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CRISES IN AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Stansbury). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, we are living through interesting times. I understood that was also a curse, ``May you live in interesting times.'' We certainly are enduring that.
An article from the New York Post, October 18, 2021, is titled
``Biden secretly flying underage migrants into NY in dead of night.''
Now, what we have come to see at the border in Texas is that this administration has learned that, gee, we have a record number of people pouring into this country illegally, but if we can ship them away from the border quickly enough, people don't see them amassed by the thousands. So if they don't see them, no harm, no foul.
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I guess they are thinking if no one is in the forest to hear a tree fall, does it really fall? Well, the truth is, when you abandon the rule of law, then a Nation based on the rule of law will not last much beyond that.
This is devastating to the country, and some would say, well, you know what, it is so compassionate to invite people. Well, when you hear from doctors that probably 25 percent of the women they see have been raped along the way, you see children separated from their parents in order to come to this country to give them a better chance of staying in the United States so the parents can someday follow, you see people that become indentured servants of the drug cartels selling drugs, sex trafficking, human trafficking, that is not very compassionate.
It seems the most compassionate thing that the United States Government could do for our friends and neighbors to the south, would be to secure our southern border so nobody comes in illegally. That would keep out the drugs, the fentanyl, those things that are killing 70,000 people a year in the United States.
But the big thing for our neighbors would be that the tens of billions of dollars pouring across our border to the drug cartels that allows them to corrupt every level of Mexican Government would stop and people wouldn't have to live in fear of the drug cartels controlling Mexico, controlling countries to the south. That would be the compassionate thing to do.
I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good).
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
There are so many crises in this country right now. While many of us recognize that this President was a hard left radical, probably most of us underestimated the speed and the effectiveness with which he could ruin just about every situation, every issue in our country.
It is hard, therefore, to identify what is the greatest threat to the country right now, what is the greatest crisis that faces our country right now--with no hope on the horizon, by the way, for any of them to get better under this administration; whether it is the vaccine mandates, things we couldn't imagine just a year or two ago.
When this President ran for office, he said he wouldn't issue a vaccine mandate if he would win, and now we see today where people are being laid off. Those who were heroes over the last year and a half are now zeros and are getting fired from their jobs. Those who kept us safe on a daily basis, the first responders, the healthcare workers, our military. So is it the vaccine mandates?
Is it the out-of-control reckless, irresponsible, unprecedented spending that we see? I mean, we already have 28, $29 trillion worth of debt, which is some 80 to $90,000 per American and yet, we find ourselves today with the majority party trying to determine how they can come together for another 5, $6 trillion, whatever the amount might be. Is it the spending?
Is it our education system? Whether it is the product that we are not getting with how much we spend on education, the Federal mandates, the intrusion into local and State education. Whether it is the teaching of CRT or that sort of philosophy where there is transgender policy. Whether it is masks and vaccines on children, which as others have submitted--and I would agree--is child abuse with no demonstrated medical justification for masks on children or vaccines for young adults who are at almost no risk from COVID.
Are those the greatest issues?
Is it foreign policy? We have got China saber-rattling, shooting off missiles. We have the debacle in Afghanistan. North Korea, Iran, and Russia certainly have no reason to fear us under this President.
Is it the 30 percent rise in violent crime while our police are at threat of their funding being reduced or they are being undermined and harassed? They are told to stand down in the face of looting and violence in their cities.
Is it massive inflation? The hidden tax on every American, where their savings, their hard-earned resources, are being depleted by too many dollars chasing too few goods?
Is it the breakdown of the supply chain and what that is going to mean in the coming months ahead?
Is it our declaring war on American energy, forcing us to again depend on foreign provision from hostile nations for our energy; the jobs that are lost in that? The higher gas prices?
But I submit to your point, Congressman Gohmert, immigration, illegal immigration, and the invasion, the absolute invasion at our southern border may be the biggest crisis.
As you know well, the Constitution says in Article IV, Section 4: It is the responsibility of the Federal Government to protect the States from invasion, and that is clearly not happening.
And I submit, as we talk about this issue, never in the history of our country has our own President intentionally done more to harm the Nation than what this President has done with the invasion at our southern border.
Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I couldn't agree more. And it is not compassionate to lure people, lure children into this country away from their parents with some hope down the road maybe they get back together. That is not compassionate when you lure people to their detriment.
In fact, if the U.S. Government were susceptible to being sued by people that have been lured into the country to their detriment and by the open border policy that ends up causing them to be basically, totally under the control of the drug cartels, then there would be attractive nuisance lawsuits against this President and against our Federal Government for not securing our border and drawing people in who are then harmed.
There are constantly people being found that are dead that tried to make it in, and yet, the drug cartels being so heartless, they don't care if they die or not. But they do want to continue to add employees or indentured servants all over the country.
It is just rather dramatic how this President, this administration is doing so much to aid and abet the drug cartels in getting their servants all over the country in cities and, yet, it is true we have Americans that are paying for the drugs, paying for sex trafficking, and we should be doing so much more as a Federal Government to prevent those things from happening.
There is an article here from Politico of all places: ``It's not just Republicans. Everyone's mad at Biden over migration.''
You have got Daily Mail from October 20: ``Facebook admits users can share information on illegal immigration and being smuggled: Arizona Attorney General calls for investigation into tech giant for
`facilitating human and sex trafficking.'''
So, once again, just like with our elections, you have got the Democrats in positions of power in the government working hand in hand with the tech giants for something that is just terrible for human beings, and that is facilitating human and sex trafficking.
Mr. GOOD. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. GOHMERT. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. This is the greatest country in the world, as you know, Congressman Gohmert. There is a reason why people from all over the world want to come to the United States. Never in the history of the world has a nation been more welcoming to immigrants, to people from all corners of the globe who are seeking a better life, seeking freedom. No nation in the history of the world has given more opportunity to people of all backgrounds, all ethnicities, all nationalities who come here legally seeking to join us, to strengthen us as a nation, to make us a stronger nation, a more perfect Union, people from all religions, all faiths, all races, all ethnicities seeking desperately to come to the United States of America, a country that is under assault for who it is as a nation by those on the left, by those on the other side of the aisle who condemn this country and want to change and transform this country into that from which these people are fleeing.
I had a reporter say to me once, well, there is not an easy fix here to the immigration situation. And I said, well, it may not be easy, but it is simple: All we have to do is go back to the policies that were working a year ago that had largely defeated illegal immigration at our southern border.
We know that walls work. I have had the privilege of going to the border three times, twice to Arizona and once to Texas, in my first nearly 10 months here serving in this Congress, something that apparently our President has never done, and our Vice President has certainly never done during her time as the ``border czar.''
But as I went and saw firsthand for the first time in my life--I had driven past the border previously just from a car and I could see the meager fence that was there before the previous President, but I had never actually gotten out and visited and walked and talked with the people who live there, the people who are subjected to this illegal invasion, these folks, some of which are very dangerous, but all of which are coming very desperately for different reasons, coming on their property, vandalizing, invading, threatening, and in some cases, harming.
I met with a rancher family who had a family member killed by an illegal alien. But meeting with ranchers, law enforcement officials, border patrol, those on the frontlines living with and then also working as best as they can under this administration--frankly, against this administration--to try to do what they can to deal with the border crisis.
Walls do work. The enforcement that we had in place a year ago was working, ending catch and release, establishing MPP--the remain in Mexico policy--turning folks away through Title 42 policies. We were on the way to fixing our illegal immigration situation.
But this administration with complicit help and support from this Democrat majority in this Congress is not just neglecting our southern border, not just failing to fix our broken illegal immigration situation, but they are part and parcel complicit and intentional in facilitating this invasion, and as you know all too well, as you have already touched on, hiding it from the American people as they do it.
Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, as my friend has noted, there are so many crises that are going on right now. We have the economy being harmed even more by policies of this administration with the President and all of those working with him and for him demanding that everyone be vaccinated.
And the President himself has said we need to protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated, and he said the way to do that is to make sure all the unvaccinated are vaccinated.
So this administration's solution is we have got to protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated by making the unvaccinated get the vaccination. That does not protect you from the unvaccinated. It makes no sense.
