Jared Huffman: “Mr. Speaker, we are on day 19 of Trump's illegal war of choice with Iran. So far, 13 American servicemembers are dead…”

“Mr. Speaker, we are on day 19 of Trump's illegal war of choice with Iran. So far, 13 American servicemembers are dead, and 200 more are wounded. Gas prices have surged 80 cents a gallon just in the last 3 weeks. Grocery bills are climbing. Oil is over $100 a barrel. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. Mr. Speaker, what is it, in the face of this chaos and calamity, that the United States House of Representatives has chosen to do this week: debate a bill about lead ammunition in our Nation's wildlife refuges. Mr. Speaker, we should consider the iconic national symbol of the bald eagle when we talk about this subject. Every year, bald eagles across America die. They drop out of the sky in some cases because they ate carcasses and remains that were laced with lead fragments. Bald eagles are not alone. Lead poisoning has been documented in over 130 species: the common loon, condors, trumpeter swans, many species of ducks, and even some mammals. For species already struggling on the brink of extinction, each piece of spent ammunition or lost fishing tackle left in the environment is another potential lethal dose of lead. We banned lead from gasoline. We banned it from paint. We banned it from children's toys. We did that because lead is a known lethal neurotoxin that never breaks down.”