[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 37 (Wednesday, February 25, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H2321-H2325]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1300
                        PEACEFUL, SILENT PROTEST

  (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Green 
of Texas was recognized for 30 minutes.)
  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise, and I rise, Mr. 
Speaker, a liberated, unbought, unbossed, fearless, unafraid Democrat.
  I rise, Mr. Speaker, with a special message, one that concerns events 
that

[[Page H2322]]

transpired right here on the floor of the House of Representatives last 
night.
  I rise, Mr. Speaker, to speak truth to power and truth about power. 
To speak truth to power, you have to simply say to power: We have a 
problem, and let us solve the problem. But if you speak truth about 
power, you say: Power, there is a problem, and you are it.
  I would like to address both. Let's start with the genesis of what 
occurred last night, and that genesis is a meme in some worlds, but it 
was actually something that AI concocted. It had President Obama and 
First Lady Michelle Obama being represented as apes, portrayed as apes.
  I find this unacceptable, and a good many people of good will found 
it unacceptable, as well. As a person of good will finding this 
unacceptable, I wanted to do more than simply tweet something about it 
or write something about it. I wanted the President to know that people 
of good will will confront him and let him know that he is doing things 
that are unacceptable.
  It is unacceptable to portray Homo sapiens, especially persons of 
African ancestry, as apes--a little bit more than, in some worlds, of 
the ape family and a little bit less than a Homo sapien, something that 
is sort of in a twilight zone, maybe the missing link, if you will.
  We are not the missing link. We are as human as anybody else, and we 
are going to demand the respect that everybody else is accorded. This 
is not a world where you are going to relegate some human beings to a 
lower life form simply because it pleases you and a host of people who 
you happen to communicate with. This is unacceptable.
  So right here, I sat on this row. I was over one seat away from the 
aisle, but when the President approached, I then approached the aisle. 
When I approached the aisle, I wanted him to see a sign that I had that 
simply said--but it was truthful; I believe it was powerful--that Black 
people are not apes. Black people aren't apes.
  I flashed that for the President to see. Based upon the way he turned 
away and tried to move briskly, it appears that he got the message but 
did not want to embrace the message.
  As a result of this, he made his way up to give his speech, and I 
continued to stand silently, holding my signage. My signage was my 
means of silently protesting.
  There were other persons over in this area who were protesting, and 
they were doing it peacefully. They had on signage. It was displayed on 
a cap--that is what I saw on one person, a cap--and it had language on 
it.
  These kinds of things are done in this Chamber quite regularly. If 
someone thinks it is too often, I won't differ with them, but we all 
have to stop. If we are going to stop some of us, every one of us will 
have to behave in a similar fashion.
  I stood there with my signage, and my colleagues became rather 
disturbed about it. I did not create a disturbance. I stood there 
silently. They created the disturbance. They are the people who grabbed 
and ripped my signage. They are the people who said things to me as I 
traversed the aisle and tried to make my way out of the Chamber. They 
are the people who became rather rambunctious and behaved, in some 
ways, in an unacceptable fashion.
  If there is to be some concern about who created the disturbance, 
then you have to look at the video, and you will see.
  I am saying this to you because I have heard talk of someone wanting 
to censure me again. I have already been censured. This happened some 
time ago, and I have signage that I used to indicate that, while I have 
been censured, my signage indicates that I have not been silenced, and 
I will not be silenced, censured but not silenced.
  This was when the President was here for a joint session of Congress. 
The President was indicating that he had a mandate. I wanted him to 
know that he didn't have a mandate to cut Medicaid, Medicare, or Social 
Security, and I spoke up.
  I was seated in that very same area. For this, I was removed, and I 
was censured. But for this that occurred last evening, there should not 
be a censureship of me. If anybody is going to be censured, it should 
be the people who became so rambunctious as to create a disturbance.
  I didn't do that. I silently stood, and I would do it again. The 
first time I engaged the President, it was with spontaneity. I did not 
plan this. I responded to this because I was concerned about Medicaid, 
Medicare, and Social Security, and well I should have been because 
about $1 trillion has been cut from healthcare.