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And some doctors have said, if somebody put out a vaccine that killed 200 people, they would immediately slam the brakes and say, Whoa, wait, let's hold up. We have got to find out what the problem is here. But we know from reports that have been made that there are people that have died from having the vaccination.
We are thrilled that the vaccines were produced so quickly. President Trump got a lot of the red tape out of the way. However, it ought to be a choice after talking, between a doctor and a patient, and the doctor understanding the risks inherent because of the biological makeup of this person for taking the vaccination, and then let the individual decide.
But if the vaccination works as good as we were told originally it did, then there should be no vaccinated person really concerned about those that are unvaccinated because they would be protected.
I am glad that the administration is starting to have cracks in their adamant position that having had COVID and having antibodies is just not nearly as good as having a vaccination. I am glad they are starting to--some of them at least--observe the science, that it is probably a little better if you had COVID, had the antibodies, as far as your future and fighting it off. So I am encouraged by that.
But then, I see this article from October 19. As we talked about before, the President, I believe, he is doing something illegal in saying you have got to have the vaccination. And then he comes out and says, we are going to have OSHA put together a rule requiring everybody to have the vaccination. But the President, himself, does not sign an executive order, which could be taken to court. It is just the general policy of blackmailing companies, private firms, that we are coming after you if you don't force your employees to have the vaccination. It is really a bit insidious. You don't even really give people a chance to file suit. You just state a policy you are going to follow and then have everybody follow it, it makes it much more difficult to sue.
But this article says, ``OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904's recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination.'' The Biden administration is forcing you to take the jab in order to work. And simultaneously, the Biden administration does not want the employer to tell them about workers who were injured by the jab. Simply more evidence that the vaccine mandate is not about your health.
So that is a little disturbing. You would think if anyone cared about science and really cared about people, you would want to know about every abnormality, every adverse consequence of taking the vaccination, because we are really concerned about individual health. But that is not this administration. They are putting out that we don't want to know things that are bad.
I was informed about a person that had the vaccination, and immediately died after the vaccination; was full of blood clots--not one, but many. And the physician noted the cause of death was blood clots from a vaccination. And then the family was told the health official will not certify a death certificate if it blames the vaccination for the death.
So the widow is in a real bind because you have got to have a death certificate in order to legally move forward and get things changed after the person died. You got to show proof. And yet, the health officer refusing to attribute the cause of death to what it really was, according to the doctor, the vaccination.
So that is pretty remarkable that the government does not want to do its job in protecting people. I would think that if someone in government really cared about people instead of caring about being a dictator, they would say, We want to know exactly what happened after a vaccination that went wrong and which vaccine was it so we can document which ones are safer than other vaccinations. But that is not, apparently, what is going on in this country right now.
So we really need people stepping up and letting this administration know, letting their Members of Congress, their Senators know that they expect them to speak up. We want complete transparency. What works; what doesn't work. We don't want the government hiding things from us anymore.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Madam Speaker, once again, I'll say how privileged we are to be among the some 5 percent of the world's population that gets to live here, in spite of all the things that we are battling through and we are struggling through as a Nation, the crises we are facing, the tyranny of this current regime that is leading us.
Our first President, who I believe was our greatest President, I believe divinely inspired, appointed by God to be that first President for the United States, who would not be king, refused to be king. And instead, we find ourselves today with one who seemingly would be king, if he could; or thinks that he is king, it seems, by actions.
In a free country, which we still are, to some degree----
Mr. GOHMERT. To some degree.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. To some degree, it is not the government's role to protect us from ourselves. We choose, in a free society, to endure or be exposed to some risks for our precious freedoms. We are a Nation of the people, by the people, for the people. A Nation whose founding documents proclaim our God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit--not the government provided--but the pursuit of happiness.
And here we find ourselves today, something we could almost not have imagined even a year or two ago, where our most precious, most basic of freedoms, have been under threat, under assault, or worse, stripping away from us in the name of a pandemic, in the name of an emergency.
The American people should make no mistake, that COVID policy needs to be viewed through a long-term lens. There is no such thing as a one-
time exception. What we will endure or accept or submit to today becomes the pattern, the model for the future.
