Jim Langevin

As Representative Langevin said, public events, such as hearings and markups, need to be accessible, particularly to the deaf community.

I look forward to further discussions on the topic and others.

It allows someone with a disability to kind of get a feel for the job.

You are spot on, on that comment.

We haven't quite reached that goal yet as a country, but it is a worthy goal that I am bound and determined in my time in Congress to see us get closer to achieving.

The Supreme Court Olmstead decision, for example, that people with disabilities have a right to live actively, independently in their communities.

I think things have just taken a lot longer to get where we need to get.

The automatic door openers. As you and I both know, those doors can be quite heavy, some of them.

The access to interpreters or realtime broadcasting of the translation of what is said at the hearings would be important.

We need to ensure that the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights completes timely, biennial ADA inspection reports.

Physical accessibility of the Capitol complex is something that I think about daily, not by choice, but really out of necessity.

I am the first quadriplegic to serve as a Member of Congress.

I'm concerned about the cybersecurity and functionality of our ground stations.

Last year Minerva, the social science program that is vital to cyber and terrorism research, was zeroed out.

Without the right attention and support and progress, our enemies and adversaries will make that progress and we can't allow that to happen.

It's just so important that we keep our eye on the ball here, we continue to strengthen the S&T and the R&D ecosystem.

Certainly, what is the bipartisan, bicameral Civics Secures Democracy Act of 2021 is a good start.

It seems like civics education is being, unfortunately, these days politicized. And, as a result, we end up stalling on civics initiatives.

I think what we are going through with the pandemic and the shift to remote teleworking, and then also our needs in the area of cybersecurity, and certainly how people with disabilities could have plenty of opportunity to contribute…

I think to your point, there is still work to do on our doctrine.

I think the word is 'competition.'

I wanted to just point out as a matter of personal privilege, we all recognize that our Nation is one giant melting pot, and I think diversity is something to be celebrated.

I do have concerns about how this withdrawal decision was made and I am very worried about al-Qaida reconstituting and how the Taliban treat women and minorities.

We need to double down if we are not going to have a military presence there, especially to make sure that those aid dollars are going where they're intended and not be diverted for corrupt purposes.

I couldn't agree more. Right now I think there are too few of them and we really need to have more.