[House Hearing, 119 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED
AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2026
_______________________________________________________________________
HEARINGS
BEFORE A
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
______________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND
RELATED AGENCIES
HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky, Chair
DALE W. STRONG, Alabama, GRACE MENG, New York,
Vice Chair Ranking Member
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas GLENN IVEY, Maryland
BEN CLINE, Virginia JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York
TONY GONZALES, Texas MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
ANDREW S. CLYDE, Georgia FRANK J. MRVAN, Indiana
MARK ALFORD, Missouri
RILEY M. MOORE, West Virginia
NOTE: Under committee rules, Mr. Cole, as chairman of the full
committee, and Ms. DeLauro, as ranking minority member of the full
committee, are authorized to sit as members of all subcommittees.
Robert Yavor, Chris Esparza, Alley Adcock,
Elizabeth Barczak and Christopher Eckhardt
Subcommittee Staff
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PART 2
Page
Department of Commerce......................................... 1
Department of Justice.......................................... 95
Public Testimony Submitted for the Record.................... . 146
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABL IN TIFF FORMAT]
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
62-425 WASHINGTON : 2026
_______________________________________________________________________
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
----------
TOM COLE, Oklahoma, Chairman
HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky,
Chairman Emeritus
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas
KEN CALVERT, California
MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas
CHARLES J. ``CHUCK'' FLEISCHMANN,
Tennessee
DAVID P. JOYCE, Ohio
ANDY HARRIS, Maryland
MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada
DAVID G. VALADAO, California
DAN NEWHOUSE, Washington
JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan
JOHN H. RUTHERFORD, Florida
BEN CLINE, Virginia
GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
ASHLEY HINSON, Iowa
TONY GONZALES, Texas
JULIA LETLOW, Louisiana
MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
MICHAEL GUEST, Mississippi
RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana
ANDREW S. CLYDE, Georgia
STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
SCOTT FRANKLIN, Florida
JAKE ELLZEY, Texas
JUAN CISCOMANI, Arizona
CHUCK EDWARDS, North Carolina
MARK ALFORD, Missouri
NICK LaLOTA, New York
DALE W. STRONG, Alabama
CELESTE MALOY, Utah
RILEY M. MOORE, West Virginia
ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut,
Ranking Member
STENY H. HOYER, Maryland
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
JAMES E. CLYBURN, South Carolina
SANFORD D. BISHOP, Jr., Georgia
BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
GRACE MENG, New York
MARK POCAN, Wisconsin
PETE AGUILAR, California
LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
NORMA J. TORRES, California
ED CASE, Hawaii
ADRIANO ESPAILLAT, New York
JOSH HARDER, California
LAUREN UNDERWOOD, Illinois
SUSIE LEE, Nevada
JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York
MIKE LEVIN, California
MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
FRANK J. MRVAN, Indiana
MARIE GLUESENKAMP PEREZ,
Washington
GLENN IVEY, Maryland
Susan Ross, Chief Clerk and Staff Director
(II)
COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND
RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS.
FOR 2026
----------
Thursday, June 5, 2025.
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
WITNESS
HON. HOWARD LUTNICK, SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Mr. Rogers. Good morning. The subcommittee will be in
order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess at any time.
Let me welcome everyone to this morning's hearing. Thank
you to our subcommittee members, and to Secretary for being
with us today for a good while.
The fiscal year 2026 budget request comes at a time of
continued fiscal pressure. We must ensure every American
taxpayer dollar is used efficiently and continue to work to
reduce duplication across agencies and throughout the
government.
The Department of Commerce's budget request totals $8.4
billion, a $1.8 billion, or 17 percent decrease from the
current level. The budget request includes funding for targeted
investments in tools to address unfair trade practices and
emphasizes important initiatives, such as American
manufacturing and trade enforcement.
Specifically, it includes a 50 percent increase for the
bureau of industry and security to counter threats from China
and protect America's technological competitiveness.
The budget request also includes a 20 percent increase for
the Census Bureau to continue providing reliable statistics.
Overall, the Department of Commerce is charged with
protecting supply chain security, economic growth and job
creation, weather research and response, and economic data
analysis, all keystones imperative to American prosperity.
On the international front, the department plays an
important role in protecting our industries from one-sided
trade practices, and strengthens supply chains that are key to
ensuring our economic security and global leadership.
I have always been a big supporter of the Department of
Commerce. The department's core initiatives are vital to small
town economies across the country, including my district in
eastern Kentucky. One of the most critical components of
revitalizing rural America is expanding access to high-speed
reliable broadband. In far too many places a lack of broadband
access is not just an inconvenience, it is a barrier to
education, job creation, entrepreneurship, and even basic
healthcare.
From EDA's emphasis on job creation and expanding economic
opportunity, to NOAA's local weather forecast offices that work
around the clock to send out alerts during times of severe
weather, the department's wide ranging responsibility requires
clear prioritization and accountability.
We look forward to hearing from you, Mr. Secretary, how
this budget request furthers our shared goals of reducing
wasteful spending, ensuring global competitiveness, expanding
broadband, and driving economic development.
Let me now recognize my ranking member of the subcommittee,
Ms. Meng.
Ms. Meng. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you very much,
Mr. Secretary, for testifying today. And as a fellow New
Yorker, congratulations.
We meet today to discuss the Commerce Department's fiscal
year 2026 budget request. At the same time I must express my
strong disappointment that we are still awaiting the complete
details of the budget request. We are also awaiting the full
legally required details of the Commerce Department's fiscal
year 2025 operating plan, despite the fact that such details
were legally required to be sent to our Appropriations
Committee more than a month ago.
These delays are unacceptable. They are also disturbingly a
pattern that we have seen over the last four and a half months,
a pattern of significant and often illegal actions by Federal
agencies, including the Commerce Department.
In most cases we have learned of these actions not from the
department itself, but from news media reporting, and from
grants and contract recipients whose critical grant funding and
contract extensions have been delayed or frozen often in direct
violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.
We have also heard from numerous Federal workers who have
been fired without any good justification.
The National Weather Service has taken a huge hit under
this administration. Hundreds of meteorologists and other
Weather Service employees were fired or felt pressured to sign
up for Elon Musk's deferred resignation program. As a result,
the National Weather Service has been scrambling to keep a
minimum staff at weather forecast offices around the country.
This staffing shortage has also forced the Weather Service
to reduce its deployments of weather balloons, which have long
provided critical information for accurate weather forecasting
in local areas. This is all happening, by the way, right when
both hurricane season and wildfire seasons are just beginning.
The Weather Service announced earlier this week that it is
moving its limited resources around, which will only change the
locations that are experiencing staffing shortages.
It has also announced that it has received permission to
hire 126 new employees, but this is obviously far short of the
number of working employees the Weather Service has lost since
February.
It is unclear when these new employees will be on-boarded,
let alone when they will be fully trained to the level of
performance of the recently departed weather service employees.
Five former directors of the National Weather Service who
served under both Republican and Democratic administrations
wrote an open letter last month expressing their strong
concerns. They wrote that National Weather Service staff,
quote, ``will have an impossible task to continue its current
level of services. Not only are there fewer forecasters, but
there are also fewer electronic technicians responsible for
maintaining the critical NEXRAD radars. Our worst nightmare is
that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that
there will be needless loss of life.'' Unquote.
The administration is also holding back various emergency
designated fiscal year 2025 Commerce Department funds. This is
funding that Congress appropriated to support weather
forecasting, create and preserve American private sector jobs,
and protect our national security. Holding this funding back is
unacceptable, and the administration should issue the required
emergency designations immediately.
The administration and the Commerce Department have
released some initial details regarding their fiscal year 2026
budget requests, most of which I find greatly concerning. For
example, the administration is proposing to end funding for the
Economic Development Administration, or EDA, contrary to your
testimony at your Senate confirmation hearing in which you
answered that you would maintain the programs at EDA.
As you know, the EDA helps create jobs and economic
opportunities in distressed communities across the country, and
historically two-thirds of its budget has helped create jobs in
rural areas.
The administration is also proposing to end funding for the
Minority Business Development Agency, or MBDA, again, contrary
to your testimony in which you answered that you did not
support dismantling MBDA.
In addition, contrary to the Trump administration's stated
goal of bringing manufacturing jobs back to America, the Trump
administration is proposing to eliminate funding for the
Manufacturing Extension Partnership program, a successful
bipartisan program that helps small and medium sized U.S.
manufacturers in every State grow and improve their operations,
and create jobs.
Furthermore, the budget request further effectively cuts
the operating budget of the National Weather Service in 2026.
It creates a real risk of a future gap in critical weather
satellite data. This needlessly risks lives, property and
public infrastructure across the country, especially during
periods of hurricanes, wildfires and other extreme weather
events.
The administration proposes to slash funding for other
vital efforts, including grant funding to protect coastal and
Great Lakes communities, as well as funding to better study and
prepare for the consequences of climate change.
I very much hope that the appropriations bill that our
subcommittee considers next month will reject these extreme
cuts.
I look forward to further discussing these and other
concerns at today's hearing, and, again, thank you very much,
Mr. Secretary, for your testimony today.
Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Ms. Meng. I would now like to
recognize our witness, Secretary Lutnick. Am I pronouncing that
correctly, Lutnick?
Secretary Lutnick. You are.
Mr. Rogers. For an opening statement.
Secretary Lutnick. Thank you.
Mr. Rogers. Without objection, your written statement will
be entered into the record, and we hope you can summarize in 5
minutes.
STATEMENT OF HON. HOWARD LUTNICK
Secretary Lutnick. I will do my best. Thank you, Chairman
Rogers, Ranking Member Meng, and the members of the
subcommittee. It is an honor for me to join you today.
America is once again the most attractive destination for
investment in the world. Under President Trump's leadership,
the Department of Commerce is strengthening American industry
from the most popular to those industries that have been long
ignored.
We are focused on building an America and driving our
economic growth, which will narrow the deficit and we will
deliver a new era of American innovation.
Businesses are no longer looking overseas. They are
choosing to invest in America first. Through the President's
executive order establishing the investment accelerator in the
Department of Commerce, we have already secured trillions of
dollars of new commitments from world class companies and
sovereign wealth funds eager to build and invest in the United
States.
This surge in investment, paired with renewed commitment to
fair and reciprocal trade is reigniting American's
manufacturing base. We are bringing car manufacturing back to
Michigan and Ohio. We are reopening steel mills in
Pennsylvania. And just last month Arizona welcomed the largest
semiconductor investment in the United States of America,
thanks to an investment of TSMC.
The first chips deals that we are improving have now have
commitments more than doubling the $300 billion of investment
in America, and that is without spending any more taxpayer
dollars than those chips funds that you have already approved.
So our Commerce Department is driving substantial
investments across America and benefiting the American
taxpayer.
Critically, the President's America's first agenda goes
beyond just economic growth and investment. The President is
taking concrete actions to protect American workers, and our
national security.
Under section 232, the Commerce Department is conducting
numerous investigations to protect, to reshore, and to revive
manufacturing capacity across our critical industries here in
America.
The Trump administration is imposing tariffs and ending
loopholes. In April we ended the de minimus loophole which
allowed foreign companies to avoid paying tariffs on small
shipments which basically undercut American small business. New
export controls are protecting cutting edge technologies, and
finally protecting our critical industries, and protecting
American innovation.
In fact, the Bureau of Industry and Security, working with
our partners in the Department of Justice, we have secured 22
criminal convictions, 32 arrests, 38 indictments, 231
detentions, and seized more than $185.5 million, and then we
did other types of seizures for another $40 million.
Under this administration, the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office is tackling a mountain of unexamined patent applications
left by the Biden administration, almost 800,000 unreviewed
patent applications, successfully reducing the inventory
backlog for the first time in 4 years. In the past 4 months
alone we have removed 50,000 fraudulent goods and services from
the trademark register that blocked the use of legitimate
products by American businesses.
Many of these purported trademarks came from what they call
``specimen farms'' that are fake websites displaying products
that don't really exist.
At NOAA we are transforming how we track storm and forecast
weather with cutting-edge technology. To improve the
understanding and prediction of how hurricanes intensify, this
season NOAA's research centers will deploy new small aircraft
drone systems and additional underwater gliders.
This year the National Weather Service will be running an
experimental AI based forecast system, and all data we will
make publicly available.
Today this commitment to innovation means earlier warnings
and increased accuracy for Americans no matter where they live.
For far too long Americans have been unfairly treated by
foreign nations because we allowed them to take advantage of
our markets to the detriment of our own industry and Americans.
Thanks to President Trump, and this administration's
efforts, we are reversing this trend by reshoring critical
manufacturing, eliminating unfair trade barriers and practices,
and investing in our American workforce.
With your help, we will deliver growth and prosperity
across our great Nation. I deeply appreciate you inviting me
here today, and I look forward to answering your questions and
talking together.
[The information follows:]
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Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Secretary, for those words. We have
a full compliment of members of the subcommittee with us this
morning, and for that reason we will do our questioning under
the 5-minute rule.
So, Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here. I yield myself
5 minutes.
You touched on this somewhat already, but I wanted to ask
you about the Chinese Communist Party and their effect in this
country, and our bipartisan concern. From economic warfare, to
technological threats, China is seeking to obtain advantage of
our Nation, our people and our companies at all possible
opportunities.
Again, summarize what we are doing to strengthen our
ability to counter China's unfair trade practices, protect
American intellectual property, and secure critical supply
chains and emerging technologies.
Secretary Lutnick. The Chinese Communist Party seeks to
become the dominant culture of the world, and it uses our
knowledge, our innovation, and our entrepreneurial spirit
against us. It sends 100s of 1,000s of students to train and
learn here in order to build up their capacity to grow. They
copy our innovations.
For example, if you see their airplanes, gosh, they look
just like the F-22 because they have copied our models and our
systems. They are trying to copy our technology. And in the
race for AI supremacy, they are behind us, but they are working
with a central government out to get us. Right. To beat us so
that they will have intellectual superiority over us.
There are an AI race, and BIS, our bureau, is at the heart
of protecting America. And that is why we have sought an
increase in the budget, even though we are decreasing our
overall budget, we need to arm the Bureau of Industry and
Security to protect us and to help us keep key industries away
from the Chinese so that they can't just copy us all the time.
Mr. Rogers. The budget request for BIS does not specify any
specific initiatives related to increasing oversight of
entities posing a threat to U.S. national security. Why is that
so?
Secretary Lutnick. I would be happy to detail it either
here or in writing, but the idea is to add enforcement agents,
agents who carry weapons, agents who go and examine warehouses,
examine those people who are exporting, examine the imports,
find the particular items, and make sure we have export
controls are rigorously enforced. So that is the specific use
of the funds, is more people to protect and defend our export
controls. The policies the government make need to be
rigorously enforced, and we are trying to increase the
enforcement capacity because we just don't have enough
enforcement agents to do a great job.
Mr. Rogers. Let me switch gears and ask you about the
National Weather Service. Kentucky has been the target of
floods and tornadoes and everything else. In fact, we lost 20
people 2 weeks ago in my hometown and adjoining area. I am
concerned about the implications of local weather forecast
offices operating at reduced staffing levels.
Take, for example, the Jackson Kentucky office, which is
currently operating with multiple vacancies and no permanent
meteorologist. What can we do about that? What steps are being
taken to ensure NOAA's local weather forecast offices have the
resources, the technology and staffing to issue timely accurate
warnings and protect lives in high-risk communities?
Secretary Lutnick. All weather collection technology is in
full force and effect, our satellites, our balloons, all
sources are in full force and effect. The National Weather
Service employs 2,100 meteorologists. Less than 130 took early
retirement. It is fake news and inappropriate to suggest a
single meteorologist or hydrologist was fired. That is
preposterous and silly.
Less than 5 percent chose to retire. And we, using these
responsible--Commerce Department sought and were granted the
ability to hire those people, the same number, so we will have
no reduction in force. Our National Hurricane Center has full
staff.
And I want you to understand just the last portion what you
said, we have numerous regional offices which are generally
small, and, you know, they usually have three or four
meteorologists, and these exist because the data is locally
hardwired into old computers with hard drives and green
screens. If I showed it to you you would be embarrassed.
The idea is to automate that, to put it on the cloud so
that the 2,100 meteorologists we have, and the 100s of
hydrologists that we have can forecast the weather from central
locations and back up each other and be more appropriate.
So I think the technological advancements we will make over
the next year or two years will totally change these things.
But I want to be crystal clear, every single person, the
National Weather Service, we are at full staff, we have full
capacity, and we will have the best forecasting capacity that
we possibly can to protect Americans. And I will not sleep if
that were not true. That is required of you, of me, and of the
America, that we deliver that for American people, and I
promise you we are.
Mr. Rogers. Ms. Meng.
Ms. Meng. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am glad to hear the
status update of the regional local weather offices. It is
very--your testimony and the numbers are really different from
what has been reported in the press. We just want to make sure,
you know, whether it is New York, my home State, or States like
Kentucky which have gone through such horrible circumstances,
and our condolences to your constituents and their families,
Mr. Chair, we want to make sure that our local communities can
be prepared.
I know that you are saying it is inconsistent from the
reporting. Would you or your team be able to provide statistics
and just more accounting of what has happened, where there are
retired or layoffs, just so we can all be on the same page if
you do think it is inconsistent with the press reporting?
Secretary Lutnick. Sure. There were no layoffs. As I said
there, were less than 5 percent retirements, and we have the
authority to replace them. But that turnover is historically
lower than it has normally been. As you can imagine, people are
entitled to retire who have worked at the department. But I
would be glad to give you very specific details. Be my
pleasure.
Ms. Meng. Okay. Thank you so much. I wanted to switch gears
and ask about the Census Bureau. In April, NPR reported that
the hiring freeze and recent Census Bureau staff departures,
including those of five division or office chiefs, are raising
concerns about whether the Census Bureau can continue producing
reliable statistics for this country.
Acting Director Ron Jarmin also recently noted that the
Bureau lost more than 1,000 employees in recent months. We have
heard warnings that the reports of Elon Musk and the DOGE team
accessing sensitive personal data of Americans at other Federal
agencies could also undermine public trust in the Census
Bureau.
Mr. Secretary, what are you doing to address these
concerns?
Secretary Lutnick. Again, my capacity to communicate
throughout this administration has made the Department of
Commerce well situated. We are not losing staff in ways that we
don't want to under any circumstances. We are able to fulfill
all of our mission at the Census Bureau.
The Census Bureau is one of the great statistical places in
our government, our capacity to analyze and statistically think
things through. If you couple that in its full--the Bureau of
Economic Analysis. Right. Where we live and we do GDP. That is
a great center of statistical capacity. And I think--so we have
sought to add to the Commerce Department the Bureau of Labor
Statistics so that CPI--I mean, shouldn't we have all of the
great statisticians in the government working together. Again,
these are the same concepts, which is use technology, use
automation. I mean, the idea that the Bureau of Labor
Statistics has enumerators calling around and asking for data
when technology makes that amazingly capable, and we could do
so much better, so we are seeking to use technology.
But I can promise you, the census is both well staffed,
and, more importantly, brilliantly covered by statisticians who
are great at doing their job. And I am really excited for the
structure of how the census will work going forward. But you
won't hear anything about weakness. And accuracy, I am not
saying the fake news doesn't like to just say these things, but
it is just not true. And I will happily send you those
statistics as well because you will be very comfortable with
the Department of Commerce.
Ms. Meng. Thank you. And just to follow up with that,
recently you terminated the three advisory committees. There
are also scheduled only two major field tests in 2026. Can you
provide us an update on the field tests, when are they
scheduled, and what are the changes to the questions about race
and ethnicity, and also talk about the advisory committees.
Secretary Lutnick. The advisory committees were set up--
again, many of these things were set up long ago and they have
sort of run their course. And we didn't really understand what
type of advisory committee we need to understand how to do a
census. It didn't seem logical.
With respect to the questionnaire, we have not considered
that as of yet, so I don't--we just have not spent the time
thinking about those topics. The decennial census is quite far
away, and we have plenty of time to think about that going
forward.
Ms. Meng. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. Judge Carter.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And welcome, Mr.
Secretary. My district in central Texas has become a leader in
semiconductor production thanks to strong partnerships between
the State, their local political organizations, the industry,
the universities, and the workforce training centers, including
programs tailored for veterans and military families.
How is the department supporting these types of locally
driven efforts, and what more can be done to accelerate the
pipeline of skilled American workers entering the semiconductor
industry?
Secretary Lutnick. Workforce training will be a centerpiece
of the Trump administration, and I have been tasked to be part
of the team to build that. So if the trillions of dollars that
the Trump administration is bringing in to invest in America to
build and to operate those gigantic production facilities, to
reshore manufacturing, we need to train great Americans to be,
you know, we say HVAC technicians. You realize these factories
have these really high-tech closed loop cooling systems.
Amazing. But training our workforce to do this is really a key
part of the administration.
