Mary Scanlon

Ms. SCANLON

Ms. SCANLON. Madam Speaker, we are failing our youth, and they know it. I rise today to share the voices of our children, the voices of those who attend schools where, once again this week, young lives were lost to gun violence that Congress refuses to prevent. My office runs a Congressional Youth Cabinet, a nonpartisan program that gives high school students the opportunity to learn about our government and share their views. We meet every couple of months during the school year, and they select topics for discussion at each meeting. Last weekend, the topic was gun violence. The next day, six people were slaughtered in yet another school shooting. Three of them were only 9 years old. As I struggled to find words to convey, once again, the urgency that Congress act, I turned to the students in my youth cabinet. I asked them what they would say if they had the opportunity to address Congress. Here are their voices, the voices of America's youth. Claire: ``It is terrifying to see another school shooting on the news, and even scarier that this is an almost normal thing. As students, we just want to be safe to learn and grow. . . . I feel, and I have heard this from a lot of kids, I can't walk down the hall without looking for a safe place to hide in case something happens. It really messes with your head.'' Zeyan: ``Gun violence feels normalized and ingrained. My school had a lockdown drill today, yet afterward, we went on with our day like the need for a lockdown drill is trivial and not disturbing. I hope legislators understand how drastically gun violence can alter students' daily lives and thoughts.'' Tyler: ``It is really hard to stay optimistic as a young person when we see these tragedies again and again.'' Lindsay: ``All those kids did today was go to school on a beautiful Monday morning. But instead of making paper cutouts of Easter bunnies or painting eggs, they were shot and murdered. [That] school is a private Christian school. Prayer takes place in every single one of those classrooms, including where third graders were shot to death. Prayers did not stop our children [from being slaughtered with] guns. A lock on the door did not stop the killer from coming in. Legislators . . . can stop this.'' Several observed that easy access to guns is a major driver of school shootings. Kiona said: ``These situations happen so frequently, it makes me question how easy it is to get a firearm or assault weapon in this country. We could have prevented more of these situations.'' Quin: ``For me, gun violence is personal. Lives like ours are on the line. On the news, time and time again, I see my own communities attacked, from the Lunar New Year Monterey Park mass shooting to the Club Q nightclub shooting. Our schools are not safe. It is clear that gun violence targets vulnerable people of color and LGBTQ+ people. . . . Guns are the leading cause of death among children and teens.'' Noah: ``We need to stop treating shootings like isolated events and think of them as part of a whole. It wasn't just one person with a gun today in Nashville or in Colorado Springs or in Uvalde. It was a web of corporate greed, insufficient legislation, and hatred.'' Eliot: ``I am a senior in high school, and I have been directly affected by four separate instances of gun violence in the past year. I was in lockdown . . . during the Highland Park shooting . . . at the same time my close friend was hiding in a church [during an active shooter situation] at a concert. . . . Our school recently lost a classmate to gun violence, and we had a lockdown because of a threat of a shooting. . . . The lack of action is alienating my generation. We are supposed to be the `future of our democracy.' Our experiences of gun violence are more common than instances of legislative progress. We are told we are supposed to save democracy, to save the planet, but no one is saving us, and we notice that.'' This last line really sticks with me. Our kids are being asked to put our democracy and our collective future first, but their country and their Representatives in Congress are not putting them first. It breaks my heart to hear the fear, anger, cynicism, and hopelessness in our children's voices. We are failing our youth, and they know it. Doing nothing is unacceptable. If you don't have any solutions, then you need to get out of their way. Our kids deserve action now.

