Wokeness

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I rise today to talk about the state of affairs here in the people's House and the extent to which the majority has been using the time on the floor of this valuable body, the people's House, to promote wokeness first rather than America first. And this is what we see every single day.

Madam Speaker, I have a few of my colleagues here tonight with me because this is such an important time in our country's history. We have so many important issues we need to be addressing, ought to be addressing, and yet, the people's House is not addressing them. And instead, the people's House is focusing on advancing wokeness first instead of America first.

I have got a number of things I am going to get into and talk about addressing these particular issues, but I would just note that my good friend's--and someone I admire a great deal--birthday is tomorrow, and that is Justice Clarence Thomas.

And for those who know his story and have read his biography, his autobiography, written through the eyes of his relationship with his grandfather--``My Grandfather's Son''--Justice Thomas, I think represents all that is great and good about this country.

He represents all that is great and good about overcoming the devastating impact of Jim Crow laws in the South, the discrimination that we saw rampant in his native hometown of Savannah, and watching his life story and walking through his life story, and the progression of what that meant and where he ended up and what he achieved.

And then what we witnessed in that fall of 1991 with the obscene, absurd actions by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary--chaired, by the way, by then-Senator Joe Biden--attacking this good man, Clarence Thomas, attacking his integrity, attacking his character.

And yet, what do we see out of the life and service of Clarence Thomas but the embodiment of the fulfillment of the American Dream and a recognition of what you can achieve when you fight for it, when you work for it, and you overcome the odds against you. And what a beautiful story it is.

And why do I raise that now? Because in a world of wokeness, in a sea of wokeness, all driving an agenda--purposeful, by the way, by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--to divide this country by race, to divide this country, and to highlight issues of division and separation, as Justice Roberts fairly eloquently stated, he said: ``It's a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.'' And we see it every single day. And it is highlighted by this body. I am going to go through that in a minute.

Madam Speaker, every single thing this administration, every single thing this Democrat-led House of Representatives, everything that the Democrat-led United States Senate is doing, is designed very purposely to divide us by race, and we should be better than that.

And I think there are things that we all know that are on the minds of the American people, whether it is increasing prices, because we spent $6 trillion and lumber prices are going up, and housing prices are going up. We have a border that is under assault; cartels who run our border. And we are turning the keys of the kingdom over to Iran and China instead of siding with Israel. And we are flooding the economy with dollars and driving up inflation, but also racking up mountains of debt. All of these things are occurring.

And the regulations that my friend from Texas, Mr. Crenshaw, was just talking about, the regulation-strangling business, we are paying people more not to work than to work.

And all of our small businesses are at home going, ``stop it. Please stop it.'' I have introduced legislation set up to end those unemployment benefits.

Will we debate those here in this Chamber?

No. No, sir.

Why? Because we are going to advance woke legislation. We are going to talk about woke bills. We are not going to talk about all the small businesses--by the way, often owned by minorities, often owned by people who need to be able to hire people and they can't because this institution spent $6 trillion and doled it out to destroy the American Dream by paying people more to work than to not work. It is absolutely astounding.

And that is what we have. This Chamber is empty. What have we done today? We have voted on a couple of random bills--I don't know if they are suspension bills or what we did today. What are we even going to do this week? The American people don't know, because we are not doing anything. They're looking at this Chamber and they are saying: What are you doing?

We have an obligation to fight and defend the American people and to do our job, and I am delighted to have my friends from Texas here.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Babin).

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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas, and I appreciate his remarks and his comments very much.

Madam Speaker, in just a minute I am going to turn it over to the other gentleman from Texas--in just a minute--and I know he has got some issues he wants to talk about involving border security.

Because, as three representatives from Texas here, I think I can speak on behalf of the entire delegation, at least the Republican side of the delegation, that our State is under siege. Our State is under siege in a way that it has not been for upwards of almost 180 years.

And you think about what is happening at the border and the extent to which cartels have operational control of our border, the extent to which we have attacks on American citizens, ranchers who are getting their fences torn down, ranches that are being ransacked.

