Steve Cohen

I was disappointed, not totally surprised, that civil rights and civil liberties were removed.

Limiting access to healthcare, wedging the right-wing ideology into the exam room, and substituting their personal beliefs for the professional judgment of doctors, they are causing needless suffering.

Gender-affirming surgery, the Republicans think the government should make these sensitive decisions.

The Republicans didn't want vaccines and face masks, and they argued that parental rights were sacrosanct then.

Parents have rights in raising their children. Athletes have rights. There is a connection.

If it is bad for politics, it is bad for people, you should use science.

Transgender people have been around for a long time. They have rights, and they need to be respected.

First, I would like to quote Judge Moody from Arkansas, a Federal judge.

Healthcare bans conflict with medical expertise. They rob parents of their right to make decisions for their children.

These bans pose a serious threat to the health and safety of transgender young people across the country, and I urge the Members of this Committee to reject any Federal attempts to replicate that harm.

Those standards have been in place for a long time. They are not new. What is new is this recent massive overreach by State lawmakers to ban medical care for transgender youth.

I trust parents and medical professionals, not politicians, to make decisions about their children's health when it comes to gender-affirming care, and so does the Constitution.

Government should not stick its nose into a parent's decision to seek gender-affirming care for their children.

I am absolutely disgusted by the Republican majority's bullying, bigoted framing of an issue that would otherwise be worthy of serious discussion.

I felt bad about voting for it because I hate what fentanyl has done to so many people and such a killer.

I'm going to help you. I'm going to call the Secretary, who is one of my colleagues. I'm going to call him today, and we're going to get this moving.

You've got to have a better answer. You've got to do something different, or this is going to go on until your great grandchildren are sitting in this Chair as DEA head.

Biden understands it should be reclassified. He said from 1-3. It ought to be classified from 1-420.

They have done nothing for 17 years and for years before that, and it goes back to the 1930s.

I agree with him totally on where we are.

I have serious concerns about some policies including a new asylum regulation which was just declared unlawful in Federal court.

The administration has embraced the use of parole following a bipartisan tradition of Presidential Administrations going back 70 years.

The administration announced the opening of regional processing centers across the Western Hemisphere.

You and the Biden Administration have used your legal authorities granted by Congress to add additional legal pathways.

Today, thanks to a concerted Republican strategy to vilify immigrants, it is hard to imagine a bill like that garnering that kind of bipartisan vote in either chamber.