Today, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-Fla.) to discuss President Trump’s leadership to prevent a nuclear Iran, honor service members who made the ultimate sacrifice, and warn that Democrats’ shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security is weakening America’s ability to respond to growing threats.
  
On our brave troops defending American freedoms:

“We all pray for our men and women in uniform who are carrying out this critically important mission. We mourn the six who have lost their lives just in the last few days, but we also recognize the threat that Iran has posed for decades. And Chairman Mast laid it out incredibly well. Chairman Mast, who himself served our country so honorably but understands that this is a threat that has declared war against America and carried out attack on top of attack on top of attack against our men and women in uniform. Hundreds of service members dead at the bloody hands of the Iranian regime, who is no longer with us because President Trump finally took the action that many other presidents have contemplated but ultimately decided to push off to somebody else. And President Trump is the leader, the commander in chief, who said, we are going to protect America against evil dictators who chant ‘Death to America.'”

On the Iranian regime’s resolve to produce nuclear weapons:

“By the way, when they're enriching uranium at weapons-grade level, we ought to take them at their word because that was their intention. For years and years, they were rushing towards a nuclear weapon, and even after the Operation Midnight Hammer decimated parts of their nuclear weapons program, they still went back and started trying to rebuild a nuclear weapons program, continued enriching uranium. They were never going to stop, and it was crystal clear during the negotiations where Secretary of State Rubio did such an incredible job, as well as his team, trying to get a peaceful solution to this.

“Iran made it clear they had no intention of reaching any kind of peaceful solution, and ultimately their intent was to kill Americans, as they have been for decades. And if you wonder what their resolve is, just look at the tens of thousands of their own people that they killed just in the last few months. And so we support President Trump in this important action. We pray for the safety of our troops who are carrying out this incredibly important mission and our allies in the region. And you can see more countries getting pulled in from even around the Middle East region.”

On Democrats’ refusal to fund the Department of Homeland Security:

“At the same time, we also recognize this is no time to have the Department of Homeland Security shut down and their ability to protect Americans limited. And who did that? Democrats in Congress, who weeks ago made a reckless decision to shut down the Department of Homeland Security. But now that we're at a heightened threat, and it's not just hypothetical threats, you could see what happened in Austin – a man with a 'Property of Allah' shirt killing Americans.

“When we saw the open border of Joe Biden, we have been for years letting in people who want to do us harm, people on the terrorist watch list, people from Iran that could do us harm. We need to be more vigilant than ever and have a fully functioning Department of Homeland Security with all the capabilities, cyber capabilities, which right now are dramatically limited because of Democrats' reckless and dangerous action to shut that department down. It is time for their dangerous games to end. Democrats need to vote with us tomorrow to reopen the Department of Homeland Security to make sure that our basic mission as members of Congress to keep Americans safe continues. And we're going to give them that opportunity.”

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