  We are still fighting to get subsidies so that people can pay 
premiums that they can afford. This is a part of that affordability 
that the President refuses to recognize, but I did this with a degree 
of spontaneity. It was not planned.
  What I did last night was planned, but it was only planned after I 
did have a conversation with my staff and asked them to tell me why I 
should and should not come over. We had that conversation, and I made 
the decision myself. My staff did not make the decision, but I welcomed 
their input. I came here to behave, as I did, and engage in peaceful, 
silent protest--peaceful, silent protest.
  However, my colleagues caused it to metamorphose into something that 
was less than what some persons would call the standards that we have 
set for ourselves here in the House of Representatives.
  I am not going to give a long message today. I wanted to make this 
message clear such that people would understand that I believe in what 
I did. The President should not portray persons of African ancestry as 
apes.
  This is unacceptable given the history in this country of caricatures 
such as this being utilized against people of color at an earlier time. 
The President would take us back to those ugly days when you could call 
Black people n-words with impunity, when you could demand that Black 
people show respect that was not deserved, when the Black people were 
relegated to the back of the bus. They were relegated to the balcony of 
the movie and the bottom of the jails.
  This is unacceptable. Black people are not going back, Mr. President. 
Black people are going to move forward with the rest of this country.
  I am giving notice today that we will not tolerate this level of 
injustice emanating from the highest office in this country, from the 
Presidency. We will not tolerate it, Mr. President.
  I speak for a good many people of good will, of all hues, who have 
decided that they will not tolerate it.
  Now, one final word on something else before I bring you to my 
closing. It seems to me that the news media--a good many, not all the 
outlets--not all of them, but a good many of these major outlets have 
decided that they will determine when a problem that African Americans 
are having to suffer--they will determine when it is worthy of being 
televised, worthy of when it should be challenged, when the problem 
itself should be taken on, and they will decide who is going to solve 
our problems.
  If we allow other people who, for whatever reasons, have a timeline 
that does not coincide with our suffering, then we do ourselves a 
disservice. We cannot allow some of these major news sources to decide 
when they will give us the opportunity to protest our problems.
  Those who would deny us this opportunity to engage in peaceful 
protest will only make it possible for other forms of protest to 
manifest themselves. This peaceful protest is an acceptable methodology 
by which problems can be brought to the attention of the public, can be 
properly litigated, and can be resolved, but not when you have a 
media--and there are many of them that would do this, and I will tell 
you who they are so that there won't be any question about it. I know 
that they don't favor me because I talk not only to them but about 
them.
  They are the same people, the same networks, who are over in the 
Russell Office Building--over in the Russell Office Building, named in 
honor of a bigot and a racist. Richard Russell was a coauthor of the 
``Southern Manifesto.'' Richard Russell fought anti-lynching 
legislation.

                              {time}  1310

  Richard Russell fought civil rights legislation. We should not honor 
a bigot and a racist by placing his name on a building paid for with 
taxpayer dollars.
  Who are they? They are the people who have themselves stationed above 
the statute of Richard Russell in the

[[Page H2323]]

