Non Fiction Authors From The United States

"The synod that will begin tomorrow conceals an agenda that is more political and human than ecclesial and divine. The will is to profoundly change the hierarchical constitution of the Church is clear, with a further consequence a weakening of teaching on morality as well as discipline in the Church."

"Please join me in thanking Our Lord for the election of Pope Leo XIV, Successor of St. Peter, as Shepherd of the Church throughout the world.The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse has a particularly strong bond with the Roman Pontiff, especially through its affiliation with the Papal Basilica of St. Mary Major. I urge all pilgrims and friends of the Shrine to pray fervently for Pope Leo XIV that Our Lord, through the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Peter the Apostle and Pope St. Leo the Great, may grant him abundant wisdom, strength and courage to do all that Our Lord asks of him in these tumultuous times. May God bless Pope Leo and grant him many years."

"Here the Shariah historically worked differently from modern laws on marital rape, which originated in the 1970s. But the effect is similar: protection. Within marriage, wrongs regarding sex were not conceived of as violations of consent. They were conceived of as harm inflicted on the wife. And in Islamic history wives could and did go to courts to complain and get judges to order husbands to desist and pay damages. So yes, non-consensual sex is wrong and forbidden in Islam. But the operating element to punish marital rape fell under the concept of harm, not non-consent"

"The Shariah offered protection to both wives and slave-concubines, but it came not under the rubric of consent but that of harm. By definition, the crime of rape (i.e., forced zina) could not occur within a licit relationship. But transgressive harm could still be done by the man. Wives and concubines could complain to local judges if they were being abused or if his demands for sex were excessive (we will discuss the issue of concubinage and consent in the concluding chapter of this book). The Hanbali scholar Buhūtī (d. 1641) even says that if a master forced a slave woman unable to bear intercourse to have sex and injured her, she would be freed as a result... "According to the Quran, both marriage and ownership (in the case of the female slave and her male master) were relationships in which sex was licit (Quran 23:5-6). Within these relationships, consent for sexual relations was assumed or irrelevant. In marriage the relationship itself entailed ongoing consent for sex, and with a female slave it was not needed (assuming the slave girl was soley owned by one man and not married; in both cases she was off limits). Kecia Ali has observed that there is no evidence for any requirement for consent for sex from slave women in books of Islamic law from the eighth to the tenth centuries""

"As noted earlier, marriage and a male's ownership of a female slave were the two relationships in which sex could licitly occur according to the Shariah. In marriage, the consent of the wife to sex was assumed by virtue of the marriage contract itself. In the case of the slave-concubine, consent was irrelevant because of the master's ownership of the woman in question. As Kecia Ali has noted, there is no evidence for any requirement for consent from slave women in books of Islamic law in the formative centuries of Islam. Books of Islamic law and natural ethics are full of exhortations for husbands to enter in foreplay and stress the wife's right to orgasm. But such books also foreground Hadiths and laws obliging wives to meet their husbands' sexual needs without contest. [...] In the Shariah, consent was crucial if you belonged to a class of individuals whose consent mattered: free women and men who were adults (even male slaves could not be married off against their will according to the Hanbali and Shafiʿi schools, and this extended to slaves with mukataba arrangements in the Hanafi school). Consent did not matter for minors. And it did not matter for female slaves, who could be married off by their master or whose master could have a sexual relationship with them if he wanted (provided the woman was not married or under a contract to buy her own freedom)."

"No compulsion in religion’ (2:256) was a Qur'anic command revealed in Medina when a child from one of the Muslim families who had been educated in the town's Jewish schools decided to depart with the Jewish tribe being expelled from Medina. His distraught parents were told by God and the Prophet in this verse that they could not compel their son to stay. The verse, however, has been understood over the centuries as a general command that people cannot be forced to convert to Islam."

