Make the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful Act of 2025

Floor Speech

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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 5103, the Make the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful Act of 2026.

For this reason, and at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to committee.

If the House rules permitted, I would have offered the motion with an important amendment to this bill. My amendment would stop unethical donations for Federal Government projects to alter any public property, building, or fixture at the White House, the Naval Observatory, or other public property locations primarily used by the President and the Vice President.

During the longest shutdown in our Nation's history, the Trump administration clearly showed the American people where its priorities lay and began demolishing the 123-year-old East Wing to build a gilded ballroom similar to that of his private billionaires' club at Mar-a- Lago.

Not only does the demolition undermine historical preservation without a public review process, but it also constitutes another ethical violation by the administration, as private donors fund the construction without input from the National Park Service.

This bill is just one in a series of the majority's and this administration's misguided priorities, whereby their answer to solving our immigration problems is advancing policies that would subject the District and cities across the Nation to a brutal and indiscriminate crackdown on immigrant communities.

While stating that he would go after ``the worst of the worst,'' the President has, instead, targeted families, permanent residents, refugees, students, and asylum seekers. Instead of taking actions that make us safer, the administration has opted for showy displays of force, all to jack up his detention and deportation numbers.

The Trump administration, in its relentless drive to use ICE and Customs and Border Patrol as an instrument of cruelty toward immigrant communities, has abandoned the Department of Homeland Security's core mission of keeping the homeland safe.

Hundreds of intelligence officers with DHS' intelligence office have been directed to focus on immigration enforcement, resulting in fewer intelligence briefs reaching local officials and police departments.

At a time when the President has dragged us into his war of choice with Iran, which puts our servicemembers in harm's way with no clear long-term strategy, we absolutely cannot afford to leave ourselves so vulnerable to attack.

With gas prices now on the rise and the cost of groceries, rent, and utilities skyrocketing for millions, we are left to question why this administration would rather pursue vanity projects and its campaign of terror than deliver on the promises it made to the American people.

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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I hope my colleagues will join me in voting for the motion to recommit.

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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

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

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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