House Speaker Johnson and GOP Leadership Hold a News Conference

Water heaters, air conditioners, heat pumps and furnaces. No government bureaucrat should ever scheme to take away Americans' appliances in the name of a radical environmental agenda. Yet, that is exactly what we have seen under the Biden administration. I was proud to lead the House Republican effort to protect our gas stoves. And I am proud again to lead this effort to protect our home appliances. My constituents in the North and Northwest Valley of Maricopa County, Arizona, do not want this government interference in their homes and lives. I know that millions of Americans around the country feel the same way. I urge all of my colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats, to support this bill. Protecting our freedoms and consumer choice should not be a partisan issue. Republicans and Democrats should come together to pass this common sense legislation and tell President Biden to take his hands off our home appliances. Thank you. Chairman Gary Gensler's tenure at the SEC has been characterized by regulatory hypocrisy, inconsistency and incompetence. The Securities and Exchange Commission's Staff Accounting Bulletin 121, commonly known as SAB 121, is just one example of Chair Gensler's egregious attempts to expand the SEC's authority and his clear bias toward the digital asset ecosystem. More than two years ago, the SEC disguised this illegal rule as guidance. Circumventing Congress and public input so they could prevent banks from safeguarding consumer-owned digital assets. However, this rule isn't just overreaching and illegal. It violates the SEC's statutory mission. First, SAB 121 introduces more unnecessary and avoidable concentration risk into the digital asset ecosystem, making our markets less fair, less orderly and less efficient. Second, it weakens investor protections by barring Americans from using the established banking infrastructure to custody their digital assets, which leaves Americans' assets more vulnerable if a custodian becomes insolvent. And third, this rule hampers capital formation and global competitiveness as foreign banks already have the ability to compete in crypto markets while our banks cannot. The SEC's statutory mission is to protect investors, facilitate capital formation and maintain fair, orderly and efficient markets. Chairman Gensler is violating all three of these with his illegal SAB 121 rule. Later this week, House Republicans, we're going to do our job to provide oversight and accountability to the SEC by passing Congressman Mike Flood's resolution so that this illegal and harmful rule ceases to be in effect. I hope that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will join us as we work to ensure the digital asset ecosystem can thrive right here in the United States. And I turn it over to our leader, Steve Scalise. Thank you, Whip. Last week, you saw the House pass overwhelmingly a bill to stand up to the anti-Semitism that we're seeing on college campuses all across America. If only those college presidents would do their jobs in protecting their students, Jewish students that are threatened every day. Right now, as finals are approaching, you've got some schools that are actually canceling in-person classrooms and in-person finals because the schools don't want to protect their students from anti-Semitism. It's disgraceful. And we've called on those heads of universities to step down who aren't doing their jobs. You saw just a few days ago here on this stage, the speaker leading an effort that six of our different standing committees are participating in to ultimately go into and dig into the money, the billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer money that these universities are receiving, some with requirements like Title VI that ensure that they protect their students. And these universities are not meeting the legal obligations as they're taking those billions of dollars. We're going to be digging into that. You're seeing it this week with the Oversight Committee bringing in Mayor Bowser to hold her accountable for the fact that when George Washington was under siege from one of these mobs, as you're seeing on so many other campuses, they called in the police and Mayor Bowser's administration told the police not to go and help out. That's the job of police. Police want to do that job, want to keep people safe. And when you've got elected leaders that are telling the police not to keep students safe, you're going to see this House Republican majority take action to hold those leaders accountable. And so you're going to see that from every standing committee that has jurisdiction. We're going to be following the money. We're going to be bringing in more heads of universities. This isn't going to end, and I'm sure the speaker is going to talk about this more, too. But this house came together to support an aid package for Israel, our dear ally in the Middle East, who's under attack since October 7th. They're out there right now fighting a terrorist organization, Hamas, and we passed an aid package that is currently being held up by the Biden administration. It is time for the Biden administration to stop holding up that aid to Israel. Congress came together in a very bipartisan way to pass that much needed relief so that they can go and root out a terrorist organization who killed Israelis, who killed Americans, who still has about 130 hostages that they're holding. And the Biden administration is going to hold up the aid to Israel. We're going to continue to speak out against that as well. And the person leading that charge to speak out and hold the administration accountable is our speaker, Mike Johnson. Thank you, Leader Scalise, and all my colleagues. Thank you all for being here. It's a big day on Capitol Hill. I've passed the six month mark serving as Speaker of the House, and part of the job of the speaker is to go all around the country and meet with Americans and hear from Americans and engage what their greatest concerns are. And so in the last six months, we calculated it over the weekend. I've been to more than 100 cities in more than half the states. It doesn't matter where I am, whether I'm out west or Manhattan or the deep south or the Midwest. It doesn't matter. The concerns are the same. The people of this country are deeply concerned about the border catastrophe, the open border that was orchestrated by the Biden administration. They're deeply concerned about the rising cost of living, about rising crime around the country. They're very deeply concerned about the weakness that we're projecting on the world stage that is encouraging our adversaries to act so provocatively