We have people who are struggling. We have migrants who are dying in these ranches, migrants who are dying on the rivers. We have migrants who are being abused on the journey. We have little girls who are being abused.

If you spend a minute, a minute on the Rio Grande, instead of pontificating in this godforsaken Chamber, and you go talk to these migrants who are coming across the Rio Grande, then you see what is actually happening to these human beings all in the false name of compassion.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions), and I would ask what his views are about the current state of things with respect to the border.

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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas. I particularly thank him for referring to me as young. I will take it.

Interestingly, and I will probably have more to say about this, but it was 10 years ago in July that I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, with a 4-month-old daughter and a not quite 2-year-old son, not 100 percent sure whether I was going to be able to do like I did last weekend and go see my son play Little League baseball and see my daughter go off to camp last week.

Madam Speaker, that will shift your world view a little bit, as they say, about what is important and what is not important. I can tell you, Madam Speaker, that my dedication to public service was fully renewed after getting through that.

I was very blessed that I got through cancer-free in a matter of months, and Lord willing, I am still cancer-free. There is plenty of wood around here, but I knocked on my head instead.

I am honored the gentleman took the time to come down here and join me and say such nice things. I know the gentleman knows that part of the purpose here is our collective desire in this body to do what is right for this country.

What I cannot for the life of me understand is why my Democratic colleagues continue to insist on using this body to stoke division and to separate us by race, by sex, and by wherever we come from--all the different ways they could possibly come up with to divide us rather than finding ways for us to unite together to protect, defend, secure, and advance this country going forward.

My colleagues from Texas know--I know my friends from Texas know--it has been a full 90 days since the Vice President of the United States was tapped by the President of the United States to be in charge of the border, yet the Vice President has not taken a second to come to the Rio Grande, to come to the Rio Grande Valley, to come to the border.

Now, it wouldn't be enough just to come. By the way, if the Vice President is listening, it is not enough just to go. But it sure would be nice if she could find the southern border on a map, get in her taxpayer-funded airplane, take a direct flight down to the border, and go take the time to meet with Texans, to go take the time to meet with migrants, to take the time to meet with local leaders, and to see what is actually happening in real time at the border.

I know the gentleman knows full well that we just had 180,000 apprehensions in May. We have had over 700,000 apprehensions this year, and we have had over 200,000 got-aways. The Border Patrol estimates 1,000 got-aways every single day coming through between the ports of entry because our Border Patrol is now running processing centers in McAllen.

We all know this. I believe the Vice President knows this. I sent the Vice President a memo outlining this just in case she doesn't know.

But it is happening to us in real time. It is happening to migrants in real time, and it is happening to ranchers in real time. I know my friends from Texas know that we have had 7,500 pounds of fentanyl that have been intercepted by Border Patrol. Fentanyl is killing our children.

What are we going to vote on this week? What are we going to do this week? I don't even know.

I flew back here from Texas, and I have half my colleagues still voting by proxy even though we are not wearing masks. We are still voting by proxy by saying: I am voting proxy because of the pandemic.

We are not even having half of our committee meetings because we are doing them virtually. We are doing them when we are home in our work periods.

Why aren't we here? Why aren't we here when there are 7,500 pounds of fentanyl pouring into our border? That is just the stuff we are capturing, by the way.

Do you know how many children are dying with marijuana that has been laced with fentanyl? It is happening right now, Madam Speaker.

You hear about the 80,000, 90,000 opioid deaths last year. Madam Speaker, do you know where this stuff is coming from?

Why did Governor DeSantis send resources to Texas to help secure our border? People said: Why would you do that? That is Texas. Because the map and the drugs that are coming into Florida are coming through the Southwest border, and anybody who follows it knows that to be true.

Why is that? Because the cartels that are now running the border profit immensely by moving human beings for profit and by moving fentanyl for profit.

The Cartel Jalisco New Generation just absorbed the Laredo faction and just absorbed the Cartel del Noreste of Los Zetas in Nuevo Laredo. They now have operational control of Tamaulipas. That is a dangerous cartel.

They are moving fentanyl for profit and moving human beings for profit, millions of dollars a day. We know this to be true. We know this from law enforcement agents on the ground--Texans, Federal authorities, Border Patrol, and ICE.