"Shah Wali Allah had been a late addition to his family. His father, Shah 'Abd al-Rahim, had long been one of the most respected in the Mughal real, and his talents and austere piety had won him and then cost him royal favor decades before his most famous son was born. When Shah Wali Allah was five, his father placed him in the school he supervised, and by seven the boy had memorized the Qur'an. He mastered Arabic and Persian letters soon thereafter and was married at fourteen. A childhood spent studying at his father's feet meant that by sixteen he had completed the standard curriculum of law, theology and logic along with arithmetic and geometry. A year later, Shah Wali Allah would recall poignantly, his father and greatest teacher 'Voyaged onward to the above of God's mercy.' The young student's ambition to seek ilm remained strong, and by nineteen he had exhausted the Knowledge of Dehli's scholars. So Shah Wali Allah voyaged across the Indian Ocean to perform his hajj pilgrimage and pursue his studies in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. In the Prophet's mosque in Medina, at the feet of scholars from across the Muslim world, he studied a book to which he became exceedingly attached and which he viewed as the foundation for understanding the Prophet's Sunna. It was the Muwatta, the 'Well Trodden Path,' of the eight-century scholar of Medina, ."

"Coming out of retreat and looking around at my own culture, looking at the crises that we are in, the problems that exist in the American family, I saw that on one hand, many of us have come a long way in order to be able to acknowledge Eastern masters, saints from other traditions. But where are the American realized beings?... What this country needs more than anything else is for us to become elders, walking the streets and doing our jobs, really happy, classic, ageless spiritual human beings. So that's the opportunity we have and I don't think any people in the history of the world has ever had more access to the methods and ideas for how to do that. We are very fortunate in that way, even if you’re in prison."

"Look all over the world and see the people who unselfishly receive and express goodness, who are dedicated to the cause of love. They’re the only people who are truly happy. They have tapped into the one mysterious, wonderful connectedness that frees them to live full-time in love. Some of them had great childhoods, some were horribly abused, some are pretty, some are homely, some tall, some short, rich, poor — our situations are always unequal, but life does not judge us by where we’ve been, what we own, or what has been done to us; life judges us by what we do."

"For much of Islamic history, the unit through which the Sunna was preserved, transmitted, and understood has been the hadīth (Arabic plural, ahādīth ), or a report describing the words, actions, or habits of the Prophet. Unlike the Quran, the hadiths were not quickly and concisely compiled during and immediately after Muhammad’s life. Because hadiths were recorded and transmitted over a period of decades and even centuries, they are not in and of themselves contemporary historical documentation of what Muhammad said and did."

"In theory, police authority is restricted by state and federal law, as well as by the policies of individual departments. In reality, the police often exceed the bounds of their lawful authority and rarely pay any price for doing so. The rules are only as good as their enforcement, and they are seldom enforced. The real limits to police power are established not by statutes and regulations — since no rule is self-enforcing — but by their leadership and, indirectly, by the balance of power in society. So long as the police defend the status quo, so long as their actions promote the stability of the existing system, their misbehavior is likely to be overlooked. It is when their excesses threaten this stability that they begin to face meaningful restraints. Laws and policies can be ignored and still provide a cover of plausible deniability for those in authority. But when misconduct reaches such a level as to provoke unrest, the battles that ensue do not only concern particular injustices, but also represent deep disputes about the rights of the public and the limits of state power. On the one side, the police and the government try desperately to maintain control, to preserve their authority. And on the other, oppressed people struggle to assert their humanity. Such riots represent, among other things, the attempt of the community to define for itself what will count as police brutality and where the limit of authority falls. It is in these conflicts, not in the courts, that our rights are established."

"When the police enforce the law, they do so unevenly, in ways that give disproportionate attention to the activities of poor people, people of color, and others near the bottom of the social pyramid. And when the police violate the law, these same people are their most frequent victims. This is a coincidence too large to overlook. If we put aside, for the moment, all questions of legality, it must become quite clear that the object of police attention, and the target of police violence, is overwhelmingly that portion of the population that lacks real power. And this is precisely the point: police activities, legal or illegal, violent or nonviolent, tend to keep the people who currently stand at the bottom of the social hierarchy in their “place,” where they “belong” — at the bottom. Put differently, we might say that the police act to defend the interests and standing of those with power—those at the top. So long as they serve in this role, they are likely to be given a free hand in pursuing these ends and a great deal of leeway in pursuing other ends that they identify for themselves. The laws may say otherwise, but laws can be ignored."