Russell Senate Office Building. They are CNN. They are MSNBC. Yes, they 
are two of the major components of this group of folks who don't 
respect us enough to move themselves from the Richard Russell Office 
Building. Don't leave FOX News out. These are the people who talk as 
though they are our friends, who give the impression that they want to 
see our problems solved. Yet, they are part of the problem over in the 
Russell Senate Office Building. CNN, MSNBC--no longer that--it is MS 
NOW, and also FOX News, they are a part of the problem.
  I speak truth not only to power. I told you I would speak truth about 
power. This is about them, and this is about what they are doing to 
prolong the suffering that we have to endure by having Richard 
Russell's name on the building and having them right there over Richard 
Russell in the Rotunda dedicated to Richard Russell.
  How shameless are you? Why is it that you, who portray yourselves as 
the bearers of the torch of freedom, as the carriers of the words of 
``liberty and justice for all,'' how can you station yourselves in that 
building all of these years and not make a to-do of it?
  You know you have the power to make the change come about. The Senate 
itself can do it, and you can influence the Senate. But rather than do 
that, you and the Senate, you are participants in the same coverup of 
Richard Russell being the racist that he is and having taxpayers pay 
for his name on a building.
  Those are the people that I am talking about, and there are others. I 
just mentioned these three main characters in a sense because they are 
the ones that hold themselves out to be such great liberty-seeking 
people and wanting justice for everybody. Shame on you. You don't want 
justice for everybody. You just want to make the news for yourselves.
  I marvel at how newspeople have decided now that if the story is to 
be told, they have to make the news too. Just report the news. Tell the 
truth about what is happening over in the Russell Senate Office 
Building. These are the people who want to decide when the problems of 
people of color can be solved and who will have the opportunity to 
solve them. Until they decide who it is that will have the opportunity 
to do this, it won't be done. Shame on you. Become the newspeople that 
you are supposed to be. Don't pick and choose. Just carry the news.
  Unfortunately, they have become so interwoven with the various 
parties that they literally are mouthpieces for one party or another. 
You are a news source. You are not mouthpieces for any political party, 
or you shouldn't be. But that is what you have become. Shame on you. Do 
you have no respect for the profession that you are supposed to 
represent?
  Now, as I come to my final close, sometimes I close more than once--
and I am being handed a note, so let me just see what my note says. So 
please forgive me.
  All right. I shall honor this request.
  I am honored to tell you that in my quest, which is not a quixotic 
quest, I see it as a noble calling. In my quest to bring some scintilla 
of justice to this cause associated with the President representing a 
former President and First Lady as persons who are less than Homo 
sapiens, maybe a little bit above the primates, but still not the human 
beings that other people happen to be.
  In my quest to do this, it has become very clear to me that people of 
goodwill do not want to see us continue down the path that we are 
currently traversing. People of goodwill want to see us unite and deal 
with the great issues of our time.
  But you can't deal with the great issues of the time if you have a 
President who is continually ignoring the norms, ignoring the rules, 
ignoring the Constitution. When you have a President who has decided 
that he can go to war at will, without conferring with the Congress. 
Who would allow a President to speak for 435 people? Who would allow 
him to have this awesome power to determine for the hundreds of 
millions of people in this country that we go to war when he says we go 
to war? This is totally unacceptable, and it is unconstitutional.
  The President does not have the authority to unilaterally declare 
war. He has to consult with the Congress.
  Well, there is a reason why he is not consulting. It is because there 
are too many pusillanimous politicians in Congress, people who have 
decided that they will bend the knee and kiss the ring. There are 
people who are afraid to speak not only truth to power but truth about 
power as well. If you won't speak truth to power, I guess it is 
farfetched to assume you will speak truth about power; but there are 
too many.

  The President has assumed the responsibility of Congress to declare 
war. He does it because Congress has been on the sidelines, not by 
accident, but with intentionality. They have just decided--and when I 
say Congress, I really mean my Republican colleagues. Democratic 
colleagues, please understand this does not refer to you.
  My Republican colleagues know that I am speaking the truth. They know 
that the President should not be declaring war without us. Maybe there 
would be a majority of us who would say yes, let's go to war. Until 
that happens, we have to assume that there is not a majority of us 
saying it, and the President cannot assume that he can, on his own 
volition, just declare war. This is the kind of President that we have.
  It is difficult to deal with some of these other issues concerning 
affordability when you have a President who disrespects the separation 
of powers. He doesn't believe that courts have the ability to make 
judicial and judicious decisions. He thinks that if they don't agree 
with him, they are wrong. If they are wrong, he believes that they can 
be impeached. It took the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to remind 
him that he does not have that level of authority, that he must 
recognize the Court's authority as a separate branch of the government, 
the judiciary, and he has to honor the decisions or he can appeal the 
decisions. It took the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to influence 
him--I assume he was influenced by the Chief Justice--to get him to 
stop flouting court orders. That is what he does. He flouts the orders 
of courts.
  He disrespects Congress' right to declare war. He disrespects the 
power of the judiciary to make decisions and, if you differ with them, 
to appeal. He also disrespects the notion that the Constitution 
provides something called due process, the right to be able to simply 
raise your hand and say: Hey, you got the wrong guy. I am not the 
person you are looking for. I am not the person who performed this 
dastardly deed. That is not me.
  He just believes that if he thinks you are it, then you are it. You 
can be summarily removed from the streets of this country by persons in 
military regalia, with a mask and little identification, taken to some 
distant place, locked up. Family and friends don't know where you are 
because this President believes that you are somehow a criminal that 
has breached some code of his, not necessarily the law, given the way 
he understands the law, and you should be taken away.
  When you have all of these things happening and then you couple this 
with the way he demeans people, he stood right there at the podium at 
the Joint Session of Congress and called Members of Congress lunatics. 
Well, when he does all of these things, it is difficult to deal with 
affordability. It is difficult to deal with the housing crisis. It is 
difficult to deal with what is happening not only in the stock market, 
which he seems to celebrate and appreciate, but also what is happening 
in the supermarket.
  Most of my constituents are more concerned about the prices in the 
supermarket than the prices in the stock market. They are concerned 
about the necessities of life, not their ability to store away 
something so that they can have a better quality of life by virtue of 
playing what we call the stock market.