I think we will train 5 million Americans for these great
jobs that are coming, just like that semiconductor plant in
Arizona, I mean, 3,000 jobs for each plant and they are
building 10 of them. So these are just great jobs coming. And
Texas I know is going to have a great participation in that,
and both you--use the schools, and I think it will be an
extraordinary outcome for Americans.
Mr. Carter. Well, Samsung is being a good neighbor in my
district, and I am real proud of what they are doing.
As a member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I
have remained deeply concerned about the national security risk
tied to our reliance on foreign-made semiconductor components.
What step is the department taking to reduce our dependence on
overseas manufacturing, particularly for chips that support
critical defense systems.
Secretary Lutnick. Taiwan produces 90 percent of the
world's wafers, which then chip apart, and that becomes chips.
So the United States has a demand for 10 million sort of high-
end wafers, and we, with the increase of $100 billion
investment that the Trump administration was able to bring in
from TSMC, we will get to about 12 percent production. Woefully
inefficient.
And I think what you are going to see is the Trump
administration is going to be very very focused on bringing
chip production to America, and the full supply chain to
America, that is going to bring in probably between $500
billion and a trillion dollar investment, and you are going to
see that across the United States of America.
And the Trump administration is very very focused on trying
to get up to 5 million wafers during this administration, which
will be a record breaking speed, but I think it is very
important for exactly the topic you raised.
Mr. Carter. Well, that is fantastic. I am encouraged, we
are encouraged by the launch of the United States investment
accelerator and appreciate your continued focus on revitalizing
American manufacturing.
Can you share more about how the rollout of this new office
will take shape, and are there other--any early projects we can
expect, particularly those that support the development of
critical defense related semiconductor technology?
Secretary Lutnick. It has been too slow, the process to
build a great factory and a great advanced manufacturing
facility in America. Generally it has taken 3 plus years from
start to finish. And so the idea of the investment accelerator
is exactly that, to assign, if you are willing to invest more
than $10 billion, assign your direct contact that will help you
with permitting, regulation, and be a one government response
to help you take that from 3 years, let's try to get it to 18
months so we can double our building capacity, focused on
semiconductors, of course, but across all industry, and that is
how we have been able to recruit over, just the department
itself, over $5 trillion of investment commitment and that we
are taking care of how quickly they can build in America.
Mr. Carter. Fantastic. I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Ivey.
Mr. Ivey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, Mr.
Secretary. I wanted to join quickly with the comments from the
chair and the ranking member regarding NOAA. And I hear your
point about fake news and numbers, but I will say this, I mean,
I have two NOAA installations in my district, and headquarters
is, I don't know, just a couple of miles across the line, and I
heard a very different story than what you are saying about
people being forced out of there. But I look forward to getting
the answers that you provide here.
I also saw your comments with respect to Senator Van Hollen
yesterday. I look forward to seeing your responses to his
questions, too.
I wanted to ask you about MBDA, which the ranking member
raised as well. During your confirmation hearing on January
29th before the Senate Commerce Committee, Senator Blunt
Rochester asked, yes or no, do you support dismantling the
MBDA, and you said, I do not.
Now, I got the skinny budget numbers here and its got EDA
and MBDA combined with a cut for $624 million. And then the
narrative connected with that, it says, that MBDA, the agency
is fully eliminated.
So I wanted to ask you what changed, and what is the status
of MBDA at this point?
Secretary Lutnick. MBDA is not being fully eliminated. That
is inaccurate. We are reducing it to its statutory minimum
size, as is appropriate. The problem I see with MBDA----
Mr. Ivey. Could I ask before you move on, what that does
mean, statutory minimum size?
Secretary Lutnick. It means that it is required by law to
be a certain size, and we will have it be a certain size.
Mr. Ivey. What size is that?
Secretary Lutnick. It was 65 people. I think it is at less
than 10 people.
Mr. Ivey. Okay. And why are you doing that?
Secretary Lutnick. These are both small size--the problem
is the GAO gives me a report that says there are 80 other
programs and 80 institutions that are so much larger, 10 times
larger that achieve the same outcomes and we are just too small
and too inefficient to do it correctly. So I think we are
better served with other programs----
Mr. Ivey. I apologize. I have a couple other areas to hit.
I would love to see that GAO report. I want to know what those
80 other entities are because I am not aware of them. Maybe SBA
has an overlap with the MBDA mission, but the other--I don't
know what those other ones could be. But I look forward to
hearing back from you on that because I think it is an
important agency, it is statutory, so it needs to be
maintained, certainly at some level, and there is a lot of
benefit from it.
I would also mention the Congressional Black Caucus sent
you a letter on this issue and asked for a response by April
18th. I don't think we have received it yet, so I would ask
that you provide that response as well.
Let me move quickly to Quantum Technology. This is kind of
a quicker point for me, but Quantum Computing, this chart shows
basically funding by governments. China, as you can see, far
outpaces the United States. We have got a couple of other----
Secretary Lutnick. I couldn't see it, but I was guessing
the top bar--I didn't need to see the words. I got the point.
Mr. Ivey. Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, here is the
question, because this is concerning, obviously, and you
touched on this a bit in your opening testimony, although you
only talked about the enforcement side of competition with
China, and clearly they are stealing a lot of our data, but
they are also committing a lot of engineers, scientists and
resources to outpacing us on the legitimate size of this, too,
from the competitive side. I don't see that being reflected in
not, just the Commerce Department, but the overall U.S. budget.
IonQ is a company in my district. It is a spinoff from the
University of Maryland's incubator. We have a lot of those
across the country.
Quick point, man, I am out of time already, the cuts that
are being made, and there is an article I will submit for the
record here, World Scientists Look Elsewhere as U.S. Labs
Stagger Under Trump Cuts. New York Times, Cuts in Research, and
a Scientist is Brain Drain. As we push these people out, I
mean, you can shake your head if you want, but I went to a
visit IonQ, and one of the things that came up was, I was like,
how many of these people are from the United States, and he
said not many. And I said why is that, and he said, well, in
part because the pipeline isn't supplying these here in the
United States, so we go overseas to get many of them.
And one last quick point on this, a venture capital firm I
had a chance to meet with said that they invest, I think there
are about 30 of these they invest in, they started setting up
shop in Canada because they can get their engineers and
scientists from overseas quicker over there. They don't have to
go through the immigration piece. So we are losing money on
that front.
So I look forward to hearing from you on that. Mr.
Chairman, I apologize for the overrun, and I appreciate your
generosity.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Cline.
Mr. Cline. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, I
appreciate you being here. As you have highlighted concerns
about the potential for unfair treatment of American tech
companies in the EU, which could potentially force them to make
costly operational changes, can you share with us some of the
steps the U.S. government is taking to promote a level playing
field and prevent discriminatory practices like excess fines,
enforced business model changes under regulations like their
Digital Markets Act?
Secretary Lutnick. This is a key topic for us in our trade
negotiations with the European Union. We have a huge trade
deficit in goods with the European Union, $235 billion, so they
are just getting great advantage of us. And so part of our
reciprocity is--they also attack our great technology companies
because they don't have them, so they write these bills, but
basically they could just write America in the bill because
they are only attacking great American companies. And it is the
Trump administration's view that that is unacceptable. That if
you want to have a trade deal with us, you are going to take
your foot off of the necks of the great American companies and
treat them with respect, especially if you are taking this much
advantage from us. So we are looking at that as a one combined
way of thinking, and that is why we get calls from American
companies that say thank God someone is finally looking out for
us.
Mr. Cline. Can you elaborate on what steps the U.S. would
take if the EU tries to regulate American AI through DMA or
other regulatory means?
Secretary Lutnick. The President has made it clear that
EU's trade, and that they have a $235 billion trade surplus
with us, and he will say, well, if you are going to treat us
poorly, we are going to treat you poorly. And if you want to
treat us well, we will treat you well. Let's be reciprocal in
how we treat each other. You are taking advantage of us--and I
think the President will make sure, since we are the inventor
of all of the leading AI chips of the world, we, America, are
the inventors. We create it all. We make them in Taiwan, that
is another topic, but we invent it all. We need to protect our
intellectual property, and we need to make sure our compute
power is here in America.
Mr. Cline. Mr. Secretary, in your testimony you mentioned
the removal of more than 50,000 fraudulent goods and services
from the trademark register. Can you expound upon your efforts
to counter trademark fraudsters, especially those that are
foreign entities?
Secretary Lutnick. What is common is that a great American
company puts a trademark out, or even a young American company,
and these other companies, and generally China is the leader in
it, but they are not exclusively, they then file 1,000s of
trademarks modifying it slightly all around it and sort of
circle you and circle you and use our laws against us. And so
the idea is for us to bring technology to the patent office,
find them all and get rid of them so that we can protect our
American companies' trademarks and make it proper instead of
being sort of surrounded by these AI created trademarks. And
that is the technology we are bringing to the patent office.
The Commerce Department is going to be so much more
technologically capable when we are done with this
administration you won't be able to recognize it as compared to
what was there before.
Mr. Cline. Let me ask you about the BEAD program. Yesterday
you told our Senate colleagues that States must choose the
cheapest option under the BEAD program. Under the previous
administration, we know mismanagement and misguided attempts at
policy outcomes like rate regulation significantly slowed the
implementation of that program. Can you comment as to what
steps you are taking to deliver on what the previous President
was unable to do, and can you clarify how you define cheapest
option?
Secretary Lutnick. Sure. The Congress authorized broadband
access to--across America, and I want to make sure we get the
benefit of the bargain, which means there are three ways you
can do it. You can do it by fiber, you can do it by what is
called fixed wireless, like WiFi we all understand, and, of
course, there is satellite. Whichever is the most efficient
option to get somebody broadband, that should be the only rule.
Let's have the outcome be the determiner. And if it is a tie,
then, of course, we don't care at all which one you pick. But
don't run fiber--they had proposals where they were running
$100,000 fiber to a house that was appraised at $100,000, and
that is silly. So whichever is reasonable. So what we have
asked all the States to do is rebid just with reasonable
technology, and then we will get the money out of the door.
In the calendar year 2025, the Biden administration had 30
months and they got zero out the door. So that is the
difference between the Trump administration and the Biden
administration. We will get the money out the door.
Mr. Cline. Thank you for keeping the taxpayers in mind. I
appreciate it. I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Morelle.
Mr. Morelle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling us
together. And thank you, Mr. Secretary. Also, as a fellow New
Yorker I congratulate you on your appointment.
You mentioned earlier the mission of the U.S. Commerce
Department. You said nothing will take away from our mission.
How would you in a sentence describe the mission of the
Commerce Department?
Secretary Lutnick. To protect, to defend and to enhance
business in the United States of America.
Mr. Morelle. The mission, according to the Commerce
Department, is to create the conditions for economic growth and
opportunities for all communities, you agree with that
definition as well?
Secretary Lutnick. Sounds excellent.
Mr. Morelle. Okay. Great. And I apologize, you know, 5
minutes is so little time, we could have a much longer
conversation, and I hope we will have the opportunity to do
that, I want to also just reiterate what people said. This is
not your choice, but I would pass along to the President that
doing budget hearings when we don't have a budget is really
hard to do. It is hard to drill down on numbers that we don't
have, priorities that you have.
I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you defending the
administration's approach. But it is really hard to do, so I
just--you don't need to respond to that.
But I would love if you would provide, to whatever detail
you can, the trillions of dollars investment that have been
made during the last couple of months and how we were able to
achieve the commitments of those trillions.
I will note, because this subcommittee had a fair amount to
do with the CHIPS and Science Act, that I suspect much of the
chip investment being made, whether it is in Texas, or whether
it is in Arizona, or made in upstate New York in Syracuse, is
partly by the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act. I hope you will
continue to--continue those efforts.
I have to say that in talking to folks, both in my region
in upstate New York, but throughout the State and other folks
in the business world, what I hear about most is the need for
predictability. And I have to say that most of the commentary
that I hear from CEOs is the lack of predictability caused
largely by the tariff situation has made it nearly impossible,
whether you are a business large or small, to make judgments
about where you will deploy capital and where you will deploy
workforce.
As decisions are made to advance tariffs, sometimes
reciprocal, sometimes--and then retrench, and then put them
back in place, retrench again, that what I am hearing, and this
different clearly than what you are hearing because I feel like
we live in maybe an alternative reality, that many people are
not making decisions at all on investment because they don't
know whether the President intends to follow through, even the
most recent announcements that there is another 90-day pause,
during the 90-day period people are saying I don't know what
this means, should I move ahead, should I not move ahead, are
we going to pull back, are we going to advance, what should I
be telling them about predictability, which is so important. I
mean, you are a former CEO, you know this in your business
world, predictability and what you can expect both from your
government and from the markets is so critical in making
decisions about investment policy.
Secretary Lutnick. We had a bad deal in America that
produced a $1.2 trillion trade deficit. So fixing that will
take some time. It will not take a lot of time, but it will
take time.
I view letting the greatest dealmaker that the United
States has who is in the oval office, let him make the deals.
He is making the deals. I am working on them all the time. The
deal for America will be opening access to markets that have
been closed for hundreds of billions of dollars, and then
charging and protecting industries which have been attacked by
foreigners, like steel and aluminum, where the foreign
governments, they give--imagine a steel blast furnace, you
think how that melts, they give free or very cheap energy and
they make it unfair.
So we are just going to get to a better deal for America,
and it won't take that long, but it is a better deal for
America.
Mr. Morelle. Well, look, I appreciate it. I think many
people would not agree with your assessment that the occupant
of the White House is the greatest dealmaker ever. I am
certainly not the greatest dealmaker ever, and I have never
gone bankrupt in businesses that I have been involved in. So I
am not sure I rely on it. But I also don't want to rely on a
single individual.
But to my point, the advancing of tariffs and then bringing
them back and causing--that goes to the predictability issue. I
don't know how people can rely on what the tariff situation is
going to be even when the courts in the United States have said
emergency powers expressed by the President are well beyond
what was envisioned by the Congress.
So on predictability, I will just say because I think we
will probably agree to disagree, I would just leave you with
what I am hearing from people is not making investments, not
being willing to make decisions because they don't know what to
rely on.
And, frankly, I don't want to get into name calling, I know
what people have said about the President and the whole thing,
that is not important to me. What is important to me is
advancing American interests. And, look, that is what we were
trying to do in the past for all the criticisms of the previous
administration, both Congress and the administration were
interested in investing in core industries that were so vital
to our national and economic security.
I would love to talk to you further whether in settings
like this or offline because I really do think we all want to
advance American interests. So thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield
back.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Gonzales.
Mr. Gonzales. Thank you, Chairman. And thank you, Mr.
Secretary. It is a breath of fresh air to have a nonbureaucrat
come up here and not give bureaucratic answers on very complex
situations. So thank you for that.
You have a great team. Harry is doing a great job for you
all. You have built a wonderful organization.
I applaud the administration, in a very short period of
time President Trump is making America great again, and he is
doing it through executive orders. I look forward to working
with my colleagues here to make sure we codify those long term.
I will start off with a softball on trade. You know, I
represent nearly, nearly half of the overall southern border. I
appreciate the work the administration is doing to ensure our
foreign partners are aligned in the same direction when it
comes to strengthening our economic and national security
alliances.
In particular, communities in my district, which spans over
800 miles, are dependent on strong reliable partnerships with
Mexico and our Latin American countries to strengthen national
security, public safety, and promote economic prosperity.
How can we leverage the relationship between U.S. and
Mexico to strengthen our North American footprint to compete
against our foreign adversaries like China?
Secretary Lutnick. Mexico is a huge trading partner of
America. What has happened is NAFTA allowed, you know,
corporate chieftains to take their factories out of Michigan
and out of Ohio and move it where there is cheaper labor. So
they attacked American workers for the benefit of corporate
profits.
Now, Mexico has amazing assets. They have got great energy.
They have got great people. So the idea is let's figure out
together with Mexico the businesses that they should be in.
They should be in the mining business. They should be in the
refining business. There are enormous businesses that would
really sit well in Mexico. And so what we need to do is sort of
rethink the relationship so that we harness their assets.
But they don't--we don't do it by stealing ours. It is
illogical that we are making cars in Mexico for Americans. That
is just illogical, and the President calls it out. But there
are enormous things that we can leverage and lean on on our
great partner just to our south in Mexico to enhance their
business, and, of course, then enhance the ability for us to
import and to do business together.
I think the relationship will be great. It just needs to be
reimagined in a way that takes care of American workers and
doesn't just, you know, give them a hard time.
Mr. Gonzales. Yeah. Part of my conversations with Mexican
leadership is we are always going to be neighbors. Always.
Right. And I want us to be partners, and I want us to be
working together on some of these same issues and find--you
know, when Mexico is strong, we are strong. When we are strong,
Mexico is strong, and vice versa.
When things are rough--I don't want to have security issues
along the border that spill over because they are in a tough
economic situation.
I look forward to talking--you know, working together and
finding, you know, how we can find these industries that really
can--they can lean on.
My next question is on autonomous vehicles. The United
States pioneered the development of autonomous vehicle
technology. We are home to Tesla whose leadership in driver
assistance system position leads us to lead the world in full
autonomy. As the Chinese Communist Party aggressively ramps up
its own EV development, we can't afford to fall behind.
I understand that on January 16th, 2025, the Department of
Commerce, BIS, which you spoke about earlier, issued a final
rule to safeguard our national security by restricting certain
ICTS transactions involving foreign adversaries, including
those related to connected vehicle systems and automated
driving software.
What other actions is the Department of Commerce taking to
ensure the United States maintains the global leadership in
autonomous vehicle technology?
Secretary Lutnick. I would just point out that January 16th
is a running out the door policy by the Biden administration.
So the Department of Commerce is deeply considering working
closely with industry to make sure we are enhancing both our EV
industry, and, importantly, that you spoke about the connection
between AI and really manufacturing, bringing those two
together, that includes both advanced manufacturing, and, of
course, like autonomous vehicles, which is another example of
that.
So I think we are very focused on that, and you are going
to see new rules coming out of the Trump administration that
would be more along the lines of what you would hope, which is
industry and government working closely together to make sure
we are the winner.
Mr. Gonzales. Good. Because this is the future. This is--we
are not--we are not reading it in a book. We are living in it,
and we need to lead on that. I certainly look forward to
continuing to working with you. Thank you again for your
testimony. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. Ms. Dean.
Ms. Dean. Thank you, Chairman Rogers. Thank you, Ranking
Member Meng. Thank you, Ranking Member DeLauro. And thank you
to you, Secretary Lutnick. Thanks for being here today.
I want to pick up on what Mr. Morelle was talking about,
and I will use the word stability. And I think you know this
from your many years in business, and that is what I thought
about as I was preparing for today, the importance of
stability, or as he said, predictability. Stability is the
foundation of economic growth. I think you have lived it.
Businesses need clear and predictable rules to plan and to
invest for the future.
Given this administration's claim of being probusiness and
progrowth, I am so baffled by the discussions around trade
deficits, and the President's belief around trade deficits, and
the President's beliefs around tariffs and the chaotic tariff
policy. They are on. They are off. Many of the tariffs are
punishing, creating a level of instability and uncertainty in
our economy that we haven't seen since COVID.
I hear the same thing over and over from constituents, from
small businesses, from bankers in my area, they can't figure
out how to plan, how to lend. Businesses can't figure out how
to expand, how to grow, whether to hire, whether to not hire.
And I heard just literally this morning from a very large
American retailer, first word out of the woman's mouth was
uncertainty, and the last thing she said to me was uncertainty,
all surrounding tariffs, the lack of predicability.
I also serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee, was recently
in U.K. and Denmark, met with the American Chamber in both
countries, confused, uncertain, they can't figure it out, what
in God's name is going on. We cannot plan to grow businesses.
We cannot plan to grow growth and jobs. So I am baffled,
absolutely baffled by this administration's talk around trade
deficits and tariffs.
I fear the administration lacks a basic understanding of
what a trade deficit is. I think many economists take issue
with equating a country's trade deficit with any one country
and its economic wellbeing.
Some economists actually view a trade deficit as a sign of
a country's economic health because it means we are purchasing
more.
For me, I have a pretty large trade deficit with my local
grocer, or my hairdresser. It is a good thing. It means I have
money enough to get my hair done once in a while, and to keep
food on the table. It tells nothing about my overall financial
position.
Do you know when this country actually had a trade surplus,
Secretary?
Secretary Lutnick. We have had trade surplus--the President
likes to speak about before----
Ms. Dean. Historically, when did we have a trade surplus? I
am not talking about the President. Historically.
Secretary Lutnick. I think early--about 100 years ago.
Ms. Dean. It was the Great Depression. It was a sign of
what was going on. It was during the Great Depression. That is
a direction none of us wants to go.
Tariffs. It is 90 days. We are going to have 90 deals in 90
days, then there is a 90-day pause. Many of these tariffs, as
they say, punishing. Tariffs on things that make no sense
whatsoever. Where are we going to go with the remaining deals?
