ISSUES OF THE DAY

On 2026-02-12, Representative Glenn Grothman (R-WI-6) delivered a floor speech titled "ISSUES OF THE DAY" in the House. The speech addressed immigration and also covered gun policy, the economy.

ISSUES OF THE DAY

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 30 (Thursday, February 12, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 30 (Thursday, February 12, 2026)] [House] [Pages H2208-H2211] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] ISSUES OF THE DAY (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Grothman of Wisconsin was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.) Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I will assure the Chair that I will not be speaking for 60 minutes. I will be kind of amazed if I get to 25. [[Page H2209]] We now go on a work period back in the district for a little over a week. I think there are certain topics that haven't been talked about enough in this Chamber, and hopefully they will be talked about a little bit more when we return. The first anecdote, which is symptomatic--it is huge problems for America, I would argue the greatest immediate concern for America--is shown by an incident that happened in Minneapolis. A little while ago, an ICE agent doing his job had his finger bitten off by one of these radical protesters who seem to have descended in Minneapolis. What happened afterwards, though, as horrific as that is, was even worse. First of all, you would think if you bit off somebody's finger, you would be in a lot of trouble with the law. Minneapolis is in some place called Hennepin County, and you would have felt the Hennepin County law enforcement, the district attorney, would have dealt very seriously with the person who bit off the finger of an ICE agent. In fact, Minneapolis--which is kind of like, I guess, New York West or Los Angeles East, they did not see anything worth prosecuting when you bite off the finger of an ICE agent. Then we went to the Federal law enforcement, and they convened a grand jury to indict the person who bit off the finger of an ICE agent, which you think would be relatively automatic. Nobody argued that this person didn't bite off the finger of an ICE agent, which by the way will not be able to be sewn back on. Instead, when they brought it before a grand jury, which was somewhere between 16 and 22 people, they would not indict. They were, in fact, hostile to the ICE agent and wondered what he was doing in Minnesota. The person who bit off the finger of an ICE agent will not suffer any penalty at all that we can determine. Now, this is not only an incredible injustice to the ICE agent who lost his finger, it is a danger sign for America. Every country has immigration laws. When I talk to people in my district, even people who think we ought to let more people in this country, they don't think we should have no immigration laws. Nevertheless, this is where we stand. As I repeated before, right now we naturalize about 800,000 people every year in this country. 800,000 people are sworn in as new citizens if you take a 4-year rolling average. That is higher than any time in our country. It is about six times what we were letting in when I was a child. We right now are in a position in which about one out of six people in America is foreign born, which is the highest it has been for at least the last 130 years. We have nothing to apologize for. We are not being xenophobic. We are not saying we are going to let nobody in this country, but obviously we have to have some restrictions or we would wind up with tens of millions more people in the country. However, despite our generosity in letting more people here, we have significant areas of the country governed by elected people who will do all they can to wage war on the rest of us and not enforce our immigration laws. This is the most egregious example of the problem. Can you imagine a grand jury whose attitude is we don't care if an ICE agent gets their finger bitten off? That is what we have in Minnesota. Like I said, while it is outrageous in its own right for this individual, it is a danger sign for the future of America when you have significant areas of the United States which are actively working to have no immigration laws at all. This happened in Minnesota. I think it could have happened in Washington State. It could have happened in California. It could have happened in New York. We have to find a way to get Americans back on the straight and narrow as far as respecting our law enforcement. One of the reasons why they lost control in Minneapolis in the first place is that local law enforcement would not assist ICE. I have talked to sheriffs in my own district, and whenever any Federal agency is engaged in an action in any county that they are aware of, the local law enforcement is prepared to assist them. That is, if the FBI is around, if ICE is around, if the Secret Service is around, if Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are around, the local sheriffs always say: What can we do to help you? Maybe it is to secure a perimeter, maybe it is to transport somebody who has broken the law, but maybe it is just to have a squad car visible to let local people know that some serious law enforcement work is going on. Whatever it is, the sheriffs of the State of Wisconsin are always there. It is automatic that they assist their brothers in law enforcement. The sheriffs I talked to couldn't even think of an example in which local law enforcement complained privately about having to help the Feds, but in Minnesota--and it is not surprising it happened in Minnesota and not in Missouri and not Indiana--at the request of elected officials, a mayor and a Governor, local law enforcement had to stand down and watch as riots took place, property damage, and even more injury to the Federal employees. This place has to find a way to persuade our citizens that we are a great country and our laws have to be enforced. As long as we keep heading down this path of not enforcing the laws or allowing States to be so degenerate that they do not want to help Federal law enforcement, it will ultimately be the end of the country. I want to talk about another area of which I will say in this case what other countries are doing affects the United States, and will also head us toward being the type of country we wouldn't want to live in. That is with regard to a committee hearing we had this week on the First Amendment and how it affects internet platforms, but it is really a greater topic than just that. This week, we had a hearing in the Judiciary Committee in which we talked about restrictions on free speech in Europe. Usually, when I think of Europe, I think of Europe as being kind of like the United States, right? You take an airline to London or Paris or Rome, and you expect the same freedoms and prosperity you do in the United States. {time} 1140 In this hearing, we heard of a woman who is a member of the Finnish Parliament. She was charged with a crime and has had to go through a great deal of legal work to not be penalized yet because she quoted the Bible in Finland. The Finnish Government had apparently decided, particularly what I guess this body would call a controversial part of Romans, that because she quoted it, she should be penalized for that. We also heard from an Irish comedian who told jokes about transgenderism in Great Britain, and he was arrested. He has since fled to the United States, to a country in which you can still tell jokes about transgenderism so far. You can still tell jokes about illegal immigration and not go to jail. Now, we were supposed to care about this, and we do care about it because it affects our platforms. Insofar as the European governments put restrictions on X or put restrictions on Instagram, it affects Americans, as well, and that is true. What I thought was even more significant is, this is what is happening in Europe. In Europe, they have lost the right to free speech, which is just shocking to me. Frequently, bad things that happen in this country happen in Europe first. You have to remember that under the last administration, under the Biden administration, they had proposed a Disinformation Governance Board. Think about that. That is something out of Orwell. Joe Biden, who was the President of the United States, elected in a free election, proposed a Disinformation Governance Board, apparently to identify speech that he didn't like and have the Federal Government do something to restrict that speech. I will guarantee you they would have been restricting free speech when it came to immigration policies. They would have been for restricting free speech if it intervened with the type of ideas they wanted to instill in kindergarten or first grade or second grade students with regard to human growth and development programs. In any event, the totalitarians are at the gates. They are taking over Western Europe, and the United States is [[Page H2210]] next. They have taken over Western Europe, from what we heard about what is going on in Great Britain, Germany, and Finland. If you look at the Disinformation Governance Board, right now, there were enough Republicans, enough free speech news outlets, probably even enough Democrats to prevent the Disinformation Governance Board from going forward. If you look at the elections since then, the type of radical Democrats who are replacing the handful of commonsense Democrats who are still left, I am afraid that in 3 or 4 years, our country will have a Disinformation Governance Board. What is going on in this country that we are restricting free speech and hate law enforcement, at least immigration law enforcement, so much that you can bite off a finger of an ICE agent and nothing will happen to you? I believe what it is, is a psychological problem. It is something that a few conservatives in the areas of psychology and psychiatry have to identify. I will refer to it as ``Thunberg syndrome.'' You may remember the little girl who, about 10 years ago, became famous in Sweden for pushing the global warming hoax. This little girl was in a Western count