Press Releases

The President and his allies are attacking the pillars of civil society, including the courts, our universities, and the free press, trampling on our constitution and the rule of law, threatening the very foundations of our democratic republic and the rights and freedoms of our people. 

In an unconstitutional power grab, the administration—with the help of Elon Musk—is dismantling federal agencies and freezing federal funding for critical services. 

They’re indiscriminately firing hardworking public servants, jeopardizing not only their livelihoods, but the health, safety, and wellbeing of the American people whom they serve.  

Seniors are scared that Elon Musk’s DOGE is coming for their Social Security and Medicare, too. 

This administration is branding all immigrants as criminals. 

And it’s embarked on a lawless campaign of terror, including wrongfully arresting U.S. citizens and deporting innocent people with legal status. 

Doctors are terrified that this administration’s funding cuts and anti-vaccine rhetoric will worsen the highly contagious measles outbreak that’s already killed two children—the first measles deaths in this country in more than a decade. 

And to top it off, the President launched an irresponsible and costly tariff war, bringing chaos to markets across the globe, and handcuffing working families and American businesses to his sinking economy.

Congress has a constitutional duty to act as a check and balance on an out-of-control executive, to fight for the people we represent, and stand up to the madness coming from the White House. 

But so far, our Republican colleagues won’t join us to do that. 

Instead, they’re wasting the time and resources of the Constitution Subcommittee to give a platform to right-wing extremists sowing chaos and division, in order to distract Americans from Republicans’ utter failure to engage with the most pressing issues facing our country.

So, let’s start by getting some facts straight. The subject of today's hearing, Dr. Eithan Haim, was not criminally charged for his political views. Instead, he was indicted by a grand jury for stealing the personal medical records of children and giving them to a right-wing activist.

These were criminal violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. 

According to the indictment, Dr. Haim “obtained unauthorized individually identifiable health information of pediatric patients” who were receiving gender affirming care at Texas Children’s Hospital and who were not his patients.  

At the time Dr. Haim accessed the records, gender affirming care was legal under Texas law, and he knew that. Dr. Haim also knew that the children were not his patients, and therefore, he had no legal right to access their medical records.

Even if Dr. Haim believed his claim—however erroneously—that this care amounted to “child abuse,” he didn’t follow any of the official procedures to report that concern to supervisors, as he’d been trained to do. 

Instead, he shared the stolen records—not with child welfare authorities—but with a conservative activist, Christopher Rufo. 

He knew that the law was designed to protect patient privacy, and he chose to break it.

This was an open-and-shut case.

And that’s why the grand jury determined that there was enough evidence to charge him with criminal HIPAA violations. 

So it wasn’t the Department of Justice that politicized Dr. Haim’s case when it charged him with a blatant violation of HIPAA privacy laws—it was Dr. Haim himself who came up with a political excuse for his actions. And it was the Trump Administration that dropped the charges against an ideological ally, in a way that clearly serves its own political agenda.

That should give us all pause. DOJ’s creed has always been to operate free from fear or favor; in other words, independent of political bias.

But, we’re already seeing that’s not true under this administration.

Earlier this week, we heard testimony from a DOJ attorney who was fired because she refused to recommend that the gun rights of one of the President’s celebrity buddies be restored because of deep concerns with his history of domestic violence. 

Over the weekend, we heard of a DOJ lawyer who was placed on leave when he refused to manufacture law or facts to support the government’s case, which would be a violation of ethics and the rule of law.

And among other egregious examples these past few months, the DOJ dismissed the case we’re talking about here today, despite clear and grotesque invasions of patient privacy, because the White House wants to attack gender affirming care.  

And Americans have to wonder, what other invasions of your medical privacy will this administration encourage? Given the Administration’s embrace of Project 2025, will reproductive health care be next? 

So, why are we having this hearing? 

For one thing, it’s yet another chance for Congressional Republicans to spread misinformation about transgender individuals and their medical care, because they think they will score political points by bullying the young people receiving that care, regardless of the fact that every major medical and mental health association in the U.S., representing more than 1.3 million U.S. doctors, supports age-appropriate gender-affirming care for transgender people.

That includes: the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Endocrine Society, among other organizations.

But this is part of a pattern and practice for our colleagues, who are all too willing to disregard Americans’ fundamental rights and freedoms in order to meddle in people’s personal medical decisions, injecting religious or political beliefs into choices that should be left between individuals, their families, and their doctors.     

It’s abundantly clear this Republican majority only cares about some rights and freedoms for some people, rather than those that all Americans should enjoy.

In addition to spreading misinformation, this hearing is meant to fight a fake problem, and to distract Americans while our Republican colleagues ignore the real problems. 

And we don’t have to look far to find out why our Republican colleagues chose to have this hearing, this week. 

Believe me, bullying transgender kids and families is not the number one concern for any of our constituents. I know because I’ve been holding town halls in my district, and in some of theirs, too.

No—our constituents’ number one concern is how they’re going to pay for housing, health care, food, clothes, college, and retirement, with the global economy and stock markets tanking and predictions of a recession rising, and Elon Musk and DOGE gutting Social Security, the VA, and the Department of Education while also freezing funding that our communities rely upon.

Meanwhile, in the midst of all this chaos and economic disruption, House Republicans are trying to pass an unpopular budget plan that would be devastating for American children and families. 

They’re proposing at least $880 billion in cuts that will decimate Medicaid. Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, provides health coverage for over 37 million kids and covers 41 percent of all births.  

Their plan will rip health care coverage away from millions of Americans, with children and working families bearing the brunt.  Kids will be left without routine medical care, leading to greater infant mortality and tragic consequences from preventable illnesses. 

It doesn’t stop there either; Republicans are also targeting programs that help working families keep food on the table. 

Their budget blueprint calls for billions of dollars of cuts that threaten SNAP, a program that provides food support to over 42 million families. In doing so, they’ll jeopardize a parent’s ability to buy the groceries they need to feed their kids healthy meals. 

Cuts to SNAP would, in turn, endanger other nutrition assistance programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, because WIC uses SNAP and Medicaid data to automatically enroll children. 

If fewer families can access SNAP and Medicaid, fewer will be able to access WIC too. 

Their budget would also cut over $300 billion from Department of Education programs, threatening, among other things, kids’ access to the nutritious school meals they need to learn and grow. 

And at the same time, Elon Musk’s DOGE is attempting to dismantle the entire Department of Education outright, destroying an agency that helps ensure that children—no matter their parents’ jobs, their zip codes, or their special learning needs—can access a high-quality education. 

All of this only begins to scratch the surface of the harm that these budget cuts will inflict on American children and families. 

They say our budget reflects our values.  And it’s clear that, instead of using their power in Congress to actually protect children, our Republican colleagues would rather pull the rug out from under them, ripping away resources that set them up for success. 

And why? So that they can give tax breaks to big business and their billionaire buddies like Elon Musk. 

American children aren’t some prop in MAGA’s culture war. They’re our country’s future, and we should always be working to ensure that the future is a better and a brighter one. 

The Republican majority’s plan shamefully misses that mark. 

I yield back.