I know of one deal that has been apparently resolved with
the United Kingdom. We got 89 more deals to do in just a few
more days? Where are we on those deals?
Secretary Lutnick. We are in the midst of negotiations with
dozens and dozens of countries. We could sign deals, but they
are only going to get better as we negotiate them.
Ms. Dean. That is just simply not true, because as I told
you, the American----
Secretary Lutnick. Actually, I promise you it is true,
because I am doing it. So I promise you it is true, and I am
here testifying in front of you, and I promise you it is true.
Ms. Dean. And Mr. Trump promised to bring down the cost of
goods day one. And what he has done through his trade deficit
fixation and his tariff chaos has nakedly increased the cost of
goods. The estimates are that for consumers in my area,
suburban Philadelphia, $2,000 at least a year increases on
goods.
I will give you an example of one. Bananas. What is the
tariffs on bananas? Americans, by the way, love bananas. We buy
billions of them a year. I love bananas. What is the tariff on
bananas?
Secretary Lutnick. The tariff on bananas would be
representative of the countries that produce them.
Ms. Dean. And what is that tariff?
Secretary Lutnick. Generally, 10 percent.
Ms. Dean. Correct. Ten percent. Walmart has already
increased the cost of bananas by 8 percent, recognizing----
Secretary Lutnick. But as countries do deals with us, that
will go to zero. As countries do deals with us, that will go to
zero.
Ms. Dean. But the cost is on the American consumer now and
on the businesses with the confusion now. Mr. Secretary, I
believe you know better. I believe you recognize that a trade
deficit is not something to fear. I believe you know that
predictability, stability is essential for businesses. I wish
you would show that truth to this administration.
And I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. The time of the gentlelady has expired.
Secretary Lutnick. Do you mind, Mr. Chairman, if I make one
quick comment to the end? Would that be okay?
Mr. Rogers. I am sorry?
Secretary Lutnick. Would you mind if I make one quick
comment to the Representative?
Mr. Rogers. Sure, please.
Secretary Lutnick. There is no uncertainty if you build in
America and you produce your product in America, there will be
no tariff.
Ms. Dean. We can't produce bananas in America.
Secretary Lutnick. So the concept of building in America
and paying no tariff is very, very clear.
Ms. Dean. We cannot build bananas in America.
Mr. Rogers. The time of the gentlelady has expired.
Mr. Clyde.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Secretary Lutnick, for appearing before the
subcommittee today. First, I want to mention that, as I read
your biography, I noticed that you have been awarded the
Department of the Navy's Distinguished Public Service Award.
And as a 28-year Navy officer myself, I want to congratulate
you as this public service award is the highest honor granted
to nonmilitary personnel by the Navy. So congratulations, sir;
job well done.
Secretary Lutnick. Thank you.
Mr. Clyde. Last November, the American people decisively
elected President Trump with a mandate to restore common sense
in Washington, including the mission of reducing the size,
scope, and cost of the Federal Government. Thankfully,
President Trump's fiscal year 2026 budget delivers on that
promise by charting a course to rein in Federal spending. It
proposes a 22.6 percent reduction in nondefense discretionary
spending, $163 billion cut from the fiscal year 2025 levels.
As a member of both the House Budget and the Appropriations
Committee, I strongly support this effort and remain committed
to restoring fiscal sanity, ensuring that future generations
are not burdened by Washington's reckless spending addiction.
And that is right, I say Washington has an addiction problem.
It is an addiction to OPM. That is other people's money, OPM.
Washington needs to go to rehab for this spending
addiction, and I was encouraged to see that your budget request
reduces the Department of Commerce's footprint by $1.75
billion, a 17 percent decrease from the fiscal year 2025
enacted level. And your proposal rightly eliminates duplicative
programs within the Economic Development Administration and the
Minority Business Development Agency, and curtails over a
billion in Federal dollars that the Biden-Harris administration
funneled into radical climate initiatives, research, and grant
programs. So thank you for that.
The Department of Commerce's budget request also includes a
historic investment in the Bureau of Industry and Security.
Now, that bureau is also responsible for a rule issued in April
of 2024, an interim final rule, which makes permanent the pause
on firearm export licenses, severely restricting U.S.
manufacturers from exporting firearms, ammunition, and
components. This rule shortens licensed durations from 4 years
to 1 and requires case-by-case approval. It also revoked around
2,000 previously approved export licenses, forcing companies to
reapply.
So, Mr. Secretary, does the Department of Commerce have any
plans to rescind this Biden administration interim final rule?
How are we going to handle that?
Secretary Lutnick. Yes. We are looking into it now, and I
find that inconsistent with our views, so we are examining it
now and you should expect us to comment on it shortly.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you. Thank you very much. I encourage you
in every way to rescind that rule. I think it is very, very
damaging to the firearms industry. And I think that, you know,
that is a very important industry in this country because it
has to deal with our constitutional rights.
Now, I would also like to address the tariffs and give you
an opportunity to talk about that. For far too long, the U.S.
has been disadvantaged by countries across the globe due to
unfair trade practices. These longstanding trade imbalances
have led to the off-shoring of manufacturing and have
undermined critical supply chains, which have resulted in some
of our defense industrial base becoming dependent on foreign
adversaries. Ultimately, the status quo trading system that we
currently have has failed our workforce, threatened our
national security, and left small town America behind.
Thankfully, President Trump is bringing countries across
the globe to the negotiating table, ensuring that our economic
policies remain America First and ensuring everyday American
workers and families do not continue to be disadvantaged.
Can you speak to your role and that of the Department in
the trade negotiation process, and could you highlight the
successful trade agreement that was previously mentioned with
the United Kingdom that President Trump recently secured?
Secretary Lutnick. My role is to assist in opening markets
for our ranchers, for our farmers, and for our manufacturers so
they can sell their goods in markets that were always precluded
from our manufacturers and our farmers having access. That is
number one.
And number two, to break open the barriers that these
countries put up to keep us out even without tariffs. So if we
break them down and we open those markets, America will
flourish. Remember, $1.2 trillion of us buying from them means
4 percent of annual, our GDP, the largest country in the world,
we are giving to other countries. If we had that domestically
produced, our growth rate would be 6 percent, our deficit would
go away by math, and we would be the winner in the world, and
that is what the President is all about.
Mr. Clyde. Well, thank you. Mr. Secretary, it is nice to
see a successful businessman in charge of the Department of
Commerce.
And with that, I yield back. Thank you.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Mrvan.
Mr. Mrvan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, it is a pleasure. I reside--I represent
northwest Indiana, the steel--top steel producing capital
within the Nation. With that, giving credit where credit is
due, section 232 helped our steel industry, our steelworkers,
and also our trades in the first administration. Now, as we go
through this----
Secretary Lutnick. So they are happy, right? Your
constituents are happy.
Mr. Mrvan. The market goes up and down, as you well know,
in the steel industry. No. They are--they were happy with
section 232. That is why I said I give credit where credit's
due.
Secretary Lutnick. Thank you.
Mr. Mrvan. Yes, sir. So my underlying question is,
ultimately, we want to make sure we have a level playing field
and capacity in foreign countries such as China. They subsidize
their steel. They flood the market. Then my steelworkers and
people within my community lose their jobs.
I am going to give you an opportunity to talk about the 50
percent steel tariffs that are in place now, and I also want to
talk about the concern that I have for downstream industries.
Specifically, you had talked about in many different areas
reshoring domestic manufacturing. I am on board and have
advocated for reshoring domestic manufacturing. The time it
takes to invest those trillions of dollars and build up for
capacity to build--as you had mentioned cars are being built in
Mexico for America.
How are we going to invest, or how are you, one, the impact
of the 50 percent tariffs, if you could discuss that with me,
and then how is it affecting downstream industries, and what is
the plan to make sure that those individuals who work in those
plants that are downstream of the steel industries are going to
be protected?
Secretary Lutnick. So foreign countries subsidize the
power, which is the biggest cost.
Mr. Mrvan. Energy.
Secretary Lutnick. And so China can produce steel at $450 a
metric ton, and our price was generally just below $1,000. So
they basically put 40 blast furnace companies out of business,
so they basically were crushing steel in America. And Donald
Trump came in and said, look, it is a subsidy. So we put on 25
percent and that moved the price up to about $900, and then it
started to drift down because the Chinese are producing it at
$450, because they don't pay for power.
Mr. Mrvan. Right.
Secretary Lutnick. So the President said, I have got to
protect domestic steel. Because his view is you can't fight a
war unless you can make steel. You can't fight a war unless you
can make aluminum. And the steelworkers and aluminum workers of
America are happy because they are being protected. The
reasonable price point is where we are right now, which is just
below $1,000 a metric ton. We are going to build--tens of
billions of dollars have been committed because of that to
building plants, mills----
Mr. Mrvan. Can you give me examples of the promised
investments?
Secretary Lutnick. Hyundai promised $7.5 billion.
Mr. Mrvan. Hyundai.
Secretary Lutnick. Hyundai, you know, the Korean----
Mr. Mrvan. Hyundai. Sure.
Secretary Lutnick. $7.5 billion plant. There were a
variety--I met with a variety of steel makers who offered us
about $6 billion of two new plants. Nippon Steel, $14.1 billion
of new investment.
Mr. Mrvan. That is a whole other 5 minutes, but yes.
Secretary Lutnick. I believe you. But those are commitments
that we have. And in auto, we have $250 billion of commitments
because of the tariffs to build and reshore in South Carolina,
in Ohio, in Michigan, in Tennessee. These are all coming in
because of our tariffs.
Mr. Mrvan. Okay. So along with tariffs is the enforcement
that you talked about. So what I--one of the reasons why I
wanted to be in this committee is to be able to make sure that
the enforcement side of it, the ITA, has the resources
necessary.
Are you here making a commitment that there won't be cuts
to the ITA that will reduce the resources that they need to
make sure that the enforcement of the products that are coming
in to our country that we can track that?
Secretary Lutnick. Importing, exporting are key roles that
we will never cut; we will only enhance. There are a whole
variety of areas within these bureaus that you would agree with
me are just not necessary. So we are reexamining what is
important and putting the resources on that, which is most
important.
Mr. Mrvan. Okay. I will wait for the second round to talk
about Nippon, the Nippon deal. And just one very quick
question. Were you in the room in the CFIUS committee for the
Nippon deal?
Secretary Lutnick. Yes.
Mr. Mrvan. What was your recommendation?
Secretary Lutnick. My recommendation was it could be
approved with mitigation, change.
Mr. Mrvan. Okay. On my second round--and I am--I would like
to continue that conversation. Thank you.
With that, I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Strong.
Mr. Strong. Thank you, Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member
Meng, for holding this hearing today. I would also like to
thank the subcommittee staff for their hard work.
Secretary Lutnick, great to be with you again. Thank you
and your staff for being here today. Each of you have had a
full 48 hours.
I commend you for your efforts to prioritize President
Trump's America First trade agenda. During your Senate budget
hearing yesterday, you highlighted Alabama's role in the
automotive industry and noted your department's $250 billion
commitment to reshore that sector.
In my district in Alabama, we are honored to be home to
Mazda, Toyota, and Toyota Motor Manufacturing, where 66 percent
of all combustible engines for Toyota North America are made in
our district, 4,000 every 24 hours.
Mr. Secretary, what other sectors are you prioritizing
investment in beyond the automotive industry to reduce our
dependence on foreign suppliers for critical goods?
Secretary Lutnick. We have examinations in pharmaceuticals,
right. Too many of our pharmaceuticals are antibiotics. You
can't fight a war and need to ask your adversary to send you
the antibiotics. So we need pharmaceuticals to be reshored to
America. We need semiconductors, which we have already
discussed, reshored in America. Those are two big items.
Aircraft parts is another place that we think there is focus,
right. And, of course, as we have discussed, automotive is
vital to America. Steel and aluminum, which I just discussed.
So those are the kind of topics that we are focused on
bringing and making sure that we are reshoring for national
security reasons in America.
Mr. Strong. Thank you, Secretary Lutnick. My home,
Alabama's Fifth Congressional District, has over 400 companies
developing and deploying technologies with various national
defense, space exploration, and homeland security applications.
Your budget request includes a 60 percent increase in
funding for the Bureau of Industry and Security. How does your
department plan to utilize this funding to protect and bolster
domestic companies, and how would this funding be used to
improve our economic competitiveness and national security?
Secretary Lutnick. Export controls, making sure that our
adversaries don't get our best equipment, our most cutting-edge
ideas. So if we don't have enough agents--you know, we have two
agents in China. That is just--come on. So we just need more
agents to protect and defend our policies, and that is what the
request is for. Let's grow our agents in the field to enforce
the policies that we make at home.
Mr. Strong. Totally agree, and that leads to my next
question. We are seeing increased sophistication from bad
actors to circumvent U.S. trade laws. China is producing goods
domestically and routing them through other countries to avoid
the made-in-China label.
Your department has asked for funds to address unbalanced
trade through increased anti-dumping and countervailing duty
investigation. How will this funding help combat China's
circumvention of American tariffs, and what tools or
technologies are you leveraging?
Secretary Lutnick. Unfortunately, it is not just China.
There are numerous countries whose governments subsidize their
industries and, therefore, create an uncompetitive environment,
and then they, basically at below cost, try to export to
America, which creates our trade deficit. So we have anti-
dumping, countervailing duties. That is the idea. We need to
study them and we need to enforce them, and that is a key role
of the Department of Commerce. And we need to augment that and
we need to defend it for exactly the point that these--for
example, steel and aluminum, they are crushing our industry
trying to put us out of that business.
What I loved is that the U.K. had one blast furnace left.
They sold it to the Chinese, and the Chinese then got all their
customers and shut it. I mean--and then they have no steel
industry.
Mr. Strong. Secretary Lutnick, in 2024, the Census Bureau
selected Huntsville, Alabama as one of six cities to
participate in the 2026 Census test run. The 2026 test is an
opportunity for the Census to refine its operations in a city
like Huntsville, which is experiencing fast population growth,
making it harder to accurately count.
Secretary Lutnick, what will you do to commit to advocating
for full funding this year and next to carry out this 2026
testing program, including the Huntsville site, and will you
provide a clear timeline to the State so they can begin
preparation without delay? And also, your thoughts about
consistency from State to State not allowing non-U.S. citizens
to be counted in the United States Census.
Secretary Lutnick. Consistency makes sense. Commitment to
doing the absolute best statistical analysis of the Census is
easy for me to commit to. We will focus on it and we will
deliver the structure to have the greatest Census with the best
statistical analysis ever in the United States of America, and
that is what you are going to get from the Department of
Commerce.
Mr. Strong. Mr. Secretary, thank you for bringing it home
to America.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. Ms. DeLauro.
Ms. DeLauro. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. My apologies.
There are a lot of appropriations markups and hearings today,
so I apologize for being late. And with that, I would like to
ask unanimous consent to put my opening remarks in the record,
if I can. Thank you.
[The information follows:]
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Ms. DeLauro. And good morning to you all. It is good
afternoon now.
Mr. Secretary, let me just follow up on something that my
colleague, Mr. Mrvan, was asking about, and that was the
International Trade Administration, which helps to increase our
exports of American products and services, protects American
producers against trade cheating by China and others. I think
it is important to note to my colleague, Mr. Mrvan, that there
has been almost a 30 percent cut to the ITA, $183 million. That
is below what was proposed for 2025.
So it was going to cost American jobs, decimates ITA's U.S.
commercial service, operates out of U.S. export assistance
centers and U.S. embassies abroad, works to maintain and
increase the exports of U.S. products and services. So the
agency which is meant to protect, if you will, our exporters,
et cetera, is now being decimated.
I think one has to look at what has been cut. There is the
MEP program that I believe has been eliminated. One needs to go
carefully through each of these areas and get a sense of, in
fact, what is being cut back.
And, you know, facts are funny. You have got to deal with
the details and with the facts. You just can't speak about it
and make general statements. And when you cut back on agencies
in the way that you have, and slash and burn, if you will, then
we are not going to get to where we want to go.
I want to focus a second on two quick areas. One is
transparency in government, because it is critical. Americans
need to see where their tax dollars are going. And since 2022,
we have had in place--I say that, it may be self-serving. I
worked hard on this issue, and we got bipartisan, bicameral
agreement to make sure that the executive branch, and I made
sure--that was with the Democratic administration--they are
legally required to publicly post budget documents. That is how
and where taxpayers' dollars are being spent. They are called
apportionments. Put that aside. It is about saying how the
money is going to be spent, and that is online.
Now, this information is legally required. It is binding on
a Federal agency. The Office of Management and Budget uses the
information to tell agencies how and when they can spend the
funds that Congress has appropriated. Beginning in March, OMB
stopped posting these documents. This is illegal, and it is a
slap in the face to the principle of transparency,
accountability, and government spending, which this
administration claims to champion.
Mr. Secretary, I am going to ask for your commitment to
once again making the amount specific budget documents,
apportionments, how and where U.S. tax dollars are being spent
by the Department of Commerce and its bureaus publicly
accessible. Will you commit to doing that?
Secretary Lutnick. It is my understanding that my
department is following the CR with precision, as is required.
Ms. DeLauro. No. You are inaccurate, because I will get to
spend plans. We do not have details on the spend plans, which
the CR requires, and it hasn't happened. We have a lack of
specificity on--this is--it is more than 5 weeks after the
legal due date. We do not have a detailed spend plan as
required by the law.
Let me go back. Will you commit to getting online how and
where the American taxpayers' dollars with regard to the
Department of Commerce are being spent, as is required by the
law?
Secretary Lutnick. I will, of course, follow the law, but
it is my understanding, as I have been advised, that we have
filed precisely according to the CR's requirement.
Ms. DeLauro. I do not know who you got your advice from,
but this is the Appropriations Committee. We are looking at
every spend plan. And let me just tell you, the bare-bones
spend plan was 3 weeks late. Surely, in that time you must have
had time to put together a more detailed spend plan.
This is false. The law sets out the timeline and the level
of detail. What is happening is illegal and in contravention of
what this committee does and it puts together. And if you can't
make a commitment--I take that as no, you will not commit--so
that the public has no idea, no idea of what any agency in this
administration as how they are spending the taxpayers' dollars
and where those dollars are going.
I yield back and wait for a second round. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman, for your indulgence.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Moore.
Mr. Moore. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Secretary Lutnick, for being here. Really
appreciate it. A lot of your comments are just so spot on. Just
a little while ago, we heard something pretty interesting: the
idea that trade deficits are good. We heard an example of, I
guess, a banana, the price of a banana at a Whole Foods outside
of suburban Philadelphia going up.
I can tell you in West Virginia what the generational price
has been for the degradation and destruction of our industries
in the State of West Virginia over the last several decades, 40
years of it, it has destroyed us. It has destroyed us.
And you talked about this blast furnace switcheroo that
they had there in the U.K. That happened to us in West
Virginia. So Cleveland-Cliffs and the United Steelworkers Union
had requested tariffs on template steel from the Biden
administration. We didn't get it. We didn't get the tariffs on
the template steel, and we shuttered that steel plant. We have
lost thousands of jobs since then, and now there is only one
blast furnace left in the whole United States that makes
template steel.
And I would appreciate it if the Commerce Department would
take a look at that, because that is a national security issue
and it is terrible for us. I mean, we used to be known for
manufacturing steel. It was hugely disappointing by the last
administration not taking any action on that.
But I do want to ask this. Just shifting gears real
quickly. Is BIS specifically--and you have talked about plusing
up that budget--have you all looked at--and this is during the
Obama administration, we went through the Export Control Reform
Initiative. This is where they created the 600 series and the
ECCNs, and then expanded EAR99, right. So there is a lot more
items that can go out without a license under that.
Have you all looked at going back and reviewing that? I
actually worked here when we were going through that process,
and it seemed, I guess, to make sense at the time, but you do
see that it has created at times, in my view, some gaps as it
relates to critical technology. Have you all looked at perhaps
reviewing that Export Control Reform Initiative that happened
about a decade ago, and maybe trying to tighten up some of
those export controls, specifically on critical dual-use
technology?
Secretary Lutnick. Very thoughtful point, right on the
point, and we are on that topic. We are on it.
Mr. Moore. Yeah. It occurs to me, particularly when we
created the 600 series, which is essentially like a United
States munitions light series within the Department of Commerce
under BIS. This is how some of our defense technology gets out
there, and it is very--it is very disappointing. Obviously,
this is not the idea is that, you know, we wanted to cruise at
export capacity for defense manufacturers and others out there,
but specifically around some of this off-the-shelf technology,
EAR99, items that are going to be exported, I would really like
if you all would take a look at this and the way this was set
up back then and trying to tighten those controls. BIS is, I
mean, really the last stop in protecting our technology.
