Condemning the Violent June 2025 Riots in Los Angeles, California
Floor Speech
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Mr. RASKIN. Lofgren), the chair of the California Democratic Delegation who leads the 45 Democrats in the California delegation.
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Mr. RASKIN.
Mr. Speaker, I am moved by the comments of the distinguished gentleman from California, and I wonder what our colleagues think the value is other than of a purely political nature to a resolution that purports to be honoring law enforcement when it is set up on a completely partisan basis. I wonder what the value of that is.
I especially wonder what the value of that is when the majority doesn't even stand by actual law when it comes to honoring law enforcement because this body on March 15, 2022, passed a resolution to put up a plaque, a simple plaque to honor the noble and brave police officers who battled for 4 or 5 hours to stop a violent riot and insurrection unleashed against this Chamber and against the Senate in an attempt to overthrow a Presidential election.
We voted to erect a plaque in their honor. That was on March 15, 2022. It was supposed to have been put up on March 15, 2023. We are now more than 2 years overdue in honoring those police officers, 140 of whom were wounded, injured, disfigured, and many of them permanently disabled. Several lost their lives in the days to follow that atrocity, attack on this body.
There is a law which says put up the plaque, and Speaker Johnson and the majority will not put the plaque up which is why you walk in the House Office Buildings now, everywhere there are poster replicas of that plaque being put up.
Now they want to pass a resolution deploring violence that took place thousands of miles away from here, and it is just a resolution, a hortatory resolution. They can't even get bipartisan support because of course they have to set it up on a polemical, partisan basis instead.
What is the utility of that resolution when they won't even follow an actual law to honor police officers who put themselves between us and a bloodthirsty mob?
That is not a partisan point because the Republicans denounced it at that time as terrorism, as an attack on this institution, as intolerable, as unacceptable.
I am happy to share with my colleague, who I know wasn't in Congress at the time, all of the statements made by Republican leaders at that time begging Donald Trump to send in the National Guard, which he controlled because it is the District of Columbia National Guard, and he didn't do it. He sat and watched it, eating hamburgers or whatever, in the White House on TV, ignoring all of the appeals to send the National Guard to come and defend Republican and Democratic Members of Congress.
Now we have got a law which says put the plaque up in honor of these officers, and they can't do it, but they want to bring a totally partisan resolution to the floor deploring violence thousands of miles away, and you have got Members of Congress from California saying that they are not capturing what actually happened there.
However, no, it has got to be another opportunity for partisan division. Why? Why can't we honor law enforcement together and follow through on our word?
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to hear my colleague invoke Abraham Lincoln in the rejection of disunion secession and violent attack on the Federal Government.
Neither of my colleagues who is on the floor has said a word explaining why they won't put the plaque up to honor hundreds and hundreds of police officers on the Capitol Police force, the Metropolitan Police Department, and the Montgomery County Police throughout the region who came to defend us. Why won't they put the plaque up if they are really such big supporters of the police? That is a law.
They just want to pass a resolution. Their resolution, of course, is completely political. One of their whereas clauses is: ``Whereas, California's leadership has prioritized protecting illegal immigrants and violent individuals over U.S. citizens.''
That is just defamation of the law enforcement officials in California. It is defamation against the Governor of California, the mayor of Los Angeles, the sheriff in Los Angeles County, the chief of police in L.A., all of whom fought to put that violence down when riots broke out, something Donald Trump never did when the riots broke out that he incited against us.
Remember, he was impeached by this body for inciting a violent insurrection against us. Not only did he not do anything to defend us, but he was the one who caused the whole chain of events that led to the deaths that took place that day and the violence that took place that day. My colleague won't utter a word about it. He won't say a word about it.
All of the attempt to focus everybody over there is a distraction from the fact that they still, to this day, are defending what Donald Trump did with January 6. Why? It is because they also defend his lie that he won the 2020 Presidential election, which he lost by more than 7 million votes, 306 to 232 in the electoral college.
I don't know what the meaning of their totally partisan resolution is when they won't even stand by the law--it was signed into law by the President--to put up a plaque, a simple plaque honoring police officers who fought tooth and nail for hours against the most bloody, vicious, violent insurrectionist mob ever to attack the Capitol of the United States.
Chu).
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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her excellent point. The California delegation has advanced, with Ms. Lofgren, a truly bipartisan resolution that deplores all violence because the political violence is getting out of control in America.
We just had colleagues in Minnesota who were the subject of assassination attempts, and, of course, the former speaker of the Minnesota House was killed, along with her husband, and a State senator was wounded, along with his wife.
