| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Noon Eastern, California Democratic Congressman Roe Cona will outline his economic policy at the City Club of Cleveland. | |
| Later in the afternoon at 4 o'clock, a conversation on campus free speech during the second Trump term says the administration continues to detain international students, including Badar Khan Souri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, who's in the U.S. under an approved visa. | ||
| That's hosted by Georgetown University. | ||
| Again, that starts at 4 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| And then at 9 p.m., Democratic Representative Laura Friedman of California hosts a town hall with constituents. | ||
| All of this live here on C-SPAN, also C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app and online at c-span.org. | ||
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core, a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Next, Congressman Suha Subramanyam holds a constituent town hall in his district in Fairfax County, Virginia. | |
| Testing. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Good afternoon, everyone. | ||
| My name is Stella Pukarski. | ||
| I represent in the 36th district in the Virginia State Senate. | ||
| Chances are, if you are a Fairfax County resident, I am your senator, and hopefully we've met before. | ||
| And if we haven't, I look forward to meeting you. | ||
| And please come up. | ||
| I'm going to stay around and would love to chat and get to know some more folks that I have not met yet. | ||
| It is my pleasure to welcome all of you here today. | ||
| I'm very excited to have our congressman and my former colleague from the Virginia State Senate, Suha Subramanian, here with us today to talk about what is happening at the federal level in our district and the work that he is doing there. | ||
| From the state, I come here to say that while we are a divided government, we just finished a 45-day session, worked on an off-year budget. | ||
| We were able to pass three constitutional amendments, one to protect marriage equality, one to protect reproductive health care access, and one to have automatic restoration of voting rights when somebody has paid their debt to society. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So what happens with the constitutional amendments is that they have to pass two years in a row with an election in between. | ||
| So we're going to have this year's election. | ||
| Hopefully we'll be going right back there in January to pass them again. | ||
| And then they will be put on the ballot for the citizens of Virginia to decide. | ||
| And I think we are going to be successful because all of you are going to come vote and you're going to share that with your friends and family. | ||
| We will be able to make some real progress in Virginia without the fear of what is happening at the federal level getting in the middle of very personal decisions for our constituents here in the Commonwealth. | ||
| We were also able to pass a myriad of bills, luckily, many of them bipartisan, to expand health care access to folks, to invest in K-12 and higher education, to work on affordable housing, and many other great bills that I think are going to help move our Commonwealth forward. | ||
| Of course, there were also those topics that we were not able to come to bipartisan agreements, and the chief of those being gun violence prevention measures, such as the assault weapons ban, which I hope after this November we may have a real opportunity to make some real progress in that space the next time that I go down to Richmond. | ||
| Currently, we are waiting on the budget. | ||
| The governor slashed a lot of the investments that we made, and we rejected the majority of his amendments. | ||
| And now we've sent it. | ||
| The ball is back in his court. | ||
| We're waiting to see what he is going to do. | ||
| And I hope he comes to a space where he realizes that continuing to invest in our children and to those who really need the help, especially right now, is a great investment for our state government to be making. | ||
| So we will see where that ends up. | ||
| And of course, you are all very well aware of what is happening at the federal level that has great impact on what is going to happen in Virginia. | ||
| We are very worried about cuts to Medicaid, cuts to social services, to the large number of job cuts that we have seen. | ||
| Unemployment in Virginia has skyrocketed. | ||
| So my colleagues and I are laser-focused on ensuring that whatever we can do as a Commonwealth to support our people, we are going to be doing that. | ||
| And I am very confident that we will probably be going back for some special sessions this year to address some of the things that are happening. | ||
| However, I could not be more proud or excited that when it comes to our district, my former colleague, the Congressman, is up on the hill fighting for us and the values that we hold dear to us. | ||
| And it is best, I think, for citizens. | ||
| We're on all levels of governments, work closely with each other. | ||
| And I'm proud to say that we have a very good relationship. | ||
| And when we get constituent requests or issues, if we cannot find a solution, we go to our federal partners to help us with that. | ||
| So, with that, I'm going to turn over the mic, and I hope you'll join me in giving Congressman Suha Subarman in his first visit for a town hall in Fairfax County a warm welcome. | ||
| Thank you, everyone, for coming today. | ||
| Sorry about the parking. | ||
| Apparently, people are still trying to find their way through. | ||
| Apparently, there's parking spots in between the school buses and the schools. | ||
| So that's where they're finding parking now. | ||
| But I really appreciate y'all being here today. | ||
| I think this is day 98 for me, almost 100 days, and it's been a very long 100 days to say the least. | ||
| Lots happened, but I'll say that a lot of people have asked me if I regret going to Congress. | ||
| And I've told them that if I wasn't in Congress, I'd be at home yelling at the TV. | ||
| So I'm glad to be yelling at Congress instead. | ||
| But either way, I'm glad to be here. | ||
| But thank you, Senator Prokarsky, for being here. | ||
| We have other elected officials that serve you who couldn't make it today, like Delegate Delaney, but they are serving you really well. | ||
| We have great local government here in Fairfax County. | ||
| I have a little bit of Fairfax County, but I wanted to make sure I came to every county I represent. | ||
| And certainly, you know, Fairfax, like Loudoun, where I'm from, and Arlington and other surrounding areas in this area, we have a lot of federal workers. | ||
| So I want to get a show of hands. | ||
| Does anyone hear a federal worker or contractor or no one? | ||
| Yeah, I would say almost everyone is tied to the federal government in this community in some way. | ||
| And so that's why I found that it's both devastating to our community to see what's happened to the federal workforce and to these federal agencies, not just because of what's going on to our economy, but also how important the work is that's being done in federal government and how it makes every American safer, healthier, and more prosperous. | ||
| And so, you know, I get those stories, though. | ||
| I've gotten almost 20,000 emails now to our office in the first hundred days. | ||
| We've responded to pretty much all of them. | ||
| But one of the things we do is before I go into a hearing, before I go speak on the floor, I ask my team, you got a story about HHS, you got a story about this agency, and we always seem to have one. | ||
| And those stories seem to have an impact on my colleagues as well. | ||
| And the other thing we try to do with your stories is we try to sell them to the press. | ||
| And so I've noticed that as a freshman member of Congress in the minority, I don't have a lot of legislative power. | ||
| But what I can do is make some of the worst offenses happening in federal government right now famous. | ||
| And so, you know, our first town hall was in Loudoun County, and we got a lot of really good stories. | ||
| One of them was actually about the fact that Doge was sleeping in some of the federal buildings. | ||
| And so I actually pitched that story to many outlets. | ||
| And I even did a skid on TikTok of me trying to break in and sleep in some of the agencies myself. | ||
| They wouldn't let me in. | ||
| But what's nice about that is we just have a lot of really amazing people in this community who do great work. | ||
| And even the ones that haven't been fired have told me how dysfunctional some of their work has become. | ||
| I think that's a shame, but it's also an opportunity. | ||
| This is the same community that's going to get us back on the right track. | ||
| Whether it's within the agencies, the people already working there, whether it's the people who are fired who can talk about what happened. | ||
| And in some cases, we've even been able to get people their jobs back. | ||
| There are some cases the VA, I don't want to promise you you'll get your jobs back, but in some cases, folks at the VA who are fired, we made a big deal out of that. | ||
| A lot of articles were written and made a lot of calls. | ||
| And within a week, a lot of the people I was calling, especially the probationary employees, were getting their jobs back. | ||
| And so I just think that this is a time not to feel powerless, but to actually feel like if you speak up and you put the pressure, that's the best way to see results. | ||
| It's not always working, but that's certainly the times when the administration is backtracked on things, but the times when the administration has admitted fault or mistake is when we have put pressure on them. | ||
