▶ 0:35:56The House Judiciary Committee will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time. Pursuant to committee rule two, House Rule 11, clause 2. Uh the chairman may postpone and further proceedings today on the question of approving any measure or matter or adopting an amendment for which a recorded vote is ordered. I now recognize a gentleman from Arizona, Mr.
▶ 0:36:19begs to lead us in the pledge of Please join me in the pledge of to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
▶ 0:36:43Pursuant to notice, I call up HR 8481. the Kayle's uh Law Act of 2026 for purposes of markup and move that the committee report it favorably to the House. The clerk will report the bill. to amend Title 18, United States Code to provide for the issue.
▶ 0:37:03Without objection, the bill will be considered as read and open for amendment at any point. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Biggs, for an opening statement.
▶ 0:37:12Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to mark up such an impactful piece of legislation. At its core, Kayle's law is about ensuring that victims of some of the most serious crimes do not have to live with a constant fear that their offender may one day contact them again. For many victims, healing is not linear, and the trauma of a crime does not end when a conviction is secured. The possibility of future contact can reopen wounds, undermine a survivor's sense of safety, and make it harder to move forward.
▶ 0:37:41That is why this bill provides a straightforward and common sense solution by authorizing lifetime no contact orders for offenders convicted of serious federal violent sexual trafficking and child exploitation [clears throat] Under this legislation, offenders are permanently barred from contacting their victims unless the conviction is later invalidated or pardoned.
▶ 0:38:02The bill is rooted in a simple Victims deserve lasting protection and offenders who have committed these heinous acts should not have the ability to reinsert themselves into the lives of those they have harmed. I thank my friend and colleague Representative Holidayiday for introducing this legislation and I acknowledge the presence in the audience today um Kaye for whom this bill was named. Thanks in large part to Kayle's advocacy and the work of supporters first at the state level in Arizona.
▶ 0:38:33Wisconsin then became the second state in the nation to enact a version of Kayle's law, providing more victims the opportunity to seek lifetime protection orders against their offenders. Other states, including Texas and Virginia, provide certain forms of long-term or lifetime protective orders. When we had our hearing on this legislation in April, we were honored to hear from Kaylee herself as she shared her experience and her path toward advocacy. And again, we thank you for being here today, Kaylee.
▶ 0:39:00Sharing one's story is never easy, particularly when it involves painful and deeply personal experiences. After the hearing, I engaged with both Kaylee and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle through robust discussion of how we make a good bill even better. And I'm pleased to say we did just that.
▶ 0:39:16Thanks to this effort, this version today includes many impactful changes, including adding stalking to the list of offenses covered, strengthening the definition of a crime of violence, and assured all language in the legislation starts and ends with the victim at the center, as all criminal law should. I thank our colleagues across the aisle for their commitment to victim's rights and making this a true bipartisan effort. I extend my sincere thanks to Wright on Crime for both their testimony before the subcommittee and for their thoughtful engagement on this legislation.
▶ 0:39:46Their expertise and constructive feedback have helped strengthen this bill. So, I thank them for your thoughtful engagement through throughout the legislative process. I'm grateful for the collaborative effort that brought us to this point. Ultimately, this bill is victim- centered and prioritizes public safety. Kayle's law helps ensure that our criminal justice system works for victims, not against them. And I urge my colleagues to support this bill. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
▶ 0:40:10Gentleman yields back. The chair now recognizes the ranking member, Mr. Rasin, for an opening statement.
▶ 0:40:15Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. And um I uh am very happy to strongly support this legislation to strengthen protection for victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence.
▶ 0:40:29uh HR8481, Kayle's law of 2026, would require federal courts to issue lifetime no contact orders against defendants who are convicted of certain covered offenses, including child sexual exploitation, sex trafficking, stalking, and sexual abuse upon the request or the consent of the victim. but independent of the criminal case. Hundreds of thousands of people live under conditions of sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and other kinds of sexual abuse.
▶ 0:40:59And this legislation will help them to turn their lives around. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, an average of 24 people a minute become victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States. That's more than 12 million women and men every year. Nationwide, more than one in five women have been raped or subjected to attempted rape. And 60% of the rapes are committed by someone known to the victim.
▶ 0:41:26A number that increases dramatically for minor victims, going up to 93% who knew their abuser. The lives of survivors of sexual and domestic violence um are radically altered even long after the abuse has ended and many suffer from a wide range of chronic physical and mental health problems. They pay a heavy price financially for medical and therapeutic treatment, lost work and legal expenses.
▶ 0:41:54And the weight of these burdens is even greater for survivors who have fewer resources and networks to draw upon. In recent years, some states have passed laws to strengthen productions for survivors, often thanks to the advocacy of survivors themselves, like Kaylee Kak, who was abused by her soccer coach beginning when she was 12 years old.
▶ 0:42:14Because of her undaunted advocacy in her home state of Arizona, survivors of sex crimes and other violent crimes may now petition the court in their state for a permanent order of protection against their abusers, totally separate and apart from the criminal case. Other states have enacted similar laws, and I'm proud to say that Maryland is one of them. These laws empower victims and survivors to feel a lot safer and to move forward with their lives.
▶ 0:42:40It's wonderful that we're advancing a version of Kayle's law that would allow federal courts to issue no contact orders to victor victims and survivors of the worst offenses. And it's wonderful that we are doing this on a bipartisan basis. And I must say it is a welcome break from the administration's retreat from a strong federal role in supporting victims and survivors.
▶ 0:43:02The administration's actions have resulted, as members of this committee know, in the elimination of hundreds of programs that Congress created and funded to address the needs of victims and survivors of some of the very crimes we're talking about here today. But I'm very happy that we can join together on this legislation and I strongly support it. I go back to you, Mr. Chairman. Gentleman goes back without objection. All other opening statements will be included in the record. The chair now recognizes a gentleman from Arizona. Offer an amendment in the nature of a
▶ 0:43:31Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the
▶ 0:43:32Clerk will report the amendment.
▶ 0:43:33Amendment in the nature of a substitute to HR8481.
▶ 0:43:37Without objection, the amendment in the nature of a substitute should be considered as read and shall be considered base text for the purposes of amendment. Chair now recognizes a gentleman from Arizona to explain the
▶ 0:43:48Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This amendment makes both technical and minor substantive changes to the legislation. It first addresses clerical corrections in the bill. The amendment further adds stalking to the list of covered defenses, closes a loophole regarding time of sentencing, strengthens the definition of crimes of violence, and lastly clarifies language to further strengthen victim autonomy throughout the process of attaining the order. These changes were made with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and they are bipartisan in nature and I yield yield back.
▶ 0:44:17General yields back. Is there any discussion on the amendment?
▶ 0:44:27Gentleman from Arizona.
▶ 0:44:29Mr. Chairman, I have an an amendment at the desk.
▶ 0:44:31Clerk will report the amendment.
▶ 0:44:33Amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute to HR8481 offered by Mr. Biggs of Arizona.
▶ 0:44:39Without objection, the amendment will be considered read.
▶ 0:44:42And Mr. Chair, if I could reserve a point of order.
▶ 0:44:44Gentleman reserves a point of order. Uh the gentleman from Arizona is
▶ 0:44:49Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This amendment clarifies only violent and sexual crimes or covered offenses under the legislation. The amendment also mirrors language in the Arizona statute to asssure due process for the defendant upon which the order is served. I urge support for the amendment and I yield
▶ 0:45:03Gentleman yields back. Does the gentleman uh
▶ 0:45:05we withdraw?
▶ 0:45:06Gentleman withdraws his point of order. Is there any uh discussion on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Seeing none, the question is on the adoption of the amendment. Those in favor adopting the amendment will say I.
▶ 0:45:18I. Those opposed say no. The eyes have it. The motion carries and the amendment is adopted. The question is now on adopting the amendment in the nature of a substitute. Is there further Seeing none, the uh question is on the adoption of the amendment the nature of a substitute. This will be followed immediately by a vote on favorably reporting the bill. Those in favor say I. I.
▶ 0:45:40Those opposed say no.
▶ 0:45:42In the opinion of the chair, the eyes have it. and the amendment in the nature of substitute is adopted. The question is unfavorably reporting the bill as amended. All those in favor say I.
▶ 0:45:51I. Those opposed say no.
▶ 0:45:54The eyes have
▶ 0:45:54Mr. Chairman
▶ 0:45:56request. Gentleman from Arizona
▶ 0:45:58request a roll call.
▶ 0:45:59General requests a a roll call. Uh clerk will call the role.
▶ 0:46:03Mr. Jordan,
▶ 0:46:06Mr. Isa, Mr. Biggs. Mr. BGS votes I. Mr.
▶ 0:46:12Mr. Mcccleintoch votes I. Mr. Mr. Tiffany, Mr. Massie, Mr. Roy, Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Fitzgerald votes I. Mr. Klein, Mr. Gooden, Mr. Vandrew, Mr. Nells, Mr. Moore, Miss Hagaman, Miss Lee, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Fry, Mr. Kylie, Mr.
▶ 0:46:41Growthman, Mr. Knot, Mr. Harris, Mr. Herder, Mr. Schmidt,
▶ 0:46:51Mr. Schmidt votes I, Mr. Gil, Mr.
▶ 0:46:56Mr. Rascin,
▶ 0:46:58Mr. Raskin votes I. Mr. Nodler,
▶ 0:47:01Mr. Nadler votes I. Miss Laughrim, Mr. Cohen,
▶ 0:47:06Mr. Cohen votes I. Mr. Johnson, Mr. Blue Miss Jipal Mr. Korea Miss Scandan Miss Gandlin votes I Mr. Nagus Miss Mcbath Miss Ross I Miss Ross votes I. Miss Ballot Miss Balot votes I. Mr. Garcia Mr. Garcia votes I. Miss Camelager Dove Mr. Mosquitz Mr.
▶ 0:47:35Goldman, Miss Crockett, Mr. Moore, Mr. Moore votes yes. Mr. Gooden votes yes.
▶ 0:48:29Miss Camagard, you're not recorded. Miss Kim v. Yes.
▶ 0:50:03Mr. Your girlfriend die.
▶ 0:54:55Mr. Johnson, you're not recorded.
▶ 0:54:58Mr. Johnson votes yay. Mr. Fry, you're not recorded. Mr. Fry votes I. Miss Lrren Miss Lrren votes yes.
▶ 0:55:31Mr. Jordan
▶ 0:55:34Mr. Jordan, that's
▶ 0:56:02Miss Lee. Miss Lee votes
▶ 0:58:53You're not recorded.
▶ 0:58:55Mr. Reds. Yes.
▶ 1:06:15Mr. Lou, are you not recorded?
▶ 1:06:17Mr. Leave that eye.
▶ 1:07:08Mr. Gail, you're not recorded.
▶ 1:07:12Mr. Gails, yes.
▶ 1:07:23Clerk will report.
▶ 1:07:24Mr. Mr. Chairman, there are 23 eyes and zero nos.
▶ 1:07:27Vote being 23 in the affirmative and zero in the negative. The eyes have it. The bill is uh passed in order to be reported favorably to the House. Members will have two days to submit views. Without objection, the bill will be reported as a single amendment in the nature of a substitute incorporating all adopted amendments and staff is authorized to make technical and conforming changes.
▶ 1:07:47Pursuant to notice, I call up HR1869, the Protecting American Industry and Labor from International Trade Crimes Act of 2025 for purposes of markup and move that the committee report it favorably to the House. The clerk will report the bill, to strengthen the Department of Justice.
▶ 1:08:07Without objection, the bill will be considered as read and open for amendment at any point. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin of of for an opening statement.
▶ 1:08:18Thank you, chairman. Um while we're waiting on the return of Congressman Isa, uh I thought I would just um in fact include his opening statement. Mr. Chairman and colleagues, US trade policy is a vital tool to protect American businesses and workers, ensure American competitiveness, and achieve our foreign policy objectives. It's not enough merely to have smart trade policy that puts American workers and businesses first.
▶ 1:08:47For US trade policy to be effective, we have to resolutely resolutely enforce the laws implementing that policy. Today, criminal enterprises and bad actors, predominantly based in the People's Republic of China, are breaking US trade laws with impunity. Trade-based financial crime is a $1.6 trillion per year problem.
▶ 1:09:10For example, in just the past decade, law enforcement has identified hundreds of instances of trade fraud, most of which originated in the PRC. Tariff and duty fraud committed by the PRCbased companies alone has been estimated to have cost that the United has cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue in that time.
▶ 1:09:33Not only has the fraudulent deprived us of revenue from tariffs and duties, but has seriously undermined our trade policy. Additionally, in just FY 2025, US authorities seized over $7.4 4 billion dollar of counterfeit goods with the PRC accounting for approximately 90% of those seizures by value.
▶ 1:09:58Those seizures reflect billions of dollars stolen from US businesses and workers, which undermines the trade policies designed to protect them. The scale of Chinese counterfeiting operations shows how much American consumers have been exposed to potentially deadly fake goods, including pharmaceuticals.
▶ 1:10:17Since June of 2022, law enforcement has also identified nearly1 billion dollars worth of goods mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in Shin Jang and uh weaguer uh autonomous regions. These goods carry significant risk of having been produced by forced labor and are illegal to import into the United States.
▶ 1:10:41We must do more to punish the criminals that are breaking our trade laws and inflicting serious harm to our economy to the tune of over a trillion dollars every year. Only then can we stop the bleeding, protect our citizens, and ensure the continued credibility of US trade policy.
▶ 1:10:58HR1869, the Protecting American Industry and Labor from International Trade Crimes Act of 2025, will establish the structure needed at the Department of Justice to go after criminals who perpetrate trade crimes. These crimes include trade fraud, tariff and duty evasion, illegal smuggling, trade-based money laundering, trafficking in counterfeit goods, and much more.
▶ 1:11:27This bill will enable DOJ to dedicate specialized personnel to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes. As more crimes are investigated, more criminals are caught and more prosecutions put those criminals in jail. US trade policy will will better pro protect Americans and better protect uh the strength to adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party.
▶ 1:11:52The importance of these issues to all Americans is clear from the broad bipartisan group of members sponsoring this bill. I want to thank all sponsors for their hard work as well as hard work by the selected committee on the Chinese Communist Party to put together this excellent legislation. We advanced nearly identical legislation on a bipartisan voice vote last Congress and I urge all my colleagues to support this legislation once again. And I yield
▶ 1:12:22Gentleman yields back. The chair will recognize the ranking member for his statement on the bill.
▶ 1:12:25Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I strongly support this legislation. The bill would create a trade crimes task force within DOJ to investigate and or to strengthen our capacity to investigate and prosecute trade related crimes. Trade crimes are an ongoing problem for our people and our businesses. Foreign hackers equip computer chips with spyw wear and slip them into our stream of commerce.
▶ 1:12:49And our businesses market opportunists use unstable materials to create counterfeit batteries that explode and maim some of our unsuspecting ecigarette users, which does not seem like a fair punishment for smoking ecigarettes. and handbags made with forced weaguer labor passed off as fair trade materials make American consumers unwittingly complicit in outrageous human rights crimes. Cyber intrusions can risk a company's trade secrets without their knowledge.
▶ 1:13:19They may never even become aware that they were part of a data leak, but a foreign competitor can use the intellectual property to unfairly compete against targeted US companies. The deluge of counterfeits has made it increasingly difficult for prosecutors at DOJ to enforce our laws. This legislation as drafted would help the government prevent trade loss by creating a task force to identify, investigate, and help prosecute trade crimes that hurt Americans in every industry.
▶ 1:13:49This legislation's bipartisan. I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle on the Select Committee on China, the House Appropes Committee, and the Judiciary Committee for working to carefully negotiate a bill that, if properly funded, would help the US crack down on foreign entities that try to circumvent our trade laws. Policing counterfeits that harm American consumers, um, endanger our national security, and destroy billions in profits for US companies is important work.
▶ 1:14:17I'm glad we all agree that DOJ prosecutors should focus on keeping our country safe. I support this legislation and I encourage my colleagues to do the same and I yield back the balance.
▶ 1:14:27Gentlemen yields. Gentleman yields back. The chair now recognized gentleman from Wisconsin to offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.
▶ 1:14:33Mr. Chairman, there is an amendment at the desk.
▶ 1:14:36amendment in the nature.
▶ 1:14:37Not objection. Amendment nature of substitute be considered as red and shall be considered as base tax for the purposes of amendment. The chair now recognizes gentleman from Wisconsin to explain the amendment. This amendment in the nature of a substitute updates the year from the title of the bill and strikes the appropriations language in section six.
▶ 1:14:54On May 13th, the House Committee on Appropriations voted on the fiscal year 2027 commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agency bill, which included the appropriation to address trade crimes within the criminal division of DOJ. As a result, the appropriation language in the bill is unnecessary and duplicative of the work already done by the House Committee on Appropriations. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment and I yield back.
▶ 1:15:22Gentleman yields back. The gentle from North Carolina is recognized.
▶ 1:15:25Um, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm in very strong support of this bill and a co-sponsor of it. We are working on this issue in North Carolina. As a matter of fact, our Secretary of State has her own division that works on these issues, but they are overwhelmed and they need federal help, particularly when things cross state lines and for in all of this international um really, let's just say, theft
▶ 1:15:56of people's goods and their innovation. And so, I commend the bill and I really look forward to seeing it on the floor as soon as possible. Thank you, and I yield back. The gentle lady yields back. The question is on adoption of the amendment nature of substitute. Of course, that will be followed by uh immediate by a vote on reporting of the bill. All those in favor say I. I.
▶ 1:16:18Those opposed, no. Okay. The chair, the eyes have it. The amendment nature substitute is adopted. The question is on favor reporting the bill as amended. All those in favor say I. I. Those
▶ 1:16:27recorded vote.
▶ 1:16:28Those opposed? No. And record a vote being requested. The clerk will call the
▶ 1:16:32Mr. Jordan.
▶ 1:16:33Mr. Jordan votes yes. Mr. Mr. Isa, Mr. Biggs, Mr. Mcccleintoch,
▶ 1:16:40Mr. Clint votes I, Mr. Tiffany, Mr. Mr. Roy, Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Fitzgerald votes I, Mr. Klein, Mr. Klein votes I. Mr. Gooden, Mr. Vandrew, Mr. Nells, Mr. Moore, Miss Hagaman, Miss Lee, Mr. Hunt. Mr. Fry,
▶ 1:17:06Mr. Kylie, Mr. Growthman, Mr. Knot, Mr. Harris,
▶ 1:17:13Mr. Harris votes I, Mr. Ander,
▶ 1:17:16Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Schmidt votes I. Mr. Gil, Mr. Bombgartner, Mr. Raskin,
▶ 1:17:24Mr. Raskin votes I. Mr. Nadler,
▶ 1:17:26Mr. Nadler votes I. Miss Lofrren, Miss Lafrren votes I. Mr. Cohen, Mr. Cohen votes I. Mr. Johnson
▶ 1:17:34Mr. Johnson votes I Mr. Lou Miss Gyipol Mr. Kareah Miss Scandan Miss Scanland votes I Mr. Necuse Miss Mcbath Miss Ross Miss Ross votes I Miss Ballot Miss Balot votes I Mr. Garcia Miss Camelager Dove Mr. Mosquitz Mr. Goldman. Miss Crockett,
▶ 1:18:02how am I recorded?
▶ 1:18:04Mr. Isa, you are not recorded.
▶ 1:18:06Mr. Isa votes yes. Mr. Gooden votes I.
▶ 1:18:16Votes. Mr. Moore. Mr. Moore votes yes. Mr. Garcia, you're not recorded. Mr. Garcia votes I.
▶ 1:18:46Miss Cam Loger, you are not recorded.
▶ 1:18:49Miss Camagervs I. Darl, how are you doing?
▶ 1:19:01Mr. Mr. Bakes votes yes.
▶ 1:19:06Mr. Vandrew, you're not recorded.
▶ 1:19:09Mr. Andrew votes yes. Mr. Gman Mr.
▶ 1:19:31Gman votes I Mr.
▶ 1:20:10Lou, you are not recorded.
▶ 1:20:12Mr. Sure. That's fine.
▶ 1:21:14I apologize. I It's It's uh not every day you have a member come in in wheelchairs. I was checking out Mr. Harris. What happened over the weekend? He was in a little accident. Uh and I still thought we were one short. Uh the clerk will report.
▶ 1:21:23Mr. Chairman, there are 23 eyes and zero
▶ 1:21:26Um the bill is approved. The eyes have the bills already to be reported favor to the House. Members will have two days to submit views. Without objection, the bill is reported as a single amendment. Nature substitute incorporating all adopted amendments and staff is authorized to make technical and conforming changes. Uh pursuant to notice I call up HR 175 that deport alien gang members act for purpose of markup. Move the committee report it favorably. The clerk will report the bill.
▶ 1:21:49Hr 175.
▶ 1:21:50Without objection, the bill will be considered as open for amendment at any point. The chair now recognizes the gentleman u the chairman of the subcommittee uh Mr. Mcccleintoch from California for an opening statement.
▶ 1:21:59Uh thank you, Mr. Chairman, during the Biden administration, the Democrats opened our borders to the largest illegal mass migration in history. This included some of the most violent criminal gangs and cartels in history, which quickly established themselves in our communities and began a reign of crime that included human trafficking, drug trafficking, vehicular manslaughter, extortion, burglary, robbery, assault, and murder.
