Jamie Raskin · TranslatePolitics.com

House of Representatives

Giving Voice to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Principles

2026-09-02

“I want to compliment Jackson. DEI is good. DEI opens doors for people. Trump administration hired bad people. Trump hired people who did bad things. Trump people fired DEI people. DEI people did a good job. Trump people had DUIs. Trump people did bad things. I don't like that. I want more DEI hires and fewer Trump hires. Trump people want to put up barriers. I want to take barriers down. Let people succeed on merit. Open up opportunities for everyone.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I thank our floor leader here on our Special Order hour, Congressman Jackson, for being such an extraordinary leader for all of us in keeping the movement for civil rights, for civil liberties, and for democracy going in the country. I want to start by just saluting Congressman Jackson for bringing national focus to the assault on DEI, which, of course, has been primarily just a system for opening up the doors to institutions that have discriminated in the past. I am seeing two kinds of people or, I should say, two kinds of categories of people working in the government under the Trump administration. One is what they call DEI hires. Who are some of the DEI hires? Well, when Secretary Hegseth became the Secretary of Defense, which he would later rename Secretary of War, he launched a campaign against so-called wokeness in the military, and one of the first people who he fired was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General CQ Brown, only the second African American to serve in that capacity. Now, what were his qualifications? Well, he was a U.S. Air Force general and a command pilot with more than 3,100 flying hours, primarily in the F-16 Fighting Falcon. He logged more than 130 combat hours in wartime. He was a commander of global operations and was given nothing but superior reviews, but he was profiled as the reviled DEI hire, and they sacked him. Then, Secretary Hegseth also got rid of a four-star admiral, Lisa Franchetti, who was one of the first women in the U.S. Navy to serve in a combat role and rose steadily through the ranks of the military to become the first woman ever to lead the United States Navy. Throughout her extraordinary 40-year career, Franchetti commanded at every level of the Navy, including the guided-missile U.S. destroyer USS Ross, Carrier Strike Group 9, and the U.S. 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean. So here we have two people who are at the very top of their profession, and of course, there were many more periods in American history where they would not have been able to do that because women and African Americans were excluded. They were able to do it in our time, precisely because the armed services opened up their vision and opened up their vista to include women, African Americans, and others who had been traditionally excluded. Yet, they are essentially labeled DEI hires, and that becomes the justification for getting rid of them. Well, there is another group of people. Take, for example, Secretary Hegseth himself, who was a weekend talk-show cohost who was forced out of the leadership of two different veterans nonprofit organizations before he was named as Secretary of Defense. Why was he forced out? Well, it turns out that he was reportedly engaged, repeatedly, in financial mismanagement, improper disorderly and drunken misconduct, and he faced repeated accusations of sexual harassment and assault from multiple women, to the point where even his own mother took him to task for these multiple episodes. Well, here is another one. The Director of the FBI, Kash Patel, who made news this spring because his security team reportedly requested breaching equipment when he was completely unresponsive one morning. He has been spotted chugging beers with the U.S. men's hockey team in their locker room and giving out free personalized bourbon bottles that say ``Kash Patel FBI Director'' on them. These are the people who were brought in who end up firing all of the so-called DEI hires. I remember when the new administration came back into power and there was a joint session of Congress in this room. The President came and made his big speech about everything they were going to do. Then, when it all broke up, afterward, somebody went outside and plowed his car into the back and side of a parked police cruiser. It turns out that was the chief of staff to Speaker Mike Johnson, but he was forgiven immediately for what he had done. I am not saying he shouldn't have been, but let's just say generally, and I am not speaking necessarily in terms of legal prosecutions here, but in terms of culture, we have the DEI hires who are being fired by the DUI hires. There is a frat-boy culture, which is what I am referring to, which dominates within the Trump administration, and those people are sacking, firing, kicking out of their careers people who have done nothing other than to thrive and succeed because the doors of discrimination have been taken down in the past. They, the Trump administration, want to put them back up. They want to reinstate all of the blockades to people's progress. Let's see fewer DUI hires and more DEI hires and let people succeed on their actual merit. Mr. Speaker, we have made progress in America when we dismantle the professional chokehold of good old boy networks and race and gender- exclusionary policies adopted by the groups that have dominated forever. There are established networks that thrive on keeping other people out. Let's open the market and government up to merit and hard work.