But they are not able to do their job because they are running processing facilities, processing facilities for human beings who we say we are helping because we are saying that we are giving them asylum. By the way, they are not claiming asylum under the statute that the asylum laws were meant to provide.

They come across the river, and there is a sign on trees at the Rio Grande.

By the way, the Vice President and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would know this if they bothered to go to the Rio Grande.

If you walk down to the river, Madam Speaker, there is a sign. It says ``asilo'' with an arrow, and it points to a bunch of bright lights sitting under the bridge, saying go over there.

When I was at the river, I met about 50 migrants at about midnight. There was a group of them, and they were lost. They were going around in circles. So, I drove my truck down the path so they would have light in the dark, so they could get to the processing center.

These are good people seeking a better life. Ask every single one of them why they are coming here, and it is for a job and opportunity. It wasn't for asylum under our laws. We are making a mockery of our laws by saying that anyone who wants to come to our country for opportunity--God bless them, I understand why; I probably would too. If you look at the opportunity you have here, Madam Speaker, as opposed to El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras right now, I understand. But we are turning our laws upside down. That is not what asylum laws are for.

Why don't we just sit down and figure it out? Madam Speaker, you can't just say wide-open borders. You can't. It is irresponsible.

Listen to the leaders of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. They say it is irresponsible because it is devastating their own countries.

People say: Why don't they fix it? We should have policies to work with them to try to fix it.

But do you know what would fix it the most, Madam Speaker? If we didn't have a wide-open border. If we actually stood up and said: Sorry, you can't just come in unless you actually qualify under our asylum laws, which is a fraction, a tiny fraction, of the 700,000-plus apprehensions that we have apprehended since January 1.

But why aren't we here debating that? Why aren't we coming up with a solution to this problem so that migrants aren't being abused as I speak by cartels so they can make money?

This is the greatest country in the history of the world, but we allow that to occur. We allow that to occur, and we do so in the name of compassion. We do so when people stand up and say: Oh, well, we want to make sure these folks will get here.

Meanwhile, we have people screaming: Kids in cages.

Anybody remember that? Anybody remember the kids in cages? How many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle ran to the cameras, sat in hearings, and screamed: Kids in cages?

The very structures put in place by the Obama-Biden administration. It is a fact. Everybody knows that that is who created the chain-link barriers in these facilities at the border. Nobody blamed Obama and Biden for doing that.

Air flow, ability to see the migrants, protect them. Oh, no, everybody went out and said: Kids in cages.

Why?

Because we had a massive influx.

But they said: Oh, they are drinking out of toilets.

It was a lie. They weren't drinking out of toilets. They were drinking out of a device that had the water fountain on the top with the toilet down below. We have them in facilities all over, in prisons facilities, where we have people coming in. The water supply in the bathroom right off of this floor is connected to the same water supply between the toilet and the sink. It is a pipe behind the drywall.

Yet they went around saying: Kids drinking out of toilets.

It is shameful. We can't have a rational conversation about what is actually happening in Texas. It is bad. There are children in stash houses right now.

Why are we sitting here doing nothing? Why are we going to have a vote this week on two suspension bills in a quest to go after more wokeness for, I think it is, some LGBTQ small business bill or something on a suspension that failed to get through on the two-thirds vote?

Okay. Debate that. Have it out. They tried to get it through on suspension. It didn't get through. So we are going to do a rule. We won't have any real debate on it, by the way. Everything that the American people see in here is all a sham. There is no actual debate on the floor of this body. And anybody who wants to come debate me on that, I am happy to debate it. There is no debate on the floor of the people's House, ever.

We haven't had an amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives, the people's House, since May of 2016, that was in order on open debate on the floor of the House so that any one of my colleagues could walk down here and say: Hey, I have got an idea. There is a bill. You know what I would like to do? I would like to change something in the bill. Here is an amendment. I would like to send it to the desk, offer my amendment. Hey, what do you think about my amendment? It might make the bill better.

Do you know when I would have liked to have had a debate on that?

Last Friday.