Ms. SCANLON

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Chair, I rise today in strong opposition to H.R. 1, and I urge my colleagues to vote against this dangerous and irresponsible bill. With extreme weather events becoming more and more frequent, and climate change impacting our communities, agriculture, homes, and even our national security, we need to work together to advance climate rescue measures that move the U.S. away from fossil fuel dependence, protect workers and communities, and strengthen environmental protections, all while reducing costs to the American people. This can't happen overnight, but instead of building upon the historic, deficit-reducing provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, Republicans are trying to roll back that historic bill, and in the process they are putting polluters over people and the planet. H.R. 1 restricts community input by gutting NEPA. It forces the sell- off of public lands and undermines the health of all Americans by compromising air and water quality, all while adding billions to our national debt. Of particular interest in my district is that this bill would block the EPA from requiring refineries to study alternatives to the use of hydrofluoric acid--or HF--in fossil fuel processing. HF has the potential to form a poisonous, killing aerosol cloud which can travel for miles if it is released. There have been dozens of accidents involving HF in recent years, including a devastating 2019 explosion and fire at a refinery in my district. That explosion put U.S. steelworkers and tens of thousands of nearby residents at serious risk of death and serious harm. An inspection found that the refinery lacked adequate inspection and safety protocols to prevent a catastrophe. Essentially, it was a miracle that no one died that night. To safeguard against future accidents, I offered a commonsense amendment to this bill that would require refineries with a history of accidents or Clean Air Act violations to study alternatives to HF, but my Republican colleagues refused to allow the amendment. This refusal to consider past disasters to create necessary safety standards tells us exactly what this bill is about: empowering the fossil fuel industry at the expense of worker and community safety. Again, I urge my colleagues to vote against this reckless bill.

Ms. SCANLON

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Ms. SCANLON

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Landsman).

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse).

