text: In 1924, after the failure of the Tatarbunary Uprising, the Soviet government created a Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on the left bank of the Dniester river within the Ukrainian SSR. The Romanian government saw that as a threat and a possible staging ground for a communist invasion of Romania. Throughout the 1920s, Romania considered itself a pillar in the "cordon sanitaire", the policy of containment of the Bolshevik threat, and avoided direct relations with the Soviet Union.


title: Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina

text: On August 27, 1928, both Romania and the Soviet Union signed and ratified the Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy. On February 9, 1929, the Soviet Union signed a protocol with its western neighbors, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and Romania, confirming adherence to the terms of the Pact. In signing the Pact, the contracting parties agreed to condemn war as a recourse to solving conflict, to renounce it as an instrument of policy and to agree that all conflicts and disputes would only by peaceful means. At the time, the Soviet ambassador, Maxim Litvinov, made it clear that neither the pact nor the protocol meant renunciation of Soviet rights over the "territories occupied by Romanians". On July 3, 1933, Romania and the Soviet Union were signatories the London Convention for the Definition of Aggression, Article II of which defined several forms of aggression: "There shall be recognized as an aggressor that State which shall be the first to have committed one of the following actions: First—a declaration of war on another State. Second—invasion by armed forces of the territory of another State even without a declaration of war. (...)" and "No political, military, economic or other considerations may serve as an excuse or justification for the aggression referred to in Article II."


text: In January 1932 in Riga and in September 1932 in Geneva, Soviet-Romanian negotiations were held as a prelude to a non-aggression treaty, and on June 9, 1934, diplomatic relations were established between both countries. On July 21, 1936, Litvinov and Nicolae Titulescu, the Soviet and Romanian Ministers of Foreign Affairs, agreed upon a draft of a Mutual Assistance Pact. It was sometimes interpreted as a non-aggression treaty, which would "de facto" recognize the existing Soviet-Romanian border. The protocol stipulated that any common Romanian-Soviet action should be approved by France ahead of time. In negotiating with the Soviets for the agreement, Titulescu was highly criticized by the Romanian far right. The protocol was to be signed in September 1936, but Titulescu was dismissed in August 1936, leading the Soviet side to declare the agreement null and void. Subsequently, no further attempts were made to reach a political rapprochement between Romania and the Soviet Union. Moreover, by 1937, Litvinov and the Soviet press revived the dormant claim over Bessarabia.


text: On August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty that contained an additional secret protocol with maps in which a demarcation line through Eastern Europe was drawn and divided it into the German and Soviet interest zones. Bessarabia was among the regions assigned to the Soviet sphere of interest by the Pact. Article III of its Secret Additional Protocol stated:


text: With regard to Southeastern Europe attention is called by the Soviet side to its interest in Bessarabia. The German side declares its complete political disinterestedness in these areas.


text: On 29 March 1940, Molotov declared on the Sixth session of the Supreme Soviet: "We do not have a pact of non-aggression with Romania. This is due to the presence of an unsolved issue, the issue of Bessarabia, the seizure of which the Soviet Union never recognized although it never raised the issue of returning it by military means". That was seen as a threat to Romania.


text: Assured by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of Soviet non-interference, Germany started World War II one week later by invading Poland from the west on September 1, 1939. The Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east on September 17, and by October 6, Poland had fallen. Romanian Prime Minister Armand Călinescu, a strong supporter of Poland in its conflict with Germany, was assassinated on September 21 by elements of the far-right Iron Guard with Nazi support. Romania remained formally neutral in the conflict but aided Poland by providing access to Allied military supplies from the Black Sea to the Polish border and also a route for the Polish government and army to withdraw after their defeat. The Polish government also preferred a formally neutral Romania to ensure the safety from German bombardments of supplies transported through Romanian territory. (See also Romanian Bridgehead.)


text: On June 2, 1940, Germany informed the Romanian government that to receive territorial guarantees, Romania should consider negotiations with the Soviet Union.


text: From June 14 to 17, 1940, the Soviet Union gave ultimatum notes to Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, and when the ultimata were satisfied, it used the bases that it had gained to occupy those territories.


text: The Fall of France on June 22 and the subsequent British retreat from the Continent rendered the assurances of assistance to Romania meaningless.


text: By directives OV/583 and OV/584 of the Soviet People Commissariat of Defense, military units of the Odessa Military District were ordered into battle-ready state in the spring of 1940. Soviet troops were concentrated along the Romanian border between April 15 and June 10, 1940. To co-ordinate the efforts of the Kyiv and Odessa military districts in the preparation of action against Romania, the Soviet Army created the Southern Front under General Georgy Zhukov, which was composed of the 5th, 9th and 12th Armies. The Southern Front had 32 infantry divisions, 2 motorized infantry divisions, 6 cavalry divisions, 11 tank brigades, 3 paratrooper brigades, 30 artillery regiments and smaller auxiliary units.


text: 1. The soldiery and the bourgeois-capitalist clique of Romania, preparing provocationary acts against the USSR, concentrated on the borders of the USSR large armed forces, increased the border posts to 100 persons, enlarged the number of commandos sent to guard the border and is with enforced tempo constructing defense facilities on its border and the close rear.2. The commander of the Southern Front set the troops of the Southern district the task to: a) clear of mines, seize and hold bridges over the borderline rivers; b) firmly defend state borders in the front of the 12th army where the troops of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army are going to act; c) to provide the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army with guides; d) to cleanse the rear of the 12th army from possible pockets of enemy in the near-border belt of Romania.


text: Two action plans were devised. The first plan was prepared for if Romania did not agree to evacuate Bessarabia and Bukovina. The Soviet 12th Army was to strike southward along the Prut River towards Iași while the Soviet 9th Army was to strike westwards, south of Chișinău towards Huși. The objective of the plan was to surround the Romanian troops in the Bălți–Iași area.


text: The second plan took into consideration the possibility that Romania would agree to Soviet demands and evacuate its military forces. In such a situation, Soviet troops were given the mission to quickly reach the Prut River and oversee the evacuation of Romanian troops. The first plan was taken as the default course of action. Along the portions of the border in which the offensive was planned to take place, the Soviets prepared at least a triple superiority of men and materiel.


text: On June 26, 1940, at 22:00, Soviet People's Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov presented an ultimatum note to Gheorghe Davidescu, the Romanian plenipotentiary minister to Moscow, in which the Soviet Union demanded the evacuation of the Romanian military and civil administration from Bessarabia and the northern part of Bukovina. The Soviets stressed their sense of urgency: "Now that the military weakness of the USSR is a thing of the past, and the international situation that was created requires the rapid solution of the items inherited from the past, in order to fix the basis of a solid peace between countries...". The German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop, was informed by the Soviets of their intentions to send an ultimatum to Romania regarding Bessarabia and Bukovina on June 24, 1940. In the ensuing diplomatic co-ordination, Ribbentrop expressed mainly concern for the fate of the ethnic Germans in both provinces, claimed the number of Germans in Bessarabia to be 100,000, and affirmed that Soviet demands regarding Bukovina were new. He also pointed out that Germany had strong economic interests in the rest of Romania.


text: The text of the ultimatum note sent to Romania on June 26, 1940, incorrectly stated that Bessarabia was populated mainly by Ukrainians: "[...] centuries-old union of Bessarabia, populated mainly by Ukrainians, with the Ukrainian Soviet Republic". The Soviet government demanded the northern part of Bukovina as a "minor reparation for the enormous loss inflicted on the Soviet Union and Bessarabia's population by 22 years of Romanian reign over Bessarabia" and because its "fate is linked mainly with Soviet Ukraine by the community of its historical fate, and by the community of language and ethnic composition". Northern Bukovina had some historical connections with Galicia, annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939 as part of its invasion of Poland, in the sense that both had been part of Austria-Hungary from the second half of the 18th century to 1918. Northern Bukovina was inhabited by a compact Ukrainian population, which outnumbered Romanians, but Bessarabia was regarded as having a Romanian majority even though most of the population adopted a "Moldavian" identity.


text: On the morning of June 27, a mobilization of Romanian troops started. In the early hours of June 27, King Carol II had a meeting with his prime minister, Gheorghe Tătărescu, and his minister for external affairs, Ion Gigurtu, and he summoned the ambassadors of Italy and Germany. Carol communicated his wish to stand against the Soviet Union and asked for their countries to influence Hungary and Bulgaria in the hopes of not declaring war against Romania and to reclaim Transylvania and Southern Dobruja. Stating that it would be "in the name of peace" to accede to Soviet demands, the ambassadors urged the King to stand down.


text: On June 27, Molotov declared that if the Romanians rejected Soviet demands, the Soviet troops would cross the border. Molotov gave the Romanian government 24 hours to respond to the ultimatum.


text: On the same day, the Romanian government replied by suggesting it would agree to "immediate negotiations on a wide range of questions". The Soviets considered the Romanian government's response to be "imprecise" because it did not directly accept the immediate transfer of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. On June 27, a second Soviet ultimatum note put forward a specific time frame that requested the evacuation of the Romanian government from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina within four days. It stated the Soviet military's intention to enter the Bessarabian cities of Chișinău and Cetatea Albă and the Bukovinian city of Cernăuți.