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House of Representatives

Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to Require That the Supreme Court of the United States Be Composed of Nine Justices

2026-09-02

“I don't want to change the number of justices. It should stay how it is. Congress should decide it like the Constitution says. I don't think we need this amendment. The other side just wants to change things because they like the current court. The court decided in their favor. I think that's wrong. I don't trust the President. He wants too much power. The court gave it to him. That wasn't right. I think the court should stay the same. Congress should keep its power. I want Congress to decide. I don't trust the President to decide.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, one still searches in vain for a single justification for why we would surrender and abdicate yet another power that Congress has in the Constitution, this time freezing it into the cement of constitutional architecture for all time, that there will be nine Justices. Mr. Speaker, they haven't even explained what that means. For example, let's say another Senate decides to do what Mitch McConnell did and hold a seat open for a year. Now that we have written a number into the Constitution for the first time, does that mean that the Supreme Court can't meet or can't vote? It is a serious question. In other words, can the Supreme Court not operate if it doesn't meet the magic number of nine? They haven't told us, which shows this is just frivolous political confetti that is being thrown into the air. It is not an attempt to really think through the powers of Congress, the powers of the Court, and so on. My friend from Kansas said that the Court shouldn't be a political football, and I agree with him about that because there are important things entrusted to the Court, like the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, and due process, all things under attack by this administration. Their gerrymandered Supreme Court, well, they have done all right sometimes, not as good as the district courts and the appeals courts have done. We have won more than 80 percent of the cases against President Trump in those courts, which is why they have been calling for the impeachment of judges, including Republican-appointed judges like Judge Boasberg, who was appointed by President Bush. They have called for his impeachment. That is making a political football out of it. We have had colleagues who have put up posters to impeach this judge and impeach that judge. They wanted to have a hearing about it in the Judiciary Committee, where they are talking about it. That is making a political football about it. I think we can all be intellectually honest. We know after Brown v. Board, the right-wingers, the anti-integrationists said to impeach Earl Warren, and the Republican platform for decades had language attacking the Supreme Court for Roe v. Wade. People have a right on all sides of the political spectrum to express what they feel about the Supreme Court, but why suddenly should we amend the Constitution of the United States to revoke our own powers simply because President Trump happens to like this Supreme Court and they voted for his immunity from felony crimes committed while in office, the so-called textualists and the so-called originalists. Where do you see in the Constitution anything about the President having immunity? When the Framers wanted to write immunity into the Constitution, they did it, like through the Speech and Debate Clause for Members of Congress. Maybe that is what they are going to want to give up next, the Speech and Debate Clause protecting us from prosecution by the executive branch for saying things that he doesn't like. That is not in the original Constitution. The President has it, but they made it up. Where did that come from? The stork brought it. They invented it. They call themselves originalists. It wasn't in the Federalist Papers. It wasn't in the original Constitutional Convention records. It is not in any of the ratified convention records. Where did that doctrine come from? They made it up. Mr. Speaker, we all can argue about what the Supreme Court does, but nobody yet has made a single satisfactory argument about why we should freeze, for the first time in American history, the number of Justices at nine when it has always been up to the Representatives of the people in the House and the Senate. Let me just close on that thought. The Senate already gets some say over the Supreme Court by rendering the power of advice and consent. The only power we have is the power they want to give up. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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“I don't want to change the number of justices. Congress should decide it like the Constitution says. I don't think we need this amendment. I want Congress to keep its power. I want Congress to decide. I don't trust the President to decide. The President taxed us too much with tariffs. I blame him for a trade war with Canada. I want Congress to have more power. The Constitution says Congress decides this.