No Mandate to Cut Medicaid

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise, and still I rise, a proud, unbought, unbossed, liberated Democrat.

And still I rise, censured but not silenced. It is important to have this photo tonight because it will get us into some very important issues.

This was the occasion when I stood before the President as he stood behind me giving a statement at a joint session of Congress. I was seated right over in the third row up.

The President started to talk about his mandate. I collected my portable items, and I was about to make my way out to the aisle so that I could traverse my way out through the doors. That was my means of peacefully protesting, but as I moved and he talked about his mandate, something came over me. It was spontaneity. It was not contrived.

I stood and I said to the President: You don't have a mandate to cut Medicaid. That was what I said.

Now, the press has distorted that, a good many of them, these opinion makers, opinion shapers. They want to define people and define what you say notwithstanding your having said something contrary to what they would like to hear.

They said that I said he didn't have a mandate. I never said he didn't have a mandate. I said he didn't have a mandate to cut Medicaid, and I still stand by it.

By the way, it became something that people across the country agreed with. So, I said it, and then I left. I left after having been told that I had to leave because the Speaker concluded that I was out of order.

I have no hard feelings as it relates to the Speaker. I have no animus to his requiring me to be removed, although I am the only person who has ever been removed from a joint session of Congress.

Here is what happened after I left. The President, from this podium, looked over toward my Democratic colleagues, and the President said to them, as he was talking, words tantamount to them being lunatics. He said it. Members of the Congress of the United States of America are at a joint session of Congress, and the President calls the Democrats lunatics.

I wasn't here. I don't know what I would have done had I been here and he called me a lunatic, because I never insulted him by saying something negative about his personhood. I didn't do that, but I was censured. The President was not censured for calling Members lunatics at a joint session of Congress. He has not been reprimanded in any way. We have allowed him to normalize his behavior.

I was censured. I had to stand in the well. I accepted my punishment. I accepted it. I never criticized the notion that it was improper for me to be removed. I did say that I didn't think the punishment was appropriate in terms of being censured, but I never said anything that would cause the President to believe that I was disrespecting him as a human. He called Democrats lunatics--no penalties, nothing done.

We cannot allow the President to normalize demeaning people, calling them names, low IQ. We can't allow him to do this. If we do, at some point, what I have in my hand now will occur. I have in my hand an article from Politico dated November 20, 2025. When we allow the President to say these things with impunity, this is what we face. November 20, 2025, 10:42 a.m. Eastern Standard time--it is styled: ``Trump calls for Democratic lawmakers to face trial for `seditious behavior.'''

I don't agree with that, but that is not the point. There is more to be said.

It goes on to say, in bold print: ``SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!'' he wrote on Truth Social.

The President is saying now that someone, Democrats, have engaged in seditious behavior punishable by death.

Then, he goes on. The article reads: ``President Donald Trump on Thursday called for six Democratic lawmakers to face arrest and trial after they made a video encouraging U.S. servicemembers and members of the intelligence community to refrain from following orders if they broke the law.''

What does that mean if they broke the law? Well, it means this: If the President gives you an unlawful order, you are not to follow that order. That is what it means. By the way, that is what the law says. You don't follow unlawful orders. We don't want people following unlawful orders.

I am not going to name the people, but then it goes on to say: ``It's called SEDITIOUS''--this is the President now. ``It's called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL,'' Trump charged in a post on Truth Social. ``Each of these traitors''--now they have become traitors. ``Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL.''

I don't agree with that, but that is not the most egregious thing in this document that I hold in my hand. I will get to that as I read on. ``Their words cannot be allowed to stand,'' he says.

Then, he goes on to say: ``We won't have a country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET.''

Now, we are getting close to the reason I am standing here tonight. If he had only said the other things, I probably would have, as many others are doing, just let it go, but sometimes, you can cross a line of no return. The President crossed that line with these words. The President then posted 16 Truth Social posts, including one that advocated for hanging Democrats. Now, that is the line.

Mr. President, what is wrong with you? Don't you know that there are people who will read this and consider doing something dastardly? Don't you know that you are putting people in harm's way?

By the way, I don't think it just includes the eight people who are named here. I don't think it just includes them. I think if you are a Democrat, any Democrat, you should be concerned about what this President has done. I don't think that this applies to just the six Democratic lawmakers that are mentioned here--six, not eight. I think it applies to all of us.

Just so that you will know, my friends, when you walk into my office now, the first thing you see is a person with a gun. When I first got elected to Congress, we didn't have police officers sitting out in the lobby. You walk in now and the first thing you see is a person with a gun. Why? Because of this kind of ignorant behavior on behalf of the President. By the way, I am being kind by saying ``ignorant.'' There are many other ways, many other ways, many other adjectives.

There is something wrong with the President. There is something wrong with the President of the United States of America. For the President of the United States to say that people should be--let me read it to you one more time. The President then responded with 16 Truth Social posts, including one that advocated for hanging Democrats.