text: On the morning of June 28, 1940, following advice by both Germany and Italy, the Romanian government, led by Gheorghe Tătărescu, under the semi-authoritarian rule of Carol II, agreed to submit to the Soviet demands. Soviet forces also occupied the Hertsa region, part of the Romanian Old Kingdom, which was in neither Bessarabia nor Bukovina. The Soviets said that was "probably a military error". As well, the final border line cut off about 1.7 km2 from Maramures, as the extending westerly border line ran south of the old historical border between Maramureș, Bukovina and Galitzia, which extended to the north to the Muncel river and border marker N542 (as seen on cold war Soviet military cartography maps), a tributary of Pârcālab river, which flows into Ceremuș river.


text: The decision to accept the Soviet ultimatum and to start a "withdrawal" (avoiding the use of "ceding") from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina was deliberated upon by the Romanian Crown Council during the night of June 27–28. The second (decisive) vote outcome, according to the journal of King Carol II, was:


text: The same night, Carol II also convinced Alexandru Vaida-Voevod to be sworn in as minister. Vaida, along with all of the above, signed the final Crown Council recommendation in which Carol II ordered the army to stand down.


text: On June 28, at 9:00, Communique no. 25 of the General Staff of the Romanian Army officially announced the terms of the ultimatum to the population, its acceptance by the Romanian government, and the intent to evacuate the army and administration to the Prut River. By 14:00, three key cities (Chișinău, Cernăuți, and Cetatea Albă) had to be turned over to the Soviets. The military installations and casemates, built during a 20-year period for the event of a Soviet attack, were relinquished without a fight, the Romanian Army being placed by its command under strict orders not to respond to provocations. In a declaration to the local population, the Soviet command stated: "The great hour of your liberation from the yoke of Romanian boyars, landowners, capitalists and Siguranța has arrived".


text: Part of the population left the regions with the Romanian administration. According to the April 1941 Romanian census, the total number of refugees from the evacuated territories amounted to 68,953, but as the ultimatum came unexpectedly, many people did not have time to evacuate, and over 70,000 request for repatriation to Romania were later recorded. On the other hand, by early August 1940, between 112,000 and 149,974 people had left the other territories of Romania for the Soviet-ruled Bessarabia. That figure comprised Romanians of the region but also included Jews, both from Bessarabia and from the Old Kingdom, who wanted to escape the officially endorsed anti-semitism in Romania.


text: As Romania agreed to satisfy Soviet territorial demands, the second plan was immediately put into action, with the Red Army immediately moving into Bessarabia and north Bukovina on the morning of June 28. By June 30, the Red Army reached the border along the Prut River. On July 3, the border was closed completely from the Soviet side.


text: One month after the military occupation, on August 2, 1940, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was established on the main part of the annexed territory, and smaller portions were given to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Six Bessarabian counties and small portions of the other three counties, along with parts of the Moldavian ASSR (formerly part of the Ukrainian SSR), which was disbanded on that occasion, formed the Moldavian SSR, which became one of 15 union republics of the Soviet Union. The Soviet governmental commission headed by Nikita Khrushchev, the Communist Party chief of Ukrainian SSR, allotted Northern Bukovina, Hertsa region and larger parts of Hotin (Northern Bessarabia), Ismail, and Cetatea Albă (Budjak) counties to the Ukrainian SSR.


text: In 1940 to 1941, political persecution of certain categories of locals took the form of arrests, executions and deportations to the eastern parts of the Soviet Union. According to Alexandru Usatiuc-Bulgăr, 32,433 people received a politically motivated sentence, of which 8,360 were sentenced to death or died during interrogations.


text: Serious incidents occurred in Northern Bukovina, where attempts by the locals to force the border towards Romania resulted in the Soviet border guards opening fire against unarmed civilians. In one case, at Fântâna Albă, that resulted in a massacre in which between 50 and 3,000 Romanians were killed. The situation was the same on the other side of the border: roughly 300 (or between 80 and 400, according to other sources) civilians, most of them Jews, waiting to leave for Soviet-controlled Bessarabia were shot by the Romanian army in Galați railway station on June 30, 1940.


text: The installation of the Soviet administration was also accompanied by major changes in the economic domain, as medium and large commercial and industrial enterprises were nationalized. The Soviet government also instituted a land reform that redistributed 229,752 hectares to 184,715 poor peasant households and limited estates to 20 hectares in the south and 10 hectares elsewhere. A collectivisation drive was also started in 1941, but the lack of agricultural machinery made the progress extremely slow, with 3.7% of the peasant households being included in a kolkhoz or a sovkhoz by the middle of year. To bolster the government's image, much of the 1941 budget was directed towards social and cultural needs, with 20% allocated to health services and 24% to education and literacy campaigns. The theological institute in Chișinău was closed, but six new higher education institutions were created, including a conservatory and a polytechnic. Furthermore, the salaries of industrial workers and administrative personnel were increased two to three times the pre-Soviet levels.


text: In September 1941, Romanian authorities uncovered evidence of torture perpetrated at the NKVD headquarters and in the basement of the Metropolitan Palace in Chișinău. Some 80 bodies were discovered, of which 15 in a common grave, with their hands and feet tied. The bodies had been mutilated and burned, then doused with quicklime and acids; from the remains of the clothing it was inferred that the victims were priests and students.


text: Of all of the regional allies with which Romania had treaties with military clauses, only Turkey replied that it would live up to its treaty obligations by providing support against Soviet military aggression.


text: The territorial concessions of 1940 produced deep sorrow and resentment among Romanians and hastened the decline in popularity of the regime led by King Carol II of Romania. Three days after the annexation, Romania renounced the 1939 Anglo-French guarantee. A new government of Ion Gigurtu was sworn in on July 5, 1940, which withdrew the country from the League of Nations on July 11 and announced its desire to join the Axis camp on July 13. A series of measures taken by Gigurtu, including official persecution of Jews inspired by the German Nuremberg Laws in July and August 1940, failed to sway Germany from awarding Northern Transylvania to Hungary in the Second Vienna Award on August 30, 1940.


text: That led to a near-uprising in the country. On September 5, King Carol II proposed to General (later Marshal) Ion Antonescu to form a new government. Antonescu's first act was to force the King to abdicate, for the fourth and final time, and to flee Romania. An alliance was formed by Ion Antonescu with remnants of the Iron Guard (partly destroyed in 1938), an anti-Semitic fascist party, and took power on September 6, 1940. Mihai, the son of Carol II, succeeded him as King of Romania. The country was declared a National Legionary State. Between October 1940 and June 1941, around 550,000 German troops entered Romania. In November, Antonescu signed the Tripartite Pact, which tied Romania militarily to Germany, Italy and Japan. In January 1941, the Iron Guard attempted a coup, which failed and placed Antonescu firmly in power, with the approval of Hitler. The authoritarian regime of Antonescu (1940–1944) did not restore political parties and democracy but only co-opted several individual civilians in the government.


text: Overall, the desire to regain the lost territories was invoked as a justification by Romania for its entry into World War II on the side of the Axis against the Soviet Union.


text: On June 22, 1941, Romania participated alongside Hungary and Italy on the side of the Axis Powers in the German invasion of the Soviet Union to recover Bessarabia and Bukovina. The Axis armies accomplished this objective by July 26, 1941.


text: King Michael of Romania, his mother Helen, and Mihai Antonescu joined the opening ceremony of the monumental Liberation Tower in Ghidighici, on November 1, 1942.


text: On July 27, 1941, despite opposition from all political parties, Romania's military dictator, Ion Antonescu, ordered the Romanian Army to continue the war eastward into Soviet territory proper to fight at Odessa, Crimea, Kharkov, Stalingrad and the Caucasus. Between late 1941 and early 1944, Romania occupied and administered the region between the Dniester and Southern Bug rivers, known as Transnistria, and sent expeditionary troops to several different areas to support the German advance further into the Soviet Union.


text: On the backdrop of increased anti-Semitism in Romania in the late 1930s, the government of Ion Antonescu officially adopted the myth of Jewish Bolshevism, which made Jews responsible for the territorial losses Romania suffered during the summer of 1940. That made the government, in an agreement with Germany, embark on a campaign to "cleanse" the recaptured territories by deporting and/or killing the Jews of Bukovina and Bessarabia who did not flee to the interior of the Soviet Union before Romania regained the territory in July 1941. Only in 1941, between 45,000 and 60,000 Jews were killed in Bessarabia and Bukovina by the Romanian and German armies. Surviving Jews were quickly gathered in temporary ghettos and 154,449 to 170,737 were then deported to Transnistria; only 49,927 of them were still alive by September 16, 1943. Only 19,475 Jews of Bukovina and of Dorohoi County survived in those territories from 1941 to 1944 without being deported, most of them in Cernăuți. Romanian gendarmerie units also participated, along German troops and local militias, in the destruction of the Jewish community in Transnistria, by murdering between 115,000 and 180,000 local Jews. (See History of the Jews in Moldova#The Holocaust).


text: In 1941 to 1944, many young male inhabitants of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were recruited into the Romanian Army. From February to August 1944, hostilities took place in the region, as Romania attempted to keep the territory from being overrun by the Soviet Union. Overall during World War II, the Romanian Army lost 475,070 people on the Eastern Front, of which 245,388 were killed in action, disappeared, or died in hospitals or non-battle circumstances, and 229,682 (according to Soviet archival documents) were taken as prisoners of war by the Red Army, of whom 187,367 were counted as Romanian prisoners of war in NKVD camps (on April 22, 1956, 54,612 were counted as having died in captivity, and 132,755 as freshly released), 27,800 were counted as Romanians released by the front levels of the Soviet Army and 14,515 as Moldovans released by the front levels of the Soviet Army.