Could you talk, though, just briefly--you talked about the
steel industry. Could you talk about, from a national security
standpoint, why it is so important? You touched on it a little
bit, but why it is so important to the national security of the
United States to have a vibrant steel industry.
Secretary Lutnick. You cannot fight a war unless you can
make the munitions, period. You can't make a missile without
steel and aluminum. You can't produce anything in defense
without steel and aluminum. You must have a domestic industry.
The President has made it crystal clear, and I think it is
obvious when I say it, and we need to protect it, just like you
said, in West Virginia. They didn't protect you and you lost
the business. That cannot continue, and the Trump
administration will not allow it to continue.
Mr. Moore. Yeah. And then they just raised the price of
template steel right after they acquired it.
Secretary Lutnick. Of course.
Mr. Moore. After they crushed it. Last real quick question.
One issue that I am concerned about is transformers in this
country, which we don't have a great domestic capacity in terms
of manufacturing. There is actually one manufacturer of
electrical steel in the United States right now, and one, maybe
a couple, that can actually manufacture transformers.
Myself and others in the Steel Caucus, a few of us sent a
letter, obviously not your department, but asking for the
Defense Production Act to be invoked around that. Is this
something that your department is looking at at all as it
relates to transformers?
Secretary Lutnick. We are now.
Mr. Moore. Okay. That is a great answer.
And with that, I yield back. Thank you.
Mr. Rogers. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Secretary, the results are in. You are a hit. They want
an encore performance. Are you available for a few minutes more
for the members that may like to ask another question?
Secretary Lutnick. I am at your service, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rogers. We promise you we will be brief and on time.
Thank you, sir.
I yield myself 5 minutes.
Mr. Secretary, rural communities, which are often ignored
by Washington, face unique challenges, one of which is access
to reliable broadband. How is the Department planning to
continue addressing broadband gaps and prioritizing expansion
into unserved areas?
Secretary Lutnick. The Congress has launched the BEAD
Program for broadband access. Under the Biden administration,
they gave out no money after 30 months. Our objective is as
follows. Within the next 90 days--I think we are going to put
it out on Friday--basically saying, if your State is willing to
just be technologically agnostic, meaning produce the right
access at the lowest price or at the--if it is a tie, I don't
care which one you pick, make that application within 90 days,
and then this department will put out the money by the end of
the year.
So we will go from not having given any money under the
Biden administration to having the full program funded and
distributed. Provided they are technologically agnostic by the
end of 2025, all the money will be distributed so that
broadband access can be built by the States. That is my
promise.
Mr. Rogers. Well, broadband is vital, as you well know,
and, of course, the places where it is not in being really are
the rural areas, where it is not profitable for a utility to go
into, which is an age-old problem that we faced before.
Let me highlight another important initiative to rural
America. That is EDA, Economic Development Administration,
particularly the one to have assistance to coal communities. My
district, as was West Virginia, had a complete breakdown of the
industry over the last 10 years. I lost 15,000 jobs in my
district alone. But EDA has been a crutch for us to use to help
revitalize and bring back into competitive nature rural areas.
What do you think about EDA?
Secretary Lutnick. So, first, I will address that the
administration wants to revitalize clean coal. We think it is
vital to America. And so for both yourself and the
Representative I just spoke to, you should rely on this
administration to bring back clean coal, because it is vital.
The country needs power. We need power. And we will do that.
And with respect to EDA, the same thing. There are many
other ways to do it better than to have a reasonably small
group inside the Commerce Department. We will stick with
disaster relief, we will stick with our Tech Hubs, but the
concept of providing that kind of program I think is better
served with bigger, more sophisticated programs.
Mr. Rogers. Well, there are rural areas that are not coal
dependents. What about those communities?
Secretary Lutnick. I would be happy to meet with you
offline and go through it together. You know, I am tasked with
being efficient with taxpayer dollars, and when I get a GAO
report that has 80 other programs, I just think it is more
efficient to do it in a more practical way than do it in a
small way in my department. Not that I don't enjoy doing
things, but efficiency is my objective. And I think it was
important that I show a budget that was substantially lower
that proves that we can do our great job with less taxpayer
dollars.
Mr. Rogers. Well, we want to work with you on this
subcommittee. We want to see you succeed, because when you
succeed, the country and the President succeed. But we have our
priorities as well as it relates to offering jobs back home to
keep our people from having to move to another locale. So I
hope we can work with you.
Secretary Lutnick. Of course.
Mr. Rogers. Ms. Meng.
Ms. Meng. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And let me fix my
microphone.
All right. I want to piggyback off a little bit about
Representative Dean's banana example and how it affects the
cost of living for our constituents all across America. You
know, I have heard from many Asian-American business owners.
They own restaurants. They own supermarkets. They own well-
known supermarkets like 99 Ranch and H Mart. They are really
concerned about the rising costs of goods, like anything from
basmati rice to the burdock root to different sauces that are
utilized by the Asian-American community, fastest growing
community in this country.
I know that you mentioned, you know, due to the tariffs,
the price will eventually come back down, but I just wanted to,
you know, make an observation that the cost of living for
Americans, as we know, is already high, and it is hard for them
to be able to afford these goods and these products that they
are using today. And the restaurant owners, the supermarket
owners, small business owners are really in a bind, because
they don't know if they have to raise their prices and pass on
the higher cost to consumers or to eat the cost themselves. And
coming out of a pandemic where they barely survived, they are
now worried that, because of these high costs, that their
businesses, you know, may not survive.
So I just wanted to highlight this issue that is happening
in my district and I am sure in many other districts across the
country, about a lot of these products that are largely not
produced here in the United States.
Secretary Lutnick. The inflation under the Biden
administration was very, very difficult and created a very
difficult time for Americans across the country.
Ms. Meng. The prices have gone up recently, starting this
year.
Secretary Lutnick. Fortunately, inflation, as the last
numbers were very low, in the low twos and back toward the
level that the Fed says is their long-term goal, so that is
very promising. But I will tell you, in our trade deals, our
expectation is for unavailable natural resources, a banana,
right, other spices and the roots, the things you have
suggested, your expectation should be there will not be a
tariff.
But when we give that to a country, right, like coffee,
right. When we say to Ghana, okay, we will not charge you a
tariff on coffee or cocoa, but you will open your market to
allow our farmers to sell soybeans, because you are blocking us
on soybeans. Why do you expect to sell us coffee and cocoa and
not let us sell soybeans? It seems unfair. Let's make that
fair. And that is an example of a trade deal.
Granted, these are small countries, but that is the kind of
model that, when we are done, we will not have tariffs on
unavailable natural resources, but we will have market access
for our farmers and our ranchers. You know our chicken and pork
and beef are treated horribly around the world, horribly. That
has to end. And if we use that by saying you can export coffee
to us, but you need to treat us better for our agricultural
products back to you, I think that is fair trade.
Ms. Meng. I appreciate that. Do you have a sense of a
timeline? I appreciate that the costs will eventually come back
down, but when my constituents, you know, just average
individual consumers or small business owners are asking me
when the prices will come back down, prices that have gone up
only in recent months after this new Trump administration, what
can we tell our constituents?
Secretary Lutnick. The President has set out July 9 as the
date by which he expects most transaction deals to have
occurred. If they don't occur because of back-and-forth, the
President can just set the agenda and say here is your offer,
and set that trading deal in place. And your expectation should
be by July 9.
Ms. Meng. I appreciate that. And I just, in my 30 seconds
left, I want to align myself with the concerns made by the
Chair about EDA. This is a program that is very important, you
know, programs from Tech Hubs, the Recompete Program, the Good
Jobs Challenge. So many programs are important to our rural
areas, to job creation. We know that in your confirmation
hearing you pledged to maintain these programs, and we hope
that that will continue.
Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Alford.
Mr. Alford. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I apologize for
missing the first round. I just literally ran back from the
House floor doing a speech, but that is our job. And I need to
get in shape.
Anyway, thank you for being here. You are doing such a
great job. And we are proud to have you in that position.
I want to--I know all the good questions have already been
asked and answered, but I want to talk about the tariffs just a
little bit. You know, the Democrats doubted these. The media
doubted it. The pundits doubted it. A lot of people made fun of
the tariffs, didn't like them, but they are working. We have
already seen the results. In fact, the Congressional Budget
Office now estimates the proposed tariffs will reduce our
Federal deficit by $2.8 trillion. That is a success story.
Secretary, what is the strategy behind these? Is it simply
a negotiating tool? Is it the art of the deal? Or does the
President mean it when he says it about these tariffs, and why
are they being so successful so far?
Secretary Lutnick. Build in America, in the greatest
economy in the world. Remember, America is the consumer of the
world. $20 trillion we consume every year. So if you want to
sell here, build here. And if you don't want to sell here, pay
to come into our market. We are receiving a run rate of $34
billion a month to the Treasury of the United States of America
because of tariffs. So anybody who says that tariffs aren't
working can't count to $34 billion.
Mr. Alford. I want to talk about the funding for NOAA and
the National Weather Service. You know, Missouri has gotten hit
pretty hard. We have a lot of tornados. We had a bad spring,
and it is still going on. There was a lot of damage in my
district just south of Kansas City.
We have a regional NOAA center in Pleasant Hill, Missouri.
It is a smaller center like you were talking about earlier, and
I heard you talking about what is going to be happening in the
future to some of these centers. Are centers like Pleasant
Hill, which they already have some vacancies, are those
regional centers in danger of closing at any time in the
future, as far as you know, being replaced by automation and AI
in a centralized location?
Secretary Lutnick. I will give you an example in Missouri,
which was we have all these research people in NOAA, but they
were separate from operational. So we started putting them
together to take that research and start using it. And what it
did is it produced an analysis that showed that we had horrible
tornado conditions in Missouri. And so 2 hours earlier than the
record ever in NOAA, we gave those warnings and saved 120
people. Got them out 2 hours earlier. So we are totally on it.
But the concept of having four people, and one of them has
a baby and one of them is out sick, and somehow we are not able
to do it 24 hours a day, it seems silly. We should have--if we
have 2,100 meteorologists, I promise you, we can cover the
United States of America 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and we
can have better technology, right.
We used to have human beings would launch a weather
balloon.
Mr. Alford. Right.
Secretary Lutnick. Like, I could imagine, like, someone
just going whoop on a--come on. It is called autosonders. We
now do it in an automated fashion, so I don't need the person
to launch the balloon because I can automate launch the
balloon----
Mr. Alford. So I have been inside the center; it is pretty
cool. And I used to be in television news there in Kansas City.
A lot of my friends are meteorologists at these stations who
have personal relationships with the people at NOAA and NWS. I
think they are a little concerned.
Will these centers be closing, but the information, which
is also lifesaving, be coming from a centralized location?
Secretary Lutnick. I think it will be both. I think there
will be many centers that will stay and will augment and be
bigger and stronger and more powerful, but the concept is we
have got to be able to automate ourselves and back each other
up. This concept that the data just stays in Missouri and is
not available to be analyzed by Nebraska or other
meteorologists is illogical. That needs to change.
If I showed you the technology, you would drop your head
embarrassed to be an American. When we are done in this
Commerce Department and I am done with my term, I promise you,
you will be proud of the technology in the Department of
Commerce.
Mr. Alford. Mr. Chair, if you would indulge me for one more
question. I want to talk about the BEAD Program, also very
important to my State, very rural State. Biden administration
put in $42.5 billion, and not one home hooked up. It is a
disgrace, I think.
You talked about tech-agnostic approach and you talked
about the three options. It has got to be a fix--what are those
three options again?
Secretary Lutnick. Fixed wireless, which we all know is
WiFi.
Mr. Alford. Right.
Secretary Lutnick. Right? Fiber, laying cable, or
satellite. Any of those three serve broadband, and we should be
agnostic to which one.
Mr. Alford. So some of the folks in my district and State
are concerned that we want to get everyone hooked up, but it
has got to be the right system. Satellite is not going to work
all over Missouri, so we are going to get the system that
actually works, right, for our money?
Secretary Lutnick. Yes.
Mr. Alford. All right. I hear the light tap of the
chairman's gavel. I will yield back.
Mr. Rogers. Ms. DeLauro.
Ms. DeLauro. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Just a couple of things. I gather, and I am just going to
assume that it is a no, that you are not going to post where,
how, and when American taxpayers' dollars are being used, for
what programs. That is the issue of the apportionment, which
is, again, illegal, so it is a legal issue there. You are not
responsible, but you can get back to your OMB friends and tell
them that they are liable for penalties when they come contrary
to the Antideficiency Act.
Food for farmers. Let me just--what you said there. U.S.
food aid programs across USDA purchased roughly $1 billion
worth of grain from farmers across the country. One farmer from
Illinois said to kill that program is a disaster, it is morally
bankrupt, and it hurts the farmers' bottom line. USAID spends
$2 billion annually on U.S.-grown agriculture for humanitarian
aid. Losing even a portion of that has already been a disaster
for farmers.
I want to talk about the spend plan, because lest you know,
this is the public law. This is--which requires you in the CR
to provide a spend plan to detailing how you will use taxpayer
dollars at the program, project, and activity level. You
provided a bare-bones spend plan with only account level
numbers, no details, no transparency for the American people.
You are out of compliance with the law.
I am asking you, when are you going to come into compliance
with the law with the spend plan?
Secretary Lutnick. As I said, as far as I know, we are in
compliance with the CR, but I will happily go back and I----
Ms. DeLauro. No, no. Right. Please. Please let us know when
we are going to receive the details that we need for this
effort in order to be able to do our business. This is the
Appropriations Committee. We need to know how much, where it is
going, what are the specific programs. We just can't make a
decision saying this is the pot of money we need, but we have
no specificity about where it is going.
And I just might add, you are not the only agency that is
not in compliance. So I am going to ask you, give us a
timeframe when you can get back to us with the detail.
Secretary Lutnick. I will take it under advisement. I will
talk to my advisers and----
Ms. DeLauro. Okay. Well, I would just say, Mr. Chairman, I
believe we need to have an answer on when that data is coming
before we decide what it is that we are going to spend and
appropriate with regard to the Department of Defense.
I was listening on trade deals, et cetera, and this is--I
will just state this. You are looking at doing a trade deal
with Lesotho. Whoa. I know they have a lot of penguins.
Secretary Lutnick. We are not spending time on that. Don't
worry about it.
Ms. DeLauro. Yeah, but I think it is important to note that
Mr. Musk, who is now gone, I don't know if his contract is gone
for Starlink in Lesotho. Let's just talk about what these deals
are beginning to look like.
Trade and tariffs. At one point you said about whether or
not the cost would go up. You said that is, quote, silly. That
is silly that they will not go up.
I think Congresswoman Dean and I were at the same meeting
this morning where the National Retail Federation is beside
themselves with the uncertainty and with the struggle of what
is going on with small businesses. 99.6 percent of businesses
have fewer than 500 people. 40 percent of the wages are paid by
small businesses. They will struggle if they are in a higher
tariff environment, and the question of uncertainty looms
large.
Tariffs, taxes on the American people. Let's face it.
American people are desperate for help with the cost of living.
These trade policies are, in fact, causing it further--the Yale
Budget Lab estimates that tariffs will lower American
households' purchasing power an average of $2,500 this year.
$2,500, most households who live paycheck to paycheck do not
have.
Mr. Secretary, $2,500 dollars is not a lot to billionaires,
but it is a hell of a lot of money for Americans who struggle
with groceries, with healthcare, and with housing costs.
This administration, the President said that costs would
come down on the first day. What the administration is doing is
making it worse, and the level of uncertainty is providing
chaos, it harms our economy, it jeopardizes small business, and
it stifles the investment that creates jobs. We need to know
what you are doing, how you are doing it.
I thank the chairman again. But it can't be, you know, God
is in heaven, all is right with the world. You need to face the
facts and be truthful about what is happening with the trade
policies and other areas that this administration is engaged
in.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary Lutnick. I disagree.
Ms. DeLauro. I am sure you do.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Strong.
Mr. Strong. Secretary Lutnick, Huntsville, Alabama is home
to the National Weather Service Forecast Office. Could you
elaborate on your plans to deploy an experimental AI-based
forecast system?
Secretary Lutnick. Sure. The way we have been doing it is
we have been taking data in and doing it consistently over the
last 20 years. AI systems can then take the weather patterns of
the world, examine how they respond to each other, and do much
better and be much more efficient, much faster, and much more
learned. So we are going to take research, technology, and the
enormous amounts of data that we collect, and we continue to
collect and we are only going to continue to collect more going
forward, and we will just become much, much better at
forecasting dangerous conditions to protect Americans.
Mr. Strong. We definitely know about those dangerous
conditions and we have seen it in the last couple of weeks
across the Southeast. How can we work with you to ensure that
my district's existing expertise and capabilities are leveraged
to support and collaborate with you during this significant
effort?
Secretary Lutnick. I look forward to meeting with you
offline and be glad to go through that and help you do it
together. Sounds great to me.
Mr. Strong. Thank you. Recent reports by NOAA and other
Federal agencies have highlighted significant concerns
regarding China's distant-water fishing fleet. Notably, in
September of 2024, NOAA denied U.S. port privileges to certain
Chinese-flagged long-line vessels due to their involvement in
illegal, unreported, and unregulated IUU fishing activity.
Mr. Secretary, given these recent developments, what
specific measures is the Department of Commerce implementing to
enforce trade restrictions against Chinese food products linked
to IUU fishing?
Secretary Lutnick. Under the Biden administration, we were
not even allowed--allowing our fishermen to use our 200 miles
of exclusive fishing zone for ourselves, and of course, when we
weren't out there fishing, guess who was out there fishing?
Right? Our adversaries just go in. If you are not there, well,
they are going to fish there just the same.
So the idea was, first, we allow all of our fishermen the
maximum usage they possibly can, because we protect and care
about American fishing. We care about it. And second, we are
going to hold accountable anybody who poaches, who breaches, or
is in our space or near our space, we are going to go and make
sure they cannot have access to our markets if they do so.
Mr. Strong. Thank you. Mr. Secretary, the American farmer
is suffering, commodity prices are low. Many countries have
taken advantage of the American farmer. It appears that we are
buying beef from other countries rather than buying from the
American cattle farmer.
What is the number one thing as Secretary that you can do
to help the American farmer?
Secretary Lutnick. We in trade deals can open the market.
Beef in the U.K.; corn, right, in the U.K.; cereals in the
U.K., in Europe, in India. India won't buy a bushel of our
corn. If they buy ethanol, right, then that will help our corn
farmers. So we have got to open these markets.
Beef, poultry, pork. You won't believe how poorly our
farmers are treated, our ranchers are treated, and our
fishermen are treated. We weren't allowed to sell lobster in
the U.K. You say, oh, come on. If you read the way we are
treated so badly, you would understand why the President is on
these trade deals. Make it fair for our people.
I always lead with agriculture, because we are just treated
so badly. If you read it, you would just keep shaking your
head. I can't believe it. I didn't know it when I wasn't here.
And when I first read it, I said, oh, come on. And it is all
sort of old rules that are just not true anymore, and we are
blasting those open. And that is what I am going to do for our
farmers, our ranchers, and our fishermen.
Mr. Strong. I am thankful for what you are doing, and these
trade agreements have got to stop where America is being taken
advantage of. And I commend you and your staff for what you are
doing. I know it is a lot of hours being spent, but we are in a
process of resetting America, and the American farmer, the
American automobile industry will be better because of it.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Ivey.
Mr. Ivey. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I wanted to follow up, Mr. Secretary, with respect to the
chair's questions about EDA. You mentioned 80 programs with
respect to what sounded like maybe the same 80 programs you
were talking about for MBDA.
Secretary Lutnick. From the GAO, and I will send you that
report. You have asked for it. I will find it and I will send
it to you.
Mr. Ivey. Okay. I appreciate that.
Real quick point. You know, the prices will come down point
with respect to the impact on small businesses and retail and
the like. I just want to say that, you know, I have got a lot
of small businesses. I am sure there are plenty across the
country who can't wait. You know, they are really up against
the wall right now. The wolf is at the door. Their businesses
are at risk of being shut down. So the faster this resolves,
the better.
I know you mentioned July 9 with respect to the tariffs,
and that can't come soon enough. And I hope that, whatever
happens on July 9, there is some effort to pay attention to
what is happening to these businesses in the country. They are
multinational, you know, corporations, they will survive. But
smaller businesses that are really, you know, struggling to
make ends meet, they don't have that luxury, they don't have
that kind of margin.
Real quick on NIST. And you heard I think from both sides
of the aisle with respect to the need for a budget that gives
more detail. And actually, I just saw you testified, I think
you said you are reviewing all 5,700 contracts that--I don't
think it was FEMA, but it was NOAA, and you said you are
reviewing all of them. And so someone who is going to----
Secretary Lutnick. All above $100,000.
