Jamie Raskin

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, let us not forget who we are. Our Framers rebelled against centuries of religious oppression, Inquisition, Holy Crusades, witchcraft trials, and state religion. They conceived America as a haven of refuge for people fleeing from religious and political persecution from all over the world. It would become an ``asylum for humanity,'' said Tom Paine--not an insane asylum, mind you, but an asylum for freedom. The President's Muslim ban desecrates this vision with the kind of religious discrimination that our Nation was created to oppose. The NO BAN Act now strikes down the President's infamous Muslim ban proclamation and restores the principle of no religious discrimination to the immigration process. It will be a proud day for this Congress when we invalidate the President's infamous and ugly attempt to scapegoat people based on their religion.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the remarkable accomplishment of my constituents, the Astro Jelly Dogs, who were selected as a Global Innovation Semi-Finalist Team for the FIRST LEGO League Global Innovation Award. I congratulate Ryan Vollmer, Mary Jane Gibson, Tyler Carney, Samuel Perretta, Jack Stauder, Molly Richards, Benjamin Richards and their coach, Kelly Vollmer, on their passionate commitment to environmentally sustainable solutions and their impressive results. Through their innovation, the Grow Home, the Astro Jelly Dogs will renovate an abandoned row house to provide Baltimore City residents more access to fruits and vegetables. The FIRST LEGO League Global Innovation Award recognizes and celebrates the next generation of innovators. Teams identify a problem in their local community and then work to design a unique and environmentally sustainable solution. Teams are tasked with considering barriers to implementation, evaluating their invention and validating their invention with STEM professionals. 20 semi-finalist teams are chosen from 40,000 FIRST LEGO League teams from over 100 countries to receive further assistance and ultimately win a cash prize. Madam Speaker, I am honored to recognize the extraordinaiy achievement of these bright children and I hope my colleagues and constituents will join me in congratulating the Astro Jelly Dogs on a job well done

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize my constituent Sherry Abelove, who is retiring this week after 31 years of dedicated public service. Sherry is a licensed social worker, who has devoted her career to serving the people of Maryland and Montgomery County. After receiving her master's degree in social work from Washington University in St. Louis, Sherry went on to receive her certification as a Licensed Certified Social Worker--Clinical in the state of Maryland. In 1989, Sherry began work for the Developmental Disabilities Administration within Maryland's Department of Health. For 17 years, she served Maryland's developmentally disabled residents and their families. In 2006, Sherry went to work for Aging and Disability within Montgomery County's Department of Health of Human Services, where she worked within Adult Protective Services to reduce the risk to senior citizens and those with disabilities. Sherry continued to dedicate her skills and experience to most vulnerable members of the community and state. Madam Speaker, I am honored to recognize the extraordinary career of Sherry Abelove and hope that my colleagues will join me in congratulating Sherry on a dedicated lifetime of service.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to reject this weak and unconstitutional motion to recommit. The motion proposes to condition the admission of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth on either the imposition of the whimsical policy preferences of the minority or simply banal restatements that the State will follow Federal law, which, obviously, it must do already under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. All of the States must. But the paradigm example here, and the thing that really appears to be really on their mind, and I am glad we at least have boiled it down to this issue, is they want to make sure that the new State doesn't come in without an amendment written by the people of Washington, D.C., saying that they will not charge people a fee for carrying a concealed weapon. Now, that is not in the U.S. Constitution, and it is not a matter of Federal law obligating the 50 States to do it, so you cannot selectively impose that on the new State of Washington, D.C. That is the equal footing doctrine, which the Supreme Court has emphasized repeatedly throughout our history, that every new State that we have granted admission to since the original 13, all 37 have entered on the exact same plane of political and constitutional equality as the original 13. So, they want to impose their various policy preferences on different things, like concealed carry weapons and so on. If you want to do that, then try to pass it for the entire country, and it would apply within the new State, as well. I don't think you can do it constitutionally, but that is a separate matter. Or, resign your seat from wherever you happen to be from. If you are from Georgia, resign your seat in Georgia, move to the new State, and then campaign as a Member of Congress from here or campaign for Governor or State legislator in the new State and get them to change their law because that is a matter of local policy. I would think that the great champions of federalism and State rights would want to allow every State to make a decision for itself. Mr. Speaker, a number of things have been said that need to be corrected. For one thing, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) said that we should legislate for the real Americans, and he is going to speak for the real Americans, not the people who live in Washington. I would hope he would reflect on that and issue an apology to the people of Washington, D.C. But it seemed that the logic of the argument was that the