[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 9 (Wednesday, January 15, 2020)]
[House]
[Pages H291-H295]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   AMERICA IS BECOMING MORE PRO-LIFE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2019, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
King) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege and honor to 
address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives. And 
given that we have had some serious discussion here this evening, I 
really appreciate my colleagues, Chris Smith and others, who have spent 
an hour addressing the life issue here.
  As we come up on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, January 22--I 
believe that is a date that will live in infamy--America is becoming a 
more and more pro-life country. And as we watch the transition that is 
taking place in this country, that has to do with the March for Life 
that comes out here every year, when thousands of people, many, many 
young people ride from my neighborhood about 18 or 20 hours on a bus to 
get here, and they gather on The Mall for the events and the speeches 
and the rally and then march to the Supreme Court building. We often 
host them here with some hot chocolate.
  Each of these years that go by, I meet more and more young people 
that have become part of the pro-life network. So the network that is 
here, it strengthens people. They look around and they see that they 
are not alone. They come from churches; they come from schools; they 
come from families; they come from neighborhoods; and they understand 
that they are not alone, that there is a patchwork of people that are 
active across this country that is emerging into the majority in 
America.
  I will submit that we are now a majority pro-life nation, and that 
would be consistent with polling, the Barna poll that we did about, I 
suppose, a year and a half ago or a little more that showed that, just 
on the Heartbeat bill alone, which I happen to be the author of, H.R. 
490, that we saw 61 percent support for the Heartbeat bill, without 
exceptions. Republicans were up at about 85 or 86 percent; independents 
were around in the 60th percentile; and Democrats are even in support 
of it, in the majority, at 59 percent of Democrats.
  So it may have been that America was a little bit ignorant about the 
beginning of life and the science of life and the moment that life 
begins, but we all knew that in our hearts when, in 1973, it was one 
thing, and it was a political agenda that was driven.
  And Norma McCorvey regretted that she happened to be Jane Roe. So she 
actually didn't get an abortion, and she became pro-life in her later 
years and became a pro-life activist.
  So it didn't serve her, and it surely didn't serve America. But some 
number of over 61 million American babies have been aborted since that 
period of time.
  And there have been struggles in this city. There have been women 
that come to this city and march for abortion, and so many women who 
come and march for life.
  But here is what I see. In 1976, Mr. Speaker, our firstborn child 
came into the world; and, of course I anticipated that with eager and 
nervous anticipation.
  But when that little boy--actually, not so little. He was almost 9 
pounds. When he went into my hands and my arms and I looked at him and 
I held him in awe at the miracle that he was and is today, it was just 
stunning to me that, from my wife, Marilyn, and I came this little 
baby, this miracle.
  To look at him, to look in his eyes, to see his dark hair, and he 
turned out to be a blue-eyed, dark-haired little guy, and he had a lot 
of hair on his head, and it was just such a miracle to see and count 
the fingers and toes and look how perfectly they were formed.