text: In early 1944, the Soviet Union gradually took over the territory through the Uman–Botoșani and Second Jassy–Kishinev offensives. On August 23, 1944, with Soviet troops advancing and the Eastern Front falling within Romania's territory, a coup led by King Michael, with support from opposition politicians and the army, deposed the Antonescu dictatorship, ceased military actions against the Allies and later put Romania's battered armies on their side. In the days immediately after the coup, as Romania's action was unilateral and no armistice had been agreed with the Allied Powers, the Red Army continued to treat the Romanian troops as enemy combatants, and in the confusion, the Romanian troops did not oppose them. As a consequence, the Soviets took a large number of Romanian troops as prisoners of war with little or no fighting. Some of the prisoners were Bessarabian-born. Michael acquiesced to Soviet terms, and Romania was occupied by the Soviet Army.


text: From August 1944 to May 1945, about 300,000 people were conscripted into the Soviet Army from Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and were sent to fight against Germany in Lithuania, East Prussia, Poland and Czechoslovakia.


text: In 1947, as part of the Paris Peace Treaties, Romania and the Soviet Union signed a border treaty confirming the border fixed in 1940. Several additional uninhabited islands in the Danube Delta as well as the Snake Island, not mentioned in the treaty, were transferred from communist Romania to the Soviet Union in 1948.


text: At the moment of the Soviet occupation, the regions had a total population of 3,776,309 inhabitants. According to Romanian official statistics, this was distributed among the ethnic groups as follows: Romanians (53.49%), Ukrainians and Ruthenians (15.3%), Russians (10.34%), Jews (7.27%), Bulgarians (4.91%), Germans (3.31%), others (5.12%).


text: During the Soviet takeover in 1940, Bessarabian Germans (82,000) and Bukovinian Germans (40,000–45,000) were repatriated to Germany at the request of Hitler's government. Some of them were forcibly settled by the Nazis in the German-occupied Poland and had to move again in 1944–1945. The people affected by the resettlement were not persecuted, but they were given no choice to stay or live and had to change their entire livelihood within weeks or even days.


text: Deportations of locals on grounds of belonging to the intelligentsia or kulak classes, or of having anti-Soviet nationalist ideas occurred in 1940 to 1941 and 1944 to 1951. The deportations touched all local ethnic groups: Romanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Bulgarians, Gagauz. Significant deportations happened on three separate occasions: according to Alexandru Usatiuc-Bulgăr, 29,839 people were deported to Siberia on 13 June 1941. In total, in the first year of Soviet occupation, no fewer than 86,604 people from Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and Hertsa Region suffered political repression. That number is close to the one calculated by Russian historians following documents in the Moscow archives, of ca. 90,000 people repressed (arrested, executed, deported or conscripted for work) in the first year of Soviet occupation. The greater part of the figure (53,356) was represented by forced conscription for labour across the Soviet Union. The classification of such labourers as victims of political repression is, however, disputed since the poverty of the locals and Soviet propaganda are also considered important factors leading to the emigration of the local workforce. The arrests continued even after 22 June 1941.


text: Based on postwar statistics, the historian Igor Cașu has shown that Moldovans and Romanians comprised roughly 50 percent of the deportees, with the rest being Jews, Russians, Ukrainians, Gagauzes, Bulgarians and Roma people. Considering the ethnic make-up of the region, he concludes that the prewar and postwar repressions were not directed at any specific ethnic or national group but could be characterised as "genocide" or "crime against humanity". The 1941 deportation targeted "anti-Soviet elements" and comprised former representatives of the Romanian interwar administration (policemen, gendarmes, prison guards, clerks), large landowners, tradesmen, former officers of the Romanian, Polish and Tsarist armies and people who had defected the Soviet Union before 1940. Kulaks did not become main targets of repression until the postwar period. Before Soviet archives were made accessible, R. J. Rummel had estimated between 1940 and 1941, 200,000 to 300,000 Romanian Bessarabians were deported, of whom 18,000 to 68,000 were killed according to him.


text: After the installation of the Soviet administration, religious life in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina underwent a persecution similar to the one in Russia between the World Wars. In the first days of occupation, certain population groups welcomed the Soviet power, and some of them joined the newly established Soviet "nomenklatura", including the NKVD, the Soviet political police. The latter had used those locals to find and arrest numerous priests. Other priests were arrested and interrogated by the Soviet NKVD itself, deported to the interior of the Soviet Union and killed. Research on the subject is still at an early stage. As of 2007, the Orthodox Church has recognized the martyrdom to about 50 clergymen, who died in the first year of Soviet rule (1940–1941).


text: In early Soviet historiography, the chain of events that led to the creation of the Moldavian SSR was described as a "liberation of the Moldovan people from a 22-year-old occupation by boyar Romania." The Soviet authors went into great length to describe scenes how the liberated Bessarabian people eagerly welcomed Soviet troops ending the "22 years of yoke under the Romanian capitalists and landowners", organized demonstrations under red flags and liberated imprisoned communists from the Siguranța torture chambers. In 1940 to 1989, the Soviet authorities promoted the events of June 28, 1940 as a "liberation", and the day itself was a holiday in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.


text: However, in 2010, the Russian political analyst Leonid Mlechin stated that the term occupation is not adequate but that "it is more an annexation of a part of the territory of Romania".


text: From June 26 to 28, 1991, an International Conference "Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and its consequences for Bessarabia" took place in Chișinău, gathering scholars such as Nicholas Dima, Kurt Treptow, Dennis Deletant, Michael Mikelson, Stephen Bowers, Lowry Wymann, Michael Bruchis, in addition to other Moldovan, Soviet and Romanian authors. An informal "Declaration of Chișinău" was adopted, according to which the Pact and its Secret Protocol "constituted the apogee of collaboration between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and following these agreements, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were occupied by the Soviet Army on June 28, 1940 as a result of ultimative notes addressed to the Romanian government". It further stated that the events were a "pregnant manifestation of imperialist policy of annexation and diktat, a shameless aggression against the sovereignty (...) of neighboring states, members of the League of Nations. The Stalinist aggression constituted a serious breach of the legal norms of behavior of states in international relations, of the obligations assumed under the Briand-Kellog Pact of 1928, and under the London Convention on the Definition of the Aggressor of 1933". The declaration stated that "the Pact and the Secret Additional Protocol are legally null "ab initio", and their consequences must be eliminated". For the latter, it called for "political solutions that would lead to the elimination of the acts of injustice and abuse committed through the use of force, diktat and annexations... [solutions] in full consensus with the principles of the Final Act of Helsinki, and the Paris Charter for a new Europe".


text: On June 28, 1991, the US Senate voted a resolution sponsored by Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Larry Pressler (R-SD), members of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which recommended the US government to


text: In the clauses of this Senate resolution it has been stated, among other things, that "(...) The armed forces of the Soviet Union invaded the Kingdom of Romania and occupied Eastern Moldova, Northern Bukovina and Hertsa Region. (...) The annexation was prepared beforehand in a Secret Agreement to a Non-Aggression Treaty signed by the Governments of the Soviet Union and the German Reich on August 23, 1939. (...) Between 1940 and 1953 hundreds of thousand of Romanian from Moldova and Northern Bukovina were deported by the USSR to Central Asia and Siberia (...)."


title: Bollocks

text: Bollocks () is a word of Middle English origin, meaning "testicles". The word is often used figuratively in British English and Hiberno-English in a multitude of negative ways; it most commonly appears as a noun meaning "rubbish" or "nonsense", an expletive following a minor accident or misfortune, or an adjective to describe something that is of poor quality or useless. It is also used in common phrases like "bollocks to this", which is said when quitting a task or job that is too difficult or negative, and "that's a load of old bollocks", which generally indicates contempt for a certain subject or opinion. Conversely, the word also appears in positive phrases such as "the dog's bollocks" or more simply "the bollocks", which will refer to something which is admired or well-respected.


title: Bollocks

text: The "Oxford English Dictionary" (OED) gives examples of its usage dating back to the 13th century. One of the early references is Wycliffe's Bible (1382), Leviticus xxii, 24: "Al beeste, that ... kitt and taken awey the "ballokes" is, ye shulen not offre to the Lord ..." (any beast that is cut and taken away the "bollocks", you shall not offer to the Lord, i.e. castrated animals are not suitable as sacrifices).


title: Bollocks

text: The "OED" states (with abbreviations expanded): "Probably a derivative of Teutonic "ball-", of which the Old English representative would be inferred as "beall-u", "-a", or "-e"". The Teutonic "ball-" in turn probably derives from the Proto-Indo-European base "*bhel-", to inflate or swell. This base also forms the root of many other words, including "phallus".


title: Bollocks

text: From the 17th to the 19th century, "bollocks" or "ballocks" was allegedly used as a slang term for a clergyman, although this meaning is not mentioned by the "OED"s 1989 edition. For example, in 1684, the Commanding Officer of the Straits Fleet regularly referred to his chaplain as ""Ballocks"". It has been suggested that "bollocks" came to have its modern meaning of "nonsense" because some clergymen were notorious for talking nonsense during their sermons. According to Merriam Webster the term has been used before the 12th century.


