Madison Reporter

Issued the following announcement on June 25

Another week of Washington, D.C. is in the books! Here’s what you need to know from this week:

My First Bill Passed the House of Representatives

This week, my first stand-alone bill to receive floor consideration passed in the U.S. House of Representatives by a bipartisan vote. The legislation, H.R. 3239,  would clean up certain portions of title 41 of the United States Code.

Making technical corrections to the United States Code ensures that statute is made more clear, easier to read, and importantly, is consistent with the original intent of Congress. Technical corrections also have the benefit of preventing lawsuits that may arise from confusingly worded or constructed portions of the United States Code, saving taxpayer dollars from being wasted on frivolous lawsuits.

The next stop for H.R. 3239 is the U.S. Senate, where I look forward to seeing the bill receive consideration. Read the full bill text here.

Marathon Markup at Judiciary Committee 

The Judiciary Committee embarked on a marathon markup this week of antitrust proposals, spanning over two days. These bills are an attempt by Democrats to give new and expansive powers to Biden appointees and bureaucrats under the guise of reforming Big Tech.

While Big Tech’s power to cancel conservative viewpoints is absolutely a problem, the Democrat proposals we considered over two days would do nothing to address those concerns. What these bills under consideration would do is marry Big Tech with Big Government, putting unelected bureaucrats at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) in a position to centrally plan how Big Tech does business.

President Biden’s pick to chair the FTC tells us everything we need to know—she is former counsel for impeachment managers Rep. Nadler and Rep. Cicilline of the House Judiciary Committee, and before that was the legal director at the Open Markets Institute, a far-left think tank.

If these bills become law, we can be almost assured that Big Tech will be further incentivized to take an anti-conservative stance in order to appease liberal regulators.

More importantly, these bills don’t take any action to address Republican concerns about how Big Tech controls the marketplace of ideas and censors conservative speech online. These bills do little to fix core problems with Big Tech, but do a lot to make Big Government even bigger.

For these reasons, I voted against five of the measures.

I joined Rob Finnerty on Newsmax this week to preview the hearing, you can watch our interview here.

Biden’s Crime Crisis 

Last weekend there was another outbreak of violence in Milwaukee—17 people were injured across 14 confirmed shootings. The weekend before that, 11 were injured, and 3 were left dead in 13 confirmed shootings. It’s the same story every week. With summer approaching, there are no signs of this violent trend slowing down.

President Biden finally held a press conference this week in a late attempt to control the narrative, but his speech was less than assuring.

Instead of addressing the root causes of the uprising of crime—which many believe is due to the defund the police efforts last summer—President Biden said he wants to "supercharge what works" to address the rising crime across America.

Translation: throw more taxpayer dollars at programs.

President Biden also said this is not a red or a blue issue. Yet, the rising crime crisis is primarily isolated to mismanaged blue cities who defunded their police departments last summer.

President Biden also announced this week that communities experiencing a surge in gun violence as a result of the pandemic can use up to $350 billion from the American Rescue Plan to hire more law enforcement officials and purchase equipment that would allow police departments to better respond to gun violence.

Let’s get this straight, so now the Administration want to re-fund the police? With COVID-19 aid? This just confirms what we already knew: there was way too much money in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to begin with.

Education Secretary Cardona Testified Before the Education & Labor Committee 

The Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona testified before the House Education and Labor Committee this week.

I spoke with the Secretary at length about the issue of student privacy and what steps the Department of Education is taking to protect student’s sensitive information. Although I was pleased to hear the Secretary tell me his department is taking student privacy seriously, physical security is another issue that warrants concern as students return to school this fall. I urged the Secretary to direct his department to explore this issue more as well. You can watch our full exchange here.

One disappointing takeaway from the hearing was Secretary Cardona’s failure to commit to condemning Critical Race Theory— a framework that proscribes the law and legal institutions in the United States are inherently racist.

Secretary Cardona claimed that the federal government would not get involved in school curriculums. However, his proposed changes to the American History and Civics Program would provide grant money to schools to teach initiatives that could include critical race theory. I joined my colleagues in sending a letter to Secretary Cardona back in May, urging him to withdraw this directive and to not use any federal dollars to teach critical race theory in schools.

Election Integrity Update

This week, S.1, the so-called For the People Act, received consideration in the U.S. Senate. The bill failed to hurdle a procedural vote and therefore did not receive a vote for passage in the Senate. This is a win for election integrity. This bill would have completely undermined public faith in our elections.

I’ve spoken at length about this bill in the past, but it is worth repeating exactly what the left is attempting to do to our election system. Speaker Pelosi & Leader Schumer want to weaken voter ID laws, steamroll states authority over election procedures, and force Americans to fund politicians’ campaigns—whether they support them or not. Bottom line, S. 1 would have made our election system worse, not better.

I also joined Representative Claudia Tenney (NY-22) this week, alongside my Republican colleagues, in a letter to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL)—a nonprofit that received $350 million in grants from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to “safely serve every voter.” It has now been revealed that 92% of the funding went to Democrat precincts…calling into question the true intent of these grants and their supposed purpose to “safely serve every voter.” In the letter we demand answers and transparency so the public can properly assess the influence of these grants.

As a new member of the Election Integrity Caucus, I will continue to work alongside my colleagues to investigate bad practices where they exist and implement safeguards that strengthen our election process and the faith that Americans put into it.