                              {time}  1945

  As he lay in his crib, I would sit and look at him, and there was an 
aura about that little baby boy. There was an aura about him. And you 
could have convinced me that he was the second coming of Jesus Christ, 
that is how strong that was to me, that little boy miracle.
  As I looked at that, I thought this little guy here, how could 
anybody take his life now in these first minutes of his life or how 
could someone take his life the minute before he was born or the hour 
before or the day before he was born or the week or the month or the 
trimester, the first, second, or third trimester?
  And I just thought that through as I held that little miracle in my 
hands, and I knew that this life was precious and a miracle the moment 
that I could hold him and touch him and see him and feel that warmth 
and smell that fresh baby smell on him. And within minutes I went back 
through this process of development of this miracle from the moment of 
conception until birth.
  And at that moment I knew that you couldn't take that little baby's 
life at any point in this stage. I knew that his life began at the 
moment of conception. And from that moment on this miracle and millions 
and millions of other miracles needed to be protected from that moment 
on, that life begins at the moment of conception. That was 1976.
  Twenty years later I went out to San Diego to the Republican National 
Convention, and certainly I had all of my colors on and all the things 
that are attached to your lapels and your delegation credentials that 
are out there. And on a Thursday afternoon at 3:00 I see on the tri-
fold schedule there that said Christian Women for Choice are gathering 
there in San Diego at a location about a block and a half away from the 
convention center.
  Something called me internally and said, you have to go down there 
and see what is going on. I was curious. What scripture would be quoted 
to me from Christian Women for Choice? I took a friend with me and we 
went down and found this area. It was about an acre, I suppose, in 
size, maybe a little less, chain-link fence all the way around, stage 
in the middle, big old speakers up there and microphones. There were 
people still milling around, but there wasn't a program going on on the 
stage at that point.
  I went to an individual that looked like he was at least associated 
with somebody in charge and I asked him who was the leader of this and 
who is the head of the Christian Women for Choice. And he said, that is 
my wife, and he pointed to her and took me over and introduced me. We 
ended up on the stage. And as that conversation began, it became a 
debate.
  And I remember there in San Diego, for every delegate--I remember the 
number they told me--there was as many as 15,000 press in that city to 
cover the convention.
  So we had quite a lot of press in that protest zone where they would 
be looking for controversy. So the leader of Christian Women for Choice 
and I went at it in kind of a no-holds barred debate that just clashed 
back and forth between us. And several of the others would chime in for 
her, and every once in a while her husband would put his chin up over 
her shoulder, and he would bark some things at me, too.
  Mr. Speaker, I was far enough from home and convicted enough, having 
enough conviction for those that don't understand what that means, that 
I could just unload all of the things that needed to be said in the 
middle of that debate.
  She began to demand that we go out and collect the billions of 
dollars in child support that is owed by deadbeat dads is what she 
called them. And I said, I am happy to do that. I think they need to 
pay their child support, and I will be working to do that--it turned 
out in the Iowa Senate for starters--but you can't make that

[[Page H292]]

claim because that father doesn't have anything to say about whether 
that child is going to be born or not. If the mother is the only one 
that has anything to say, then when that child is born you don't have 
the claim that the father needs to pay the child support. Save the 
baby's life, protect this baby, and then we can hold the father to 
this. I am happy to do that. You don't have any claim to that, because 
you don't give the father any say in whether that baby is going to be 
born or not.
  And what I didn't hear anybody say here in this pro-life discussion 
that we had is the pain that a father goes through when the mother 
decides to abort the baby. I know people who have gone through that 
pain and that agony, and they were helpless to do anything about it. 
They want the baby. They say, I will raise the baby. It is mine. This 
is my flesh and blood. Give birth to this baby and I will take care of 
this baby for life. And when the mother says no, sometimes it is even a 
spiteful act. And I have had that happen close enough to me that I know 
that to be fact as well, Mr. Speaker.
  But in that debate with the head of Christian Women for Choice in San 
Diego in 1996 two things came out of that. Sometimes when you are 
tested under fire you get to a place where the principles are tempered 
to a point where they are no longer negotiable and they are as rock 
solid as they can be.
  Now I stand in auditoriums in schools K through 12, wherever the 
situation might be, and I will say to them, ``One day in your lives you 
will have this question come up around you, whether it is you asking 
the question or whether it is a friend of yours, acquaintance, or a 
relation, and it will be the question of abortion. Here are the two 
things you need to know''--and I will ask this question first, I will 
say, ``Is human life sacred in all of its forms?'' And they look a 
little bit slightly confused about what does ``all of its forms'' mean. 
And I say, ``Look at the person next to you. You are sitting next to 
one of your friends. Is that person's life sacred?'' And they are 
looking at you, Is your life sacred? And they will nod their heads and 
say, ``Yes, our lives are sacred.'' I say, ``So if you believe that 
human life is sacred, then is there any form of human life that is not 
sacred?'' How about someone that is a paraplegic, a quadriplegic, 
someone who is incapable of functioning verbally or getting up and 
moving in any way; is that person's life sacred? I say, yes, and so do 
they. They recognize that we have to have passion and compassion for 
all human beings.