And, again, our most basic freedoms we have seen are freedom of movement, where we can go; our freedom of assembly, who we can be with; our freedom to work and to provide for ourselves and our family, to open our business, to frequent a business, to worship. And then the most basic of freedoms of all--our freedom of our person. That we now have a President, again, who a year ago, because he would not have gotten elected otherwise, said he would not enforce a vaccine mandate, later said he did not have the authority to enforce a vaccine mandate. And you know better than I, constitutionally, has no authority to enforce this vaccine mandate.
Setting aside whether or not it is helpful or justified medically, just speaking legally and constitutionally, the Federal Government has no authority to do this. Certainly, the executive does not have the authority to act like a king and do this. And certainly, he does not have the authority to compel businesses to do that which he does not have the authority to do.
And yet, we see a total disregard. This was a President that ran as the uniter in chief, and instead, he is the divider in chief, separating and dividing people based on vaccine status. Demanding that people disclose their most basic of personal information, whether or not they have received a vaccine, and then under threat of penalty of their job and worse, not be able to, again, go where they want to go and do what they want to do, if they don't comply with the heavy hand of the Federal Government.
And in this terrible, terrible spending package, which is not just the trillions of dollars, but it is what is in it, one of many, many terrible things in it that the American people need to know about it is making the penalty for a business that doesn't comply with this vaccine mandate up to $700,000 dollars per occurrence.
And to your point, what a shame, what a travesty that our own government is lying to us about COVID and about the vaccine. Here, we know that medicine and science is supposed to be challenged. It is supposed to be debated. It is supposed to be learned from. We don't want the same medicine from yesteryear. We want the very best from today, that we don't just hold on to what was before. We get a medical diagnose that is troubling, we get a second opinion; we consult with more than one person. We learn. We establish the evidence.
But as you know, this government, this Federal Government, this executive administration, with their complicit allies in the media and in Big Tech, shuts down any dissent--to your point--on the stated narrative, the approved narrative, no matter how many times over the doctor in chief, the celebrity doctor in chief is proved wrong or contradictory--whether it is on gain of function or whatever it might be--any dissent is shut down on the risks of the vaccine. And there are risks.
And some people understandably make the decision that for them, because of their health, because of their youth, because of their exposure, or because they have natural immunity because they have already had COVID, or the religious reasons or whatever it might be, they decide they don't want to have the vaccine. And this government and their complicit allies that we have already mentioned, are lying to us that there are risks to the vaccine.
They obviously have been lying to us about the efficacy of the vaccine, because as you made the great point, we are going to force the unvaccinated to get the vaccine that doesn't protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated. They are lying to us about the efficacy of masks.
As you know, what we are forced to wear in this Chamber when we are not speaking at the lectern, pretending that a cloth mask makes a difference. There is medical documentation for that, which there is very little conclusive evidence to that effect, as you know.
Mr. GOHMERT. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Yes, I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. GOHMERT. I did read results of one study that indicated that if you wear a mask, you are two-tenths of one percent less likely to get COVID. So there is that. There is at least two-tenths of one percent that it is apparently helpful but we don't know the results of long-
term wearing a mask, the additional CO2 that may be taken in, or germs that are kept in a mask that would have not been breathed in repeatedly. We don't know the results of all that.
That is fine, but that is still very different from forcing someone to have an injection, which we know can have very adverse effects. And that is why it ought to be an individual decision to make.
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But then again, it also contributes to a crisis in enough people doing jobs that allow us to have a supply chain that is intact and getting people the things that they need.
Little did I know--you may have anticipated it--but there were people making jokes after the Vice President had said several weeks ago--it may have been in August--that people needed to get their orders in now so they would get things by Christmas. Wow. Apparently, they saw this coming.
But the point that has been made by my friend about the various opinions from the same people, when it comes to Dr. Fauci, when it comes to the President, it is hard to find an issue that they haven't been on more than one side of.
Fauci would say, no, don't use a mask. Yes, you should use a mask. And then he says, use a mask. And then he is saying at a baseball game you do not need to wear a mask, not social distance.