and ramp up hot wars around the globe. And you know what the other thing is that they're really concerned about? They're deeply concerned about the institutions of government itself, that we're trying to keep steady hands on the wheel here and keep the legislative branch moving and operating in the best interest of the people. And that's a heavy task when we have divided government, as we do in the smallest majority in U. S. History, famously that everybody knows. But one of the things that is also in jeopardy right now is our judicial branch, and it's our system of government itself. And I don't think we can say often enough here how much that has been abused under this administration and with local prosecutors, state prosecutors and at the federal level who are using lawfare. They're using our judicial system to go after political opponents. The most obvious example of that, and I think the most egregious one in history is what is being done to Donald Trump right now. This is yet another week where cable TV has a split screen image right on one side. Turn on any new station. You see the partisan prosecutors and the double standard D O. J. Going after President Trump and on the other side, college campuses being wrecked by anti semitic mobs in Manhattan in the New York case. I mean, it's play by play on all the stations, right? That case should never have been brought. If there's ever been an example of lawfare, everybody can look at that and see the trial is being orchestrated by Democrat supporters of President Biden, who are trying to make a name for themselves. I mean, they're pretty open about that. They used it in their campaign pledges. We've got a Democrat district attorney, a Biden donor judge whose daughter is a Democratic political consultant and has clients that use the case in their solicitation emails to raise money. And now we've learned there's an assistant D. A. Who was recently a top man at the D. O. J. And received over $10,000 in payments from the Democratic National Committee. This is all wrong. It doesn't matter what political party you're in. You have to look at this. If you look at this objectively, you know, you know deep down that this is wrong. And think about all this in the context of New York assaults in New York are at their highest level ever. Crime is through the roof. The D. A. Has decided to bring an eight year old bookkeeping bookkeeping charge that rest on the testimony of a long proven liar and perjurer. And the judge, who is a well known Democrat, is pursuing an indefensible gag order on President Trump. Now just think about that. Think of think about the magnitude of that. He's trying to override President Trump's constitutional right to defend himself against the constant smears of his political opponents in an election year, but not just any election year. The election year that most everyone understands is the most fateful one of our lifetimes. You cannot call yourself a serious judge and threaten a presidential candidate with jail time when he defends his reputation in public in the middle of a campaign. And I think everybody of good conscience understands that. Then we have the classified documents case where President Trump is being treated completely differently from President Biden. Again, this is something that is just obvious that everybody can see. Biden, of course, willfully retained and disclosed classified material. But because he is, quote, an elderly man with a poor memory, unquote, it was decided the DOJ would not be bringing charges. What the American people see, and I mean this is across the country, this isn't just red states, it's blue states as well, they look at this and they see an incredible double standard. It's just blatantly on display. It's the weaponization of our justice system and every single person of good conscience and common sense can see that clearly. And it's disturbing to them. Why? Because in our system, in a constitutional republic, if the people do not believe that the justice system is fair, that you really do have equal justice under law, then they throw their hands up and they say, what is there to believe in? It's critical. It's a foundational component of maintaining a republic, and they are jeopardizing this for political purposes. Now we're learning that prosecutors in the Jack Smith case have even engaged in evidence tampering during the raid at Mar-a-Lago. But here's the point. The entire case turns on what happened with those documents. And Jack Smith has admitted that things were not as they should be with the boxes. It just raises very serious questions. These cases are coordinated political attack, plain and simple. They are a clear attempt to keep Donald Trump in the courtroom and off the campaign trail. That's what this is. It's an election interference. It is borderline criminal conspiracy, and the American people see right through it. President Trump has done nothing wrong here, and he continues to be the target of endless lawfare. It has to stop, and you're gonna see the United States Congress address this in every possible way that we can, because we need accountability. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it's bigger than President Trump. It's about the people's faith in our system of justice, and we're gonna get down to the bottom of it. All these cases need to be dropped because they are a threat to our entire system on these other issues. While these sham trials go on up and down the East Coast across America, you got college students wondering whether their careers, uh, about graduation and after graduation or are gonna be even possible because now they're interrupting their lives again. These the same kids you've seen same students who many of them had their high school commencement ceremonies canceled because of Cove it. Now, four years later, they're getting their graduations canceled. They don't know where they're gonna have that that opportunity at all. Ceremonies across the country being thrown into turmoil because you have weak administrators who have allowed the anti Semitic writers to take over campus and cancel graduations and disenfranchise the students who are trying to follow the law and do the right thing. Columbia's announcement that it's going to cancel its graduation is a disgrace. These administrators have failed to fulfill their first responsibility, and that's to keep the students safe. And there should be consequences for their inability or their unwillingness to maintain order on their own campuses. We have called for these residents resignations of these administrators or they should be fired. This week is part of our housewide effort. You heard we're gonna crack down on any any Semitism, and