  And so then once you establish that human life is sacred in all of 
its forms, then I say to them: Now you only have to ask one other 
question and that is, at what moment does life begin? Does it begin a 
week after birth? Does it begin the day after birth? Does it begin the 
minute after birth? That doesn't make sense to anybody in that 
gymnasium. These are young people, but they understand some things that 
seem to be confused over here some days, Mr. Speaker.
  I say to them, ``What about that baby a minute before the baby is 
born, is that life?'' And some of them might look a little confused, 
but most of them know it is life. But I will say, But how about the 
week before? How about the month before? How about if that baby is born 
by cesarean, when does that baby become alive? Is it the moment the 
mother is opened up by the surgeon in cesarean and that baby is brought 
forward? How could that be?
  We take it back to the moment of conception. We say even more 
accurately, the moment of fertilization, but the moment of conception.
  We get to this place where most every young person in that gathering 
understands human life is sacred in all of its forms. It has to be the 
highest value that we have, and that it begins at a moment and the only 
moment that exists is the moment of conception. From there on out it is 
a matter of continuum and continual growth and continual cell division, 
continual metabolism getting to the point where that baby is in a 
condition to be able to live outside the womb. And then we nurture that 
baby, up on that baby's feet, we nurture that baby all the way through 
until that baby is in a condition where they can take care of 
themselves and eventually take care of their own parents and their own 
children. That is life. It is precious.
  If you sit around in a household in a family, especially when we go 
through the holidays that we have gone through, Thanksgiving, 
Christmas, and New Year's, where families gather together and you watch 
with joy as they interact with each other, and you know there might be 
in some of these homes--you know there are--there is grandpa's empty 
chair over in the corner, he is gone now. He is missed. There is a 
vacancy in the chair and there is a vacuum in the family because maybe 
grandpa or grandma has been such a big part of that family, but they 
still cherish the joy that they have shared. They don't often lay an 
empty cradle there in the living room for that baby that was aborted, 
but that is also the soul and the spirit that is not there to share in 
that family joy as well.
  This Nation has aborted 61-plus million babies. The back of the 
envelope calculation says that if half of them were girls and you look 
at the frequency of abortion going back to 1973 in the years that these 
women would be having babies you can easily get to the place where we 
are not just missing 61 million--I say that; it sounds odd even as I 
say it--we are not missing 61 million, as appalling and as ghastly as 
that is, we are probably missing another 61 million of the babies that 
were never born because their mothers were aborted. Add it up. Call it 
120 million. Round it back to 100 million.
  Here we are in this country, we have aborted a workforce of 100 
million. And I hear over here, well, we have to import people into 
America. We have to have cheap foreign labor because, after all, the 
total fertility rate is low enough in America. We are not replacing 
ourselves, and we are not raising enough workers to fill the gap.
  I recall in the Iowa Senate there was a bill to require each health 
insurance policy to cover contraceptives and the female State Senators 
made this argument--back then we were at a full employment workforce as 
well, Mr. Speaker, as full as it is right now. Right now we are kind of 
knocking on the door of the lowest unemployment we have had in Iowa. 
Well, we had that back in about 1997 or 1998, as well. Some of the 
State Senators went off to the women's State legislators gathering, and 
they came back with this idea that was going to spread all over the 
country: every health insurance policy has to cover contraceptives. 
Here is the argument they made: They said, with this short workforce 
that we have, this full employment economy we have, we can't afford to 
have women missing work because they are pregnant and having babies and 
taking care of babies. And back then I said, Who is going to do the 
work in the next generation or two if we don't have babies being born 
now? How do you fill that gap? It seemed to me to be a simple equation 
that I had raised, but yet their agenda worked opposite it.
  We need to remember, this Nation has sinned, and this sin of abortion 
weighs on the conscience of a country, a country that could well have 
100 million more American babies born here, raised here, learning our 
civilization, learning our culture, learning our history, learning our 
language, sharing and growing an even greater Nation than we are today. 
And the recovery of that is heavy.
  Even when we end this ghastly practice of aborting babies, innocent, 
unborn human life, we have a long way to go to ever get back to where 
nature would have had us if we hadn't interfered with abortion.
  It troubles me a great deal. And one of the things I have done is 
drafted and introduced the Heartbeat Protection Act. That is H.R. 490. 
What it does is it protects any baby with a heartbeat. In fact, it says 
this: If a heartbeat can be detected, the baby is protected. It is 
really that simple. And so it requires that if an abortionist is 
preparing to perform his trade, he must first do an ultrasound. If that 
ultrasound produces a heartbeat, then that is the first certain 
physical sign of life in the womb, a heartbeat, and that is about 6 
weeks into pregnancy. We don't punish the mother. We do punish the so-
called physician, the abortionist. If a heartbeat can be detected, the 
baby is protected. And in the last Congress we took it to 174 
cosponsors.
  Mr. Speaker, it protects every baby because it is innocent, unborn 
human

