Bill to Outlaw Wounding of Official Working Animals Act of 2025

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, here is what America is talking about: Donald Trump's unauthorized, undeclared war of choice, a forever war in the making, which is costing us between $1 billion and $2 billion every single day and has killed already 13 Americans in uniform, wounding more than 200 Americans in uniform, and killing more than 1,000 Iranians, including 170 school children who were bombed at an all-girls school in Iran.

Americans are talking about the fact that gasoline now costs $3.84 a gallon. It has gone up more than 25 percent in 1 week because of Donald Trump's unauthorized, undeclared, illegal war of choice in Iran. Crude oil is now soaring to more than $109 a barrel because Donald Trump's war planners could not have predicted that Iran would try to strangle commerce in the Strait of Hormuz.

That is what America is talking about this week. America is talking about when there will be justice for Renee Good and Alex Pretti, American citizens exercising their First Amendment and Second Amendment rights who were shot down in cold blood by government agents in Minneapolis, and the most recent Secretary of Homeland Security libeled them as domestic terrorists and refused to recant from that defamatory lie.

That is what America is talking about. When are they going to reform ICE, and when are they going to start paying members of the Coast Guard, TSA, FEMA, and CISA?

We have a discharge petition to say: Pay those people, and don't let all of the illegality of ICE bring down the faithful public servants at the Coast Guard, TSA, FEMA, and other Federal agencies.

That is what America is talking about this week.

Well, what are MAGA Republicans in Congress talking about this week? They are talking about the BOWOW Act. The BOWOW Act?

Now, how did they come up with this bill and this title?

Well, the President's poll numbers are sinking like a stone, so they needed to find something to do in Washington to put on the floor. They can't talk about Trump's ruinous tariffs that have plunged so many small businesses into oblivion and cost American consumers hundreds of billions of dollars. They can't talk about that because the Supreme Court, which they gerrymandered, sliced and diced, and packed and stacked, struck it down.

Even the extremely right-leaning Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump's tariffs. We told them that it was unconstitutional. We told them that only Congress has the power to impose taxes and to regulate commerce with foreign nations, but no. Like lemmings, they followed Donald Trump off of the side of the ship, and now those tariffs are not only economically ruinous for the country, but they are discredited and struck down.

They can't talk about that, which was their big policy hit of the administration so far. No, they can't talk about that.

Well, they are not talking about the war in Iran. That is splitting even the MAGA base right down the middle because they had talked before Donald Trump about the importance of Congress actually making decisions about going to war. After all, that is what the Constitution says in Article I, Section 8, Clause 11. It is Congress that has the power to declare war.

Mr. Speaker, they are not talking about that. They are not talking about the lives that have been lost in Iran with this bizarre, impetuous war of choice that has been thrust onto the country when the President promised us that there would be no more forever wars and regime-change wars.

They can't even settle on whether this is a regime-change war or not. Some of them say that it is. Some of them say that it isn't, so we don't know. They can't talk about that.

Maybe they can talk about the healthcare public policy, which Donald Trump has been promising for more than a decade. It is a decade of, in 2 weeks, we will get you our plan. They don't like the plans that we have under Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which have delivered healthcare to millions of Americans.

They have done whatever they can to dismantle those healthcare plans. Maybe they could come up with a healthcare plan. No, they are not uttering a peep about that.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks, and Donald Trump fundamentally is not interested in delivering a healthcare plan to America.

Then someone says, ``Well, let's go back to immigration,'' but they have already been told not to talk about mass deportation. We pulled out of Minneapolis because we disgraced ourselves there. We know that America reviles the policy of shooting down American citizens in cold blood for exercising their First Amendment and Second Amendment rights, so we can't talk about that.

Then somebody discovered Freddie and said: There is a case at Dulles Airport with a dog, and we can at least go to the dog people with the BOWOW Act.

I am co-chair of the Congressional Animal Protection Caucus, and I have one of my dog's dog hair all over this suit, even though I tried to get it off before I came out this morning. If anybody is going to be a sucker for something called the BOWOW Act, it is me. I don't vote for a lot of MAGA legislation, but every dog has his day, and I was willing to look at this one. I was moved by something called the BOWOW Act.