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, finally, a serious argument. I thank the distinguished gentleman, the former attorney general of Kansas, for responding. First of all, he describes this as the Keep Nine Amendment. If you want to keep at nine, you don't need a constitutional amendment. You just make that argument in Congress, just like people argued in prior centuries to keep it at ten or keep it at six or let's move to seven, so we don't need to freeze it into the Constitution. Secondly, he says that this should be a bipartisan issue. It should not be partisan. Agreed. We should have a bipartisan commitment to the handiwork of the Framers. It is in the Constitution that it is up to Congress. Yet, the gentleman leaves us by saying: Well, we are actually going to turn it over to the people to decide whether to revoke this power that the Framers invested in Congress. Of course, that is what it would mean to amend the Constitution. Why would we want to do that? We have dealt with this in a responsible way throughout American history. We are suspicious that our colleagues first gave away the war power to the President. Then they give away the spending power by letting him just abolish entire agencies and entities, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, USAID, and the Department of Education. Then they give the President the power over tariffs, which we have because we have the power to regulate commerce domestically and internationally, and he imposed the largest tax in American history unilaterally. That is what a tariff is. It is not a tax on China or any other country. It is a tax on our businesses and our people. Now we are in a trade war with Canada. If you travel to the north of Michigan in the Upper Peninsula, you go to the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, you go to the Adirondacks in New York, the small businesses are crying out for help because Canadians are boycotting us because of the whimsical, irrational, and deranged trade policies of this administration. We have real problems to deal with. We don't really need to be giving away the powers of Congress and upsetting the proper balance of powers that was set by the Framers originally. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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“You are bad. The other side is bad and mean. The other side only cares about one family. The other side is socialist. The other side does not like the courts. The other side is not fair. I don't want the other side to change the court size. They want more judges. That's bad. Our court system should be fair. The other side is not fair. They lost but want to change the rules. That is bad. The other side is bad. They are socialists. They are bad. Our country is not like the Third World. Socialists are bad. They want to control the court. They want to change our country. They opened our borders. The other side is radical. They are not fair. I want our side to win.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am moved by the remarks of the distinguished gentlewoman from Colorado. It seems to me if it doesn't make money for the Trump family, they call it socialist. That is interesting, especially when it is President Trump who is taking large pieces out of American corporations, like Intel. No other American President has done anything like that. He is, obviously, the state socialist and hanging around and palling around with every communist dictator on Earth. Again, we have not heard a single positive argument for why we should cement for all time nine as the number of Justices on the Supreme Court. I am beginning to conclude that there simply is no argument. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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“I don't want this amendment. Congress should keep its power to change the court size. FDR tried to change the court size. Congress rejected it. We aren't giving away power. The other side's policies are bad. I want us to keep our power.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, quickly, just as Congress has exercised its authority seven different times to reduce the size of the Court or increase the size of the Court according to appropriate historical circumstances, it has rejected numerous proposals to do that, including in the famed Court-Packing Plan. I don't know why our colleagues insist on thinking that FDR's field proposal is somehow an argument for giving our power away. We exercised our power properly in that moment. The gentlewoman from Wyoming refers to the Democratic political program. I am not sure what she is referring to, but it is certainly the opposite of the GOP political program of endless war, inflation, corruption, illegal tariffs, and billion-dollar ballrooms. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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“I did not say that. You want to keep nine justices because you like the court how it is now. Your party played politics with the court. You kept it at eight justices for a year. You would not vote on Merrick Garland. Now you want nine in the constitution. I think you just want to keep your majority.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman quotes me as having said that I said there was no possible reason that someone would want nine. No, I didn't say that at all. I think there might be a number of reasons. One very clear one is they want to freeze into place the majority they have in the Court right now, a majority that was created by the most suspect political maneuvers on the Senate side. The gentleman would like to lionize the number nine and place it in cement. Why wasn't it nine when Senator McConnell blocked any confirmation or vote on a replacement for Justice Scalia after he died? He kept it at eight for an entire year in order to get to the next administration so they could put Justice Gorsuch in instead of my constituent, Merrick Garland, who is one of the most talented people ever nominated to the Supreme Court. He was the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit, and they kept him off. Eight was fine with them then. Now, they want to go to nine because President Trump likes it just fine. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Menefee).