▶ 1:22:26Today, an estimated 10,000 MS13 gang members are loose uh in our country. Trend Ara is active in at least 19 states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Tennessee, uh Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, as well as Washington DC.
▶ 1:22:55The sheriff of Teraryi County, California, testified to our subcommittee that the Sinaloa cartel now operates throughout the state of California, including extensive drug and human trafficking, extortion, and even organized execution squads.
▶ 1:23:09He estimates that half of the crime he deals with in his rural county involved illegal aliens, many serving organized criminal The toll of this deliberate policy of the Democrats mounts with every news Despite this carnage, there is no specific provision in law to allow authorities to immediately deport members or accompllices of these criminal gangs and to summarily deny them immigration benefits and admission based on their involvement with these criminal
▶ 1:23:40organizations. This bill fills that glaring gap in our nation's It creates clear grounds of inadmissibility and deportability for aliens who are members of criminal gangs or who have promoted, aided, conspired with, or participated in gang activities. It provides immigration authorities with the tools necessary to act before these individuals commit additional crimes on American soil rather than waiting until innocent Americans suffer the consequences.
▶ 1:24:10This legislation also establishes a clear statutory definition of a criminal gang. The offenses covered under that definition are not minor infractions. They include drug trafficking, firearms offenses, crimes of violence, human trafficking, identity theft, money laundering, alien smuggling, and other serious criminal conduct. These are the very activities that fuel organized criminal enterprises and threaten public safety throughout our nation.
▶ 1:24:36This bill also requires the detention of gang affiliated aliens during removal proceedings. This provision reflects a simple reality. Individuals who have demonstrated allegiance to criminal organizations represent a substantial public safety risk and should not be released into our communities while their immigration cases are pending. This closes loopholes that allow gang members to obtain immigration benefits were never intended to protect violent criminals.
▶ 1:25:05Under this legislation, gang members would be ineligible for asylum, temporary protected status, special immigrant juvenile status, and other forms of immigration relief. These humanitarian protections were created to assist vulnerable individuals fleeing persecution or hardship, not to provide safe haven for members of organized criminal enterprises. Now, we've often heard the Democrats argue that existing law is sufficient.
▶ 1:25:32Well, if that were true, we would not continue to see criminal gangs of illegal aliens operating in American communities from coast to coast. Now, would we? We would not see local law enforcement agencies struggling with gang rellated violence from people with no legal right to be here. [snorts] We would not see repeated instances in which dangerous individuals evade removal despite clear evidence of their gang affiliation. The president put a simple question to members of Congress during a State of the Union message.
▶ 1:26:02Stand if you believe the United States government should put the needs of American citizens ahead of illegal aliens. Not a single Democrat They keep telling us that they support removing dangerous criminal illegal aliens from our country while they do everything they possibly can to keep them here, including storming detention facilities, assaulting law enforcement officers, and defending sanctuary laws that are specifically designed to keep criminal illegal
▶ 1:26:33aliens in our communities when the law requires that they be removed. So, here's yet another chance for the Democrats to join us in requiring the removal of criminal gang members and their accompllices from our country immediately and automatically. This restores clarity to the law, strengthens public safety, and reinforces the principle that the United States will not serve as a sanctuary for foreign criminal organizations. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I yield back.
▶ 1:27:03Gentleman yields back. The chair now recognizes ranking member for an opening statement. Thank you kindly, Mr. Chairman. Uh, our colleagues invite us to believe that this legislation is necessary to repair a gaping loophole in our laws permitting alien criminal gang members to freely enter and remain in our country and do their dirty business and somehow preventing the administration from removing them.
▶ 1:27:27If that were true, of course, we would gladly support legislation to close such a dramatic and overlooked loophole. Uh but despite all of the dramatic rhetoric, that is not remotely the case. If there's anyone who really believes that we can't remove alien criminal gang members from uh the country today, they're too innocent to be led out of the house by themselves. The administration has ample broad authority under our existing immigration laws to deny entry to or remove criminal gang members.
▶ 1:27:57Current law already contains numerous provisions ensuring that convicted criminal gang members are deportable and inadmissible. Section 212 A3A of the INA allows the administration exclude anyone who seeks to enter the United States and intends to engage in any unlawful activity at all. Section 237A4A renders deportable any non-citizen who's engaged or is engaged in any criminal activity endangering public safety.
▶ 1:28:25These provisions obviously provide ample authority to render deportable andadmissible any gang member. Um so why is the majority bringing forward this legislation when the people it claims to be targeting are already clearly covered by current law? Perhaps it's because this bill would allow the administration to claim it's cracking down on foreign criminal gang members, the worst of the worst, without having to offer any real evidence in particular cases.
▶ 1:28:54This legislation grants the administration sweeping authority to declare anyone to be a past or present gang member so long as an officer asserts he has reason to believe that they are a gang member or once were a gang member. Uh the outrageous and lawless treatment of people alleged to be gang members has already led to huge miscarriages of uh justice even without this legislation being passed.
▶ 1:29:19Take the case of Herce Reos Barios, a 36-year-old professional soccer player and coach. He was an asylum seeker from Venezuela, awaiting his asylum hearing. But unbeknownst to his family, he was swept up and flown out of the country under the Alien Enemies Act to a torture prison in El Salvador as part of the government's dragnet campaign against Trend Arua. He had no criminal record and no criminal charges were ever filed against him.
▶ 1:29:47But he was sent to a dictator's prison in El Salvador because he was simply declared to be a reputed gang member. And why? Because he is a tattoo on his right arm which was mistakenly associated with the gang. In fact, the tattoo is of a soccer ball topped with a crown which signifies the soccer club Real Madrid.
▶ 1:30:09Take the case of Andre Hernandez Romero, a gay makeup artist and barber who fled Venezuela's brutal maduro regime, which was persecuting him simply because of his sexual orientation and because he was against their corrupt government. His asylum claim was pending when he too was swept up in the government's campaign because of his benign tattoo of two crowns, one symbolizing his father and one symbolizing his mother.
▶ 1:30:36His tattoo for his parents was the only evidence used by the administration to claim that he was a quote gang member and then to send him to the infamous torture facility in El Salvador. To this day, the government has never provided any other evidence beyond that tattoo that Andre was actually a gang member.
▶ 1:30:57The Trump administration also tried to deport a Venezuelan couple with temporary protective status multiple times, claiming without evidence that they were members or were associated with Trenar Aagua. Judges threw both of their cases out with one saying she would have literally thrown administration officials out of her chambers if they had asked her for an arrest warrant in the case based on the completely weak and pathetic evidence present presented.
▶ 1:31:25ICE, we learned today, even lies about US citizens. I knew about this case for a while, but they had not gone public with it. Um, a US citizen from Maryland was arrested by ICE agents in December and held for 25 days. This is a US citizen, like the vast majority of the people in this room today, held for 25 days despite her offering proof of her citizenship, but they didn't believe her.
▶ 1:31:52and she was held um for nearly a month uh despite all of her protests and her family protests that she was born in the United States. The DHS continually claimed that she was an illegal alien from Mexico. They've not apologized, but they've issued her a passport. She didn't have one like half of the people uh in the United States. Half of the US citizens in the United States don't have a passport.
▶ 1:32:15So, look, judicial frustration with the administration's cavalier attitude towards the rules of evidence and the burden of proof tells us everything we need to know about this new proposal. Judges across America have openly rebuked the administration for systematically lying to them. In court, the conduct of DOJ attorneys has gotten so bad that judges are questioning if this administration is deserving of the longrunning presumption of regularity in the operation of governmental law enforcement.
▶ 1:32:45If judges can no longer assume that executive branch officials have properly discharged their duties, why would we give them even more wideopen discretion and vague language with which to abuse their government offices? What if the administration's claim that it's taking on drug cartels and going after the worst of the worst, which is why it needs uh this legislation suddenly? Well, it turns out that's totally bogus, too.
▶ 1:33:11President Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez for his crime of helping drug traffickers move hundreds of tons of co cocaine, more than 800,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States. The president of Honduras, Hernandez, said that he was going to stuff it up the nostrils of the gringoes. Hernandez was also accused of taking huge bribes from El Chapo and getting millions of dollars from other drug trafficking cartels.
▶ 1:33:40Trump uh not only pardoned him um and uh blamed Biden for his harsh treatment of this global narot trafficker, but Trump also pardoned Ross, the mastermind behind the dark web platform Silk Road, that was used by drug dealers to sell more than $200 million worth of narcotics online. That guy was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.
▶ 1:34:05And yet, after Trump pardoned him on day one of his administration, that guy is now back at work, a completely unrepentant criminal and a threat to public safety. It's difficult to take seriously the argument that suddenly we need massive new redundant legislative authorities to hunt down criminal gang members and international drug traffickers when the convicted drug traffickers at home and abroad are getting full presidential pardons and the red carpet from the Trump administration.
▶ 1:34:33The administration's bombing campaign wiping out fishing boats in the Caribbean in the Pacific has led to no detectable decrease in the amount of cocaine flowing into our country. And federal drug prosecutions are at an all-time low. ISIS dragnet mass deportations have obstructed federal prosecutions of cartel drug smugglers by deporting the witnesses, the victims, and informants. As we've described in our report, a quiddle by removal.
▶ 1:35:02Under this administration, gang members and drug traffickers get pardoned while innocent people are falsely accused of gang membership and sent to torture prisons abroad. We blow up fishermen, decimating the rules of war and our notions of due process while cocaine flows freely in our country and we've got no meaningful plan for treatment of our people. ICE and CBP are shooting American citizens like Renee Good, like Alex Prey, brutalizing protesters.
▶ 1:35:32Far from targeting the worst of the worst, the administration has detained and deported people who've committed no crimes at all and pose no safety threat. And now the majority wants to give them even more power to abuse. This administration has demonstrated it cannot be trusted to accurately identify real gang members. The few guard rails this bill tries to insert are completely inadequate.
▶ 1:35:53The definition of a criminal gang in the bill is dangerously broad and loose and allows the administration to label all sorts of people's gang members without requiring any evidence at all. The bill states a criminal gang is an ongoing group, club, organization, or association of five or more persons that has as one of its primary purposes the commission of a felony drug offense, including simple possession of marijuana.
▶ 1:36:19This could mean a group of high school kids who have gathered on the weekend to smoke marijuana could be deemed a criminal gang under the bill. It also includes harboring undocumented people. This provision is not restricted to those in the business of smuggling, but includes anyone who provides shelter, transportation, or support to undocumented immigrants and thus could be read to cover clergy members who provide undocumented immigrants a place to stay or food for their children, as many of them
▶ 1:36:49do. The Catholic Church has come out forcefully against this government's abuse and mistreatment of migrants. in the US Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed a similar bill the house the House voted on nine years ago. Would this administration use the powers granted to them by the bill to declare Pope Leo as the leader of a criminal gang for harboring undocumented people? Donald Trump has already called the Pope weak on crime. Is this the next step?
▶ 1:37:15I oppose this really dangerous bill which gives the administration broad loose discretion and authority that it simply cannot be trusted with as they have demonstrated time and again. I urge our colleagues to oppose this bill. I yield back Mr. Chairman.
▶ 1:37:30Gentleman yields back without objection. All other opening statements will be included in the record. Chair now recognize the gentleman from California to offer an amendment in the nature of a
▶ 1:37:37Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have an amendment at the desk.
▶ 1:37:39Clerk will report
▶ 1:37:40amendment in the nature of
▶ 1:37:41objection. amendment. The nature of substitute will be considered as read and shall be considered base tax for the purposes of amendment. The chair now recognizes a gentleman from California to explain the amendment.
▶ 1:37:49Uh thank you Mr. Chairman. The ranking member would rather wait until the MS13 gang member here who's here illegally. Uh rapes, assaults, or murders a fellow American before taking any action.
▶ 1:38:02Point of order. The gentleman is not explaining the nature of a substitute.
▶ 1:38:06Gentleman gentleman is recognized. He can explain it the way he wants to explain it.
▶ 1:38:09Thank you. Um, if the individual's an MS-13 member, that should be enough to insist that they be removed. I mean, if a rattlesnake is curled up in your bedroom, would you wait to remove it until it strikes or would you get it out of your bedroom before it can harm you or your family? That's the fundamental question here. There's a there's a new term of foot called suicidal empathy.
▶ 1:38:36It describes virtue signaling that is so naive that it invites actual harm. And I want to thank the ranking member for illustrating that disorder in real life. Uh as to the amendment, uh it makes a small change in the short title of the bill. It expands the immigration relief in ineligibilities. It makes technical changes to the TPS provision, criminal gang definition, mandatory detention provision, and withholding of removal provision.
▶ 1:39:02adds uh crimes such as kidnapping and racketeering to the criminal gang definition and makes technical changes to the grounds of inadmissibility and deportability. And with that, I yield back.
▶ 1:39:13Gentlemen yields back. The gentleman from New York is recognized.
▶ 1:39:16Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I start out by uh uh endorsing everything the ranking member said, but I'll go a little more specifically. one, it is made here a crime to uh be a member of a a gang, the bill doesn't require conviction.
▶ 1:39:41How can you uh act on someone uh based on the allegation that he's committed the crime, namely being a gang member, without convicting him in a court of law of that crime? So no evidence need be given that he is a uh uh member of a gang. Somebody simply may must assert it.
▶ 1:40:04This is about the most unamerican thing I can think of since the Bill of Rights was enacted in Second point, talking about the strikes in the they are murder. Murder straight and What was wrong with our old policy? If you suspected a boat of having nar of h having narcotics, the po coast guard intercepted that boat and inspected it.
▶ 1:40:35If there were narcotics on it, arrested the occupants and uh confiscated the narcotics and if there were no narcotics, tip their hat and said, "Go on your way." Instead, with no evidence whatsoever, the president orders that people that boats be uh uh um um destroyed and the people on them killed. This is murder, pure and simple.
▶ 1:41:01There is no doubt in my mind that the president in the next administration should be prosecuted for murder. But unfortunately, the uh Supreme Court decision on in the Trump case that said that a president cannot be questioned for anything his official duties precludes that. But I have no doubt that in the next administration, Pete Hexath should be and will be prosecuted and convicted of murder. I yield back.
▶ 1:41:29Could it could uh the gentleman yield
▶ 1:41:31to the gentleman?
▶ 1:41:32Thank you. Uh thank you for your your comments, Mr. Nabler. Um the the destruction of those alleged gunboat uh drug boats in the Pacific uh have nothing to do with war. As you point out, we're not at war. There's been no declaration of war. I know that Donald Trump doesn't think he needs a declaration of war, but they weren't even asserting these were acts of war. So what were they?
▶ 1:41:56As you were saying, that was just lethal violence administered against people without any kind of due process at all. Right. So, we appointed ourselves, not just the officers, but the prosecutors, the judges, and then the jury uh laying down a death sentence against the people who were on the boats, whoever they were, whether they were involved in drugs or not. It could be a case of mistaken identification. That's what due process is all about.
▶ 1:42:25The last time we discussed this, I remember one of my colleagues said to me, "Well, you're not for due process for guilty people, are you?" That's the whole point. We don't know if they're guilty until they've had due process. That's why those are about the two most beautiful words in the Constitution, if not the two most beautiful words in the English language. If you think the government is infallible, which is not something I usually hear from my friends on this side of the aisle, although I do hear it increasingly more under Donald Trump, but if you think the government is infallible, then great.
▶ 1:42:54You don't need due process. If you think the government can make mistakes and government officials and officers and prosecutors can make mistakes, then you need due process. That's why the framers built it into the Constitution. And so this legislation is a further part of exactly what the gentleman from New York is describing, which is a demolition of our basic ideas of due process.
▶ 1:43:18Now, it's enough simply to label somebody a member of a gang, which can be any kind of club or organization or association that has ever advanced one criminal aim, including smoking marijuana. Uh, or look, I mean, we got a president of the United States who's convicted of fraud. Is fraud one of those? I don't know if fraud is in there. Could that be a criminal gang? I mean, come on.
▶ 1:43:39Let's walk our way back from this intense uh attempt to uh give the government complete and total discretion to do whatever it wants. It leads to situations where totally innocent people are put into solitary confinement or pinned up against other prisoners in torture facilities around the world. And I want to thank the gentleman for his his point
▶ 1:44:03and reclaiming my time. I'll point out the president was convicted not of fraud but of sexual assault and sexual assault is certainly a uh
▶ 1:44:12that was a civil adjudication. I was referring to the criminal conviction but it was nonetheless it was a civil adjudication of sexual assault and uh just saying everything else again. Um, you cannot label someone a gang member and take uh action against that person without the evidence that will convince a jury. Gentlemen,
▶ 1:44:37that's the basis of our constitution and of our bill of rights. I yield back.
▶ 1:44:41Gentleman yields back. Gentleman from New Jersey is recognized.
▶ 1:44:44Thank the chairman. I want to thank Mr. Mcccleintoch for putting this good legislation forward and all the work that he's done in on these issues in this area. I I think you know again it's important to hear the other point of view but we've had this argument before and I don't know why time after time and I'm going to stay cool calm and collected today the one side is always defending criminals always defending illegals we've had people here who have been victims over and over again
▶ 1:45:14and while we hear some words we don't see any action for the victims out there for the people who are hurt let's Start out by understanding that the people we're referring to are not legal Americans in any regard. We would have the right to deport them even if they weren't gang members.
▶ 1:45:34But we're trying to, I guess, be as open-minded, I'm not even know what the right words are for, and say if you are illegal and you are a gang member that you must be deported. Not that we can think about it.
▶ 1:45:47we can still in a different administration let you go out and do what you do that you have to be deported and you know in America we do have processes the very fact that the ranking member was able to discuss different individuals that may or may not have been I don't know all the cases I knew of some of them that were going to be deported and have some issues and then it was determined no that wasn't correct that very fact that he was able to discuss that and point it out in a handful
▶ 1:46:18of cases shows that the system works. But the but for us to keep people here who we know are dangerous, we know are criminal, we know we're member of criminal gangs, we know that don't belong here, we know that there are many victims, people who've been hurt, who've lost family members, who've been raped, who've been attacked, who we have felons. I I won't go through all. I can give you lists of people who've done the wrong thing. That's wrong to keep them here. I don't get it.
▶ 1:46:48I don't understand it. We keep talking about the American people. The American people don't understand that piece of it. Secondly, when we talk about the drug boats, these are not just innocent fishing vessels. They investigate. They find out what they're doing. They know what they're doing. They're hurting our babies, our children, our American people, our American citizens. They're killing them.
▶ 1:47:12And yeah, we do have to keep our borders closed and we do have to defend our borders and those that would push those drugs on others have to be stopped. I can't speak to the other issues and the pardons or whatever, but I know that we need to stop those that would hurt our American people.
▶ 1:47:32Would the gentleman yield
▶ 1:47:33in one second? Um, what they're doing is murder, pure and simple. with so many. You all have sat here where we've had the angel moms. You've sat here where brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and mothers and fathers have talked about the people they lost that shouldn't have happened that wouldn't have happened if Mr. Mcccleintoch's legislation was law and many of the other things that we want to do.
▶ 1:48:03Again, I will yield and I'm going to wrap up by saying and I may reclaim my time. We're not speaking about American citizens. We're speaking about people who broke the law already, but now have gone an extra step and are also committing atrocious criminal acts. I yield. I
▶ 1:48:25I thank the gentleman for yielding. I just want to point out that with respect to the boats, I wasn't aware that under our law, uh, drug smuggling is a capital crime. I yield back. um I reclaim my time.
▶ 1:48:43You know, again, if it isn't, maybe in certain cases it should be when you're moving large quantities of drugs and focus on one particular nation, in this case, the United States of America. And again, you know, we're not going to do that. We could drag the families in here. We can drag the real Americans. We all love to bring up what does America think? The real people. I know.
▶ 1:49:08I meet people every day who tell sad stories about what's happened to their family because of drugs. It's an epidemic. And it's not only, you know, we've got to do more with drugs than just wait till they're here and wait till people are addicted and then have social workers and doctors and nurses have to deal with that. We need to do that. We need to do it, unfortunately.
▶ 1:49:32But how about we try to stop the drugs from flowing in and our Americans from be getting addicted? Fentanyl in China, South America, the stuff that comes over from all over the world trying to destroy our nation. No other country would allow this. And by the way, if you had American gang members in other countries that are law-abiding countries, see what happens to them. Watch, listen, and see what happens to them. I got to tell you, American gang members in other countries would be in a lot of trouble.
▶ 1:50:02They don't want it. I yield back.
▶ 1:50:04Gentleman yields back. Gentleman from
▶ 1:50:07I think I think gentle lady from Vermont and we'll get to you, M.
▶ 1:50:10Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just just briefly to respond to my colleague, Mr. Vandrew. Due process is there to protect all of us, not just the accused. When we have due process, we can gather evidence. We can talk to witnesses. We can find out in the in the case of these drug boats that are being blown up. We are not just attacking those boats. We are attacking witnesses.
▶ 1:50:37If in fact they are running drugs, then you would think that what's valuable to us to crack those cartels is to have us able to question those people. and our colleagues who serve on the committees of jurisdiction have asked for the evidence, have asked for this government to get back to us about the evidence because we do want to prevent drugs from coming in here.
▶ 1:51:06And when we kill witnesses, when we kill people who may be part of larger rings, then we are not taking full advantage of what due process does for all of us. We are literally killing the people that can help us crack these cartels if in fact they're part of cartels. Why don't we have that evidence is I I yield to the ranking member.