Mr. Ivey. Okay. Someone who pays that level of attention to
detail, when you were a CEO, I am sure that you demanded
something better than the skinny budget when you were making
corporate decisions for your business. You had to. And I know
that when you go through these contracts in the way that you
are, that is the attention to detail that we want to actually
provide in our roles here in Congress and in functioning and
carrying out our aspect of the appropriations process. So
please give us that level of information so we can do our job
carefully and closely too.
And then real quick point with respect to NIST. Again in
the skinny budget, there is a $325 million reduction under that
category. I don't really know where the money is coming from,
but NIST is a critical agency, as you know, with respect to
cyber and quantum and the like. You got a letter from--I guess
in concern about this--Software and Information Industry
Association, CCIA, ITIF Center for Data Innovation, a bunch of
private industry leaders, tech net, raising questions about
where these cuts are going to come from and what is being done
with them.
The work done at NIST is not just a matter of maintaining
technical excellence; it is a direct investment in ensuring
that American industry continues to set the global benchmark
for innovation. And we emphasize that NIST work represents a
high-value investment that directly contributes to U.S.
economic growth, competitiveness, and technological leadership.
We caution that downsizing NIST or eliminating these
initiatives will have ramifications for the ability of the
American AI industry to continue to lead globally.
So I share those concerns. I would like to add to the
record this article, Eric Geller, NIST loses key cyber experts
in standards and research for the record.
NIST is playing a critical role in our competition with
respect to AI for quantum across the board. I don't know what
cuts you are talking about making with respect to them, because
the level of--or lack of detail with respect to the budget, but
please be careful in the cuts that you make here. I don't know
that any of them are justified necessarily. I can't really
tell.
But cutting NIST at this time--and that chart I tried to
show you that you couldn't see, the quantum competition, we
need all hands on deck. This is a critical time for the United
States right now. Making cuts to those industries--or to those
aspects of the government, they are such key players with
respect to the industries, this couldn't be a worse time to do
it.
So I appreciate your leadership on this and hope that you
will continue to make sure that the United States can take a
leadership role in these industries.
Secretary Lutnick. We are not cutting in quantum. We are
not cutting in AI. But there are old programs that need to be
reexamined, and that money can be used better.
And the last thing I would say is we keep talking about
small businesses. Ninety percent of our businesses are American
businesses. And we keep talking about 10 percent that import.
If you build in America, you are being protected by the
tariffs. It is good for small business in America that build in
America. Ninety percent of them build in America.
Mr. Ivey. Not all businesses build in America, as you just
heard from----
Secretary Lutnick. Ninety percent.
Mr. Rogers. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Ms. Dean.
Ms. Dean. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thanks for hanging around for a second round.
I wanted to first, Mr. Chairman, just offer for the record
some articles and documents. The first is a Washington Post
article of this week, entitled, ``We are Witnessing the Suicide
of a Superpower.''
The second is, as ranking member revealed, the report from
Yale Budget Lab, titled, ``The State of U.S. Tariffs: June the
1st of this year.'' One of the highlights, American consumers
face the highest average tariff rate they have endured since
1938, the Great Depression.
The next one, U.S. trade document--U.S. Trade
Representative, titled, ``Reciprocal Tariffs, Calculations, and
the Flawed Formula.'' I am sure you know this formula very
well, Mr. Secretary. It is incoherent and flawed. I enter that
for the record.
And a New York Times article, April 7, ``The Trump White
House Cited My Research to Justify Tariffs. It Got It All
Wrong.''
And the final one, which was revealing of my use of the
banana here, ``Bananas to Car Seat--to Car Seats, Walmart Warns
of Price Rise Due to Tariffs.''
For the record. Without objection?
Mr. Rogers. Without objection.
[The information follows:]
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Ms. Dean. Thanks so much.
I want to ask you about--I was interested in what you said
to Mr. Morelle in terms of the mission, and some of the
language you used, the mission of your department, to protect,
defend, and enhance business in America. That was a good
summary?
Secretary Lutnick. Sounds good.
Ms. Dean. I think that is what you said. I tried to write
it down fast.
Secretary Lutnick. Still sounds good.
Ms. Dean. I just wonder, did your department, did you
personally, or your department whose mission that is, have any
problem with the President's recent trips overseas; or the
development of his business and his family's business around
bitcoin, meme coin, fundraising, or investor raising dinners;
any worry with the Department of Commerce with the President
and his family growing their own business while on the job?
Secretary Lutnick. My trip to the Middle East was
extraordinary in that we came home----
Ms. Dean. I am sure. I am asking you about----
Secretary Lutnick [continuing]. With $5.1 trillion of
investment in America. It was amazing.
Ms. Dean. Mr. Lutnick, I am asking you, did the question of
conflict of interest come up for the leader of the free world?
Secretary Lutnick. No.
Ms. Dean. No? Thank you.
I ought to have a team of lawyers take a look at that. It
is grotesque the way this President is using his office to
enrich himself, his businesses and his family's. That ought to
be something you are interested in.
I want to tell you something I agree with you on and I
agree with the President on, the closing of the de minimus
loophole. You are absolutely right, it hurts retailers when
stuff comes in here, package after package, order after order,
under $800, no tax, no tariff, no review. It hurts retailers.
But I know the other reason that I believe the President is
interested in that is in tackling the precursors of fentanyl
and making sure these packages don't come in unabsorbed,
unknown, and then off to Mexico to only come back manufactured
and to kill our children.
So I want you to know, I want the President to know, that
is a good thing. And I hope it brings great revenue to our
Treasury. It should. We have passed on that, at the expense of
our children and at the expense of retailers.
Secretary Lutnick. Thank you.
Ms. Dean. So please take that back.
And, finally, I guess I want to tell you, do you know when
we met? I don't know if you remember. We met once in Davos. We
had a very interesting conversation, and you told me some of
your backstory. And this goes back to where I started with
stability.
I think it is very well known that, when you began college,
your father died. And what a trying time that must have been
because your mother had predeceased. And you were at Haverford,
very near my district. And Haverford College said stay, you
stay, get your education, and you did. And they offered you
that stability at a time when you must have needed it most.
I had a similar experience. My father died when I was in my
third semester of college, suddenly, of a heart attack.
Difficult. We were all wobbling for quite a while. But his
company offered scholarships to kids who lost their parents,
and I got a scholarship to go to law school, offering me
stability that I had no idea I would ever lean upon.
I take you back to that because what have you done in the
meantime? You have rewarded Haverford. You are making sure that
other kids get that stability. Please take that back into your
work in the Department of Commerce. You know stability is what
our consumers, our constituents, our businesses, our banks
need. This is not stability. It is an incoherent tariff policy
that is costing every single one of us.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Mrvan.
Mr. Mrvan. Mr. Secretary, during our first exchange, we
talked slightly about Nippon. My first question will be, is,
with that deal you said you agreed, and I don't want to put
words in your mouth, were you in the room or at the table for
the CFIUS agreement, and what was your recommendation?
Secretary Lutnick. I can't really discuss the particulars,
but generally, we came to the view that the deal would be good
for America. The President came to view it, it would be good
for America, and we are discussing how to make sure that that
protects the USA and America, and those discussions are ongoing
right now.
Mr. Mrvan. So in the beginning, the administration, when he
was a candidate, was against the deal.
Secretary Lutnick. Well, the terms of the deal did not
protect America, and he is interested in making sure the terms
of the deal protect America.
Mr. Mrvan. Okay. And I agree. So I represent northwest
Indiana, Gary, Indiana, one of the top steel producing. One of
the concerns with it, the USW, the union, is to specifically
make sure that the investments that have been agreed upon, that
those----
Secretary Lutnick. You can say promised. How about that?
Mr. Mrvan. See, that is my concern. You are right,
promised, based on market conditions. So these are real-life
individuals. My father came over from--or grandfather came over
from Czechoslovakia, ended up in northwest Indiana, worked in
the steel mills. Families, everywhere around my district, it is
our economic engine.
You have passionately talked about how it is a national
security issue, right. So with that, many promises have been
made.
First and foremost, to my steelworkers, just a
recommendation, the USW wants a seat at the table because they
are concerned about disinvestment in their union blast furnaces
that will go to nonunion shops and other parts of the country.
So in my district, which I am here to protect, that--our
concern level is to make sure that the administration hears the
voices very loudly and clearly from my district that we want
assurances, not based on market conditions, that this
investment, promised investment, will protect steelworkers'
jobs and tradesmen who provide the back--the maintenance on
those blast furnaces.
So what are you going to do specifically? Not broad strokes
of what is going to happen. Specifically, what are you going to
do to protect those jobs in my district?
Secretary Lutnick. I agree with you. My understanding is
the President agrees with you, and I think the end result of
the transaction with Nippon will agree with you.
Mr. Mrvan. What are some of the specifics, or can I get a
commitment from you that the USW union representation
leadership will have a seat at the table to protect their
interests in U.S. steel?
Secretary Lutnick. I think the best I can say is that the
President understands their concerns, I understand their
concerns. I have met with the steelworkers union, and I
understand their concerns, and----
Mr. Mrvan. Do you understand that this creates uncertainty,
unpredictability for families who want to make sure that they
have a secure income, healthcare, secure pension; that that
uncertainty causes great disbelief in what is going on? And
specifically, what are you going to do to protect those jobs?
I understand you agree with me. We agree that a $14 billion
investment on top of a regular $14 billion investment, that is
pretty good. But what are you specifically going to do to
protect those steelworkers' jobs?
Secretary Lutnick. The President of United States flew to
Pittsburgh----
Mr. Mrvan. I saw the press conference. I have got a minute.
What are you specifically going to do? I saw what--I saw the
press con--I saw it. I saw the rally. Specifically, what are
you going to do?
Secretary Lutnick. The President of the United States will
direct what he wants to do, and I will assist him in doing so.
He knows the steelworkers union concerns, and I think they will
be very happy with the outcome.
Mr. Mrvan. Okay. So time is of the essence, they want a
seat at the table so that there is not disinvestment in my
community and investment in other parts of the community which
would have cheaper labor. I want to make sure that I articulate
that to you.
Then, ultimately, I also want to ask about with the Nippon
deal. If there is reshoring manufacturing and there is a 50
percent tariff around the world on steel, correct, Nippon now
is an investor in U.S. steel, please tell me if they are going
to be able to circumvent that 50 percent tariff and ship steel.
Secretary Lutnick. No.
Mr. Mrvan. No.
Secretary Lutnick. No. If they make it in America, you
don't pay the tariff. If you make it anywhere else but America,
anywhere else, you are going to pay.
Mr. Mrvan. But the--are you following me? A foreign country
is investing in an American company to circumvent those trade
policies--to the tariffs----
Secretary Lutnick. If you hire Americans and you build it
here, you don't pay the tariff.
Mr. Mrvan. Okay.
Secretary Lutnick. So if a foreigner builds, good for them.
Mr. Mrvan. Okay.
Secretary Lutnick. But in America, with American----
Mr. Mrvan. Know that--I just want to close in saying, know
that I agree a $14 billion investment in the infrastructure of
our steel industry is a good thing, but understand how vitally,
gravely important it is to the steelworkers, to my community,
to my economic development, or my economic engine----
Mr. Rogers. Time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. Mrvan [continuing]. That you stand up for those jobs.
Thank you, Chairman.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Secretary, you have been so generous with
your time. I am sorry that we went over what we had intended
timewise, but it was worth it from our point of view.
We look forward to working with you to be sure that you are
a success, and we are very impressed with your exuberance in
the work that you are upon now.
So good luck to you. We wish you well, and we want to stay
in touch with you to try to help to be sure everything works
out A number one.
So that concludes today's hearing. We want to thank our
witness, Secretary Lutnick, for being here and sharing with us
his plans for the future.
Without objection, members may have 7 days to submit
additional questions for the record.
The subcommittee stands in adjournment.
[Whereupon, at 1:14 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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Monday, June 23, 2025.
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
WITNESS
HON. PAMELA BONDI, ATTORNEY GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Mr. Rogers. Good afternoon. The committee will be in order.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess at any time.
We will begin by myself being recognized for an opening
statement.
I would like to welcome our witness, the Honorable Pam
Bondi, Attorney General of the United States, to testify on the
Department of Justice's fiscal year 2026 budget.
To begin, I want to thank the Attorney General for speaking
at the Rx and Illicit Drug Summit this past April down in
Nashville, Tennessee.
That is, I think, the third or fourth of those summits that
you have been there to speak, and we appreciate that
especially.
That summit gathers the best and brightest to discuss ways
our Nation can tackle the opioid and addiction crisis impacting
every corner of our country.
At this year's summit, we received some encouraging news
from the CDC: that overdose deaths have decreased by nearly 30
percent.
Unfortunately, we still lost over 80,000 loved ones in
2024, and recent provisional data from the CDC suggests that
the progress that has been made might be coming to an end. And,
indeed, 70 percent of those deaths were from fentanyl.
Significant more work needs to be done to curb opioid
addiction, including focusing on the precursor chemicals being
produced in China and the manufacturing labs in Mexico, as well
as tracking down the cartels and criminals that shop these
drugs to our Nation's children.
The Department of Justice must keep this at the top of
their priority list.
Unfortunately, Madam General, your job at the top will not
be easy, and the list of issues that the American people are
counting on you to address is long and dangerous.
From fentanyl and immigration to violent crime and
supporting local law enforcement, the Department of Justice
needs to uphold the rule of law and equal justice while
tackling the most dangerous situations confronting Americans.
To make matters even more difficult, this all must be
accomplished within a budget that needs to be rightsized for
efficiency and effectiveness.
The Department of Justice's fiscal year 2026 budget request
totals just under $34 billion. This represents a reduction of
close to $3 billion from fiscal year 2025.
Specifically, the request includes about $11 billion to
target violent crime, $10 billion to tackle drug crimes, over
$3 billion to defend the Nation and our citizens against
transnational organized crime, and over $3.5 billion to address
immigration.
These are the exact issues that hit home for many families,
and these are the issues that are being discussed between
neighbors in all of our States, including mine in Kentucky, and
across the Nation.
After 4 years of politicization at the Biden Department of
Justice, these are the issues that the American people expect
you to address. They want a Department of Justice that protects
American citizens from violent crime, not one that is
weaponized against them for speaking their minds.
Thus far, we have seen much progress on many of these
fronts, including an administration that is taking the Nation's
borders seriously.
Attorney General Bondi, I stand ready to support you in
your efforts to ensure that the American public lives in a
society that is free from crime and abuse. I look forward to
hearing from you today regarding the fiscal year 2026 budget,
and then we will go from there.
There are critically important funding decisions ahead of
us, and I hope we can gain a better sense of your priorities
today so that we can make the best decision on behalf of the
American public.
Let me now recognize the ranking member of this
subcommittee, Ms. Meng, for any remarks she cares to make.
Ms. Meng. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And welcome, Attorney General Bondi.
Tens of thousands of public servants at the Department of
Justice and its bureaus have historically worked very hard and
continue to work hard to protect public safety and uphold the
rule of law in our country.
Yet, I must take this opportunity to express my very strong
concerns about this current administration's lack of respect
for the rule of law.
Over the past 5 months, we have seen numerous examples of
this administration outright breaking the law.
The administration continues to illegally withhold billions
of dollars in funding that Congress appropriated, including
hundreds of recently terminated Justice Grants that had been
previously awarded through open and competitive processes.
The administration is violating the Federal law that
mandates that the Office of Management and Budget publish
apportionments and show the public how and when Federal
agencies are spending appropriated funds.
The Justice Department has begun illegally restoring the
gun possession rights of convicted felons and domestic abusers.
It is allowing the sale of forced reset trigger devices without
a background check.
These are devices that effectively convert regular firearms
into machine guns, which I fear will only make mass shootings
in the United States more numerous and deadly.
More than 1,500 individuals involved in the January 6
attack on the Capitol were pardoned or granted commutations of
sentences.
The President's new appointee as Pardon Attorney, Ed
Martin, previously raised money to help defend some of the most
violent of these individuals, people who assaulted police
officers. Some of the pardoned January 6 defendants have
subsequently been arrested, charged, or sentenced for other
crimes.
Under this President, the U.S. has accepted a luxury
jetliner from Qatar, very likely in violation of the Emoluments
Clause of the Constitution.
This President has also issued a series of illegal and
unconstitutional executive orders, several of which are being
challenged in courts right now.
Presidential actions in recent months have also directed
highly political and targeted investigations against law firms
and individuals, including Miles Taylor, a former staffer for
the House Appropriations Committee's Republican majority.
Meanwhile, the administration has weakened law enforcement
against political corruption by gutting the Department's Public
Integrity Section, which fairly investigates and prosecutes
corruption by government officials.
It has dismantled Task Force KleptoCapture, which was
started after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine to enforce
sanctions and target oligarchs close to the Kremlin. It has
also ended the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, which was
created to defend against foreign influence operations
targeting U.S. institutions.
Furthermore, dozens of experienced career Federal
prosecutors, litigators, and FBI leaders have been fired or
forced out since the start of this administration, including
James Dennehy, the highly respected leader of the FBI's New
York Field Office.
I am really concerned about what is happening in the
Department of Justice, especially based on the Department's
fiscal year 2026 budget request. The proposed budget weakens
the country's efforts to fight crime and keep Americans safe.
The proposal reduces funding for the FBI, despite the
heroism of agents like those in Minnesota who aided in the
recent capture of the deranged man accused of killing a State
representative and nearly killing another.
It slashes funding to fight the trafficking of fentanyl and
other dangerous illegal drugs by reducing the budget of the
DEA, cutting the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program
by more than a third, and by completely eliminating the
dedicated funding for the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task
Force program.
The administration also proposes a cut of more than 25
percent to the ATF, which will further weaken the government's
ability to fight illegal gun trafficking.
This budget proposal also puts further pressure on State
and local budgets at a time of great economic uncertainty.
The proposal cuts by more than $800 million funding to
grants to local and State law enforcement for fighting and
reducing crime, including a cut of more than $37 million to
Byrne Justice Assistance formula grants that help our local law
enforcement in every single State.
I am also concerned about the huge cuts to grants aimed at
preventing and prosecuting violence against women, such as STOP
grants and Sexual Assault Services grants.
The administration also proposes eliminating three valuable
programs aimed at fighting and preventing hate crimes at the
same time that the FBI is reporting that hate crimes are at
historic highs.
The administration's budget would completely eliminate the
Community Relations Service, which was created by the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 to prevent and resolve conflicts in American
communities.
These actions and this budget proposal simply don't
demonstrate a commitment to the rule of law and equal rights
for all Americans.
I look forward to discussing these important issues at
today's hearing.
Thank you for being here.
And thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. We have in attendance the ranking member of the
full committee, Ms. DeLauro, whom I now recognize.
Ms. DeLauro. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank
you and Ranking Member Meng for holding this budget hearing.
And I also want to say a thank you to our witness, Attorney
General Bondi, for appearing before the subcommittee today.
Welcome to the House of Representatives.
A well-functioning, well-funded, well-led Department of
Justice is critical to the safety and the security of the
American people. And the Department of Justice's employees are
dedicated public servants who work diligently and often in
dangerous settings to keep criminals off the streets.
But, unfortunately, the Department of Justice under your
leadership has become a tool of political retaliation and the
front door for criminals seeking to curry favors and pardons.
As I told Director Patel last month, pressure from the
White House to investigate the President's opponents or to
quash investigations of his allies threatens the Department's
credibility and the very foundation--and the foundation on
which this Nation stands, and that is the rule of law.
The Attorney General must shield the rule of law from
political pressure, not act as an instrument for implementing
the President's political hit list.
Attorney General Bondi, the Department of Justice is not
the President's personal law firm. Loyalty or disloyalty toward
the President, or even the President's agenda, is not a valid
measure of the performance of your employees nor of the
appropriateness of a particular criminal investigation.
President Trump is more focused on revenge, retaliation,
and retribution rather than lowering the high price for
everyday essentials, and the American people are bearing those
costs.
The American people expected President Trump to address the
high cost of living, but the President is not laser-focused on
the cost-of-living crisis. He is actually making it worse.
Instead, he put billionaires like Elon Musk in charge of
our government, and they are attacking civil servants who are
not loyal to him but to the Constitution and to the rule of
law. And they are stealing programs, the funding for the
programs that keep America's communities safe.
This administration is deliberately undermining agencies
that protect the American people. Over $4.5 billion in the
Department of Justice grants, those funds, including COPS
grants, the Office on Violence Against Women grants, have been
unlawfully frozen, stolen from the communities that are
counting on this funding to improve their own law enforcement
capabilities.
This funding supports reentry initiatives, violence
prevention. It helps prevent hate crimes, provides services for
crime victims, and supports underserved communities. Stealing
this funding makes the American people less safe, more likely
to become victims of crime.
Freezing this money is an illegal impoundment. There is no
lawful authority to unilaterally impound or, in my words,
steal. You can continue to say there is inherent authority. You
can say it over and over and over again. But it is not true and
we are going to correct it over and over and over again. And
how many times can the courts and the Government Accountability
Office tell you so?