I looked up the incident that the gentleman from California has referenced, and it was outrageous. I was outraged to learn about what happened to Freddie. It all started when Freddie the Beagle, the canine detective at Dulles Airport who works with CBP, Customs and Border Protection, to detect smuggled agricultural products, alerted his superior officers at Dulles to the presence of over 100 pounds of prohibited food items that appeared in the baggage unloading area.

It turns out Freddie did his job. He barked and alerted his superior officers to what was happening. They determined that there was a guy coming over from Egypt, a foreign national, named Aly Marie. Mr. Marie, age 70 years old, who was traveling to the airport and had all of this illegal food, contraband, was foiled by Freddie's excellent detective work. This frustrated Mr. Marie guy kicked Freddie. He kicked him so hard that the poor dog became airborne and had bruised ribs.

Now, if you are a major dog person and believe in animal protection, like me, you say to yourself: You have to be kidding me. That should be illegal. Kick that guy out of the country immediately. Don't let him in.

Guess what. That is exactly what happened. He was arrested immediately. He was charged immediately. He was held by the authorities. He was charged with one count of harming animals used in law enforcement under 18 U.S.C. 1368. He was convicted in a trial on his second day in America. He was held overnight, arrested, charged, convicted the next day, and then removed. He was sentenced to time served. He was ordered to pay for the veterinarian bill for Freddie's bruised ribs, which the court records show is $840, and he was promptly deported right back to Egypt after the court hearing on day three.

I am happy to report that, according to the CBP, Freddie is doing fine today. The law worked.

Imagine if Alex Pretti and imagine if Renee Good had that kind of criminal law enforcement and justice. What if their killers had been apprehended, arrested, charged, and convicted in 3 days? That would be a great thing, but no. What do we hear from Pam Bondi? What do we hear from Kristi Noem, the now-deposed former Secretary of Homeland Security? It is under investigation. The whole world saw it right on video. It is under investigation. Nothing is happening there.

Freddie got justice. We have a system that actually works there. Mr. Marie served 3 days in jail. His food was confiscated, taken away, and he was deported from the country. Why? Because assaulting a dog like that is a crime of moral turpitude. Under the Federal laws, a crime of moral turpitude like that gets you kicked out of the country. It all worked.

They have nothing else to talk about, so they want to double down and pass redundant legislation to say that somebody who does this should be deported, which is already what happened in this case. The opportunity to propose a redundant, unnecessary, superfluous bill to score meaningless political points, when the rest of the world is talking about war and inflation caused by this President, proved impossible to resist for our colleagues.

H.R. 4638 would render inadmissible and deportable any noncitizen who willfully or maliciously harms a police dog or a police horse, as current law already requires.

There is one change. It removes the requirement that immigrants to the country, whether travelers like the doggone Mr. Marie or a green card holder, it removes the requirement that a noncitizen actually be convicted of a crime. It is enough that you be charged with it or they say you admitted it, or whatever, but the conviction requirement is removed.

Now, that has been a trend for our colleagues in this session. They have been taking things that are already crimes and saying: Let's make that a matter of deporting and removing someone. Well, they already can be deported and removed, yes, but now they want to excise the conviction requirement to do it without complete due process. Why would they do this?

Thomas Jefferson said at the time of the Alien and Sedition Acts that there will be a temptation to go after the immigrants. He said that when you water down constitutional requirements as they apply to noncitizens, that is going to come to affect the citizens, too--a bitter lesson learned by the families of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

In other words, if you train the ICE agents that they can do whatever they want, that they are beyond the law, that they can put on masks, bust down people's doors, and enter without a Fourth Amendment search warrant issued by a neutral magistrate, if they can do that kind of thing, if they can abuse people as we have seen all over the internet, if they can rough up people, what difference does it make really if they are immigrants or if they are citizens if they are beyond the law? Now, we have dead Americans at the hands of our own Federal agents, with nobody charged, nobody arrested, and nobody being prosecuted.