title: Bollocks

text: Originally, the word "bollocks" was the everyday vernacular word for testicles—as noted above, it was used in this sense in the first English-language Bible, in the 14th century. By the mid-17th century, at least, it had begun to acquire coarse figurative meanings (see ), for example in a translation of works by Rabelais.


title: Bollocks

text: It did not appear in Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary of the English language. It was also omitted from the 1933 "Oxford English Dictionary" and its 1941 reprint, finally appearing in the 1972 supplement. The first modern English dictionary to include an entry for "bollocks" was G. N. Garmonsway's Penguin English Dictionary of 1965.


title: Bollocks

text: The relative severity of the various profanities, as perceived by the British public, was studied on behalf of the Broadcasting Standards Commission, Independent Television Commission, BBC and Advertising Standards Authority. The results of this jointly commissioned research were published in December 2000 in a paper called "Delete Expletives?". This placed "bollocks" in eighth position in terms of its perceived severity, between "prick" (seventh place) and "arsehole" (ninth place). By comparison, the word "balls" (which has some similar meanings) was down in 22nd place. Of the people surveyed, 25% thought that "bollocks" should not be broadcast at all, and only 11% thought that it could acceptably be broadcast at times before the national 9 pm "watershed" on television (radio does not have a watershed). 25% of the people regarded "bollocks" as "very severe", 32% "quite severe", 34% "mild" and 8% considered it "not swearing".


title: Bollocks

text: A survey of the language of London teenagers (published in 2002) examined, amongst other things, the incidence of various swearwords in their speech. It noted that the top ten swearwords make up 81% of the total swearwords. "Bollocks" was the seventh most frequent swearword, after "fucking", "shit", "fuck", "bloody", "hell" and "fuck off". Below "bollocks" were "bastard", "bitch" and "damn", in eighth, ninth and tenth places. This research regarded these words as swearwords in the context of their usage but observed that some might be inoffensive in other contexts.


title: Bollocks

text: Some campaigners, particularly the Liberal Democrats, hoping to stop the UK's departure from the European Union have adopted the slogan, "Bollocks to Brexit". When queried about the propriety of the use of this term in Parliament in January 2019, the Speaker of the House, John Bercow ruled that the use of the word in Parliamentary speech was "not disorderly".


title: Bollocks

text: "Talking "bollocks"" generally means talking nonsense or "bullshit", for example: "Don't listen to him, he's talking "bollocks"", or "talking absolute "bollocks"". Another example is "I told Maurice that he was talking bollocks, that he was full of shit and that his opinions were a pile of piss. (Rhetoric was always my indulgence.)" "Talking "bollocks"" in a corporate context is referred to as "bollockspeak". "Bollockspeak" tends to be buzzword-laden and largely content-free, like gobbledygook: "Rupert, we'll have to leverage our synergies to facilitate a paradigm shift by Q4" is an example of management "bollockspeak". There is a whole parodic book entitled "The Little Book of Management Bollocks". When a great deal of bollocks is being spoken, it may be said that the 'bollocks quotient' is high.


title: Bollocks

text: Comparable to "cock-up", "screw-up", "balls-up", etc. Used with the indefinite article, it means a disaster, a mess or a failure. It is often used pejoratively, as in to have "made a "bollocks" out of it", and it is generally used throughout Britain and Ireland.


title: Bollocks

text: "To bollocks something up" means "to mess something up". It refers to a botched job: "Well, you "bollocksed" it up that time, Your Majesty!" or ""Bollocksed" up at work again, I fear. Millions down the drain".


title: Bollocks

text: "To "drop a bollock"" describes the malfunction of an operation, or messing something up, as in many sports, and in more polite business parlance, "dropping the ball" brings play to an unscheduled halt.


title: Bollocks

text: A ""bollocking"" usually denotes a robust verbal chastisement for something which one has done (or not done, as the case may be), for instance: "I didn't do my homework and got a right "bollocking" off Mr Smith", or "A nurse was assisting at an appendix operation when she shouldn't have been ... and the surgeon got a "bollocking"". Actively, one "gives" or "delivers" a bollocking to someone; in the building trade one can 'throw a right bollocking into' someone.


title: Bollocks

text: The "Oxford English Dictionary" gives the earliest meaning as "to slander or defame" and suggests that it entered the English language from the 1653 translation of one of Rabelais' works, which includes the Middle French expression "en couilletant", translated as "ballocking". The earliest printed use in the sense of a severe reprimand is, according to the OED, from 1946.


title: Bollocks

text: "Bollocking" can also be used as a reinforcing adjective: "He hasn't a "bollocking" clue!" or "Where's me "bollocking" car?"


title: Bollocks

text: ""A kick in the bollocks"" is used to describe a significant setback or disappointment, e.g. "I was diagnosed with having skin cancer. Ye Gods! What a kick in the bollocks".


title: Bollocks

text: To freeze one's bollocks off means to be very cold. To "work one's bollocks off" is to work very hard. This phrase is also sometimes used by or about women: Boy George referred to his mother "working her bollocks off" at home.


title: Bollocks

text: ""Bollock naked"" is used in the singular form to emphasise being completely nude: "he was completely pissed and stark "bollock naked"".


title: Bollocks

text: In Ireland, ""bollocks"", ""ballocks"" or ""bollox"" can be used as a singular noun to mean a despicable or notorious person, for instance: "Who's the old "ballocks" you were talking to?", or conversely as a very informal term of endearment.


title: Bollocks

text: The phrase "bollocksed up" means to be in a botched, bungled, confused or disarrayed state; e.g. "He managed to bollix up the whole project." In the printing and newspaper industries, dropping a California Job type case of moveable type spilling the contents was a classic example of "bollocksing up the works". The box was called "pied". "Bollocksed" in that sense meant "beyond all repair".


title: Bollocks

text: "Dog's bollocks syndrome" is a term used by web designers to describe over-designed websites that have more flash than might be needed or justified.


title: Bollocks

text: A usage with a positive (albeit still vulgar) sense is "the dog's bollocks" or simplified "The Bollocks". An example of this usage is: "Before Tony Blair's speech, a chap near me growled: 'He thinks he's the 'dog's bollocks'. Well, he's entitled to. It was a commanding speech: a real 'dog's bollocks' of an oration."


title: Bollocks

text: Although this is a recent term (the "Online Etymology Dictionary" dates it to 1989,) its origins are obscure. Etymologist Eric Partridge and the "Oxford English Dictionary" believe the term comes from the now obsolete typographical sequence of a colon and a dash :-. This typography, using a dash following a colon -:, was used to introduce a list. Thus, it is a very early example of an emoticon.


title: Bollocks

text: The Oxford English Dictionary says the following mark (":— ") is entitled "the dog’s bollocks", defined as: "typogr. a colon followed by a dash, regarded as forming a shape resembling the male sexual organs." The usage is cited to the year 1949.


title: Bollocks

text: This phrase has found its way into popular culture in a number of ways. There is a beer brewed in England by the Wychwood Brewery called the Dog's Bollocks, as well as a lager cocktail.


title: Bollocks

text: The phrase ""chuffed to one's bollocks"" describes someone who is very pleased with themselves. Nobel laureate Harold Pinter used this in "The Homecoming" The phrase provided a serious challenge to translators of his work. Pinter used a similar phrase in an open letter, published in "The Guardian", and addressed to Prime Minister Tony Blair, attacking his co-operation with American foreign policy. The letter ends by saying "Oh, by the way, meant to mention, forgot to tell you, we were all "chuffed to the bollocks" when Labour won the election."


title: Bollocks

text: The rhyming slang for "bollocks" is ""Jackson Pollocks"". It can be shortened to "Jacksons", as in "Modern art? Pile o' "Jacksons" if you ask me!". "Sandra Bullocks" is occasionally used to approximate rhyming slang; it does not quite rhyme, but preserves meter and rhythm. The Beautiful South bowdlerised their original line ""sweaty bollocks"" as ""Sandra Bullocks"", as one of several changes to make their song "Don't Marry Her" acceptable for mainstream radio play.


title: Bollocks

text: The term ""Horlicks"" was brought to prominence in July 2003, when then-British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw used it to describe irregularities in the preparation and provenance of the "dodgy dossier" regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Straw used the expression "a complete "Horlicks"", instead of the more impolite "make a complete "bollocks" of something". This euphemism stems from an advertising campaign for the Horlicks malt drink, where people were seen to be shouting ""Horlicks!"" in a loud voice, to give vent to stress or frustration. Eric Morecambe was also known to cough ""Horlicks!"" behind his hand on The Morecambe and Wise Show.


title: Bollocks

text: "Rollocking" is sometimes used as a euphemism for ""bollocking"". A "rollocking bollocking" may be delivered by an electorate.


title: Bollocks

text: The 2007 "Concise new Partridge dictionary of slang and unconventional English" quotes "bollards" as meaning "testicles" and that it is a play on the word bollocks.


title: Bollocks

text: The play "Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery", published in 1684 and ascribed to John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, includes a character named Bolloxinion, King of Sodom (along with other characters with names such as General Buggeranthos and the maid of honour, Fuckadilla). The word "bollox" appears several times in the text, such as:


title: Bollocks

text: In 1690, the publisher Benjamin Crayle was fined 20 pounds and sent to prison for his part in publishing the play.