There is something wrong with the President. There is something wrong. We can't ignore this. We cannot allow him to say this with impunity. We can't.

Now, I don't speak for anybody other than myself and everybody who agrees with me. A lot of people agree with me that the President can't be allowed to do this. That is why I say: ``Censured but not silenced.'' I have not been silenced. I will not be silenced. I am not going to be one who is going to allow this to take place and not speak up and speak out and say to the world that this has to change.

We are normalizing not just hate, but we are normalizing these signals to persons who may not be as stable as I would like for them to be, who will then proceed to do something to harm someone.

Yes, when you come to my office, the first thing you see is a person with a gun. When I go out to events now, I have to have someone to escort me out to events. When I am in the airport, we have to be escorted through the airports.

Do you think this improves the situation? This does not. This only exacerbates a situation that we already are having to deal with. We have had to allocate more funds so that Members can have armed protection. For me it is armed--maybe for some others it is not--but protection. This is not normal.

If we just allow it to continue, we may find ourselves at a point where we can't stand here in the well and say what I am saying. We may find ourselves at a point in the history of the United States of America, which was a functioning democracy when the President took office for this term, we may find ourselves with an inability to exercise the constitutional right of free speech.

You have to see what is coming. You have seen what he has done, calling all of the generals in, all of these high-ranking officers. In a sense, they spoke down to them. He changed the name of the Department of Defense into the Department of War. He has become a ``might makes right'' President--might makes right.

In a might makes right world, the weak are wrong. If you don't have the might to match what the President is doing, then you are weak. I am coming back to this, but I have to step aside for a second and say this to you:

This is a President who has decided that he will use the awesome power of the Justice Department to punish people who are perceived to be, in his mind, persons who have harmed him in some way by simply prosecuting him.

Now, look, if we can all decide that we are going to indict the prosecutors in our cases, then we are not going to have a rule of law in this country. What happens to the rule of law if everyday people, like you and me--I can't force the Justice Department to do anything, but he knows this. He knows that he and the Justice Department have unlimited time, a coffer in the millions, if not billions, and that you may beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride, you won't beat the indictment. You will have to pay. This is all so obvious in terms of what he is doing.

However, back to this. Censured but not silenced. Well, there is a remedy. If my colleagues who generally sit on this side won't rein him in, if the Supreme Court has decided that it won't, for whatever reasons, then there is but one option left. There is but one.

The Congress of the United States of America has the authority to rein in a President who commits impeachable offenses. Impeachable offenses. Saying that Members of Congress that advocated for people to follow the law, saying that these Democrats should be lynched, at some point there is a line. This is the line. This is the solution.

We are in a countdown to impeachment. I intend to bring Articles of Impeachment to remove this President, who is normalizing violations of the Constitution. He could care less about due process. Due process, the notion that you ought to be able to at least raise your hand and say, hey, you have got the wrong person when you are being taken away by people who have masks and are not properly identifying themselves as members of the constabulary. You should be able to stop that.

In my opinion, people ought to be identified so that a person will know who arrested them. However, he doesn't care. It doesn't matter to him that we have a branch of the government called the judiciary. He wants to impeach the judges when they differ with him. We have got a Member of Congress who has filed Articles of Impeachment against a judge because they don't agree with their opinion.

Most people in this country of more than 300 million people can't do that. They can't decide that they are going to impeach the judge because they don't like the opinion.

We have entered into an era now where an authoritarian President has control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and a Supreme Court that has to date not challenged him properly, in my opinion, so now he believes that he can say we should hang Members of Congress.

Well, Mr. President, you shouldn't. You shouldn't say that, and the remedy is to remove you from office.

He shouldn't be allowed to serve out his entire term. I am not implying that anything should be done to his physical person, no. I am talking about what we can lawfully do, peacefully do. He should not be allowed to finish his term of office because he is not getting better. There is something wrong with him, and he is not getting better.

It is progressively moving toward a point in time when he will say something that is going to impact every person in this country, it seems. I hope that it never happens, but I do believe that he is setting us up such that when he is to leave office, when his term is up, he will have some rationale for staying on, and he will have the power, the awesome power of the Presidency to back him up.

What he did when he should have left office before and he encouraged--there are other words that I could use--people to come over to the Capitol, a person was killed. People died. People were walking around the Capitol with gallows, looking for the Vice-President, calling out Speaker Pelosi's name, defecating in the Capitol, and not in the necessary facility, but in inappropriate places.

He did that. When do we get enough evidence to realize that what he did once he will do again? Yet, he has now greater authority because of the Supreme Court saying to him that he is immune to certain things. He has been given a certain amount of immunity, which he has taken as absolute immunity.

We can see what is happening. He is progressively moving toward the date that he is to leave office, when, in my opinion, he will not. I think he will try to stay on. I think he will use the awesome power of the Presidency--and if he can, the United States military--to stay. That is my prognostication.