only people who live here are Federal employees, and they are different from the rest of America. Now, think about that for a second. In the first place, the overwhelming majority of Federal employees do not live in Washington, D.C. As far as I could tell, less than 8 percent of Federal employees live in Washington, D.C., which means 92 percent of them live in our States in the rest of America. Should those people be disenfranchised? Should people who work for the post office lose their right to representation in Congress? Should members of the Armed Forces be disenfranchised? The Supreme Court already said no in Carrington v. Rash. Check it out. So, the overwhelming majority of Federal employees don't live in D.C., and the overwhelming majority of people who live in Washington, D.C., and are the constituents of Representative Norton are not Federal employees. They do other things. Yes, they are real Americans, too. They are bus drivers. They are schoolteachers. They are businesspeople and entrepreneurs. I mean, come on, get real, be serious, get out and meet the people in Washington. The gentleman from Georgia said Washington, D.C., was set aside in the Constitution as a Federal district, and that was echoed by the former judge from Texas. But here, our friends just advertised their unfamiliarity both with the Constitution and with American history. The Constitution does not fix the geographic site of the so-called seat of government, the district that is set aside for the seat of government. That is why after the Constitution was adopted, the capital was in New York for a while. It was in Philadelphia for a while. Before that, it was in Trenton, New Jersey. It was in Princeton. It was in Annapolis. We have a whole room in Annapolis set aside for where Congress met. So the idea that you can look up the Constitution and see the boundaries or the map of Washington, D.C., is just absurd. Now, does Congress have the authority to modify the boundaries of the Federal district as proposed by Ms. Norton? Of course it does. We voted to do that in 1846 at the behest of a couple hundred slaveholders in Virginia who were afraid that this Congress would follow the advice of Representative Lincoln from Illinois, who said abolish the slave traffic in Washington, D.C. And they were afraid it was going to happen, so Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax county were given back to Virginia, and it was perfectly constitutional. And there is no legal authority to the contrary in any way. If we can modify the boundaries of the Federal District to placate a couple hundred slave masters from the 19th century, we can modify the boundaries of the Federal District to grant statehood and political equality for the people of Washington, D.C. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, when in the course of human events a relationship stops working and one party experiences a long train of abuses and indignities at the hands of the other, you scrap the old relationship and you start anew. It is nothing personal, but I wish our GOP colleagues in the House and Senate could recognize that this just isn't working out anymore for the people of Washington. The relationship you have taken for granted for so long with the local population is dysfunctional and, frankly, abusive. Plainly put, the people of Washington want out. It is not just the pepper spray and the tear gas and the rubber bullets; it is not just crashing their churches and desecrating their religion with your photo-ops; it is not just the use of their sons and daughters in the National Guard to put down protests by their sons and daughters in the streets; it is not just the threats to Federalize their local police or the decision to overturn their adoption laws, their marijuana laws, and their health funding choices; or your control of their judges and prosecutors; or the constant Presidential insults leveled against their chosen leaders; it is not that the GOP Members who claim to be the attentive partners of the District never listen to the people here, never go to their local meetings, don't know the mayor or the city council or the ANC members; it is not even the $750 million that they just cheated the people of Washington out of in the middle of this plague. It is something deeper. It is not just something you did. The people of Washington have found someone and something else. They have voted to break up this dysfunctional relationship with Congress to start a healthy and respectful relationship with America. In America, States make their own local policy and budget decisions without constant tampering and interference by other people's representatives. In America, every political community stands on equal footing through statehood. Each one sends two Senators to the U.S. Senate and voting representatives to the House, delegations that guarantee no one will push their people around. When you are a State, you help decide things like whether your country goes to war, who will be your judges and supreme court justices, how will your Federal tax dollars get spent, and what should be the laws of the Nation. The only question now is whether Congress is mature enough, is man enough, to deal with the fact that Washington no longer wants to be under our thumb. A mature and faithful Congress that wants the best for all of its people is not afraid of statehood. We celebrate it. We delight in it. America started as 13 States, but we have exercised our powers under Article IV, Section 3, 37 separate times to admit 37 new States, all of them by simple legislative acts, none of them by constitutional amendment, and each one was controversial in its own way. I heard the gentleman say that you have to be either a territory or formally part of another State to be admitted as a State. It is not true. I have a one-word answer to that: Texas. It was its own independent country. It was a republic, and people said that was unconstitutional and Congress said: No, we are going to favor the trajectory of democratic inclusion and political equality.