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Indiana for yielding the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I think we can all agree that public education plays a central role in our democracy, helping to ensure the Jeffersonian ideal of having an informed electorate to participate in the governance of our country. I think we can also agree that it is vitally important that parents, as their children's primary caregivers, play an active role in their kids' education in our public schools. That is why governance of our public schools is entrusted to local boards of education, where most school board members are, in fact, parents and are directly responsible to the communities they serve. In our fast-paced and online world, the glue that so often holds our communities together is our neighborhood schools, the parent-teacher and home and school organizations that support them, and the extracurricular athletics and activities that we all gather at. That is why it is so disappointing that the Republican majority has chosen to bring to the floor a bill that undermines those community values and does nothing to address the real issues facing America's schools today. Contrary to its title, this bill does not give parents any more rights than they already have. Even the conservative Cato Institute has criticized this bill for doing nothing to actually empower parents. In fact, many of the so-called rights this bill claims to establish, like parents' ability to meet with their child's teachers, testify at school board meetings, examine school budgets, or protect their children's privacy, are already enshrined in law and are things school districts nationwide already do and in which parents consistently participate in. What this bill does do is promote efforts to inject divisive D.C. politics and culture wars into our neighborhood schools and create burdensome new Federal mandates for those schools, dictating to our local communities and our local taxpayers how and when to perform certain tasks. To add insult to injury, this bill doesn't offer any funding to meet these new Federal mandates or propose resources that would actually help students and families or support our public schools, many of which are already struggling to make ends meet under inequitable funding formulas. This bill would force schools to invest already scarce time and resources toward onerous compliance requirements and administrative costs and away from crucial measures that actually improve student outcomes, all with no additional money and with no discernible benefit to our children. Ultimately, this bill is an act of Federal overreach that would hinder students' ability to learn and undermine the important work that educators, librarians, and other school professionals do every day. It would undermine the valuable relationships among parents and between parents, students, and teachers, relationships that are built on trust and shared goals. The truth is that the primary concerns for too many teachers and parents are to make sure that their children have enough to eat, a bed to sleep in at night, and can get to and from school safely. This bill does not address those critical needs or, for that matter, anything else that promotes student success and well-being. What this bill does is open the door to allowing a noisy minority to dictate what all students can and cannot read or learn, and that hurts both our kids and our communities. We have already seen in Florida and other States that have passed versions of this bill that the provisions buried in this legislation have allowed rightwing bullies to ban books, gut history lessons, and marginalize some of our communities. The beauty of our public schools is that they help our children become critical thinkers and functional adults by meeting and learning about the diversity of people, viewpoints, and experiences in the world around them. Allowing some parents to dictate their worldview to all parents and students in our public schools does a disservice to our schools, our children, and our communities, particularly when, as has been so often the case recently, those efforts have sought to marginalize people of color and the LGBTQ community. Perhaps my Republican colleagues are discounting the opportunities for parental engagement that are already baked into our public education system because the views they are pushing, to ban books and whitewash history, are not accepted by the overwhelming majority of Americans. I know how much children benefit when parents and teachers work together to help them reach their full potential. I know this from experience. I spent a decade providing training and representation for parents and students in the public school system. I spent two decades, while my children attended public schools, as a home and school parent, a classroom volunteer, and, like my father and sister before me, a school board member to help not only my kids but all the kids in our district to succeed. I often think that school boards are one of the purest forms of local representative democracy. Unpaid members from the community--most of them, like myself, parents--spend endless hours working together with school administrators, educators, and parents, all united by a common goal to do what is best for all of our children. Over the years, I had countless conversations with involved parents and constituents in grocery stores, at school concerts, on soccer fields, and at formal board meetings about how our schools could best serve our children and taxpayers, where we could do better, and where our options were limited, usually by financial constraints. Those discussions were sometimes emotional or passionate, and people didn't always agree, but everyone respected our democratic processes and the boundaries of protected speech as we sought to reach the best possible solutions for our community. Those conversations and deliberations also reflected a core principle of our civil society, one that is important to remember as we struggle to reduce the hyperpartisanship and lack of civility in our politics and to model good behavior for our children. That is the principle of cooperation and compromise, that having the loudest voice or being a bully doesn't mean that you always get to win. This bill, H.R. 5, does not help parents, educators, and school districts to work together more effectively. Instead, this bill pits parents against each other and against teachers in a way that creates more chaos and community discord. That hurts students and families, disregards talented educators, undermines public schools, and detracts from what should be our ultimate goal, providing the best possible public education for America's children. Our national motto is ``e pluribus unum,'' ``out of many, one,'' not ``my way or the highway.'' We form a stronger and more perfect community when we bring our diverse talents and strengths together, and this bill undermines that goal. I now represent a congressional district with 21 school districts in it, including one of the largest in the country, and I talk to a lot of parents in my community. Parents in my district want to talk about how to help our kids succeed. They want to talk about hiring enough teachers, librarians, and guidance counselors. They want to talk about fixing crumbling school buildings and preparing our children for the jobs and challenges of the 21st century. They want schools in our communities that serve the healthy food kids need to learn and grow, offer mental health resources, and teach the skills that every American needs to be engaged and informed citizens and taxpayers to ensure our long-lasting democracy. Overwhelmingly, these parents are appalled that bills like H.R. 5 threaten to open the floodgates to book bans, more restrictions on what can be said in the classroom, and attempts to rewrite history and censor facts, all at the expense of our students. While it sounds benign, this bill will be used to eliminate classroom conversations about racism in the American story or portrayals of LGBTQ people in books, all while refusing to deliver on what parents are actually asking for to keep their children safe, the kind of policies that House Democrats are bringing to the table to keep children safe from dangerous toxins like asbestos and lead that are still prevalent in too many schools and to keep children safe from gun violence, now the leading cause of death for American children. We need commonsense gun safety laws that keep weapons out of classrooms and out of the hands of children so parents aren't scared that one day they will send their kids to school and they will never come home. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle often talk about being the party of small government and local control. They condemn the intrusion of the Federal Government into local affairs, but this legislation is nothing more than an attempt to nationalize our education system and mandate a one-size-fits-all approach across the country, assuming that the size that fits is a rightwing straitjacket. Even the conservative Cato Institute has said that H.R. 5 suffers from a fundamental flaw: It is not constitutional. We should give young people the resources they need to learn and grow, not stifle their ideas, threaten their civil rights, censor their classrooms and teachers, or take books off library shelves. We should not promote chaos and bullying in our communities. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. General Leave

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the Record a letter from the American Library Association opposing H.R. 5, saying that the bill would create a catalyst for more book banning and censorship.

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Rules.