They want to just get rid of the conviction requirement before people are deported. They can already be deported once they are convicted, but they want to get rid of the conviction requirement.

This case illustrates how completely unnecessary the bill is. Harming animals in law enforcement, or any form of animal cruelty, is already a crime involving moral turpitude and has been for a long time. It is a deportable offense, and everybody knows it. If it wasn't, Mr. Marie would not have been deported 3 days after he kicked Freddie.

Bizarrely, because their bill doesn't require a conviction, if this legislation had been in place and Mr. Marie had been deported on day two instead of day three, and there had been no trial, he never would have had to pay restitution. Think about that. Due process helps a lot of people. It is not just for the benefit of that defendant who might be innocent, as Mr. Marie was not, but it also benefits the victims because the victims can win restitution and fines in this way.

They want to deport first and not have a trial. They just want to eliminate due process. I don't understand it.

President Trump has had his experiences in the criminal justice process, and he had every right guaranteed to people under due process: the right to a lawyer, the right to be heard, the right to introduce evidence, the right to cross-examine, the right to trial by a jury of his peers. Even after going through all of that, there are still people who say: That wasn't enough. It didn't really work for him. He didn't really get due process. He wasn't really guilty of committing fraud.

If that is the case for someone who had every conceivable benefit of due process, what about somebody now who gets no due process at all and no trial? That is what they are suggesting. I don't understand why, really, other than the possibility of just introducing an unnecessary, redundant bill and giving them something to talk about when they don't want to talk about what is really going on in the world, what is really going on in America, with gas prices soaring out of control, people unable to pay for their healthcare, and people unable to afford groceries. They don't want to talk about any of that. They want to talk about Freddie.

Well, there is a lot of meaningful animal protection work we can do together, and those of us in the Animal Protection Caucus would be very happy to meet with the gentleman from California about all of the things we can do to really help animals in America. But right now, Freddie is doing fine. That case worked out fine. This bill is unnecessary.

We want the immigration laws enforced. We also want the Constitution of the United States to be enforced. They think somehow it has been suspended, and the President of the United States can do whatever he wants.

We are trying to stand up for the rule of law in America and for our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

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Mr. Speaker, first of all, I am baffled and amazed that the gentleman would bring up the economy under President Biden. A month before the Presidential election in 2024, The Economist magazine had a cover story titled: ``The envy of the world. The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust. Expect that to continue, argue Simon Rabinovitch and Henry Curr.''

That was what President Biden left to Donald Trump when he took over, an economy that was the envy of the world, inflation down, unemployment down, small business sector roaring, the economy roaring, opportunity for young people. Donald Trump has taken an economy that left other rich countries in the dust, and he has covered us in mud and dirt. He has put us in the dust.

Now gas prices are up 25 percent in 2 weeks. I don't need to refute all this propaganda and disinformation. People go to the gas station and it refutes all the propaganda and disinformation that we are hearing from them.

They are better off sticking to the BOWOW Act.

Under President Biden, we passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, a $1.2 trillion investment in America, in our bridges, our roads, our highways, our ports and our airports, not blowing up stuff in other peoples' countries, precisely what Donald Trump had promised he wouldn't do.

That is where our money is going now, draining the U.S. economy by $1 to $2 billion every day. They are spending that on an undeclared, unauthorized war, and our colleagues would not even want to have one honest debate and one honest vote in Congress on whether or not to declare war on Iran. They won't utter a peep about it today or yesterday or tomorrow. They won't say anything about it, nothing, but they let President Trump have their way with them.

Now the gentleman somehow accuses us of not being interested in animal rights and animal welfare. I am sorry, I usually don't go running to rightwing MAGA forces for the protection of animals against animal cruelty and the industrial slaughterhouses and so on. They don't show so much interest in that, but now in Freddie's case because there was an immigrant traveler involved, they want to pass a law which is an exact echo of what the law is. The gentleman has not explained to us why we need to pass a law when Freddie's kicker was arrested, jailed, charged, prosecuted, convicted, and sent back to Egypt all within 3 days. He never saw anything outside of a jail cell in the United States of America, and yet they tell us we need, essentially, to go back and pass the law that mimics what the law is today, except now they want to sneak in a provision saying that we are going to remove the necessity of a conviction.