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“You want to change the constitution. I don't like that. I think your changes are bad. Where are your changes that I like? I want equal rights. I want no corporate money. I want different election rules. Lots of people want those things. Why don't you want that? I think you just want to look good. I think you have no real plan. I am against this. I will vote no.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I will add to the remarks of the distinguished gentlewoman, this point: It is interesting that our colleagues suddenly want to dabble in constitutional amendment politics. Nobody is crying out for this, as my colleagues have argued, but you know what people want by 85 percent? People want the equal rights amendment. Where is the Republican Party on that? They used to support it. Three-quarters of Americans, more than 75 percent, want to overturn Citizens United by a constitutional amendment, which transformed every corporate treasury in America into a dark money political slush fund. We want to get rid of that. How come they are not here today on that? How about a constitutional amendment on the right to vote or abolishing the electoral college and giving us a national vote for President? We have commanding popular majorities that want all those things. Yet, they come forward with a constitutional amendment no one is talking about where you need two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate, and three-quarters of the States. You can measure the sincerity of this whole proposal by virtue of the fact that there is no national movement for it in any way. This is, again, another little bone that is chucked over toward the White House to show them that they want to freeze into place the vanishing power of Donald Trump. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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“I want to talk. I think the other side is wrong. The constitution allows us to change the number of justices. I want to keep talking about this. Why is nine the right number? I don't know. I won't say why I think it's wrong. I just want people to agree with me.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. By ``leftwing socialist group,'' I assume the gentleman is referring to the Framers of the Constitution. It is the Framers who set up the system. They are trying to overthrow the system that the Framers created. The Framers gave Congress the power to control the number of Justices on the Court. Where does the number nine come from? I still await a single positive argument for why we should inscribe into law forever the number nine as the number of Justices we should have and nullify the power that the Framers of the Constitution and the Founders of the country gave to us. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Stansbury).

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“You call our plans socialist. I don't care. I think you like communism. Your friends are communists. You asked why a Democrat wanted more justices. I will tell you why. He wanted 13 judges for 13 courts. I want Congress to decide how many judges there should be. You don't say why 9 is the right number. I think you just want the court to do what you like. I will let someone else talk now.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I will try to answer the interesting questions raised by my distinguished colleague, Mr. Jordan, in seriatim. First of all, anything that we do to try to improve the fortunes and the well-being of the American people, our colleagues call socialist. They call Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid socialist. That is just water off our back. The President talks about communists. The only communists on Earth today are his best friends and his role models, like Kim Jong-un, who he writes love letters to, and President Xi, who he has praised more than two dozen times in public. How about Vladimir Putin, who he follows around like a puppy dog? Vladimir Putin was head of the KGB. If there is a problem with communism, it is over on that side of the aisle. The gentleman legitimately asked the question: Why did the former chair of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Nadler, advocate for an increase of four seats on the Supreme Court--which we are not debating today? What we are debating is whether Congress should have the power to do anything, to increase or reduce the size. He asked about that. It is a legitimate question. I will tell you exactly why. The gentleman may be unfamiliar with the history here, but Congress has traditionally linked the number of Justices on the Court to the number of Federal circuits. We have 13 Federal circuits. His proposal was to go from 9 to 13. Even the gentleman's beloved Ninth Circuit--which I think he is supposed to be representing in some sense--would be represented on the Supreme Court. We could have one Justice from each Federal circuit. That is what circuit riding was all about. You don't need some conspiracy theory to explain it. He was very overt about why he wanted to go from 9 to 13, which we could discuss another day. Here the question is whether we should nullify, obviate, and destroy our own power to decide who should be on the Court. Still, the gentleman has not offered one single argument explaining why the number nine should be magic other than it cements into place all the decisions of this rightwing Roberts Court. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon), the distinguished ranking member of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government.

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“I don't want to talk about the actual bill. I brought up something from 10 years ago to change the subject. I hope that people will be distracted by talking about that instead.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The floor leader offers a charming and completely self-defeating argument when he goes to the Roosevelt plan. FDR was a President, and Congress rejected his plan. The gentleman acknowledges that Congress has changed the size of the Supreme Court seven different times, and we have also declined to change it several times. Now, he describes what Roosevelt wanted to do as Court packing. This is Court packing on steroids. The gentleman wants to say that this President happens to like the people on the Court right now, through all of the packing and stacking and gerrymandering that has taken place in the last few years, and therefore we should freeze it, not just only for his own term but for all time. That is extraordinary. In the meantime, they have not offered a single argument to explain why nine Justices should be the number that we constitutionalize and place in cement forever. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), who is the ranking member of the Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet Subcommittee.