▶ 1:51:28Well, thank you for that excellent point. Due process protects not just the accused, it protects all of us. It allows us to conduct the criminal investigation. But there's another group that it protects, which is innocent people who are swept up in the drag net. The distinguished gentleman from New Jersey [clears throat] says that the fact that we're able Excuse me.
▶ 1:51:48The fact that we're able to identify people who were wrongfully deported to a torturer's prison in El Salvador and could have spent the rest of their lives there had there not been protests, which I don't believe the gentleman was part of. He thinks that that somehow vindicates the system. Those people were never prosecuted. They were never given a hearing.
▶ 1:52:10They were literally swept up in the early days of the Trump administration in the Trenda Aragua uh dragit sweep and just sent out of the country. And that's exactly what we're trying to avoid here. I these people were 100% innocent. They've been returned to their lives. Nobody has uh advanced a single iode of evidence against them. And I don't think we can just, you know, roll our eyes and say, well, say Lavie, because there might be people still down there, um, who haven't been released because of it.
▶ 1:52:40And I hope the next time it happens, we will be able to work together on a bipartisan basis to insist that the rigors of due process be applied to everybody because people's liberty is way too sacred simply to entrust to lawless government agents. And so what we're afraid of here is look, does anybody really believe that we don't have the power to deport criminal aliens from the country right now or to prevent them from coming in the country? I mean, give me a break. Nobody believes that.
▶ 1:53:10You're telling me that we went through the entire first Trump administration and nobody noticed that there was a law permitting criminal alien gang members to get in? I mean, it's ridiculous. So this is obviously just for political value, but in the process, what you're doing is you're creating hopelessly vague and loose language that will lead to more miscarriages of justice. So I yield back to the gentle lady.
▶ 1:53:34The gentle lady yield
▶ 1:53:34just a moment. It is the dangers not trusting this uh administration to be clear with us and the American people about the evidence that they have against those who are accused.
▶ 1:53:57We had an incident where you had uh DOJ and Homeland Security taking taking to the public airways constantly about cases, whether it was Renee Good, whether it was Alex Prey, whether it was somebody who they a tattoo on their hand that didn't even exist.
▶ 1:54:23We do not want vague language that can empower any administration, Democrat or Republican, without evidence, to go after American citizens. Mr. Vandrew,
▶ 1:54:35will the gentle lady yield?
▶ 1:54:36Briefly, I will.
▶ 1:54:37Okay, we'll be very brief. When drug lords are patrolling our waters and our country and pushing drugs on our kids, the best thing they can learn is they're not going to get away with that. And yes, they are going to be
▶ 1:54:49Will the gentle lady yield? I will finish up.
▶ 1:54:52I I I I take I reclaim my time.
▶ 1:54:54We can teach them they're not going to get away with it until Donald Trump pardons them because he has pardoned dozens of criminal fraudsters and international drug traffickers and other criminals. So that that's why it's hard to take this seriously. By the way, fraud is included under this law and so that does make relevant the the criminal fraud conviction on dozens of counts in New York City. I yield back. Thank you.
▶ 1:55:16And I yield back.
▶ 1:55:18Gentle lady yields back. Gentleman from California is recognized. Mr.
▶ 1:55:21Thank you. I I believe that my colleagues may have been confusing the civil action against the president with former Congressman Bob Fner who was convicted of his crimes of assaulting women. Um the president has been exonerated. The lawfare used against President Trump has been overturned uh by the process. Uh, and I would hope that we would move on from the false allegations that occurred under the last administration.
▶ 1:55:53President Reagan was always kind to liberals and rightfully so. He said, "Liberals aren't stupid or poorly educated. They just know things that don't happen to be true." And I think that's exactly where we are at this moment. Mr. Vandrew recognizes the phrase. The fact is there is a difference between a right and a privilege.
▶ 1:56:16This legislation is dealing with a recognition that noncitizens are privileged to be here. Yes, they have rights under the Constitution. However, the privilege of being in the United States can be revoked at any time and due process is by definition limited. decisions can be made, rightfully so, to evacuate them. But that's not even what we're dealing with here.
▶ 1:56:45We're dealing with 10 plus million people, many, many, many of them criminals, but even those who were not, who were all led in by the previous administration. An invasion of our country occurred under four years of Joe Biden. And the measures that everyone's complaining about on the other side of the aisle are the measures that will only undo a fraction of what was allowed during the last administration.
▶ 1:57:15What the president's trying to do is pump build water out of a boat that was allowed to essentially open all the the orififices and you can bring water into a boat much faster than you can pump it out. And that is exactly where we stand. As to the fastboats, if our third president were alive today, President Thomas Jefferson would have looked and said, "These are pirates.
▶ 1:57:45They bear no flag. They operate ships designed for speed well beyond any fishing boat. And they do not heave too." when uh alerted to these crafts that are being shot and yes they are being doused are in fact the ones that we know with great certainty exist for one purpose to smuggle. They have massive amounts of engines and they are moving quickly.
▶ 1:58:14They in fact bear no flags and they do not stop when summoned to. So the idea that there's some sort of innocent and that you should give on the high seas due process to these boats carrying massive amounts of drugs into America is simply a matter of being well educated and knowing things that aren't true.
▶ 1:58:37to believe that in fact due process is working and that we can undo the damage of 10 plus million people ushered into the United States, including many of them that have been just emptied out of foreign jails in a timely fashion by doing the same process as the Democrats would approve, is simply fantasy.
▶ 1:58:59If we want to come close to getting rid of a small portion of the worst of the worst during this time of just four short years of President Trump, he has to work as aggressively as possible, use all the tools at his disposal. And yes, we should provide tools to expedite as much as possible that ability.
▶ 1:59:24And again, that would not be necessary if we had not had a president who who failed to faithfully uphold his duties under the Constitution. Now, President Reagan, citing him again one more time, asked famously at the end of four years, are you better off now than you were four years ago? The
▶ 1:59:44gentleman yield.
▶ 1:59:45Wait a moment. The fact is, are we safer today than we were less than two years ago? The streets of our cities are safer because of this removal. The se streets are safer because of the president's use of his authority, including in the nation's capital where we sit today. So, thank you, Mr. President, and I look forward to voting to give you just a little more defined ability to do the job that you are doing for America.
▶ 2:00:15Would the gentleman yield?
▶ 2:00:16And I would yield eight seconds.
▶ 2:00:18I thank you. I I just want to point out that uh
▶ 2:00:21I visited Delaney Hall, a detention center last week and I found there a uh a high school student.
▶ 2:00:28I yield back. My time is expired.
▶ 2:00:31Gentlemen, gentlemen, yield back.
▶ 2:00:33Can I see?
▶ 2:00:34The ranking members recognized for UC.
▶ 2:00:35Thank you. I ask unanous consent for the following statements to be made part of the record. The US Conference of Catholic Bishop statement against this
▶ 2:00:43A letter from 24 faith-based groups including church, world service, and world relief.
▶ 2:00:47Objection. and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
▶ 2:00:49Without objection.
▶ 2:00:51Um I believe I don't know who's next, but I'll go and what I thought it was Mr. Johnson, but if that's all right, we'll go to Mr. Johnson.
▶ 2:00:58Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll yield uh to the gentleman from New York to finish his point.
▶ 2:01:03Thank you. I I visit, as I said, I visited last week Delaney Hall, an ICE detention factor uh in in Newark uh run by a private company. I found there a high school student who'd been taken away just before her prom, a a girl who's lived here since she was one year old. Um, and convicted of nothing, not the worst and the worst.
▶ 2:01:28I found there someone who was um suffering from colon cancer and getting no treatment. I found there someone who was diagnosed with breast cancer uh and is waiting a month ago and is waiting for a mammogram.
▶ 2:01:42I found there that the only medical treatment people get for anything is So, I don't know how we can in good conscience um say that these that that that that we're deporting the worst of the worst uh or that our detention facilities uh uh don't violate every law on the books. I I thank the gentleman for yielding.
▶ 2:02:06Gentleman is welcome and I rise in opposition to this uh bill. This bill allows the Trump administration to deny someone entry to the United States if they have reason to believe the person is a member of a criminal gang. That's just like, you know, they're doing with these drug boats, so-called drug boats down in the Caribbean, saying that we have reason to believe. They won't share their reasoning with you.
▶ 2:02:33So you have no way of independently determining whether or not their actions in extrajudicially killing suspected or alleged uh drug dealers is correct or not. Uh you just ask to believe that and accept it. Well, I don't. Um this administration uh cannot be believed. Uh they compulsively lie, distort, uh they uh trick you.
▶ 2:03:02Uh, you can't believe anything they have to say. This legislation allows the Trump administration to deport green card holders if a Trump administration official decides that the green card holder is or has been a member of a criminal gang. And there's no due process for that determination just like there's no due process for these uh speedboats.
▶ 2:03:27When did it become illegal to operate a speedboat in the Caribbean or in the Eastern Pacific? If if you can do it, uh some person from uh Venezuela can operate a speedboat, that doesn't mean they're a drug dealer. We've already seen this administration make unfounded accusations of gang affiliation.
▶ 2:03:51The Trump administration deported young men because they had tattoos, even though those tattoos had nothing to do with gangs. And federal agents conducted a nighttime raid on a Chicago building claiming there were gang members inside, even though the government produced absolutely no evidence of alleged gang membership. When these are just simply magic words that the government can use to deport people without showing any evidence, they could they become ripe for abuse.
▶ 2:04:20And we know how abusive this administration has been. It is all too easy to see the government using this language to deport people who dare exercise free speech or who oppose the administration's policies. Instead of making us safer, this will cause our communities to live in even more fear.
▶ 2:04:40If the Trump administration cared about public safety, they would not create a $ 1.8 billion slush fund to reward people who stormed the capital and attacked capital police. If Trump cared about public safety, he would not pardon a major cocaine trafficker.
▶ 2:04:58And if the co if the Trump administration cared about public safety, it would allow federal law enforcement to work on gun prosecutions and child exploitation cases instead of pulling them off to work only on immigration enforcement. But this bill is not about public safety. It's a dangerous bill that gives the Trump administration unfettered power to deport someone without proof of wrongdoing. I oppose it. I urge my colleagues to do the same.
▶ 2:05:28And I would also point out that this legislation comes at a time when people's are when people are finding more finding it more and more difficult to make it uh financially. The cost of living is just so high and people are living daytoday at this point not knowing what's going to happen the next day. And instead of addressing those concerns, we are here giving the Trump administration the power to deport people for allegedly being a gang member.
▶ 2:05:58Uh with that, I yield back.
▶ 2:06:01Wait, I
▶ 2:06:02gentleman yields back. The gentleman from Arizona is recognized.
▶ 2:06:06Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, uh last week I met with the Phoenix DEA office and their personnel and toured their lab as well. And also I met with the director of the office of national drug policy and they will tell you contrary to what we heard from the other side. They are actually interdicting more uh illicit drugs including fentinel and cocaine than ever before.
▶ 2:06:29I also however got to meet with eight angel families and these families have endured the worst pain imaginable because their government failed to do its most basic job protect innocent Americans. I sat with Maryanne Mendoza and thought about her son Brandon who was killed by a repeat criminal illegal alien who never should have been in this country. I thought about Steve Ronbec and his son Grant murdered by an illegal alien who should never have been here.
▶ 2:06:55I heard from the Baserto family whose son Fernando was killed by a repeat illegal alien offender who should have been removed long before he had the chance to hurt anyone else. I spent time with Patty Fox and her daughter Cararissa, whose life was permanently changed by someone who never should have been allowed to remain in the United States. She will be bound and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life because uh someone was here that should not have been here.
▶ 2:07:22I listened to Shannon Estus describe her daughter Shaye murdered in her own home by a Russian national living here illegally. Someone who should never been in this country. I thought about Patricia and Doug Quetsz whose son Nicholas was murdered by criminal gangs in Mexico. These aren't statistics. These are families who wake up every day carrying a burden that never goes away. And every one of them asked for the same thing. Do everything you can to stop this from happening to another family. And that's what this bill is about.
▶ 2:07:52It's about keeping a promise. A promise that we will do everything within our power to prevent the next family receiving that horrible phone call. I promise that we will not accept preventable tragedies at the cost of failed policies. A promise that we will put the safety of American families first because we need to be honest about what we are dealing with. Foreign criminal gang members do not come to the United States to contribute to our communities.
▶ 2:08:17They not do not come here to build businesses, raise families, or strengthen our neighborhoods. They come to seow chaos, to traffic drugs, exploit vulnerable people, traffic children, traffic and rape women. They come to commit violence. They come to terrorize communities that hardworking Americans have spent generations building. That's what criminal gang members come here to do.
▶ 2:08:40And right now in Phoenix, Arizona, it was reported to me that there are more than 1,000 drophouses still today. The number one human drug and and and uh trafficking corridor is in my state. It comes because we have a 62 mile that we can't close. We can't close.
▶ 2:09:08On the other on the south side of the border, there are seven plazas controlled by the Senoloa cartel just even with Arizona border. and they continue to pour over and there is according to the DEA as they listed the number of communities that have cartel and gang members in them. The cartel are gang members.
▶ 2:09:34Under current law, gang membership alone is not always enough to make an alien in inadmissible or deportable. Gang members can still seek various forms of immigration relief and remain in the United States. And that makes no sense. HR175 closes that loophole. It creates clear grounds to remove alien gang members. It ensures they are detained. It prevents them from exploiting legal gaps to remain here indefinitely. And most importantly, sends a simple message.
▶ 2:09:59If you're a member of a criminal gang, the US is not your American people are tired of watching preventable tragedies unfold while politicians search for excuses. The families I met with last week do not want speeches. They want action. They want accountability. Now I'll just speak to the drug boats. The drug boats are not uh bukallic fishermen out for a leisurely uh sail.
▶ 2:10:28They've been designated foreign tra uh terrorist organizations and that changes the very nature and it makes them not subject necessarily to civil law but actually to military law. And when there's military authority, they can go ahead and be destroyed. That's the drug boats. Whether you like it or not, that's the authority.
▶ 2:10:50The other thing about visiting um uh detention facilities, I have visited dozens of facilities [snorts] all along the border. I've never heard of any ill patient being said, "Oh, we're going to give you um you know, some kind of uh painkiller, just you know, a Tylenol." I I have never seen anyone there where there's not a contracted medical officer there. And that's that's the way that
▶ 2:11:20The gentleman yield.
▶ 2:11:22I don't have anything left to yield, Mr. Mr. Nadler. But I can tell you this. Um I don't believe you for a second on that. yield back.
▶ 2:11:31Gentleman yields back. The gentle lady from Pennsylvania.
▶ 2:11:35Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, trying to stick with the order. The gentleman from Illinois is recognized.
▶ 2:11:40Uh, [snorts] thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move to strike the last word.
▶ 2:11:42Gentleman's recognized.
▶ 2:11:43Um, HR 175 is yet another effort by Republicans to violate due process and give the Trump administration blanket authority to persecute any non-citizen that it wants. And as someone who's not running for reelection or higher office, I want to say this.
▶ 2:12:03This is a stunningly broad uh bill that would empower DHS agents to classify any non-citizen as a gang member and subject them to mandatory detention and deportation. It would even bar them from critical forms of protection like asylum, the violation of domestic and international law. This is a breathtaking assault on due process.
▶ 2:12:31Reason to believe is a stunningly low standard of proof and arbitrary designation of gang affiliations that will enable mandatory detention and deportation without any criminal conviction. As has been pointed out, the bill also codifies racial with an absurdity broad definition of criminal gang and no reliable standard to prove gang membership.
▶ 2:13:00It's a loaded gun that the Trump administration will use, especially against brown and black people and anyone else that it wants to smear as a gang member, including children. The bill is not even necessary. Our immigration laws, as has been stated, already bar people from entry and trigger deportation for a wide range of conduct, including gang So, what is this really about?
▶ 2:13:29It's about giving the Trump administration more power to weaponize the immigration system and inflict violence on our communities. We already know how Trump and his cronies lie and cover up about alleged gang membership to strip immigrants of due process. We saw that when they rendered hundreds of men to a torture prison in El Salvador with no evidence of gang membership.
▶ 2:13:57We also saw it in Chicago last summer. Federal agents conducted a militarized raid on an apartment building in the dead of night that resulted in US citizens dragged out of bed and children, some naked, zip tied and detained for hours. The Trump administration claimed the building was filled with trend Ara gang members and said they captured two confirmed gang members.
▶ 2:14:25Yet, prosecutors have still not filed one single criminal charge against anyone who was arrested, nor have they revealed any evidence showing anyone belonged to the gang. Court filings have shown that the operation had nothing to do with gang membership. It was just one more dragnet in racial profiling by this administration.
▶ 2:14:51I've seen firsthand the devastation caused by this raid, including to US citizens who no longer trust their government. I find it ironic that Republicans want to talk about gang membership. We have gangs of violent mass dug agents who are work in DHS who are kidnapping, brutalizing, shooting, and killing people on our streets without accountability.
▶ 2:15:18We have gangs of corrupt criminals inside this administration who are using the federal government as their personal slush fund. The president himself is helping the power of his office to turn our country into a gangster state where extremist organizations like the Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers are empowered after trying to overthrow the government. As usual with Republicans, every accusation is a confession.
▶ 2:15:46Instead of wasting our time with another bill that guts due process and advances a racist anti-immigrant agenda, maybe it's time that we deal with the criminality of the highest levels of our government. Thank you. And I yield back.
▶ 2:16:00Would the gentleman yield if you have I think 40 seconds. Thank you for those very powerful and uh lucid remarks. Um, I wanted to take a second just to respond in the gentleman from California who said that um he I think strongly suggested that the president's criminal convictions in New York uh on fraud were reversed. They were not reversed. He was found guilty by unanimous jury on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the hush money case.
▶ 2:16:30Um and uh that has not been reversed. But I think he was confusing it and it's understandable because the president has a very thick docket but with a separate civil fraud case where the judgment was upheld uh by the highest court in New York but the amount of damages was reduced from $500 million to something lower. Thank you and I yield back.
▶ 2:16:50Gentleman yields back. Gentleman from California is recognized.
▶ 2:16:52Uh thank you Mr. Chairman. The Democrats keep insisting that this law is redundant of current law. Well, if it's redundant of current law, why do they object to it? The Democrats tell us that there there needs to be a conviction of being a gang member before we can remove him from our country. Well, we don't require a conviction of being a member of a terrorist group in order to remove him from our country or to refuse them admission to our country. The mere affiliation is enough.
▶ 2:17:21The fact is, for decades, federal immigration laws provided federal officials the ability to designate terrorist organizations. This bill simply gives officials the same ability to designate dangerous uh uh groups such as criminal gangs. The bill has the exact same rights and procedural protections that the law already applies to foreign terrorist organizations.
▶ 2:17:44It includes the same procedures related to classified information, the same procedures related to judicial review and the same standards for courts to apply. It also includes the same procedures for congressional notification and publication in in the Federal Register. Remember, every person who is legally entering our country is questioned about their plans and intentions by a counselor officer if they're applying for a visa or by an immigration officer at a point of entry.
▶ 2:18:14And they can be denied entry and be returned to their own country if there's reasonable suspicion over those circumstances. No conviction is required. The murderers of Kayla Hamilton and Lake and Riley were gang members, but they were not convicted of any crime. Lake and Riley's murderer even had a pending asylum claim.
▶ 2:18:34One was an MS-13 member, the other Trendy Ara, and they could not have been admitted to this country if this law had been in effect then and Kayla Hamilton and Lake Riley would be alive today. And theirs is a tragic story told over and over across this country with every new victim. And by the way, deportation is not a punishment.
▶ 2:18:58Deportation is an administrative act recognizing that an individual is not legally here and removing them from the country. Those illegal aliens in detention are perfectly free to leave anytime they want to any country that will accept them. They are simply not free to return into our country.
▶ 2:19:18This bill simply says an illegal alien who's affiliated with a criminal gang cannot be released into the United States as the Democrats gleefully did for four years or access other privileges that we accord to immigrants. I yield back.
▶ 2:19:32Gentleman yield.
▶ 2:19:33Yes, I yield to the
▶ 2:19:34gentlemen. I appreciate the gentleman yielding. So the Democrat's position is if you're here in the country, maybe illegally, but you're you're not a sister here in the country and you're affiliated with the gang, you can't be removed. That's our position. We actually think you should and that's what that's what the bill does. But that's not where they stop. Remember, we just had a hearing two weeks ago. They don't stop there. They actually want preferential treatment for someone. We saw Mr. Dano said right there. He gives preferential treatment to individuals who are here illegally and commit another crime.
▶ 2:20:01He changes the plea agreement what he might charge depending on their immigration and deportation status. So, they take it a step further. All we're saying is if you're here not a citizen, you're a member of a gang, we don't think you should stay. Plain and simple. They say no, you should stay and we're going to take it a step further. And as I've said now several times, it's all part of their systematic, I call it their four-part plan. Step one, as the chairman of the subcommittee has pointed out, they let in 10 million illegal migrants during the Biden administration.