Your Department is responsible for upholding the law. You
must unfreeze grant money appropriated by the Congress or be in
violation of the law.
Moving to the next fiscal year, I am eager to learn about
how the Department of Justice will continue to fulfill its
mission with a proposed budget that significantly cuts our
Nation's law enforcement agencies, key offices, and grant
programs.
The President's proposed budget would impair and defund the
core law enforcement agencies that keep our communities safe.
In essence, you are defunding law enforcement.
It slashes funding for the FBI, the Drug Enforcement
Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives, limiting Federal efforts to help our State and
local enforcement combat gun violence, drug trafficking, and
organized crime.
The budget also targets DOJ's foundational legal divisions,
cutting funding for civil rights enforcement, environmental
protection, and even, yes, national security. It takes an axe
to grant programs and other programs that support domestic
violence survivors and local police departments.
It dismantles DOJ's Tax Division, which will only make it
easier for prominent tax cheats to avoid prosecution, further
increasing the burden on honest taxpayers who pay what they
owe.
They pay what they owe. Our largest corporations do not.
And why on Earth does your budget slash the Department of
Justice's Office of the Inspector General by 30 percent? Does
this administration want to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse
or not?
Our government's Inspectors General are absolutely critical
nonpartisan offices that help Congress and the American people
eliminate and prevent fraud and corruption. This administration
has directly undermined and even removed over a dozen of these
offices across our government.
Waste, fraud, and abuse are not the targets of President
Trump's White House. They are the primary objectives. This
budget does not put the safety and security of the American
people first. It puts white collar criminals, drug traffickers,
and violent offenders first, while eviscerating your
Department's ability to stop them.
The Department of Justice exists to uphold the rule of law.
The American people deserve assurance that everyone will be
treated equally under the law. Instead, this administration
breaks the law with reckless abandon.
President Trump, like every other American, must follow the
law. Russ Vought must follow the law. Secretaries Noem and
Kennedy and McMahon must follow the law. And we must understand
why your Department is complicit in lawbreaking from the
highest office.
I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. We want to say congratulations to the Attorney
General on her selection to this very important post. But she
brings a great record from her home State of Florida in her
earlier part of her life.
So we are proud of you, and we welcome you to the
subcommittee. And you are now recognized for an opening
statement, which will be entered into the record.
STATEMENT OF HON. PAMELA BONDI
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you, Chairman.
Good afternoon, Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member DeLauro,
Ranking Member Meng, and distinguished members of the
subcommittee. I am honored to appear before you today to
present the President's fiscal year 2026 budget for the
Department of Justice. I look forward to working with all of
you to ensure continued support for the Department and our many
critical missions.
President Trump's fiscal year 2026 budget proposal totals
$34 billion for the Department of Justice. That money will
support Federal law enforcement as well as our State, local,
and Tribal law enforcement partners.
My primary objective as Attorney General is to return the
Department to its core mission of keeping Americans safe and
vigorously enforcing the law. This budget will allow us to
continue doing just that.
Since January 20, we have dismantled deadly fentanyl
networks across our country. We have prosecuted MS-13 and TdA
members using terrorism and RICO charges. We have seized
thousands of illegal guns from cartels and extradited key
cartel leaders into U.S. prisons.
Last month, the FBI arrested 205 child predators in a
single operation, and the DEA executed the largest fentanyl
bust in history across four States.
We have also surged FBI resources to investigate thousands
of violent crimes committed against American Indian and Alaska
Native people.
These are just a few examples of what we have achieved thus
far. The budget will allow us to continue doing our crucial
work.
We have also led the charge to enforce our immigration
laws, rebuild our immigration system after 4 years of chaos,
and help secure our Nation's borders. Moreover, we must
guarantee that our laws allow us to process, hold, and remove
those who enter our country illegally.
Our U.S. Attorneys continue to effectively work with law
enforcement at all levels to investigate and prosecute the
increasing volume of immigration-related criminal offenses.
Additionally, the President and I have established and
reinvigorated three task forces to enforce the administration's
priorities.
The Homeland Security Task Force is enhancing Federal and
State law enforcement cooperation to destroy criminal cartels,
foreign gangs, and transnational criminal organizations
throughout our country.
Joint Task Force Alpha will continue to specifically target
the human trafficking and human smuggling networks that took
root while our border was wide open.
And Joint Task Force Vulcan will continue successful
efforts to arrest and prosecute members of TdA and MS-13.
We are also committed to making America safe again by
reducing recidivism. The Bureau of Prisons has suffered
mismanagement, lack of funding, and low morale. Throughout my
confirmation process, BOP came up in every single meeting
regardless of the Senator's party.
The President's budget proposal will address critical
staffing shortages, enhance staff retention, and deliver
positive changes to a system that has long needed improvements.
The resources made available through President Trump's
proposal will also empower the Department to continue fighting
our war on fentanyl.
Since January 2025, the DEA has already seized 41.5 million
fentanyl pills and 4,470 kilos of fentanyl powder.
It is a historic rate, but it is not enough. We won't rest
until this poison is off our streets.
And finally, the 2026 budget continues my commitment to
find savings in the Department, reduce inefficiencies, and
deliver value to the American taxpayer.
In fiscal year 2026, the Department will merge components
that will work in overlapping areas and make our law
enforcement and grant-making efforts more effective. We will
emerge from this work as a leaner organization, better equipped
to keep the American people safe.
Chairman Rogers, Ranking Member DeLauro, Ranking Member
Meng, it is my pleasure to highlight our efforts to be good
stewards of these resources. I am working diligently to restore
confidence and integrity to the Department and each of those
components. Thank you for your continued support of the
Department's financial needs and for the opportunity to present
our budget request.
I also would ask all of us now to pray for our troops in
Qatar.
Mr. Rogers. Amen.
Attorney General Bondi. I look forward to working with you.
And I am now happy to take any questions you might have.
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Mr. Rogers. We will proceed under the 5-minute rule, and I
will yield myself the first 5 minutes.
As you know, Madam Attorney General, rural America, many
parts of the country, including my district, continue to suffer
from the lethal effects of illicit drug use and overdose
deaths.
How does your 2026 budget propose to address drug crimes,
such as trafficking and the influx? What are you doing
differently than in the past?
Attorney General Bondi. Chairman, what we are doing, we are
focusing all of our law enforcement agencies on getting these
drugs off of our streets.
Since I was a State AG, I focused on the opioid crisis. I
focused with all of our agencies--all of our agencies--working
hand in hand on the drug crisis.
Securing our borders, I believe, was the first step. We
will continue to do that.
On May 22, I believe, Chairman, we announced the success of
Operation RapTor, the FBI-led DOJ operation that targeted
fentanyl trafficking on the dark web. That has become a huge
problem with added technology now.
We have seen drug trafficking increased not only across our
boarders, not only through the mail, but also on the web. And
that is something I believe that we can all work together on. I
believe that crosses party lines. That is something that we all
need to work together on.
We have seized 144 kilos of fentanyl, 180 firearms, and
over $200 million in currency and digital assets, working with
nine international partners and arresting 270 drug traffickers
across four continents. And that was all because of Operation
RapTor.
On May 6, we executed the biggest fentanyl bust in DEA's
history. We dismantled a Sinaloa Cartel that trafficked across
five States: New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Oregon, and Nevada. We
seized 412 kilos of fentanyl pills, 11.5 kilos of fentanyl
powder, and 49 illegal firearms. We arrested 16 accused drug
traffickers.
These cartels, these gangs, are so organized that they
insulate their leaders. The leader of this particular cartel
was living in Oregon. Yet none of the drugs were with him.
This was incredible police work by all of our agencies,
Federal agencies, working hand in hand to track them down. I
met in conference rooms. We had charts.
And I would invite any of you Members, on both sides of the
aisle, to come in and see these investigations of what we are
trying to do to get these drugs off our streets. They are so
complex. They are so complicated.
What our law enforcement have been doing is really second
to none and I am so proud. They are some of the bravest in the
world. And I am so proud at what they have been doing, working
with all of our State and local partners to eradicate these
drugs.
My point of that was in Oregon was the leader of this
particular Sinaloa gang. And, again, he insulated himself. But
we were able to catch him thanks to great police work, and we
will continue to do that.
Mr. Rogers. Well, congratulations.
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you.
Mr. Rogers. And thanks for the invitation. I hope we can
take you up on that.
During his hearing before us, FBI Director Patel indicated
a lot of precursor chemicals that originate in China are now
going to terrorist organizations that reroute the precursors
into our country through the northern border.
What can you say about that?
Attorney General Bondi. Yes, Chairman, that is accurate. I
have been fighting this fentanyl epidemic since I was a State
AG when it really first came on the market.
Ironically, I was recently in Poland at a security
conference with all of my counterparts around the world, and I
will never forget something they said to me. My counterpart in
Poland said, ``Fentanyl isn't here yet.'' Yet. Because they
protect their borders.
And, yes, the northern border is now a great concern to all
of us, I would think to everyone on this committee. And, yeah,
that is a great concern. But we will continue to do that.
We are fighting to protect those precursors from coming in,
as we know. And what they keep doing is they are changing the
precursors. And they continue to change them, and they continue
to send them through Mexico, through Canada, on ships through
our ports of entry into our country. But that is something we
have to all work together on to stop.
I went to our DEA lab. I met with our DEA. It only takes--
it looks like almost two grains of salt. I had them put sodium
chloride in a little bottle so I could show people.
That is what it takes to kill you. And that is what our
kids are taking. They don't realize that it is mixed. They
think they are buying a Xanax, an Adderall--I can't say this
enough--an oxycodone pill. They think they are buying something
else.
And this junk is being laced--this poison--into these pills
throughout our country. And that is something I feel like we
can all work together on to try to stop.
But, yes. That was--sorry--a very long answer to, yes, it
is coming in through our northern border, but we are doing
everything we can to secure that. We are working with Homeland
Security very closely, and they are doing an incredible job on
that as well, Chairman.
Mr. Rogers. Ms. Meng.
Ms. Meng. Madam Attorney General, I wanted to ask about a
topic that is of great importance to many Americans, and
especially my constituents, which is about hate crimes.
I am really troubled that your budget proposes to end the
grant programs that may help prevent some of these hate crimes.
As you may know, I was the author of one of these programs,
the Community-Based Approaches to Advancing Justice program,
which was created in fiscal year 2022.
This program supported local groups working to increase
hate crimes reporting, give community members resources in
languages other than English, and to improve relationships
between local law enforcement and the community.
It was a direct response to the rise in hate crimes
targeting Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. You may
recall in March 2021, six women of Asian descent were
tragically murdered in Atlanta, Georgia.
My Hate Crimes Act passed through Congress in May of that
year with bipartisan support, including from several of my
colleagues on the other side of the dais.
For years, I have been hearing from constituents about how
scared they felt and have been hearing from members of these
communities as well as experts who have told me that one of the
best ways to combat hate in this country is to fund prevention
programs. So not just prosecution but also prevention.
I have a letter here that hate crime survivors and family
members wrote to you in May expressing their strongest concerns
about the termination of these grants, signed by people like
family members of Emmett Till, James Byrd Jr., Matthew Shepard,
and survivors of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.
I ask unanimous consent to enter into the hearing record
this letter from these survivors and family members to Attorney
General Bondi regarding the termination of hate crimes-related
grant programs.
Mr. Rogers. Without objection.
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Ms. Meng. Thank you, Chairman.
Attorney General Bondi, I absolutely share your support for
law enforcement and for the prosecution of hate crimes in a
just way. But we must combat all forms of hate on all fronts,
bringing together law enforcement and community leaders and
members of the public, and these grant programs have helped
many communities do exactly this.
So I just wanted to ask and hear from you why there is a
proposal to eliminate the three largest sources of DOJ funding
for hate crime prevention programs.
Attorney General Bondi. Yeah. And, Ranking Member, can you
list those three for me again? And I am sorry, I have not
received your letter yet. But I would welcome working with you
on any issue regarding hate crimes in the Asian-American
community and any community. I welcome working with you on
that.
Ms. Meng. Okay. Yeah. I would love to.
And this letter was sent May 15, and we will make sure that
you and your team have received it.
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you.
Ms. Meng. So the programs. One of them, for example, is
named the Community-Based Approaches to Advancing Justice.
Three programs have been cut. One of these programs literally
helped support our law enforcement departments locally, like
our NYPD, to train and respond to hate crimes.
Attorney General Bondi. Let me see.
So we have 5,800 grants, Chairman, that come--Ranking
Member, excuse me--that come through my office; 365 have been
cut so far. That is approximately 6 percent.
What I will tell you is we have turned back on 13 of those
so far because people have reached out to me. If you want to
reach out and talk to me directly, I will give you my cell
phone. I would love to sit down with you and see if we can work
that out. I am sorry. I am not familiar with those three
directly.
But, again, we will, if you have, on either side of the
aisle, any grants that you believe should be back on, I would
love to meet with you and work with you on that.
We are doing that on a case-by-case basis. And law
enforcement is my top priority, especially hate crimes,
violence against women, everything I have done my entire career
as a prosecutor. I think we have a former prosecutor in the
room too.
And I look forward to working with you on those and seeing
what we can do to help you.
Ms. Meng. Great. We would love to work together, and we
will flag all the programs that have been impacted, including
those that directly support our local law enforcement, like
NYPD.
And just to be more specific, the three programs mentioned
are Community-Based Approaches, Jabara-Heyer NO HATE, and
Shepard-Byrd. NO HATE, Shepard-Byrd.
Thank you so much.
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Gonzales.
Mr. Gonzales. Thank you, Chairman.
And thank you, Attorney General, for being here today.
When the DOJ submitted their budget, the United States was
a Nation at peace, and now we are a Nation at war. So my
questions are going to be focused on national security.
How many Iranian sleeper cells do we suspect are in the
United States?
Attorney General Bondi. Congressman, I can't talk about
that in this setting. But what I can tell you is I know
Homeland Security, I know the FBI. They are focusing on doing
everything we can to keep our Nation safe and they will
continue to do that.
Yeah, it is a frightening time in which we live right now.
But President Trump is committed to keeping all Americans safe.
And we look forward to working with you on that.
Mr. Gonzales. Great. Thank you.
How many active cases of threats to the homeland does DOJ
currently have open as of today?
Attorney General Bondi. Countless. Countless. I can't talk
about those in this setting either, obviously, anything pending
regarding national security issues.
But there is not a day that goes by that we don't discuss
the issues that you just brought up with me at the Department
of Justice. But I also know that our counterparts at DOD, HSI,
the State Department, and all of our agencies are working
together to make America safe and, in turn, keep our world
safe.
Mr. Gonzales. This is very much on my mind. I spent 20
years in the military. I spent 5 years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These aren't----
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you.
Mr. Gonzales. Of course. These aren't dots on a board. And
not only American lives abroad, what we saw today, are at risk,
but it is also American lives here at home.
And I don't want us looking back and going: What if? I want
us to, as much as we can, get ahead of it, to give you the
resources, the instruments that you need to go out and make
sure that we are preventing things from happening, not waiting
until after the fact.
There was a report of over 1,500 Iranian nationals that
have entered the country illegally over the last several years.
Do we know, out of those over 1,500, how many of those have
been convicted of a crime?
Attorney General Bondi. Yeah, I don't have the number of
the convictions. It is well over a thousand have entered, yes.
I don't know if it is quite up to 1,500. But, yes, it is well
over a thousand have entered our country. And I can tell you,
we are on high alert, and everyone is looking at that very
closely.
Mr. Gonzales. Some things just don't line up as far as us--
I see the world as on fire now more than ever before. Once
again, when this budget was submitted we were a Nation at
peace, and now things have changed.
I look at this. I see law enforcement and national security
has a reduction of $645 million, over 1,500 positions. The
notes I have: The FBI will implement cost-saving measures. The
largest decreases will be in criminal, cyber, response, and
service branches and national security branches.
FBI's criminal investigation, cyber, and international
operations will reduce resources and support various
investigations and partnership. Additionally, the
counterintelligence, counterterrorism, threat screening, and
weapons of mass destruction programs experience reductions.
I mention those things because those, in my eyes, those are
the programs that we need more resources to, more manpower to.
And not everything is about money. I mean, you have alluded
to this. A lot of times it is about being more efficient with
the things that you are doing.
I would love to hear your thoughts on some of the ways you
are looking to get ahead of any problem sets.
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you.
And we can do more with less. Of course, you can always do
more with more. But we are doing more with less. We are
prioritizing. We are refocusing. And the budget request
supports $7.5 billion for national security.
Also, that is why it is very important, I believe, for all
of you to support the Big Beautiful Bill. The One Big Beautiful
Bill gives us a lot of additional funding at the Department of
Justice to carry out our mission.
The Senate version gives us $11.82 billion. Currently, the
House version gives us $3.3 billion. Hopefully, they will come
to a compromise in there.
But that is where it will truly help Department of Justice
combat all of the issues that you brought up and many others.
And thank you for your service to our country, especially
now. I didn't realize that you had served in Iraq. Thank you.
Mr. Gonzales. Yeah. No. Of course. And thank you for saying
that. I mean, resources matter. And the Big Beautiful Bill, we
look forward to getting that to the President's desk as soon as
possible, once again, to give you the resources and the tools
you need to get ahead of these problems that we see so clearly
coming through.
I represent nearly half of the southern border. The border
is on my mind quite a bit.
One of the questions I have--I focus a lot on convicted
criminal illegal aliens. Do we know how many illegal aliens
have been convicted of a crime in the United States?
Attorney General Bondi. Yeah. I can get you those specific
numbers.
Mr. Gonzales. Great.
Attorney General Bondi. I don't know. But many, I can tell
you. Our prosecutors are indicting and charging illegal aliens
constantly--violent crimes, rapes, thefts, many crimes
throughout this country.
And, yes, our borders were wide open. And, Congressman,
back in September, I went to our border at Yuma, Arizona. Not
in Texas, but in Yuma. And at our border, what I saw firsthand,
we saw IDs just dropped from every country you can imagine. El
Salvador. Venezuela. China. Every country you can imagine.
And of course I didn't see Iranian driver's licenses, but
they are coming into our country. Yes, we know. That is
documented. But just walking into our country.
And that is why Homeland Security, that is why ICE, that is
why the FBI, that is why all of our agencies, DEA, ATF, are all
working hand in hand to combat that and to keep Americans safe.
And that is what President Trump is committed to doing.
Mr. Gonzales. Thank you.
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you.
Mr. Gonzales. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. Ms. DeLauro.
Ms. DeLauro. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Just a quick note before I get to my questions.
Fentanyl seizures are down 30 percent compared to last
year. And that data is coming from the Customs and Border
Patrol, CBP. I don't make it up. But fentanyl seizures are
down.
At your confirmation hearing you asserted that you will do
everything in your power to prevent illegal gunrunners in our
country. Your budget request for the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, ATF, proposes a cut of 26
percent below the current level.
How can you justify such a massive cut without inevitably
weakening ATF's ability to help our State and local law
enforcement fight illegal gun trafficking?
How many ATF law enforcement officers and industry
operations investigators do you anticipate will be lost to
attrition as a result of this funding reduction you are
proposing?
Attorney General Bondi. So I am a career prosecutor, and I
believe in keeping America safe, making America safe.
First, what we are doing is ATF is going to be brought over
with DEA. Everyone knows, everyone sitting up here, guns and
drugs go together. They go together. We are going to make it
more efficient.
What I will tell you will not be happening is ATF agents
will not be knocking on the doors of legal gun owners in the
middle of the night asking them about their guns. They are
going to be out on the street--if I can finish--they are going
to be out on the street----
Ms. DeLauro. Well, I have 3 minutes.
Attorney General Bondi. No, no, no. You asked me a
question.
Ms. DeLauro. I did, and you haven't answered my question.
Attorney General Bondi. Yoo asked me a question. Let me
answer it.
So they are going to be out on the streets working hand in
hand with DEA----
Ms. DeLauro. You haven't answered my question. You haven't
answered.
Mr. Chairman, I would like an answer to my question. And
the question is not being answered.
How many ATF law enforcement officers and industry
operations investigators do you anticipate will be lost to
attrition as a result of the funding reduction you are
proposing? You are proposing a 26 percent cut to ATF for fiscal
year 2026 as well as a 4.4 percent cut to DEA.
So you are going to merge the two agencies together, and
then you are going to shortchange their resources so neither
one of them will be able to do the job that they have been
designed to do.
You have got a 34 percent cut to the High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Areas program, no dedicated money at all for the
Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.
So my view, it is fair to say that the Trump administration
proposal shortchanges Federal efforts to stop illegal gun
trafficking and Federal efforts to stop the flow of dangerous
illegal drugs like fentanyl.
Attorney General Bondi. As I was attempting to answer your
question very calmly, unlike you, what--what the--what I was
saying----
Ms. DeLauro. Excuse me. Excuse me, Madam Attorney General.