"Police violence is very frequently over-determined — promoted from above and supported from below. But where it is not actually encouraged, sometimes even where individuals (officers or administrators) disapprove of it, excessive and illegal force are nevertheless nearly always condoned. Among police administrators there is the persistent and well-documented refusal to discipline violent officers; and among the cops themselves, there is the “code of silence.” Police brutality does not just happen; it is allowed to happen. It is tolerated by the police themselves, those on the street and those in command. It is tolerated by prosecutors, who seldom bring charges against violent cops, and by juries, who rarely convict. It is tolerated by the civil authorities, the mayors and the city councils, who do not use their influence to challenge police abuses. But why? The answer is simple: police brutality is tolerated because it is what people with power want. [...] It is merely the normal functioning of the institution; it is just that the apparent conflict between the law and police practices may not be so important as we tend to assume. The two may, at times, be at odds, but this is of little concern so long as the interests they serve are essentially the same. The police may violate the law, as long as they do so in the pursuit of ends that people with power generally endorse, and from which such people profit."

"Violence is an inherent part of policing. The police represent the most direct means by which the state imposes its will on the citizenry. When persuasion, indoctrination, moral pressure and incentive measures all fail — there are the police. In the field of social control, police are specialists in violence. They are armed, trained and authorized to use force. With varying degrees of subtlety, this colors their every action. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent. Despite the official insistence to the contrary, it is clear that police organizations, as well as individual officers, hold a large share of the responsibility for the prevalence of police brutality. Police agencies are organizationally complex, and brutality may be promoted or accommodated within any (or all) of its various dimensions. Both formal and informal aspects of an organization can help create a climate in which unnecessary violence is tolerated, or even encouraged. Among the formal aspects contributing to violence are the organization’s official policies, its identified priorities, the training it offers its personnel, its allocation of resources, and its system of promotions, awards, and other incentives. When these aspects of an organization encourage violence — whether or not they do so intentionally, or even consciously — we can speak of brutality being promoted “from above.” This understanding has been well applied to the regimes of certain openly thuggish leaders —Bull Connor, Richard Daley, Frank Rizzo, Daryl Gates, Rudolph Giuliani, Joe Arpaio (to name just a few) — but it need not be so overt to have the same effect. On the other hand, when police culture and occupational norms support the use of unnecessary violence, we can describe brutality as being supported “from below.” Such informal conditions are a bit harder to pin down, but they certainly have their consequences. We may count among their elements insularity, indifference to the problem of brutality, generalized suspicion, and the intense demand for personal respect. One of the first sociologists to study the problem of police violence, William Westley, described these as “basic occupational values,” more important than any other determinant of police behavior."

"We are encouraged to think of acts of police violence more or less in isolation, to consider them as unique, unrelated occurrences. We ask ourselves always, “What went wrong?” and for answers we look to the seconds, minutes, or hours before the incident. Perhaps this leads us to fault the individual officer, perhaps it leads us to excuse him. Such thinking, derived as it is from legal reasoning, does not take us far beyond the case in question. And thus, such inquiries are rarely very illuminating. The shooting of Oscar Grant, the beating of Rodney King, the arrest of Marquette Frye, the killing of Arthur McDuffie — any of these may be explained in terms of the actions and attitudes of the particular officers at the scene, the events preceding the violence (including the actions of the victims), and the circumstances in which the officers found themselves. Indeed, juries and police administrators have frequently found it possible to excuse police violence with such explanations. The unrest that followed these incidents, however, cannot be explained in such narrow terms. To understand the rioting, one must consider a whole range of related issues, including the conditions of life in the Black community, the role of the police in relation to that community, and the history and pattern of similar abuses. If we are to understand the phenomenon of police brutality, we must get beyond particular cases. We can better understand the actions of individual police officers if we understand the institution of which they are a part. That institution, in turn, can best be examined if we have an understanding of its origins, its social function, and its relation to larger systems like capitalism and white supremacy."