▶ 2:20:31Step two, create sanctuary jurisdictions, which makes it difficult to remove those migrants when they commit another crime. Step three, don't fund the people who do the removing. We're having that debate as we speak. They won't fund ICE. And then step four, prosecutors say, "We're not even going to charge them or we're not going to charge him the same way we would charge an American citizen who commits the exact same crime." Such a deal, such a plan. That is what they're executing. And all this is just good common sense. And so I appreciate the work of the the the chairman of the committee and what he's done on this bill.
▶ 2:21:01Would urge a yes vote. With that, I would yield back uh the time. simply repeat the point. If if a rattlesnake's curled up in your bedroom, would you wait to remove it until it strikes or would you get it out of your bedroom before it can harm you or your family? That's precisely what this bill is about.
▶ 2:21:16Earlier, if the gentleman would do one more time, earlier the ranking member said, "We need to walk our walk our way back. I can't remember the kind walk our way what we need to walk our way back from is this sanctuary jurisdiction." Almost a third of the country, 18 big big blue populated cities, 11 states, three counties, District of Columbia are sanctuary jurisdiction. So, American citizens live in there. And understand in simple terms what that means.
▶ 2:21:45The politicians tell local law enforcement, don't work with federal law enforcement when it comes to enforcing federal law. That is just plain stupid. But that is what's going on in almost a third of the country. That's what we need to walk our way back from. We need to keep all this in in context. Again, I yield back.
▶ 2:22:01Gentleman's time is expired. The gentle lady from Pennsylvania is recognized.
▶ 2:22:05Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, I I think we need to level set here a little bit. I mean, we've just heard Democrats think this, think that. Most of that was fiction. Um, certainly no Democrats are
▶ 2:22:18What part was fiction?
▶ 2:22:19The part that says
▶ 2:22:2131.5% of the country lives in a sanctuary jurisdiction.
▶ 2:22:24No, no, no, no, no. It's still my time.
▶ 2:22:26No, but I'm just asking what part was fiction. You said what I said was
▶ 2:22:31I'm reclaiming my time. Can I start
▶ 2:22:33You I'll give you all the time you want. I'd like you to answer the question.
▶ 2:22:36So, the chairman just suggested that Democrats want to allow in criminals. Want to allow in violent criminals and uh don't don't have any um interest in getting rid of violent criminals. That's just fiction. Um that's why there are laws on the books that Democrats and Republicans have voted for. But what we are objecting to is the absence of due process in all of these bills that you keep bringing forward.
▶ 2:23:04I mean, what makes America different is our feelalty to the rule of law is that we observe due process. And that simply means if you've got a gripe about something, if you think someone's a criminal, well, then you have to prove it. And the problem we have with this administration is they keep making accusations of people particularly if those people are immigrants to this country and they can't prove them because those are false allegations.
▶ 2:23:31Whether it is claiming that people who they are blowing out of the water in the Caribbean are drug dealers when we haven't seen proof that they all are. It certainly appears from reporting that some of them were fishermen that many of them were not bringing drugs into this country. um this idea that the gentleman from California said, "Oh, they refused to hail over. There was nothing to hail over to.
▶ 2:23:53They're being bombed by drones and by airplanes." So, you know, if you think that amounts to due process, then we should be having hearings on that because it doesn't meet any standard of due process that we've ever seen. Then we hear an alternative justification that well, we don't need to do due we don't need to observe due process because this is actually the law of war. Well, when we talk to the folks who are experts in the law of war, they say in fact, what's been going on with bombing these boats has often constituted war crimes.
▶ 2:24:23So once again, we are not living up to what the American ideals are with respect to if you accuse someone of something, if you are going to murder them, if you are going to send them to jail, if you're going to send them to some foreign goolog, you better be able to prove the allegations you're making against them. And this administration has been particularly suspect when it makes allegations about people that it views as enemies.
▶ 2:24:48Heck, they've accused Americans who were standing up and exercising their First Amendment rights of being domestic terrorists. So, uh I think we have very strong reasons not to um trust without proof, without due process uh when when the whole of government is being weaponized for political purposes. I was however heartened by uh Mr. Big's remarks and I agree with him.
▶ 2:25:16The the American people are tired of watching preventable tragedies occurring because of bad policies. And if that's his opinion, I think he should be joining with us on some of the gun safety uh legislation that has been waiting for hearings and waiting to be moved because we see every day across this country.
▶ 2:25:36We see people um being killed because of bad policy um because of the failure to enact common sense gun safety laws in this country that will help our law enforcement actually enforce the laws on our books. Um with that, Mr. Ruskin, uh, I yield to
▶ 2:25:54Thank you. I want to thank the distinguished gentle lady from Pennsylvania for her excellent comments. Let let me just add a couple things. Um, the our colleagues talk about murder and rape. Murder and rape are against the law and anybody who commits it should be given due process rights, prosecuted, if they're guilty, found guilty, and sent to jail. And if they are uh if they're not a citizen of the United States, they should be deported after they have been convicted and after we've gotten all the evidence.
▶ 2:26:23Uh yeah, in just one second, I just wanted to make one other point. Uh the gentleman says, and this is indisputably true, if certain undocumented people weren't in the country when a crime was committed, then the crime would have been committed. That is indisputably true. It is like also saying if Donald Trump had not pardoned Andrew Paul Johnson, he would not have been able to commit those two sex crimes against 12y olds and then be sentenced to life afterwards.
▶ 2:26:50So yes, we need to have bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform. Let's stop using this as just an opportunity for demagoguery. Why don't we actually sit down and legislate? That's what we should be working on. And I thank you for yielding.
▶ 2:27:04Thank you. And I just wanted to conclude with the rattlesnake analogy. I mean before you kill a rattlesnake before it strikes maybe you should prove it's a rattlesnake instead of just a garder snake. Thank you.
▶ 2:27:16Gentle yields back.
▶ 2:27:20Question is on adoption.
▶ 2:27:22Question on adoption of the amendment in the nature of a substitute. This will be followed immediately by vote on reporting the bill. All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed no.
▶ 2:27:30Opinion of the chair. The eyes have it. The amendment the nature of a substitute is adopted. The question in favor reporting the bill is amended. All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed? No.
▶ 2:27:38The eyes have it. The bill is ordered to be reported favorable to the House. Members will have two days to submit
▶ 2:27:45Seeking a roll call vote. Mr. Chairman,
▶ 2:27:48I wonder if the rule is if I get through that line. [laughter]
▶ 2:27:52I think you made it.
▶ 2:27:53Almost made it. If I get there was like another sentence I had to get to though. Uh the uh uh record vote being requested, the clerk will call the role.
▶ 2:28:02Mr. Jordan,
▶ 2:28:03Mr. Jordan votes yes. Mr. Isa.
▶ 2:28:05Mr. Isa votes yes. Mr. Biggs.
▶ 2:28:08Mr. Biggs votes yes. Mr. Mcccleintoch. Mr. McClentok votes I. Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Massie. Mr. Roy. Mr. Fitzgerald. Mr. Klein, Mr. Gooden, Mr. Vandrew, Mr. Nells, Mr. Moore.
▶ 2:28:33Mr. Moore votes yes. Miss Hickman, Miss Lee,
▶ 2:28:38Miss Lee votes yes. Mr. Hunt, Mr. Fry, Mr. Kylie, Mr. Growthman, Mr. Growthman votes I. Mr. Knot, Mr. Harris, Mr. Ander, Mr. Schmidt,
▶ 2:28:56Mr. Schmidt votes I. Mr. Gil,
▶ 2:28:59Mr. Gil votes yes. Mr. Bombgardner,
▶ 2:29:02Mr. Rascin,
▶ 2:29:04Mr. Mr. Raskin votes no. Mr. Nadler, no.
▶ 2:29:06Mr. Nadler votes no. Miss Lofrren, Mr. Cohen,
▶ 2:29:12Mr. Cohen votes no. Mr. Johnson, Mr. Johnson votes no. Mr. Lou, Miss Gipal, Mr. Kareah, Miss Scandan, Miss Scanland votes no. Mr. A goose, Miss McBth, Miss Ross, Miss Ballant, Miss Balant votes no. Mr.
▶ 2:29:36Mr. Garcia votes no. Miss Camlager Dove,
▶ 2:29:40Miss Camlager Dove votes no. Mr. Mosquitz, Mr. Goldman, Miss Crockett, Mr. Fry, you're not recorded. Mr. Fry votes I.
▶ 2:30:36Mr. Klein,
▶ 2:30:40Mr. climb votes. Yes.
▶ 2:32:54gentleman from Carolina.
▶ 2:33:00Mr. Harris.
▶ 2:33:01Mr. Harris votes. Yes. at 1:30.
▶ 2:34:14Mr. Vandrew, you are not recorded.
▶ 2:34:16Mr. injury votes. Yes.
▶ 2:35:13Mr. Honor, you're not recorded. Mr. Honor votes yes.
▶ 2:41:14Mr. Not, you are not recorded.
▶ 2:41:16Mr. Knots. Yes.
▶ 2:41:25Click a report.
▶ 2:41:26Mr. Chairman, there are 15 eyes and eight nos. Um the eyes have it. The bill is ordered to be reported favor to the house. Members will have two days to submit views without objection. The bill will reported as a single amendment. The nature of substitute incorporate all adopted amendments and staff is authorized to make technical and conforming changes. Pursuant to notice we call up HJ res one. Wow.
▶ 2:41:55for purpose of markup and move that the committee reported favorably to the house. The clerk will report report the joint resolution
▶ 2:42:02HJ res one.
▶ 2:42:04Without objection, the joint resolution will be considered as read and open for amendment at any point. The chair now recognizes a gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Biggs, for an opening statement.
▶ 2:42:11Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Founders build a system of checks and balances to protect the American people from concentrated power. They understood that liberty survives only when power is divided, restrained, and accountable. A central part of that design is the Supreme Court. Its duty is to defend the rights and freedoms of every American, not to serve as a political tool for any party or administration. Alexander Hamilton made this clear in the Federalist 78.
▶ 2:42:35He wrote that the court must remain independent from the political branches so it can stand as a barrier against unconstitutional acts. The judiciary was designed to be the quiet guardian of liberty, insulated from the passions of the moment, and be the weakest branch. Opposition to court packing is not new and not partisan. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned that court packing was a quote bad idea close quote and that quote if anything would make the court look partisan, it would be that close quote.
▶ 2:43:05Justice Steven Brier called court packing a structural alteration that would erode trust in the judiciary and reminded his own party, quote, "What goes around comes around." Close quote. Even President Biden back in the day when he still believed in judicial independence called FDR's court packing plan a bonehead idea and a terrible, terrible mistake that's threatened the independence of the Supreme Court. Now, that's something that President Biden said that I can really agree with.
▶ 2:43:32President Biden's own Supreme Court commission refused to endorse court packing. The commission admitted that it was divided on expansion and war warned that adding seats would undermine the court's legitimacy and damage democratic values. They concluded that the risk of court expansion were considerable, including the likelihood that it would erode, not restore public trust. Court packing is a direct assault on that independence. It is an attack on the Constitution itself.
▶ 2:44:00It is an attempt to turn the Supreme Court into an extension of political power rather than a check on it. We must ask a simple question. How can the Supreme Court protect Americans from government overreach if the same government can pack the court whenever it dislikes a ruling? How can the court restrain unconstitutional power if it can be punished for doing its job? And history gives us a clear warning.
▶ 2:44:24When President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court in 1937, Congress, including Democrats, rejected it outright. FDR even attacked the justices personally claiming quote lowered mental or physical vigor close quote made them unable to understand modern problems. Congress responded with bipartisan outrage. Members introduced at least 10 constitutional amendments to fix the court at nine members.
▶ 2:44:49The Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee called FDR's plan quote an invasion of judicial power that violates every sacred tradition of American democracy. Close quote. and the Senate voted 70 to 20 to strip every court packing provision from the bill. Both parties understood then what we must understand now. Court packing is a direct threat to the republic. Many of my colleagues across the aisle have pushed court packing schemes for years. It's not new.
▶ 2:45:17The ranking member Rascin, ranking member Johnson, others made it a central goal during the Biden Harris era. Their objective has been the same from the start. intimidate the court, pressure the justices, clear the way for their agenda. And let's be honest, they had no problem with the court when it delivered rulings they liked. They celebrated Roie Wade for decades. But the moment the court issued rulings they disagreed with, they demanded the institution be blown up and rebuilt to guarantee political outcomes. Their goal is not ethics.
▶ 2:45:47It's not policy. It's it's power. One of their own members, former Representative Mandere Jones, said the quiet part out loud. quote, "Nothing will be enough to protect our democracy short of sending this far-right majority on the cur on the court to its rightful place in the minority and into the dust bin of history by expanding the Supreme Court." Close quote. That's not about legitimacy. That's about punishing the court for doing its job. After the DOS decision, Democrats held hearings designed to delegitimize the court and inflame their base.
▶ 2:46:18They claimed other rights, interracial marriage, same-sex marriage, contraception, were at risk, even though the DOS majority explicitly stated otherwise. They used the hearing to launch personal attacks on Justice Thomas for expressing views he has held for decades. Some even insinuated he omitted Loving versus Virginia because of his interracial marriage, a disgraceful and baseless smear. This is not about protecting rights. That was about intimidating the court and rallying the far left. And look at Virginia.
▶ 2:46:48One ruling they did not like and Democrats immediately called for wiping out the entire state Supreme Court. That's not reform. That's They're not defending an institution. They're pursuing raw power. And they're willing to tear down every guard rail the founders put in place to get it. We have watched Democrats on this committee launch personal attacks and smear campaigns against sitting justices. They have questioned their integrity, their families, their faith, their right to serve, their qualifications. They've done this not because of ethics, but because they want political outcomes.
▶ 2:47:19Their reckless rhetoric has consequences, very real consequences. A left-wing radical was arrested outside Justice Kavanaaugh's home uh armed and prepared to assassinate him. Law enforcement stopped him, but Democrats dangerous words helped fuel that attempt. Their attacks created an environment where violence became thinkable. And we have seen the same pattern in the repeated attempts by radical leftists to assassinate President Trump. Not once, not twice, but at least three times.
▶ 2:47:48This is what happens when extremists put power above country. When they treat political opponents as enemies, when they tell their supporters that institutions must be destroyed if they stand in the way. This assault on the Supreme Court must stop. This assault on the Constitution must stop. Democrats efforts to pack the court, impose political ethics codes, or force term or age limits on justices are all part of the same campaign. They want to weaken the judiciary.
▶ 2:48:15They want to silence constitutional limitations on their power. They want a court court that obeys them, not the constitution. This constitutional amendment proposed today will fix the number of justices at nine members and will stop their court packing scheme. It will protect the court's legitimacy. It will preserve the checks and balances that safeguard our freedoms. And it will ensure the right of all Americans that they remain secure no matter who holds political power.
▶ 2:48:45The Supreme Court must remain independent. It must remain strong enough to do its job. And it must remain a guardian of liberty, not a casualty of partisan ambition. I yield back.
▶ 2:48:57Gentleman yields back. The gentleman from Maryland's recognized.
▶ 2:49:01Thank you kindly, Mr. Chairman. I oppose this resolution precisely because it undermines the constitutional design in the framer separation of powers. It's fascinating to me that our friends would cite the framers in the federalist papers to undo the handiwork of the framers. The question before us today is not really about whether nine should become a magic number and elevated above all the other numbers.
▶ 2:49:26It's about whether this Congress, which has already surrendered congressional war powers, congressional taxing and tariff powers, and congressional spending powers to a president clearly desiring to be a king should now permanently relinquish another constitutional power that we've got that the framers endowed us with in article one of the constitution.
▶ 2:49:49The framers understood that the more a president seeks to expand his powers, the more important it is for the other branches of government, Congress and the judiciary, to exercise our own powers to serve as a structural check on an imperious and rapacious executive branch. That's why we've got the power of impeachment and trial, conviction, removal, and permanent disqualification. We've got the power of oversight. We've got the power of the purse.
▶ 2:50:19Uh alas, over the last year and a half, we've seen this GOP controlled Congress act in an utterly obsequious and invertebrate fashion before a president who thinks he can go to war without Congress, impose the largest tax in American history in a tariff in the form of a tariff without Congress, create billion dollar slush funds without Congress, give himself and his family permanent forever in all caps immunity in uh
▶ 2:50:50in all cases relating to crimes and civil wrongs that he or his family members have committed without Congress having any say in it and reduced the Supreme Court in the federal judiciary to being the pure instrument of his will. Now placing loyalty to party over loyalty to the Constitution, Mega House Republicans have repeatedly declined to act in any way to reject these outrageous usurpations by the executive.
▶ 2:51:15In fairness to the Senate Republicans, they have properly reacted with outrage and scorn for the president's sorted attempt to deal himself a $ 1.776 billion slush fund to bankroll his private militia and ship of fools political operation. But this joint resolution from uh the GOP takes us much further down the road of institutional capitulation and surrender.
▶ 2:51:41This is not constitutional conservatism in any way, but rather one more abdication striking at the very architecture of our republic. The founding fathers designed Congress to be the predominant branch, the one representing the people directly and the one most capable of standing as a bull work against a president grasping for kingly powers.
▶ 2:52:04As the people's representatives, we are meant to protect the Constitution, not surrender its authority whenever a president likes his particular stacking and packing of power on the Supreme Court and wants to freeze it into place for all time. But that's what the administration now demands. And our colleagues fall into line like good foot soldiers, proactively and permanently seating another one of Congress's powers to the presidential will for no good reason.
▶ 2:52:33Over the course of our history, Congress has repeatedly exercised its authority to change the size, the structure, the jurisdiction, and other aspects of the Supreme Court and fe and the federal judiciary and for a variety of reasons. The Judiciary Act of 1789 established the first Supreme Court with six justices. I guess that would have been unlawful and not to the liking of our friends.
▶ 2:52:56that in 1801, President John Adams and Congress shrank the size of the court from 6 to 5 to limit President Jefferson's ability to make appointments. I guess that would have been unconstitutional, too. But when President Jefferson and his Republican majority came into power, they restored the sixth seat. In 1807, Congress expanded the size of the court to seven seats when it created the seventh circuit court of appeals. And that became the pattern then. There should be one justice for each federal circuit.
▶ 2:53:26Again, in 1837, Congress expanded the number of federal circuits to nine and the corresponding additional two seats to the court, bringing the total number to nine. In 1863, Congress briefly added a 10th circuit and of course added a 10th justice, giving President Lincoln another justice to appoint. In 1866, Congress abolished that 10th circuit and then reduced the size of the court to seven justices.
▶ 2:53:51Congress did that to deny President Andrew Johnson the ability to nominate justices who might undermine reconstruction with them. Again, in 1869, President Grant increased the court to nine with another judiciary act which set the number at nine justices for nine circuits, matching the number of justices again for the number of circuits. The court remained here until Senate Republicans changed the size of the court again in 2016. Let's see. Wait, what was I'm sorry.
▶ 2:54:21Oh, with Merrick Garland. Yes. Um, and we were down to eight without Merrick Garland by blocking the filling of that Supreme Court seat. So, why would we propose a constitutional amendment now after this history to tie our own hands in the hands of every future Congress? Um, what's going on?
▶ 2:54:42Well, the resolution is obviously meant to cement into place a profoundly lopsided and partisan Supreme Court that was successfully stacked and packed, gerrymandered and engineered by Mitch McConnell after the deaths of Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsburg. In the former case, when President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, one of the most qualified people ever to be nominated to serve being the chief judge of the DC circuit to fill the seat, McConnell did not even allow hearings, much less a vote.
▶ 2:55:10a full 11 months before the next election because he said that the people should decide. Well, of course, the people had decided in electing President Obama to one of those genuine 4-year presidential terms. In the latter case, he rushed a vote for Amy Coney Barrett, check this out, 8 days before the presidential election, and he wouldn't allow hearings or a vote in the case of Merrick Garland's nomination 11 months before.
▶ 2:55:38So give me a break with all the talk about court packing. The court has been packed. Any changes now conceivably could lead to unpacking of the Supreme Court. This measure today is not a serious effort to improve our constitutional system. It's an attempt to pacify the president again by freezing the illegitimate handiwork of the mega senators into place for all time.
▶ 2:56:03Our colleagues are trying to give away another tool that our Constitution deliberately gave to Congress to check the other two branches simply because Donald Trump is demanding it. And we shouldn't be surprised. It's in keeping with the pattern we've seen since January 20th, 2025, where the leadership here has overseen in a completely passive way the unprecedented expansion of executive power and celebrated it. So this proposed constitutional amendment is not headed for ratification.
▶ 2:56:33Everybody knows that. So I turn back to the question before us which is whether Congress should permanently surrender another one of its essential constitutional powers. The framers answered that question well for us more than two centuries ago and I stand with them. Congress was designed to check executive power, not succumb and surrender to it. I oppose this misguided resolution. I yield back to you, Mr.
▶ 2:56:59Gentleman yields back. Uh without objection, all the opening statements will be uh included in the record. Um the chair now recognizes I think the gentleman from Tennessee was first, but I'll get to you then, Mr. Natler. Gentleman from Tennessee.
▶ 2:57:12I move to strike the last word.
▶ 2:57:13Gentleman's recognized. This committee has properly jurisdiction over constitutional amendments of which I've had several over the years dealing with pardon powers, dealing with monuments clauses and other areas where president has trampled over our constitution. It's a heavy responsibility to deal with constitutional amendments and we should use it to address important structural reforms in our democracy, not to try to find political wedges. As Mr.
