[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 58 (Thursday, March 30, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H1686-H1688]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. 
Grothman) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, as we wrap up this week in Congress, I 
would like to address some issues that I feel have not been discussed 
as much as they should be in the Chamber this week, and I look forward 
to the issues being highlighted when we return from our break 10 days 
from now.
  First of all, I would like to discuss the very concerning memos 
coming out of the Richmond office of the FBI. The FBI has kind of 
embarrassed us over the last year, in that there are areas in which I 
would consider more political in nature, but the FBI, perhaps like 
their counterparts in China or Russia, seem to go after people for what 
they think more than what they do.
  We found out in the last month that they have decided to equate 
traditional Catholics with groups that ought to be monitored so that 
they don't do anything too untoward.
  In their memo, they implied that perhaps traditional Catholics, 
without evidence that I know, may be opposed to affirmative action, 
like the majority of Americans. They may not be all on board with the 
LGBTQ agenda. They may not be thrilled with President Biden's 
immigration policy. Horror of horrors, they might like to attend a 
service with Latin Mass.

                              {time}  1300

  I am not Catholic personally, but I have friends who I think would 
consider themselves conservative Catholics. The idea that they would 
consider conservative Catholics in line with being an enemy of the 
state is incredibly scary. I know traditional Catholics will not do 
very well in communist China today, and that is perhaps not surprising. 
That is one of the reasons why we worry about what goes on in China. It 
is very scary that this administration would be targeting conservative 
Catholics for additional monitoring, and it is something that we should 
be very mindful of and something we should insist on.
  They have said that they are revoking the memo, which is nice. But 
when you just say that we are getting rid of the memo because it 
doesn't meet our exacting standards, it implies that you are getting 
rid of the memo because it is true and you feel bad that your true 
feelings about conservative Catholics have now been made public.
  I have not seen any press release from the FBI, and I hope to see it, 
in which people are removed from the FBI, saying we don't want you 
there anymore. If you view your job as not one in which we are going to 
track down people who are counterfeiting or tracking down people who 
are selling fentanyl in the State but instead are going to spend your 
resources monitoring conservative Catholics, that is of great concern.
  Like I said, I personally am not Catholic, but I will tell you, after 
seeing that memo from the FBI, if I was a member from an Assembly of 
God church, a Wisconsin Lutheran Synod church, most Baptist churches, 
evangelical churches, or Orthodox Jewish, I would be scared of where 
our country is going.
  I insist that the FBI open up their files and tell us exactly who 
drafted these repugnant memos and whose idea it was out of Washington, 
out of Richmond, who knows, that the FBI should be involved in 
targeting conservative Catholics.
  I hope the rest of the people in this body, including my leadership 
team, talks about it every day until we get back or until we get a 
better explanation from the FBI of exactly what was going on and who, 
in particular, were the employees of the FBI who thought it was a good 
idea to monitor conservative Catholics, of which apparently one piece 
of evidence is attending Latin mass.
  Now, I think we should also have a look at a story that began about 2 
years ago. We can kind of follow it along and see the degree to which 
President Biden's administration is following the demands made of them 
about 2 years ago.
  About 2 years ago, when the Senate was 50/50, with a Democrat Vice 
President, U.S. Senators Tammy Duckworth and Mazie Hirono said that 
they were tired of confirming any White men appointed by President 
Biden. That is kind of a scary thing. Actually, they said it would be 
okay to confirm White men if they were gay.
  After 2 years were up, a legal journal did a study and found out that 
2 years into the Biden administration, only 5 out of 97 judges were 
White men. We were able to determine that 1 of the 5 is gay. We don't 
know about the others.
  I think that is a little bit scary. I think if you are going to take 
the legal community collectively--remembering that you don't really 
appoint people to the Federal judiciary when they are 26 years old--so 
when we look at the community of people age 35 and up and say, we are 
going to try to find the best judges we can, I would think more than 5 
out of 97 judges would be White men who are not gay. But that is what 
we have. Actually probably less than 5. It is 4 or 3 or whatever.
  I think it is something for the media to pick up on and ask some more 
questions here.
  Does the Biden administration really feel that only 5 of 97 judicial 
openings would be best filled with a White man?