| That's been my experience at least. | ||
| And so, yes, I'm the guy with the suit on, but you all have a lot of power, and it's my job to empower you. | ||
| That's the way I look at this. | ||
| And so I wanted to talk about a couple of things before I hear from you. | ||
| I'm here for you. | ||
| So we're here to talk about what you want to talk about. | ||
| But I've got these handy posters. | ||
| They're very nice. | ||
| And the first one is the question I get asked the most is like, what am I doing about it? | ||
| What are we doing about it? | ||
| There's a lot of things that we've tried to do here. | ||
| There's a lot of numbers here. | ||
| I'll let you read it, but the long story short is it's been a very busy first hundred days. | ||
| But again, the one I want to pay you to pay attention to is 5,000 calls, 18,000 letters. | ||
| I even get a report when you call me. | ||
| It's usually an intern you're talking to, but they write down what you have to say. | ||
| And I often go through and get a report at the end of the week of what you've been saying. | ||
| And sometimes I'll even call you back if you said something interesting. | ||
| I think a few of you may have gotten those calls. | ||
| But then the emails, too, I've actually read out entire emails during committee hearings. | ||
| And I found that even my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have found those to be very powerful. | ||
| When the stuff happened with Signal, I actually had many military families reach out and say how upset they were that their lives were in peril because folks in the administration were using Signal to talk about war plans. | ||
| And I just read their emails and I had a member afterwards on the other side of the aisle say how powerful that was to him. | ||
| And so just keep telling your stories because you have really good ones, especially in this area. | ||
| The second thing I want to note is the economy. | ||
| And this is a very simple graph showing what's going on. | ||
| We've got the stock market, it's down, consumer confidence down, retirement funds down, costs are up, tariffs are up. | ||
| Actually, even with the tariff fix, it's actually because of the increased tariffs on China, they actually made tariffs worse by rolling them back. | ||
| But what this means for a community is that I've talked to a lot of businesses. | ||
| I had a small business before I got into Congress. | ||
| I know many others have as well, Senator Pukarski, too. | ||
| And it's hard to predict the future already when you're a small business. | ||
| You don't know what's going to happen three to six months down the line. | ||
| And so when you put on top of that tariffs or even just general economic conditions, I had one builder who talked about how they used to have lumber quotes open for 30 days. | ||
| And now they won't keep them open for more than a day or two because lumber prices keep going up day by day. | ||
| And so they can't predict how much it's going to cost to build a house in 30 to 60 days. | ||
| It's hard for them to even justify building homes at a time when we have a housing shortage here in Northern Virginia, right? | ||
| So just one example. | ||
| Take that across hundreds of sectors. | ||
| And what you have is it's not just about the rising costs. | ||
| That's certainly a part of it. | ||
| But it's about the unpredictability of what's going on. | ||
| And, you know, there's not a lot of data behind the actions that are happening. | ||
| The administration talked about the art of the deal a lot this past week. | ||
| And so I was actually going through the art of the deal, the book. | ||
| And there's this quote there that said, I don't have a lot of number crunchers. | ||
| I don't trust fancy marketing surveys. | ||
| I do my own surveys and draw my own conclusions. | ||
| And that to me is a little dangerous because what that means is we're not doing evidence-based things. | ||
| And that's going to hurt a lot of businesses and hurt a lot of people in our community. | ||
| And so I don't know. | ||
| I'm a little afraid to read the rest of the book, but at least it gives us a window into kind of what's going on. | ||
| And then last thing, a couple of things that you may not have heard of. | ||
| There's stuff going on in immigration. | ||
| First, just to say, even if you don't agree with what someone has to say, people do not deserve to be deported, detained for what they said. | ||
| That is just not, that's against free speech. | ||
| It's against what our country stands for. | ||
| And then the second is people deserve due process. | ||
| And so what I mean is Even if they are, even if you suspect that they committed a crime, they deserve their day in front of an immigration judge, in front of a court, to at least be told what they did, and that's not happening. | ||
| And finally, if the courts rule something, the administration needs to follow it. | ||
| And that didn't quite happen this last couple of weeks in one or two cases. | ||
| And so one last thing, too, sorry, before we go on, is we had a bill that I think is very interesting and really bad. | ||
| It's called a SAVE Act, and we had a vote on it. | ||
| And then we had another one, the No Rogue Rulings Act, which you may not have heard of as much. | ||
| So the No Rogue Rulings Act basically says all these nationwide injunctions are not allowed. | ||
| And so the injunction on some of these firings, the injunction on birthright citizenship, for instance, basically they wanted, they don't like the rulings, and so they're trying to, one, impeach the judges or else stop them from stopping the unconstitutional stuff that's happening. | ||
| And so I think that's dead on arrival in the Senate, but I just want to let you know that that passed the House on party lines. | ||
| And then the second one was the SAVE Act, which basically requires you to have a passport or federal ID to vote. | ||
| And I think that's very dangerous because I think it's almost 40% of Virginians don't have a passport. | ||
| And it's not easy to get a passport. | ||
| It costs quite a bit of money. | ||
| It's quite a bit of time. | ||
| It's very inconvenient to get one. | ||
| And so not everyone travels abroad and doesn't see the need. | ||
| And to force everyone to get a passport is not easy. | ||
| It disenfranchises a lot of people. | ||
| And then on top of that, if you're a woman and you got married and have a different last name than your birth certificate, then that's a problem for you as well. | ||
| You have to find, you have to prove that you're a citizen now. | ||
| And so we looked back, my staff looked back 20 years in Virginia, and guess how many instances of non-citizens we found voting? | ||
| Zero. | ||
| And how many instances of voter fraud we found was not very much either. | ||
| And in fact, it was actually more Republicans committing voter fraud. | ||
| And there are a couple instances. | ||
| Someone told me this, so I'm trying to verify it. | ||
| Some of the instances were actually Republicans trying to prove that there was voter fraud, the instances of voting fraud that I'm talking about. | ||
| And so we're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist by creating a whole new problem, which is disenfranchising people. | ||
| And I don't want to drop the SAVE Act and let that kind of go unheard because if they're going to flood the zone at me, I want to flood the zone right back. | ||
| And that means talking about every single thing that's happening that's wrong. | ||
| But again, you're not powerless in this fight. | ||
| Let's continue to speak up. | ||
| Even if you disagree with me, I want to hear from you. | ||
| And that's why I'm here today. | ||
| So thank you for showing up. | ||
| And I look forward to your questions and your comments. | ||
| So thank you for joining us. | ||
| And the mic's right there. | ||
| And I hope you step up. | ||
| But thank you for being here. | ||
| appreciate it. | ||
| Who's the bold person that's going to go first? | ||
| We'll help you. | ||
| We'll help you out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So I have two questions, actually. | ||
| I attended the hands-off rally in D.C. last weekend. | ||
| And Al Green mentioned that Al Green mentioned that impeachment papers were going to be filed within 30 days. | ||
| Wasn't sure if you were aware of that. | ||
| He said it to like thousands of people. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And then my second question was, even though you brought it up, and I appreciated that, the signal chats seems to have fallen off the radar for a lot of people. | ||
| And I am a DOD employee, and I would get fired for that. | ||
| So I'm really curious on what's actually going on there. | ||
| Yeah, it's a good question. | ||
| Yeah, and I'll agree. | ||
| I'm curious to see what the impeachment reasoning is. | ||
| I think certainly there's a lot to choose from. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So many. | |
| I want to remind everyone, though, impeachment is not just a legal process. | ||
| It's a political process, right? | ||
| So, you know, having the votes is just as important. | ||
| That's why Trump wasn't impeached the first time. | ||
| But I'll certainly keep an eye out on that. | ||
| So thanks for bringing that up. | ||
| The second thing, the signal chats. | ||
| We had a hearing, they won't have a hearing on this in the oversight committee where I serve. | ||
| I'm the ranking member on military and foreign affairs. | ||
| A great place to have a hearing on this. | ||
| But instead, so they had a hearing on cybersecurity a couple weeks ago. | ||
| And all I did was talk about this. | ||
| And the reason why is because we can't, you know, they're talking about cybersecurity vulnerabilities in America, and that is a cybersecurity vulnerability, right? | ||
