Protecting America's Values

Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I give thanks to both the gentlemen from Texas for organizing this Special Order tonight, to all of our colleagues who have spoken tonight, and to my dear friend Congressman Baird for all that he has given for his country. The words that he shared he means from his heart, and he has shown and proven that.

We organized this Special Order to talk about protecting America's values and protecting our communities.

There is a lot of outrage. There is a lot of alarm in the country today. And it is justified.

It was just a couple of days ago, of course, in Los Angeles where two sheriff's deputies, a 24-year-old man and a 31-year-old young mother, were brutally attacked as they just sat in their police cruiser.

As they were rushed to the hospital, protesters were blocking the entrances and exits to the emergency room, chanting: ``We hope they die. Kill the police.''

It is outrageous. It is alarming.

This is just the latest example, of course, of the violence and vitriol going largely ignored by the Democrat majority in the House. Unfortunately, it is the predictable result of what happens when leaders make radical calls to defund the police.

We have widespread unrest in major cities across this country right now. We have violent riots and businesses being destroyed and law enforcement officers being targets of heinous crimes, things that would have been unthinkable even a couple of years ago.

In Portland, we have leftwing groups that set a police station on fire, besieged a Federal courthouse for weeks on end.

In Seattle, leftwing activists created an autonomous zone, they said. They evicted police and occupied the abandoned precinct.

In Chicago, 31 police officers were injured in riots that occurred in July and August.

In Minnesota and Wisconsin, rioters exploited peaceful protests as a vehicle to incite violence and create chaos.

Here in the Nation's Capital just up the street, leftwing groups staged a mock execution of the President of the United States and then harassed people as they left the White House.

The economic fallout from all this, of course, will be disastrous. The human toll will take generations to recover.

We have seen reports from minority-owned small businesses, for example, in these communities where a person has worked their entire life just to build a business, to build a legacy to pass along to their children and grandchildren, all to have it go up in flames because their city leadership refused to preserve law and order.

We have seen the President's actions, and we know that he is doing all that he possibly can to restore order in these cities. But, of course, he is being rebuffed by these leftwing mayors at every turn.

I mean, the Portland mayor has rejected offers of Federal assistance multiple times. The rioters who are actually arrested by local police are simply released by the district attorney so they can just return again to create chaos the next evening.

Despite this stonewalling, Attorney General Barr is doing his job. Secretary Wolf is doing his job. They have been able to secure the arrest of dozens of bad actors, but we all know this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The question remains, what do we in Congress begin to do to tackle this issue?

I would suggest that my friends on the other side can start right here in this building by at least first acknowledging that there is a problem. I mean, it doesn't seem too much to ask to denounce the violence that is plaguing so many parts of the country.

Mr. Speaker, you could imagine our dismay in the House Judiciary Committee when we heard our chairman call the Antifa violence in Portland a ``myth.''

I mean, he contends that all this chaos and destruction is merely a figment of our imagination. One month after the chairman made those remarks, a self-proclaimed Antifa member murdered a Trump rally participant in Portland in cold blood.

We have been calling for weeks for the chairman to hold hearings in the Judiciary Committee to look into this widespread violence. We in the Judiciary Committee are uniquely situated, because of our jurisdiction, to dive into this crisis of leftwing violence and formulate policy solutions that will protect the life and property of all Americans. But the chairman would rather sweep things under the rug and brush it off as a mere myth.

The Democrat silence and dismissiveness have turned into a real life- or-death situation for millions of Americans now.

I know our side is ready and willing to act. This is not just idle discussion tonight. We are not just standing up here talking about America's values and the need to protect our communities. We are ready to act.

It is time to call out these leftwing groups for what they are, to denounce specifically the violence and the chaos they create, and to restore law and order for the American people. This action is our responsibility, and it is long overdue. We will keep pushing on this side of the aisle to make this happen.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the time, and I appreciate what my friend stands for.

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