[[Page H1687]]

  I would be asking questions, since apparently Senator Duckworth and 
Senator Hirono felt it was important to give preference to gay men over 
straight men. I would ask how many of the few White men appointed are 
gay and how many are straight. I think that is something that if the 
media was on the ball, they would be asking that question.
  We do know that there are strong elements on the left that don't like 
traditional families. We know the close ties between the Democrat Party 
and Black Lives Matter and how early on Black Lives Matter said they 
don't like western prescribed traditional families. I always objected 
to the way Black Lives Matter says that, because I think we have 
traditional families with a mom and dad at home through all sorts of 
different backgrounds, not just in Western Europe. But they, 
themselves, describe it as western prescribed traditional families.
  I hope that beyond this rather obscure legal journal, we would have a 
little more investigation by the press and perhaps investigation by 
some of the relevant committees.
  Are we continuing down the path of apparently actively discriminating 
against White heterosexual men?
  I mean, that is clearly what these two Senators wanted. I think it is 
very concerning that they are getting exactly what they wanted. It is 
like the Biden administration is just following their tune.
  Hopefully, we will see more articles about this in the paper over the 
next couple weeks. If I do not get what I want here, hopefully 
Republican leadership will weigh in and force the Biden administration 
to comment on this issue and the backgrounds of some of their 
appointees.
  Given the obsession, or their apparent view of the world, the Biden 
administration does view people as just representative of where their 
ancestors lived 200 years ago.
  I don't view it that way. I think most Americans view people as 
individuals. If you ask what do you think about John or what do you 
think about Mary or what do you think about Peter? You talk about their 
views on things. Maybe you talk about their upbringing or where they 
grew up, but you don't say the most important thing about that person 
is whether their ancestors are from Spain or England or India or 
wherever.