[[Page H293]]

life. These sacred souls, and I believe that God places a soul in that 
little baby at the moment of conception. But their sacred, little 
souls, we protect all of them.

  There has been some discussion here in this Congress and around the 
country about exceptions for rape and incest. This bill doesn't have 
exceptions for rape and incest. We had the votes to pass it off the 
floor of the House in the previous Congress a little more than a year 
ago, and we had the votes to sustain it going through the Judiciary 
Committee in the previous Congress a little more than a year ago. We 
didn't get this to the markup in Judiciary. We had a hearing, we didn't 
get it to markup, and therefore, we didn't get it to the floor. I fear 
that we have failed an opportunity that we could have sent a very 
strong message over to the Senate, which likely would not have taken it 
up.
  But to the rest of America, that having exceptions for rape or incest 
says that those babies are not precious. I argue that they are as 
precious to God as my own grandchildren are precious to me. There 
cannot be a legal distinction between a baby that is born as a result 
of conception that comes from rape or that comes from incest. In fact, 
they are as precious as any others.
  In this legislation, H.R. 490, if we were to incorporate exceptions 
for rape and incest what we would have instead would be exceptions that 
the Court could look at and say, Just a minute. What about equal 
protection under the law? If there is going to be equal protections for 
all persons, whether born or unborn, then if there are exceptions for 
unborn persons that are the result of the act of rape or incest, then 
doesn't the Court look at that and conclude that we are inconsistent 
and that the equal protection clause really doesn't apply and that 
Congress didn't apply the equal protection clause to all of the unborn?

                              {time}  2000

  We must protect all of them, Mr. Speaker.
  From a moral standpoint, it is the right thing to do. From a legal 
and analytical standpoint, and with an anticipation of a court that 
would one day see this legislation--I would never sue on this, but you 
know the other side will--we have to make sure that we are consistent 
and that we are legally sound without exceptions for rape and incest.
  Furthermore, if you have incest that is taking place in a family, if 
you allow abortions for incest, that means that the family member that 
is perpetrating incest on usually the innocent young girl gets a pass 
each time there is an abortion because there is not evidence of his 
crime.
  But if you prohibit abortions for the sake of incest, you are likely 
to uncover the crime of the family member that is abusing, generally, 
the young lady within the family.
  So I am grateful for my colleagues, that they came here and each one 
of them spoke up with passion for innocent, unborn human life.
  We will get there one day. Just like Dr. Martin Luther King said: I 
may not get there with you, but we are going to get there.
  We will be a pro-life nation by law, and we will recognize these 
lives from the moment they are conceived within the womb.
  Mr. Speaker, I will conclude the component of this discussion on the 
life issue. Again, I thank my colleagues for the work that they do.