title: Bollocks

text: In one of the tales in Burton's 1885 translation of "The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night", Kafur, the eunuch, says:


title: Bollocks

text: Perhaps the best-known use of the term is in the title of the 1977 punk rock album "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols". Testimony in a resulting prosecution over the term demonstrated that in Old English, the word referred to a priest, and could also be used to mean "nonsense". Defence barrister John Mortimer QC and Virgin Records won the case: the court ruled that the word was not obscene. It just means "put aside all of that other rubbish and pay attention to this". In a summary for the defence, Mortimer asked,


title: Bollocks

text: Tony Wright, a Leicestershire trader, was given an £80 fixed penalty fine by police for selling T-shirts bearing the slogan "Bollocks to Blair". This took place on 29 June 2006 at the Royal Norfolk Show; the police issued the penalty notice, quoting Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 which refers to language "deemed to cause harassment, alarm or distress".


title: English folklore

text: English folklore consists of the myths and legends of England, including the English region's mythical creatures, traditional recipes, urban legends, proverbs, superstitions, and folktales. Its cultural history is rooted in Celtic, Christian, and Germanic folklore.


title: English folklore

text: During the Renaissance in the 16th century, England looked to more European texts to develop a national identity. English folklore has continued to differ according to region, although there are shared elements across the country.


title: English folklore

text: Its folktales include the traditional Robin Hood tales and the Brythonic-inspired Arthurian legend, and their stories often contained a moral imperative stemming from Christian values. The folktales, characters and creatures are often derived from aspects of English experience, such as topography, architecture, real people, or real events.


title: English folklore

text: Before England was founded in the year 927, Wessex and its surrounding areas' cultures were transformed by the invasion of the Danish King Guthrum between 865 and 878. The king of Wessex, King Alfred, prevailed against King Guthrum's troops in 878 and King Guthrum was baptised and became the ruler of East Anglia. This continued the process of the assimilation of Norse words into the English language. Eventually English folklore melded with Norse traditions such as in their iconography, which became more Greek, and in their clothing and folktales which adopted more Nordic elements. The folklore of the people of England continued to be passed down through oral tradition.


title: English folklore

text: During the Renaissance, artists captured these customs in the written word; such as Shakespearean plays' reflections of English folklore through their witches, fairies, folk medicine, marriage and funeral customs, superstitions, and religious beliefs.


title: English folklore

text: The Grimm brothers' publications such as "German Legends" and "Grimms' Fairy Tales" were translated from their original German and distributed across Europe in 1816. Their stories inspired publishers such as William Thoms to compile legends from within English folklore and without to compose an English identity. The stories that the Grimm brothers collected were integrated into the English school curriculum throughout the 19th century as educators of morality.


title: English folklore

text: Although English folklore has many influences, its largest are its Christian, Celtic and Germanic. Non-Christian influences also defined English folklore up to the eleventh century, such as in their folksongs, celebrations and folktales. An example is the 305 ballads collected by Francis James Child published during the English revival in the 19th century. During the English folksong revival, English artists scrambled to compose a national identity consisting of England's past folksongs and their contemporary musical influences. Authors such as Francis James Child, Arthur Hugh Clough, and Chaucer made English folksong supranational due to the willingness to import other languages' words, pronunciations, and metres. Other examples of non-Christian influences include the Wild Hunt which originates from wider Europe, and Herne the Hunter which relates to the Germanic deity Woden. The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance may represent a pre-Christian festival and the practice of Well dressing in the Peak District, which may date back to Anglo-Saxon or even Celtic times. May Day celebrations such as the Maypole survive across much of England and Northern Europe. Christmas practices such as decorating trees, the significance of holly, and Christmas carolling were born from the desire to escape from the harshness of winter around Europe.


title: English folklore

text: These combine to form a folklore which teaches that, through an upright and virtuous character, a person can achieve a successful life. Lullabies, songs, dances, games, folktales, and superstitions all imparted a religious and moral education, and form a person's sense of justice and Christianity. Children's games would often contain counting songs or gamifications of manners to ensure that a child was happy, healthy, and good.


title: English folklore

text: English folklore also included beliefs of the supernatural, including premonitions, curses, and magic, and was common across all social classes. It was not regarded with the same validity as scientific discoveries, but was made to be trusted by the repeated accounts of a magician or priest's clients who saw the ritual's spectacle and so believed in its efficacy. Even when such rituals failed, such as a 15th-century physician using a golden artifact to heal his patients, their failures were attributed to the fickleness of magic.


title: English folklore

text: As for English folktales, some such as Weber argue that they were passed down for the purpose of reflecting the grim realities of a child's life and hence instilled valued English morals and aesthetics. Others such as Tatar would counter that these folktales' fantasies were so removed from reality that they were a form of escapism, imaginative expression, and linguistic appreciation. Most folklorists would agree that the purpose of English folklore is to protect, entertain, and instruct on how to participate in a just and fair society.


title: English folklore

text: Folklorists have developed frameworks such as the Aarne–Thompson-Uther index which categorise folktales first by types of folktales and then by consistent motifs. While these stories and characters have differences according to the region of their origin, these motifs are such that there is a national identity of folktales through which these regions have interacted.


title: English folklore

text: There are likely many characters and stories that have never been recorded and hence were forgotten, but these folktales and their evolutions were often a product of contemporary figures, places, or events local to specific regions. The below are only a small fraction of examples from the folktale types of English folklore.


title: English folklore

text: A dragon is a giant winged reptile that breathes fire or poison and is usually associated with waterfalls. The dragon is also present in Chinese, Egyptian, Mesoamerican and many other mythologies of the world. In the cultures of India, they are found in the mythologies and folklore of Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism.


title: English folklore

text: A Wyvern is a smaller relative of dragons with two legs rather than four. It also has smaller wings and cannot breathe fire.


title: English folklore

text: The black dog is a creature which foreshadows calamity or causes it. It is a combination of Odysseus' Argos and Hades' Cerberus from Greek mythology, and Fenrir from Norse mythology. The first collection of sightings of the black dog around Great Britain, Ethel Rudkin's 1938 article reports that the dog has black fur, abnormally large eyes, and a huge body. The black dog is a common motif in folklore and appears in many traditional English stories and tales. They often denote death and misfortune close at hand and appear and disappear into thin air.


title: English folklore

text: A boggart is, depending on local or regional tradition, a malevolent "genius loci" inhabiting fields, marshes or other topographical features. The household boggart causes objects to disappear, milk to sour, and dogs to go lame. They can possess small animals, fields, churches, or houses so they can play tricks on the civilians with their chilling laugh. Always malevolent, the boggart will follow its family wherever they flee. In Northern England, at least, there was the belief that the boggart should never be named, for when the boggart was given a name, it could not be reasoned with nor persuaded, but would become uncontrollable and destructive.


title: English folklore

text: A brownie is a type of hob (household spirit), similar to a hobgoblin. Brownies are said to inhabit houses and aid in tasks around the house. However, they do not like to be seen and will only work at night, traditionally in exchange for small gifts or food. Among food, they especially enjoy porridge and honey. They usually abandon the house if their gifts are called payments, or if the owners of the house misuse them. Brownies make their homes in an unused part of the house.


title: English folklore

text: A dwarf is a human-shaped entity that dwells in mountains and in the earth, and is associated with wisdom, smithing, mining, and crafting. The term had only started to be used in the 19th century as a translation for the German, French, and Scandinavian words which describe dwarves.


title: English folklore

text: Ogres are usually tall, strong, violent, greedy, and remarkably dull monsters and they originate from French culture. In folktales they are likely to be defeated by being outsmarted.


title: English folklore

text: The Will-o'-the-wisp is a folk explanation of strange, flickering lights seen around marshes and bogs. Some perceive them as souls of unbaptized infants which lead travellers off the forest path and into danger, while others perceive them as trickster fairies or sprites.


title: English folklore

text: King Arthur is the legendary king of the Britons, the Once and Future King and True Born King of England. The origins of King Arthur and his exploits are vague due to the many reproductions of his character. The "Historia Brittonum" and the "Annales Cambriae" reference many battles of an Arthur, "Annales Cambriae" also referencing Mordred, a rival, and Merlin, a wise mentor. Although these sources have been used as proof for Arthur's origins, their credibility has been disputed as mythology rather than history. As English folklore has progressed, King Arthur's retellings have been classified into romances such as Malory's "Morte Darthur", chronicles such as Geoffrey's "Historia Regum Britanniae", and fantasies such as "Culhwch ac Olwen" (whose author is unknown).


title: English folklore

text: Robin Hood was a vicious outlaw who expressed the working-class' disenchantment with the status quo. Through Robin Hood, the forest (called the "greenwood" by folklorists) transformed from the dangerous, mystical battleground of Arthur to a site of sanctuary, comradery, and lawlessness. Rather than a philanthropic thief of the rich, Robin Hood's tales began in the 15th century as a brutal outlaw, ballads revelling in his violent retaliation to threats. Robin Hood fought to protect himself and his group the Merry Men, regardless the class, age, or gender of their enemy. In stories such as 'Robin Hood and the Widow's Three Sons' and 'The Tale of Gamelyn', the joyful ending is in the hanging of the sheriff and the officials; in 'Robin Hood and the Monk"'," Robin Hood kills a monk and his young helper. Paradoxical to English values of strict adherence to the law and honour, Robin Hood was glorified in ballads and stories for his banishment from society.