I would have liked to have had a debate on the Juneteenth bill.

Why?

Because the purpose of that bill was excellent. The fulfillment of the Declaration of Independence with the ending of slavery, which we recognize in Texas because of Juneteenth, I didn't support the bill because I didn't think the title was good. There were some other factors. But I didn't support it, and I would have liked to have amended it. Never got a chance to do it, ever. I would have liked to have had the ability to amend it, but couldn't do it.

All right. So you are forced with an up or down vote. We have 2,000- page bills that are $2 trillion. They are dropped on the floor and they say take it or leave it. And I say, you know what? I would like to cut something or add something. Can't do it.

I can go up to the Rules Committee and say: Here is my thing. And it gets voted down in the Rules Committee.

If you see amendments on the floor of the House, it is all a fraud. It is all a fraud. They are hand-picked amendments designed to make it look like we are amending, but we are not.

You know, 15 amendments from the majority, 5 amendments from the minority, bam. Hey, look at that. That is debate. We are killing our country by partisan dropping of bills, no matter who is in the majority, by the way.

I said that we haven't had an amendment on the floor since 2016. Guess who was in control of the House for 2 years of that?

Republicans.

When are we actually going to sit down and debate this stuff and do the things that matter?

Again, I go home to Texas and everybody is saying: How can you possibly be allowing this to be occurring on our border?

It is the fundamental duty of the Federal Government to secure the border of the United States, yet we have fentanyl pouring in. We have cartels who run the border. We have Mexico becoming a narco-terrorist state. We have danger to citizens in our country actually occurring.

We have human trafficking and sex trafficking occurring in San Antonio, Austin, all the way up I-35, going over to Houston. We stopped cars in the San Antonio suburbs that have nine immigrants in them going to a stash house in Houston, driven by an American citizen employee of a cartel.

I offered an op-ed explaining that to the San Antonio Express-News, along with the district attorney of Kendall County, Texas, and the San Antonio Express-News wouldn't print it, a fact-based op-ed. We ended up printing it in National Review or someplace online.

Who wants to have a conversation about this stuff?

The American people do. Everybody I talk to in Texas knows this is real. But here we are, and we have a House body and, frankly, an administration that is more interested in advancing wokeness every single day than addressing a wide open border that endangers us and the migrants who seek to come here.

I can't emphasize that enough: a wide open border that endangers American citizens, endangers our children, and endangers the migrants who seek to come here, which my colleagues on the other side of the aisle pat themselves on the back in the false name of compassion that open borders is somehow good for migrants. And it is a lie. It is a blatant lie.

Instead, what are we going to get?

We are going to get a so-called infrastructure bill next week, which will come through here on partisan lines. And what are we going to have in there?

There are the provisions and programs that prioritize funding based on race, ethnicity, gender, and socially disadvantaged status. One provision, it finds that race and gender-neutral efforts alone are insufficient.

The bill includes a study on how Federal infrastructure planning exacerbated systemic racial, regional, social, environmental, and economic injustices.

We have a bill that establishes 41 new Federal programs, $20 million a year for implicit bias research and training grants related to racial profiling; $5 million a year for a program to increase transportation job awareness and diversity; a carbon pollution reduction program.

On the international stage, what do we see?

Our own diplomats are undermining the greatness of America. We have got Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the Ambassador to the United Nations, who said that racial equity is her top focus, and that white supremacy is woven into our founding documents and principles.

Our adversaries, like Russia and China, are weaponizing the leftist agenda. At the summit in Alaska, Secretary Blinken brought up China's imprisonment of millions of Uighur Muslims, and China responded by arguing that the U.S. is not much different, mentioning Black lives matter. The Uighurs.

Military and veterans: Instead of working to develop a lethal, battle-ready force that will kill people and destroy things when called up to do so, which is the purpose of a military, under the guise of reviewing extremism within the ranks of the military in March, Special Operations Command hired its first chief diversity and inclusion officer.

We have seen examples of West Point cadets forced to attend critical race theory presentations. A Space Force officer was fired for saying, ``The diversity, inclusion and equity industry and the trainings we are receiving in the military . . . is rooted in critical race theory which is rooted in Marxism.''