Mr. RASKIN. So every State has faced objections. They said Utah was too Mormon, and New Mexico was too Catholic. Hawaii and Alaska, in 1959, of course, they weren't contiguous; they couldn't be admitted. Yes, the District exists now under Article I, Section 8, Clause 17, but the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia proposes to shrink the Federal district the way it was shrunk in 1847 because the slave masters of Virginia wanted the land back in advance of congressional abolition of the slave traffic in the District. If we can modify the boundaries of the Federal district to placate the slave masters in the 19th century, we can modify the boundaries of the Federal district in the 21st century to grant statehood and equal rights to the people of Washington, D.C.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, American apartheid lasted until the modern civil rights movement, when the blood sacrifice of John Lewis and Medgar Evers, Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman, and Dr. King gave us the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but we have been brought back to the baseline of violent white supremacy by a reactionary Supreme Court and a President who looks into the souls of white supremacists and sees ``very fine people.'' This is the real deep state in America: violent white racism. Black Lives Matter and America's young people have given us the chance to launch a new birth of freedom, a third reconstruction in America. Let's start today with the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, the whole premise of civil government is that we will be safer inside the social contract than outside of it, the state of nature which Thomas Hobbes famously described as a state of war, ``solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.'' So we give up the habits of violent self-help for trust in the rule of law and the impartial administration of justice. But where was the American social contract for George Floyd as Officer Chauvin asphyxiated him with his knee as he begged for his life; or Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT who was shot eight times in her own bed by officers carrying a no-knock warrant; or Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who had a water fight in the park, and then was shot dead by a police officer getting out of his car? The American social contract has always been contaminated by racism. In the words of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision, our Constitution began as a ``White man's compact'' in which the African American had ``no rights the White man was bound to respect.'' The Civil War gave us the chance for a new birth of freedom, but after 12 years of reconstruction, it was washed away by the KKK and Jim Crow.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, if Congress can redraw the boundaries of the Federal District to protect the property rights of a few hundred slave masters in the 19th century, surely we can redraw the boundaries of the Federal District to protect the democratic rights of hundreds of thousands of Americans of all races and ethnicities living in the Capital City in the 21st century.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. In ``Leaves of Grass,'' Walt Whitman wrote that ``the United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.'' So each of our States is like a stanza, a line in the remarkable and always unfinished American poem, a lyrical whole far greater than the sum of its parts. Four years ago, the more than 700,000 of our countrymen and women living in Washington, D.C. exercised their rights and their powers under the Ninth Amendment and the Tenth Amendment to vote to form a new State and to petition us for admission to the Union. That vote carried by a 6-1 margin. Washingtonians ask us today to pierce the sound barrier of propaganda in 2020 to hear once again, and to recall in our hearts, the poetry that is America. We began as 13 States, but Congress has exercised our powers under Article IV, Section 3, 37 different times, to admit 37 new States, all of them by simple legislative acts, none of them by constitutional amendment. Each one was controversial in its own way: They said Texas couldn't be admitted because it was a separate republic; West Virginia used to be part of Virginia; Utah was too Mormon; New Mexico was too Catholic; and, of course, everyone knew it was unconstitutional to admit Hawaii and Alaska in 1959 because they weren't contiguous. Washingtonians do not ask us to convert the Federal district into a State. They ask us, rather, to redraw the boundaries of the Federal district, to shrink it to the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, and The Mall, to effectuate an exodus of the people from direct Federal control, from the condition of being ruled in ``all cases whatsoever'' by other people's elected representatives without equal rights of self-government and representative participation. If you have ever met any Washingtonians, you will know they are sick and tired of being governed by other people's representatives. And who wouldn't be? That is how you get cheated out of $750 million in the CARES Act. That is how your State militia gets turned against you with pepper spray and tear gas and rubber bullets. That is how the choices you make locally about reproductive