                    Correct the Congressional Record

  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to make a short comment 
here on another circumstance that has taken place in this Congress, and 
it works out like this, that a year ago last week, an unprecedented 
action took place in this Congress, and that was I did an interview 
with The New York Times, and I was misquoted in The New York Times.
  That quote, some people would say that, well, it was an organic, 
spontaneous eruption of social media and print media. I say, instead, 
no, it was an organized effort to set this up and create a railroaded 
firestorm against me.
  I knew that that was going to take place, and I will tell you, Mr. 
Speaker, why I know that. And that is, even though there was a nearly 
perfect storm created against me in the previous election, and we 
emerged from that with a victory, after the election and before 
Christmas of 2018, a very highly placed and respected political 
operative said to me they are going to try again. They have chosen a 
messenger to go to the President, and this messenger has the 
President's ear.
  The messenger is to convince the President to send out a negative 
tweet on me, and that negative tweet is supposedly going to trigger the 
worst firestorm of media assault on me that could possibly be 
unleashed, and that they would make that try again in that way.
  Well, I preempted that at the White House to the extent I could, and 
I believe that was successful. In fact, I have no doubt that that was 
successful.
  Then, by January 8 of last year, I was able to get a meeting with 
that messenger, who said, ``I would never do that to you, Steve,'' but 
that also let the messenger know that I knew what the strategy was and 
what the attempt would be. I let them know that I am going to blow this 
thing wide open and tell the public what was going on if they made that 
effort.
  That was on January 8. That sent the message through, perhaps, to any 
planners and strategists that I knew what was up.
  The very next day, a State senator announced that he would challenge 
me in a primary. That was at 11:23 a.m. He had no media planned. He had 
no website. He had no activities or any kind of evidence that he was 
planning to run that was at least on paper. Still, he announced by 
Twitter that he was going to run against me.
  He was also scheduled to swear in to the next General Assembly, the 
Iowa General Assembly, on the following Monday, about 4 days later. The 
most improbable time for anyone to announce they are going to run in a 
primary against a seated Member of Congress was that day, but he did 
that that day anyway.
  I let the messenger know I knew what was up. The next day, I get a 
primary opponent. The following day, The New York Times story came out, 
and the rest is history, Mr. Speaker, The New York Times with the 
misquote in it.
  There is no tape. It is his word against mine. He has notes, he says. 
He admits there is no tape. He has notes, he says, but he won't divulge 
even the question that he would say that he asked me.
  So I made the point here on the floor, that if I had uttered those 
words, it would have been in repetition to a question he asked me. But 
I often defend Western civilization. I never have uttered those words, 
those two odious ideologies. One of them is on this chart right here.
  When I gave the answer that questioned the definition here of what is 
this, white nationalism, what is it, I said: It might have meant 
something different 1 or 2 or 3 years ago, but today it implies racist.
  Well, what did it mean before that? We went back to the year 2000, 
LexisNexis, and it was virtually unused. You can see all the way along 
here.
  Mr. Speaker, I will describe it because you can't actually see it, 
but I can.
  All the way along here, you can see that it is virtually unused until 
you get to 2016, and then this term was used 10,000-plus times, then 
30,000. It is still up at 20,000 times, so 2016, 2017, and 2018.
  I could not have been more accurate when I said: It might have meant 
something different 1, 2, or 3 years ago.
  This is in 2018: 1, 2, or 3 years ago. What did it mean here, when 
nobody was using it? That is a hard definition to come up with because 
it is not in this big dictionary over here. You can't look up two words 
together and find out what they mean by looking in a dictionary.
  That is the annual records, Mr. Speaker. So we looked into 2016 and 
asked the question: When did this jump up? Well, it jumped up right 
here in the month of November and then up there pretty high yet in 
December 2016.
  What happened in November? Two things: Donald Trump was elected 
President and the Democrats gathered at the Mandarin Occidental Hotel 
to plan a strategy and what they were going to do to prevent him from 
being an effective President.