title: English folklore

text: Robin Goodfellow, or Puck, is a shape-changing fairy known for his tricks. Since some English superstition suspected that fairies were demons, 17th century publications such as 'Robin Good-Fellow, his Mad Prankes and Merry Jests' and 'The Anatomy of Melancholy' portrayed him as a demon.


title: English folklore

text: Lob, also called loby, looby, lubbard, lubber, or lubberkin, is the name given to a fairy with a dark raincloud as a body. It has a mischievous character and can describe any fairy-like creature from British folklore. It can be confused with Lob Lie-By-The-Fire, a strong, hairy giant which helps humans.


title: English folklore

text: Beowulf is an anonymous Old English historical epic of 3182 lines which describes the adventures of its titular character, prince Beowulf of Geats. The story goes that Beowulf slays Grendel, a monster who has tormented the hall of Hrothgar King of the Danes for twelve years. Grendel's mother seeks to gain revenge and Beowulf slays her also, after which Beowulf becomes king of the Danes himself. After 50 years, Beowulf's people are tormented by a dragon and Beowulf dies while slaying her. Original speculation was that Beowulf was a Scandinavian epic translated to English, theorised due to the story's Scandinavian settings. However, Beowulf was cemented as an Old English epic through the study that heroes of folklore are not ordinarily natives of the country they save.


title: English folklore

text: The Brown Lady of Raynham is a story of the ghost of a woman of Norfolk, Lady Dorothy Walpole. After her adultery was discovered, she was confined to her chambers until death and roamed the halls of Raynham, named after the brown brocade she wears. Differing versions of the story attest that she was locked in by her husband, Lord Townsend, or by the Countess of Wharton.


title: English folklore

text: The Legend of the Mistletoe Bough is a ghost story which has been associated with many mansions and stately homes in England. The tale describes how a new bride, playing a game of hide-and-seek during her wedding breakfast, hid in a chest in an attic and was unable to escape. She was not discovered by her family and friends, and suffocated. The body was allegedly found many years later in the locked chest.


title: English folklore

text: Standing stones are man-made stone structures made to stand up. Some small standing stones can also be arranged in groups to form miniliths. Similar to these geological artefacts are hill figures. These are figures drawn into the countryside by digging into the ground and sometimes filling it in with a mineral of a contrasting colour. Examples are the Cerne Abbas Giant, the Uffington White Horse, and the Long Man of Wilmington and are the focus for folktales and beliefs.


title: English folklore

text: The Green Man is a description originating in 1939 which describes the engraved sculpture of a face with leaves growing from it in English architecture. His presence symbolises nature, but he is depicted differently according to where he is engraved and who carves him; on a church he may symbolise either inspiration or lust, or he may symbolise an ancient protector of travellers in a forest. The phrase originated from 'whifflers' who dressed in leaves or hair to make way for processions during pageants from the 15th to 18th centuries.


title: English folklore

text: There was a belief that those born at the chime hours could see ghosts. The time differed according to region, usually based around the times of monk's prayer which were sometimes marked by a chime.


title: English folklore

text: Crop circles are formations of flattened cereal. While they have been speculated to have mysterious and often extraterrestrial origins, most crop circles have been proven to be hoaxes. Those made by Doug Bower and Dave Chorley across England in 1991 have since started chains of copycats around the world.


title: English folklore

text: Cunning folk was a term used to refer to male and female healers, magicians, conjurers, fortune-tellers, potion-makers, exorcists, or thieves. Such people were respected, feared and sometimes hunted for their breadth of knowledge which was suspected as supernatural.


title: English folklore

text: The wild hunt was a description of a menacing group of huntsmen which either rode across the sky or on lonely roads. Their presence was a hallmark of the perception of the countryside as a wild and mystical place.


title: English folklore

text: On May Day, the first day of May, a tall, decorated pole is put up as a symbol of fertility called a maypole. The maypole represents a phallic object impregnating the earth at the end of spring to ensure a bountiful summer. The maypoles were decorated originally with flowers and carved from the branches of trees about to bloom to symbolise the birth of new life. Eventually the flowers were replaced with ribbons and May day became a day for celebration and dancing in which a May queen and sometimes a May king would be crowned to also symbolise fertility.


title: English folklore

text: A parish ale is a type of party in the parish usually held to fundraise money for a particular purpose.


title: English folklore

text: Plough Monday was a custom in which, on the first Monday after Christmas, men visited people's doorsteps at night and asked for a token for the holiday. They carried whips and a makeshift plough and dug up the house's doorstep or scraper if the house refused to give them an item.


title: English folklore

text: Corn dollies are a form of straw work made as part of harvest customs of Europe before the First World War. Their use varied according to region: it may have been decorative, an image of pride for the harvest, or a way to mock nearby farms which had not yet collected their harvest. There has been a recent resurgence in their creation lead by Minnie Lambeth in the 1950s and 1960s through her book "A Golden Dolly: The Art, Mystery, and History of Corn Dollies".


title: English folklore

text: A superstition among children was that, if the first word uttered in the month was "Rabbit!", then that person would have good luck for the rest of the month. Variants include: "rabbit, rabbit, rabbit!", "rabbit, rabbit, white rabbit!", and "white rabbit!".


title: English folklore

text: After a person died, a poor person was hired to take on their sins by eating before or after the funeral over their body- a sin-eater. The sin-eater would hence ensure that the recently deceased would be taken to heaven.


title: English folklore

text: Sir Francis Drake's Drum is a legend about the drum of an English admiral who raided Spanish treasure fleets and Spanish ports. He was believed to have white magic which enabled him to turn into a dragon (as hinted by his name, Drake meaning dragon in Latin). When he died, the drum which he brought on his voyage around the world was sung about- that in England's peril, they could strike it and he would come to their aid. Eventually the legend evolved to be that the drum would strike itself in England's peril, and it has been heard struck since.


title: English folklore

text: A hagstone, also called a holed stone or adder stone, is a type of stone, usually glassy, with a naturally occurring hole through it. Such stones have been discovered by archaeologists in both Britain and Egypt. In England it was used as a counter-charm for sleep paralysis, called hag-riding by tradition.


title: English folklore

text: A petrifying well is a well which, when items are placed into it, they appear to be covered in stone. Items also acquire a stony texture when left in the well for an extended period of time. Examples in England include Mother Shipton's Cave in Knaresborough and Matlock Bath in Derbyshire.


title: Chip Roy

text: Charles Eugene "Chip" Roy (born August 7, 1972) is an American attorney and politician serving as the U.S. representative for Texas's . A member of the Republican Party, Roy took office on January 3, 2019. Before his election to Congress, he served as chief of staff to Senator Ted Cruz and as first assistant attorney general of Texas.


title: Chip Roy

text: Roy was born in Bethesda, Maryland, and raised in Lovettsville, Virginia. Growing up near the Potomac River, Roy was familiar with places linked to the early history of the United States. For one of his high school activities he reenacted John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. His parents, Don and Rhonda Roy, were conservatives who supported Ronald Reagan and helped shape Roy's political views. In late November 1949, Roy's father contracted spinal and bulbospinal polio during an epidemic. This occurred soon after his father (Roy's grandfather) died of cancer on Thanksgiving weekend. Roy's father went to Lion Camp in Kerrville for therapy and was able to avoid being placed in an iron lung. He wound up with a permanent tracheostomy due to polio's effects.


title: Chip Roy

text: Roy attended the University of Virginia, receiving a Bachelor of Science in commerce in 1994 and a Master of Science in information systems in 1995. There, he worked as a dorm resident assistant for a year, meeting future pro football players Tiki and Ronde Barber, who later attended his wedding. After graduation Roy spent three years as an investment banking analyst. Wary that his career might require him to relocate to Manhattan, Roy decided to pursue a different career. He enrolled at the University of Texas School of Law, where he met his future wife, Carrah. He graduated in 2003 with a Juris Doctor.


title: Chip Roy

text: Though initially Roy saw politics "as an avocation, a sort of interest, but not something I would do anytime soon, if ever", his mind began to change when, while still in law school, he began working for then-Texas attorney general John Cornyn on his 2002 campaign for the United States Senate. After the September 11 attacks, Roy reflected on his goals. "I was in law school when September 11 happened. I will always remember that moment, crystallized in my head. That had a lot to do with my commitment to public service", he has said. When Cornyn was elected and made vice chairman of the Republican Committee and the Judiciary Committee, Roy served as his staff director and senior counsel. Roy provided counsel for Cornyn and his staff on legislative issues including nominations, intellectual property, crime, civil justice reform and advising him during the immigration reform debates under the George W. Bush administration. Roy worked for Cornyn until 2009.


title: Chip Roy

text: Roy returned to Texas as a special assistant in the office of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas. In 2006, Roy met Ted Cruz, then Texas Solicitor General, during a strategy session discussing the case "League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry", a case about redistricting that Cruz argued before the Supreme Court.


