Our rural communities are important threads in the fabric of our nation.

Members of this committee, even with the hardships rural communities face, we are often the first to be forgotten when legislators and healthcare experts discuss healthcare quality, access, and affordability.

I have met teenagers in crisis who face a long waiting list for a much-needed mental health appointment.

One way to increase healthcare access in rural areas is increasing the number of doctors serving them.

I have visited rural and community hospitals on the verge of closing.

I have met veterans who have to get on a bus in the middle of the night to get to a doctor's appointment in Albuquerque the next day.

I urge you to encourage deployment of smart meters and other technologies which make our electric grid more responsive and capable of supporting distributed energy resources.

Silencing civil servants, stifling science, squandering taxpayer money and spurning communities in the face of imminent danger have never made America great.

I filed the complaint because the Trump administration clearly retaliated against me for raising awareness of this danger.

Alaska needs the help of a fully engaged federal government. Washington cannot turn its back.

Removing a civil servant from his area of expertise and putting him in a job where he's not needed... is a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars.

These are dark times for science, the abuses have been taken to an extreme.

This is a betrayal of the public trust.

they broke it, they broke the agency.

This bipartisan legislation takes critical steps toward reducing nationwide physician shortages.

I am working with several of my colleagues on legislation to set a nationwide goal of 100 percent clean energy economy by 2050.

As chair of the Native American Caucus, I am working to address the federal neglect and under investment in Indian Country.

This will protect public health and our environment, create millions of jobs, and mitigate the impacts of climate change for all communities and all generations, especially those disproportionately impacted.