| And so we need to have them, we need to have both sides coming together because this was a total screw-up, and this doesn't need to be a partisan thing. | ||
| And what I'm finding is that there's some folks on the other side of the aisle who are scared of criticizing the president, even when he does things that are completely wrong, that everyone can agree are wrong. | ||
| And in this case, this was the Secretary of Defense putting war plans in a signal chat. | ||
| That is completely wrong, right? | ||
| And so we need to call that out. | ||
| I call on him to resign. | ||
| I called on Mike Waltz to resign as well for even having signal chats in the first place. | ||
| And we can't let this go. | ||
| We cannot let them plan really strategic, important, sensitive things on Signal at all. | ||
| It is a vulnerability. | ||
| And the last thing is Signal is encrypted, yes, but you can still get into the chats. | ||
| I explained in my committee how a phone works because I don't know if they know how a phone works. | ||
| But it's not just about the app you use, it's about the phone itself and so many other things. | ||
| And so there's a lot of reasons why that was really bad. | ||
| And thank you for bringing it up because I'm not going to let that go either. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's really important. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Is there anything like we can do to help keep that going to make sure that it gets to the city? | ||
| So on the Senate side, they're doing, I know there is an investigation happening. | ||
| And I know the White House is doing its own investigation. | ||
| I don't really trust that one. | ||
| But I know the Senate has not dropped. | ||
| There's bipartisan support for continuing to probe this. | ||
| And I want to make sure that we continue on the House side. | ||
| None of that is happening. | ||
| So we'll be doing our own sort of inquiries and keep putting on the pressure. | ||
| But like everything else, keep putting the pressure on. | ||
| And I think you'll start to see some blowback and response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, thank you. | |
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for letting me speak today. | |
| My name is Marnie Madiak. | ||
| I'm from Manassas, but I'm born and bred in Fairfax County. | ||
| I went to Fairfax County Public Schools from kindergarten to 12th grade, and I taught for 32 years for the district. | ||
| I currently tutor students online in Title I schools in Milwaukee and Oakland, which is kind of cool. | ||
| So I stand before you not just as an educator, but as a passionate advocate. | ||
| Fairfax County Public Schools was always an example of diversity, inclusivity, and inclusivity. | ||
| However, I'm deeply concerned about the troubling trends we're witnessing across the country, trends that threaten the very foundation of our educational system. | ||
| In many states, we're seeing teachers being fired for simply honoring the names and identities of their students. | ||
| Teachers have been forced to take down welcome signs because they are seeing some see them as political. | ||
| And as you walk out, take a look at everything in the hallways because all of that would not be hung up in some other states. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| This is not a matter of policy. | ||
| It's a fundamental right of every child to feel seen, respected, and welcomed in their classroom. | ||
| As educators, we have a sacred responsibility to hold safe spaces where all children can express themselves freely and learn without fear of discrimination or exclusion. | ||
| Moreover, I'm alarmed by the recent decision made by institutions like my alma mater, James Madison University, to get rid of their diversity, equity, and inclusion program. | ||
| These initiatives are crucial in recruiting teachers from diverse backgrounds. | ||
| Our students need to see themselves and their teachers. | ||
| Stripping away DEI efforts sends a clear message that diversity is not valued and that the unique identities of our teachers and students do not matter. | ||
| Programs like Head Start and Title I, which provide essential support for our most vulnerable students, are also at risk. | ||
| If we allow funding cuts or policy changes to jeopardize these resources, we are failing not only our students but our society as a whole. | ||
| As an educator whose livelihood depends on district funding, I fear for my job and my well-being of my students. | ||
| The loss of support for diversity and inclusion initiatives would not only impact me personally, but would also ripple through the entire educational system, diminishing the quality of learning for countless children. | ||
| Please continue to stand with us in advocating for policies that uphold the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our education. | ||
| And thank you for your time. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good afternoon. | |
| My name is Kelly. | ||
| In December 2023, after many years of education working as a contractor, I became a civil servant. | ||
| I love helping people and working within the challenges of budget and security restrictions the government provides. | ||
| Working for the FDA was a dream come true. | ||
| I'm a bit of a nerd. | ||
| Even before joining the agency, I had read all about its history, about Dr. Wiley, the poison squad, the fight to make her food and drugs safe. | ||
| I was so proud to work for them. | ||
| I absolutely love creating procedures and systems that make things operate efficiently. | ||
| Again, I'm a nerd. | ||
| In August 2024, my world changed. | ||
| I was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer. | ||
| I was facing multiple surgeries, but I was more worried about missing work. | ||
| The day after my surgery, I tried going back. | ||
| My boss knew I would do it and actually texted me first thing in the morning to say, don't even think about it. | ||
| I did return two weeks earlier than expected because I left my job. | ||
| In January, I had a second surgery. | ||
| It was more serious. | ||
| I had a week after getting out of ICU, a week after, I received a letter from HHS saying I was being let go for not meeting probationary standards. | ||
| It horrified me. | ||
| My performance was exceptional. | ||
| I won awards. | ||
| I had even been promoted. | ||
| With my supervisor's support, I appealed immediately and eventually the termination was rescinded. | ||
| I pushed myself to return to work early again. | ||
| I was exhausted and in pain, but I loved the FDA more than that. | ||
| In April 1st, barely a month after I returned, my entire team was let go. | ||
| Again, I was without work. | ||
| I'd worked so hard. | ||
| I'd fought cancer. | ||
| I had done everything I could to keep serving the American people, and I was discarded again. | ||
| And for what? | ||
| Not because of performance, not because of budget, but because of politics, because of the wins of Doge and RFK. | ||
| These people aren't saving money. | ||
| They're not trying to make America healthy again. | ||
| What they're doing will harm the American people. | ||
| Our food and drug supply will be less safe. | ||
| Our workforce, made up of people who care deeply, who work long hours for less pay, is being broken. | ||
| Federal employees are not the enemy. | ||
| We are the people who make this country run, and now we're being turned into scapegoats for political gain. | ||
| We can't let this continue. | ||
| We have to stand up for ourselves, for each other, and for the future of public service. | ||
| We need to fight back before it's too late. | ||
| Thank you for your time. | ||
| Thank you for sharing your story. | ||
| Just one thing I want to reiterate that you said was a couple things. | ||
| One is this is not about waste, fraud, and abuse or making government efficient. | ||
| A lot of this seems to be about loyalty tests or about ideology, and it's hurting every American in the process. | ||
| The FDA does incredibly important work. | ||
| It keeps us safe, keeps us away from infectious disease. | ||
| And thank you for your service, and thank you for sharing your story. | ||
| And we've got your back. | ||
| I've got your back, certainly. | ||
| So thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My name is Ernie Barreto here from Centerville. | |
| Thank you for being here today. | ||
| I read with great alarm this morning about possible enormous cuts to NASA budgets in the proposed budget by the President. | ||
| And that's on top of very alarming cuts to science in general, the NIH cap on indirect funds, for example. | ||
| Who knows what's coming for the National Science Foundation. | ||
| I'm the chair of physics and astronomy at George Mason University. | ||
| I'm greatly concerned. | ||
| A lot of our faculty work with NASA Goddard, for example, which I guess the rumors are going to zero that out entirely. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| And I'm greatly concerned about our students. | ||
| We have a lot of students on J-1 visas, H-1B visas. | ||
| It's very alarming what this administration is doing to them, and I don't know how to protect them. | ||
| What can you do to protect science funding, NASA, National Science Foundation, NIH, National Institutes of Health? | ||
| How can we help you protect that funding and support universities and our immigrant students? | ||
| Yeah, that's a really good question. | ||
| And I grew up next to Johnson Space Center. | ||
| I'm on the science committee that includes space. | ||
| And I completely understand how important NASA is. | ||
| Even when we're privatizing spaceflight, NASA does so much for a country. | ||
| A dollar in NASA and other science and technology fields is the best investment we can make. | ||