freedom, adoption, and public safety get trampled and rewritten by politicians from other places who know nothing of the community whose decisions they insist on controlling. This is called virtual representation, and we fought a revolution to destroy that principle. Those who are taxed, those who are governed, must be represented directly in government by their own voting representatives. Washington asks us to do something that is not only perfectly constitutional, but time-honored. Congress has drawn and redrawn the boundaries of the Federal District several times before. The passage of the Organic Act in 1801 did not freeze the boundaries of the Federal District, which by its own terms may be ``no more than 10 miles square'' but has no minimum size set in the Constitution. That is why Congress was able to redraw the Federal District in 1847 to shrink it and return Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax County to the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is true this was done to placate the slave masters who foresaw the coming abolition of the slave traffic in the Federal city. That is what Abraham Lincoln argued for.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the remarkable accomplishment of my constituents, the excellent team from Springbrook High School that placed second in the 17th Annual Capitol Hill Challenge. I congratulate Nelson Alvarez and his teacher, Donald Wharton Jr., on their passionate commitment and impressive results in the Challenge during a time of economic uncertainty. Every year, with the support and participation of Congress, SIFMA Foundation's Capitol Hill Challenge instills in young people a deeper understanding of personal finance, economics and civics. Student teams manage and invest a hypothetical $100,000 portfolio of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, impact investments and cash. This national competition expands financial education, civics learning and math literacy for public school students in every US Congressional District. Madam Speaker, I am honored to recognize the extraordinary achievement of Mr. Alvarez and Mr. Wharton and I hope my colleagues and constituents will join me in congratulating Nelson Alvarez from Springbrook High School on a job well done.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I want to start by saluting Chairman McGovern, who has done such a sensational job under adverse circumstances bringing us a new rule so that we can maintain the continuity of the U.S. Congress. We are bringing a rule forward today to allow for a very narrow exception to allow for proxy voting in the coronavirus emergency, when Members cannot get back to Washington, so we can continue the absolutely vital and central work of Congress. That work continues today with the HEROES Act, which will put trillions of dollars into the heroes of America: the firefighters and the cops, the teachers, the frontline health workers, the emergency responders, the people who actually make America run. That is what the HEROES Act is all about. We hear a lot in Congress about how much people love the States and the cities and the towns. Now is the chance to show it. Let's put our money where our mouth is and support Americans who are struggling with this crisis brought by the coronavirus and the mismanagement of the disease from the very beginning, the mismanagement of our efforts to fight it. America, as Dr. Bright said yesterday, does not have a plan. We need massive testing. We need vigilant contact tracing. We need coordination of logistics rather than pitting the States against each other in a ruthless competition for PPEs and for ventilators. The U.S. Government, under our Constitution, should be coordinating the national effort, not pilfering supplies from the States, much less pitting the States against each other in a brutal competition. The HEROES Act takes us in the right direction by putting billions of dollars into the testing the population needs. A majority of the cases of infectious transmission comes now from people who are asymptomatic or presymptomatic. The only way to deal with the disease and to put the coronavirus on the run is to do mass testing, diligent contact tracing; and we have got lots of people who can do it, because more than 35 million Americans have been thrown out of work in this process. Let's put millions of people to work being contact tracers. Let's unify as a country. Let's show that America has the capacity and the strength to operate under our system of federalism to put money into the States and the counties and the cities to work together to stop the disease and to win this major public health battle. The HEROES Act is the way to go.