                              {time}  1320

  We have a responsibility to address all of these other issues, but 
this President distracts us from them, and he prevents us from 
resolving them. As a result of doing this, he is as much to blame for 
any of these problems associated with affordability as anybody else in 
this country. In fact, he is more to blame when you realize that the 
Supreme Court had to tell him that a tariff is a tax. It is a tax on 
the American people, and that he doesn't have the authority to impose 
these taxes.
  He has got lawyers who are supposed to be advising him if he doesn't 
know.

[[Page H2324]]

Most people assume that if you are going to tax something coming into 
the country, into the hands of a person who is in this country and you 
put a tax on it--they call it a tariff, but when you put this tariff 
tax on it, that this person is either going to pay it himself to get 
the product into the country or the person that is sending it in is 
going to have to lower the cost or the person bringing it in can pay 
the cost and then pass it on to the consumer. At some point it becomes 
something that is passed on to the consumer. That is what has happened.
  When you have that coupled with the other things I have mentioned, 
affordability becomes a difficult issue to negotiate. It is easy if you 
want to capitulate and call that negotiation, but capitulation is not 
negotiation. Capitulation means, in the President's world, he has won. 
He talks about winning. He has won, and you have lost. For him, it is 
an all-win-or-lose game, and he always has to win.
  The President is the source of the upheaval that we are seeing in 
this country. Two people killed--American citizens, unarmed, were 
killed under the color of law by the constabulary. Members of our 
police protection force killed two people. We saw it with our own eyes. 
We saw what happened to Ms. Good as she was in a vehicle. We saw how 
she had her life taken from her. We saw what happened to Alex when his 
life was taken from him, shot 9 or 10 times, depending on who is 
counting, while he was unarmed, while he was on the ground, while he 
was subdued to the extent that he was not a threat to anybody.
  Yet the President of the United States distracts us with other 
things, including buying Greenland and taking Canada and making it the 
51st State. He goes on to something else. Now we are no longer mourning 
the lives of those two people that were lost tragically at the hands of 
the constabulary under the color of law.
  These kinds of things are distractions that allow him to get away 
with other things, that allow his family and himself to make huge sums 
of money, profits. It allows them, while we are being distracted, to 
drive the market down, and he will then signal to people over his 
Truth--well, I don't even like to call it Truth--over his means of 
transmitting messages--he uses that to tell people: It is time to buy. 
His people buy, the market goes up, and they make billions.
  This is what is happening. I know. I am on the Financial Services 
Committee. We have had the empirical evidence presented to us.
  All of these things--other things are happening while the President 
is making billions by and through his family, billions of dollars.
  We fight among ourselves such that we cannot coordinate and unify and 
acquire the unity necessary to deal with this reckless, ruthless 
President. We have to find a way to put a stop on his behavior. His 
behavior is totally unacceptable.
  I am here to tell you that what I did last night, I would do again. I 
would do it again by coming in and taking my seat and saying to people 
what I said because what I said was necessary.
  It was not performative. It was not to get attention, other than to 
call attention to what the President is doing. It was not to get 
attention but to call attention to what the President is doing.
  I still say that all of these other things that we find ourselves 
saddled with, they can be solved, but you have to have a President who 
is willing to behave with some degree of Presidential dignity, 
according respect to the people of this country, which he seems to have 
great difficulty doing. He seems to, for whatever reason, want to 
believe that his moral standards are the standards that everyone 
concurs with.
  He has as much as said that the only thing that can get in his way 
would be his own moral standards. How bold. How can a person have the 