We deplore all the political violence across the board, and we defend the right to speak. We look for policies from the Federal Government that will not exacerbate conflict but will reduce conflict.
This resolution is far from being nonpartisan, as my distinguished colleague argues. In fact, it attacks the Governor of California, Members of Congress, California leadership, and the mainstream media. I mean, come on.
We know the difference between what is a partisan, gotcha resolution and a resolution that actually attempts to unify people around common values.
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Mr. RASKIN.
Mr. Speaker, my colleague from California talks about defunding the police. He might want to update his talking points because look who is defunding the police. President Trump and the Republicans are defunding the police, and we know that because we debated it for hours on this floor.
His DOGE agents, back when Elon Musk was still in town before he got run out of town by somebody, DOGE said a guy in the Department of Justice cut out an estimated $500 million in community project funding to police departments across America, victim rights organizations, and others receiving those grants. They have not been able to explain it. They didn't even know it was happening.
Of course, they unleashed DOGE on the Department of Justice and hundreds of millions of dollars in State and local law enforcement, victim assistance, rape survivor organization grants, all of that was cut by them. Of course, they are also cutting more than a billion dollars in law enforcement funding in the DOJ appropriation this year.
We don't need any lectures about defunding the police from people who are actively defunding the police and people who are refusing to follow the law in honoring the police. My friend from California refuses to utter a word about that.
Could somebody please explain why they are not following the law and putting a plaque up to honor the officers who came to save our lives on January 6?
Kamlager-Dove), who is a member of the Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from California has engaged in a spirited defense of the immigration policies of the administration. I wonder if he would clarify for us what the policy is this week, or at least today, with respect to agriculture in California or any other State.
President Trump heard from the Secretary of Agriculture and large agrarian interests saying that his immigration policies were destroying agriculture in America by getting rid of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who work there and that they are disrupting the entire agricultural economy.
Then, Donald Trump announced that there were some very fine, good workers within the agriculture sector, and they would not be enforcing the law there. That lasted for several days, and then there was a reversal. They went back to saying, yes, we will be doing ICE immigration crackdowns again.
Then, Donald Trump heard again from the Agriculture Secretary, as I understand it, and other interests, and he said no, they would be leaving some of these people alone.
I wonder if the gentleman could clarify that for us, and I wonder whether it causes him to second-guess in any way his absolute support for these policies. Maybe it suggests that there is something wrong with what they are doing and that the administration could go back to the drawing board.
Barragan).
Mr. Speaker, I am glad we are getting somewhere in this debate. The gentleman concedes that it is within the discretion of the administration to decide where to target resources.
I was just trying to find out where the administration is this week because we are getting conflicting accounts of whether or not they are still targeting farmworkers. We are getting reports from California, Texas, and New Mexico that entire farms are shut down because there have been ICE raids. The other workers are afraid to come to work.
They are begging the President to do something. The President then said we would stop doing that. Then they reversed it when Stephen Miller got involved. I think now the agriculture interests are getting involved. They should get the policy together.
It speaks to an underlying problem here, which is that the overwhelming number of arrests now are not of people who are criminal suspects for anything. Mr. Speaker, 65 percent of the people who have been taken by ICE since this administration began had no criminal convictions at all.
That is why we read articles in The Wall Street Journal about small, rural towns that voted for Donald Trump. They are up in arms and are in an uproar because people who have done nothing wrong and are pillars of the community are being taken away from their workplaces, their farms, their restaurants, their businesses, and their homes.
I ask the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Kiley), who I know to be a serious student of the law because he was a student of mine of the law when we were at Yale Law School together: What authorizes the government to send people out who are not identified with any law enforcement insignia, who are masked and who are in unmarked cars, to arrest people? Doesn't that set the people up for danger in America?
That is what the assassins in Minnesota were doing. They showed up, dressed like some kind of vague police person without any law enforcement insignia, and in an unmarked car. That sets us up for danger.
Doesn't my colleague think the law enforcement norm is for people to know who police officers are so that they know they have to submit to their authority? I would inquire if my colleague would like to answer the question.
Mr. Speaker, there are masked agents in unmarked cars sent out, violating people's due process rights, as the courts have found. This includes all the way up to the Supreme Court. They are arresting Members of Congress. They are prosecuting Members of Congress for doing their jobs. They federalize the State National Guard when the police in Los Angeles and the elected officials are doing their jobs.
This is an authoritarian attack on constitutional democracy. We must get back to the rule of law.
If nothing else, the Republicans should put up the plaque they committed to put up, honoring the police officers who defended American democracy, the Vice President of the United States, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and everybody in this room during the January 6 violent insurrection which Donald Trump was impeached for having incited.
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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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