▶ 2:57:40Raskin has well pointed out the number of justices on the Supreme Court is a historical artifact, not a component of our system of government. It's not the number that's important. It's the justices are impartial and act in accordance with the law. The justices on the Roberts court, at least six of them, have it entirely wrong. They are supposed to have integrity, impartiality, feelalty to the Constitution, and be unencumbered by the politics of the day.
▶ 2:58:07But today we have a court that refuses a binding code of ethics even in the light of trips multi multi multi-tens of thousand dollar trips to Asia to hunting in Texas all over the globe and gifts to take care of justice's grandchildren's education and their mother's houses from private individuals.
▶ 2:58:36Those refusing to have a binding code of ethics has allowed pre Mr. Justice Roberts wife to interview and sell for up to $100,000 spots in large law firms that practice before the Supreme Court as a recruiting fee that Chief Justice Roberts never disclosed because they don't have a code of ethics and they don't have ethics. The Supreme Court does not show ethics to the people and morality. They operate as a political arm.
▶ 2:59:07It undercuts our core and explicit constitutional principles like that no one is above the law and meddles in politics and pursuit of partisan interests. For years, I defended this court, particularly Chief Justice Roberts.
▶ 2:59:22I thought that despite the outrageous conduct of justices Alo and Thomas who took these trips all the time that the chief justice really wanted to preserve the court as an institution which he said I thought he would be the one to stand up for the court. But the past several years have shown he's incapable of doing that or didn't want to do it. Like other justices when they're sworn into office they take two oaths. One a judicial oath and two a oath to the Constitution.
▶ 2:59:50and they swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and they'll be bear true faith and allegiance to that and that they take the obligation freely without any mental reservation that those oaths are taken but Justice Roberts has not abided by it. He's lived up to neither. That's why I introduced six articles of impeachment on the Chief Justice.
▶ 3:00:12And I'd ask each member of this committee and each member post to join because Chief Justice Roberts unfortunately deserves to be impeached and convicted and removed from the court because he has not done his his duty and he's violated his oath. Article one of that holds that he has enabled the court to become a political force and partial to specific partisan interests with unequal application of law.
▶ 3:00:38He's interfered with Article two, he's violated the Constitution by creating a system that undermines the will of the people, can enrich, entrench minority rule, partisan When Virginia passed a Democratic redistricting provision on the ballot in April, seven or eight days later, the Supreme Court released the Cala decision, which they could have done anytime since last October when they had the hearing.
▶ 3:01:06But instead they released the CalaLa decision right after If Justice Roberts cared about caring about the institutional respect for the court, he would not have issued that opinion then when it would interfered with elections that were going on in Tennessee, mine, Louisiana, Alabama, and other states. But he didn't care. He released it.
▶ 3:01:28If he didn't realize the public would think that was political, seven days after Virginia and just in time to get some things going in the South where the former Confederate states could get rid of African-American districts, which they've been wanting to do forever, he was foolish and incapable of having his job and applying his oath properly. And then just this past week, he jumped up when Alabama wanted to move up and get a court that was different than the court that they had approved earlier with the two minority districts. And they said, "Oh, fine. do it.
▶ 3:01:58Let them run under the district with this one minority district. They didn't care about the PCEL rule then and he applies the PCEL rule when he wants to. They came up with something that let the president be immune from criminal and they grabbed that out of their backsides. There's no place in the Constitution that that would have allowed them, but they pulled it up because they wanted to take care of
▶ 3:02:21Time is expired. So that's why I filed that resolution and I urge people to support it or Chief Justice Roberts to resign and get out of the seat that he recognize gentleman from Missouri, Mr.
▶ 3:02:35Kansas. Sorry, Mr. Mr. [clears throat]
▶ 3:02:39Hey, Mr. Chairman. That That's the other Schmidt. He spells both of his names wrong. He's in the wrong body. But other than that, it's all good. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I want to thank you for sponsoring uh this amendment. to thank the chairman of the full committee for teeing it up uh first for hearing and subcommittee and and now for action Before I was in this role when I was attorney general in Kansas, I was one of the original supporters of the so-called keep nine movement, one of the first to lend my name to it.
▶ 3:03:08I think we ought to ask the people of this country through the constitutional amendment process whether they want to take off the playing field the possibility of expanding the court for the purpose of stacking its membership to try to influence the outcome of its decisions as a tool for an agrieved political party either party to use when at that moment in history the court's decisions are not going as that
▶ 3:03:39party would prefer. This discussion in this committee today is nothing new in our history. We've had these same debates since the founding. We've had them throughout our history. John Marshall has made his decision. Now, let him enforce it. We had this debate in the 1930s. Uh I always get a little bit of a chuckle when people talk about kings and no kings.
▶ 3:04:01I mean, my goodness, we had to ask the people whether they wanted to uh amend the constitution, changing the original framework, I would say to my friends on the other side, what the amendment process is about, in order to prevent a president at that time, who many in the public called the king, from seeking re-election yet again, four But one thing that was rejected in the 1930s when there was a lot of turmoil in the architecture of our system was packing the court by expanding it.
▶ 3:04:31In fact, it was proposed and it was rejected by bipartisan including majorities led by members of the other party, the president's party, in both houses of Congress.
▶ 3:04:46Because our predecessors in these roles had the wisdom to understand that fundamentally rewriting the rules of the game by expanding the court to get a preferred outcome in your cases is counter to how we should govern ourselves in this country. It's not only just not fair, it's unwise. As our witnesses testified in the subcommittee on this measure, on this topic, it has no limiting principle.
▶ 3:05:13If you expand from 9 to 10 to 13 today because one faction in our country wants it when a different faction is in power, what's to stop them from expanding to 15 or 20 in order to get their preferred outcome? We have settled at nine justices for the majority of our country's history. As our friend, the ranking member said in his uh exposition on the history of this issue, we've been at nine since just after the Civil War. That's prudent.
▶ 3:05:43It works. Justices of both philosophies appointed by presidents of both parties have said nine's a good number. You ought to stay there. This proposed constitutional amendment asked the people of the United States through the constitutional amendment whether they want to keep nine as the magic number to use the phrase my friend on the other side. That is not only exactly what this debate is about.
▶ 3:06:12It's all this debate is about. All of these other discussions, grievances with the court, they may have their day. People can propose what they want. We can debate and vote. But that's not today. This is about whether or not people ought to be asked if they want our constitution to set the size of the court at 9 to take away the temptation of politicians in the heat of the moment to stack the court with new members to get their preferred outcome on issues
▶ 3:06:42that are important to them. I think we ought to ask the people if that's what they want. I think we ought to advance this amendment. I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for bringing it forward. I urge my colleagues to support it. Let's get it on the floor. Let's get it out of the chamber. Let's get it out to the states and let's let our people decide what they want their government to look like. I yield back.
▶ 3:07:04Will you yield to me, sir?
▶ 3:07:06Will you?
▶ 3:07:07Yes, absolutely.
▶ 3:07:07Thank you. So, the argument has been made that this court is already packed um with judges loyal to President Trump and is intended on remaking wide swaths of law. But it seems my Democratic colleagues have some amnesia there. Just in this term, Supreme Court overturned President Trump's signature bill ter on tariffs. It stopped his National Guard deployments to US cities. So, there's some independence there.
▶ 3:07:35You can laugh as you will, but the reality is this court is a neutral, responsible arbiter and overturns president less often and rules unanimously more often than any of its historical predecessors. I'm I yield
▶ 3:07:48Mr. Chairman, do I have any time to
▶ 3:07:50I or I'm haven't watched the clock.
▶ 3:07:53Yeah, you're out. You're out of time.
▶ 3:07:54Well, then I won't reclaim it.
▶ 3:07:55Thank you. I think Mr. Gentleman from New York, Mr. Nadler.
▶ 3:07:59Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me start by saying I resent you for calling me a liar. I saw what I saw in Delaney Hall. Congressman Goldman and I were together and we saw what we saw. I didn't even mention that they told us that there was medical staff available, doctors from 9:00 to 5:00 Monday through Friday and we were there from 3:00 to 5:00 on Wednesday and there was no me no doctor there. We saw the maggoty food.
▶ 3:08:26So, I resent you calling me a liar unless you've been in Delaney Hall. to the subject of the bill. Since taking office, the Trump administration sought to tear apart our democratic institutions through unlawful and unconstitutional actions. The Roberts court has acted as a rubber stamp. Across 245 federal court orders, challenges to the Trump administration prevailed 59% of the time.
▶ 3:08:55At the circuit level, the challenges prevailed 60 54% of the time. Despite this adherence to the rule of law by the lower courts, the Supreme Court appears to be the most dependable venue for reviving Trump's authoritarian actions. Let me put this into a historical context.
▶ 3:09:15The Dread Scott decision was probably the most despicable decision in American history in which Justice Tory and the Supreme Court declared that oraining that uh black people had no rights which a white man was was uh bound to respect. We had a civil war. Congress passed the 13th amendment and the 14th amendment and the 15th amendment. The latter giving specifically giving black people the right to vote, black men the right to vote.
▶ 3:09:43Um the court and and the uh Congress passed the 1875 civil rights act to give substance to that. The court immediately declared the uh uh law unconstitutional civil rights law unconstitutional. And you had the first redemption where black people were robbed of all their rights. And then you had pie versus Ferguson which continued in that.
▶ 3:10:14And then we had the Warren Court which finally after all those years starting in 1965 um or 1954 started re [snorts] uh restoring those rights and you had the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to 1968 restoring you know guaranteeing voting rights.
▶ 3:10:34But then you had a series of Supreme Court decisions um ending with Louisiana versus Cala which is a second redemption effectively repealing the protections for black voting rights and that's this court. What a disgusting court it is right in the tradition of the court which issued Dread Scott.
▶ 3:11:00But to the substance of the uh of the uh uh bill before us, the constitutional amendment, as the ranking member mentioned, the sup the the size of the Supreme Court has been altered from time to time by Congress. Historically, the idea was to have one justice for each circuit. We now have 13 circuits. Some justices are doing double duty and it's very difficult.
▶ 3:11:27We should have 13 justices as we historically have for one for each circuit and that should be uh uh restored. Uh this constitutional amendment has no purpose other than a an obviously partisan purpose to to to to um um um lock in the current right-wing majority on the Supreme Court.
▶ 3:11:52And also with aside from all the uh arguments on the merits, why would you waste our time knowing perfectly well you're not going to get uh um twothirds vote in the House and two/3s in the Senate? It's a total waste of time. Uh as well as being uh uh protective of a court that um um deprivives people of civil rights um in every conceivable respect. I yield back.
▶ 3:12:20could yield to the gentleman.
▶ 3:12:22But I just wanted to make a point that was made to me by our uh dear colleague from Tennessee whose um majority African-American district has been dismantled by uh this series of court actions. Um this attempt to gerrymander and pack and stack and engineer institutions for partisan purposes is not limited to the judiciary.
▶ 3:12:44It's exactly what President Trump has done with respect to congressional redistricting itself with we had always thought we were bound by the 10-year redistricting principle, but now suddenly the president has plunged us into this mid decade Texas chainsaw gerrymander massacre. And all over the country, we have an attack on the majority African-American districts and on people's right to vote. So, it's very much in the same vein. And I thank you for yielding.
▶ 3:13:11I yield back. Gentleman yields back. Gentleman from Georgia is recognized.
▶ 3:13:19Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move to strike the last word. It is rich that MAGA Republicans are standing before the American people pretending to be guardians of judicial integrity. For decades, however, these same aiding greedy, selfish billionaire fraudsters and polluters and fat cat multinational corporate interest have spent billions of dollars to build a Supreme Court that
▶ 3:13:49protects their financial interests while taking away our right to vote and our reproductive freedom. And they got the Supreme Court that they've paid for, the Roberts Court, which has opened the floodgates to unlimited dark money in our political system, empowering billionaires and oligarchs like Elon Musk, the Koch brothers, Leonard Leo, Holland Crow, and other powerful special interests
▶ 3:14:20to distort and corrupt our political system and to reshape the United state Supreme Court. All the while they're drowning out the voices of ordinary Americans. This court granted Trump unprecedented placing him virtually above the law.
▶ 3:14:41This Supreme Court before he took office gave him immunity and rubber stamped after that all of his uh illegal This resolution is just this this this Supreme Court has resulted in you having to pay higher prices and costs while at the same time this president fattens his own pockets
▶ 3:15:11and those of his wealthy billionaire big shot dark money billionaire friends. This resolution is just another example of MAGA Republicans giving away Congress's power in order to please a president who does not want us to hold anyone, especially himself, accountable. Congress can pass a law changing the size of the court just like it can pass a law that mandates an enforcable ethics code for the court.
▶ 3:15:41But MAGA Republicans don't want to do that. And they're tripping over themselves to limit the tools in our congressional toolbox. They want to give Congress's power away to Trump and then stick their heads in the sand and hope everything works out as it will for the billionaires, but unfortunately not for the regular working people in this country.
▶ 3:16:05But more than anything, this is just a mega The prices of groceries, health care, housing, and gas are skyrocketing for everyday Americans. Yet, Trump keeps getting richer and richer at our He has bought shares in companies like Nvidia and Palunteer before taking policy actions that gave those companies a boost.
▶ 3:16:33And he is even profiting off of this war that he started in the Middle East. That's despicable. Trump bought stocks in oil companies and defense contractors that stand to profit the longer that the war continues. The government purchased drones from a company linked to Trump's son. And the White House directly intervened before the government made a $620 million loan.
▶ 3:17:02The defense department actually made a a $620 million loan. What is the defense department doing? Making a loan and it going into a startup linked to the president's son, Donald Trump Jr. So don't be distracted by gambits like this. A constitutional amendment requires twothirds of the House and Senate and threearters of the states to ratify it.
▶ 3:17:30And we all know that that's not not going to happen here. This is just another way for Trump and his MAGA allies, including those here on this It's an effort to destruct and distract from the corruption and the chaos. Because I believe we have a role to play in ensuring the public can trust our Supreme Court, I urge my colleagues not to give away Congress's power.
▶ 3:17:58And because we need to focus on what matters to the American people, I urge my MAGA colleagues to reject this cynical resolution as I know all Democrats will do on this panel and let's just get to work trying to help make life more affordable for Americans. And with that, I'll yield back.
▶ 3:18:18Gentleman yields back. The we got a number of folks in the queue. I think it's gentle from late from Texas. Then we'll come to Vermont. Gentle lady from It is um it's hard to imagine how you can argue with a straight face that this is what we should be doing in this moment or ever. You see, because this is the same time as you heard an emotional Representative Cohen.
▶ 3:18:48Now, Representative Cohen is a white man, but in Memphis, Tennessee, the district that he represents, it is a majority black district, and black folk decided that he should be in Congress and be their voice.
▶ 3:19:03When you look at what they are proposing to do in Georgia, where it's my understanding that they plan to go after Lucy Mcbav's seat, yet again, when you look at the type of seat that Hank Johnson currently sits in, it is also a VR district.
▶ 3:19:21When you look at the state that they started in, Texas, they decided to go after majority minority districts to the extent that two black incumbents down in Houston just went head-to-head for a seat in which only one would survive. We know that there are currently debates taking place because Debbie Wasserman Schultz is now wanting to run in one of the few VR districts that is left so that black people can have representation.
▶ 3:19:50You see, the reason that y'all want to do this right now isn't because you're afraid that we are after a power grab. It's because you want to lock in this racist agenda for decades to come. Because that's exactly who this court is. This court is racist. This court is immoral. And this court lacks any semblance of ethics.
▶ 3:20:15the fact that this court just on last night decided that they want to go after yet another Alabama seat and then they decided to throw out the votes of the voters in Louisiana because they decided that they wanted to go after yet another black seat in Louisiana. The fact that Virginia decided to stand up and fight back and it was this SAME SUPREME COURT THAT DECIDED forget the will of the people and the fact that they voted WE'RE GOING TO THROW THAT OUT.
▶ 3:20:44This isn't what democracy is supposed to be. So, let me be clear about a couple of things. Number one, the court absolutely needs to be expanded because it's been expanded in the past. And yes, it makes sense if we have 13 circuit courts that we should have 13 judges. But let's just pretend that the size of America was the same. Let's pretend that the complexity of the cases was the same as it was when we originally got the nine. Let's pretend all those things.
▶ 3:21:09I would still argue that it is time to not only expand the court to introduce some form of ethics and to put term limits on because you have bad actors like Mitch This court was packed by the Republicans and that is the reason you don't want it unpacked.
▶ 3:21:28You see, as a trained attorney, I don't understand how the very same court could say that in the state of Texas, four days before we were to have the end of filing, it is too close to the end of filing. And so therefore, we've got to go ahead and go forward with these intentionally discriminatory maps. And these are the words and the characterization of a Trump appointed justice.
▶ 3:21:52It's got to be bad when a Trump appointed justice decides that something is racist and is willing to call a thing a thing and put it into writing. But they did that. They didn't just say it. They laid it out in an opinion that was more than aundred pages long. But this very same court will decide that after votes have been cast to throw those votes out. The reason that we need to do something about this court is because this court has decided that it will bend to the of a wannabe king.
▶ 3:22:22We have never in the history of this country needed a court to say that absolute immunity should be given to a president because historically we don't actually keep criminals in the But we know that even after he had been found guilty by a jury of his peers, y'all went out and y'all wanted to say, "Yes, this is our guy." the same way that right now in the state of Texas for the Texas Senate race, I'm sure all of y'all will line up behind that criminal
▶ 3:22:52as well. So, I don't want to hear about law and order. I don't want to hear about this is the right thing to do. Just be honest about what it is because y'all are basically saying that we're stupid. You're playing in our faces. We know that this is about locking in this agenda because you will never do right by the people. The reason that we have elections is because the people are supposed to decide whether or not your policies are actually working for them.
▶ 3:23:17But because you have killed our economy, because we are sitting in the midst of an unconstitutional, unlawful war. Because we have a president that is lining his pockets in the pockets of his friends and his families in violation of the imalments clause and so many other laws. Y'all want to lock in absolute power by any means necessary? And the last thing that I'll say is I got to respect your gangster because that's exactly how y'all are acting like real gangsters. Y'all are mobbing out.
▶ 3:23:47And that's one reason that the Democrats are struggling right now because they have always tried to play by the rules. I am here to say that I applaud the people of Virginia. I am here to say that I applaud the people of California. I am here to say that we need to meet fire with fire and fight y'all tooth and nail so that we can do right by the people.
▶ 3:24:06Lady is expired. I will yield.
▶ 3:24:11Um, gentle lady yields back. I would just I would just remind uh the gentle lady that we didn't introduce the bill to take the court to 13. The Democrats did. I think Mr. Nadler was the chief sponsor just a couple couple congresses back. Uh we didn't leak the DOB's opinion. I think well I don't know if we can blame it on Democrats, but we didn't leak the DO's opinion. Uh we didn't threaten the court like uh what what what this now famous quote from
▶ 3:24:35Mr. Chairman, whose time are you on? Final order.
▶ 3:24:37My time.
▶ 3:24:38Oh, I didn't know that you didn't have your Okay.
▶ 3:24:40I haven't taken my time.
▶ 3:24:41And you and I gave you like six minutes. So, uh, it's my time. But here's what Senator Schumer said. I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaaugh, you've released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these decisions. So, uh, we we didn't threaten the court. We didn't introduce the bill to take it to 13. People say, "Why are we doing this? We don't have the votes." We don't know. We don't know. Maybe you guys will see the light and do the right thing and and keep it at nine when it comes for a vote. We'll see. You'll get a chance to do that. I think pretty sure it's going to pass and be on the House floor.
▶ 3:25:10And if you guys suddenly find the good Lord and do the right thing, okay, God bless you. That that's how it works. But uh you know, you you said all kinds of things about Republicans. All I'm saying is you introduced the bill to go to 13. [snorts] The top Democrat in the United States Senate threatened the Supreme Court. The Dob's opinion was leaked. You've done all said all kinds of things about Supreme Court justice like Justice Thomas, Justice Alo. You had a hearing where you brought in a pastor, a pastor for goodness sake, who just lied to the committee three years ago.
▶ 3:25:38So, um, okay, you can you obviously say what you want, but I think it's important that we get the facts here. With that, I would yield
▶ 3:25:44Would the gentleman yield? I would yield to the gentleman from Arizona. Sure.
▶ 3:25:48Thanks, Mr. Chairman. So, you know, uh, when you hear when you when I hear all the consternation on the other side and we've gone through the history and how, uh, back in a more rational day, Democrats rejected absolutely expansion of the court. And that's what what we're talk we're not talking about packing the court. We're talking about preventing an expansion of the court. See, and those are really two different things because the Democrats are saying that that the court is packed now. Well, you got nine.
▶ 3:26:18So why would you be opposed to just setting at nine if if you can if you can pack at nine. Not only that, Supreme Court justices come and they go. It is not locked in. I remember thinking as I was going in law school and I was reading all these Warren Court decisions and uh I thought, "Wow, that's a long time. That court was there for a long time.
▶ 3:26:43Sure felt like it anyway." I thought I loved Justice Douglas saying I I reached my decision and then find see if I can find any support for it. I loved it. That was great. That was a paraphrase. I'm not quoting him directly, but that was that was one thing he said one time. But here's the deal. We uh we know that setting at nine is something very comfortable for all It doesn't favor one party over the other.
