Calling for Empathy in the Face of Tragedy

Floor Speech

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Ms. ANSARI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call for empathy in the wake of fear-driven hate. Fear has become the air we breathe in America.

Parents breathe it as they drop their kids at school, wondering if today will be the day they get a call that no parent should ever get. Teachers breathe it, walking into classrooms, rehearsing how they might shield their students.

Immigrant families breathe it in their own neighborhoods where ICE raids at schools and festivals turn everyday life into a source of terror. Transgender Americans breathe it just stepping outside, never knowing if they will be targeted for simply existing as themselves.

Journalists and everyday Americans breathe it for simply exercising their free speech rights. Elected leaders, including myself, breathe it after watching colleagues and public figures gunned down in front of their families.

This is the America we are living in right now, and this is not okay. We don't need to agree with someone's politics to say that their murder is a tragedy. The assassination of Charles Kirk, the murders of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the countless children lost to school shootings, are not partisan issues. These are human tragedies.

Violence against any American is violence against us all. Yet what did we hear in the immediate aftermath? We didn't have space for grace or respect for families left behind. We heard Fox News hosts declare this is a war.

Mr. Speaker, that is not what America needs right now. That instinct to weaponize tragedy betrays our humanity because political disagreements, even vast ideological differences, never justify violence.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a reminder of the imminent threat that having so many guns in our society poses to all of us, not just to our immediate safety, but to our freedom and our democracy. Violence cannot heal division. History teaches us that it only deepens it.

Somewhere along the way we have lost our empathy. We started debating which families deserve protection, which communities deserve safety, and which children deserve dignity. That is not who we are supposed to be.

Empathy is not weakness. Empathy is strength, and empathy is action. It is action against the epidemic of loneliness that leaves millions disconnected and vulnerable, a crisis that fuels despair and radicalization.

We need to invest in connection in this country: in schools, in civic spaces, in mental health services, and in communities where people can see one another as human beings again.

Empathy is action against the viciousness of unchecked social media. Cruelty isn't an accident of these platforms. It is their business model.

When algorithms reward division and hate, that hate doesn't stay online. It shows up in our streets, in our schools, and in our politics.

Congress cannot keep looking away while Big Tech profits from tearing our communities apart. Empathy is action against gun violence, the fear that stalks every one of us. It stalks every school, every community, and every public gathering.

Enough with the excuses. Enough is enough.

Children's lives are worth more than the profits of gun manufacturers. We need commonsense gun safety laws, and we need funding for mental health care.

We cannot weaponize tragedy to silence dissent. When hate and fear are unleashed, then nobody is safe. Today it may be immigrants; tomorrow, transgender Americans; last week, a conservative political leader. Hate corrodes the bonds of belonging for all of us.

I am asking my colleagues: Resist the temptation to harden your hearts. Choose empathy instead. Choose courage over cruelty. Choose action over indifference.

That is because our strength as a nation will never be measured by how viciously we fight one another, but how deeply we care for one another. Let this moment of grief be a call to empathy, to decency, and to action.

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