"We’ve been here before. In the first hours of 2009, police boarded a Bay Area Rapid Transit train, responding to a call about a fight. They detained several young men, most of them Black, among them one named Oscar Grant. As Grant was lying facedown on the platform being handcuffed, one officer, Johannes Mehserle, drew his gun, shot him in the back, and killed him. The entire incident was recorded on video from multiple angles. Several witnesses were filming with their cell phone cameras when Grant was shot; afterward, they hid the cameras from police, and then posted the footage on the internet. Within days, demonstrations were organized in Oakland, and quickly escalated into riots — beginning with an attack on a police car parked in front of the BART headquarters. More than 300 businesses and hundreds of cars were damaged in the unrest. Police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, an armored personnel carrier and more than a hundred arrests, but demonstrations continued for weeks. A year later, Mehserle was tried and convicted, but of manslaughter rather than murder. Rioting resumed. Damages were estimated at $750,000. While clearly a limited victory, the Mehserle verdict remains remarkable. Looking back over the fifteen previous years, the San Francisco Chronicle could find only six cases in which police were charged for on-duty shootings, and none of the thirteen officers involved were convicted. "If there’s one lesson to take from this," a participant in the unrest was later to conclude, "it’s that the only reason Mehserle was arrested is because people tore up the city. It was the riot — and the threat of future riots.""

"Riots are communities defining what counts as police brutality and to set the limits of authority. It is here, not in the courts, that our rights are established."

"We’re All Doing Time, by Bo Lozoff. This simple, straightforward book is widely read by inmates for the message of spiritual hope it imparts... When you’re locked up, you are just sitting there with your mind... You’ll do things like go to church and read the Bible. You’ll be looking for something. This book, which had letters from ex-prisoners and current prisoners... teaches you how to meditate and pray and do yoga. This book, for me, it was my guide to getting free."

"Police described the incident in a media release: Responding to a 3:34 p.m. call, Puna patrol and Traffic Enforcement Unit officers determined that the 65-year-old man was operating a 2003 Suzuki motorcycle and traveling north on Route 130 when a 1999 Lexus multi-purpose vehicle being operated by a 66-year-old Pāhoa man failed to yield the right of way and made a left turn onto Leilani Avenue. The motorcycle operator was not wearing a helmet and was dead at the scene. Lozoff received praise from the Dalai Lama, who wrote the forwards for two of his books, and from the late children’s TV host, Mr. Rogers, who listed Lozoff among his heroes... An innovative thinker, he sought ways to re-integrate former prisoners into society, and founded the environmental non-profit, Carolina Biodiesel, to both promote biodiesel and to create jobs for former prisoners."

"Lozoff decided to apply for a position as a prison guard at the new federal prison...He didn't get the job, but the assistant warden was curious about why a guy like Lozoff--a young man active in the protest and counterculture movements of the '60s and '70s--would want a job as a prison guard... Lozoff leveled with him, told him he was a Karma Yogi who suspected his spiritual path might involve service to prisoners... amazingly, the assistant warden responded with enthusiasm... Lozoff... soon found himself teaching classes in individual jails and prisons... Ram Dass, also had taken a great interest in prisoners; the Lozoffs met with him and the three began to craft a plan for helping convicts turn their cells and prison yards into ashrams, places of spiritual growth and freedom."

"In the midst of global crises such as pollution, wars, and famine, kindness may be too easily dismissed as a ‘soft’ issue, or a luxury to be addressed after the urgent problems are solved. But kindness is the greatest need in all those areas."

"Here are people who go out into the world with two strikes against them. First, they're felons, with all that conjures up for people. Second, they don't know how to work for a boss. Don't know how to handle a schedule, how to show up on time, how to manage the obligations. When they leave us, it's like they're swimming upstream."

"The need was there. These were people who had changed their lives, their values, while they were in prison. And they were getting ready to be thrown back into a society that wouldn't support that... We wanted to provide a place for ex-cons to live before moving out on their own."

"Everyone is born with a spiritual responsibility also, as specific as our hearts pumping blood: We must learn to love one another, to receive and express goodness. It doesn't matter whether we believe in it or not. Obey it and we will thrive, disobey it and we won’t. Period. Isn’t that wonderful? Our human justice system may be all screwed up, but the Divine Law treats us absolutely equally."

"Today, as we meet here, there are Republican candidates for governor who deny the outcome of the 2020 election, and who may refuse to certify future elections if they oppose the results. We have candidates for secretary of state who may refuse to report the actual results of the popular vote in future elections. And we have candidates for Congress, including here in Wyoming, who refuse to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and suggest that states decertify their results. Our nation is barreling, once again, towards crisis, lawlessness and violence. No American should support election deniers for any position of genuine responsibility, where their refusal to follow the rule of law will corrupt our future."

