Founding Documents in National Archives

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, recently, the National Archives released a report in which they concluded a structural nature of racism permeates all aspects of work and workplace culture at the National Archives. Unbelievable.

Among other things, they claim that the rotunda where our founding documents--the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights--are housed are displayed as an example of structural racism. Also, they called out the praise of our Founders that constructed those documents as being somehow triggering of people.

The report recommends that we reimagine--a buzzword, these days--the rotunda at the National Archives, including staging dance and performance art in the space that invites dialogue about the ways the United States has mythologized the Founding era.

So rather than celebrating our independence, like we will in a few days, we will be focused on the U.S. failures or flaws. It seems we have enough bashing of our country, our flag, even our National Anthem, as we saw at a track and field event of a would-be Olympian who turned away from our anthem.

The report also calls for putting in place trigger warnings for those who would view and see the display there.

We are losing our minds, folks. These are our founding documents.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source