Melanie Stansbury

I don't think anyone in this room wants to return to an era when we had rivers on fire, when smelters were poisoning children and communities across the country.

This is not only a national security emergency for the United States. This is about making sure that we can make good on our responsibility to ensure that we are not passing a global tipping point in climate change over the next decade.

We need a multi-pronged approach.

This is not just a U.S. problem.

I understand very intimately, because of my own family history, how big, international, global issues around our domestic production of minerals and fossil fuel production really affects the families and workers of this country.

Let me be clear. We cannot mine and permit our way out of this problem.

This is a national security issue. This is an issue that affects every aspect of our economy.

It is absolutely critical that our workers, our unions, and our communities have a strong voice in every aspect of how we plan those local, regional, and national economies.

I hope and am optimistic that we will find opportunities for bipartisan collaboration.

These issues that we cover in the Natural Resources Committee at large, and especially the oversight that we do in this Committee, are of great personal concern to me and to the communities that I represent.

It is an honor to be able to serve alongside you, and welcome to our first Subcommittee of Oversight hearing.

I think if you keep those three questions at the forefront of what you are doing, we will get to that future that you described in your comments.

We should really treat members of the public who come before this body with the due respect that they deserve

I have traveled to every corner of my district, and New Mexicans are depending on us to defend our democracy and to ensure that we are holding not only those who are committing waste, fraud, and abuse accountable, but ourselves.

So, whose free expression are we protecting at the expense of whose safety, and whose safety are we willing to allow to go to the wind so that people can speak freely?

The failure of Twitter and other social media companies to moderate political disinformation not only fueled its use in election tampering in 2018 but allowed for election denialism to run rampant in 2020.

So clearly, we must come together as a committee to stand up and protect our country from foreign election interference and disinformation.

The Trump administration massively expanded the use of private, for-profit prisons.

It was the humane--inhumane policies of the previous administration that have contributed to this crisis.

Our government is failing. The system is failing. We need action.

The system is terribly broken, and that is why we need bipartisan reform.

We should not be playing politics with people's lives. This is serious. People's lives are in the balance.

It is truly a humanitarian crisis, and it is a crisis that has been manufactured, reproduced over and over again.

Our job is to make sure that the American people are represented and we keep this government accountable.

After three decades of bipartisan work, dedicated collaboration by our extraordinary scientists and engineers at NASA, our space industries, and of course scientists across the world, this amazing telescope launched last December.