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to take a minute--or not even a minute--to correct a couple statements that were made. First of all, I include in the Record an article from Jax Today titled: ``Duval Schools to keep 73 `diverse, inclusive' books out of classrooms.'' [From Jax Today, Dec. 22, 2022] Duval Schools To Keep 73 `Diverse, Inclusive' Books Out of Classrooms (By Claire Heddles) Dozens of books the Duval County school district ordered in the summer of 2021 will never hit classroom shelves. That's the result of an ongoing review after the district pulled almost 200 books this spring while the Florida Legislature passed limits on what teachers can say about race, gender and sexual orientation in classrooms and set new rules for purchasing classroom materials. After a 10-month process--delayed by staffing shortages, according to the district--47 titles are being returned to the distributor. Twenty-six others will remain in storage, awaiting further state guidance. Among the rejected titles are a book about Martin Luther King Jr. intended for fourth graders; a biography of Rosa Parks for second grade classrooms; a first grade Berenstain Bears book about God; and multiple titles including LGBTQ+ characters and families. District staffers are sending the rejected books back to the distributor, Perfection Learning, for exchange. The rest of the 179 books that had been held for review were determined to meet ``statutory guidelines and are useful toward our reading goals,'' and were distributed to classrooms in October, a district representative tells Jacksonville Today in an email. All of the books are from the Essential Voices Classroom Libraries collection, which the distributor says are meant to engage students in ``independent reading through these diverse, inclusive'' stories. Explore the full list of books that were pulled for review: `Banned books' In September, PEN America, an organization advocating for free speech, released a tally of books they said were banned across the country, including more than 550 in Florida, the second-most of any state. Only Texas banned more. The list included the Essential Voices books the district withheld from classrooms. Duval Schools contested the characterization as a book ban because none of the books was challenged by the public--the district pulled them before they ever went on shelves. Ami Polonsky is the author of one of the recently rejected books, Gracefully Grayson, a transgender coming-of-age novel intended for fifth grade classrooms. A teacher herself, Polonsky believes books like hers are blocked to appease a small subset of parents. ``Books can save kids' lives, and to know this, but still refuse to take them out of storage is nonsensical, it's immoral. A parenting perspective cannot outweigh a national mental health crisis among trans children,'' Polonsky told the School Board this month. ``Books that are ordered with the best of intentions gather dust, and the LGBTQ children continue to receive the message that their existence is controversial.'' Polonsky and two other authors came to Jacksonville to address the Duval School Board in early December at the urging of national free speech organizations PEN America, We Need Diverse Books and Freedom to Read. At the time, the district had not yet publicly released the list of 106 books it now says were distributed to classrooms in October. New state laws Another of the authors, Linda Sue Park, wrote a book about South Sudanese sisters on a two-hour walk to get water for their family called Nya's Long Walk. Her book was among the 179 titles initially pulled, but it was since distributed to kindergarten classrooms, according to the district. Park was in Jacksonville advocating for all the books in the Essential Voices collection, many of which are written by authors of color with main characters of color. ``You never know what book is going to do it for them, what book is going to hit them, and that's why more choice, more access, more variety is so important,'' she said. Duval decided to pull the books for review as it grappled with limited state guidance for how to implement at least three new Florida laws that restricted school curricula: HB 1467, HB 7 and HB 1557. HB 1467, sponsored by Rep. Sam Garrison, R-Fleming Island, requires school districts to maintain a list of library materials and make it easier for the public to contest school books. Districts are also required to have a state-certified media specialist sign off on new materials. Starting in January 2023, school librarians and media specialists will have to complete an online training program developed by the state Department of Education. In an email this week, a Duval Schools spokesperson said the remaining 26 Essential Voices book reviews will be the first use of this training. ``Once that training [is] released, the district will use this as a great opportunity to go through this process applying the required training,'' the spokesperson wrote. Another new law, HB 7, which Gov. Ron DeSantis nicknamed the Stop WOKE Act, limited how teachers can talk about race and racism and in the classroom. A federal judge blocked the law from taking effect last month, calling it ``positively dystopian.'' The DeSantis administration is appealing the ruling in federal court. Though HB 7 is not currently in effect, Duval Schools blocked multiple books that deal with race and history, including a Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop by Alice Faye Duncan, about Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1968 sanitation strike; Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga, about a 12-year-old Syrian refugee in the U.S.; and Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family's Fight for Desegregation by Duncan Tonatiuh, a children's book about the fight to end segregation in California schools seven years before Brown v. Board of Education--the Supreme Court decision that found school segregation unconstitutional. A third new law, HB 1557, or Parental Rights in Education, bans instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in first through third grade, ``or in a manner that is not age-appropriate'' in older grades. Rather than define ``age appropriate,'' the law that critics call ``Don't Say Gay'' allows parents to sue districts if they believe something is not. Polonsky's rejected book, Gracefully Grayson, was intended for fifth graders. Other books meant for older grade levels with LGBTQ+ stories are also being sent back, including the fourth grade book, Rainbow Revolutionaries: Fifty LGBTQ+ People Who Made History, by Sarah Prager, and The Stonewall Riots: Coming Out in the Street, by Gayle E. Pitman for fifth graders. Also in response to HB 1557, the Duval school district dramatically shrank its LGBTQ+ support guide, removed rainbow stickers and posters that supported LGBTQ students from classrooms and took down a 12-minute anti-bullying video that taught middle and high school students how to support their gay and transgender peers. Ellen Oh, author and CEO of the national nonprofit We Need Diverse Books, says Duval's actions are particularly concerning because the decisions were made before any parent complained about the books. ``It's the secretive, the silent censoring part of it that is so troublesome to us,'' Oh said ahead of the Dec. 6 School Board meeting. ``Books that have been banned have been done publicly. People have challenged books. In this case, these books were pulled because of fear. We can't live in a society like that.''