Why wouldn't it have been better to deport Mr. Marie on day two before he was fined $800 or $900 for Freddie's veterinarian bill?

Why would that have been better?

The gentleman hasn't explained. That is the only substantive change I can imagine coming from the BOWOW bill because the bowwows are already protected as we saw in this case. I wish he could summon up for the GOP caucus the same kind of fervor, passion, and commitment they are now demonstrating for animal rights and welfare, summon that up for human rights and human welfare, for people like Alex Pretti and Renee Good, who were shot down by out-of-control ICE agents in Minneapolis, and then ICE and Homeland Security say that they will not cooperate with local police authorities in Minneapolis and State police in Minnesota.

Why not?

All of a sudden they care just about dogs. They want to rewrite a law that already exists that already protects dogs, as we saw in this case, and not explain why they want to do it. It is an absolute diversion. It is an absolute distraction for the country.

They can't talk about gas prices. They can't talk about inflation. Remember, President Trump said he was going to bring down prices on day one. He hasn't done one thing to bring down prices. Now, they are soaring out of control throughout the entire economy because of his illegal, unauthorized war that is splitting even their own base.

It is the most unpopular war at the beginning that we have seen, maybe in American history, certainly in this century, because nobody explained why they were doing it. That is why the Founders said it has to be Congress that decides whether we go to war.

James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Tom Payne, the whole founding generation knew that the Kings were always plunging their countries into impetuous wars of conceit, vanity, imperial ambition, foreign intrigue, and corruption. They didn't trust one guy with that decision; they put that decision in us. They reposed it in us, whether or not we wanted it.

They are running away from it. They don't want to make a decision about this war, which Donald Trump now calls the ``little excursion,'' the little excursion in Iran, the little excursion that has already taken the lives of 13 U.S. citizens in uniform, wounded more than 200 Americans, and killed more than a thousand Iranians, including 170 schoolchildren who got bombed in this reckless, impetuous war.

They don't want to talk about that. It is the BOWOW Act, but they have not made one good argument about why we need to add a redundant, superfluous law in this way.