"The Church therefore requires that the priest practice custody of the eyes, an integral part of modesty: we should never let our eyes fall on anything that would distract us from God or lead us into sin."

"It’s not unreasonable that people are becoming angry because they’re seeing that the bishops are overreacting in certain circumstances, but what they need to do, they need to see, instead of being angry, that this is a sign that God’s calling us to pray for them, because being angry with them isn’t going to help them. Praying will."

"As a natural right, belongs to none but those who have been born of citizens."

"Citizenship by inheritance belongs to none but the children of those Americans, who, having survived the Declaration of Independence, acquired that adventitious character in their own right, and transmitted it to their offspring."

"Citizenship is the inheritance of the children of those who have taken part in the late revolution; but this is confined exclusively to the children of those who were themselves citizens."

"Rep. Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick, is trying to prolong her father's in Afghanistan. [...] Colorado's freshman Democratic Rep. Jason Crow teamed up with Republican Rep. Liz Cheney to advance legislation that would make it more difficult for any president to draw down troop deployments in Afghanistan. I live in the same media market as Crow's district. I can tell you that his 2018 campaign was focused on gun control. It was not a campaign promising voters that he would go to Washington to make common cause with Liz Cheney, and help her efforts to glorify and fortify her daddy's policy of endless war. But that’s exactly what his bill does. [...] Cheney initiatives that may seem superficially reasonable when calmly uttered by a Cheney usually have an insane ulterior motive. In this case, that truism applies: The Crow-Cheney legislation may sound like it includes reasonable requests, but they are designed to make the Afghanistan deployment permanent. In practice, nobody can predict with 100 percent certainty what will ensue once a nineteen-year ends. What we can know is that it's a bad idea to continue a policy that isn't working — and there’s plenty of evidence that it isn’t."

"If she ran in a primary, she’d be firmly in the Larry Hogan lane, which might constitute about 5 percent of the Republican electorate total. It’s quite possible that those voters are themselves so disaffected from the GOP that Cheney wouldn’t be denying them to any other non-Republican candidate. But if that’s wrong, or if she got some traction, she’d only be taking voters from some other, more viable, alternative to Trump. She might not even make it on the debate stage with Trump, if the party writes rules to exclude her. What possibly would make such a run worth the risk of, at least at the margins, making it more likely that Trump wins the nomination again? An independent run wouldn’t make any more sense. Again, her share of the vote would likely be tiny. In 2020, Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgenson got 1.18 percent of the vote. Even if Cheney could get more, the chances are that she’d be a place for Republicans repulsed by Trump to park their votes rather than go all the way to Biden. This means, just as with a prospective primary run, she’d be helping Trump at the margins. Captain Ahab may have made a few mistakes in judgment in his stewardship of the Pequod, but at least he never allowed himself to affirmatively assist his great adversary, the White Whale. One thing that’s been remarkable about Cheney’s performance the past couple of years is how apparently clear-eyed she’s been about what it means for her future in the House of Representatives, namely that she wouldn’t have one. In contrast, a presidential run of any sort would be giving in to delusion. If Lincoln was dogged, he was never fanciful. Cheney should realize that she’s taken a path that, whatever its other advantages, doesn’t end in electoral vindication."

"It’s difficult to overstate the magnitude of Cheney’s collapse. She went from winning her primary with 73 percent of the vote in 2020, to garnering a mere 29 percent that was heavily dependent on Democratic cross-over votes. Wyoming is particularly Trumpy, but there’s no reason to believe that there’s much appetite for Cheney’s approach elsewhere, either. House Republicans who voted for impeachment have been getting hunted down like members of the “Cowboys” gang targeted in the Earp Vendetta Ride, even if they’ve tried to placate GOP primary voters. Cheney not only voted for impeachment but made herself the emblem of Republican resistance to Trump and helped lead the House January 6 committee, without exercising any procedural or other restraint on the partisan Democrats making up the bulk of the panel. There’s simply no market for this among Republicans. On top of it, Cheney’s alienation from her party is likely to build on itself. Already, she has said that she’d “find it very difficult” to support Ron DeSantis, the leading Republican alternative to Trump. In so doing, she is identifying herself with a fraction of a fraction of the party that is so small it is all but nonexistent."