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, also, it is not the first time my colleague mentioned the book ``Flamer,'' which he described as a graphic book about a child at summer camp. In fact, it is a graphic novel, which is kind of a trend that he may not be familiar with. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Correa).

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Hayes), who is a teacher.

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Colorado.

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, there are many issues that we should be dealing with here. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to provide for consideration of a resolution that states the House's unyielding responsibility to defend and preserve Social Security and Medicare for generations to come and to affirm that it is the position of the House to reject any cuts to these vital programs. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, Social Security and Medicare are foundational to our constituents' economic and health security. Republicans have demanded unconscionable cuts to these programs in exchange for raising the debt limit and paying our Nation's bills. Some of my Republican colleagues have recently changed their rhetoric and now say that they don't want to eviscerate Social Security and Medicare benefits. Mr. Speaker, I am offering my friends the opportunity to back up their newfound position. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining?

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close. Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Rules Committee, I do feel compelled to comment upon the amendment process that we have with respect to this rule and bill. I am astounded that, once again, the Republican majority has reported such an imbalanced rule. This rule actually makes in order every single germane Republican amendment submitted before our meeting yesterday, but for Democratic amendments, the rule blocks 28 of the 31 germane amendments offered by the Democrats. That is a 90 percent suppression rate of the ideas submitted by the minority party, all of which were compliant with the rules of the House but have been blocked by Republicans from being debated or voted upon. The Rules Committee Republicans actually complained about amendment disparities during the Democratic majority, saying, ``There is no context in which such a stifling of minority voices is consistent with the designs of this institution or in the best interest of the American people we represent.'' That complaint was written after we made in order 30 percent of the amendments submitted by Republicans to structured rule bills. When we do 30 percent, it is a crisis for the institution, but when they do 5 percent this month, it is okay. Speaker McCarthy actually promised both sides ``. . . more openness, more opportunity for ideas to win at the end of the day.'' Mr. Speaker, that promise has been broken. This Republican majority knows their bills fail to address real problems, so they continue to block our good ideas from coming to the floor rather than actually debating them. It is wrong, and they need to do better. Mr. Speaker, with respect to H.R. 5, it does not promote the rights of parents, but it does open the door to censoring teachers and textbooks, threatening the rights of students and their parents, imposing costly burdens on our neighborhood schools that they cannot afford, and infringing on core American values, including freedom of speech and ideas. It puts rightwing politics over parents and would let a noisy minority push their own agenda and impose their beliefs of what children can or should read or learn onto all parents and students. Our schools carry out important responsibilities of educating the next generation of Americans, and all children deserve access to an equitable and well-rounded education that equips them for the future. We should give our schools the resources to help young people feel supported and ready to reach their full potential. We should not create hostile environments for our most marginalized students. We should not pit parents against each other and against educators, and we should not drive wedges between families and their neighborhood schools. I want to do better than that for our kids, and I hope others today want the same. Mr. Speaker, again, I urge my colleagues to oppose the previous question and the rule. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Ms. SCANLON