| It's the best return on investment in our government. | ||
| And a couple things are happening that are really concerning me. | ||
| One is the Doge folks are trying to take control over all the grants that go out right now. | ||
| And so that's another thing that's come up recently. | ||
| And so there's going to be folks filing a lawsuit on that and on many of the others' cuts as well. | ||
| The second part is just trying to let people know, there's the courts and then there's the court of public opinion. | ||
| And I think trying to let people know that the work you do impacts every American. | ||
| This is not just a Virginia problem. | ||
| This is not just a federal worker problem and a jobs problem here. | ||
| It's a problem for every American when we're not investing in science. | ||
| And, you know, even if you cut funding to a lab for a couple months, it takes many, many months. | ||
| Sometimes you lose that research completely. | ||
| And so some of the cuts we've made already, or some of the firings that have already happened, are irreversible, unfortunately. | ||
| But there's a lot that's not. | ||
| The FDA, going back to the previous person, for instance, they already said that a lot of the firings that they made were big mistakes. | ||
| They already admitted to that, but they haven't reinstated the people yet. | ||
| And they're hoping that we don't pay attention to those types of cuts. | ||
| So we have to continue to bring attention to them, tell the stories, make them famous. | ||
| And I think that and only then will we actually make a huge difference. | ||
| And every American needs to know about what's going on. | ||
| So thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I appreciate it. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Good afternoon. | ||
| My name is Chuck Martello. | ||
| I live here in Virginia Run. | ||
| Thank you for taking the time to come out and listen to your constituents. | ||
| I have a simple question with no or a hard answer. | ||
| You know, several million people showed up last weekend protesting what's going on. | ||
| Yet a week later, more outrageous and illegal activity happens with this administration every day. | ||
| What can we do? | ||
| I mean, you know, here we've voted Democratic, but there doesn't seem to be any checks and balances in our constitutional form of government any longer. | ||
| And people are rolling over to this dictator illegally. | ||
| And, you know, the frustration level is obvious here among the voters. | ||
| What can we do to fight back? | ||
| Yeah, that's a good question. | ||
| I'll say that first, if you look at stuff that happens, stuff will happen. | ||
| And then three or four weeks later, either the administration will admit it was a mistake or roll it back or they'll back down a little bit, maybe reinstate some people. | ||
| I'm not saying things are going well. | ||
| You know, things are not going well. | ||
| But I'll say that when we have actually put pressure on the administration, we have gotten some results. | ||
| Not enough, but we've gotten some results. | ||
| I think the energy is seen and heard, even in the halls of Capitol Hill. | ||
| And I think what I'd like to see in the House of Representatives is we have slim margins, right? | ||
| The Republicans, even with the special election wins, only have a couple of votes on us. | ||
| And they have at least three or four members in districts that Trump did not win. | ||
| And I'd like to see them start to pull on our side. | ||
| Right now, there's no sort of incentive in their minds, or really in the minds of any Republican, to divert from the president. | ||
| In fact, the incentive is to celebrate the president. | ||
| We have a bill to put him on Mount Rushmore. | ||
| We have a bill to rename Dulles Airport Trump Airport. | ||
| That's a real bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we have the birthday parade. | |
| We have a bill to make his birthday a federal holiday. | ||
| And so these are real bills, and the intent of them is to essentially pander to the president and be in his good graces. | ||
| I think the more pressure we put, the more they may feel like that's not a good idea. | ||
| That's my hope. | ||
| And in the meantime, we have to use every tool at our disposal, and we certainly cannot be fearful. | ||
| We certainly cannot back down from a fight. | ||
| I was a little disappointed in the CR, to be honest, and what the Senate did there. | ||
| And we have to use every bit of leverage that we have to put them in a difficult spot. | ||
| So maybe I've fell short on some of the votes, but every committee hearing that I've seen and done and been in, I bring up all this stuff that we're talking about, even if it's not the subject of the hearing, because I think it's important that we continue to put the pressure on. | ||
| So I know it's frustrating. | ||
| I'm with you, but we got to keep fighting, even if we don't win every single fight. | ||
| So thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Hi, Congressman Suhas. | ||
| I'm Kevin. | ||
| I'm a son of a veteran, and I just wanted to read the statement. | ||
| I want to talk to you about something that's been weighing heavy on my heart, not just as a citizen, but as a human being. | ||
| What our current administration is doing is disgraceful, and it should not be taken lightly. | ||
| We're watching mass firings across the country. | ||
| Vital programs that middle and lower class Americans rely on are being gutted by billionaires that somehow need more money. | ||
| And on top of that, there's open inside trading being bragged about, the kind that's destroying our retirement savings and leaving our people in the dust. | ||
| There is something I want to bring up today as well, and that is the genocide happening in Palestine. | ||
| And our government is being explicit in it. | ||
| There are no words to fully describe the horror of what's happening right now. | ||
| Israel has bombed schools, flattened hospitals, targeted at refugee camps, and yes, even open fired on ambulances full of medics last week. | ||
| All of this while claiming it's defending itself. | ||
| Let me ask you, how is it defense when you target children? | ||
| How is it defense when every hospital in Gaza has been bombed? | ||
| How is it defense when just last week you shoot up paramedics, then try to bury the trucks, the bodies, the truth? | ||
| Israel is spreading lies, death, and destruction, and I don't want my country to be a part of it. | ||
| How could the U.S. be supporting this with our tax dollars, with our weapons, with our silence? | ||
| Until Prime Minister Netanyahu and those responsible are held accountable for their crimes, until Israel ends its apartheid and pro-settler agenda, we should not be sending them another nickel, not another dime, not one more dollar. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| It terrifies me, terrifies me to know my money is being used to fund violence, remove people from their land. | ||
| Again, that is not defense. | ||
| It is occupation, it is ethnic cleansing, it is a genocide. | ||
| We need to follow the lead of people like Senator Tim Kaine, Senator Bernie Sanders, and who had the courage to stand up to this foreign government, one that seems to have far too much influence over our own. | ||
| Even now, students and college campuses who are here legally are being kidnapped, deported by our own very government for speaking out against a genocide. | ||
| We need to follow what will happen when they target us next. | ||
| And I'm not just asking, I'm demanding that we stop supporting the terrorist state, Israel. | ||
| Because this isn't about a purity test. | ||
| This is about right and wrong. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for meeting with us today, Representative. | ||
| Earlier, when referring to the kidnappings of political dissidents, you said people deserve due process. | ||
| And the room, I'm proud to say, my fellow constituents of CD-10 erupted in applause because that's what this country is all about, is due process. | ||
| Unfortunately, in the first month that you were representing the people of CD-10, you voted for the Lake and Riley Act, which, among other things, requires the detention of undocumented migrants if they are even charged with a crime, exempting a particularly marginalized group from the due process that we hold sacred in this country. | ||
| In the interim, since that act was passed, our sheriff's office in Loudoun County signed a 287G agreement pledging to cooperate with immigration and customs enforcement. | ||
| They signed this agreement after the fact that we, after these slew of political kidnappings and disappearances of American political dissidents. | ||
| What do you, my question is briefly threefold. | ||
| First, what do you say to a constituent who sees your vote in support for the Lake and Riley Act and Democrat concessions on these issues in general as having contributed to this process, contributed to this tendency where we're now seeing people detained for their political beliefs? | ||
| Urgently, I'll ask you what are you doing to help the threatened groups among your constituency, undocumented migrants and Palestinian Americans in particular. | ||
| And considering that your, the final question is, considering that your top campaign contributor in 2023 or 2024 was the American Israel Public Affairs Committee at $37,250, can you pledge to not take any more money from them if and when you run for re-election? | ||
| Yeah, the third one is simply not true. | ||
| So I don't know where you're getting that number from. | ||
|
unidentified
|
OpenSecrets.org? | |
| OpenSecrets.org. | ||
| Well, that's not true. | ||
| So anyway, the second one and the first one. | ||