title: Chip Roy

text: Roy resigned from his job as a special assistant U.S. attorney after six months to be a ghostwriter on then-Governor of Texas Rick Perry's 2010 book "Fed Up!" and work for Perry's 2012 presidential campaign. The book served as a campaign agenda for Perry's campaign, and offered a range of Perry's positions, including criticism of the Social Security system as unconstitutional (calling it "a Ponzi scheme"), changing the election of U.S. senators back to state legislatures (they were made popularly elected by the Seventeenth Amendment), ending life tenure for federal judges, and repealing the 16th Amendment (which allows a federal income tax). The book also denounces as "overreach" federal efforts to regulate health care, labor conditions, energy policy, and pollution. In the book's acknowledgments section, Perry singled out Roy for "special recognition" for resigning his previous post "to devote himself full-time to the completion of the original manuscript" and his "amazing knowledge of the U.S. Constitution and other Founding documents, and a keen ability to frame federalist arguments in striking terms that make complicated law easier for non-lawyers like me to understand and discuss." In his review of the book, Gene Healy of the libertarian Cato Institute credited Roy as "the guy who did most of the heavy lifting in the book."


title: Chip Roy

text: On April 1, 2011, Perry announced Roy as his choice for Texas's Director of State-Federal relations, an office whose duties include lobbying for federal funds for state institutions (such as grants to universities). He told reporters: "I'm enthusiastic about the opportunity. I've spent a number of years in Washington, and I got to see a lot of what works and more of what doesn't work. In this role, I think I can help serve the interests of the state of Texas and how it interacts with Washington. It's particularly exciting for me at the moment at this particular time. The influence of Washington has such a significant impact these days. I think this is a good opportunity to help Texas deal with what Washington is doing as it relates to our budget and those kinds of things."


title: Chip Roy

text: During the confirmation hearings for his position before the Texas Senate, Roy said he would oppose an "intrusive federal government that spends our money recklessly." He promised to help Texas legislators "push back on Washington where necessary" and stand up for "liberty, state sovereignty and an end to the crippling pile of debt and regulation coming from Washington that is destroying our nation and endangering the state." When asked about the recent Texas House vote to slash most of the office's funds, transferring them to a tuition reimbursement program for children of the military, he said it was "hardly surprising…I might have voted to cut it as well, based on what I understand of the office, but possibly without hiding behind the political gamesmanship of moving it from one account to another." He promised to consider eliminating the entire office if it didn't "stand for something." Roy's nomination was opposed by Texas State Senator Kirk Watson, who pointed out that the office's mission was "to promote communication and build relationships between the state and federal governments" and asked Roy "when you or someone else" decided to redefine its purpose. The committee approved Roy's nomination, 6-1, with the full State Senate later confirming the nomination. Roy served in the office from April to October 2011.


title: Chip Roy

text: The week of his 39th birthday in August 2011, Roy was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin lymphoma. He later said his experience battling cancer convinced him of the importance of "health-care freedom", and that examining his medical bills showed him "how truly convoluted our system is."


title: Chip Roy

text: After Cruz's election to the Senate in 2012, Roy became his chief of staff. Cruz praised his talents, calling Roy "a proud Texan and a principled movement conservative who was an early supporter of my campaign."


title: Chip Roy

text: While serving as Cruz's chief of staff, Roy gained attention for criticizing other Republicans who did not join Cruz in demanding Obamacare be defunded before voting to keep the government running past September 30, 2013. During the 2013 United States federal government shutdown, Roy's main tasks were behind the scenes, plotting a course through the media coverage and determining tactics when Republican allies deserted the cause and the party's leadership became increasingly hostile. Roy chastised defecting Republicans, and was quoted as saying Tom Coburn was serving in a "surrender caucus" and likening Mitch McConnell to Barack Obama. Cruz said Republicans who did not join him had fallen into "a powerful, defeatist approach…they're beaten down and they're convinced that we can't give a fight, and they're terrified." Their cause was joined by Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Mark Meadows and Mike Lee.


title: Chip Roy

text: The media picked up on Roy taking to Twitter to jab John McCain, sarcastically calling it "shocking" that "someone talking to [Democratic Senator Chuck] Schumer 5x a day and the White House daily" didn't support the hardball approach. Coburn complained about these tactics to the "Washington Examiner", saying: "The worst thing is being dishonest about what you can accomplish, ginning everybody up and then creating disappointment." Roy's response on Twitter gained media attention: "Since when is a promise to fight disastrous policy 'dishonest?' No, the worst thing is giving up & leaving your base believing there is no need to be a Republican any longer." Coburn told a reporter that he had "no ill will" toward Roy: "He knows I'm not part of the surrender caucus." He added: "a good portion of it [Obamacare] is mandatory spending, and the only way to get rid of mandatory spending…is 67 votes because you got to override a presidential veto" and that Cruz's and Roy's tactics would result in the Democrats taking control of the House.


title: Chip Roy

text: Roy told a reporter that his job was to advance Cruz's priorities and he had not been told to stand down: "The Washington establishment uses every tool at its disposal to push its own narrative on the American public—and in this case, it's the narrative of 'we can't.' They plant stories, strong-arm members and try to create fake 'wins' for cover that simply do not change the status quo. It is important that we push back." In response to questions about Roy's behavior, McCain said, "He and Senator Cruz are entitled to their opinions, but I don't pay that much attention to that kind of thing because I believe my position. It wouldn't be the first person who has criticized me." Richard Burr, who supported defunding but not threatening to cause a shutdown, also was unmoved by Roy's quips: "It doesn't matter to me what he does. The only thing that's important is that I'm on Senator Cruz's bill to eliminate Obamacare."


title: Chip Roy

text: On September 25, 2013, Cruz and Roy met with trusted staffers and Cruz read aloud from Psalm 40 (which includes the line "troubles without number surround me") and then took to the Senate floor for a 21-hour speech against Obamacare. Despite such efforts the shutdown did not result in the desired policy change: the Republican leadership brokered a deal with the Democrats, reopened the government, and Obamacare funding was only marginally affected. "Politico" called Roy an "architect" of Cruz's strategy, and he later told a reporter, "Was I intimately involved with it? Yes. Unapologetically. I think it was the right strategy. And but for the same hand-wringers in the Senate that continue to give us the status quo, we might have been successful."


title: Chip Roy

text: In September 2014, as Cruz contemplated a 2016 presidential campaign, Roy's duties in his office moved from chief of staff to top political strategist. During the exploratory phase of Cruz's campaign, Roy and Cruz got into an argument about political tactics and strategy that became heated enough to cause Roy to leave Cruz's Senate office. Despite the level of disagreement, they discussed working together in the future. Cruz later recalled, "We often agreed, but not always, and we would have vigorous debates. Chip never backs down, and we would have extended discussions about which battles should be the highest priority."


title: Chip Roy

text: In 2014, despite controversy over the Texas State Securities Board issuing a disciplinary order against him for soliciting investment clients without being registered in the state, Ken Paxton easily won election as Texas attorney general. He chose Roy as his first assistant attorney general, saying: "Chip is a longtime friend, and someone whose counsel I trust. …I am pleased that he will bring his strong legal mind, devotion to liberty, and servant's heart to the Office of Attorney General as first assistant." He added that Roy would be part of "a highly qualified and dedicated team that will be ready to defend Texas and ensure we are protected from an overreaching federal government." Roy's continuing battle with cancer influenced his decision to return to Texas, as he wished to be close to his family rather than commute weekly to Washington, D.C. or travel extensively on a presidential campaign. In accepting Paxton's offer, he praised Cruz, saying he "has honored his promise to Texans and 'made DC listen.' Moving on from his team is like leaving family, but you never truly leave...Now, Attorney General-elect Paxton has given me the honor of being home in Texas and helping him lead the great people of the Office of Attorney General as we defend the interests of this great state."


title: Chip Roy

text: Stepping into his role in Texas's attorney general's office, Roy confronted over 28,000 active cases, including high-profile cases on voter ID and same-sex marriage. He also participated in the 2015 lawsuit "United States v. Texas" against President Obama's executive action on immigration. The case challenged the constitutionality of the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) program. Roy explained Texas's position to reporters: "the U.S. Senate and House aren't doing their job in standing up for and defending [the powers granted only to them by the Constitution's] Article 1, I think it is critical what Texas is doing in stepping up and defending when the president himself said repeatedly he didn't have the power to do this." When asked about further political ambitions, Roy mentioned his cancer, which had been in remission for four years: "Before Hodgkin's lymphoma, I was headed down that path. Subsequent to having cancer, I kind of took a step back. I'll leave that in the Lord's hands. I love public policy and trying to impact public policy."


title: Chip Roy

text: In July 2015, a Collin County grand jury indicted Paxton on two first-degree felony counts of securities fraud and a third-degree felony for failure to register as a securities dealer. Paxton maintained his innocence, but news stories continued to focus on the charges. Due to Paxton's decision to work from his home in McKinney rather than the capital in Austin, reporters covering the office's work highlighted the rolls of his solicitor general Scott Keller, his chief of staff Bernard McNamee, and especially Roy. With Paxton avoiding all but the friendliest audiences, speculation arose that Roy was the "de facto" attorney general.