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, last year, on my birthday, I was really excited to see that I had a kayak expedition on my calendar. I love getting outdoors and especially on the open water, but because I represent a district that has some of the oldest infrastructure in the country, it turned out that my kayak tour was an inspection of combined stormwater and sewer outlets on the Schuylkill River. That is why I am more excited today to highlight that $2.4 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law is being invested in communities nationwide to support necessary upgrades to our infrastructure to increase access to clean water. I am thrilled to see yet another wave of clean water infrastructure funding, including $92 million for Pennsylvania, being invested in the health and safety of our families. Nearly half that funding is available as grants and forgivable loans to ensure that our most underserved communities can access the investments. As I noted, some of our greatest infrastructure and environmental challenges facing southeastern Pennsylvania involve the need to address critical water, wastewater, and stormwater projects. This new funding will protect the health of Pennsylvania's children and families.

Ms. SCANLON

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, last week was National Gun Violence Survivors Week, when we reflect on the toll that gun violence takes on all of us. It is disgraceful enough that our Republican colleagues are unwilling to confront gun violence as the leading cause of death among American children, but last week, several Members of this body chose to mock the somber week by wearing assault rifle pins. Those Members paraded through the Halls of Congress and on this floor, celebrating the weapon of choice for military combatants, mass murderers, and those who have fetishized the Second Amendment. This shameless gesture was received loud and clear by Americans, including a mother in my district who recently lost her son to gun violence. She called my office after seeing those Members, distraught by their casual cruelty and their dangerous promotion of violence. I rise today as the voice in Congress for that brokenhearted mother to make this very clear: House Democrats are united in the fight to end senseless gun violence. We want to advance real solutions, and we will always stand up to extremist behavior that threatens the safety of our communities. Recognizing Betsy Walls, Public Health Emergency Preparedness Trailblazer

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize a constituent whose decades of public health service have made our community stronger. Betsy Walls is being recognized by the CDC and Prevention as a public health emergency preparedness trailblazer from Pennsylvania. She is one of 48 Americans being recognized for their tireless work to protect our communities from a range of public health threats. Betsy's distinguished career in serving her community includes serving as a flight nurse for the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, where she retired as a lieutenant colonel; she spent 30 years at Delaware County Memorial Hospital, first as a staff nurse, then a head nurse, then an evening supervisor, and, finally, as director of staff education; and she served as director of personal health at the Chester County Health Department for 18 years. Betsy's commitment to ensuring our community is ready and able to respond to disasters has touched thousands of lives. Our community owes Betsy Walls an enormous debt of gratitude for the strong foundation she has built to keep our communities strong and healthy for years to come. Recognizing Philadelphia Eagles Changemaker Award Winner, Dr. Ruth Abaya

Ms. SCANLON. The Philadelphia Eagles are headed to the Super Bowl this weekend, and I want to recognize the team's 2022 Inspire Change Changemaker Award winner, Dr. Ruth Abaya, an emergency physician at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a scholar of the hospital's Center for Violence Prevention. As our country works to tackle gun violence, Dr. Abaya is on the front lines, treating this issue like the public health crisis that it is. In her role as program manager for the Injury Prevention Program at Philadelphia's Department of Health, she is helping to identify the most promising practices for violence prevention and intervention for young people in our region. A public health approach to gun violence requires a comprehensive, multifaceted response driven by research and data. It means a focus on prevention, in addition to treatment. Dr. Abaya's work is moving us toward the solutions we need to face this crisis head-on and give our children brighter futures. I am grateful for Dr. Abaya's dedication to making our community a safer place for everyone and to the Philadelphia Eagles for their support for her program. This weekend, go Birds.