  Unfortunately, the Biden administration basically seems to throw away 
the rest of the resume and focus primarily on ethnic background. That 
is unfortunate.
  One way we can see it is in their proposed budget. They seem to put 
diversity police in all of their different agencies. It is something 
that is growing more and more in our universities, as well.
  Some of these diversity police are making $200,000 a year, which is 
something that scares me in its own right. If you are going to be 
making $200,000 a year, a lot of people will say anything. If your 
$200,000-a-year job depends on the rather warped idea that we should 
hire, fire, or promote people based on where their great, great 
grandparents are from, these people are going to be running around the 
country telling businesses, telling students, that when you meet 
somebody, the most important thing is their ethnic background. We have 
seen the result of having these people running around the university 
and the obsession with this view of the world.
  We did have a hearing this week looking at universities, and we will 
talk about universities again in a second. But there are a lot of 
universities, who complain that tuition is too high, who purport to 
care about the high student loan debt out there, who have no problem 
hiring people for $150,000 or $200,000 a year to preach to children 
that they ought to walk around with a chip on their shoulder because of 
their background, despite the fact that clearly people are coming from 
all around the world and succeeding in America.
  It is kind of a defeatist thing to tell people that they are going to 
be discriminated against based on ethnic background. I have talked 
before about people from all around the world showing up at a swearing 
in ceremony where people become American and looking at all the people 
who are hitting the ground running from all around the globe.
  I always talk about, in my own district we have a huge Hmong 
population. I look at how successful they are, how hardworking, and how 
they are living the American Dream. Then you hear about these people 
making $200,000 at our university campuses to tell people they ought to 
walk around with a chip on their shoulder and saying what a horrible 
country America is.
  In any event, I hope all alumni around the country pay attention to 
what is going on in their alma maters and make sure they are not 
wasting the students' precious tuition dollars on hiring these people.
  Now, we have seen the result of these people recently, or this 
intolerance that they promote, in two separate universities. We are all 
familiar with what happened at Stanford University. A judge showed up 
there carrying ideas that if not a majority, close to a majority of 
Americans hold. They weren't big on transgender people going into the 
other persons' bathroom and what have you.
  They whipped up almost a physical confrontation at Stanford, which, 
when I get online, is supposed to be the second-best law school in the 
country, at least according to somebody. These potential lawyers, if 
they come from Stanford, they are going to wind up becoming Federal 
judges, very important jobs. They are shouting down people with views 
on transgender people different than the population as a whole. I don't 
know how these people are going to get back to home base and become 
productive lawyers, much less productive judges or productive 
bureaucrats in the future.
  We did have a hearing on this the other day, but I think we should 
have more hearings, specifically about what is going on with Stanford.
  We found similar intolerance of First Amendment free speech at 
Georgetown, another supposedly good law school. We had a student step 
forward, William Spruance, and talk about what happened to him when he 
questioned the guidelines with regard to masks. If you get on the 
internet, there are all sorts of people who will say different sort of 
things about masks, different things about vaccines. But apparently, 
because he stepped outside the orthodoxy at Georgetown Law School, he 
was threatened and he had to undergo a psychological evaluation.
  Doesn't that sound like something from the Soviet Union?
  If you disagree with the state, you have to see a psychiatrist 
because you must be mentally ill if you don't understand what a great 
guy Joseph Stalin is.
  Sounds like that is what we have going on here at Georgetown; send 
somebody for a psychiatric evaluation if he doesn't agree with the 
conventional view on how to deal with COVID.
  I hope that there is widespread outrage. We like to think people who 
graduate from college are taught to be open-minded and look at 
different views on things. But instead, apparently coming out of 
Georgetown, you are taught everybody must fall in line with the state 
or fall in line with the leadership of the law school, and if you 
don't, we will weigh in. Despite the fact that you may have spent 2 or 
3 years of money and time going to the law school, we are going to do 
what we can to make sure you don't become a member of the bar 
association and you won't be able to use that degree. Because far more 
important than your grades or what you know is going on in school is 
that you know that once you become a lawyer, you wind up being obedient 
to the state.
  It should be of great concern to the bar association across the 
board. I think the American Bar Association ought to look at what is 
going on both in Stanford and Georgetown, which--I think, maybe because 
of what they were 20 or 30 years ago--still have a good reputation. I 
am sure they will still sucker some kids into going there.
  But what is going on with the intolerance at both of these law 
schools is something that should be looked at, and I hope perhaps 
individual bar associations around the country also want to monitor 
this, as to what we can make of the intolerance in both of these law 
schools.

                              {time}  1315

  My final comment as far as what is going on this week is something I 
have

[[Page H1688]]