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 228, nays 190, not voting 14, as follows: [Roll No. 96] YEAS--228 Aderholt Alford Allen Amodei (NV) Arrington Babin Bacon Baird Balderson Barr Barrett Baumgartner Bean (FL) Begich Bentz Bergman Bice Biggs (AZ) Biggs (SC) Bilirakis Boebert Bost Brecheen Bresnahan Buchanan Burchett Burlison Calvert Cammack Carey Carter (GA) Carter (TX) Ciscomani Cline Cloud Clyde Cole Collins Comer Crane Crank Crawford Crenshaw Cuellar Davids (KS) Davidson Davis (NC) De La Cruz DesJarlais Diaz-Balart Donalds Downing Dunn (FL) Edwards Ellzey Emmer Estes Evans (CO) Ezell Fallon Fedorchak Feenstra Fine Finstad Fischbach Fitzgerald Fitzpatrick Fleischmann Flood Fong Foxx Franklin, Scott Fry Fulcher Garamendi Garbarino Gill (TX) Gimenez Golden (ME) Goldman (TX) Gonzalez, V. Gooden Gosar Gottheimer Graves Gray Griffith Grothman Guest Guthrie Hageman Hamadeh (AZ) Haridopolos Harrigan Harris (MD) Harris (NC) Harshbarger Hern (OK) Higgins (LA) Hill (AR) Hinson Houchin Houlahan Hudson Huizenga Hunt Hurd (CO) Issa Jack Jackson (TX) James Johnson (LA) Johnson (SD) Jordan Joyce (OH) Joyce (PA) Kelly (MS) Kelly (PA) Kennedy (UT) Kiggans (VA) Kiley (CA) Kim Knott Kustoff LaHood LaLota Landsman Langworthy Latta Lawler Lee (FL) Letlow Loudermilk Lucas Luttrell Mackenzie Malliotakis Maloy Mann Massie Mast McCaul McClain McClintock McCormick McDowell McGuire Messmer Meuser Miller (IL) Miller (OH) Miller (WV) Miller-Meeks Mills Moolenaar Moore (AL) Moore (NC) Moore (UT) Moore (WV) Moran Nehls Newhouse Norman Nunn (IA) Obernolte Ogles Onder Owens Palmer Patronis Perez Perry Pfluger Reschenthaler Riley (NY) Rogers (AL) Rogers (KY) Rose Rouzer Roy Rulli Rutherford Salazar Scalise Schmidt Schweikert Scott, Austin Self Sessions Shreve Simpson Smith (MO) Smith (NE) Smith (NJ) Smucker Sorensen Spartz Stauber Stefanik Steil Steube Strong Stutzman Suozzi Taylor Tenney Thompson (PA) Tiffany Timmons Turner (OH) Valadao Van Drew Van Duyne Van Epps Van Orden Vindman Wagner Walberg Weber (TX) Webster (FL) Westerman Wied Williams (TX) Wilson (SC) Wittman Womack Yakym Zinke NAYS--190 Adams Aguilar Amo Ansari Balint Barragan Beatty Bell Bera Beyer Bishop Bonamici Boyle (PA) Brown Brownley Budzinski Bynum Carbajal Carson Carter (LA) Casar Case Casten Castor (FL) Castro (TX) Cherfilus-McCormick Chu Cisneros Clark (MA) Clarke (NY) Cleaver Clyburn Cohen Conaway Correa Costa Courtney Craig Crockett Crow Davis (IL) Dean (PA) DeGette DeLauro DelBene Deluzio DeSaulnier Dexter Dingell Doggett Elfreth Escobar Espaillat Evans (PA) Fields Figures Fletcher Foster Foushee Frankel, Lois Friedman Frost Garcia (CA) Garcia (IL) Garcia (TX) Gillen Goldman (NY) Gomez Goodlander Green, Al (TX) Grijalva Harder (CA) Hayes Himes Hoyer Hoyle (OR) Huffman Ivey Jackson (IL) Jacobs Jayapal Jeffries Johnson (GA) Johnson (TX) Kamlager-Dove Kaptur Kennedy (NY) Khanna Larsen (WA) Larson (CT) Latimer Lee (NV) Lee (PA) Leger Fernandez Levin Liccardo Lieu Lofgren Lynch Magaziner Mannion Matsui McBath McBride McClain Delaney McClellan McCollum McDonald Rivet McGarvey McGovern McIver Meeks Menefee Menendez Meng Mfume Min Moore (WI) Morelle Morrison Mrvan Mullin Nadler Neal Neguse Norcross Ocasio-Cortez Olszewski Omar Pallone Panetta Pappas Pelosi Peters Pettersen Pingree Pocan Pou Pressley Quigley Ramirez Randall Raskin Rivas Ross Ruiz Ryan Salinas Sanchez Scanlon Schakowsky Schneider Scholten Schrier Scott (VA) Scott, David Sewell Sherman Simon Smith (WA) Soto Stansbury Stanton Stevens Strickland Subramanyam Sykes Takano Thanedar Thompson (CA) Titus Tlaib Tokuda Tonko Torres (CA) Torres (NY) Trahan Tran Underwood Vargas Vasquez Veasey Velazquez Walkinshaw Wasserman Schultz Waters Watson Coleman Whitesides Williams (GA) Wilson (FL) NOT VOTING--14 Auchincloss Gonzales, Tony Horsford Kean Keating Kelly (IL) Krishnamoorthi Luna Mace Moskowitz Moulton Murphy Swalwell Thompson (MS)

Mr. VEASEY changed his from ``yea'' to ``nay.''

Ms. HOULAHAN changed her vote from ``nay'' to ``yea.''

So the bill was passed.

The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.

A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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