Mr. Speaker, I don't want to wait until he does it to take a stand. That is why I am counting down to impeachment now. That is why I am taking a stand now. I am not saying to any other Member that they must vote to impeach. I am saying to everybody they have notice now. They can do all of the things they want to do to prevent the Articles of Impeachment from coming to the floor for a vote. Go ahead and do that.

For posterity, I want everyone to know there was one Member of Congress at least--I believe there are others--but there was one Member of Congress at least that realized we should have taken action and one did. We must take this action.

If nothing else, maybe if he sees that impeachment is imminent, maybe he will change his behavior. I doubt it. Maybe he will change it. Maybe he will come to his senses and realize that what he is doing is harmful to democracy--to democracy. It is not just harmful to the people he demeans but to democracy.

Mr. Speaker, I will bring these Articles of Impeachment. Everybody is on notice now--everybody. Not only am I going to file them but I am going to ask for a vote. This cannot stand.

There are people who will say in quiet places something similar to what I just said. I hope that those people will have the courage. If they don't want to say it publicly, I just hope they will have the courage to do what they can do to prevent the imminent threat that this President has become to American democracy. I say ``threat.'' It is an assault on democracy now. It was a threat. It has now become an assault.

We are in a countdown to impeachment. I am giving every assurance that I can. Please take me literally. I plan to bring these Articles of Impeachment against this President. I pray that the Senate will convict. The Articles of Impeachment filed in the House are comparable to an indictment but not the same. They are comparable to it in a sense.

The Senate then has a trial. I would hope that the Senate would vote, Republican and Democrat, to convict and remove this President from office. That would be my desire. I don't always get what I want, which means I have got to be prepared to file again.

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to let this behavior die. If my colleagues don't vote this time, it is okay. I will file again because there is plenty he has already done. Not everything should be put into just one set of articles. There are plenty of other things.

Mr. Speaker, I already have articles pending against him that I call the sword of Damocles for what he has done in defying court orders, in flouting court orders, and not giving due respect to orders of the court. This is the President of the United States doing it. This is not just some other person. It is the President.

They are hanging there. I am waiting to get the order from a judge who is looking at it. I have been waiting since this occurred. There is a judge looking at a case that was before him. If this judge rules, as I think he will, the sword of Damocles will fall on him. I am referring to the articles I have already filed dealing with his failure to obey the simple constitutional premise of persons having a right to due process.

Everybody in the country knows--as he would say, ``everybody.'' We know everybody doesn't, but that is his terminology. Everybody knows that we get due process in the United States of America except the President. They get what a might-makes-right mentality accords them when they are dealing with the President.

We have this countdown to impeachment. I am going to file against him before the Christmas break. I will let everybody have fair shots at me and do whatever they need to do. I probably shouldn't have said ``shots.'' I will let everyone take whatever lawful measures they think they should take.

Before the Christmas break, I plan to have articles filed and voted on right here in the Congress of the United States of America because we cannot allow him to normalize the notion that someone can just hang Members of Congress because they don't agree with their position. Even if their position is wrong, he shouldn't say it. I am referring to six Truth Social posts, one including that he advocated for hanging the Democrats.

If anybody wants to read this, it is in Politico. Thank God for Politico. It says: ``Trump calls for Democratic lawmakers to face trial for seditious behavior.''

By the way, there are Members who will agree with this. There are Members who will say it is okay for the President to say we can hang people in this fashion. They will say it because it has become normal for some people.

Mr. Speaker, I don't live in that world. I live in a world where the President of the United States is supposed to be the most respected person in the country and where the President of the United States is a person who sets the example. He is an exemplar and not just an example. He is an exemplar. He is a supreme and superb exemplar of what behavior should be like in the country.

Even Presidents make mistakes, but these are not mistakes. These things are done with intentionality, and they are done almost on a daily basis. There is something new almost every day. I expected something new today, but I didn't expect this.

Before Christmas, we will vote again on impeachment. I am giving notice now so that no one will say they are surprised when I bring additional articles. I already have some on file, and there are other things that he has done that I shall pay attention to. This has some specificity associated with it, but there are other things, as well.

Mr. Speaker, as I conclude my message tonight, I think it is important to note that we live in a participatory democracy. Every person has a duty, responsibility, and an obligation to participate in our functioning democracy. We should vote. We should serve on a jury. We also have a duty in a participatory democracy to protect the democracy. We have to protect it.

We can't just allow a President to become a might-makes-right authoritarian. We have to protect the democracy that we have inherited. We do it for ourselves. We do it for posterity. We do it because, without this participatory democracy, the world itself becomes at greater risk.

Mr. Speaker, the United States of America is a pretty important piece of the puzzle of life that the entire planet Earth is a part of. We have got to protect this participatory democracy.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source