▶ 3:27:14man, you weren't you guys were uh when after Roie Wade passed, I maybe people were I don't remember. I was kind [clears throat] of young at the time, but I don't remember people saying, "Well, we got to we we got to reap the whirlwind on the on the Supreme Court because proiffers didn't like it." I don't remember that, man. I don't remember that, but maybe it happened.
▶ 3:27:38uh the reality is we're talking about locking in constitutionally a number that is very very comfortable to the American people. And as even Supreme Court Justice Brier said, if you were to expand the number, you would denigrate the um trust that the American people have in the court. Now, you guys don't like the decisions. I get it.
▶ 3:28:08You don't like the decisions. There are decisions that happen even now that I don't particularly like. But the bottom line is we're not talking about packing a court. We're talking about setting the boundaries of the court at nine nine members. And and quite frankly, that's what the American people expect. That's what they're used to.
▶ 3:28:27And I'm hoping that you guys come around and and and uh get on the Ruth Bader Ginsburg bus and the Steven Brier bus and uh your your commission bus, the the Biden commission bus and and the Joe Biden bus. Uh and and back then when even the Democrats said, "Look, you know what? It's wrong." Because it was almost unanimous rejection of FDR's attempt to expand the number in the court.
▶ 3:28:56Hope you get on that bus and I'll yield back to you, Mr.
▶ 3:29:01Yield to the gentleman or I can recognize you next better.
▶ 3:29:05I just had a question, Mr. Chairman.
▶ 3:29:06Gentleman's recognized.
▶ 3:29:07Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Appreciate you yielding. I I just wondered that the gentleman from Arizona made the comment that [clears throat]
▶ 3:29:13um you know there are decisions you don't like and so our friends on the other side get upset with the justices and and you know the shoe's been on the other foot. I mean there have certainly been decisions I've not liked from time to time. I've sat at the council table seven times now. I've argued three and I second chaireed four. We came out ahead on all seven of them. I decided to quit while I was ahead. But we also argued a whole bunch um where we were on the briefs that didn't turn out the way we wanted. So, you know, you win some, you lose some. That's the nature of arguing in front of any court, including the Supreme Court. My question, Mr.
▶ 3:29:43Chairman, the the gentleman from Arizona says, you know, you like some, you don't like. I was just looking at the the numbers from this last term, the October 24 term, and if you look at the six to three cases,
▶ 3:29:55in 15 uh% of those cases, the three dissenting justices who presumably didn't like it, didn't like the outcome, were the three generally perceived as liberal judges. But in 28% of those six to3 cases where there were three dissenters, it was three of the conservative justices who didn't care for it. And I'm I'm just wondering um if this court is so stacked, why are the conservatives in the discontented minority more often than the liberals?
▶ 3:30:24Yeah, well said. And the president's, I think, expressed his concern about that some of those decisions as well. So well said. Time has expired. The gentle lady from Vermont is recognized.
▶ 3:30:34Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to start by uh thank you thank my my colleague Mr. Schmidt. I appreciated your uh comments about why it was that you support this and um I just want to say I reject this in the strongest possible terms because when I reflect on if I bring it back to the people and what I'm hearing from and I do believe Congress is closest to the people what I hear from my constituents is
▶ 3:31:06they want us to pro protect the congressional power that we have right Now there. So in this moment, what I'm hearing is why would you give up any more of your power to the executive regardless of who is in the White House? If in fact we believe Congress is closest to the people, then why would we not be protecting our article one powers in this moment?
▶ 3:31:31when I am at town halls, when I am at the grocery store, when I'm at the post office in the bank, again, these are the times when we actually interact directly with our constituents, there is nobody that is saying to me in this moment that we should be giving up any further power to the executive. And as a former social studies and history teacher, right, we are supposed to be a check. I take that very seriously. It's one of the reasons why I often bring up Article One powers and the importance of protecting them.
▶ 3:31:58Will the gentle lady yield? Not yet. And we got a couple more points. Uh, Mr. Not and I wanted to speak to something that my colleague Mr. Big said about um issues around trust of this uh Supreme Court.
▶ 3:32:14And when you look at uh polling over the last year, whether it's Quinnipic, whether it's Yahoo, whether it's Gallup, consistently a strong majority in this country actually does not have faith and confidence in the Supreme Court right now. Some of that is over the fact that they did pass ethics um an ethics code finally in 2023 with absolutely no mechanism to enforce it.
▶ 3:32:40there is no explicit mechanism for them to do anything once they have found that they are violating their own ethics code and so strong majorities depending on the poll between 63 and 74% of Americans saying we actually don't trust in this court right now so in this moment I don't see why we as Congress would be giving up a tool that we have in our tool back box not saying that we're going to use it this isn't the moment
▶ 3:33:10for us to be contemplating giving up any more power to the executive. And I yield to Mr. Nod for a question.
▶ 3:33:17Yes. Just just as a broader point, I I fully support your uh desire to pull back power from the executive. And I'm curious one one topic that I'm most interested in is pulling back to sort of unchecked executive authority in the rulemaking process.
▶ 3:33:32Is there any bandwidth uh with you or your colleagues to engage on some type of mechanism to pull approval of rulemaking back to Congress from agencies whether it be IRS, EPA, otherwise uh that have really farreaching effects because I agree with you. We we as a body have given far too much authority to the executive and I would like to pull some of that back.
▶ 3:33:53I appreciate that and I see that uh the ranking member would like to weigh in
▶ 3:33:57I would love to work with you on that,
▶ 3:33:59Yes, sir. would love to. I yield back.
▶ 3:34:07Gentle lady yields back. We do have uh I think we have an amendment.
▶ 3:34:11So maybe have you offer that? I do know we um
▶ 3:34:15votes have been called, right?
▶ 3:34:17Yeah. So let's maybe get the amendment. We can do a little debating and
▶ 3:34:21I have an amendment at the desk.
▶ 3:34:22Okay. Clerk will report being reserved by gentle from Arizona.
▶ 3:34:28Amendment to HJ res one.
▶ 3:34:29Objection. The amendment will be considered as read. The gentleman is recognized. Explain the amendment.
▶ 3:34:32Thank you. Um, could I just see the text of it?
▶ 3:34:36The text of the amendment.
▶ 3:34:37right now. The amendment reads simply the I guess the the the base text says that uh the the number of Supreme Court justices shall be limited for all time to nine. And the amendment says unless each circuit is not represented in which case an additional number of justices equal to the number of unrepresented circuits may be added by Congress. And the reason for this, Mr.
▶ 3:35:06Chairman, we we've raised this before is that the number of Supreme Court justices has historically been tied to the federal circuits. And that's where the phrase circuit riding comes from. each justice used to go back to their circuits and then handle a series of emergency petitions, administrative matters and so on.
▶ 3:35:27Um that continues to be the case today uh where each individual Supreme Court justice is assigned to a particular federal circuit for the purpose of handling emergency applications and administrative matters such as motions for extensions of time, bail and release orders, injunctions and other emergency applications, motions for a stay of execution and other motions relating to the death penalty.
▶ 3:35:53So all this says is that we were that you guys have a a presumption for the magical number nine, but we shouldn't be confined to nine when we have at least four federal circuits who are not represented. And I would consider it an emergency situation today. Mr. chairman. Um there are four federal circuits, the 1st, the 6th, the 8th, and the 9th, uh covering 242 million people where there is not a single justice who comes from there.
▶ 3:36:24Seven justices come from either the New York, metropolitan, New Jersey area, or Washington DC. Seven of the nine. There are only three law schools that are represented on the Supreme Court today. Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, and Notre Dame because of Justice Barrett. There's this overwhelming coastal domination of the Supreme Court. Let's take the Sixth Circuit, which is your circuit, Mr. Chairman. That includes not just Ohio, but Michigan, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
▶ 3:36:52Um, millions of uh people live there. There's not a single justice on the court. And I don't know how a member can go back to their own constituency, their own state, and say there's nobody on the Supreme Court who comes from the great law schools in Ohio. There's nobody who comes out of the sixth circuit itself. There's nobody who's been a federal district court judge in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, or Tennessee who's made it up to the Supreme Court.
▶ 3:37:18It continues to be the domination of this eastern coastal elite, which continues to give us pro-Wall Street corporate rulings one after another. So, well, why would we cement into place the historical contingency of nine justices when the vast majority of the American people are not represented on the Supreme Court?
▶ 3:37:42you know, the Federal Reserve Board uh also has a geographic an explicit geographic representation uh requirement um where uh and precisely because lawmakers recognized that placing a single central bank in Washington DC or New York would propound this kind of geographic bias and preference.
▶ 3:38:05So to build public trust they said that a new system needed regional representation and independence and coordination and that's why there are 12 banks regionally and there also is a geographic representation requirement on the central bank and I think that we need to think of the Supreme Court in those terms and that's rooted in the history of the Supreme Court precisely because of the circuit writing duties that each justice uh had.
▶ 3:38:31So I uh a number of the justices happen to live in my district including Justice Gorsuch, Justice Kavanaaugh, Justice Jackson. Uh there there might even be some more. So we know that there's a concentration coming from the DC circuit, from the second circuit out of New York and New Jersey. Um but why don't we have a big country and can't we find uh superb legal talent from all over America to do it?
▶ 3:38:56So in any event, uh if you you prefer nine, I mean, we don't think we need to monkey with the handiwork of the framers, but if you think you need nine, at least you should account for the possibility that people from your own federal circuits should have a place on the Supreme Court. And I yield back to you.
▶ 3:39:12Gentlemen yields back. This gentleman insist gentleman withdraws his
▶ 3:39:15I'll withdraw my point of order.
▶ 3:39:16Point of order. Gentle lady from Wyoming is recognized.
▶ 3:39:21Thank you. Just in order to respond to that to to this particular amendment. Wow. These aren't lawmakers. They interpret and apply the laws and that we pass in the Constitution. It doesn't matter if they're from Nebraska or Ohio or California or Wyoming. Federal law is federal law. That's what they're applying. That's what they are interpreting. Uh I I I I'm just kind of stunned that that would be the argument that would be made.
▶ 3:39:44I think that it is critically important that we have this particular amendment for the specific reason that it is the Democrats that have repeatedly stated that they want to stack the court. Not because the decisions of the court are wrong. In fact, as I listen to the debate that has taken place today, there's very little discussion about the actual substance of the decisions that have been issued by the United States Supreme Court. Whether it is the Sacket decision involving the Clean Water Act or well, Row versus Wade because they're obsessed with abortion and killing babies.
▶ 3:40:13But other than that one, they don't really talk about the substance of the decisions that they seem to dislike but that have been issued by the United States Supreme Court. It is instead name calling and attacks, personal attacks, collective attacks, MAGA.
▶ 3:40:30Um I I mean we could start a drinking game and maybe every time that they say MAGA we can take another shot and see if we can maybe get through some of these insane arguments that are being made about whether we should have nine justices. The idea that we have a supermajority legislature that oversees the various districts throughout the country to make sure that there's a law that comes from Ohio or a law that comes from Nebraska or a law that comes from Arizona. and we're going to interpret it differently and apply it differently than if you're from Washington.
▶ 3:41:01That makes absolutely no sense when we're talking about the United States Supreme Court. I want to give you a couple quotes. There's a commission that was done by the presidential commission by President Biden. They actually recognize the risks associated with the Democrats drum beatat of packing the court every time there is a decision that is issued with which they disagree. And what they stated is actually there is a profound disagreement over whether court expansion at this moment in time would be wise.
▶ 3:41:30We know that it wouldn't be wise because we know the purpose of the court expansion drum beatat is to is to nullify constitutionally statutoily based decisions that are issued by the Supreme Court that the other side disagrees with. That is the bottom line about this discussion. Are there times when the Supreme Court disagrees with me or I disagree with what the Supreme Court has said? Absolutely.
▶ 3:41:53But I don't turn around and say, "Well, we got to get rid of them." That's a totalitarian, despotic way of looking at what our judicial system is. We have article one, article two, and article 3 for a reason. Article 3 covers the judiciary. We are not supposed to be interfering. And every time that the Democrats attack these justices personally, they put them at first at phys at physical risk.
▶ 3:42:18In addition to which they are sending a message of if you don't do what we want, we are going to continue to attack you. You gave statistics about people not trusting the court. What do you expect when half of the the the people in Congress come out and constantly attack that the attacks that I've listened to today, the MAGA, and they hate everybody and they only care about Wall Street and all they care about is the rich guy and they just want everybody to suffer.
▶ 3:42:45Why in the world would anybody make those kinds of accusations when we're talking about the upstanding people that we have on the United States Supreme Court right now? all nine of them, including the ones that I vehemently disagree with on a repeated basis. The fact is, what you guys are doing is heading down the same damn road that you see in Venezuela and other South American countries every time you attack the court and try to pretend that you are doing this from an upstanding standpoint.
▶ 3:43:11You won't even talk about what constitutional provisions or what statutory provisions you think they're violating. You just attack them personally. This is despicable. This is why we need this amendment. With that, I yield back.
▶ 3:43:24The gentle lady yield. The gentle lady
▶ 3:43:28I appreciate you yielding and and I appreciate the your analysis and insight there. But I was struck more by I don't know if you all picked up that the ranking member from Maryland who went to Harvard was criticizing the coastal elite. I thought that was that was somewhat interesting.
▶ 3:43:42I submit myself to the voters, Mr. Chairman, just as you do.
▶ 3:43:46Well, I I could add to that the I'm not demanding a Supreme Court. Maryland who's got how many I think you said five Supreme Court justices in his district who went to Harvard who then taught at Harvard is criticizing the coastal league but uh anyway I will if I if you will yield to the gentleman from Kansas I yield back.
▶ 3:44:01Mr. Chairman and I appreciate my colleague from Wyoming. I I was just observing I mean looking at the amendment and and it doesn't actually do anything. I mean it just locks in basically the status quo because congress can change by statute the number of circuits uh which then would change the number of justices. So it doesn't really do anything. I suppose the one thing it does do is it injects into the Constitution this whole concept of a circuit court which isn't there now. It's created by Congress. And I I think that strikes me as a little bit contrary to what I thought my friend from Maryland was arguing for which was we shouldn't change the architecture.
▶ 3:44:31But nonetheless, that's beside the point. But I I just it as I was listening, it it really has nothing to do with this amendment, although it was a nice speech. But I I really appreciated the comments of our our colleague friend from Maryland with respect to, you know, wishing we had a bit more geographical uh diversity on the court. Um I've made that argument before. I believe it. And I I I didn't know my friend from Maryland at the time of the first Trump administration.
▶ 3:44:55we hadn't served together or met, but I'm wondering if he shared my glee when President Trump appointed Justice Gorsuch, who came from Colorado and was from my home circuit, the 10th Circuit, and seems to satisfy um you know, one of the critiques he has.
▶ 3:45:10If if I might
▶ 3:45:12then we're going to go vote, but go
▶ 3:45:13I thank the gentleman and I thank you for disagreeing with the gentle lady from Wyoming who said it made no difference where uh you come from geographically. I'm with you. I think it makes a huge difference which is why we uh take cases up to the court because of a circuit court split. The federal circuits are split because they have a different approach to a particular issue and that's one of the major pathways to getting on the court. So I agree with you and I do think that we should embody it in this amendment.
▶ 3:45:38If we're going down the road of micromanaging the number and divesting ourselves of authority as Congress from doing it, then we should deal with this problem that we have this incredibly lopsided concentration of members coming from particular districts. And I I thank the chairman for his comments about me because I I submit myself to the voters. I am not somebody who thinks that I should just get appointed to an office because of where I went to law school. Thank you. All right.
▶ 3:46:03The uh the committee will stand in recess while we head to the Florida
▶ 4:48:20We'll come to order. Uh we have amendment offered by the gentleman from Maryland who seeks recognition. Gentleman from Georgia is recognized.
▶ 4:48:28Uh thank [clears throat] thank you Mr. Chairman. Uh before we uh left out to go vote, um I was kind of reminded of uh of my years in middle school, uh junior high school, we used to call it. Um you know, and we'd be in the lunchroom uh around the table and uh folks would be uh laughing and giggling and making comments and you know, it was like a popularity contest.
▶ 4:48:58And you know the the uh alpha male would um say would look at somebody and and uh make a joke and then everybody all of the followers uh the wannabe uh alpha males and females would laugh and then you know it's at the expense of uh the poor person sitting there at the table and uh then everybody moves on and they try to do that to the ranking member.
▶ 4:49:28uh talking about the coastal elites and uh you know mocking him for allegedly being a coastal elite. You're from there so you and you uh went to Harvard and so you must be a coastal uh elite and um by uh the ranking member they kind of uh showed their hand who they were really They are really for those coastal elite.
▶ 4:49:55Now, who are the coastal elites that um the ranking member was referring to? It's not everybody that goes to Harvard or everybody that lives in New York or He was talking about Wall Street, the Wall Street billionaires who've spent so much money corrupting this system.
▶ 4:50:16He was talking about the billionaire West Coast uh, you know, the artificial intelligence titans, uh, the data center, uh, purveyors around the country. That's who he was talking about.
▶ 4:50:36He is actually talking about an amendment to this bill that would bring in the voices of regular ordinary people throughout America, not just those who went to Harvard and Yale. And by the way, they're doing away with the um diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at those institutions.
▶ 4:50:58And so they're making them even more elite at the instance of the same folks that these that the alpha male and his followers were uh laughing uh about. You know, I mean, it's uh it's it's crazy that they would be mocking somebody who's looking to bring the voices of the unheard into the equation.
▶ 4:51:23So the people throughout America are the ones that uh uh Representative Raskin was is trying to protect with this u amendment, which would simply add a requirement that instead of confining ourselves to a Supreme Court made up of elites, uh that we balance it out and have all people of America represented uh on the Supreme Court.
▶ 4:51:52It doesn't have to be an inordinate number of uh regions that need to be uh uh represented. It could be folks from the South, folks from the Midwest, folks from the Northwest, uh folks who've been traditionally left out at the Supreme Court, whose voices and um cultures and whose experiences are not brought to bear on the decisions that the Supreme Court, its elites
▶ 4:52:22make uh that bind us all for generations. Someone else talked about how they were, you know, I mean, they wished that the Warren Court would come to an end. Well, you know, the Warren Court established rights for people who had none. And uh it lasted for about 14, 15, 16 years.
▶ 4:52:47But I tell you, I share the concerns of my colleague who wanted to get rid of who wondered when were we going to be done with that Supreme Court. We've been dealing with this Robert's court now for 21 22 years and what they've done is taken away those rights that the Warren Court gave and um it's time for us to do something that is very popular with the American people and that is Supreme Court reform.
▶ 4:53:14This amendment sends us in the right direction in reforming uh the Supreme Court. And so I support this uh amendment. I think it's a common sense amendment. Uh it appeals to people throughout the country and I hope that my colleagues on the other side would take a second look at it instead of laughing about it. Uh let's give it the look that it deserves and let's go ahead and pass it. I support it. With that, I yield back. Gentlemen yields back.
▶ 4:53:42I wasn't mocking or being u I'm just having a light-hearted moment with my friend, the ranking member. So, uh you can take whatever analysis you want. Anyone else seek recognition? Um the question occurs on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Maryland. All those in favor say I. I.
▶ 4:53:59Those opposed, no. No. In the opinion of the chair, the the nos have it.
▶ 4:54:04Could we have a recorded vote?
▶ 4:54:05Reported vote being requested, the clerk will call the role.
▶ 4:54:07Mr. Jordan,
▶ 4:54:08Mr. Jordan votes no. Mr. Isa,
▶ 4:54:11Mr. Biggs,
▶ 4:54:12Mr. Biggs votes no. Mr. Mcccleintoch.
▶ 4:54:15Mr. Mcccleintoch votes no. Mr. Tiffany, Mr. Massie, [snorts] Mr. Roy, Mr. Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Klein, Mr. Gooden, Mr. Vandrew, Mr. Nells, Mr. Moore, Mr. Moore votes no. Miss Haggimman, Miss Lee, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Fry, Mr. Kylie, Mr. Growthman, Mr.
▶ 4:54:44Not, Mr. Harris, Mr. Harris votes no. Mr. Ander, Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Gil, Mr. Bumgardner, Mr. Raskin.
▶ 4:54:57Mr. Raskin votes I. Mr. Nadler,
▶ 4:54:59Mr. Nadler votes I. Miss Laughrim, Mr. Cohen, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Johnson votes I. Mr. Lou, Miss Gipol, Mr. Korea, Miss Scandlin, Miss Scanland votes I. Mr. Noose, Miss McBath, Miss
▶ 4:55:20Miss Ross's eye, Miss Ballot, Mr. Miss Camlager, Dove, Mr. Mosquitz, Mr. Goldman, Miss Crockett, Mr. Garcia, you're not recorded, Mr. Garcia. Mr. Garcia votes I.
▶ 4:55:52Mr. Klein votes no.
▶ 4:55:58Mr. You're good in vids now.
▶ 5:05:26Mr. Vandry, you are not recorded. Mr. Vandry votes no.
▶ 5:06:59Miss Kamagerdov, you're not recorded. Miss Kagerov votes I.
▶ 5:07:15Cler report.
▶ 5:07:16Mr. Chairman, there are seven eyes and eight nos.
▶ 5:07:19Uh the amendment is not agreed to. Um, gentle lady from Pennsylvania is
▶ 5:07:25Miss Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.
▶ 5:07:28Clerk will report.