we have several committees looking into the origins of that on higher education and higher education and in K 12 schools. And additionally, the oversight committee will be looking into the encampments at George Washington University here, and we're gonna ask Mayor Bowser if she shows up for the hearing. Why D. C. Law enforcement has been so slow to respond to the request from the school and with regard to Israel, and I'll take questions. We just when we thought it was only university presidents who were caving into the absurd demands of the pro Hamas students, the president himself has now reportedly halted ammunition shipments to Israel. We can see right through it. I mean, if this is true, and it looks to be true that President Biden is clearly trying to placate the pro Hamas element of his party. There's no other explanation for that. And if I remember correctly, and I do because I was here, House Democrats engaged in a sham impeachment of President Trump over questions about politicizing military aid. This is what's happening. This is a report on the ground in Israel that I got this morning. A shipload of munitions and precision weapons which are to be used to help protect civilians in Rafa is is being withheld. Uh, administration officials have assured Congress and have assured me, uh, personally, very recently and as recently as last Friday, reaffirmed from my from my staff to my staff from theirs that there would be no delay in assistance to Israel. This is not the will of Congress. This is an underhanded attempt to withhold aid without facing accountability. It's undermining what Congress intended and and has acted to take care of by authorizing the aid Israel. And so if the president truly wanted to defeat Hamas, like he said in the past, he wouldn't be standing in the way, preventing it from happening. I think that's clear, and we're gonna try to get down to the bottom of that as well. With that, I'll take a few questions. Your criticism of these prosecutions you do what? Asking which is to defund special counsel's investigation. Well, look, there's been a lot of discussion here amongst House Republicans in particular for a long, long time about the abuse of the special counsels. And this is a tradition that goes back about a quarter century. Janet Reno, I believe, is the one that originated this idea. And the problem that we have see Congress has an oversight responsibility, and we've got to make sure that the justice system is maintained well, and that's our job. We also have the power of the purse. And the problem with this that many of us see with the special counsel statute is that it goes outside of the regular appropriations process. It's sort of a sort of individually or self funded. And so there's discussion this week, as there has been for a long, long time about what is the most effective way for Congress to take the reigns of that and ensure that the special counsels are not abusing the law themselves. And there's a lot of ideas about that. Discussions this week or nothing new, but we're looking very intently at it because I think the problem has reached a crescendo. I think for all the reasons I just outlined here, I think there are serious questions on the part of the American people, and they want to know they're asking us, uh, what we can do to ensure that the law is followed. And we're looking at every possible angle on that and stay tuned. We'll find out. Second row. Yeah. No, I I intend to lead this conference in the future. And the most important thing that we have to do right now is govern the country. Well, um, show the American people that we will and that we are. That's what we've been doing. And then I'm convinced that my number one job and responsibility is to keep and grow the House majority in November. That's my singular focus right now. We have plans for the next Congress, and we've been outlining a lot of that. But right now it's all hands on deck, all hands on the wheel and and steering that steering the ship of state, so to speak. So I'm honored to be able to do that. I expect I'll be doing that in the future. I'm glad to have the support of President Trump. I was down with him most recently this this weekend and all of our the leaders of our party were united in this in this cause because our objective in our mission is to save the country. And if in my view, if we don't grow the House majority and we don't retake the Senate for the Republican Party and the White House, um, then I it's I think we're facing very serious threats to our republic. I'll put it that way. Scott back. Well, let me let me let me let me address it. So yesterday I met at some length with Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massey. Um, it was a good discussion. I thought it was productive. We'll visit again today. It's not a negotiation. Okay, this is how I've operated his speaker. I committed to do it before I became speaker, and we've been doing this for the last last six months. I addressed reminded this my conference of this just within the last hour. Um, everybody knows I have lengthy discussions, detailed discussions on a daily basis with members across the conference. There are 217 of us. Um, it takes a lot of time. This is why I don't get enough sleep these days. But we what it's required when you have the smallest majority in history is that you have to quite literally get everyone to work together when you can only lose one vote on a on a on a party preference or priority. It takes a lot of time to build consensus. And so what I do every day, Scott is, um, almost on an hourly basis is I hear suggestions and ideas and thoughts from from members. My door has been open from day one. Everybody knows that. I mean, I spend endless hours at this. Um, there's nothing unusual about this. Um, I've heard Marjorie and Thomas's ideas, just like I have every day for the last six months heard others. And I reminded the conference this morning, everybody, uh, has the same opportunity to do that. It's not a negotiation at all. What we're trying to do and what my job is, is to every day improve processes, procedures are are our policy preferences, our legislation and make sure that we can build the right consensus to get everybody together. It takes an inordinate amount of time and a lot of patience to do that in a time like this. Um, but I'm committed to it. And, um, you know, we're gonna continue to do that. So I take Marjorie's ideas and Thomas's and everybody else's equally, and we assess them on their own value and and where we can make improvements and changes and all of that we do. And that's that's what this is. There's nothing more than that going on. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.