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I salute the chairman for his determination to keep the American Government going through this period, and that is what this resolution is about, the continuity of Congress and the continuity of government. We are here to keep the great American experiment in democratic self-government alive through the pandemic, through the crisis. The first sentence of the Constitution, the Preamble, says: We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and preserve to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty, do hereby ordain and establish the Constitution of the United States. The very next sentence vests all legislative power to us, in Article I, in the Congress, and gives us the right to determine the rules of our own proceedings. That is what the Supreme Court calls a political question. It cannot be second-guessed by the Senate. It cannot be second-guessed by the President. It cannot be second-guessed even by the Supreme Court. It is up to us what our rules of proceeding are going to be. Mr. Speaker, I have watched the debate, and one can only regard with amazement the full outrage summed up by our colleagues who display great reservoirs of self-righteousness. And it is amazing to me because the same Members have been operating for many years, for term after term, under the current rule, first adopted by a Republican-majority House, which allows two Members to form a working quorum. I repeat: The current rule, which this body has ratified repeatedly, was adopted by a Republican majority, allowing two Members to constitute a working quorum. So, how can anyone who has blithely accepted that state of affairs, when it would have been very easy to do something about it--there was no pandemic and no plague let loose on the land, with 86,000 people dead and tens of millions of unemployed. They did nothing about it, but now they want to suddenly turn on the proposal necessary to guarantee the continuity of the U.S. Government in which the numerical quorum majority rule is scrupulously observed through the well-known and well- accepted proxy system. This rule preserves the vote and the voice of each and every Member of the House. Unlike the two-Member quorum rule, which was put into place by a Republican majority, our rule is based on effectuating the will and the vote of every Member. The proxies must be cast in strict accordance with the will of the Member, with no discretion, and no room for judgment. Mr. Speaker, I expect to be a proxy because I live about a half hour away from here. I will cast the proxy vote exactly as given to me. And if I were to decide I know better than the person I am voting for, that should be the subject of ethical proceedings. I am nothing more than a letter carrier. This is what the Congress needs to do. The American people expect nothing less from us. Let's keep the Government of the United States in business.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Ted Rowse, a wonderful constituent who just celebrated his 100th birthday. Mr. Rowse has honorably served our country in battle and as a public-spirited journalist, and he has been a popular member of the Chevy Chase community for over 45 years. This past Saturday, I was touched to join his loving friends and family who organized a drive-by parade of cars to celebrate Ted's 100th birthday in a safe and festive way. Ted left college in 1942 to enlist in the Army. During WWII, he served in North Africa and Italy and was awarded 4 battle stars for his courageous service. Following the war, Ted returned to education and received his MBA from Harvard Business School. Ted led a fascinating career as a journalist, beginning at the Boston Globe before eventually moving to Washington to work as an assistant city editor of the Washington Post in 1960. He went on to serve in the Johnson White House on programs to help consumers. His distinguished career culminated in his generous creation of the Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism. Madam Speaker, I am honored to recognize the important accomplishments of my distinguished constituent, Ted Rowse, and hope this chamber will join me in wishing him a very happy 100th birthday.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I rise today in solemn recognition of the selfless sacrifice made by law enforcement officers across this great nation and to honor those who have fallen in the line of duty. Ever since President John F. Kennedy signed a proclamation designating May 15th as Peace Officer's Memorial Day, we as a nation have paused to show our support and eternal gratitude for the brave men and women who have paid the ultimate sacrifice while serving and protecting their fellow citizens. I embrace this opportunity to pay tribute to our fallen law enforcement officers. These are true and brave public servants who made the conscious decision to stand in between the men, women, and children in their communities and those who would do them harm. While these courageous individuals hail from a broad spectrum of social and economic backgrounds, they all share the common instinct to protect and serve their fellow citizens. These officers are husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. They understand the perils they face every day when they go to work in service of others, but they are defined by a rare sense of duty and a love for their fellow human beings. They keep our roads and highways safe. They safeguard our property. They secure the event sites and venues where we gather. They respond to incidents of domestic violence and calls for help. They bring criminals to justice. They are the ones who are moving toward the sound of the gunfire when everyone else is running away. Law enforcement officers engage in thousands of face-to-face encounters throughout their careers. They do so in most cases without knowing, even in the midst of the encounter, if the individual or individuals they are confronting are in need of their help or intend to harm them. Too often, these encounters end tragically. 