Ms. SCANLON

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Langworthy) for yielding the customary 30 minutes. Mr. Speaker, here we are, 6 weeks into a new Congress, and the Republican majority has yet to bring substantive, serious legislation to the floor that does anything to address the serious issues confronting our great Nation. Instead, we have seen Republican leadership buckle under time and again to the demands of a rightwing minority that seems more interested in stoking controversy and conspiracy theories than crafting actual legislation or governing. Instead of delivering for the American people, we have seen precious time and taxpayer dollars wasted in power struggles and political stunts, rather than doing the people's business. True to that pattern, today's rule provides for the consideration of three deeply problematic measures, measures that further the objectives of that extremist minority, measures that stoke division, that undermine government institutions, and that threaten fundamental American freedoms when they don't align with the radical right's ideology. By caving to these fringe forces, Republican leadership is squandering precious time and taxpayer dollars that would be better spent working together on the issues most Americans want us to address lowering prices; housing, healthcare, and education needs; making our communities safer; and protecting our planet. The first two resolutions under consideration today would nullify legislation recently passed by the democratically elected D.C. Council and, in the process, would undermine the fundamental right of citizens of Washington, D.C., to political self-determination. H.J. Res. 24 would overrule the Local Resident Voting Rights Act, which was recently passed by the D.C. Council. With this measure, the citizens of D.C. decided to join other municipalities around the country in allowing noncitizen residents to vote in local D.C. elections. H.J. Res. 26 would nullify the Revised Criminal Code Act, the RCCA, which reformed D.C.'s criminal code. That code has not been comprehensively revised since it was first enacted in 1901. The American people expect their Members of Congress to prioritize their most pressing kitchen table issues, but instead of focusing on lowering costs or creating better-paying jobs, we are here today to interfere with legislation duly enacted by the citizens of D.C. and their government. Not only is that not what our constituents sent us to do, it is distinctly antidemocratic to substitute our policy judgment for the local policy judgment of D.C.'s elected officials. The nearly 700,000 residents of the District of Columbia, a majority of whom are Black and Brown, are worthy and capable of self-government. Instead of seeking to undo the work of that democratically elected body, we should be holding hearings and considering whether it is finally time to address the issue of D.C. statehood. As my colleague, Mr. Raskin, said in the Rules Committee yesterday, if my Republican colleagues insist on acting as a colonial overseer of the District of Columbia, the least they can do is hear from the people of D.C. Those promoting these resolutions should have called a hearing or at least attempted to engage the D.C. Council and community leaders in some way. If my colleagues think they have the best interests of the people of D.C. at heart, let's hear from the D.C. residents. I believe they have made it quite clear they don't appreciate being made a pawn in national political battles. We owe it to the people of D.C. to enact statehood, not this radical attempt to interfere with the district's Democratic process. The subject of these disapproval resolutions, the Revised Criminal Code Act and Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act, should be irrelevant. But just so we are clear, let's look at the legislative history of those two acts that our colleagues across the aisle want to overturn. Under the D.C. Home Rule Act, which is a Federal statute, the democratically elected 13-member D.C. Council is required to enact a new law twice, with at least 13 days intervening between each vote, in order to pass legislation. Legislation passed by the council and affirmed by the Mayor or with a veto override is then transmitted to Congress for a review period. The legislation takes effect at the expiration of the review period unless Congress intervenes by passing a resolution of disapproval. Congress has only overturned duly elected D.C. laws three times before the misguided efforts that we are forced to consider today. Now, the D.C. Council passed the Revised Criminal Code Act by votes of 12-0 and 13-0. While the Mayor vetoed it, the council voted to override that veto by a vote of 12-1. The Revised Criminal Code Act is the culmination of a 5-year process to revise and update D.C.'s criminal code, which, as mentioned previously, has not happened since it was first created over a century ago. Everyone in the D.C. legal system, from prosecutors to judges to defense attorneys to scholars, agrees that this revision is long overdue. Our colleagues across the aisle object to the revised criminal code that has been crafted with so much care to meet local conditions because they don't like some sentencing provisions that seek to match up the law with current standards. They posit that harsher penalties would be a greater deterrent to the criminal conduct that they want to target when, in fact, the data shows that harsher penalties in some of the States that they represent does not, in fact, deter that conduct. So think about this: Republican politicians from Georgia and Kentucky and Texas, who haven't bothered to take the time to hold a hearing or study this issue, have decided to parachute in and dictate to the 700,000 residents of D.C. that they know better than those residents and their elected