| So I want to tell you the difference between the Lake and Riley Act and what's happening, because at least the Lake and Riley Act does give an immigration judge the ability to hear and let the person know what's going on. | ||
| They're at least charged with the crime and at least know what the crime is, and they at least have the opportunity to have a deportation proceeding. | ||
| What's actually happening right now is there are people who are being picked up without even being told why they're being picked up and they're being sent to El Salvador out of our jurisdiction where and then the administration is telling people we can't get them back, right? | ||
| That is completely different. | ||
| This isn't the debate. | ||
| Let me finish at least and I'll let you ask another question. | ||
| But the concern that I have right now is that even if you two things. | ||
| One, even if you disagree with someone's stance on an issue, to call them a foreign, a threat to our foreign affairs and a threat to our country because you disagree with what they're saying, that's not right to detain someone based on that issue. | ||
| The people being detained had green cards. | ||
| They were here legally. | ||
| A lot of people had TPS status, for instance. | ||
| And so they're very different situations. | ||
| We can still be for rule of law. | ||
| We can still be for making sure that people have, there's consequences for crimes, but not do what's happening now, where there's absolutely no communication. | ||
| We had a third grader, right, in New York that was picked up and detained and put in a prison, right? | ||
| Had no idea what was going On. | ||
| He did nothing wrong, right? | ||
| So that is not that, right? | ||
| And so I disagree with a lot of your premises, actually. | ||
| And we'll agree to disagree on that. | ||
| But I just don't think that what's going on today in our country is anywhere near the goal of trying to at least make sure our communities are safe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, then I'm aware that these arrests are not within the purview of Lake and Riley, but what I'm referring to is when you spoke to LCDC in Loudoun County a couple months ago, You provided the reasoning for your support for the Lake And Riley Act as wanting to demonstrate a realism for the other side of the aisle on these issues. | |
| That you well. | ||
| Then, you can rephrase it however you'd like, but can you at least answer how much money you have taken from the from AIPAC? | ||
| I have zero money taken from. | ||
| The APAC has not sent me any money. | ||
| If you look back at our campaign finance reports, they have a portal where they, where people can donate, right. | ||
| So that's might be what you're seeing, but even then it's. | ||
| I've gotten far more money from people who oppose Israel, but it's not even about that. | ||
| My money, my vote, is not bought in any sort of way. | ||
| I vote based on my community, based on the facts, based on what's best for a country, and so I know I disagree with your premises and I don't know where you got that number from. | ||
| I disagree with that as well. | ||
| So, but I appreciate you coming here today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, good afternoon, Congressman. | |
| My name is Mac McNeill. | ||
| I was part of the Ukrainian delegation that met with you on Wednesday of this week, and I want to speak about Ukraine, but just wanted to say that all of us very much appreciated your taking your personal time to to meet with us. | ||
| That was. | ||
| That was very good. | ||
| A couple of things have happened since then that I've observed in the news. | ||
| The Trump administration's envoy to Ukraine, General Kellogg, has just released a statement about Ukraine being partitioned in the way Germany was after World War II. | ||
| I think it is likely although I disagree with it, but I think it's likely that the ultimate solution is going to be that the Russians are going to remain in the occupied territories of Ukraine. | ||
| That's not right. | ||
| But I think the real red line here is that the United States should not in any event recognize those territories as being Russian. | ||
| That's what the Russians Putin, Lavrov and all of those folks are pushing for, and I think we have to take a strong stand against that. | ||
| We all want the the killing to stop, but not at the cost of putting Europe at risk of further aggression by Russia. | ||
| You know that's what happened at the Munich conference in 1938, when the British prime minister acquiesced to Hitler's demands for the Sudetenland. | ||
| That was then leading to World War II, and we want to ensure that, as in our national interest, that we don't let that kind of situation happen again. | ||
| So thank you very much, thank you. | ||
| I have no idea why this president feels a desire and need to be allies with Russia, but I do feel it, that they seem to think that Russia is a natural ally. | ||
| And so it frustrates me that we're in this position where we're not sure who our allies are anymore. | ||
| We're taxing and tariffing and putting sanctions on some of our allies. | ||
| And we're rewarding. | ||
| If you note on the tariffs, the one country that doesn't have a tariff is Russia. | ||
| And so the reasoning was because they apparently were in the middle of negotiations with them. | ||
| But isn't Ukraine in the middle of that negotiation too, right? | ||
| So why isn't Ukraine exempt from the tariffs then, if you're concerned about the negotiation? | ||
| And I would imagine we're in negotiations with dozens of countries about all sorts of things, right? | ||
| So why is the negotiation with Russia any different? | ||
| It's just the foreign policy of this administration really baffles me sometimes, and I think it baffles House Republicans as well. | ||
| And it's what I'm really concerned about, though, is we've got four more years of this, right? | ||
| What is going to happen to our strategic alliances long term? | ||
| What's going to happen to our country? | ||
| What's going to happen to our own safety, security, or the stability of all these regions? | ||
| I don't know, right? | ||
| And so all we can do is be very loud voices in our community and on the Hill and everywhere else as we go. | ||
| So thank you. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for your support. | |
| Good afternoon. | ||
| And thank you very much for being with us. | ||
| I don't have a question, but I have a request and I would like to explain to you the situation, what I am right now, and thousands of constituents in your constituency are being in the same situation. | ||
| I'm on an H-1B visa right now. | ||
| And I'm being in this country for 17 years. | ||
| I'm holding a master's degree and working with one of the best wireless operator who is running 5G and working for 6G right now. | ||
| It's been 17 years and since I'm coming from India, my born is in India. | ||
| I will not treat equally. | ||
| Anyone who is born outside of India get a green card within six months to one year. | ||
| But because there is a per-country cap, these rules have been there in Addis Presley somewhere I can say, that has never changed. | ||
| And because of that cap, I will not get green card another 10 years. | ||
| So imagine I'm being legally in this country, paying all the taxes, holding master's degree, doing research work. | ||
| And I have to wait for 27 years. | ||
| And my other colleagues who came after me from another country, they already got a green card in one year. | ||
| So we already passed the bill in previous Congress for this issue. | ||
| And some congressmen are working from our party on the same issue. | ||
| So I request you to reach out to Premila Jaipal and Rajakrishnamurthy on this issue to work with them and please bring the bill again in this Congress and remove this country cap. | ||
| Yeah, I've already committed to signing on to the bill and will likely do so. | ||
| I just want to look at the language when it comes out. | ||
| When my parents came in the late 70s, they got their green card at the airport, at Dulles Airport. | ||
| They arrived, went through customs and got their green card. | ||
| Some people are saying, wow, because I'm sure you know it, it takes some families 10, 20 years now to even get a green card appointment. | ||
| And it's so frustrating. | ||
| And what we're doing is the breasts and brightest want to come to America. | ||
| And we're saying, no, go back. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Right? | ||
| And we're losing so much talent. | ||
| And a lot of sectors, you want to know how to expand manufacturing in America. | ||
| How about having an expand business in America? | ||
| About having a great workforce, and immigration is part of that great workforce for rural communities, for tech communities, for our community here in Fairfax and Loudoun. | ||
| And that's a better strategy than tariffs is actually having a great workforce and training up the folks that we have in our country now. | ||
| And so instead, we have this system where we have shortages in different sectors. | ||
| And I've talked to countries who want to bring manufacturing to the U.S. and want to bring business, but they're like, we don't know where to put it. | ||
| We don't know where the workforce is. | ||
| And when we try to have an immigration program, it doesn't work anymore because programs like the H-1B program, we're scared it's going to go away or get you know they're going to get rid of it. | ||
| So thank you for bringing that up. | ||
| Thank you for what you're doing. | ||
| I hope we can at least work in a bipartisan way to fix this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, my name is Robert. | |
| I'm from Ashburn and I'm a federal retiree. | ||
