Val Demings: “To ask the States to decide our most essential freedoms is essentially to make all of us supplicants to the government.”

We are here to discuss communities that are most at-risk during disasters and struggle to recover properly from their effects.

One and one-half years. The SPEAKER. When we have recalcitrant Members these days, I try to remind them that unless the legislative body is a team sport, then you cannot come here to be an individual and build a brand. That is not what…

we rely on government to help us survive, to help us recover, to help us rebuild. There`s really no substitute for the services that government provides during this time.

How can we sit here today--are we serious?--and say, regardless of the physical, emotional, and psychological trauma, the women and girls who survive these vicious attacks, that does not matter?