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“You say we should change the number of Supreme Court Justices. I don't want that. I want nine justices, no more. You want to change things because you don't like the current court. That's bad. Our side is good. Your side is bad. I talk about many bad things you did. The court is not fair. It should change. No, it should not change. It is fine how it is. I want to keep things how they are.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. In this 119th Congress we have watched the President's followers in Congress surrender to the President one constitutional power after another. Amazingly, the Speaker and the MAGA party have abdicated nearly every single essential power that the Framers exclusively vested in us, Congress, the Representatives of the people. First is the power to declare war, which has been usurped by the President with catastrophic results for the country and without a peep from his sycophants in Congress. Next is the spending power, the power of the purse, the power to appropriate Federal dollars to spending and grant programs and to specify their purposes, powers that have been continually violated in acts of impoundment, nullification, and redirection by the President who has not only effectively shut down the Department of Education, USAID, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but has even helped himself, without any appropriation from Congress, to $1.8 billion of taxpayer money to give away to Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other convicted insurrectionists who attacked this body in order to try to overthrow a Presidential election in January of 2021; Next is the power to impose tariffs and taxes and the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, powers that have been ripped away from us without any protests from the majority so the President could launch preposterous trade wars against the world and aggressively insult and alienate our beloved neighbor and democratic ally Canada. They have abandoned even the power to decide whether or not the President should receive Presidential emoluments, gifts, payments from foreign governments as he piles up a pirate's treasure of hundreds of millions of dollars in gifts from foreign autocracies and monarchies. They have abandoned the unquestioned exclusive congressional power of Congress to build and exercise control over needful buildings and structures for the national government like the White House; the Reflecting Pool, which they are now calling the strait of warm ooze; and The Kennedy Center. All of these structures are being bulldozed, demolished, desecrated with Presidential graffiti, and renovated according to unilateral and independent executive decisions without even congressional consultation--all for the first time in American history. They are dangerously ceding our power to regulate the times, places, and manner of Federal elections conducted in the States to the post office and to our monarchically minded President who has no constitutional role in elections and was impeached by this Chamber for inciting a violent insurrection to try to overthrow an election, which he lost by more than 7 million votes, 306-232 in the electoral college. So what constitutional power do our colleagues propose to surrender today? Well, it is just a power that Congress has had since the beginning of the Republic under Article III, Section 1: the power to define the composition of the Supreme Court and the number of Justices who serve there. Over the course of our history, Congress has exercised this authority seven different times by changing the number of Justices on the Court. With the Judiciary Act of 1789, Congress established the first Court with six Justices. In 1801, President Adams and Congress shrank it to five Justices. When President Jefferson won in 1800 and came back to power, then it was back to six Justices. In 1807, Congress expanded it to seven Justices when it created the Seventh Circuit, keeping to the congressional tradition of one Justice per Federal Circuit. In 1837, Congress expanded the number of Federal Circuits to nine and then added the corresponding two seats to the Court, bringing the Court to nine Justices. In 1863, Congress briefly added a 10th Federal Circuit during the Civil War and added a 10th Justice, giving Lincoln one more to appoint. In 1866, Congress went back to seven Justices. In 1869, President Grant and Congress increased the Court to nine again with another Judiciary Act, again, matching the number of Justices to Federal Circuits. That is the tradition of circuit riding. Today, we still have nine Justices, although we have 13 Federal judicial circuits, the vast majority of which are not represented by even a single Justice among the nine currently serving on the Supreme Court. In fact, the floor leader from Arizona has not only no Justices from his State on the Supreme Court, there are no Justices from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has 67 million Americans living there. Five of the Justices today come from the New York City metropolitan area, basically