"Hers was an admirable loss. It is rare that any elected official is willing to sacrifice his or her office over a matter of deeply felt principle. Cheney did it unhesitatingly. She will be remembered fondly by history, and better than other members of her party who have repeated or tolerated lies merely to maintain or gain political power. That said, she has undoubtedly cut herself off from the possibility of having a positive influence on the direction of the Republican Party via electoral politics. If she runs for president, either in a GOP primary or as an independent in a general election, the effort will be nugatory at best, and possibly quite destructive. If Cheney is willing to listen to reason on this question, she will be content to use her prodigious fundraising ability and national platform to continue to make her case against Trump as an advocate. Anything else would be folly."

"I have not had an opportunity to even see or hear what she had to say because I’ve been kind of focused on what’s going on here. It doesn’t surprise me that she would revert to those same old talking points, because that’s really in large part what got her defeated. … She’s not focusing on Wyoming. She’s not focusing on our issues. She’s still focusing on an obsession about President Trump. And the citizens of Wyoming, the voters of Wyoming sent a very loud message tonight. We have spoken. And that is not what we are interested in in terms of our lone congressional representative."

"History will remember this day— when an American President and Vice President abandoned all we stand for."

"We can reject Donald Trump’s cruelty and misogyny"

"I don't believe that we have the luxury of writing in candidates' names, particularly in swing states," Cheney said. "As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this. And because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris."

"Actually, this is pro-Nazi propaganda, including, 'Churchill was the chief villain of WW2' and Hitler 'didn’t want to fight.' [...] No serious or honorable person would support or endorse this type of garbage."

"One of the things we see happening is a sort of sleepwalking into a dictatorship in the United States."

"We must be very clear-eyed about the threat we face and about what is required to defeat it. I have said since January 6, that I will do whatever it takes to make sure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office. This is a fight for all of us together. I'm a conservative Republican. I believe deeply in the principles and the ideals on which my party was founded. I love its history. And I love what our party has stood for. But I love my country more. So, I ask you tonight to join me. As we leave here, let us resolve that we will stand together — Republicans, Democrats and independents — against those who would destroy our republic. They are angry and they are determined, but they have not seen anything like the power of Americans united in defense of our Constitution and committed to the cause of freedom. There is no greater power on this earth. And with God's help, we will prevail."

"America has meant so much to so many because we are the best hope of freedom on earth. Last week in Laramie, a gentleman came up to me with tears in his eyes. "I'm not an American," he said, "But my children are. I grew up in Brazil. I know how fragile freedom is, and we must not lose it here." A few days ago, here in Jackson, a woman told me that her grandparents had survived Auschwitz. They found refuge in America. She said she was afraid that she had nowhere to go if freedom died here. Ladies and gentlemen, freedom must not and will not die here."

"In May of 1864, after years of war and a string of reluctant Union generals, Ulysses S. Grant met General Lee's forces at the Battle of the Wilderness. In two days of heavy fighting, the Union suffered over 17,000 casualties. At the end of that battle, General Grant faced a choice. Most assumed he would do what previous Union generals had done and retreat. On the evening of May 7, Grant began to move. As the fires of the battle still smoldered, Grant rode to the head of the column. He rode to the intersection of Brock Road and Orange Plank Road. And there, as the men of his army watched and waited, instead of turning north back towards Washington and safety, Grant turns his horse south toward Richmond and the heart of Lee's army. Refusing to retreat, he pressed on to victory. Lincoln and Grant and all who fought in our nation's tragic Civil War, including my own great-great-grandfathers, saved our Union. Their courage saved freedom. And if we listen closely, they are speaking to us down the generations. We must not idly squander what so many have fought and died for."

"Our duty as citizens of this republic is not only to defend the freedom that's been handed down to us. We also have an obligation to learn from the actions of those who came before, to the stories of grit and perseverance of the brave men and women who built and saved this union. In the lives of these great Americans, we find inspiration and purpose."