Answer yes or no. Tell me what the numbers are. I don't want to
hear all of your filibustering about this. Go ahead. Please,
tell us the numbers.
Attorney General Bondi. So we are reorganizing. ATF agents
want to be out on the street working with DEA agents.
Ms. DeLauro. Okay. Let me answer the question for you. I am
going to answer it for you. Page----
Mr. Rogers. Let the witness answer the question.
Ms. DeLauro. Mr. Chairman, you give me a certain amount of
time, and I have a high respect for you, but I don't have to
listen, nor do my colleagues have to listen to a filibuster
when it is a simple question.
But I have an answer to your question. It is page 146 of
the Department's fiscal year 2026 budget. And the performance
summary explicitly says, and let me quote, ``ATF will eliminate
541 Industry Operations Investigators, reducing ATF's capacity
to regulate the firearms and explosives industries by
approximately 40 percent in fiscal year 2026. ATF will perform
fewer regulatory inspections.''
And the Department summary goes on to say, and let me
quote, ``ATF anticipates a reduction of approximately 284
support personnel and 186 agents, based on historical attrition
patterns, and these personnel cuts will impact ATF across
various functions,'' unquote.
If the capacity to regulate the firearms industry is
reduced by 40 percent, if you are losing 186 ATF law
enforcement agents on top of that, it is clear the direction
you are headed with this budget. That is what it is, isn't it?
The proposal will weaken our ability to stop gun trafficking,
and it will greatly reduce ATF support for State and local law
enforcement that helps them prevent and solve violent crimes.
It is a bad proposal.
Attorney General Bondi. Do you want to hear my answer in 3
seconds?
You mentioned regulatory functions. We will not be having
ATF agents go to the doors of gun owners in the middle of the
night, asking them about their guns. Period. They will be out
on the street with DEA, guns and----
Ms. DeLauro. How many are gone?
Attorney General Bondi. They will--we are--it will be
attrition. We are not firing agents who will be working----
Ms. DeLauro. How many have taken attrition?
Attorney General Bondi. Can I tell you that they all want
to be on the street? They want to be doing their jobs. They
want to be seizing guns.
Ms. DeLauro. But you are getting them off the street.
Attorney General Bondi. They want----
Ms. DeLauro. You are getting them off the street.
Attorney General Bondi. We are putting them on the street.
They want to be working with DEA.
Ms. DeLauro. You are getting them off the street. There is
no clear----
Attorney General Bondi. We will be efficient----
Ms. DeLauro. And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.
Mr. Rogers. Time of the gentlelady has expired.
Ms. DeLauro. I yield back my time. Let's get some answers
here.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Clyde.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Attorney General Bondi, for being here
today. You are, in my mind, a breath of fresh air to our
Department of Justice.
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you.
So thank you for your dedication to the Constitution and
for equal justice under the law. I am thoroughly impressed with
your experience and how you have handled the Department of
Justice so far.
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you.
Mr. Clyde. As we all know, under the Biden-Harris
administration the Department of Justice, FBI, and ATF were
dangerously weaponized to target President Trump and everyday
Americans, tactics more fitting of an authoritarian regime than
a constitutional republic.
From politically persecuting President Trump, then-
President Biden's chief political rival, to going after pro-
life advocates, like Mark Houck, the actions of Attorney
General Garland, Director Wray, and the DOJ leadership were
unacceptable and unconstitutional, in my opinion.
That is why I was very encouraged to see the President's
fiscal year 2026 budget commit to ending the weaponization
within the Department of Justice and the FBI.
And so can you elaborate for me how has the Trump
administration's DOJ shifted away from politically motivated
investigations and refocused on its core mission, prosecuting
the most dangerous criminals?
And you mentioned that a little bit in your opening
remarks. So if you can focus on the moving away part, I would
appreciate it.
Attorney General Bondi. Yeah. Thank you, Congressman Clyde,
and thank you for that.
And also our budget includes $1.2 billion and 2,444 agents
for ATF, and those agents will be on the street with DEA. And
thank you for letting me answer that question.
Mr. Clyde. Yes, ma'am.
Attorney General Bondi. And we are prioritizing resources
addressing illegal firearms and traffickers, and we will reduce
unnecessary regulatory efforts, including what I just said
about the weaponization. That is how ATF, I believe, was
weaponized in the prior administration.
Also, they were arresting peaceful protesters, the Biden
administration, at abortion facilities. No longer. They
targeted Catholics at church services. No longer. No longer
will parents be arrested at school board meetings because they
care about their children.
That has ended under this Department. That is why Donald
Trump won the popular vote and the electoral college by
overwhelming margins. He made that crystal clear, and that is
what is happening now in our country.
That weaponization has ended. These ATF agents will be on
the street fighting drugs. I have been a career prosecutor. ATF
has taken thousands of guns off the streets since January 20,
working hand in hand with DEA. Drugs and guns go together.
Core function. No more targeting and weaponizing our
citizens by any of the agencies, Congressman.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you. Thank you for that commitment.
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you.
Mr. Clyde. I was delighted to see that the Department of
Justice's fiscal year 2026 budget also included a dedicated
fund for a firearm rights restoration initiative.
Can you describe this initiative a little bit and any other
steps that your Department is taking to restore the Second
Amendment rights to Americans who were unlawfully or unjustly
stripped of them by prior administrations? Can you talk about
that a little bit, please?
Attorney General Bondi. Yes, Congressman. And that is a--
the pardon power, of course, falls with the President. And he
has been doing many pardons on that topic, and he will continue
to do that, I am certain.
Also, one other thing about ATF is our seizure of firearms
is up 33 percent from this time last year.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you.
Attorney General Bondi. I wanted to add that. Thank you.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you.
I was going to ask you about the merger of DEA and the ATF
and kind of if you would elaborate on that. You have talked a
little bit about it already.
One thing that I think is very important is that the ATF
and Federal firearms licensees work together, because truly
FFLs are the front line when it comes to illegal purchases and
just the information that is out there.
And we can help each other as long as we have a good
relationship with each other. And during the last
administration, it was a terrifying relationship. I mean, you
had the zero tolerance against Federal firearms licensees.
I am sorry, we are all human. Everybody makes mistakes. And
they are not intentional. They are just mistakes.
And when you can lose your livelihood and you can lose your
business and your employees can lose their jobs over simple
mistakes, that is a real problem, especially when, if you think
about Federal firearms licensees, they are the pathway to the
Second Amendment of the Constitution. They enable individual
participation in the protection of liberty. I mean, that is
what Federal firearms licensees do.
So I think it is really important to have that critical
relationship between ATF and the Federal firearms licensees.
When the inspectors, when the ATF went from the Treasury to
the Department of Justice and the inspection side of it, when
the IOIs, when they were--industry operations inspectors--when
they became industry operations investigators, when you
investigate crime, you really inspect records. That was
concerning to me.
So my thought was maybe we could move the IOIs to the
Department of Commerce. But just would get your thought on
that.
Attorney General Bondi. Yeah. And, Congressman, that is the
first time I have heard about that. I would love to meet with
you and learn more about that.
Mr. Clyde. Great. I look forward to it.
Attorney General Bondi. And thank you for asking about the
ATF-DEA merger.
In the world in which we live, bureaucracy has been around
for a very long time, and just because things have been done
one way for decades and decades doesn't mean that is the most
efficient way to do them in the future.
And I am a career prosecutor. I care about ATF. I went to
ATF's memorial service. We are doing everything we can to put
those ATF agents on the street where they want to be.
Anyone in modern day history--the years of Prohibition are
over. ATF, they want to be on the street. They want to be
working hand in hand with DEA. That is what they do. No
redundancy, no repeat of investigations. They are going to be
working together. And that is what this reorganization does.
They are all going to be--it is going to be a great
marriage between those two agencies. They are working hand in
hand on task forces already. Now they will be working under one
umbrella and it is going to be great for our country.
Mr. Rogers. Time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you very much.
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you.
Mr. Clyde. I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Ivey.
Mr. Ivey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I wanted to follow up on what Congressman Gonzales raised
with you with respect to the new environment that we are in now
with the--essentially at war with Iran.
A few weeks ago, your FBI Director sat in the same chair
and said that he thought in the budget that has been proposed
they are about $11.2 billion short. He wanted an additional
1,100 positions that were lost to attrition and 1,300 he wanted
to have filled. That is before the scenario with Iran.
Now, I know you submitted the budget already and you want
to stick with it. But please take another look. This is a new
environment. I think the points that the Congressman raised are
very valid with respect to the issue of sleeper cells and
threats domestically here.
Taking FBI agents off the street now is a bad--there isn't
a worse possible time you could do it. So please reconsider
that and move in a different direction on that, because we need
more of them on the street, not fewer.
Ms. DeLauro was raising issues with respect to your budget,
the IOI cuts and the 86 agents that are going to be cut, too.
And the concern I have on that front, I know you are saying we
need--they want to be on the street--but there are ATF agents
that do things that aren't on the street.
So, like, for example, the NIBIN work where they match the
cartridges to the guns is critical. And I am very concerned
that some of the cuts you are going to make are going to impact
that.
And the NIBIN pieces are critical for State and local law
enforcement, like you used to be, because a lot of them don't
have the resources to track it down. And the information that
they can get, you can turn it around in 48 hours.
So the man who attempted to assassinate now-President
Trump, the connection that was made was through this apparatus,
this approach. Same thing with the Minnesota assassin.
So that is an area where we can't afford to have those kind
of cuts, I don't think, at this time.
And the performance of fewer regulatory inspections. I had
gun dealers in my district who needed those inspections to take
place, and important findings have been made, certainly with
respect to tracking crime guns and cracking down on gun dealers
who are working illicitly.
I am not saying they all do. I mean, many of them operate
in the right way. But the only way to track it down is through
inspections that have to be aggressive.
And by the way, even under the current regime--or the
previous regime--I think some of them didn't get inspections
for maybe every 10 years or so. So it wasn't like it is a
constant harassment piece.
But I have got some folks here in the corner of the hearing
room who are from my district, Moms Demand Action, DMV Mothers
Like Me, Women's Missionary Society. I met with them a few
weeks ago, and the concern was the issue of gun violence on our
streets and the desire to make sure that the Federal presence
continues to push hard to make sure we close those cases.
You are reducing resources. You are taking--reducing the
number of agents, as Mr. Patel said. That is moving in the
opposite direction.
What response would you give to them with respect to the
steps that you are taking to make sure not only that we stay
safe, but we get even safer and do even more to get violent
offenders off the street and get the guns off the street before
the violent offenders get them?
Attorney General Bondi. So, first, Congressman Ivey, you
are a former prosecutor, and I am smiling because I could see
that in some of your questions. Thank you for those questions.
I am going to try to answer them all in order of how you asked
them.
You asked about the FBI. Our budget--and Director Patel
clarified that in front of the Senate, I think, and our budget
includes $10.1 billion, 12,926 agents for the FBI.
Mr. Ivey. I think ``clarification'' would be gentle. It was
a complete flip-flop on what he said when he was here.
Attorney General Bondi. So they prioritize----
Mr. Ivey. And he was asked three times by Ms. DeLauro, just
to make sure that he was right about what he had said when he
was testifying.
Attorney General Bondi. They prioritize realignment of
personnel to the field to carry out national security, which
you just talked about, intelligence, criminal law enforcement,
and criminal justice missions.
The budget----
Mr. Ivey. Can I do this?
Attorney General Bondi. Can I just keep--I only have 34
seconds to answer you, and I really want to answer.
Mr. Ivey. I have got three quick questions for you, and I
would love to get your answers----
Attorney General Bondi. You are asking three questions, and
you haven't let me answer one.
Mr. Ivey. I would love to get your answers in writing.
Attorney General Bondi. I want to talk about NIBIN.
Mr. Ivey. Quick question.
Attorney General Bondi. NIBIN.
Mr. Ivey. When you were the attorney general in Florida----
Attorney General Bondi. Chairman, can I answer the
question?
Mr. Ivey [continuing]. You offered after the Parkland
shooting----
Mr. Rogers. If the gentleman will suspend.
Mr. Ivey. I believe this is my time under the rules and I
had----
Mr. Rogers. If the gentleman will suspend momentarily.
Ms. DeLauro. Stop the clock.
Mr. Ivey. Can we stop the clock?
Ms. DeLauro. Stop the clock at a different----
Mr. Rogers. Let's be respectful of each other.
Mr. Ivey. Mr. Chairman, what I just said was, if you could
submit your answers in writing, that would be great. I don't
think I have made any kind of statement that has been
accusatory with respect to her or her professional reputation.
There has been no attack on her. These were just questions that
were asked. I am seeking the answers in writing, which would be
great. But I have a couple others I would like to ask, too, and
we will do them on----
Mr. Rogers. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Ivey. No, it hasn't. You cut me off when there were 30
seconds left. Yeah. So----
Well, that is true, too. A couple of you all went over,
like, a minute and a half.
Ms. DeLauro. Congressman Clyde went over almost 2 minutes.
Mr. Ivey. I just would like my 30 seconds back. And then if
she can submit answers in writing, that will be fine, but, you
know--but I want to get these questions in while she is here.
Mr. Rogers. Submit your questions.
Ms. DeLauro. Go ahead. No, no, no.
Chairman----
Mr. Ivey. I want to ask the questions, and she can submit
the answers.
This is my 5 minutes. I get to do it the way I want to do
it under the committee rules and under the House rules. These
are my 5 minutes. And as I said, I have not been disrespectful
to this witness. I have not.
Ms. DeLauro. Go ahead.
Mr. Ivey. Okay. When you were the attorney general in
Florida, after the Parkland shooting, my understanding is that
you moved to ban guns--gun sales to people under 21. Is that a
position that you would take now as the Attorney General? I
have a bill, H.R. 2368, which does something like that. I would
be interested if you would be willing to cosponsor--or support
that bill.
You also moved to enact red flag laws, allowing a judge
temporarily to confiscate weapons when he or she viewed that
the person was at risk of hurting himself or someone else. Is
that a position you would continue to support now?
And the last one is ghost guns. Ghost guns--I don't think
you took a position on it back when you were the AG in Florida.
But we have had two bills come through here in the Congress,
all Democratic cosponsors. I think there is no argument that
ghost guns have any, you know, appropriate use on the street.
They only help criminals avoid prosecution. Would you support a
legislative ban on ghost guns?
And, with that, I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Strong.
Mr. Strong. Thank you, Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member
Meng, for having this hearing today. I would also like to thank
the subcommittee staff for their hard work.
Attorney General Bondi, thank you for being here today. I
commend you for your efforts to prioritize President Trump's
America First agenda and commitment to making America safe
again.
As you know, I represent Alabama's Fifth Congressional
District, which includes Huntsville and Redstone Arsenal. I am
especially supportive of the FBI Director Patel's plan for the
continued movement of FBI personnel to north Alabama. My
district has repeatedly answered the call to support our law
enforcement agencies with a second-to-none workforce, cutting-
edge facilities, and room for growth.
Attorney General Bondi, do you support the FBI's plan to
move additional personnel and programs to Redstone Arsenal and
out of the Beltway?
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you, Congressman, for your
question.
And, yes, we are moving 500 additional personnel from D.C.
to Alabama to Redstone. Redstone is a state-of-the-art
facility. It will enhance everything we do, training for FBI,
training for other employees. And Huntsville provides the most
cost-effective location with a distinct partnership
opportunity, and we support all of that that is happening, and
I look forward to visiting it one day.
Could I have a couple minutes to answer a couple of your
fellow Congressman's questions?
Mr. Strong. Please do. I will yield.
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you. He asked me about--he
asked me about NIBIN, and yet he didn't want to hear my answer.
NIBIN means National Integrated Ballistics Enforcement Network.
I am very aware of that. We are not cutting that. ATF is
receiving $66 million. It is an important program. And I know
he would not intentionally attempt to mislead anyone by saying
that I am trying to cut that, but that is not being cut.
I am a career prosecutor. I have used that, and I am sure
he has used it as a prosecutor. It is an important program that
provides critical support to 7,200 State and local partners we
work with. It is a key element to combat violent crime and
firearms. So I am a huge supporter of NIBIN, and we will
continue to do that.
You asked me to talk to moms. I will always speak to moms
in my office and any environment. Yes. And I lived the Parkland
shooting. I still talk to and meet with all of those families,
both Democrat and Republican alike. I will continue to do that
as a career prosecutor.
Speaking of moms, I am sure you met with--I am sure you met
with Patty Morin. She is the mom of a murdered woman in your
district. I am sure you met with her. I am sure he met with
Tammy Nobles. Kayla Hamilton--that was her daughter who got
murdered. So yes, I am willing to meet with any mom from any
side of the aisle.
And thank you, Congressman, for letting me correct that.
Mr. Strong. Absolutely.
Mr. Ivey. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. Strong. I have got--I want to move to my questions.
In my district, we have the FBI, the ATF, and DHS working
together to address bombing incidents and use of explosives.
The FBI's Hazardous Devices School and Terrorist Explosive
Device Analytical Center, effectually known as TEDAC, the ATF's
National Center for Explosives Training and Research, and the
U.S. Bomb Data Center are all located at Redstone Arsenal.
As mentioned, ATF's National Center for Explosives and
Training Research is a world-class facility located at
Redstone. The center provides remarkable training facilities
and specializes in lifesaving explosives and arsons training.
Can you discuss how merging the ATF with the DEA will
streamline their activities while ensuring their critical and
unique capabilities are maintained?
Attorney General Bondi. Yes, absolutely. And, yes, the
National Center for Explosives Training and Research at
Redstone--it is pretty remarkable what they do. They oversee
the canine operations, I believe, as well as the criminal
profiling, the explosives, the arson investigations, and I look
forward to working with you. I look forward to visiting that. I
really want to go to that facility.
Yeah. There are no cuts planned for that. And that is where
ATF and DEA, again, can partner together. The drugs and the
guns go together. Those agents will be working hand in hand.
The bureaucracy at the top will be gone. There will be no
redundancy. They will be working hand in hand at that facility
and many others throughout our country. Thank you.
Mr. Strong. Ms. Attorney General, I just want to thank you
for how you represent yourself and you represent this country.
It is a hard task, what you have to do. You represent
Democrats, Republicans. But what you have done in these first 5
months, have reestablished the American people's belief in what
the DOJ is to do for the American people.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Morelle.
Mr. Morelle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Meng, for holding this important hearing, and thank you,
Attorney General Bondi, for appearing before us today.
Madam Attorney General, I serve, in addition to the
Appropriations Committee, as the ranking member of the
Committee on House Administration. I sent you a letter last
week along with my Republican counterpart, Chairman Brian
Steil, requesting an increase in Federal prosecutorial
resources to address threats against Members of Congress,
particularly in light of what happened last week in Minnesota--
that tragedy.
In 2024, the U.S. Capitol Police identified and received
nearly 9,500 concerning statements or threats against Members.
Federal prosecutors have only secured eight convictions so far,
and the heightened threat environment demands an all-hands-on-
deck approach.
Will you commit to assigning an assistant U.S. attorney or
special assistant U.S. attorney to each of the 94 Federal
districts to, at least on a part-time basis, investigate and
prosecute threats against Members of Congress?
Attorney General Bondi. So thank you for bringing that up,
and I take that very seriously. Not only what happened in
Minnesota was horrible; I have spoken to Keith Ellison. I have
spoken to Amy Klobuchar about that. It is horrible. We are
involved in that. The FBI was involved. Our U.S. attorneys are
involved.
Many of these are district-to-district. So the way we are
doing that is--I will tell you my national security division is
involved in all of those and assisting in those. We meet every
single morning and we discuss that. But many of those--
Minnesota--will be handled in the State in which it happened.
Another one is----
Mr. Morelle. So, ma'am----
Attorney General Bondi. I am sorry. If I could keep going.
I am sorry. I don't mean to----
Mr. Morelle. Quickly, though.
Attorney General Bondi [continuing]. Filibuster.
Governor Shapiro and what happened in Pennsylvania with
Governor Shapiro. I have spoken to Governor Shapiro. We are
working hand in hand--our U.S. attorney with the district
attorney there--hand in hand just like in Minnesota. I made
sure our U.S. attorney and our district attorneys there were
working hand in hand. Political party doesn't matter when
something like this happens, and I also want to make sure all
Members of Congress are safe as well.
Mr. Morelle. Okay. And I would reiterate Chairman Steil and
I--I think Chairman Steil and I agree that at least a part-time
in each of the 94 districts would be appropriate.
Let me change topics for just a moment. As I said--I am
sorry.
Attorney General Bondi. And just really quick on that. Yes.
We are doing that through our national security division, so I
think that is already in the works. And I would be glad to meet
with you in a secure facility to talk about that.
Mr. Morelle. Very good. Thank you.