one for each borough. Is it really possible that there are not people from other parts of the country who could effectively and honorably serve on the Supreme Court? Well, if we decided this on an originalist basis, we might move to place 13 Justices on the Court to match our 13 Federal circuits or we might go to 6 Justices, which was the original number there. However, MAGA's proposal is to strip Congress of all authority in the matter, to freeze it and cement it permanently in the constitutional architecture for all time, with the suddenly magic number nine. This is odd. Nine is neither the number of Federal circuits we have-- that is 13--nor is it the original number of Justices Congress placed on the Court. That was 6. Therefore, what is going on here? Well, surprise, surprise, America, it is another partisan power grab by MAGA, our colleagues who fear for the results of the November election, as their policies have brought us nothing but war, inflation, corruption, lawlessness, and a $40 trillion debt, one-quarter of it supplied by this Presidential administration. The MAGA party wants to cement into place a profoundly partisan and lopsided 6-3 Roberts Court that was gerrymandered and engineered by Mitch McConnell after the untimely deaths of Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsburg, each in the final year of a Presidential term. After Justice Scalia died on February 13, 2016, President Obama nominated my constituent, Merrick Garland, to fill the seat. Senator McConnell did not even allow hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee, much less a vote in the committee, much less a vote on the floor. He said he wanted to let the people decide, and 11 months was too close to the next election; forgetting, I suppose, that President Obama had won one of those genuine constitutional 4-year terms in office. That seat sat open for a record-setting 422 days before they filled it with Justice Gorsuch. In other words, they were for an eight-Justice Court during that year, but when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, less than 2 months before the election, when early voting had already started in some States, Senator McConnell rushed through confirmation hearings and then a final vote for Amy Coney Barrett just 8 days before the 2020 Presidential election took place, laughing about this glaring disparity in treatment, acknowledging what everyone knew: Well, that 1-year rule was just for the Democrats. They were very happy to barrel through that nomination at the last moment. Now, by essentially stealing these two seats from the American people, MAGA has put four of the five seats in the ruling majority rightwing faction in the hands of Justices appointed by two Presidents who lost the Presidential popular vote--George W. Bush in 2010 and Donald Trump in 2016. The rightwing capture of the Court, fueled by corporate dark money and the Citizens United decision, has plunged this Court into a legitimacy crisis, an ethics crisis, and a jurisprudential crisis like has never been seen before in American history. Trump's followers in Congress now seek to freeze into place the political Court that MAGA built for decades to come. Thus, they urge us to give away another critical power that the Framers vested in us. As gas and diesel prices soar out of control and Trumpflation spirals up for groceries, healthcare, housing, as Trump's reckless and forever war of choice in Iran spirals downward, and America increasingly stands isolated in the world, MAGA wants to impose a straitjacket clamp-down on our democracy, our freedom, and our constitutional rights. The Roberts Court overthrew Roe v. Wade and destroyed the constitutional right of women to comprehensive healthcare in every State in the country. It demolished the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, and the Callais decision just this term. Also, these fraudulent textualists invented out of thin air Presidential immunity from prosecution for felony crimes committed in office. In Federalist 51, Madison said that the major safeguard against tyranny and despotism in America would be the natural identification and loyalty that Members of Congress would show to our own branch of government. We would stand up for ourselves, Madison thought. ``Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,'' he wrote, but today's Republicans show no loyalty to the constitutional architecture of Congress, to our rights, our prerogatives, our powers. They are content just to keep their heads down, to close up shop, to go home as early as possible just to keep their jobs so the President will not mobilize social media and Elon Musk's money against them in a primary. They want to preserve their survivability, their marketability. What a humiliating and spectacular collapse of the tradition of congressional self-respect and constitutional patriotism. I urge every colleague in this body to oppose this ridiculous constitutional amendment and giveaway of congressional powers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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House of Representatives