He has given different opinions, and it reminded me of Winston Churchill's comment about Keynes, the economist. Of course, a lot of people say that is Keynesian economics. But if you look back and do some research on the guy, often when he got into debate and was confronted that some theory he had wasn't true and didn't work, he would immediately take the other position and say he was not for that, he was for this.
So Winston Churchill had once said--I believe this is close to verbatim. He said if you put two economists in a room, you would have three different opinions unless one of them was Sir Keynes, in which case you would have an unlimited number of opinions. I am getting that impression from Dr. Fauci.
Apparently, even Dr. Fauci needs to come to grips with the fact that when he says the U.S. never funded any gain-of-function research--okay, the evidence is there. He had us going for a while, but the evidence is in, and that is absolutely not true.
Hopefully, in all the myriad of opinions he has, he will come around and find the truthful opinion when it comes to his group contributing to gain-of-function research that helped weaponize the COVID virus.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, this administration, this executive branch of government, as you said, is weaponizing its agencies, its departments, its resources against the American people.
On the COVID vaccine mandate that you were mentioning, what greater weapon can we use than to strip folks of their ability to earn a living? But it is part and parcel with this government, this administration, this Presidential regime which believes that the greatest threat to America is Americans, conservatives, patriots, those who vote the wrong way, as they see it, those who might have supported the previous President, those who show up to school board meetings, those who don't get a vaccine that they say you have to receive.
They are weaponizing the IRS. Here in this budget that they want to approve, the trillions of dollars, they want to hire some 85,000 more IRS agents so they can be more effective in their assault on the American people.
Here we are turning the Federal Government against parents who show up at school board meetings to express their concern for their children or what is being taught in their schools, which they have to pay for, by the way, that they have to fund.
You see that this administration looks with contempt upon the American people, with contempt upon our law enforcement and first responders, with contempt upon our military. They have told our military that the greatest threat to the country, in addition to climate, is white supremacy in the military, racism in the military. We see the CRT forced upon our military, while we have the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs saying he wants to understand what white rage is.
I would like for him to understand what China is doing, what is going on in Afghanistan, what is up with North Korea, what is up with Iran, what is up with Afghanistan. Instead, they are focused on weaponizing the Federal Government and all of its resources against our very citizens.
Mr. GOHMERT. My friend has such a great point. To have the Attorney General of the United States jump into the issue of disagreements at school board meetings is absolutely astounding. We have record crime, especially in cities controlled totally by Democrats. Crime is going up tremendously.
I know that Merrick Garland knows the Constitution, or at least he has at one time. He knows that there is no mention in the Constitution of a Federal role in education. Yet, he sends out a memo saying--
basically, it is pretty intimidating--that we are going to start digging into these school board meetings and using the Justice Department to go after people who have differences of agreement that happen to agree with Dr. King that people should be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.
Who would have believed that 40 to 50 years after it seemed we were so close to Dr. King's dream being realized that you would have an administration totally committed to undoing Dr. King's dream and going back to judging people by the color of their skin instead of the content of their character? It is just shocking.
Of course, the saying in Washington is and has been for many years, no matter how cynical you are, it is never enough to catch up. Well, we find out, after Attorney General Garland sends out the letter that he is going to go after these people that are in disagreement, lo and behold, it turns out his son-in-law and daughter make a tremendous amount of money selling things in support of critical race theory, judging people by the color of their skin and not by the content of their character.
It is Panorama Education Company founded by Xan Tanner. They sell surveys to school districts, according to this article from Callie Patteson, that has a nationwide focus on ``social and emotion climate,'' which is interesting. I guess they are wanting that climate changed as well.
With contracts in more than 50 of the 100 largest school districts in the U.S., Panorama Education claims to be supporting ``13 million students in 23,000 schools and 1,500 districts across 50 States.'' Panorama Education Company's cofounder Xan Tanner is Attorney General Merrick Garland's son-in-law.
It then goes on to talk about the 21 different States where they are spreading this stuff. Their surveys reportedly give justification for new curricula in schools, which parents have recently taken issue with, such as critical race theory.
But since 2017, the company has raised $76 million from investors. Just last month, Panorama Education struck a $60 million private financing raise with General Atlantic.
