Devastating Harm Caused By Trump Administration

Floor Speech

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Mr. IVEY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman for hosting this Special Order today and for the great work that she has done on behalf of the State of Ohio and for the Nation. We serve on the Appropriations Committee together, and I have had a chance to see her do outstanding work on a firsthand basis, so I want to thank her for her service.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of hardworking public servants who were using their expertise and training for scientific advancement that could save lives and preserve American leadership in technology and innovation. Unfortunately, the Trump administration forced them out of their jobs and out of their laboratories.

I had a chance to meet with many of these individuals over the last few months. We had a job fair in my district not that long ago, and a couple of people came through had a chance to chat with me. Unfortunately, we didn't have anything that met the caliber of the background and expertise that they possessed.

One was a Ph.D. researcher at NIH who had been doing clinical trials on Alzheimer's research. She told me that what had happened was she had been laid off. Everybody in her lab had been laid off. So what that meant was the trial that they had been running for years got shut down.

As we all know with clinical trials, Alzheimer's, cancer, and others--and I will come back to those--these aren't light switches, Mr. Speaker. We can't just flip the switch and start it back. In some of those instances, we have to start from scratch.

Alzheimer's is a disease that I have a special interest in. It killed my father. I watched him waste away from Alzheimer's, and I now pay closer attention to the impact that that disease can have and the way it ravages thousands of people every year across the country. Instead of doing the research to find a cure for Alzheimer's, their laboratory got shut down.

Medical devices was another one. I met a gentleman who was a mechanical engineer. He had been trained and earned his Ph.D. in research. He worked for the Federal Government. I believe he was at the FDA, if I recall correctly. He did tests to make sure that the medical devices that were up for approval had been tested and actually worked the way that they did.

He gave me an example. He said that pacemakers were one of those. There are people who are trying to make innovations with respect to these kinds of medical devices. The job at his office was to make sure that these worked the right way and were safe and efficacious. His lab got shut down.

I met another individual. She had a master's in public health. She got fired. You won't imagine how ironic it was, Mr. Speaker. She got fired, and she was doing work on measles. Just at the time they had the major outbreak in Texas, she was laid off, and her group was canceled out as well.

The New York Times, just last weekend I believe it was, published a cover story on their magazine about losing the war on cancer. As you know, Mr. Speaker, the United States has been one of the leading innovators with respect to research, and cancer has been a huge focus on that research. We have been doing outstanding work there and making huge strides forward.

As I mentioned a moment ago, I am a cancer survivor, and I was a beneficiary of the fact that we had innovations that changed the way that treatment was provided just in time for when I came along. That was 20 years ago. However, now we are shutting those clinical trials down, and that article lays it out clearly and sadly.

It was a little ironic. Mr. Speaker. You may recall that here in this Chamber, President Trump gave a speech. It looked kind of like a state of the Union, but it wasn't actually that address, but there was a young boy up in the seats over there who was a cancer survivor. He had him stand up. He gave him a badge from, I think it was, Secret Service and celebrated his survival. Just a few days later, the Trump administration terminated research for pediatric cancer.

We have to find a way to make sure we don't lose the competition with China. I just mentioned medical issues there, but the Trump administration is doing so many things with respect to research and development and high tech.

China, on the other hand, as we heard from one of my colleagues a moment ago, is pushing employees. They are developing them. They can't develop them fast enough, and they are pushing them into research and work with respect to artificial intelligence and quantum computing, while here in the United States, especially in the last 9 months, we are doing everything we can--well, the Trump administration is doing everything it can, it would seem, to limit the number of people who can go into this kind of work. They are cutting back on the grants that would allow people to do the research, and they are cutting the funding for people who are going to school to earn their Ph.D.s to pay for their education.

China is doing the exact opposite. To the extent the United States has been behind on creating its own researchers and developers here in the United States, we have had a lot of people come from overseas, people who are doing outstanding work, but they come from other countries. Then the Trump administration decided it wanted to cancel their visas.

Some of the attacks on Harvard, in particular, the big threat was: We are not going to let you have international students come to study. The result of that was, international students from all around the world who are the top of the line, doing outstanding work, this is the next generation we want to help and have them come. Many of them come to the United States from other places, and they like it here so much they stay. They build their careers.

In fact, many of the research and innovation entities that we have in the United States are run by people who have come from overseas, immigrants who have come to the United States. But we are forcing them away, scaring them away, and pushing them to other countries.

You have got to believe the other countries are welcoming them with open arms. I was just talking to a group who trains doctors, medical doctors. They said the people that we train here, they are being pulled away to other countries now because they can complete their medical training, go work overseas, the medical training gets covered, and so they can get their medical education done and then go to work and have a chance to be successful and provide the type of medical care and treatment that we want to have here in the United States, but we are losing that, as well.

We have got to make sure that we do everything we can to preserve the institutions and the departments and agencies that are doing great work here in the United States. NASA, NOAA, FDA, and NIST are all doing great work. The universities we have got here are doing great work on the R&D front. That is the only way we are going to be able to win the competition with China. That includes AI, quantum computing, and high-tech. Those are the places that gave us the lead that we have in software and in the computer industry. GPS and LASIK were spinoffs of R&D that was worked on at NASA. Instead of building that up, the Trump administration is laying people off.

Mr. Speaker, 445,000 Federal employees lost their collective bargaining rights. As the Senate report pointed out, in forcing out tens of thousands of people who worked for the government--many of them doing the science and tech work that I just talked about--the Democratic staff report calls it: The $21 billion blunder, analyzing the waste generated by DOGE.

DOGE didn't focus only on science and tech, but its impact has been resonating there for sure in a very damaging way for the United States.

We need to work together to force the Trump administration to see the error of its ways. We need to make sure that we get back on track so that we can win the competition with China, preserve our leadership role in the world, and build on the great advances that we have had here in the United States.

Let's get to work.

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