gall to say such a thing? Do you not want to hesitate and have the good 
sense to say to yourself that maybe this is not an appropriate thing to 
say?
  But I think he believes this. Because he believes it, he imposes it 
on us, whether we like it or not. Well, Democrats don't like it, and 
Democrats want to do something about it, but Republicans are in the 
majority.
  If there is a problem with these great issues of our time, don't lay 
them at the feet of Democrats. Democrats are doing as best as they can 
with what they have to work with, the resources that are available to 
them. These resources are not unlimited. We just don't have the same 
opportunity to bring legislation to the floor that Republicans have. We 
don't have the opportunity to deny things to get to the floor that 
Republicans can deny. We are in a weakened position because they have 
218 votes or more in the House, and they have more than 51 votes in the 
Senate. They are in the majority.
  When you are in the majority, don't blame President Biden for what 
you are doing. President Biden is no longer the President of the United 
States. He should not be blamed for what is happening currently within 
the United States. This is Donald Trump's watch. We ought to blame 
Donald Trump and the Republicans who side with him and prevent us from 
solving the great issues of our time because they have the power.
  We have but one power that we can use without the consent of the 
other side. That one power is impeachment. We have one power: the power 
to impeach.
  We are in a countdown. We are in a countdown because, whether the 
President likes it or not, whether I like it or not, the people of the 
country want to see him impeached. Whether he likes it or not or 
whether I like it or not or anybody else, he is going to be impeached 
before he leaves office again. He should be for what he has done to the 
country in terms of its devolution into authoritarianism. He should be 
impeached.
  Mr. President, you will be impeached for your dastardly deeds done 
and for the way you have demeaned the Presidency, the way you have 
harmed society with your behavior. You should be impeached.
  I say to you: I would, without question, reservation, or hesitation, 
given the opportunity, bring the Articles of Impeachment to have him at 
least impeached. I would hope that the Senate would act and remove him 
from office.
  But even if the Senate chooses not to act, we should proceed with our 
countdown to impeachment and impeach him. It is that impeachment that 
will make the difference in the lives of the people of this country 
when the signal is sent that we do not agree with his behavior.
  People are waiting for us to let them know that we don't agree, and 
this is the best way to signal to them we don't agree, with Articles of 
Impeachment, where we can make our case, explain it to the public, and 
then take a vote on it and show the public that a majority of the 
people in the House of Representatives differ.

                              {time}  1330

  Someone would say: Why bring impeachment until you have a majority?
  It is because we, quite often, build up to a majority by presenting 
legislation on the floor that doesn't get a majority of votes the first 
time.
  The best example of this is healthcare. It took us almost one century 
to get the kind of healthcare that we have, so that people who have 
affordability problems will have healthcare in this country. It took us 
almost a century to do it, but we kept bringing it back and back until 
we were able to get a President, a House, and a Senate that could agree 
on something and get it done.
  That is the way it is with impeachment. Somebody has to lay the 
foundation for it, Mr. Speaker, and when you lay the foundation for it, 
you are putting the country in a position to move forward with it.
  I am assuring you, Mr. President, should you continue with what you 
are doing, articles will be filed whether they are agreed-upon by a 
majority or not. We will file the Articles of Impeachment, and we will 
have votes on them. This is what I believe the Constitution not only 
allows but requires. This is what I think that the Constitution 
requires.
  Mr. Speaker, I want you to take these last words to heart: I still 
rise unbought, unbossed, and a liberated Democrat.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from 
engaging in personalities toward the President.

[[Page H2325]]

  

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