[[Page H294]]

  Then we broke the month down, and here is what we have. November 14 
and 15, the time that George Soros and the Democratic leaders were in 
the Mandarin Occidental Hotel planning a strategy. Well, was it a 
weaponization strategy of the term ``white nationalism''? You bet, 
right there.
  That is what happened, Mr. Speaker. So they launched that as a 
weaponization, and they used it as a weapon against me.
  When I stated those words here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives, I said there is a pause between the two odious 
ideologies and ``Western civilization.'' I made that case, and then I 
demonstrated that significant pause.
  Even though we have the best stenographers, I believe, in the world 
here, and they have been great for me to work with, it came out with 
exactly the same mispunctuation that The New York Times had.
  So I have introduced the bill called H. Res. 789 to correct the 
Congressional Record to at least reflect what the C-SPAN video shows 
that I said.
  Now, it also demonstrates that if these excellent people here can end 
up with that punctuation, it is pretty easy to explain what happened to 
The New York Times.
  Meanwhile, there have been only four people in the history of the 
United States Congress who have been removed from their committees. 
Three of them are either Federal felons or confessed Federal--they have 
been convicted of Federal felonies or confessed to Federal felonies, 
three of them.
  And me? There is not even a rule that I violated. It is just simply 
the will and the whim and the bloodlust of a political lynch mob, and 
that has been going on for over a year now today. And it is going to 
end, and I am not going to wait until this next year goes by and have 
to win another election and make a case.
  Furthermore, the term ``white nationalist'' had never been 
consciously even uttered on the floor of the House of Representatives 
since 1789 all the way up until the time that Donald Trump was elected 
President or George Soros led this situation at the Mandarin Occidental 
Hotel.
  So this resolution, H. Res. 789, is filed and cosponsors are signing 
on to it.
  Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record an article from Politico.

                     [From POLITICO, Nov. 14, 2016]

       Soros Bands With Donors To Resist Trump, `Take Back Power'

                         (By Kenneth P. Vogel)


 Major liberal funders huddle behind closed doors with Pelosi, Warren, 
          Ellison, and union bosses to lick wounds, retrench.