128 officers died in the line of duty in 2019. Including officers identified from previous years, 307 names will be added to the National Law Enforcement Officer Memorial here in Washington, D.C. this year. Eight of those names are from my home state of Maryland. Officer Kyle David Olinger was a husband, a father, and a Police Officer in the Montgomery County Police Department. On August 8th, 2003, while serving the citizens of my home district, he initiated a traffic stop in Silver Spring, MD on a vehicle with three passengers. Officer Olinger observed one of the occupants attempting to conceal a handgun under the seat, and he ordered the man to drop the weapon. A struggle ensued, and Officer Olinger was shot in the neck and paralyzed below the chest. Despite his wounds, Officer Olinger, a former U.S. Marine, continued to serve his department until his injuries forced him to retire in 2007, demonstrating the type of man he was and his commitment to the service of others. On April 18th, 2019, Officer Olinger succumbed to complications from the gunshot wound he suffered in the line of duty. He is survived by his wife and two sons. Beyond recognizing the bravery and sacrifice of law enforcement professionals like Officer Olinger, we must acknowledge the sacrifices made by their loved ones. Every day our officers leave for work, their families must live with the anxiety of knowing that they may not return home. The burden of the profession is not just borne by officers themselves. Their family members endure these circumstances for the benefit of others--in exchange for all the pain and suffering that is prevented by the actions of these dedicated officers. So, today we salute not only the fallen officers, but the loving families that supported them in their very challenging profession. Today, I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring all the courageous men and women who have taken the oath to protect and serve, and who have fallen in the line of duty. We are forever grateful for their sacrifice, and they will not be forgotten.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I send to the desk a resolution and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the bill (S. 3503) to authorize the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to treat certain programs of education converted to distance learning by reason of emergencies and health-related situations in the same manner as programs of education pursued at educational institutions, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the extraordinary life of Ellen M. Bloom, a dedicated public servant, beloved Congressional staffer and compassionate constituent of mine in Silver Spring whose earthly journey concluded on February 4, 2020. I include in the Record her obituary, which was published in the Washington Post on February 7, 2020 and tells the story of her wonderful life.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, this year we honor the memory of hundreds of ethnic Armenians killed--and hundreds of thousands displaced-- between 1988 and 1990 in brutal and violent pogroms in Azerbaijan. In the 1980s, citizens in Azerbaijan of Armenian heritage embarked on one of the first pro-democracy movements against the Soviet Empire, calling for self-determination, fair treatment, and an end to discrimination. This pro-democracy movement was met with extreme brutality in waves of pogroms and forced deportations of Armenians from Azerbaijan. Mobs violently attacked ethnic Armenians in the cities of Sumgait in late February 1988, Kirovabad in November 1988, and the capital, Baku, in January 1990. For three days in February 1988, mobs murdered, raped, assaulted, and burned alive ethnic Armenians. This came as the result of years and decades of anti-Armenian rhetoric and policies engineered by the Azerbaijani government, contributing to a lethal climate of dehumanization, racism, and religious intolerance. Despite an international outcry, including bipartisan resolutions, statements and letters from concerned members of Congress, the violence continued. Between 1988 and 1990, according to human rights organizations, an estimated 300,000 to 350,000 Armenians fled Azerbaijan under threat of violence or were deported. The failure of the government to legitimately address simple democratic demands, and the violent response to largely peaceful movements, fueled a spiral of reactionary intercommunal violence and prolonged armed conflict in the region. Today, I stand to remember and honor all of those killed, wounded and displaced in these anti-Armenian pogroms. The lessons of the events of 1988 to 1990 are obviously acutely relevant as we look around the world today. Ethnic and religious hatred that foments violence is on the rise--the Rohingya in Burma have been slaughtered, Uighur Muslims in China are being put in concentration camps because of their religion, and tens of thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses have been declared extremists in Russia for following their peaceful religion. When human beings are denied their universal freedoms, and when governments put in place dehumanizing rhetoric, policies, and laws; then hatred, violence, and suffering follow. I urge my colleagues to stand with me in recognition of the plight suffered by ethnic Armenians thirty years ago and to stand vigilant against the use of ethnic and religious hatred to stir violence against minorities here in the United States and around the world.