden.'' He helped build 45 garden plots and got 2 village children to tend each plot. By the end of the growing season, they'd produced mountains of cabbage, beans, spinach, turnips, tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, lettuce, kale, chard . . . and sweet corn. The village was fed all winter. In an interview years later, he said, ``The thing I love about agriculture is that it's pretty hard to get away from the facts. There it is. Mother Nature takes care of it. If you do something wrong, you pay.'' Birch Bayh was a farmer of democracy. He planted the seeds of a more equal and more just America. He helped us cultivate a national debate by connecting our modern lives to the fundamental principle of universal human equality embedded in the Declaration of Independence. This was not a dry intellectual exercise for him. Bayh's conviction was profound, and his inability to achieve a national popular vote pained him deeply for the rest of his life. It was, he would say, the single greatest disappointment of his career. As an example, in the fall of 2000, John Feerick, the former dean of Fordham Law School and an instrumental figure in the passage of the 25th Amendment, was teaching a seminar at Georgetown Law School, and invited Senator Bayh as a guest speaker. Bayh visited the class in October. In a few weeks, the nation would be upended with the drama and chaos of a contested election--the recount in Florida, the butterfly ballot, the hanging chads, the Brooks Brothers riot. . . and finally, a tense resolution by the Supreme Court, giving George W. Bush a bare Electoral College majority, and sending the first popular-vote loser to the White House in more than a century. All of that was in the future when Feerick, sitting next to Bayh in his law-school seminar, posed what seemed at the time like an innocent hypothetical. ``I put the question to him,'' Feerick said, `` `What do you think the reaction of the American people will be if there's a difference between the electoral vote and the popular vote winner?' '' ``And his response to me was that the people would accept the legal system we have, and the outcome of that system. The one we have. And then he started to cry.'' I want to return a final time to the words Birch Bayh spoke on the Senate floor in 1966. A national popular vote is ``a logical, realistic and proper continuation of this nation's tradition and history--a tradition of continuous expansion of the franchise and equality in voting.'' That is the essence. In my book I write, ``Maybe this is the real American exceptionalism: our nation was conceived out of the audacious, world-changing idea of universal human equality. And though it was born in a snarl of prejudice, mistrust, and exclusion, it harbored in its DNA the code to express more faithfully the true meaning of its founding principles. Over multiple generations, and thanks to the tireless work and bloody sacrifices of millions of Americans--some powerful but most just regular people who wanted to be treated the same as everyone else--that code has been unlocked, and those principles, slowly but surely, have found expression.'' I believe a central reason Birch Bayh's effort in the late 1960s came so close was that this was his argument. It was irrefutable, and it resonated with millions of Americans. Now here we are, 50 years later, facing the same questions he faced, fighting the same battles he fought, and relying all along on his wisdom, his vision and his humanity to help us find our way to an answer--and to a more perfect Union.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of my constituent from Silver Spring, Giana Hutton, who passed away unexpectedly on September 15, 2020. Originally from the south suburbs of Chicago, Giana graduated from Williams College with a Bachelor of Arts in History. She will be sharply missed. Giana was deeply committed to empowering young people and fighting for the rights of students. While in her junior and senior years at Williams, Giana interned with Senator Ronald Burris as an Education & Judiciary Intern. Following graduation, she was selected as a Junior Associate Fellow in the Urban Education Leadership Program, where she worked with the District of Columbia Public Schools in the Office of Special Education to find potential community stakeholders to support independent work habits for students with emotional and learning disabilities. Giana later returned to school to receive her Master of Science in Public Policy and Management. During her second year, Giana interned with Reading is FUNdamental Pittsburg, serving as its Outreach and Development Intern. During her time with RIF Pittsburg, Giana was able to further work on her goal of reducing the achievement gap across socio-economic classes by raising money for literacy programs which provided students with greater access to books, activity-based projects to focus on the joys of reading and materials aimed at developing reading and comprehension skills. In 2013, Giana was selected as a recipient of the Public Service Career Opportunities Program Award. Through this prestigious award, Giana got a job as a Program Analyst working on federal grants to support low-income students in the local charter and D.C. Public Schools. Through her job, Giana supported schools in providing students with supplemental learning opportunities. Giana was a beloved sister of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc, an organization she joined because of its commitment to education. Through her involvement in Alpha Kappa Alpha, Giana was proud to be a part of a community in which she felt empowered and could inspire others. Giana will be remembered for her commitment to empowering others and her dedication to providing educational opportunities for young people. I ask my colleagues to join me today in honoring the remarkable life of my constituent, Giana Hutton.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the extraordinary life of Patrick Beauregard, who passed away on September 6, 2020 at the age of 29 after battling stage IV young-onset colorectal cancer. Patrick will be remembered as a compassionate, loyal and thoughtful man, and I had the good fortune of spending time with him during his grueling battle against the disease. Patrick was raised in Massachusetts and went to college in Rhode Island. Following his college graduation, he fulfilled his lifelong dream of serving in the military. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in April 2013 and served as an Intelligence Analyst until he was honorably discharged in July 2019. Throughout his service, Patrick received commendations for his exceptional leadership, initiative, loyalty and dedication to duty. During his grueling 40 rounds of treatment--something his Marine training helped him endure--I had the honor of meeting with Patrick to discuss how Congress can contribute to the fight against colorectal cancer. He was passionate about advocating for greater research funds and generating national awareness about young-onset colorectal cancer. Although Patrick eventually lost his years long struggle with the disease, his advocacy work will continue to benefit and give hope to countless colorectal cancer patients and their families for years to come. Throughout his 3-year battle, Patrick remained remarkably positive. Prior to his passing, Patrick was able to accomplish his final goal of meeting his son, Noah Patrick, born on July 10, 2020. Patrick is survived by his wife, Amanda, and by Noah. I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring the precious and irreplaceable life of Patrick Beauregard. He will be missed dearly.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on House Administration be discharged from further consideration of the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 88) providing for the appointment of Franklin D. Raines as a citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on the Budget be discharged from further consideration of the bill (H.R. 8089) to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to expand premium processing for certain immigration benefits, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I thank Ms. Clark for organizing this beautiful observance and testimony to our beloved colleague. I want to praise John Lewis, not the Congressman, but John Lewis the member of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a relative handful of students who began a process that transformed America forever and brought down the walls of American apartheid and Jim Crow through the extraordinary force of their physical courage, their moral courage, and their political courage to confront an entire system of racism bearing down upon them. The end of their struggle was nonviolence, to create a nonviolent society committed to justice and equality for everyone, and the means of arriving at that nonviolent society was nonviolence itself. So even as the sheriffs and police officers unleashed the German shepherds and the billy clubs on them, the water hoses and the teargas, they still remained remarkably nonviolent the entire way there. I asked John Lewis when we got to travel down South on the civil rights tour with the Faith and Politics Institute about where he thought things were. I think he felt that, in terms of civil rights, we have been moving things forward, but in terms of violence, we still had not remotely turned the corner. I said, what is going to make the difference? He said: When people realize that violence doesn't work. Leaving aside the morality of it, violence doesn't work. We talked about the Vietnam war. We talked about the Iraq war. We talked about gun violence sweeping the streets. And we talked about domestic violence. I want to say that the spirit and the memory of John Lewis live in this body and this institution, which loves him. But I see the spirit of John Lewis today in the streets with the hundreds of thousands and millions of young Americans who are demanding nonviolent, just, and peaceful transformation of our society. John Lewis lives in the young people today, and he would be so proud of the young people of America.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Butterfield for his really exemplary leadership here. Mr. Speaker, it is a proud day for Maryland as we move to replace the bust of Roger Brooke Taney with the bust of Thurgood Marshall. One Marylander wrote the infamous Dred Scott decision, hundreds of pages of argumentation about how the Constitution is and must forever be a White man's compact and that African Americans have no rights that White people have to respect. The other, Thurgood Marshall, whose bust will replace that of Justice Taney, argued Brown v. Board of Education, argued Shelley v. Kraemer, argued Smith v. Albright, became the first African-American Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. He made equal protection come alive in our country. So it is a proud day for Maryland. I was delighted to hear the gentleman from Illinois' remarks, but I was amazed to hear another colleague in the minority defending the bust of John C. Breckinridge on the grounds that we don't honor him for his service as secretary of war in the Confederacy but we, rather, honor him for what he did before that in his prior service as United States Senator and Vice President of the United States. Well, that is just precious. Think about that for a second. Breckinridge was serving as a U.S. Senator from Kentucky when he defected to the Confederacy, signed up to become their secretary of war, and betrayed the Union. And they still have his bust outside of the United States Senate saying ``Vice President'' on it, despite the fact that, on December 4, 1861, he was convicted of treason by the Senate and stripped of all of his titles--including Senator, President of the Senate, and Vice President. So we may as well put up a statue of Benedict Arnold to honor him for his service to the Continental Army before he defected over to the British side and led British groups against America. So let's go all the way here. If there are statues of traitors and racist White supremacist supporters of the Confederacy up in the Capitol, then we need to get rid of them. This is our opportunity to remake the social contract as represented by the symbolism in this great House.