       George Soros and other rich liberals who spent tens of 
     millions of dollars trying to elect Hillary Clinton are 
     gathering in Washington for a three-day, closed door meeting 
     to retool the big-money left to fight back against Donald 
     Trump.
       The conference, which kicked off Sunday night at 
     Washington's pricey Mandarin Oriental hotel, is sponsored by 
     the influential Democracy Alliance donor club, and will 
     include appearances by leaders of most leading unions and 
     liberal groups, as well as darlings of the left such as House 
     Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and 
     Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairman Keith Ellison, 
     according to an agenda and other documents obtained by 
     POLITICO.
       The meeting is the first major gathering of the 
     institutional left since Trump's shocking victory over 
     Hillary Clinton in last week's presidential election, and, if 
     the agenda is any indication, liberals plan full-on trench 
     warfare against Trump from Day One. Some sessions deal with 
     gearing up for 2017 and 2018 elections, while others focus on 
     thwarting President-elect Trump's 100-day plan, which the 
     agenda calls ``a terrifying assault on President Obama's 
     achievements--and our progressive vision for an equitable and 
     just nation.''
       Yet the meeting also comes as many liberals are reassessing 
     their approach to politics--and the role of the Democracy 
     Alliance, or DA, as the club is known in Democratic finance 
     circles. The DA, its donors and beneficiary groups over the 
     last decade have had a major hand in shaping the institutions 
     of the left, including by orienting some of its key 
     organizations around Clinton, and by basing their strategy 
     around the idea that minorities and women constituted a so-
     called ``rising American electorate'' that could tip 
     elections to Democrats.
       That didn't happen in the presidential election, where 
     Trump won largely on the strength of his support from 
     working-class whites. Additionally, exit polls suggested that 
     issues like fighting climate change and the role of money in 
     politics--which the DA's beneficiary groups have used to try 
     to turn out voters--didn't resonate as much with the voters 
     who carried Trump to victory.
       ``The DA itself should be called into question,'' said one 
     Democratic strategist who has been active in the group and is 
     attending the meeting. ``You can make a very good case it's 
     nothing more than a social club for a handful wealthy white 
     donors and labor union officials to drink wine and read 
     memos, as the Democratic Party burns down around them.''
       Another liberal operative who has been active in the DA 
     since its founding rejected the notion that the group--or the 
     left, more generally--needed to completely retool its 
     approach to politics.
       ``We should not learn the wrong lesson from this 
     election,'' said the operative, pointing out that Clinton is 
     on track to win the popular vote and that Trump got fewer 
     votes than the last GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney. 
     ``We need our people to vote in greater numbers. For that to 
     happen, we need candidates who inspire them to go to the 
     polls on Election Day.''
       But Gara LaMarche, the president of the DA, on Sunday 
     evening told donors gathered at the Mandarin for a welcome 
     dinner that some reassessment was in order. According to 
     prepared remarks he provided to POLITICO, he said, ``You 
     don't lose an election you were supposed to win, with so much 
     at stake, without making some big mistakes, in assumptions, 
     strategy and tactics.''
       LaMarche added that the reassessment ``must take place 
     without recrimination and fingerpointing, whatever 
     frustration and anger some of us feel about our own allies in 
     these efforts,'' and he said ``It is a process we should not 
     rush, even as we gear up to resist the Trump 
     administration.''
       LaMarche emailed the donors last week that the meeting 
     would begin the process of assessing ``what steps we will 
     take together to resist the assaults that are coming and take 
     back power, beginning in the states in 2017 and 2018.''
       In addition to sessions focusing on protecting Obamacare 
     and other pillars of Obama's legacy against dismantling by 
     President-elect Trump, the agenda includes panels on 
     rethinking polling and the left's approach to winning the 
     working-class vote, as well as sessions stressing the 
     importance of channeling cash to state legislative policy 
     battles and races, where Republicans won big victories last 
     week.
       Democrats need to invest more in training officials and 
     developing policies in the states, argued Rep. Ellison (D-
     Minn.) on a Friday afternoon donor conference call, according 
     to someone on the call. The call was organized by a DA-
     endorsed group called the State Innovation Exchange (or SiX), 
     which Ellison urged the donors to support.
       Ellison, who is scheduled to speak on a Monday afternoon 
     panel at the DA meeting on the challenge Democrats face in 
     winning working-class votes, has been a leading liberal voice 
     for a form of economic populism that Trump at times channeled 
     more than Clinton.
       As liberals look to rebuild the post-Clinton Democratic 
     Party on a more aggressively liberal bearing, Ellison has 
     emerged as a top candidate to take over the Democratic 
     National Committee, and he figures to be in high demand at 
     the DA meeting. An Ellison spokesman did not immediately 
     respond to a request for comment on Sunday evening. Nor did a 
     Trump spokesman.
       Raj Goyle, a New York Democratic activist who previously 
     served in the Kansas state legislature and now sits on SiX's 
     board, argued that many liberal activists and donors are 
     ``disconnected from working class voters' concerns'' because 
     they're cluster in coastal cities. ``And that hurt us this 
     election,'' said Goyle, who is involved in the DA, and said 
     its donors would do well to steer more cash to groups on the 
     ground in landlocked states. ``Progressive donors and 
     organizations need to immediately correct the lack of 
     investment in state and local strategies.''
       The Democracy Alliance was launched after the 2004 election 
     by Soros, the late insurance mogul Peter Lewis, and a handful 
     of fellow Democratic mega-donors who had combined to spend 
     tens of millions trying to boost then-Sen. John Kerry's 
     ultimately unsuccessful challenge to then-President George W. 
     Bush.
       The donors' goal was to seed a set of advocacy groups and 
     think tanks outside the Democratic Party that could push the 
     party and its politicians to the left while also defending 
     them against attack from the right.
       The group requires its members--a group that now numbers 
     more than 100 and includes finance titans like Soros, Tom 
     Steyer and Donald Sussman, as well as major labor unions and 
     liberal foundations--to contribute a total of at least 
     $200,000 a year to recommended groups. Members also pay 
     annual dues of $30,000 to fund the DA staff and its meetings, 
     which include catered meals and entertainment (on Sunday, 
     interested donors were treated to a VIP tour of the recently 
     opened National Museum of African American History and 
     Culture).
       Since its inception in 2005, the DA has steered upward of 
     $500 million to a range of groups, including pillars of the 
     political left such as the watchdog group Media Matters, the 
     policy advocacy outfit Center for American Progress and the 
     data firm Catalist--all of which are run by Clinton allies 
     who are expected to send representatives to the DA meeting.
       The degree to which those groups will be able to adapt to 
     the post-Clinton Democratic Party is not entirely clear, 
     though some of the key DA donors have given generously to 
     them for years.