▶ 5:07:31Point of order reserved by the gentleman from Arizona.
▶ 5:07:35Amendment to HJ res.
▶ 5:07:37Objection. Amendment will be considered as read and the gentle is recognized to explain amendment.
▶ 5:07:41Thank you. Mine is a straightforward amendment. It would require that Supreme Court justices be bound by the same code of conduct that applies to all other federal judges. It would insert uh a line saying that the uh justices shall be bound by the code of conduct that applies to all other federal judges.
▶ 5:08:02I know this amendment can't fix a measure as flawed as HJRES one, but at least my proposal would address one of the issues that's called into serious question. uh the court's credibility and its legitimacy and would make this misguided legislation a little bit better.
▶ 5:08:20I want to make clear that I oppose the proposed constitutional amendment to forever cap the Supreme Court's membership at nine justices because frankly no one has advanced a compelling reason why we should alter our constitutional framework and particularly at this time when the court has effectively been packed with a conservative majority.
▶ 5:08:43The power of Congress to determine the number of Supreme Court justices is carefully rooted in the calibrated systems of checks and balances established in our Constitution intended to serve as a bull work against tyranny by any branch of government. While it's true that the framers intended for the Supreme Court to be insulated from day-to-day politics and factional interests, they also recognize the need for the democratic accountability of our courts, even for unelected federal judges.
▶ 5:09:14That's why our Constitution gives Congress, the American people's elected representatives, significant power to shape the structure and jurisdiction of the court in various ways while ensuring judicial independence through various protections for courts and judges by taking away Congress's authority to determine the number of Supreme Court justices, a power that Congress has exercised multiple times in our nation's history.
▶ 5:09:40This proposed constitutional amendment erodess that system of checks and balances, flying in the face of the framer's wisdom in distributing power among the branches of federal government to ensure that ambition checked ambition. While I oppose the resolution and constitutional amendment it proposes, I offer my amendment to mitigate some of the damage this legislation would do by requiring Supreme Court justices to follow the same ethics code that binds all other federal judges.
▶ 5:10:09This simple important step could help the court regain some of its democratic legitimacy at a time when the political manipulation of the court's membership by the Republican Senate has dramatically undermined the American people's trust in this important institution. All lower court federal judges must follow the code of conduct for the United States judges which regulates issues like the acceptance of gifts and the circumstances in which judges must recuse themselves from cases.
▶ 5:10:39This code prevents even the appearance of corruption and impropriy and conflicts of interest and in doing so safeguards the judiciary's integrity and legitimacy. Yet, the Supreme Court has stubbornly resisted being governed by these same requirements when a series of ethical conflicts by justices were exposed in recent years. The court finally adopted its own code of conduct. But that 2023 code is largely toothless.
▶ 5:11:07It lacks an enforcement mechanism and contains loopholes that don't apply to lower court judges. It relies solely on self-p policing by the justices themselves, thereby making accountability optional. Given recent disclosures of apparent ethical misconduct by justices, it's clear that self-p policing is inadequate and the American people are right to be concerned.
▶ 5:11:30Over the course of his career, Justice Clarence Thomas has reportedly received nearly 200 gifts worth more than $4 million and disclosed only a fraction of them. He's also refused to recuse himself in cases where people who've lavished gifts on him may have a financial interest, such as billionaire Harlon Crowe, who treated him and his wife to luxury travel, including an Indonesia island hopping trip valued at a half million dollars.
▶ 5:11:55I oppose HJ Res because it would undermine our Constitution's system of checks and balances and democratic accountability for a powerful institution of government, the Supreme Court. But if our Republican colleagues want to change the Constitution, let's make it abundantly clear that Supreme Court justices should be bound by a real code of ethics just like every other federal judges. That way we can ensure at least a small measure of accountability. I urge everyone to support my amendment and I yield back.
▶ 5:12:25Gentle lady yields back. Does the gentleman from Arizona insist on his point of order?
▶ 5:12:28I do, Mr. Chairman.
▶ 5:12:29Gentleman's recognized you. The gentle lady's amendment would introduce material beyond the scope and purpose of the bill before us and therefore violates house rule 16 clause 7. I yield
▶ 5:12:40Gentleman yields back. The gentleman is correct. The amendment does not satisfy the subject matter and fundamental purposes test. Therefore, it is not germaine and is out of order. Who seeks
▶ 5:12:49Gentleman from George is recognized.
▶ 5:12:52I have an amendment at the desk.
▶ 5:12:53Clerical report.
▶ 5:12:55Reserve a point of order. Point of order reserved by gentleman from Arizona. Amendment to HJ.
▶ 5:13:02Objection be considered as read. The gentleman is recognized to explain his
▶ 5:13:05Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This amendment is straightforward. It creates an 18-year term limit for justices which will restore integrity while removing partisan politics from the court's confirmation process. Life tenure at the Supreme Court has become a tool of politicization. But it does not have to remain this way. Because of the uncertainty of appointment timelines, some presidents appoint no justices at all.
▶ 5:13:35And some have appointed as much as a third of the entire bench, i.e. Donald Trump with a MAGA majority on the Supreme Court. He appointed three of the nine. This means the bench is not actually representative of the entire country.
▶ 5:13:53Instead, one president can end up having a wildly outsized ideological influence over the highest court in the land, lasting potentially for generations after that president leaves office. We can't afford that. America to extend the influence of their own Supreme Court pick as long as possible.
▶ 5:14:16The current system incentivizes presidents like Trump to nominate young, relatively immature and strident, unseasoned, radical, and unwise justices who presumably could sit on the bench for three or four decades over justices who are perhaps more qualified or experienced and wise, but are later in their career.
▶ 5:14:45Our current system also incentivizes strategic retirements from the bench to give their pre preferred president a chance to appoint an ideologically similar replacement justice to further influence the future of the bench.
▶ 5:15:03Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are great examples of strategic retirements that would give Trump the frightening opportunity to replace them with two young extremist who will wreak havoc on democracy for all for the next 30 or 40 years. That is not good for democracy.
▶ 5:15:26Lifetime appointments to the United States Supreme Court no longer are viable for our democracy, and we must change it. A regularized appointment schedule for 18-year active terms would mean that each president would appoint two justices, balancing the court with a new justice ascending to the bench every two years, and a fair system for each president to make their nominations.
▶ 5:15:55It benefits no one, no polit, no one political party and instead creates a court that is actually representative of the American people as time passes and new presidents are elected.
▶ 5:16:09I urge my colleagues on both sides of the vi of the aisle to support this restorative nonpartisan amendment to protect the Supreme Court from corruption derived from lifetime tenure and also bring needed reform to the hyperartisan confirmation process. And with that, uh, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
▶ 5:16:30Gentlemen, [clears throat] Gentleman yields back. The gentleman from Arizona is recognized on his point of order.
▶ 5:16:34I, uh, insist on my point of order, sir.
▶ 5:16:36Gentleman's recognized. The gentleman's amendment would introduce material beyond the scope and purpose of the bill before us and therefore violates House rule 16 clause 7. I yield back. Uh
▶ 5:16:45the gentleman is correct. Uh the the amendment offered by the gentleman from Georgia does not satisfy the subject matter fundamental purpose test. Therefore is not gerine and is out of order. Who seeks recognition?
▶ 5:17:04Uh question then. Okay. The gentle lady from California is recognized.
▶ 5:17:07Think I'd like to strike the last word.
▶ 5:17:09Gentle lady's recognized.
▶ 5:17:11Uh, you know, I [clears throat] would be supporting both of these amendments and I think the fact that um the majority is trying to suggest that they're not gerine probably means that they're incredibly accurate and on point. Um, I just want to say, you know, this Supreme Court's approval ratings are at historic lows. 48% of the American people approve of this Supreme Court.
▶ 5:17:40That's down from 70% just 5 years ago. I mean, that is a precipitous drop. And when you talk to people, [clears throat] they want term limits for these justices. They want an enforcable code of ethics for these justices.
▶ 5:18:00After this Cala decision, folks have been up in arms because they see that it is just another unraveling, a continuation of the unraveling of so many rights. And you can say, well, that's [clears throat] just, you know, Sydney Camel Dove talking. Of course, you'd say that she's a Democrat. But how interesting that the Chief Justice, Justice Roberts, is now on the circuit.
▶ 5:18:28He is on tour having meetings with folks trying to remind them or persuade them or gaslight them into thinking that this court um is still credible, is still legitimate.
▶ 5:18:48If it weren't, he wouldn't be out here going on all these tours talking to folks saying, "Oh, no, we're not partisan." You know, it is I mean, Justice Barrett just was at an event and said, "Oh, yes, you know, the bench is comprised of we have to let people know, persuade people, tell people that we are not comprised of partisan hacks. So, they know that the public is on to them and that the public is tired of them.
▶ 5:19:19They they wouldn't be saying this if it weren't true. Which is why this amendment is actually really relevant because it would suggest that at least folks in this committee are not asleep at the wheel that we're listening to our constituents. We are feeling and sensing the anger and the that so many Americans across this country are feeling because of these recent decisions by Scotas.
▶ 5:19:49And because they're appointed for life, they can um in these really disastrous, um disenfranchising, demoralizing decisions.
▶ 5:20:05And you know, I have to say with the gutting of the Voting Rights that was bipartisan law that was passed decades ago, the people were not clamoring in the streets saying, "Oh my god, I've been wronged because black people have been allowed to vote." So, this has been a a Supreme Court justice and Justice Roberts that has been patiently waiting to figure out a way to you know, representation in the South.
▶ 5:20:34And when it counts for black voters who are interested in voting for whomever they want, but they want a choice and then feeling the heat and then going out on tour trying to tell people that what you are seeing with your eyes is not the truth. No, Justice Roberts, what we are seeing is the truth. We have partisan hacks that have taken over this SCOTUS bench.
▶ 5:20:58And if I'm going to be honest, it started with Mitch McConnell court packing by denying Barack Obama the ability to nominate a justice. And he said, Mitch McConnell said, "I'mma wait it out. I'mma wait it out." In hopes that the next president will be the president of my choice so that we are able to control the court. So if we're going to tell the truth, just tell the whole truth. And it is okay for Republicans to say, "Yeah, he did it. I'm glad he did. we're in the majority.
▶ 5:21:29You should just say it and own it.
▶ 5:21:31But you also should own the fact that we are offering up these amendments because we're trying to tell you the truth about how the rest of America feels about what is going on at that Supreme Court, that corrupted, corrosive Supreme Court. So, I do support this amendment and I hope we're able to vote on it because I would certainly be a yes. And with that, I yield back.
▶ 5:21:53Mr. Chairman,
▶ 5:21:54gentle yields back. Gentleman from New York's recognized.
▶ 5:21:56Mr. Chairman, I appeal the ruling of the chair in that the amendment or the bill proposes an amendment to the constitution dealing with the composition of the court. The amendment likewise composition of the court
▶ 5:22:09appealing the ruling of the chair happened 5 minutes ago. We've already moved on to other business. I don't think it's in order. Uh so therefore, we can't can't deal with that.
▶ 5:22:17You see request
▶ 5:22:19uh unanimous consent request from the gentleman from Arizona.
▶ 5:22:21I'd like to include into the record um several articles. One entitled Democrats promise to wreck the Supreme Court.
▶ 5:22:28Without objection.
▶ 5:22:29James Carville urges Democrats to consider expanding Supreme Court if they regain power.
▶ 5:22:34Progressives court progressives court packing push will backfire on Democrats.
▶ 5:22:38Without objection.
▶ 5:22:39FDR unveils court packing plan February 5th, 1937.
▶ 5:22:44Supreme objection.
▶ 5:22:46Supreme Court packing. A bad way to get
▶ 5:22:49Don't repackage court packing. Democrats renew calls for US Supreme Court overhaul after voting rights decision. Yield back.
▶ 5:22:58Gentleman yields back. The question On favorably reporting uh reporting the joint resolution from the gentleman from Arizona. All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed? No.
▶ 5:23:10The eyes definitely have it and the joint resolution is ordered to be reported favorably to the House. Members will have two days to submit views. Without objection,
▶ 5:23:16I'm going to just interrupt because I don't want to lose my chance. So, if we could ask for a roll call, that'd be The roll call being requested. The clerk will call the role.
▶ 5:23:23Mr. Jordan,
▶ 5:23:24Mr. Jordan votes yes. Mr. Isa.
▶ 5:23:28Mr. Biggs. Mr. Biggs votes I. Mr. Mcccleintoch. Mr. Mcccleintoch votes I. Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Massie, Mr. Roy, Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Klein, Mr. Klein votes I. Mr. Mr. Van Drew, Mr. Nell's Mr. [snorts] Moore, Miss Haggamman, Miss Lee, Mr.
▶ 5:23:57Hunt, Mr. Fry, Mr. Kylie, Mr. Growthman, Mr. Not, Mr. Harris, Mr. Ander, Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Gil, Mr. Bombgardner, Mr. Mr. Raskin,
▶ 5:24:20Mr. Raskin votes no. Mr. Nadler,
▶ 5:24:23Mr. Nadler votes no. Miss Laughrim. Mr. Cohen. Mr. Johnson.
▶ 5:24:30Mr. Johnson votes no. Mr. Lou, Miss Mr. Korea, Miss Scandlin,
▶ 5:24:38Miss Scanland votes no. Mr. Nagus, Miss McBath, Miss Ross, Miss Ross votes no. Miss Balot Miss Balant votes no. Mr. Garcia Mr. Garcia votes no. Miss Camager Dove Miss Camager Dove votes no. Mr. Mosquitz Mr. Goldman Mr. Gil, you're not recorded.
▶ 5:25:02Mr. Gil votes yes. Mr. Moore. Mr. Moore votes yes.
▶ 5:25:40Mr. Gooden votes yes. Mr. Harris.
▶ 5:25:48Mr. Harris votes yes.
▶ 5:34:35Mr. Isa, you're not recorded.
▶ 5:34:37Mr. So votes yes.
▶ 5:35:29Mr. Hunt.
▶ 5:35:30Mr. Hunts. Yes.
▶ 5:38:10Mr. or not?
▶ 5:38:11No, you're not recording. Mr. Not votes.
▶ 5:38:27Mr. Ander,
▶ 5:38:29you're not recorded. Mr. Honor votes
▶ 5:38:36Mr. Schmidt, you are not recorded. Mr. Schmidt votes I
▶ 5:39:18Mr. Vander, you are not recorded.
▶ 5:39:22Mr. Andrew votes yes.
▶ 5:43:05Mr. Fitzgerald, you are not recorded.
▶ 5:43:07Mr. Fitzgerald votes I.
▶ 5:43:13Clerk will report.
▶ 5:43:15Mr. Chairman, there are 15 eyes and eight nos. The eyes have it and joint resolution is ordered to be reported favorably to the house. Members will have two days to submit views. Without objection, staff is authorized to make technical and conforming changes. Pursuant to notice, I call up HR 5437, the protection of lawful commerce and stone slab products act for purposes of markup and move that the committee report it favorably to the house.
▶ 5:43:44The clerk will report the bill. HR5437 to prohibit civil action.
▶ 5:43:48Without objection, the bill will be considered as red Nova for amendment at any point. Chair now recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Mcccleintoch, for an opening statement.
▶ 5:43:56Uh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, this legislation addresses a fundamental question of fairness in our civil justice system. Who should be held responsible when workplace safety laws are violated? Who is liable when an otherwise safe product is misused? the party that responsibly, safely, and legally manufactured that product or the party that dangerously, recklessly, and illegally misused that product and injured their workers as a result.
▶ 5:44:26Now, the answer should be self-evident to any fair and reasonable person. Stone slabs are used for kitchen and bathroom countertops in millions of American homes. Stone slab manufacturer produces about $30 billion a year for our economy. It employs 100,000 American workers who depend upon it to feed their families. When these stone slabs leave the factory, they're entirely safe as long as they are then fabricated according to health and safety laws.
▶ 5:44:56These products are then shipped to fabricators to be cut to fit your kitchen. The manufacturers have no control over the fabricators. Fabricators are completely unrelated and independent businesses. Those fabricators are required by law to use safe processes to cut these slabs to asssure that harmful silica particles aren't released into the air. If inhaled, these particles can cause debilitating and permanent lung damage, a condition called silicosis.
▶ 5:45:24OSHA has established detailed standards governing exposure to resperable crystalline silica. Employers are required to implement engineering controls, provide protective equipment, conduct monitoring, and train workers. Uh, states such as California have adopted additional requirements. Now, most fabricators abide by the law and employed these practices to protect their workers.
▶ 5:45:48Unfortunately, there are some sweat shops that ignore health, safety, labor, and immigration laws to undercut their competition. Instead of obeying the law and using state-of-the-art equipment to prevent silica dust, they simply have their workers dry cut these slabs, releasing silica particles that injure their workers. So, who's responsible for these injuries?
▶ 5:46:11the manufacturer who obeyed all the laws, who safely manufactured the slab and had no control over the fabrication process once their product left their factory, or the fabricator who broke all the applicable safety and labor laws and ordered their workers to expose themselves to injury. Well, according to some unscrupulous trial lawyers, it's the innocent manufacturer who should be held liable.
▶ 5:46:36We're now seeing crippling lawsuits that ignore the guilty fabricators and instead sue the manufacturers because that's where the money is. This doesn't protect workers. Indeed, it imperils a new class of workers. Every one of the 100,000 Americans employed in the safe manufacturer of this product. And that's because this litigation threatens to shut down American stone slab manufacturers.
▶ 5:47:01Now, some say good or as the socialist mayor of Seattle recently giggled by. Well, 100,000 American workers lose their jobs. $30 billion of the American economy vanishes. But at least we protect the workers in the unscrupulous fabrication shops, right? But of course, we don't.
▶ 5:47:24stone slab manufacturer will simply shift to foreign suppliers who are beyond the reach of this litigation and the unscrupulous sweat shops will remain. If you truly care about the workers, you'd protect the innocent and hold the guilty responsible for violating health and safety laws. That's what this bill does. It preserves workers rights to seek relief from those who caused their injuries while preventing abuse of litigation against parties who neither created the hazard nor controlled the workplace.
▶ 5:47:54It says that manufacturers and sellers of stone slab products cannot be sued for injuries arising from fabrication activities that were conducted entirely beyond their control. Not shield employers who violate OSHA requirements. It does not prevent workers from seeking remedies against those responsible for unsafe working conditions. It simply prevents liability from being imposed on parties that neither controlled nor caused the alleged harm.
▶ 5:48:23At its core, this legislation reaffirms a principle that should unite all of us regardless of pri uh party. Liability should be based upon responsibility. Those who cause harm should be held accountable and those who don't should not. I yield back. Gentleman yields. Chair now recognizes the ranking member, Mr. Raskin, for an opening statement.
▶ 5:48:46Thank you very kindly, Mr. Chairman. and I came in to hear the distinguished gentleman denouncing sweat shops and criticizing a socialist mayor from the left. So, I knew something unusual was a foot today. Um, I've got to oppose this legislation, which is a a shameful effort to shield stone slab manufacturers from lawsuits as workers get sick and die from acute silicosis, an extremely fatal, dangerous lung disease caused by exposure to highly concentrated
▶ 5:49:16silica dust. Although silicosis is not a new disease, a new silicosis epidemic has emerged among workers who cut and finish artificial stone countertops, also known as engineered stone or quartz countertops. Artificial stone silicosis is a rapidly developing disease that manifests within a few months or years, killing even young workers quickly rather than the slowly progressing past forms of the disease.
▶ 5:49:46If you get it, acute silicosis is a disease that essentially renders your lungs useless. You struggle to breathe as fluid fills up your lungs, completely cutting off your oxygen supply. There's no cure. And if you don't uh receive uh an excruciating, grueling million-doll double lung transplant, you effectively end up drowning on dry land.
▶ 5:50:14The disease is contracted when workers who fabricate artificial stone inhale nano particles that settle in the lungs. These particles [snorts] are so small and plentiful in artificial stone that they can escape any respirator and evade any protections designed for avoiding harms from silica in natural stone such as the use of wet saws. Artificial countertops were the most commonly used countertop material in the United States over the last decade.
▶ 5:50:41Yet medical experts agree that the only safe way to cut artificial stone is to wear a full hazard suit or to have machine-only fabrication, neither of which seems to be technically or economically feasible yet. So what do my colleagues across the aisle propose to do about this problem? Do they want to leave it up to state law and state courts to figure out these complicated traditionally state tor issues?
▶ 5:51:11No. Do they want to ban artificial stone nationally? That's what they did in Australia as an inherently dangerous substance. No, they don't want to do that. Do they think we should prosecute the artificial stone CEOs when they deliberately or negligently fail to warn the workers that they could end up dying from this condition as Spain did in 2023? No, they don't want to do that.
▶ 5:51:39Do they want to just let our American court system do what it does best and hear claims on a case-byase basis under the general principles of American tort law in products liability? No, they don't want to do that. What they want to do is to immunize the big primarily manufacturers from being held accountable or liable for the results of this process in our court system. um that's baffling to me.
▶ 5:52:10They want to ignore the epidemic, not do anything to turn it around, and simply pass an absolute liability shield for manufacturers, mostly foreign, who poison workers here.