"To believe Donald Trump's election lies, you must believe that dozens of federal and state courts who ruled against him, including many judges he appointed, were all corrupted and biased, that all manner of crazy conspiracy theories stole our election from us and that Donald Trump actually remains president today. As of last week, you must also believe that 30 career FBI agents, who have spent their lives working to serve our country, abandoned their honor and their oath and went to Mar-a-Lago, not to perform a lawful search or address a national security threat, but instead with a secret plan to plant fake incriminating documents in the boxes they seized. This is yet another insidious lie. Donald Trump knows that voicing these conspiracies will provoke violence and threats of violence. This happened on January 6, and it's now happening again. It is entirely foreseeable that the violence will escalate further, yet he and others continue purposely to feed the danger. Today, our federal law enforcement is being threatened, a federal judge is being threatened. Fresh threats of violence arise everywhere. And despite knowing all of this, Donald Trump recently released the names of the FBI agents involved in the search. That was purposeful and malicious. No patriotic American should use these threats or be intimidated by them. Our great nation must not be ruled by a mob provoked over social media."

"Our nation is young in the history of mankind and yet we're the oldest democracy in the world. Our survival is not guaranteed. History has shown us over and over again how poisonous lies destroyed free nations. Over the last several months, in the January 6 hearings, the American people have watched dozens of Republicans, including the most senior officials working for President Trump in the White House, the Justice Department and on his campaign — people who served President Trump loyally — testify that they all told him the election was not stolen or rigged and there was no massive fraud. That's why President Trump and others invent excuses, pretexts for people not to watch the hearings at all. But no citizen of this republic is a bystander. All of us have an obligation to understand what actually happened. We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation."

"Most of world history is a story of violent conflict of servitude and suffering. Most people in most places have not lived in freedom. Our American freedom is a providential departure from history. We are the exception. We have been given the gift of freedom by God and our founding fathers. It is said that the long arc of history bends toward justice and freedom. That's true, but only if we make it bend. Today, our highest duty is to bend the arc of history to preserve our nation and its blessings to ensure that freedom will not perish, to protect the very foundations of this constitutional republic. Never in our nation's 246 years have we seen what we saw on January 6. Like so many Americans, I assumed that the violence and the chaos of that day would have prompted a united response, a recognition that this was a line that must never be crossed. A tragic chapter in our nation's history, to be studied by historians to ensure that it can never happen again. But instead, major elements of my party still vehemently defend those who caused it. At the heart of the attack on January 6 is a willingness to embrace dangerous conspiracies that attack the very core premise of our nation. That lawful elections reviewed by the courts when necessary, and certified by the states and Electoral College, determined who serves as president. If we do not condemn the conspiracies and the lies, if we do not hold those responsible to account, we will be excusing this conduct, and it will become a feature of all elections. America will never be the same."

"The great and original champion of our party, Abraham Lincoln, was defeated in elections for the Senate and the House before he won the most important election of all. Lincoln ultimately prevailed, he saved our Union and he defined our obligation as Americans for all of history. Speaking at Gettysburg of the great task remaining before us, Lincoln said, "That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and a government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth." As we meet here tonight that remains our greatest and most important task."

"A few years ago, I won this primary with 73 percent of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear, but it would have required that I go along with President Trump's lie about the 2020 election. It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic. That was a path I could not and would not take. No House seat, no office in this land is more important than the principles that we are all sworn to protect, and I well understood the potential political consequences of abiding by my duty. Our republic relies upon the goodwill of all candidates for office to accept honorably the outcome of elections. And tonight, Harriet Hageman has received the most votes in this primary. She won. I called her to concede the race. This primary election is over but now the real work begins."

"A little over a year ago, I received a note from a Gold Star father. He said to me, "Standing up for truth honors all who gave all," and I have thought of his words every single day since then. I've thought of them because they are a reminder of how we must all conduct ourselves. We must conduct ourselves in a way that is worthy of the men and women who wear the uniform of this nation. And in particular, of those who have given the ultimate sacrifice. This is not a game. Every one of us must be committed to the eternal defense of this miraculous experiment called America and at the heart of our democratic process — our elections. They are the foundational principle of our Constitution."