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       That includes Soros, who, after stepping back a bit from 
     campaign-related giving in recent years, had committed or 
     donated $25 million to boosting Clinton and other Democratic 
     candidates and causes in 2016. During the presidential 
     primaries, Soros had argued that Trump and his GOP rival Ted 
     Cruz were ``doing the work of ISIS.''
       A Soros spokesman declined to comment for this story.
       But, given that the billionaire financier only periodically 
     attends DA meetings and is seldom a part of the formal 
     proceedings, his scheduled Tuesday morning appearance as a 
     speaker suggests that he's committed to investing in opposing 
     President Trump.
       The agenda item for a Tuesday morning ``conversation with 
     George Soros'' invokes Soros' personal experience living 
     through the Holocaust and Soviet Communism in the context of 
     preparing for a Trump presidency. The agenda notes that the 
     billionaire currency trader, who grew up in Hungary, ``has 
     lived through Nazism and Communism, and has devoted his 
     foundations to protecting the kinds of open societies around 
     the world that are now threatened in the United States 
     itself.''
       LaMarche, who for years worked for Soros's Open Society 
     foundations, told POLITICO that the references to Nazism and 
     Communism are ``part of his standard bio.''
       LaMarche, who is set to moderate the discussion with Soros, 
     said the donor ``does not plan to compare whatever we face 
     under Trump to Nazism, I can tell you that.'' LaMarche he 
     also said, ``I don't think there is anyone who has looked at 
     Trump, including many respected conservatives, who doesn't 
     think the experience of authoritarian states would not be 
     important to learn from here. And to the extent that Soros 
     and his foundations have experience with xenophobia in 
     Europe, Brexit, etc., we want to learn from that as well.''
       The Soros conversation was added to the agenda after 
     Election Day. It was just one of many changes made on the fly 
     to adjust for last week's jarring result and the stark new 
     reality facing liberals, who went from discussing ways to 
     push an incoming President Clinton leftward, to instead 
     discussing how to play defense.
       A pre-election working draft of the DA's agenda, obtained 
     by POLITICO, featured a session on Clinton's first 100 days 
     and another on ``moving a progressive national policy agenda 
     in 2017.'' Those sessions were rebranded so that the first 
     instead will examine ``what happened'' on the ``cataclysm of 
     Election Day,'' while the second will focus on ``combating 
     the massive threats from Trump and Congress in 2017.''
       A session that before the election had been titled ``Can 
     Our Elections Be Hacked,'' after the election was renamed 
     ``Was the 2016 Election Hacked''--a theory that has 
     percolated without evidence on the left to explain the 
     surprising result.
       In his post-election emails to donors and operatives, 
     LaMarche acknowledged the group had to ``scrap many of the 
     original plans for the conference,'' explaining ``while we 
     made no explicit assumptions about the outcome, the 
     conference we planned, and the agenda you have seen, made 
     more sense in the event of a Hillary Clinton victory.''

  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I will conclude my remarks, and I 
yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________