talked about in the past and want to talk about one more time. That is 
what is going on in Ukraine.
  My major concern with the Biden administration is I don't think they 
are trying to end this war. I mean, we are where we are, but the longer 
the war goes on, the closer the alliance between Russia and China goes. 
In the relatively recent background, we had a thousand McDonald's in 
Russia. I know people in my personal life who had jobs in Russia. We 
had Russians coming here doing jobs on our farms. The college-aged kids 
from Russia would come here with special visas working in the vacation 
industry.
  Obviously, right now relationships are falling. With regard to China, 
over time, relationships are getting worse and worse, which is a 
dangerous thing. We have had peace with China for well over 60 years. I 
don't know why we can't do another 60 years.
  President Biden is not making, I believe, an effort to wrap up this 
war. It shouldn't be that difficult. Ukraine has the second lowest 
birth rate of any country in the world. If there is any country that 
doesn't want to lose some of its young people it ought to be Ukraine.
  Nobody can tell me that Vladimir Putin thought that when he entered 
Ukraine the war would be going on this long. It is another country with 
a low birth rate. It is a country that is losing people as they 
immigrate to other countries.
  Both Ukraine and Russia should have motive to end this war, and 
eventually it will end. The sooner it will end, the better. I am afraid 
the Biden administration seems satisfied to just sit there, let things 
go on, every day more young Russians and more young Ukrainians die. Not 
only is that a tragedy in its own right, but every day that this war 
goes on, it is going to be that much harder to reach peace.
  I strongly wish that President Biden would use this interlude before 
we try to put more billions of dollars on Ukraine that he would--if the 
United States can't do it, and I can understand why we can't broker 
peace because we don't look like we are neutral in this fight--beg the 
Turks or the Israelis or the French or somebody who has more standing 
to step in and see if we cannot find an end to this war before it 
becomes much more catastrophic; before maybe the United States becomes 
involved; before Russia decides to shoot something at Western Europe, 
or use its submarines off of American shores.
  I strongly hope that the press, when they get a chance to interview 
President Biden, ask him: What are you doing or do you feel it would be 
good for this war to end, or are you just going to throw up your hands 
and pretend you are an innocent bystander? If the war goes on another 4 
or 5 years, it is all fine by President Biden.
  Those were four issues that I don't think we paid enough attention to 
during the course of the week.
  I hope the press corps gives them some attention during the next week 
when we are back in our districts, and I hope our leadership brings 
more attention to them when we return from our districts in 11 days 
from now.
  Madam Speaker, we will go for one more topic right now while my good 
friend returns from his office.
  There is an effort made right now in America with regard to school 
lunches to shift from milk to sugary drinks. This is something else we 
don't pay a lot of attention to, but a lot of children get a lot of 
their food from school lunch.
  I would be hard-pressed to find anybody who would say that we are 
better having kids drink sugary, gooey drinks than wholesome milk. Milk 
has been around since the Bible, right? Israel, the land of milk and 
honey.
  Apparently, there is an anti-milk feeling out there. I do know that 
gooey, sugary drinks are sold by big corporations that are very active 
in all segments here in Washington. I hope that this is something else 
the press will pick up on.
  Just because little children can't vote doesn't mean that this ought 
to be a banner headline, at least once a month, as to whether the next 
generation of children is raised on gooey, sugary drinks or wholesome 
100 percent milk, which has been such a big part of the diet of 
Americans since our founding.
  We hope that our bureaucracy holds the line and does good research 
into the good and the bad of sugary drinks, as well as the nutritious 
value of 1 percent whole milk.
  Again, if any members of the press or the Chair want to look into 
this, I think it will be very important. We have spiraling out of 
control healthcare costs in this country. The health of the next 
generation is largely going to be determined--or to a large degree be 
determined--by what is going on with the youngest children.
  We are at a precarious time in our country in which the drug 
companies want to prescribe en masse anti-obesity drugs to little 
children. I heard this week that parents are being told that sometimes 
their children, as young as 8 or 9, are going to begin to be prescribed 
anti-obesity drugs.
  I can understand why that is a gold mine for the drug companies. We 
are such an over-drugged country already, and if they can make our 
young people a little more pudgy--the idea that they would have to take 
anti-obesity drugs for the next 70 years of their life--the eyes of 
some of these pharmaceutical executives must just brighten up at the 
idea that that has become the norm of America.
  I suggest that we step back for a second, analyze what is healthier 
and what is less likely to make you obese, and encourage healthy foods. 
I think we are also talking here with regard to the WIC program. I hope 
we weigh in both on the WIC and the food stamps and the school lunch 
programs, all with more nutritious foods.
  If we get back more of the nutritious foods that the average American 
was eating 60 years ago, we wouldn't have to worry about giving all the 
young children anti-obesity drugs because people of my generation lived 
their whole life without them.
  I can understand it might be more profitable for some people, they 
have a lot of obese kids. We don't need that. It is bad for them. I 
hope the press really monitors what is going on as we try to step away 
from whole milk and other, what I will call, natural foods, instead of 
pushing their way toward sugary, processed food. I think that is one of 
the reasons why America's children right now are so much heavier than 
they were when I was a child. We look forward to that situation.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________