| And as such, I am concerned about my two sources of income are my pension and Social Security and I think sooner or later they're going to come after those. | ||
| But I don't have so much a question about a specific issue as I have a question to you, which is, you know, why was Donald Trump put in the office in the first place? | ||
| And I think it's because people are sick and tired of the same old, same old. | ||
| And the Democrats have represented the same old, same old for a long, long time. | ||
| And they are not willing to get down in the dirt and fight the good fight for their people. | ||
| And that's how people like Donald Trump get into office. | ||
| So you are a first-time congressperson and you have a potential, very nice political career ahead of you. | ||
| So what are you going to do with it? | ||
| Are you going to make sure that you keep it above all else? | ||
| or are you going to do whatever it takes, even if it means your career? | ||
| No, I appreciate that. | ||
| I do think we need to look at more creative ways, is one way of putting it, of how we're going to push back and how we're going to get things done. | ||
| One of the reasons, for instance, you know, Doge has been an initiative and maybe more popular is that we could have done more to make the federal government work better for people. | ||
| The federal government, though, takes on a very difficult task, but there's more we could have done and more we can do still. | ||
| That's one example. | ||
| But I mean, to your point, I feel like I'm playing with house money. | ||
| There's not very many Suha supermundiums in Congress, right? | ||
| And so I feel like I'm lucky to even be here. | ||
| And so I've tried to use this platform in a way that I would have wanted someone who was representing me to use it, which is to allow every citizen to have a voice and allow people to share their stories in a way where people around the country will listen. | ||
| If there's things that I can do better, please let me know. | ||
| And that's why we take all the calls and emails. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't mean to throw you to the bus. | |
| I just want to, you know, I appreciate what you're saying. | ||
| No, no, but I take that really seriously because I, you know, as soon as I start voting for self-preservation, just get me out of here. | ||
| I don't need to do it anymore. | ||
| So I appreciate it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good evening. | |
| My name is Jackie, and I am a veteran's spouse. | ||
| But I'm going to be talking about something else very briefly. | ||
| About a month ago, my 22-year-old daughter called me crying on the phone because she had heard that funding was being cut at the NIH and that funding would be cut for breast cancer research. | ||
| And she was very upset because her mom, me, has metastatic breast cancer. | ||
| And the reason that I'm alive today is only because of research. | ||
| I'm very, very fortunate because I was given two years and I've been alive now for eight. | ||
| And I just can't stress enough how important out-of-the-box research is that the NIH, for example, does. | ||
| And one of the questions I was going to ask you is: how is this going to be somehow addressed? | ||
| And also, will you be signing on to the dear colleague letter to approve funding for the DOD breast cancer research program? | ||
| On the letter, our team will look into it. | ||
| I was told not to say yes to things until we've looked into it. | ||
| We get surprised by some of these letters that are very well intended. | ||
| But we'll continue. | ||
| We'll definitely look into that. | ||
| It sounds like something I'd love to sign on to. | ||
| I get really frustrated by some of these cuts to science and research because I think the only way we can, it's hard to tell the story of science because you don't know what you've lost sometimes. | ||
| Like the internet came from science investments that our country made. | ||
| How would we have known that we lost that? | ||
| Right? | ||
| There's so many other instances of that cell phone technology. | ||
| Every technology really have, you know, the initial kind of investment often needed to come from federal government investment in science and research. | ||
| And so it's hard for me to thank you for telling your story. | ||
| It's really hard for me to see how we have to do something to stop it, otherwise a lot of people are going to die. | ||
| And so I don't want a lot of people to have to die for the American public to realize what they've missed. | ||
| And certainly that means that we have to tell the stories, stories like yours. | ||
| So I appreciate you saying that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
thank you. | |
| Hi, my name is Ellie. | ||
| I am from Manassas, Virginia, and I attend George Mason University. | ||
| You are calling for a national data center plan and caution against unlimited data center expansion. | ||
| However, you are also supported by pro-cryptocurrency packs such as Protect Progress, which also has ties to a conservative counterpart, who in 2024 spent $4 million to influence Virginia elections. | ||
| I received an ad from a cryptocurrency group congratulating you for your support of crypto in Congress. | ||
| Both crypto and AI, which you advocate for, are similar to data centers in that they consume huge amounts of energy and rely on fossil fuels. | ||
| Why do you see regulation as a tool to stem data center developments, or at least its rapid expansion? | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| While seeing regulation as a way to help the crypto industry establish itself and expand, is it just because the damages of data center expansion are more visible to us in Virginia? | ||
| Because it's not like AI and crypto aren't making their mark in our economy. | ||
| I've seen George Mason go really hard into promoting AI, and I can only imagine that this is because of its funding issues that it is getting, et cetera. | ||
| But yeah. | ||
| Yeah, thank you. | ||
| So a couple of things. | ||
| First, on the campaign finance side, that is true that Standwick Crypto did support my campaign through a super PAC. | ||
| They gave, I think, $100,000 in general, actually, quite a bit of money, right? | ||
| They also spent $5 million against me two months before that. | ||
| So I don't know how Standwick Crypto, how I should be beholden to them, but I think the reason they supported me is because I do think that we do, maybe not all crypto, like TrumpCoin, for instance, is good. | ||
| A lot of it is kind of scammy, but there's a lot of it that's good. | ||
| For instance, I think there's a place for stablecoins, and we're pushing stablecoin legislation through. | ||
| There's also a place to have a regulatory framework for crypto products so that consumers can be protected from them. | ||
| But as far as data centers, which is the second part of your question, you know, I think you can be for emerging technologies and also not want to have data centers all put in the same community and stress our region's energy infrastructure and stress our region's land values, for instance, and things like that. | ||
| I think that's why I wanted a national data center strategy is because we're putting them all in one community. | ||
| We're hurting our rural regions. | ||
| We're hurting our communities here. | ||
| We're building power lines through homes. | ||
| There's one now that might go through the high school in my region, right? | ||
| And that's hurting us a lot. | ||
| And so I think we need to be a little smarter about the way we deploy data centers. | ||
| There's also, there's groups out there. | ||
| I don't want to say their names and promote them necessarily, but there's groups out there that are also looking at ways where we can have data storage in a way that's not just the data center model, for instance. | ||
| And so I'd like to see us look more into that. | ||
| But I do think we're going to need data centers moving forward. | ||
| It's just we don't need to put them all in one place. | ||
| Let's find a way where we can put them in brownfields, places that already have the energy infrastructure, where we don't have to build new power lines. | ||
| And let's also see ways we can power them in a sustainable way, right? | ||
| So we can still meet our clean energy goals. | ||
| One of the things about the data centers here is one, we're building them in a way that is actually going to double everyone's energy prices in the next five to ten years. | ||
| Double it. | ||
| So your utility bill is going to double because of the data centers alone to pay for their power infrastructure. | ||
| That's completely unfair. | ||
| Second part of that is that then we're also building it in regions that didn't ask for it. | ||
| People had already put their communities there, right? | ||
| And we're building the infrastructure through their regions and without any sort of community import, right? | ||
| So those are the things that we need to address and we need to keep in mind. | ||
| And finally, we have clean energy goals in Virginia, and this completely implodes those. | ||
| There's no way we can reach our clean energy goals if we're building power lines to cold country in West Virginia to power our data centers. | ||
| So hopefully that answers your question. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would say largely, I would just very quick follow up, if I can. | |
| I mean, AI and AI and crypto also have these real energy intensive. | ||
| They do. | ||
| Yeah, and like they are also in Virginia, along with the data centers, it's part of like this, we are a tech-focused region. | ||
| And I think like we really need to address, look at the economic impact, the environmental impact of that. | ||