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I want to thank Mr. DeSaulnier for his leadership. I rise in very strong support of the PRO Act because it will restore the constitutional and civil rights of American citizens seeking to organize a union. We have to remember that the right to organize is rooted in the First Amendment of the Constitution which protects the right of the people to speak, to assemble, and to petition for a redress of grievances. All of these rights have been under severe attack over the last several decades of union busting and interference with the right of the people to organize into unions. There are three specific provisions I want to mention that will restore the constitutional rights of the people to organize. The first treats the violation of the right to organize like a violation of any other civil right in America. If your civil rights are violated based on race or based on gender, you have a right to go to court to sue for enforcement of your rights and for compensation for violation of those rights. This PRO Act will give the same right to workers to go to court to enforce their labor organizing rights. Right now, they have got to go through the National Labor Relations Board which has been stifled with bureaucracy and red tape. And right now, under the PRO Act, if it passes, you will have the right to go to court as well as to go to the NLRB in order to enforce your right to organize. Secondly, the PRO Act will end so-called captive audience speeches. Those are already illegal right now. Employers cannot herd all the workers into a big room and tell them why they have to vote for Donald Trump for President at the risk of perhaps earning the disfavor of the employer, being fired or demoted or whatever. But they can herd you into the room to tell you why unions are bad and why unions are a bad choice and predicting that the company will have to leave or lay off people if a union is voted in by the workers. This ends captive audience speeches. The union doesn't have the right to herd all the workers into a room to propagandize them for the union; the employers should not have the right to herd all of them into a conference room to propagandize them against a union. Finally, the PRO Act will restore the First Amendment rights of workers organizing a union or in a union to support boycotts, strikes, and other labor actions by workers in other places. Amazingly, under the Taft-Hartley provisions and the way the labor law has grown up now, it is against the law for workers in a union to engage in secondary support and secondary boycotts and so on. This is a naked violation of the First Amendment rights of workers. Unionized workers should have every same right to support boycotts and strikes of their fellow workers as anyone else. Madam Speaker, I do strongly support the PRO Act.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, there is another unfolding humanitarian crisis in Syria, this time in Idlib province. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has launched an all-out assault on the province, aided by Vladimir Putin's Russian forces. More than a quarter of a million people, 80 percent of them women and children, have fled their homes to the northern part of Idlib into freezing desert and refugee camps, without adequate food, shelter, or medical care. With the current death toll of the Syrian civil war estimated to exceed 500,000, along with six million people internally displaced, humanitarian groups are concerned that the siege of Idlib will result in the largest humanitarian disaster yet seen in the country. This assault is a replay of the siege of Aleppo as the government again bombs civilian targets like hospitals, schools, markets and people's homes. This disaster will only be compounded as a result of Russia vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution allowing cross-border aid to Syrian refugees. Although a modified resolution was adopted, cross-border aid has been restricted and may come to an end this summer if Russia and Syria continue to push for its elimination. As U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Kelly Craft said: ``Syrians will suffer needlessly as a result of this resolution.''

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, this will occur tomorrow morning on the first bill at 12:15, 12:30. It is the first bill. Madam Speaker, let me just say that I hope our friends take yes for an answer, and I hope that this will perhaps usher in their ability to support the underlying legislation here because I know that they agree with us that the Constitution gives the House of Representatives and the Senate the power to declare war. It gives Congress the power to declare war, to spend money on war. We should not allow a President of any party--Democratic, Republican, or anything else--to usurp that power and to engage in unilateral Presidential wars without our specific authorization, without our declaration, unless there is an attack on the land, the people of the United States, or our Armed Forces, as specified in the War Powers Resolution. Madam Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule and the previous question.