Representatives how to run their city. Can you imagine how those politicians would react if the D.C. Council tried to tell them how to run the jails in Athens, Georgia; Lexington, Kentucky; or Buffalo, New York? What is particularly infuriating is that our Republican colleagues claim that they want to block the D.C. law because they want to be tougher on crime. But, once again, this is empty rhetoric. Overturning the D.C. criminal code will do nothing to increase public safety in D.C. or anywhere else. As I mentioned at the outset, we are 6 weeks into the new Congress, and the Republican majority has not brought forward any legislation to address crime in America. They won't consider legislation to block the flood of unregulated guns into American communities, they won't ban the weapons of war that take innocent lives in horrifying and predictably regular mass shootings, and they haven't taken any action to address the societal issues that produce violence. The second resolution under consideration would vacate the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act, which the D.C. Council passed by votes of 12-1 and 12-0 after holding hearings and soliciting public comment. This act would allow otherwise qualified D.C. residents who are not U.S. citizens to vote in local D.C. elections. Qualified noncitizen residents could vote in races for Mayor, council, attorney general, neighborhood commissioners, school district, and local referenda. Of course, this does not apply to Federal elections. Our colleagues are trying to paint this legislation as some radical new idea, but there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution--which I understand was read here on the floor today, so we could check--that prohibits noncitizens from voting in local, State, or Federal elections. In fact, there is a long history in the U.S. of noncitizens being allowed to vote in those elections, and they have done so since at least 1704 in what would later become the U.S. At various points, 40 States have permitted noncitizens to vote. Congress only first prohibited noncitizens from voting in Federal elections in 1996. Currently, there are at least 15 municipalities that permit noncitizens to vote in local elections. They do so in recognition of the fact that noncitizens, who are allowed to vote under such local laws, pay a variety of State, local, and Federal taxes, and they have an inherent interest in helping to shape policies in the communities where they live. I strongly encourage all of my colleagues to oppose these profoundly undemocratic and paternalistic resolutions. Now, today's rule also provides for consideration of H.R. 185, which would terminate the CDC requirement for proof of COVID-19 vaccination for foreign travelers to enter the U.S. The CDC order was put in place to open the world back up and allow vaccinated foreign travelers to visit the U.S. while keeping our community safe. Revising or revoking the COVID-19 public health guidance should be at the behest of public health experts with understanding and knowledge of global case trends, up-to-date data, and real-time safety information about emerging infections and COVID-19 epidemiology, not partisan politicians looking to settle political scores or curry favor with the disgraced former President and his base. This bill would upend our current COVID-19 travel protocol, and worse, tie the hands of our public health experts by prohibiting any future order to require COVID-19 vaccinations as a condition of entering the United States. As I said last week when the majority brought several bills to the floor attacking COVID-19 emergency declarations and vaccines, we shouldn't jeopardize our progress in fighting COVID with political stunts. This is just the latest bill inspired by anti-vax conspiracy theories that has been rushed to the floor, uninformed by any hearings or any scientific evidence. It is dangerous to repeatedly mislead the public about the efficacy of these vaccines that are proven to save lives. This bill increases the risk of spreading new variants, just as hospitals and public health infrastructure are trying to rebuild. Once again, an extremist fringe is putting politics over science and undermining public health experts at the expense of the American people, and Republican leadership is letting them get away with it. We need Republican leaders to embrace science and promote the public good, instead of undermining them to score political points. I am disappointed that my colleagues continue to waste this body's time and taxpayer dollars on frivolous bills and resolutions. Mr. Speaker, the resolutions and bill we are considering today do not address the issues we were elected to address for the American people. We have now been in this Congress for over a month and have yet to take up any serious legislation. I hope my colleagues can work in a bipartisan manner to address the problems our constituents sent us here to solve. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter from The Sentencing Project advocacy group, which is signed by over a dozen civil rights organizations opposing the Republican efforts to obstruct the enactment of the District of Columbia's Revised Criminal Code Act. It states: ``Washingtonians know best how to address criminal justice policies in their community and deserve the right to determine their own laws. Local leaders are better positioned and retain more expertise to address safety and justice issues in the District than Congress.'' The Sentencing Project, February 6, 2023. Re Oppose efforts to obstruct the District of Columbia's Revised Criminal Code Act. Hon. Kevin McCarthy, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Chairman Jim Jordan, Judiciary Committee, House of Representatives, Washington,

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), our esteemed colleague.