The Biden VA will now be using American taxpayer dollars to cover sex reassignment surgery.

I had multiple parents of the kids that I was able--or 18-year-olds I was able to nominate to go to academies, and we had a celebration in San Antonio, and every single one of the parents were coming up to me and showing me these videos from the Air Force Academy, West Point Academy, talking about, you know, people having two moms and two dads and all of this woke training. For heaven's sake, it is the military.

I mean, China and Russia is just looking at us and saying: What in the world? Well, they are licking their chops.

You have got critical race theory in education. We are seeing a large-scale effort to impose tyranny over the minds of our children through taxpayer-funded indoctrination.

In Evanston, Illinois, students listened to ``Not My Idea: A book about Whiteness,'' which states that ``whiteness is a bad idea,'' and ``always was,'' and that ``you can be white without signing onto whiteness.''

In Cupertino, California, third graders were required to deconstruct their racial identities and then rank themselves according to their ``power and privilege.''

In Oregon, ``ethnic standards'' will require kindergartners to ``understand their own identity groups, including but not limited to race, gender, family, ethnicity, culture, religion, and ability.''

An advisory board linked to Virginia's Loudoun County Public School District demanded that teachers be dismissed if they criticize the district's equity training, inspired by critical race theory.

We saw the fellow who was removed or told that he had to be suspended in Loudoun County--I think he was finally restored--because he dared to speak up about this.

Meanwhile, we have got woke corporations all across America and their corporate boards moving the Major League Baseball All-Star Game from Atlanta, Georgia, which is 50 percent Black, to 10 percent Denver. I bet all of those White Coloradans driving around in their Subarus, patting themselves on the back when they go hiking with a rainbow flag on the back of their car or something, feel good about themselves, instead of celebrating Hank Aaron in Atlanta, Georgia.

Why?

Because Georgia was moving an election reform bill with laws that were almost identical to Colorado.

The Major League Baseball said: Oh, no, we are going to go join the woke brigade and we are going to go forward and we are going to move everything to Colorado.

Nothing was proved by that other than Major League Baseball's wokeness.

I talked about border security because it is so critical to the people of Texas. We can talk about the other things that are critical, all of these programs I just talked about.

People asked: Well, Congressman Roy, why do you come down here and often vote ``no''?

Because every single bill dropped on the floor of this House spends money we don't have, adds regulations that are going to kill small businesses, divides us by race, or adds more laws to the books.

Does anybody think we need more laws, more spending when we are $30 trillion in debt?

I just once would like to see an actual debate with the 435 Members representing the American people in this Chamber about what in the world we are going to do about $30 trillion in debt.

But we got nothing. We have got an empty Chamber. The American people can hear my voice echoing. We are not going to actually have a debate about it. We are just going to spend more money. It is just a race to see who can spend more money.

Does anybody have any belief that we are not endangering our kids and grandkids?

I mean, if somebody wants to come down here and expound on modern monetary theory about how spending all this money is absolutely fine, I am happy to listen. Most people in America don't believe it. We will have $30 trillion in debt soon; $6 trillion spent in the last year.

Do you know how much it cost to win all of World War II?

It was $4.1 trillion in current dollars.

We just spent $6 trillion in a year--appropriated. We will spend it out in a little over a year; $6 trillion.

We are shutting down small businesses, closing our schools. We have 100,000 small businesses closed, 100,000. And now we are paying people more not to work than to work.

Why do you suppose the Vice President of the United States refuses to come to the southern border? Why do you suppose the Vice President of the United States, or the President, refuses to go to the southern border and refuses to take me up on my offer to debate the Vice President anywhere, any time about the border?

Because she knows and the President knows they have zero defense for our current border policies. There is literally no ability to defend the current border policies of the United States. It is laughable. A high school debate team would destroy the President or the Vice President in a debate about our current border because it is so unbelievably unforgivable to turn our borders over to cartels.

But that is what this administration has done. And, again, look, it is all tied back together. This is all in the name of supposed compassion for people and a continued desire to try to drive a wedge and say: Oh, Republicans just don't want those Brown people to come here across our river. That is what it is about. That is the purpose of the fight and the divide.