It is rather amazing. Just when you think you can't get more cynical about what this administration is doing, we find out, gee, there is pecuniary gain afoot here on this issue of the Attorney General weighing in on school board meetings. Of course, that is kind of flying in the face of the idea that white supremacy and climate change are the two biggest dangers to America.
For those of us that had incredibly good constitutional law professors, we know those professors would say: Where is the Federal nexus? There has to be some Federal reason, something that gives the Federal Government the right to come in and control school board meetings.
Of course, shortly after I got here, I had a law that I was working on. Having family involved in schools--my mother was a schoolteacher--I know back then the administrators had the teachers' backs. But now, because of so many lawsuits so easily and quickly filed, administrators would say things to teachers like: Look, I realize this student is a total disruption to your class, but his mother or father, or both, will file lawsuits, and we don't need a lawsuit, so just do the best you can. And that would disrupt the education of other students.
My thought was, as a judge, I had what was called judicial immunity. You might not like my rulings, but you can't just sue because you don't like the rulings. It was judicial immunity. I thought, what if we created an educational immunity? You may not like what a school does, or a teacher or principal, but unless they have committed a crime, you can't sue them. That would allow things to get to the place where they used to be.
When I was growing up, if you had a problem with a teacher or some issue in the school, you went to the school board meetings--like the Attorney General is trying to stop now. If somebody on the school board or too many on the school board didn't see it as a problem, then you ran for the school board, got elected, and fixed it.
But because of lawsuits, that has totally changed the way schools have had to approach things. So what if we gave them educational immunity? I had asked the national education folks. They came and I made the presentation, and I was totally shocked when they said: We are not sure that we could support that. I said, but it would keep your teachers from being sued at the drop of a hat. People could go complain to the school board, but you couldn't just go after a teacher.
Well, it turns out, they eventually got back to me and said they wouldn't be able to support that bill. I was just mortified--mystified, too. Why would they not be behind that?
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Then one of my friends who spent his life in education said, Louie, do you not understand the biggest cash cow, the biggest moneymaker for the teachers unions, is liability insurance?
If you take away their liability, then the teachers unions can't sell and make money off of liability insurance. There goes that big cash cow.
Yes, it would make life easier for teachers, but the unions, the people who are making money from unionizing teachers, will not ever support something like that.
So, just, again, going back to the old adage: No matter how cynical you get around here, it is not enough to catch up. I am constantly being reeducated on that issue.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Virginia.
Mr. GOOD of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Gohmert for allowing me to participate with him.
The final thing that I will add is we certainly have agreement and recognition, as I think most Americans do, that we have surrendered control of K-12 through college of our education system to the hard left radicals, and it is refreshing to see parents engaged and parents standing up and saying that this is not what they are paying for and this is not what they are going to stand for.
That is the silver lining of the pandemic, as more parents became aware of it.
I will make one more reference to my final words here on the spending package that is being debated by the majority as they are trying to come to an agreement to bring it to the floor for a vote.
It would take it a step further, as my friend knows, it would take it to not only free community college, which is a step toward free college and probably eliminating faith-based institutions that wouldn't be eligible for the free college, by the way--the marketplace would probably eliminate them as families chose the free public education--but it would take it to the preschool and the childcare that is now proposed to be free. Faith-based institutions would not be eligible for the free childcare, daycare, and preschool. That is an assault on the choice that families make.
Then the requirement in this bill would be that daycare workers and preschool workers would have to have a college education, and that is an assault on those home-based daycare and preschool facilities because this administration and their allies in academia are determined to get control of our children now from age 2 or 3 in preschool and beyond at your provided taxpayer expense.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for allowing me to be with him.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Virginia more than he can ever know, and I am glad he is here.
But along the lines of rights that we have had, and that the Constitution has assured, we are finding civil liberties still are being trampled.
I have an article here by Glenn Greenwald, and it is just an excellent summary on what the title tells us: ``Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled By Exploiting `Insurrection' Fears.''
We have people in this body who are constantly referring to the insurrection on January 6. We have heard the President and others say that it was the worst attack on democracy ever. Even a person whom I don't often agree with, FBI Director Christopher Wray, even he pointed out that, gee, it is kind of tough for those of us who recall 9/11 to say January 6 was a worse attack on democracy.