| We do, but we don't need to build all the data centers right here, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I agree. | |
| A data center can go. | ||
| People in Europe have their internet go through our region, right? | ||
| So it's like the data center doesn't need to, they don't all need to be built here, right? | ||
| We can have a great tech sector here without having all the data centers here. | ||
| I get why they came here in the first place, but I'm just saying that we need to at least put a pause or at least revisit why we're putting all of them in this one region. | ||
| It's really hurting our power infrastructure. | ||
| So I appreciate the question, though. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I'm my name's John. | |
| Thank you for being here. | ||
| A couple of things. | ||
| One thing about the data center: I know someone that works for Amazon. | ||
| Do you know they abandoned the data centers in five years? | ||
| Abandon them because they don't have enough power. | ||
| So you're building that, using all the environment stuff, and then they're gone. | ||
| And they move into other data centers. | ||
| Something you might want to look into. | ||
| And that comes from someone who works there. | ||
| Not rumors, things like that. | ||
| The other thing is, I'm a little lost in where the Democratic Party stands. | ||
| I truly appreciate you being here, but you see Trump out there with this fictional ad out there of all these great things going on. | ||
| Where's the Democrat National Committee on an ad that says, here are the facts? | ||
| Let me tell you, like recently they just said that the Republicans have spent $150 million more than Biden did in the previous year. | ||
| So where's efficiency and cost savings if they've already spent more money? | ||
| None. | ||
| So that's what I'm saying. | ||
| Where are you guys? | ||
| Why not put out nationwide ads? | ||
| You got money. | ||
| What's it doing? | ||
| I really don't know where you are. | ||
| I see where you stand. | ||
| Like I said, I truly appreciate you being here because the cowards on the other side of the aisle have refused to do town halls now. | ||
| Right? | ||
| I mean, they've been told by the House, do not do a town hall because you're paying us to be here, is what they say. | ||
| So are you going to, I mean, can you encourage the committee to say, let's put out a nationwide ad and base it up on facts? | ||
| So one of the problems we have in politics today is that anyone can stroke a check. | ||
| We just heard a couple of criticisms of me of campaign donations that helped me or supposedly helped me. | ||
| But I would just say that if Elon Musk went up to Wisconsin and stroked a giant check, right, to try to buy an election, he lost, right? | ||
| But a lot of the money that's being spent on these ads is coming from these big groups, special interest groups, that can spend the money, and they're spending it in a way that are trying to sell the Trump agenda so they can curry favor with him. | ||
| And that's really hard to fight back when you don't have the money. | ||
| I mean, I don't have the money to fight that back, for instance. | ||
| But what we can do is use our platforms to fight back. | ||
| And what I've always said when it comes to these campaigns is that it's not about who has the most money necessarily, but you just have to have enough. | ||
| And you have to also use the platforms you have right now. | ||
| And so in Wisconsin, you know, small dollar donors helped that Supreme Court woman win her race. | ||
| And so all we need to do is just get enough money and then just run on the issues and run on how what's happening in this administration is hurting people. | ||
| And so this isn't a political event, so I can't really say more, but when it comes to campaign finance, there's certainly a lot we need to do. | ||
| And I understand how frustrating it is to see those commercials because I see them all the time as well. | ||
| Sometimes I'll actually be on that cable network during a commercial before my interview. | ||
| I see the freaking ad and I'm like, oh my gosh, another one. | ||
| So I see how frustrating it is. | ||
| But I'll just say, you know, if we don't have the billionaires stroking the checks, right, like they do, we can at least have the everyday people who can do whatever they can to speak out. | ||
| I think our strategy will be better for the American people and certainly successful longer term. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I hope so, but I doubt anybody here is MAGA. | |
| So the trouble is they're not hearing us, and that's the reason why I want to see the ads. | ||
| But I truly appreciate you being here. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Congressman. | |
| Monty Zimmerman from Anassis, and you may remember me from Joint Leadership Council at the state legislature working on VMEzDEP. | ||
| I truly thank you for being here and all your thoughtful responses and how hard you're working on our behalf. | ||
| Three real quick points and maybe question is George Mason University. | ||
| I'm a PhD student who's advanced to candidacy and I'm working on water pollution in heavy metals and surface water. | ||
| And the problem right now is all my NAH and EPA websites are now all blocked that are dealing with all of this. | ||
| And I don't know if you are aware of that, but I don't know if we can work to get those sites back up. | ||
| And you can't trust whether or not a site is going to be there for Department of Transportation or for anything. | ||
| And so it's getting to be really scary to see if you're trying to get research or information on and from the federal government from the agencies. | ||
| Do you have a comment on that? | ||
| Do you still have access to your email? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I do. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Can you get us more information on that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I'm real close friends with Anthony. | ||
| So I'll communicate through Anthony if that's okay with you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Please do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Second, on the weather service cuts, the governor of Kentucky said the 20 people that died last week probably didn't have to. | ||
| I don't know if you're aware that one-third to one-half of all weather balloons have been cut, mainly in the central United States. | ||
| And regular forecasting you see on your local TV comes from that source. | ||
| Flying airplanes kind of matters about weather. | ||
| And the insurance industry for your auto insurance and for housing insurance. | ||
| And I don't know if you have anything tied to anywhere where you can put input into issues tied to National Weather Service or NOAA. | ||
| Yeah, no, it's a good question. | ||
| I'm on the science committee. | ||
| We've written a letter about NOAA, a couple letters. | ||
| We're trying to get answers. | ||
| We're also trying to rally some Republicans to at least understand and also speak out, even if it's privately. | ||
| A lot of this comes from the fact that, sorry, did you have another question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, but that's a okay. | |
| No, a lot of people have asked me why the weather service has been targeted. | ||
| It's obviously a very efficient, very cost-effective, and high ROI program. | ||
| So why would you, just like many of the other programs that are being targeted, I think there's this notion that a weather prediction and weather service should be privatized. | ||
| But we have done that before and it was not very successful. | ||
| And the fact is it takes a lot of upfront investment. | ||
| And the best, the most successful private enterprises have actually been started through federal grants anyway. | ||
| So I just don't, I think this is really ill-informed and it's going to be really bad for a lot of different sectors like the ones you mentioned for instance. | ||
| And if we get really bad at predicting the weather, that's not very good given, you know, climate change is here and we're going to have more and more unpredictable weather events. | ||
| And so this is making a bad problem much worse. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I appreciate that you're already engaged in that, so thank you so much. | |
| And I said I put these two first for my last one because this is not polarized, but I'm a retired deportation officer, supervisory detention deportation officer. | ||
| I've written 6,000 orders of deportation in West Texas, but every single person that I wrote a law order to, I've personally interviewed, personally ensured that their due processes were met, personally ensured that they didn't have a right to stay here. | ||
| And in the process of meeting with 6,000 people, I found five with Nexus to citizenship because they were military service, and one who was a U.S. citizen and didn't know it. | ||
| And so I kind of wanted to share this. | ||
| I talked to some people on the Hill the other day about this, and they were shocked that somebody cared and was trying to be a good human being while being an enforcement officer for deportation. | ||
| But I'm very, very upset about the El Salvador movement because I'm very upset that they didn't have any due process. | ||
| And I'm very upset for people that are possibly there innocent going through the hell that they're going through. | ||
| And again, I don't know if there's anything you can do about that, but I can communicate through Anthony if you need any more information from me. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| Thank you for explaining that to folks as well. | ||
| And we actually had a gentleman in Manassas who was arrested and detained, who was a citizen and who voted for Trump. | ||