Meanwhile, ask any Border Patrol agent, ask anybody along the Rio Grande, ask anybody who is being affected by it, ask any of the migrants about what is happening, how it is happening, about the journey. I am not saying the migrants who come here don't want to be here. They do.

But look in the eyes of the little 7-year-old girl on the border that I looked into, who had no mom, no dad, no uncle, no aunt, no brother, no sister, nobody with her. But we don't care. It is all fine. It is all fine for us to have a system in which a 7-year-old girl takes a journey by herself from Guatemala through Mexico in the hands of the cartels to get to our border. We say that is fine.

I can't state enough--and the reason I am using this time, and I went a little longer than the time I thought I was going to use, is because my friend from Texas used a little more time, and I appreciated his being here.

Every single person I talk to in Texas views this through the lens of an existential crisis, and yet it is absolute silence from the administration and this body.

People wonder why Governor Abbott is starting to say he is going to take it upon himself and the State to build a wall or to fund resources at the border.

We have had to do it for years, by the way. Basically, a billion dollars a year, or at least per session, Texas has been funding technology.

Do you know how often the Border Patrol is using technology funded by Texans? Cameras--because their Border Patrol cameras weren't working-- radios. Now the Governor is going down there saying he is going to do a lot of this, and Texas has got to figure out how to fund it.

It is our border; they are our communities. Yet crickets, absolute crickets, devastating crickets, from the Democrat-led House of Representatives and the Democrats in the White House, President Biden and Vice President Harris, who refuse to even come to the border.

I don't know, the longer this goes on--I get why the Vice President won't go to the border. How can you look any American in the eye and say you are doing your constitutional duty to defend the United States of America and secure our borders?

Does anybody understand in this Chamber and comprehend how bad it is for our future and the future of our neighbors to the south to empower cartels the way we are empowering them?

Instead of being able to compete with China, by having a robust free trade throughout the Western Hemisphere, to be able to have a strong Mexico that isn't a narco-terror state, that we can partner with, that we can partner with countries throughout the Western Hemisphere and compete against China and not have this pressure valve coming to our border; instead, we are damaging these countries and empowering the narco-terror state in Mexico, empowering cartels, weakening our country, and endangering Americans.

My friend from the House Judiciary Committee is here, and I am about to give my time up. I will give you a little warning here. In a couple of minutes, I am about to yield.

I appreciate the work that he is doing, with my friend from Colorado, trying to navigate the complexity of antitrust laws with respect to the size of massive companies, particularly massive big tech companies. We are going to have a pretty robust day tomorrow in the House Judiciary Committee. I do want to thank him, since we are here in the Chamber together, for the work that he is doing to try to address that.

I don't know if I will agree with every bill tomorrow. I know I am going to support at least one or two. We will see what happens during the process of amending and debating.

What I would say to my friend is that it would be great if we could address every issue with both sides of the aisle engaging and offering amendments and restore regular order so that we can try to get to the heart and the truth of these issues.

We are never going to deal with our spending issues in this country if we don't sit down and roll our sleeves up, like a family or small business has to do. We are never going to address something like the border if we don't sit down and give and take and offer solutions that will work. We are never going to solve healthcare; we are never going to be able to have a strong national defense, without, by the way, being involved in endless conflicts.

I joined with my Democrat friends last week on a measure involving our presence in Iraq. I think we can find agreement at times if we will sit down and do it. But we can't bury our head in the sand and ignore existential crises and hope that they will just go away.

I will just close by renewing my call to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the Vice President and the President. Let's actually focus on these crises like the border, and let's actually do our job and our constitutional duty to address them. Let's actually do what we said we were going to do when we took our oaths to the Constitution of the United States, and we said we wanted to be a part of the people's House to debate, to amend, to vote.

I am not afraid of what we are going to do tomorrow. To my friend, we are going to offer bills, we are going to debate, we are going to amend, and we are going to vote. We should do that on the floor of this House, Madam Speaker. We should do that on the floor of this House.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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