Continuing, in addition to my role here, the committee that
I serve on as an authorizer oversees Capitol security as well
as Federal elections, so I am closely following the aftermath
of January 6. Recently, several defendants who received
Presidential pardons related to that day are now arguing in
court that the pardon covers crimes like, for instance, illegal
firearm possession discovered in a search of an individual's
home in California months after January 6.
What is your position on whether the pardons cover these
separate offenses?
Attorney General Bondi. Yeah. The pardon power rests with
the President, not the Department of Justice. And some of that
is pending litigation, and I cannot discuss pending litigation.
Mr. Morelle. Well, I am not asking you about who has the
right to a pardon. I think as the Department of Justice, in
February, wrote, ``The pardon is an act of grace which removes
the punishment from a crime a person has committed.''
It further said, ``In its effect, the granting of a pardon
is, in no sense, the overturning of a judgment of a conviction.
It is an executive action that mitigates or sets aside
punishment.''
So, as the chief law enforcement officer, what is your
opinion? Not the President's power of whether he can offer a
pardon. That is pretty clear in the Constitution. But, for
crimes committed unrelated to January 6, would you suggest that
the pardons would cover activities or crimes potentially
committed outside of that by the same person?
Attorney General Bondi. Well, I don't know if you are
referring to Joe Biden pardoning his son after he said he would
not pardon Hunter Biden or the communization of all the----
Mr. Morelle. No, I am actually referring to January 6. I am
sorry.
Attorney General Bondi [continuing]. All the sentences
that--the people that were on death row. I have met with those
families. All of those sentences were commuted. I am not going
to comment on pardons on either side of the aisle.
Mr. Morelle. So, well, I am not asking about either side. I
am asking--you are the chief law enforcement officer in the
United States. You have a responsibility directly. You swore an
oath to the Constitution, not the President. I want to know
what your views are on the extent to which pardons cover
potential are crimes committed by individuals who have been
pardoned but unrelated to January 6.
Attorney General Bondi. Do you mean the ones that were done
by the autopen? I am not going to discuss anything that could
be or not be pending litigation.
Mr. Morelle. All right. Mr. Chairman, I respectfully--you
know, Ms. DeLauro accused you of filibuster, and I think that
is the height of filibuster.
This is a serious, serious topic, and for you to suggest
that you don't have an opinion or to divert to other things
that had nothing to do with January 6 pardons, I think it is
frankly demeaning to your responsibilities and your job.
With that, I will yield back.
Mr. Rogers. The gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Cline.
Mr. Cline. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Attorney General, thank you for being here today.
You know, when I am home in my district talking to my
constituents, they are concerned about their safety. They are
concerned about the safety of their communities, the safety of
their neighborhoods. And, as we have spoken many times, under
your leadership, the DOJ has taken decisive steps to restore
the rule of law, to tackle violent crime, and to hold both
foreign and domestic bad actors accountable.
I read your opening statement, and I just wanted to give
you an opportunity to go back again and talk about--in light of
4 years of open borders, the drugs that are coming in, the sex
trafficking, the human trafficking, the gangs that have moved
in, the terrorism that has infiltrated the United States, the
sleeper cells that may or may not be present in this country,
the political prosecutions that we saw over the 4 years of the
Biden Administration, the fact that we are restoring integrity
to the office and the rule of law--can you restate for my
constituents how the actions of the Department of Justice and
your agencies are keeping them safe?
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you, Congressman. And we have
also been working hand in hand on a task force with your
governor, with Governor Youngkin, and we really--we started a
task force with Governor Youngkin, and that is something that
we would like to take to every single State, both Democrat and
Republican. And that is how we have been able to fight these
gangs, these transnational cartels, these organizations--these
criminal organizations, and it was really remarkable. One of
the top members of TDA was living 20 minutes from where we are
sitting right now in Virginia.
And working hand in hand regardless of political party with
State and local law enforcement officers throughout the State
of Virginia, we were able to dismantle a major, major gang. And
there are so many gang members, and he was another one who was
living there. I think when he was arrested, he had multiple--
and ATF was involved in that--multiple guns when he was
arrested, but he did not have any of the drugs on him. He had
insulated himself because he was one of the leaders of the
criminal organization.
And so these task forces working together with the State of
Virginia have been remarkable. So that is one way to break it
down--what we have done, and we are just so proud of the
partnership that we have had with your State dismantling the
gangs, the guns, the drugs, and we will continue to do that.
Mr. Cline. And, when you have that partnership, you can get
a lot done.
Attorney General Bondi. You can get so much done.
Mr. Cline. You can secure a safer community for the people
living here. When you have sanctuary States like California who
are preventing you from actually getting in there and actually
getting the gangs off the streets, getting the drugs and the
human trafficking off the streets, that hurts the people of
those States.
You know, when the streets of Los Angeles descended into
scenes more fitting of a failed State than a major American
city--mobs setting fire to police cruisers and looting entire
city blocks, videos online showing American flags being burned
and the flags of foreign nations being flown, some carried by
riders proudly waving them through smoke-filled streets.
The Department of Homeland Security has revealed new data
saying that ICE law enforcement is now facing a 500 percent
increase in assaults while carrying out enforcement operations.
Can you describe what actions you have taken to hold these
sanctuary jurisdictions accountable? And I have a couple
questions after that.
Attorney General Bondi. Yeah. Thank you.
To California specifically--and we have made it very clear.
If you spit--I believe it was an ICE officer. Someone spit on
him. We charged them federally. We will charge you if you spit
on a law enforcement officer. If you loot, under the Hobbs Act,
that is a robbery, and we will charge you with robbery. We are
going after the maximum penalty federally for anyone who
touches a Federal agent, and we are also going to protect our
State and local law enforcement agencies and officers.
The men and women every day around this country, whether it
is a blue or red or purple State, are out there fighting crime.
That is what they care about. They care about keeping every
single one of us safe. That is what they are doing. They care
about preventing drug abuse and drug overdoses throughout this
country, and they jeopardize their lives every single day to
keep us safe, and we are going to do everything in our power to
fight for them.
Mr. Cline. Do you think that these sanctuary
jurisdictions--these cities or States should be receiving law
enforcement grants if they refuse to uphold the law?
Attorney General Bondi. That is pending litigation,
Congressman, and I can't discuss that right now.
Mr. Cline. I think the answer should be no, but I will
leave that to the judges and to this committee to decide. Thank
you.
Mr. Rogers. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Ms. Dean.
Ms. Dean. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you, Ranking Member.
Thank you and welcome, Attorney General Bondi. I just
wonder--sincerely wonder--do you hear how hollow your last
words sound in light of the pardon of all of the January 6
people day one of this administration? I believe you are
sincere. You want to protect law enforcement. But your
principal, the President, pardoned every single one on January
6.
It rings hollow when you say these words that if you spit
on a police officer, we are going to go after you. Talk to my
friends who are Capitol Police officers who were here, five of
whom are no longer here. They are dead. And this
administration--and I guess I want to ask you. Did you have any
advice for the President when he came forward with the blanket
pardon on January 20? What advice did you offer the President?
Attorney General Bondi. I am never going to talk about
conversations, advice in any way----
Ms. Dean. Were you asked for advice?
Attorney General Bondi. I am never going to talk about
discussions I have had or have not had----
Ms. Dean. Because you will remember----
Attorney General Bondi [continuing]. If I can answer--with
the President of the United States.
Ms. Dean. Yes or no. Did you give him any advice? Yes or
no.
Attorney General Bondi. I am not going to discuss any
conversations----
Ms. Dean. That is a no.
Attorney General Bondi [continuing]. That I have had with--
you just put words in my mouth. I am not going to discuss----
Ms. Dean. No, I am going to reveal your own words.
Attorney General Bondi. I am not going to discuss
conversations----
Ms. Dean. Please stop. Please stop. This is my time.
Attorney General Bondi [continuing]. That I have had with
the President of the United States. You asked me a question----
Ms. Dean. Attorney General.
I would like to reclaim the last 20 seconds.
Attorney General Bondi [continuing]. And you have asked me
to answer.
Ms. Dean. I have asked to reclaim my time. Please put 20
seconds back on the clock.
Mr. Clyde. You can have an extra 30.
Mr. Rogers. If the gentle----
Ms. Dean. She answered and then answered it again and
answered it again with a nonanswer.
Ms. DeLauro. It is a filibuster.
Ms. Dean. I ask for your consideration of putting time on.
Mr. Rogers. If the gentlelady will let the witness answer
the question, we will resume.
Ms. Dean. She answered it by saying no. Okay.
The three hallmarks of this administration are
incompetence, corruption, and cruelty. I am going to focus
today on corruption. And, in my mind, there are two types of
corruption: personal, and then the other I am going to call
public, governmental.
Attorney General, have you ever been registered as an agent
of a foreign principal under the Foreign Agents Registration
Act?
Attorney General Bondi. I assume you are talking about when
I represented the country of Qatar for a very short time----
Ms. Dean. The answer is yes.
Attorney General Bondi [continuing]. Hold on. Hold on. No.
For anti-human trafficking for the World Cup. Anti-human
trafficking for the World Cup.
Ms. Dean. Yes or no. Attorney General----
Attorney General Bondi. You can't put words in my mouth. If
you want to talk about incompetence, you are the one that said
Joe Biden on PBS was competent. You had to retract those words.
So don't talk to me--don't insult me publicly.
Ms. Dean. This is so discourteous. This is so outside the
committee's guidelines. Taking a personal shot at me while
swiping at Biden? Very strange and very unprofessional of you.
The answer is yes or no, and the answer is yes. You were
registered as a lobbyist for Qatar. Is that correct? Yes. Never
mind. Don't answer.
Did you disclose that when you went before the Senate for
confirmation? Yes or no? No, it was not in your documents. The
answer is no.
President Trump----
Attorney General Bondi. This was discussed at my
confirmation hearings in detail.
Ms. Dean. Well, it was discussed, but you failed to bring
up the conflicts that you had.
President Trump recently announced he would accept that
$400-million Qatar airplane because it was just prettier than
the one he was flying around in. Is it true that you gave
advice that this was legally permissible? Yes or no?
Attorney General Bondi. I will not discuss any advice that
my Office of Legal Counsel gives to the President of the United
States on any matter.
Ms. Dean. When you spoke before the Senate, you said you
would ask for ethical advice. Did you recuse yourself from that
issue?
Attorney General Bondi. And talking about unprofessional,
you say the President wanted a jet because it is pretty? Come
on. This is a Senate--this is a congressional hearing.
Ms. Dean. He said it himself. He said it himself.
Let me go to April the 2nd. You are a part of this--you
know, the President has dabbled in memecoin. He had you, the
DOJ, disband the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team. His
son recently launched the Executive Branch Club, a private club
with $500,000 memberships here in D.C.
Any of this seem like it might be a problem--might be
profiteering from the office and maybe you and your ethics team
might be concerned about these conflicts of interest, your own
and the President and his family? Yes or no? Any concerns?
Attorney General Bondi. What I would be concerned about in
Pennsylvania are all the child sex cases that we have
prosecuted, and all the CSAM cases that we have prosecuted in
Pennsylvania.
Ms. Dean. Did you hear my question?
Attorney General Bondi. That is what I would be concerned
about.
Ms. Dean. I ask the witness to actually answer questions
that are asked----
Attorney General Bondi. Congresswoman Dean----
Ms. Dean [continuing]. Chairman.
Mr. Rogers. Please let the witness answer the question.
Ms. Dean. She didn't.
And I would like to ask you one more question. You are not
just complicit in this. You are actively helping and profiting.
Isn't it true that on April the 2nd, the same day that
Trump announced his chaotic tariff regime that plummeted the
stock market, you sold more than $1 million worth of your
shares in Trump Media stock? Trump Media stock fell 13 percent
in the following days. It seems you avoided that loss. Well
done.
I yield back.
Attorney General Bondi. May I answer that, Chairman?
I complied with my ethics. And yeah, I would take a class
in financial literacy if you think I profited from that because
I lost a tremendous amount of money, Congresswoman.
And, also, on page 25 of my S.J. 2, it lists my involvement
with Qatar for anti-human trafficking for the World Cup. Thank
you.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Moore.
Mr. Moore. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
holding the hearing.
Thank you, Attorney General Bondi, for being here.
You just mentioned this previously and--obviously, as you
are aware about the recently uncovered information about the
FBI's egregious, politically motivated, anti-Catholic field
memo which was disseminated to more than 1,000 employees. The
Biden Administration claimed that this memo only was circulated
at the Richmond Field Office. It is now clear that this memo
went much beyond just that one field office.
This was a memo that suggested that Catholics, based on
their theological beliefs and practices, were radical and that
their traditional parishes were vectors for extremism. The FBI
went so far as to infiltrate and spy on Sunday masses.
So Attorney General Bondi, I am grateful for your efforts
to combat anti-Christian bias, including the task force you
recently stood up. It is clear from both the original leaked
memo and the additional documentation that has been released
that extremist Southern Poverty Law Center was the basis for
this anti-Catholic bigotry coming from the FBI.
Will you commit to not use the Southern Poverty Law Center
to determine who is a hate group?
Attorney General Bondi. Committed to working with you on
that, Congressman. And thank you for bringing that up about--
yeah, that was--that was horrible, what happened to Catholics,
in that memo. It didn't just happen to Catholics, of course. It
happened to parents at school boards. It happened to people who
were peacefully protesting at abortion clinics. That is the end
of weaponization under the Trump administration.
Mr. Moore. Thank you for that, Attorney General Bondi.
What additional resources can this committee provide to
further execute your efforts to eradicate anti-Christian bias
in the Federal Government?
Attorney General Bondi. Yeah. We are committed to working
with you. Our Civil Rights Division led by Harmeet Dhillon is
doing an incredible job working on those issues and many more.
Our Civil Rights Division--I met with her this morning. I talk
to them almost daily. And they are working to protect people of
all religions.
And, you know, especially now--I am actually surprised that
hasn't come up yet this morning--but in light of everything
happening with Israel, all of the anti-Semitic things that have
been happening around our country. I went to the crime scene
here in D.C. of two young people who were leaving a Jewish
museum and were gunned down simply because of their religion.
It was horrific. It was horrific. And then in Boulder,
Colorado, when a Holocaust survivor was firebombed--lit on fire
because she was Jewish.
And so, it is not only Catholics. It is every religion and
even mosques that were slow-walked under the Biden
Administration and not allowed to open. We will protect every
religion in this country.
Mr. Moore. Thank you for your commitment to that, and I
truly appreciate, and I think everybody of faith in the United
States appreciates that.
And I just want to switch gears real quick to just another
topic. In 2022, the D.C. Metropolitan Police recovered the
remains of five unborn children apparently from a D.C. abortion
mill which appeared to be the victims--these five remains that
were found--victims of a brutal partial-birth abortion. As you
know, Congress passed a bipartisan law outlawing this gruesome
practice in the early 2000s.
Public reporting suggests that the President--President
Biden's DOJ directed the D.C. chief medical examiner to destroy
the remains of the children without performing an autopsy,
which the CME appears not to have done yet.
General Bondi, will you commit to working with me and this
committee to conduct a full and fair investigation into the
deaths of these children to ensure justice is served for the
D.C. Five?
Attorney General Bondi. Yeah. And, Congressman, that is an
ongoing investigation and pending; so I cannot discuss that in
this forum.
But, on a collateral matter, the woman who retrieved those
five fetuses was convicted and she was pardoned by President
Trump. And they were--basically, unborn babies is what is
alleged in the--but I can't discuss it any further.
Mr. Moore. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you, Attorney General Bondi. I yield back.
Mr. Rogers. Mr. Mrvan.
Mr. Mrvan. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you, Ranking Member.
Attorney General, thank you for joining us today.
Our law enforcement officers, first responders, and local
safety agencies are the backbone of our communities. In
northwest Indiana, I have worked hard to bring critical Federal
grant dollars home, funds that directly support the brave men
and women who protect us every day. Unfortunately, funding for
2025 has been rescinded, weakening our public safety framework
and making our neighborhoods less safe.
I firsthand have a positive impact in securing dollars and
investments for Gary, Indiana, East Chicago, Lake County, and
Michigan City that were force multipliers that were technology
such as license plate readers and COPS grant. I am asking you
today, what can we do to ensure that those funds are going to
continue to flow to my district and in light of the HIDTA?
I am in northwest Indiana. Gary, Indiana. We are a HIDTA
district. We have the Chicago traffic. That is vitally
important to my district. I just need commitments that that
funding will continue to be going forward and that our agencies
will have that support.
Attorney General Bondi. Congressman, thank you for bringing
that up. I am well aware of the HIDTA. I believe that is in
Merrillville. Is that correct?
Mr. Mrvan. You are correct.
Attorney General Bondi. And, yes, that funding will remain
where it is. We do not intend on touching that funding. We want
to protect HIDTA.
Mr. Mrvan. Very good.
So, in light of the escalation with Iran, part of our
cybersecurity and our infrastructure when it comes to our
electric grid, our banking systems--that is a new threat. Does
this budget reflect increasing our cybersecurity protections,
and how is the Department of Justice going to protect our
infrastructure when it comes to bad actors such as Iran coming
directly at our infrastructure in a cyber attack?
Attorney General Bondi. Yeah. We have $50 million for
cybersecurity. And also, in the One Big Beautiful----
Mr. Mrvan. With an M? 50 million?
Attorney General Bondi. Fifty million. Yeah.
Mr. Mrvan. Okay.
Attorney General Bondi. But, also, in the One Big Beautiful
Bill, it is also addressed to give us more resources. And, you
know, it is not only Iran. As you well know, it is China as
well.
Mr. Mrvan. Right.
Attorney General Bondi. But yes, I wholeheartedly agree
with you, Congressman.
Mr. Mrvan. In the reconciliation--tomato, tomato.
In the reconciliation bill, can you tell me what more
resources are going to go towards cybersecurity? Because I was
under the impression that was decreased.
Attorney General Bondi. Can I get you--I will get you those
numbers.
Mr. Mrvan. Okay. Yes.
Attorney General Bondi. And I want to do everything I can
to help you protect cybersecurity--all of us in this country--
not only, again, with Iran but also with China and all of our
foreign adversaries around the world.
Mr. Mrvan. Okay. And then just a question of curiosity that
I have. Director Patel was here a couple weeks ago, and we
talked about the emails that went to the FBI agents, meaning
please tell us what you did at the end of the week. Give us
five reasons why you did.
At first, Director Patel said that that didn't exist. Then
he specifically said, Well, that came from the Department of
Justice to the FBI agents and I--his words--I told them not to
fulfill that obligation.
How do you manage that if you give a directive to your
director of FBI and he chooses not to fulfill that, and where
did that information go? So, when someone from the FBI--an
agent fulfilled that obligation of giving you the information
of what they were working on, where did that data go and how is
it secured?
Attorney General Bondi. Yeah. And, Congressman, I would be
happy to see who answered that, but I have asked--I asked--when
I learned about it, I asked that it be withdrawn, and it was--
that email.
Mr. Mrvan. When you learned about the email going to the
FBI agents, you asked them to withdraw it. Who did you ask to
have it withdrawn?
Attorney General Bondi. My entire office, and it was.
Mr. Mrvan. So it is unknown who sent that email?
Attorney General Bondi. Well, the office--it came from my
office. But, when I learned it went to the FBI, we asked that
it be withdrawn.
Mr. Mrvan. Where is the gap of my understanding if it came
from your office? You are telling me you didn't send it?
Attorney General Bondi. I didn't realize it went to the
FBI. That email went out. And the purpose of that email was to
make sure--just so you know, it wasn't--it was to make sure
that these people were sitting at their desk and working and
alive, that there were people actually responding.
Mr. Mrvan. Okay. And I agree.
Attorney General Bondi. It could have been I got up and got
a cup of coffee. That was the purpose.
Mr. Mrvan. Sure. So, without going into that, the people
that did answer it, where did that data go?
Attorney General Bondi. I will find out, and I will get you
that information.
Mr. Mrvan. And I only ask as a national security issue----
Attorney General Bondi. Absolutely.
Mr. Mrvan [continuing]. As they are working on sensitive
issues.
And I thank you for joining us, and I yield back my time.
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you.
Mr. Rogers. The gentleman yields back.
That concludes today's hearing. I want to thank our
witness, Attorney General Bondi, for being here today. We would
normally like to do another round of questions, but we don't
have time.
Ms. DeLauro. Yes, we do.
Mr. Rogers. The gentlelady, the Attorney General, has a
meeting scheduled, I think, at 4:00.
Attorney General Bondi. Thank you.
Mr. Rogers. So we will not be able to do a second round
because of that.
Ms. DeLauro. Great to answer the question.
Mr. Rogers. So, without objection, members may have 7 days
to submit additional questions for the record. The subcommittee
stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:40 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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Lutnick, Hon. Howard............................................. 4
Prepared statement........................................... 6
Bondi, Hon. Pamela............................................... 100
Prepared statement........................................... 102
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