| And so that's the kind of system that they're running right now. | ||
| And I think some of it is for headlines. | ||
| But, you know, I just think what's going on right now is terrible, and we need to do everything we can to speak up about it. | ||
| We can't let this fade into the background either. | ||
| So thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just a full disclosure: I am a paid Republican operative, so I'm just kidding. | |
| Congressman, thank you for being here. | ||
| My name is Chris. | ||
| I live in Sterling. | ||
| If you'll indulge me for a minute, I wanted to read part of a speech by Abraham Lincoln, and then I have a short question after that. | ||
| He gave this speech in 1938 to the Young Men's Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois. | ||
| Some of you may be familiar with parts of the speech. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Sorry, did I say 1938? | ||
| 1838. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I think he was only 28 when he wrote this or gave this speech. | ||
| It was pretty remarkable. | ||
| A lot of fact-checkers here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, I appreciate that. | ||
| Having to do that. | ||
| And in this speech, he's talking sort of about the permanence of our democracy. | ||
| At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? | ||
| By what means shall we fortify against it? | ||
| Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? | ||
| Never. | ||
| All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. | ||
| At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? | ||
| I answer: if it ever reaches us, it must spring up amongst us. | ||
| It cannot come from abroad. | ||
| If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. | ||
| As a nation of free men, we must live through all time or die by suicide. | ||
| Further on in the speech, he goes on, I hope I am over-wary, but if I am not, there is even now something of ill omen amongst us. | ||
| I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country, the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice. | ||
| This disposition is awfully fearful in any community, and that it now exists in ours, though grading to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth and an insult to our intelligence to deny. | ||
| Pretty scary. | ||
| He wrote this, what, almost 200 years ago. | ||
| So, my question to you, Congressman, and maybe this sort of echoes what the gentleman, two people in front of me was talking about. | ||
| And I know you said you can't really talk about politics. | ||
| Maybe let's be more of a statement than a question. | ||
| But your poster you have up here, this is wonderful, right? | ||
| But it's meaningless. | ||
| And I don't mean to belittle your work. | ||
| Thank you for your work. | ||
| But What do the Democrats plan to do to win the midterm elections and in 2028? | ||
| You know, our governing institutions are broken. | ||
| Our political process is broken. | ||
| You know, it's time to take the gloves off and get dirty. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| For years, I think the Democrats wanted to maintain the higher ground, maintain decency. | ||
| It hasn't worked. | ||
| And the Democratic Party, I feel for several years, has been in a shambles and not responding to this threat that we're facing. | ||
| So what do we do? | ||
| And I don't know what take the gloves off means. | ||
| I'm not advocating violence. | ||
| but I haven't gotten a decent night's sleep in five months because I don't know what that means and I don't know what to do. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for that. | ||
| It's a good question. | ||
| It's something I think about every day. | ||
| Someone actually asked me, can you throw chairs at each other in Congress? | ||
| We unfortunately have benches. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think only in South Korea they do that. | |
| But if you have ideas, let me know. | ||
| But what I've tried to do is any opportunity I have to just speak up about things. | ||
| So again, these hearings, usually the decorum is to stay within the subject and the topic that's being presented. | ||
| But I just bring up the stuff that's been happening that's tangentially related because people need to hear it. | ||
| We had a hearing on FDA and it's specifically on cannabis and vaping, which is important. | ||
| But then I brought up the FDA cuts, for instance, and how it's going to hurt every single American and told the stories of people in our community. | ||
| But I've heard what you just said many, many times. | ||
| I've taken it to heart. | ||
| And I've tried to figure out ways that I can do it that are both respectful and also not respectful at times too, because I think it's important. | ||
| And without getting into the details of politics, I'll just say that we had a special election in Pennsylvania. | ||
| We had an election in Wisconsin, even a couple in Florida that show that people are paying attention to what's going on. | ||
| But that's not enough. | ||
| I think the other thing I feel a need to do is not just fight back, be loud, and be aggressive, but also to be welcoming to people who maybe voted for the other side last time and maybe feel like they made a mistake or maybe are second-guessing things or maybe making excuses for the president right now that maybe they might come over and make a different decision in the future. | ||
| I think it's important to have a positive vision for the future too, and in addition to being aggressive and fighting too. | ||
| And so I'm trying to navigate that and do both. | ||
| But what you brought up is a very good point. | ||
| And someone asked me once, what are you going to do if he stops listening to the courts? | ||
| And I'm like, take to the streets, right? | ||
| And people clapped and they like that answer. | ||
| But my wife heard it. | ||
| She was like, what does take to the streets actually mean? | ||
| And sometimes I'm trying to figure out what that means too, to be honest. | ||
| And there's protests, right? | ||
| But we've had protests. | ||
| There's what Al Green did, right? | ||
| And impeachment proceedings hasn't stopped, bad stuff from happening yet, right? | ||
| I think the one thing that has slowed down bad things from happening is speaking out and putting pressure on the administration, especially putting pressure on folks that support the administration, making them feel like they need to talk to the administration because even they disagree with what's going on, right? | ||
| And making the case to them as well. | ||
| So I continue to wonder what I can do better and that's why I need your feedback and I'm going to continue to take every opportunity to fight the way I can fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much. | |
| Thank you. We have 15 minutes left. | ||
| So if you're in line, stay in line. | ||
| But we'll be done in 15 minutes. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I will try not to be fast. | |
| I mean, I'm trying not to be slow, but my name is Emily, and I'm currently writing a book about the American church and its toxic relationship with politics. | ||
| I'm going to try really hard to get through this, but I need you to understand where I'm coming from. | ||
| I was raised in the southern evangelical fundamentalist women do not have rights. | ||
| They are taught from a young age that their body is the problem, their mind is the problem, their voice is the problem. | ||
| And I have seen the antithesis of all of that because loud, strong, highly educated women change the world. | ||
| So the rest I'm going to just read so I stay on topic. | ||
| Like I said, I'm writing a book about the American church, but I'm the head pastor's daughter. | ||
| To be here, to be speaking the things I'm about to say, in this book I'm going to be asking really big questions that I know every single person in the United States of America and even some of the ones in MAGA that are scared to say anything. | ||
| The hard questions I'm going to be asking is not the only thing that I'm writing about. | ||
| I shared on TikTok that I'm writing this book, asking the hard questions of are we actually separate of church and state? | ||
| Because we now have a faith task force of a woman who has called Donald Trump God and that following his words are the exact words of following God. | ||
| So what's going to stop a politician from doing what happens behind pulpits of God told me this, so this must happen? | ||
| And that I've literally watched it. | ||
| I've seen the upper echelon in front and behind the scenes, making sure that women don't have a voice. | ||
| There have been other people, the gentleman literally in front of me and the one in front of him on of saying, of what are we doing, the gloves comes off, is I would like to request go live with me on TikTok. | ||
| Let's talk about the fact about religion and women's rights. | ||
| Go live with me, not only one, so that I can show that there are men out there fighting for women's rights. | ||
| They just ain't got the microphone. | ||
| And I want to make sure we have a microphone. | ||
| There are over 100,000, like it's going viral right now, so my phone is like burning up in my hand because the comments are insane. | ||
| I don't even want to repeat them because I'll never make it through. | ||
| They're going to break your heart. | ||
| They're going to devastate you, but it's going to give you power to take off the gloves because Senator Booker quoted John Lewis, who said, let's get into good trouble, and I want to get into the trouble with you. | ||
| There could be people in here who are Christians. | ||
| I was literally raised as one, but that doesn't make my religion better or deserve more protection than someone else. |