results of the election, but they are the right results. Joe Biden has won Arizona.
The State supreme court, made up entirely of justices appointed by Republican Governors, has spoken, too. The court said the President’s challenge “fails to present any evidence of misconduct, illegal votes, or that the Biden electors did not in fact receive the highest numbers of votes for office.”
Look to the words of one of the President’s own campaign chairs in my State, our Governor, Doug Ducey. Our Governor loves the President. He has been so loyal. He made sure the President could hold large rallies in our State in the middle of a pandemic. The Governor personally attended them. They spoke so often that the Governor gave the President a special “Hail to the Chief” ring tone on his phone.
After election day, as the legal challenges played out, the Governor kept quiet; but when the truth became clear, even he acknowledged “Joe Biden did win Arizona.”
I am grateful that, in this instance, the Governor put law, not partisan politics, first. And I urge my colleagues in the House to follow his lead.
Each and every one of us in this House, the people’s House, swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend our Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Over the last few hours, we have gained a better understanding of what that means.
The future of the Constitution, the most precious of the founding documents of the greatest democracy human kind has ever known, is in our hands. Defending democracy is not, and should not be, a partisan task. It is a sacred one. Right here, right now, we must recognize that fidelity to the founding principles of our Nation are not about loyalty to one man, but rather to ensure that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.
The world is watching us all right now. We must get it right. Reject this ill-conceived attack on our democracy.
Ms. Stefanik. Madam Speaker, I rise to support the objection.
The Speaker. The gentlewoman is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Stefanik. Madam Speaker, I rise with a heavy heart. This has been a truly tragic day for America. We all join together in fully condemning the dangerous violence and destruction that occurred today in our Nation’s Capitol.
Americans will always have their freedom of speech and the constitutional right to protest, but violence in any form is absolutely unacceptable. It is anti-America, and must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Thank you to the heroic United States Capitol Police. And thank you to the bipartisan professional staff of the United States Capitol for protecting the people’s House and the American people.
This hallowed temple of democracy is where generations of Americans have peacefully come together to face our Nation’s greatest challenges, bridge our deepest fissures, and create a more perfect system of government. This is the appropriate place we stand to respectfully and peacefully give voice to the people we represent across our diverse country.
The Representatives of the American people in this House are standing up for three fundamental American beliefs: The right to vote is sacred, that a Representative has a duty to represent his or her constituents, and that the rule of law is a hallmark of our Nation.
And in the spirit of healing—those are not my words—those are the words of you, Madam Speaker, from this very Chamber, when some of my colleagues and friends across the aisle objected to the 2005 electoral college certification.
In fact, there were objections on this floor to the certification of nearly every Republican President in my lifetime: In 1989, in 2001, in 2005, and in 2017.
So history is our guide that the people’s sacred House is the appropriate venue for a peaceful debate. And this peaceful debate serves as a powerful condemnation to the violence that perpetrated our Capitol grounds today. The violence that was truly un-American.
Today’s discussion is about the Constitution and it is about the American people, but it must also be about clearly and resolutely condemning the violence that occurred today.
I am honored each and every day to represent New York’s 21st Congressional District, and I believe it is my solemn and sacred duty to serve as their voice and their vote in the people’s House.
Tens of millions of Americans are concerned that the 2020 election featured unconstitutional overreach by unelected State officials and judges ignoring State election laws. We can and we should peacefully and respectfully discuss these concerns.
In Pennsylvania, the State supreme court and secretary of state unilaterally and unconstitutionally rewrote election law eliminating signature matching requirements.
In Georgia, there was constitutional overreach when the secretary of state unilaterally and unconstitutionally gutted signature matching for absentee ballots and, in essence, eliminated voter verification required by State election law.
In Wisconsin, officials issued illegal rules to circumvent a State law, passed by the legislature as the Constitution requires, but required absentee voters to provide further identification before obtaining a ballot.
In Michigan, signed affidavits document numerous unconstitutional irregularities: Officials physically blocking the legal right of poll watchers to observe vote counts, the illegal counting of late ballots, and hand-stamping ballots with the previous day’s date.
My North Country constituents and the American people cherish the Constitution. They know, according to the Constitution, elected officials closest to the people in State legislatures have the power of the pen to write election law, not unelected bureaucrats, judges, Governors, or secretaries of state.
To the tens of thousands of constituents who have reached out to me, thank you. Please know that I am listening and I hear you, both those who agree and those who disagree. Our Constitutional Republic will endure this tragic day because the Founding Fathers understood Congress and the American people would face unprecedented and historic challenges by debating them on this very floor.
I believe that the most precious foundation and the covenant of our Republic is the right to vote, and the faith in the sanctity of our Nation’s free and fair elections. We must work together in this House to rebuild that faith so that all our elections are free, fair, secure, safe and, most importantly, that they are according to the United States Constitution.
Mr. Roy. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to the objection.
The Speaker. The gentleman is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Roy. Madam Speaker, today, the people’s House was attacked, which is an attack on the Republic itself. There is no excuse for it. A women died. And people need to go to jail. And the President should never have spun up certain Americans to believe something that simply cannot be.
I applaud House leadership of both parties for bringing us back to do our job, which is to count the electors and no more.
The problem we face, though, is even bigger. We are deeply divided. We are divided about even life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The words which used to bind us together now, at times, tear us apart because we disagree about what they even mean.
My constituents at home in Texas are genuinely upset. I say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, we have a constant barrage of those who wish to remake America into a socialist welfare State, efforts to attack our institutions, tear down statues, erase our history, defund our police. We have seen the debasing of our language. We teach our children that America is evil. We destroy our sovereignty, empower cartels. We attack our Second Amendment. We destroy small businesses through lockdowns. We divide ourselves by race. We can’t even agree that there is man and woman. We extinguish the unborn before they even have a chance to see daylight.
But at the heart of our path forward lies the essence of our Republic, its cornerstone. That we are a union of States bound together for common defense and economic strength, and more