▶ 5:52:25And it just defies logic that anyone would embrace a nothing to see here approach when young people, mostly men, are dying from a disease that is only contracted from what's referred to in the business as fabricating or cutting artificial stone countertops. The science is clear. Other countries are acting to keep their workers safe or to impose greater liability, not eliminate it. Australia, an early adopter of artificial stone, saw the first cases of acute silicosis.
▶ 5:52:54The government commissioned a study that determined artificial stone is inherently dangerous to the workers who have to cut the slab in order to use it. In response, Australia just banned it. Now, recycled glass countertops have um sprung up and taken off there and previous artificial stone suppliers have shifted to glass. In Spain, the government prosecuted the CEOs for negligent failure to warn their workers.
▶ 5:53:21The owner of Spain's leading kitchen worktop manufacturer, Constantino, eventually accepted a plea bargain that included a six-month suspended prison sentence for gross negligence for failing to warn the workers that his product could kill them. So, what's our government done to address this crisis?
▶ 5:53:40absolutely nothing except that which is Following the philosophy of RFK Jr., Donald Trump ended the programs researching silicosis last year and fired the researchers leading the charge to how to identify how workers die from this process. But apparently that wasn't enough.
▶ 5:54:00Now, our colleagues want to immunize the big primarily foreignowned manufacturers from being h held accountable under ordinary tort law principles in our court system. And the closer we look at this industry, the more serious the questions are that are rising. Only 1% of artificial stone is manufactured here in the US, primarily by one company, Cambria.
▶ 5:54:24We now when we had our hearing on this issue a few months ago, Cambria sent their general counsel, not their CEO. And it's pretty obvious why the Cambria CEO didn't want to take our questions. Cambria's CEO, Marty Davis, turns out to be a major Trump donor and a noted election denier.
▶ 5:54:44Davis gave Donald Trump a $5 million loan to Truth Social in 2021 to keep his company afloat until it went public on top of uh all of these very generous and prolific campaign donations. And things are going well for Mr. Davis today. Tariffs on artificial stone imports from China, India, and Vietnam increased last year to the benefit of the primary domestic manufacturer, Cambria.
▶ 5:55:12Doge ended government research into silicosis in workers entirely. They just got rid of it. And in February, the US International Trade Commission held a hearing on a request from Cambria and just two other companies in which they asked to limit artificial stone imports into the US and requested substantial tariffs on artificial stone brought to the US.
▶ 5:55:34Last month, in a decision the Wall Street Journal editorial board called dumb as rocks, the trade commission agreed with them and recommended tariffs of up to 40% on foreign imported quartz slabs for a 4-year period, as well as quotas on how much can be imported.
▶ 5:55:51President Trump has until July 17th to approve or reject the IC ITC determination, making him the only barrier between Marty Davis and absolute dominance over the US supply of deadly quartz. But apparently that doesn't go far enough. My colleagues now want to immunize this very special Mr. Davis's company from the consequences of his poisoning his workers.
▶ 5:56:17In 2016, Donald Trump promised five, ten years from now, it's it'll be a different party. You're going to have a workers party. Well, check out this legislation which would protect one super powerful, super rich Donald Trump campaign donor from facing any accountability in the courts as young working men die from avoidable lung failure. It's clear that this promise of the GOP becoming a working man's party has been broken.
▶ 5:56:47The idea of the MAGA party being the party of working people is a bad and a cruel joke. I oppose this legislation and I urge all of our colleagues to study what's really going on here and vote no today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. Without objection, all other opening statements will be included in the record. Chair now recognizes the gentleman from California to offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.
▶ 5:57:09Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I have an amendment at the desk. Clerk will
▶ 5:57:12Amendment in the nature of a substitute to HR5437.
▶ 5:57:15Objection. The amendment in the nature of a substitute will be considered as read and shall be considered if uh base text for the purposes of the amendment. Chair now recognizes the gentleman from California. Explain the the ANS.
▶ 5:57:25Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, the ranking member has been quite clear. He wants to put the domestic manufacturer of stone slabs out of business. He doesn't like the politics of one of the manufacturers of stone slabs in the United States. Well, the 100,000 Americans who rely on that industry to provide for their families, they he's perfectly willing to throw into unemployment. What does he expect to happen if he's successful in shutting down American manufacturer of this product? Now, again, the effect of silicosis is devastating.
▶ 5:57:56But the product is safe when it leaves the factory. It is safe when it is fabricated according to health and safety laws. It is only unsafe when it's fabricated in violation of the law. This bill holds the guilty fabricators who break the law liable for the damages that they cause to their workers uh and protects the 100,000 American jobs in the safe manufacturer of this product.
▶ 5:58:27The amendment in the nature of a substitute makes a few targeted changes to the definitions in section four of the bill. First, it makes the definition of fabrication more precise, clarifying that the definition only includes actions similar to the examples listed. Second, the definition of qualified civil action is narrowed to limit the bill's prohibition to only cases involving silicosis or related injuries, which are types of cases currently being abused.
▶ 5:58:54Third, also in the definition of qualified civil action, it adds the end uh an exemption to ensure that the prohibition does not affect an employees ability to sue their own employer. Fourth, it clarifies that both natural and man-made stone slab products can be qualified products.
▶ 5:59:12Finally, it emphasizes in the definition of qualified product that the fabrication of these products are subject to federal or state occupational health and safety statutes and regulations, including those pertaining to resperable uh crystalline silica. I'd urge my colleagues to support the amendment.
▶ 5:59:29The gentleman yield back yield to Mr.
▶ 5:59:33Mr. So it was uh if you'll indulge the question just so for my own clarity it was described by the ranking member as basically a a strict prohibition of any recovery even for negligent behavior on the uh behalf of the producers or the people who fabricated this these stone slabs. That's not what the bill does.
▶ 5:59:53You are correct. Yes.
▶ 5:59:54So explain explain to me exactly what we're prohibiting with the legislation and what would still be allowed. We're when a product is of uh mishandled by the fabricator, it simply shields the innocent manufacturer from being involved in that lawsuit. Uh it maintains the right of the workers to seek uh damages from the uh uh employer who caused them the injury who violated the laws in the manufacturer of this otherwise safe product.
▶ 6:00:24Okay. uh it simply uh assures that the innocent manufacturer who had nothing to do with the fabrication uh cannot be sued as well. And that's what the trial lawyers are doing. They're reaching the the the money is is with the manufacturer.
▶ 6:00:40Okay. So they're we're not we're not protecting negligent behavior in any way with this bill.
▶ 6:00:45No. No. We're protecting innocent behavior of manufacturers who produce a safe product when it leaves their factory and have no control uh over the fabricators uh who uh who who then misuse it.
▶ 6:00:59Okay, I yield back. Thank you,
▶ 6:01:04chairman. Gentlemen back.
▶ 6:01:05Gentleman yields back. Uh Mr. Natal is
▶ 6:01:08Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, artificial stone is causing a completely preventable epidemic among stone fabrication workers. The people who shape and install our countertops are getting sick with irreversible lung damage more quickly and more severely than in the past because of an inherently dangerous product. We should be here today to help these workers who are suffering.
▶ 6:01:31Instead, we're here to consider a bill to shield manufacturers and distributors from ever being held accountable for the workers they poison and kill. The liability immunity offered by this bill means that suffering workers and their families would no longer be able to sue the companies that make the product that made them sick. Granting immunity to the entire supply chain means the cost of disease would be transferred from those who produce and distribute the toxic stone slabs to the workers who have been harmed and to the American people.
▶ 6:02:01Because this bill only makes lives worker harder for workers, the natural question becomes why are we doing this? The answer is because a major Trump donor who owns the leading domestic stone manufacturing company keeps getting sued by sick workers. So, we're not here to protect American workers. We're here to protect Donald Trump's wealthy friend. Congress typically only gives us immunity in very limited cases. This bill completely upsets that president.
▶ 6:02:31We give immunity to provide for the common defense in the case of weapons of war or to promote the general welfare in the case of vaccines which are highly regulated before they go to market. This bill puts stone slabs in the same category as guns, bombs, and vaccines. It goes even further than PLCA which granted sweeping immunity to gun manufacturers but with certain exceptions for products liability and defect cases.
▶ 6:02:58This bill has no such exceptions granting manufacturers and sellers of artificial stone slabs virtually unqualified community. Artificial stone slabs are uniquely toxic to the workers who cut and grind it. Silicosis has impacted miners and stone workers for hundreds of years. But artificial stone silicosis is a new disease. Artificial stone slab products have a higher concentration of silica that makes them far more dangerous to work with.
▶ 6:03:28Fabrication workers are getting sick and stone silicosis and other occupational health diseases more quickly and more severely than they did before the rise of artificial stone. Manufacturers claim their product is perfectly safe. They tell us their product only becomes dangerous when you cut it. This argument doesn't hold up to scrutiny. A cigarette is also perfectly safe until you light it up.
▶ 6:03:52These hu huge stone slabs are manufactured to be cut and grinded grinded down into countertops, not just to look at. The majority claims that the proper precautions are taken during cutting, workers will not get sick. This is simply not supported by the evidence. There are cases where fabrication companies took every precaution possible. Wet cutting, respirators, air filtration, and still their employees developed stone silicosis. Studies have shown that these protections are not sufficient when working with engineered stone.
▶ 6:04:22Stone silicosis is a lifealtering and entirely preventable disease. Those living with silicosis can expect to be placed on 247 oxygen or require a lung transplant, leaving those affected unable to work and suffering from chronic pain. Exposure to artificial stone dust also causes lung cancer, chronic obstructive uh pulmonary disease, rheumatoid arthritis, kidney chronic kidney disease, and numerous other diseases.
▶ 6:04:49Stone manufacturers claim that this bill is necessary because of the volume of lawsuits they are facing. But courts are entirely equipped to deal with these lawsuits. Courts and juries are designed to evaluate the complex factual record in each individual case to figure out who is liable. It should not be up to Congress to blanketly decide where the stone manufacturer should be liable for this harm. When a case does go to trial, courts can work out what share of fault might belong to the manufacturer.
▶ 6:05:14For example, if the wrong defendant truly is being sued and the manufacturer distributor has nothing to do with the worker's disease, courts will dismiss the case on summary judgment. The majority claims that it's all the fabrication shop's fault. They can be held liable, too. Courts weigh all the evidence and carefully assign damages based on the facts of the case. For example, in a case in Colorado, a jury decided that Cambria was 32% liable for workers harm for mislaving their product. A majority of the fault in that case was attributed to the fabrication shop.
▶ 6:05:44Other cases have had different verdicts depending on the specific facts and circumstances of those cases. This bill would completely take away the ability of a jury to decide any of those things because the worker wouldn't be able to sue this stone manufacturer at all. When companies make a harmful product, litigation serves as a force to incentivize them to do better. If your product is so bad that you keep getting sued over it, maybe you should make a better product.
▶ 6:06:09I yield back.
▶ 6:06:10Gentleman yields back. Question. The gentleman from uh uh Georgia is recognized.
▶ 6:06:16Uh yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move to strike the last word. And um I would point out uh to the public to not be deceived by anything that you may have heard this morning uh or this afternoon about this particular legislation.
▶ 6:06:33Its purpose is to prohibit, and I'm reading from it, to prohibit civil actions against manufacturers and sellers of stone slab products for injuries caused by exposure to resperable silica or other substances arising from or rating or relating to the fabrication of such products by third parties.
▶ 6:07:00So when you look at the fact that this is uh this legislation prohibits civil actions, that means an action to recover monetary damages for injuries that a worker sustained as a result of uh working with this uh they call it stone slabs. I call it fake stone.
▶ 6:07:25uh fabrication of fake stone uh stone that uh looks like uh granite or uh some other substance. This is fake stone. But this seeks to uh preclude workers from being able to sue for injuries uh when they are working to cut this material so that it can be sold to consumers.
▶ 6:07:52And um you know I've often said that in this committee nothing comes to uh this committee if it has not been approved uh by uh the Trump administration Donald Trump uh at the head of it. Uh and in fact this committee is known to be putting forward legislation as directed by Donald Trump.
▶ 6:08:16And this legislation may fit the bill uh because one of Donald Trump's investors, a man who has kept Truth Social afloat with a $5 million investment, uh this guy owns Cambria. Marty Davis, he owns Cambria, which makes which is the uh major producer of this fake stone here in America.
▶ 6:08:44And so Trump wants to see this bill passed as a payback to his friend Marty Davis for investing in his business. Now the uh impact that uh this legislation would have, it would be on the multitudes of workers who cut, drill, and polish these slabs into usable shapes and sizes
▶ 6:09:14for countertops. And when fake stone is cut, it releases silica particles so small and numerous that they evade workplace protections like water saws and respirators. So even if workers use protection, these silica particles get into their lungs and cause scarring and inflation, inflammation, I'm sorry, making their lungs unable to function.
▶ 6:09:39And with only within only months or years, these fake stone workers are getting silicosis and either undergoing lung transplants or dying. It's a serious uh situation and we're looking to bar lawsuits against Marty Davis for uh anything that his company as the manufacturer of the product may be responsible for.
▶ 6:10:09Instead of letting it be decided in a court of law before a jury, uh they want to they pay back to Marty Davis, the owner of Cambria. It's not doing anything to make American life more affordable for the people as Trump promised. Instead, it's just merely greasing the palms of his billionaire buddies like Marty Davis and enriching Donald Trump himself.
▶ 6:10:39For all we know, he's got an interest in And so, once again, ladies and gentlemen, don't be fooled. Uh this administration is not doing what it promised to do. It's actually doing the opposite. Enriching Donald Trump and at the same time it's pulling money from your pocket to go into his pocket. Let's follow the follow the money. He gets rich, you get poor. There's a connection there.
▶ 6:11:10Your money is going into his pocket. And so, you know, I don't support this legislation and I hope my colleagues uh will not do so as well. And with that, I will yield back. Gentlemen, yields back. Gentleman from South Carolina.
▶ 6:11:24Uh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wasn't planning to speak, but I I figured I needed to to defend my colleague from California who introduced this this bill. I don't know Marty Davis. I don't know Cambria. What I do know is that there's a there's a facility in rural South Carolina, uh, in a largely African-American community that employs a lot of folks. uh in this field and they manufacture uh this this stone slab
▶ 6:11:47and those workers are being
▶ 6:11:49it's my time sir. Um when you go to that facility before you prejudge them which you seem to be doing with impunity you will see that their operation is safe. You will see that they're operating lawfully and that even though when you go to mine courts you're subject to the mine safety and health administration under the mine act. when you mine that quartz. Uh state mining uh and other reg uh state agencies also regulate the mining of quartz.
▶ 6:12:15The EPA regulates this for water and environmental impacts when you mine that quartz. And then when you process that quartz at a place like Cambria, which you guys have used as a red herring uh to to target Trump or any other facility in the United States, there's water discharge regulations there. There's air emissions. the Clean Air Act. Uh you got to be permitted for the new source performance standards. You're subject to the hazardous air pollutant regulations uh where applicable.
▶ 6:12:43Uh these are governed pretty tightly by our own federal government. And if you go to a place that manufactures these, you will see pretty because they're subject to those federal regulations, you will see a pretty good operation because at any moment's notice, a federal agency could show up to make sure that you are compliant. But here's the rub, and I think this is where the gentleman from California is going, where I think it is.
▶ 6:13:06When a manufacturer of these stone slabs, puts these stone slabs into the the the stream of commerce, normal people who are professional know that you have to cut with a uh with water, that you cannot do a dry cut because of the silica. there is an exposure limit that is in federal uh federal regulations and most people cut it according to how it's supposed to be cut so that there is a minimal impact.
▶ 6:13:36Uh there is a concentration requirement that's in the air uh that's that's in federal regulations so that workers would not be exposed to this. But you know where the rub happens actually is in California under sanctuary policies that have encouraged illegal immigration. Bad actors, employers are pulling these people in. They're cutting uh these uh stone slabs without without fear uh of the damage that it might cause to the employer. They don't care about the employees themselves.
▶ 6:14:06There are lawful people who are doing this in a great way that's providing a great service to the American people, a great product to the American people. But these individuals in California, I think where the where the gentleman is from, are doing this. And now there are lawyers out there that say, "Well, you know what? there's some deep pocket somewhere we can go do this. No. How about go after the bad actors that are doing this?
▶ 6:14:28How about state regulators going after the bad actors in California who are employing people and not doing it according to our own federal regulations? That's where the liability rests. That's where the fault rests. Not with the people who are doing creating the products. Sure, there are health risks associated with this.
▶ 6:14:47There's also federal regulations already on the books that govern the creation, the manufacturing, the mining, and yes, indeed, the cutting of these stone slabs that are retrofitted for houses. So, why would we now go after y'all want to talk about Cambria and whoever whoever likes Trump? I'm talking about real world impacts in South Carolina. What does a salesman have to do with how somebody chooses to cut or not cut a stone slab? has nothing to do with it.
▶ 6:15:17There are there are disclosure requirements on these stone slabs when they go out into be in in in the first place. I mean, I think that's fairly accuracy of federal regulations, we can do that. But to open up a salesman or a manufacturer of these products to liability when all they've done is just create a product, they're not the ones cutting it. They're not the ones these individuals.
▶ 6:15:44They're not the ones with without proper equipment or ventilation in these sweat shops in Why aren't we going after them? Y'all want to go after the the people who are creating jobs in rural South Carolina? Why not go after the people who are really the culprits here without a yield
▶ 6:16:01Gentleman yields back. The question is on the adoption of the amendment. Mr.
▶ 6:16:04Chairman, some unanimous consent
▶ 6:16:06If we can go quickly, uh, we're voting on the floor.
▶ 6:16:09Thank you,
▶ 6:16:09Mr. Chairman. I want to introduce for the record a letter from Drs. Jane Fazio and Shafali Gandhi. Okay.
▶ 6:16:15Leading researchers and physicians from California opposing HR5473. Yep. And explaining artificial stone cannot be fabricated safely. I ask unanimous consent to introduce a letter from the American Public Health Association opposing HR5437.
▶ 6:16:29I ask unanimous consent to introduce a January 13, 2026 letter from the AFL CEO to the courts subcommittee which highlights how this bill would make it safer for dangerous workplaces to harm workers. And finally, I ask unanimous consent to enter enter into the record a letter from the Association of Occupational Environmental Clinics to the court's subcommittee which states that the claim that stone slab products are not inherently dangerous is false and a distortion of the facts and opposes HR5437.
▶ 6:16:57Without objection, the question is on adoption of the amendment and nature of substitute. This will be followed by immediately by a vote on reporting the bill. All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed, no.
▶ 6:17:06Pin the chair the eyes have it and the amendment nature of sub is adopted. We'll get that in a second. The question is on favorably reporting the bill as amended. All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed, nay.
▶ 6:17:16The eyes have it and the bill is ordered to be reported. Recorded vote being uh requested. The clerk will call the role.
▶ 6:17:21Mr. Jordan,
▶ 6:17:22no. Or excuse me, yes.
▶ 6:17:23Mr. Jordan votes yes. Mr. Isa,
▶ 6:17:27Mr. Biggs,
▶ 6:17:28Mr. Biggs votes I. Mr. Mcccleintoch.
▶ 6:17:30Mr. Mcccleintoch votes I. Mr. Tiffany, Mr. Massie, Mr. Roy, Mr. Fitzgerald. Mr. Mr. Fitzgerald votes. I Mr. Klene, Mr. Gooden, Mr. Vandrew, Mr. Nells, Mr. Moore, Mr. Moore votes yes. Miss Miss Lee, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Fry, Mr. Fry votes I. Mr. Kylie, Mr.
▶ 6:18:00Growthman, Mr. Knot, Mr. Not votes I. Mr. Harris, Mr. Ander, Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Schmidt votes I. Mr.
▶ 6:18:11Mr. Gil votes yes. Mr. Bombgardner.
▶ 6:18:14Mr. Raskin?
▶ 6:18:15Mr. Raskin votes no. Mr. Nadler
▶ 6:18:18Mr. Nadler votes no. Miss Lofgrren. Mr. Mr. Johnson.
▶ 6:18:24Mr. Johnson votes no. Mr. Lou. Miss Mr. Koreah. Miss Scandan. Mr. Noose. Miss Mcbath. Miss Ross. Miss Ross votes no. Miss Ballot. Miss Balant votes no. Mr.
▶ 6:18:43Mr. Garcia votes no. Miss Cam Lagard.
▶ 6:18:46Miss Camager Dev votes no. Mr. Mosquitz. Mr. Goldman. Miss Crockett. We're working on it
▶ 6:19:46Mr. Good in bits.
▶ 6:26:30Mr. Vandrew,
▶ 6:26:32you are not recorded.
▶ 6:26:35Mr. Andrew votes yes.
▶ 6:27:40Mr. Under Mr. under bed's eye.
▶ 6:28:55Mr. Klein votes. Yes.
▶ 6:29:25Mr. Gman's I miss you're not recorded.
▶ 6:29:44Miss Haggman votes Mr.
▶ 6:30:54Isa, you are not recorded.
▶ 6:30:56Mr. Isa votes yes.
▶ 6:31:05Clerk will clerk will report.
▶ 6:31:07Mr. Chairman, there are 16 eyes and seven nos.
▶ 6:31:10The eyes have it. The bill is order to be reported. Favor to the House. Members will have two days to submit views. Without objection, the bill will report as a single amendment. The nature of a substitute incorporating all adopted amendment. Staff's authorized to make technical conforming changes. This concludes today's business. The meeting is adjourned. All right. Thank you all.