If you were just judging by time, I heard from Attorney General Garland and spinning the news, many, I think 2 to 300, were charged with obstructing an official session of Congress for 4 to 6 hours. But, Mr. Speaker, if you go back to June 22 of 2016, we had 26 hours of obstruction of an official session of Congress. Congress twice tried to go back into session and was prevented each time. It was about 26 hours before the efforts of so many to obstruct Congress finally were withdrawn so we could have Congress again.
I didn't realize back then that this offense was out there. I knew there were many violations of House rules that went on, but then, Mr. Speaker, when you see, oh, my gosh, just obstructing Congress carries up to 20 years in prison. I would be interested to know if any of those people who were obstructing an official session of Congress realized that they were committing a Federal felony carrying up to 20 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine.
But fortunately for them, Paul Ryan was Speaker and chose not to really do anything. Those are the kind of things that when the American public sees that people are doing things wrong who are supposed to be making the laws and following the laws and yet they are the worst violators, it is not helpful nor healthy for the country.
I know one of my constituents--and I am not defending any crimes that have been committed--but he is a guy, he was on Ellen after rescuing dogs in a hurricane; he was arrested for his role in the Capitol. What I have learned from him and his family, gee, these people are being so mistreated. We have heard from other people. But we had a Federal judge here who said: Enough is enough.
He finally held the warden in contempt. As I understand, the warden has lost the job of being warden.
There is an article from Sarah Lynch saying that the jail violated the civil rights of a U.S. Capitol riot defendant, but these folks not being allowed to--at least some of them--not to shave, not to get a haircut, and I thought we were decades past those days, because I know all the county jails with which I am familiar, they would make sure people were dressed out, had a haircut and shaved, if they wanted to, before they came to court, that they were not going to have them forced into an appearance like the Unabomber looking like some wild, crazy person making it easier for a jury to convict them because they looked like a Neanderthal. Yet, that is exactly what the D.C. Jail has been doing.
It was reported that after the judge held the warden in contempt, that there was a late-night effort by the people at the D.C. Jail that, as I understand it, is partially under the control of the Bureau of Prisons, but they sent people to start scrubbing the black mold that was causing problems for some of the prisoners, painted areas that were disgusting and that they let some of these folks who were arrested because of the January 6 events, let them know that we hold you accountable and you are going to pay for it. Then some noted the terrible smell of cleaning fluid on their food that they couldn't eat. Many are tired of eating bologna sandwiches for months and months in a row.
I do know this: the reports we have been getting indicate that the folks here who are being held in pretrial confinement and are being punished--although that is unconstitutional to punish somebody while they are awaiting trial and not having been convicted--that they are not treated nearly as well as bloodthirsty murderers who are being held in Guantanamo.
I have been down there more than once. I have seen how things go there, and it is rather tragic that American citizens are being treated so much worse than individuals who want to destroy America and who have killed and participated in the killing of thousands of Americans.
Here is one from Gateway Pundit: ``Newly Released Video Shows January 6 Political Prisoner Jeremy Brown Saving a Female Trump Supporter Who Was Trampled By Capitol Police.'' That is from October 20.
Here is an article that was this summer titled, ``Six Months Since the January 6th Attack on the Capitol.'' It points out that it works out to be an average of three defendants arrested every single day, including weekends, since January 6. Nearly 235 defendants have been charged with corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding, or attempting to do so.
And this article from Sarah Lynch, October 13, ``Jail Violated Civil Rights of Capitol Riot Defendant, U.S. Judge Says,'' and a copy of that order.
But AG Garland tried to blame D.C. for conditions at the jail and treatment at the jail when actually he is in charge of what happens to pretrial prisoners that the Department of Justice is going after.
So nice try, but we need people here facing up to their responsibility.
Mr. Speaker, I will just conclude with a comment that I never ever thought I would hear myself say, but after seeing the partisanship, the use of official position to help a daughter's and son-in-law's finances, thank God Mitch McConnell didn't bring him to be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Schneider). Members are reminded to refrain from engaging in personalities toward the President.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 186
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