Extend Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans

2026-09-02

“A group of immigrants in my district might have to leave. They have lived here for a long time. They work and pay taxes. I want the government to let them stay. If they leave, it will be sad for the community.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, in Maryland's beautiful Eighth Congressional District, Montgomery County, Maryland, something shocking is about to happen. In 1 week, tens of thousands of people in our community will lose their Salvadoran temporary protected status. They will lose their work authorizations, and many will lose the careers that they have worked hard to build here, packing up whatever belongings they can fit into a couple of suitcases. They may be separated from the rest of their families and forced to return to a country where they will face violence and human rights violations. Their departure will create great dislocation and heartbreak in many neighborhoods. For the past 25 years, Salvadoran TPS holders have raised their families here and sent their kids to our schools, started small businesses, and added to the vibrant culture of Maryland's Eighth District. They have believed in America, and they form an essential part now of our communities. The Free State is the third-largest population of Salvadoran TPS holders in America. Every year, the 23,000 of them who call our State home contribute an estimated $732 million to our community. They have been a powerful driver of our prosperity. One of my Salvadoran constituents who obtained TPS and arrived in Maryland when she was just a baby has built an outstanding career here as an educator at an elementary school where she herself went to school in the only State and in the only country she has ever known. As a product of Montgomery County Public Schools, she is proud to give back to the community that helped her family establish a life in the United States. She hopes to keep educating the next generation of leaders. Yet the looming end of TPS next week threatens to strip her away from her students. The abrupt revocation of her status also threatens to separate her from her U.S. citizen spouse. Another constituent also arrived in Maryland as a child. After escaping brutal poverty in El Salvador, she went on to achieve success by providing professional cleaning services to households throughout our community. She has been an active member of her local church and congregation. With her TPS designation now in question, she worries about having to abandon her livelihood, her family, and the community she loves. She does not know what the future holds. Other hardworking Salvadorans have played an important role in the growth of one of Montgomery County's finest paint manufacturing companies. In their many years working for the company, these constituents have made impressive use of their work authorizations. They manage business affairs for the company, test its new paint formulas, and efficiently facilitate the delivery of products to doorsteps across our community. These neighbors have enriched the social, economic, and cultural life of our State. Their loss will be felt in classrooms left without teachers, unbuilt houses, renovations unfinished, landscaping projects abandoned, friendships severed, and families deprived of breadwinners and loved ones. The Trump administration, if you are listening, please extend this vital program. Do not turn a blind eye to what is taking place. America has always served as an asylum for humanity. As Tom Paine said, it is a place of refuge for hardworking people fleeing economic, intellectual, political, religious repression and poverty from all over the world. The administration should extend TPS and assure Salvadorans of their place in our community.

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House of Representatives

Making Improvements in the Enactment of Title 54, United States Code, into a Positive Law Title and to Correct Related Technical Errors

2026-08-31

“I want to agree with the other side. The nonpartisan experts did a good job. I want everyone to vote for this bill to make small technical fixes to the law.”

House of Representatives

Making Revisions in Title 51, United States Code, as Necessary to Keep the Title Current, and to Make Technical Amendments to Improve the United States Code

2026-08-31

“I want to pass this bill too. It will update some laws about space. The bill will not change what the laws mean. It will just keep our laws organized and up to date. I want to thank the office who worked on this.”

House of Representatives

Making Improvements in the Enactment of Title 41, United States Code, into a Positive Law Title and to Improve the Code

2026-08-31

“This bill just cleans up some technical errors. It doesn't change anything important. I want everyone to vote for it.”

House of Representatives

Making Technical Amendments to Update Statutory References to Certain Provisions Classified to Title 2, United States Code, Title 50, United States Code, and Title 52, United States Code, and To...

2026-08-31

“These are small updates to the law. They will make the laws easier to read. I want everyone to support this bill.”

House of Representatives

Amending Chapters 4, 10, and 131 of Title 5, United States Code, as Necessary to Keep Those Chapters Current and to Correct Related Technical Errors

2026-08-31

“I want this bill to pass. It will update some laws. It will not change what the laws mean. I hope everyone will support this bill.”

House of Representatives

Making Technical Amendments to Title 49, United States Code, as Necessary to Improve the Code

2026-08-31

“I think people should vote for this bill. It will change some words in a law about transportation. It won't change what the law does. That's all it does.”

House of Representatives

Making Technical Amendments to Update Statutory References to Provisions Reclassified to Title 34, United States Code, and to Correct Related Technical Errors

2026-08-31

“I want to pass this package of bills. They will make technical updates to the law. I think that is good. I thank the people who worked on these bills. This is not controversial. We do this every year.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Today, we are considering a series of bipartisan and, one hopes, noncontroversial bills to help ensure that the U.S. Code is up-to-date and accessible to all American citizens. We do this at least once every Congress. This is the first time we are doing it in the 119th Congress, I believe, and I am very pleased to support this package. Currently consisting of 54 different titles, the U.S. Code is a compilation of the vast array of Federal laws organized by coherent subject matter areas. As new laws are passed, they get assimilated into the code, which is a painstaking process undertaken by the dedicated professionals who work in the Office of the Law Revision Counsel. As part of the office's efforts to maintain the code, they work to make it more efficient and easier to navigate and understand. This includes correcting technical errors, removing ambiguities, updating statutory cross-references, and repealing provisions that have become obsolete. The bills we are considering today are a result of this exhaustive process. It is important to note that these bills make no change to the substantive meaning or effect of any existing laws. They are purely technical in nature and will help ensure that the code is authoritative, accurate, and accessible. I thank Chairman Jordan for continuing our Judiciary Committee's long tradition of considering these bills in a bipartisan way. I thank the sponsors of each bill for bringing them forward today. The first of them is H.R. 4499, which updates cross-references and corrects related technical errors throughout the code to accommodate previous reclassification efforts in title 34. Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to support the legislation, and I thank my distinguished colleague for his leadership. I reserve the balance of my time.

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House of Representatives

Protecting American Industry and Labor from International Trade Crimes Act of 2026

2026-08-31

“I want the bill to pass. It will make a new task force to stop trade crimes. Trade crimes are bad. They hurt Americans and companies. The task force will need money to work. If we don't give them more money, the bill won't do much. I am glad both parties agree on this bill. The Department of Justice should stop trade crimes instead of going after the President's rivals.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in support of H.R. 1869, which would create a new trade crimes task force within DOJ to strengthen capacity to investigate and prosecute trade-related crimes. Trade crimes are a big problem in the U.S. Foreign hackers equip computer chips with spyware and then slip them into the bloodstream of American commerce, market opportunists use unstable materials to create counterfeit batteries that end up exploding and maiming unsuspecting e- cigarette users in our country, and handbags made with forced Uyghur labor passed off as fair trade materials deepen and perpetuate our complicity with human rights crimes. Other trade crimes may not have a clear victim or defined perpetrator, but they are equally pernicious. Cyber intrusions can risk a company's trade secrets without their knowledge. They may never become aware of the data leak, but a foreign competitor can use the intellectual property to unfairly compete with targeted U.S. companies. The deluge of counterfeits and the unique way trade crimes are perpetrated make it difficult for prosecutors at DOJ to enforce our laws. This legislation would help the government prevent trade loss by creating a task force to identify, investigate, and prosecute trade crimes that hurt Americans across the economy. We are proud the legislation has been bipartisan. I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle on the select committee on China, especially our distinguished colleague from Illinois, Raja Krishnamoorthi, the House Appropriations Committee, and the Judiciary Committee for working to carefully negotiate this legislation that, if properly funded, will help the U.S. crack down on foreign entities that circumvent U.S. trade laws. Although DOJ already has dedicated personnel to enforce laws protecting Americans against illegal products, limited funding and resources prevent prosecutors from doing enough. If we don't provide funding for this work, the bill we are voting for today has an uncertain future. The myriad investigators, prosecutors, and support staff envisioned for the task force will never be hired. You cannot increase trade crime enforcement without increasing the number of prosecutors working on the problem, and you cannot increase the number of staff handling trade crimes without more funding. Stopping and preventing counterfeits that hurt Americans, endanger national security, and lose billions in profits for U.S. companies is serious work. I am glad we can all agree that DOJ prosecutors should focus on keeping America safe rather than pursuing political rivals of the President and targeting perceived political enemies with bogus prosecutions. Mr. Speaker, I support this legislation strongly. I encourage my colleagues to do the same, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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