title: Chip Roy

text: In September 2015, while praising Roy at the Pflugerville First Baptist Church as one of the "visionaries on this religious liberties issue", Paxton said, "I get credit, sometimes not credit, for what happens in my office." MacNamee soon resigned in frustration over Paxton's behavior. Roy inadvertently drew unwanted attention to the situation in an interview about Texas's challenge to the DAPA program. When a reporter asked him how Paxton's legal problems affected the agency, Roy's response was seen as revealing Paxton's absence from running the office. He said, "We're in constant communication with the attorney general, and we're focused on doing our job every day to defend the state of Texas. ...The first assistant attorney general, the solicitor general, our head of civil litigation, all of us are charged to manage the daily affairs of this agency, and that's what we're doing."


title: Chip Roy

text: When Paxton's name did not appear in a "New York Times" piece about a suit against Texas in the Supreme Court over abortion restrictions, his communications staff complained to Keller about it. Paxton traveled to Washington to hear the oral arguments, paying for his own ticket and submitting a copy of it to the state alongside the one his office had purchased for Roy to show how much money he had saved Texas. Eight days after the Supreme Court hearing, Paxton called his communications director, Allison Castle, who could not get any news organization to agree to interview him about the case. He demanded she resign or be fired. He then did the same to Roy, who resigned. Both were placed on emergency leave, which caused further controversy. Reporters also began to investigate whether Paxton had broken state law in the way he had hired staff: giving people the job before they filled out an application and without first advertising openings before filing them with people from outside the department. Paxton's choice to replace Roy was Jeff Mateer from First Liberty Institute, who had attracted notoriety by offering to represent, "pro bono", any business that wished to sue the city of Plano over its anti-LGBT discrimination ordinance.


title: Chip Roy

text: On March 10, 2016, the day after Paxton announced that Roy had "resigned to pursue other endeavors," he was named the executive director of the Trusted Leadership PAC, which was supporting Cruz's presidential campaign. Kellyanne Conway, president of the pro-Cruz Keep the Promise PAC, hailed his hiring, saying, "Chip brings a wealth of experience in politics and public policy, and a deep understanding of Senator Cruz's philosophy and track record and we are happy to have him on board." The PAC was formed to bring the preexisting separate Cruz-supporting PACs into a single operating structure. Taking the job, Roy praised his previous co-workers, saying, "After fifteen months of far-reaching accomplishments in defense of Texas, I leave behind an extraordinarily talented team capable of continuing the work we started together."


title: Chip Roy

text: Controversy arose when it was discovered that Roy remained a state employee while working for the PAC. Roy responded that he had not received any pay from the PAC while he was on the state payroll, and only used his accrued vacation and compensatory time from the state after resigning to work for the PAC. This had left open the option for him to receive leave after his vacation and holiday time expired, which would have allowed him to continue receiving health benefits for his cancer treatment. After "The Dallas Morning News" reported on the matter, Roy fully resigned, maintaining that doing so was the result of a good report from his oncologist. He told reporters, "Had I gotten some bad news, then I would have taken a step back and then thought, 'Okay, now what?' And then, maybe I go back and have a conversation with the attorney general or anybody else in the state and find the right place, depending on what the news is."


title: Chip Roy

text: While working for the campaign, Roy called presidential candidate Donald Trump's conservative credentials into question, at one point tweeting, "@RealDonaldTrump Supports Planned Parenthood, which kills babies and puts them in a freezer, government funding of healthcare and Palestine."


title: Chip Roy

text: At the time of Roy's hiring, Conway had said, "This is a two-person race where Senator Cruz is building significant momentum and is the proven conservative, able to win the nomination and defeat Hillary Clinton," but Cruz dropped out of the race less than two months after Roy took over the PAC. Roy later said of his questioning Trump, "I think it was reasonable for Americans to go, 'Well, wait a minute. Who are you and what are you about?' …we saw the campaign unfold and I did my job to push back and try to make sure that we got Senator Cruz elected. On May 3rd of 2016, that went a different way." Despite a scandal about the Cruz campaign's relationship with Cambridge Analytica, Roy and Trusted Leadership PAC had no interaction with the company.


title: Chip Roy

text: By September 19, 2016, Roy had found employment as the Director of the Center for Tenth Amendment Action for the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a conservative think tank. Cruz praised the move: "I congratulate both him for his new role, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation for securing such an accomplished and principled individual as Chip to serve as Director of their 10th Amendment Center. As one who had the honor of helping launch that center, it is critical to have someone lead the effort who possesses both a strong knowledge of the Constitution and an acute awareness of how the federal government steps beyond its limits on a daily basis."


title: Chip Roy

text: Roy said: "The talented team at TPPF has a proven track record of success in defending liberty and free enterprise - and I look forward to working side-by-side with them."


title: Chip Roy

text: In 2018, Roy ran for the United States House of Representatives in to succeed Lamar Smith, who did not run for reelection. Covering his campaign, "Politico" likened him to Cruz. Roy finished first in an 18-candidate field and received Smith's endorsement in a runoff on May 22 against Matt McCall. Roy said his agreement with Smith when it came to questioning whether climate change was attributable to human activity.


title: Chip Roy

text: When he supported Cruz in the 2016 presidential primary, Roy's criticism of Trump caused some of his friends to describe him as committed to the "Never Trump" cause. By 2018, his position had changed. Roy praised Trump's job performance as president, citing his decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords and his results in "regulatory relief, on tax relief, on judges, on the embassy in Jerusalem" and his attacks on "the swamp or the establishment or the status quo or whatever you want to call the inner workings of Washington, D.C." Roy also echoed Trump's position about a "deep state", which he defined as "entrenched bureaucrat[s] who hide something from the political decision-makers" causing "pushback from deep within the bowels of each of the agencies." He called for federal agencies "to be thinned out so that we don't have those issues."


title: Chip Roy

text: Roy promised if elected to push back against the status quo and restrict the federal government's power, calling for Medicare to be delegated to the states, for Congress to pass a balanced budget, and for action to be taken to prevent judges from "legislating from the bench". He suggested that the House should attempt to pass no legislation the next term until it advanced a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. He also held that there were threats from "porous borders, gangs and drug cartels" that he would address if elected. The Club for Growth supported his candidacy. The House Freedom Fund (aligned with the Freedom Caucus in the House) contributed $143,000 to Roy's campaign. By February, Cruz joined in campaigning for Roy, telling voters, "I know how he responds under pressure, under heat, and that he won't buckle."


title: Chip Roy

text: Roy finished 10 percentage points ahead of McCall in the Republican primary election. He beat McCall by 5% in the "top-two" runoff. McCall credited much of Roy's victory to Cruz's endorsement and efforts: "Ted carried him into office. He gave him his prestige, his name, his money, his contacts, everything he put on the line for this guy. He literally drove him around in the Ted Cruz Cruzer." McCall said that Cruz was able to convince others to endorse Roy, even Louie Gohmert, whom McCall hailed as his congressional role model. Roy defeated Democratic nominee Joseph Kopser, a businessman, aerospace engineer and veteran, in the general election, 50%–48%, a closer than expected margin.


title: Chip Roy

text: As the 2020 electoral season approached, Democrats sought to associate Roy with Cruz, whose popularity was seen as in decline. Roy was unfazed by the tactic: "This whole thing about trying to brand me as Ted Cruz—I'm honored. He's one of the smartest guys I've known. I think he's a great senator from Texas. I was proud to be his chief of staff. But I'm Chip Roy." As election season approached, Roy told reporters that he was unafraid of any Democratic challenger: "I think what I'm fighting for is good for all Americans regardless of what their ideology is. So if the Democrats want to mount a challenge, go ahead. Place a big pile of money in Austin and light it on fire. I'm going to win next year."


title: Chip Roy

text: Roy was reelected, defeating Democratic nominee Wendy Davis by seven percentage points and winning eight of the district's 10 counties.


title: Chip Roy

text: "The Wall Street Journal" described Roy's Republican primary race of 2022 as "a case study in whether a conservative Republican usually aligned with Mr. Trump can survive politically after angering the former president—even a modest amount." Even before a challenger arose against Roy, Trump had called for him to be defeated in the Republican primary. By June 2021, physician Robert Lowry had filed with the Federal Election Commission to face Roy in the primary, with the possibility of more candidates entering the race by the December 13 deadline. A further complication in the race is that Texas state legislators will be redrawing congressional district boundaries because the 2020 U.S. Census mandated that the state receive two more House seats.


title: Chip Roy

text: Coming into office, Roy cast himself as a conservative version of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "I doubt she and I agree on many issues. But functionally, this place is broken." He was happy to be part of the Freedom Caucus: "they're serving as a check against the current broken system where the power brokers make decisions at the top and just say 'Here's what we're going to do'." He added that Republican power brokers in Congress lost control of the House because "You demonstrate rote incompetence when you are leaving us with a trillion dollars in deficits this year on top of $22 trillion in debt. You said you were going to do something to secure our border, and you didn't. And you said you were going to fight for—I use the term 'health care freedom'—and you didn't. It's hard to really take that to the people and say, 'Hey, send me back'."


title: Chip Roy

text: Roy's election was hailed by many conservatives, including Greg Mueller of the conservative-aligned public relations firm Creative Response Concepts, who said people "are very excited about him coming to Congress. …I think he's seen as the future of the party. He's very smart, politically savvy and he's measured and articulate in how he explains conservative policy, theory and philosophy. I think he's going to chart a lot of courses for the conservative movement." Representative Jim Jordan called Roy "exactly the kind of guy" Congress needs to show what can be done if Republicans regain the House, as "He can convey our message in a compelling fashion."


title: Chip Roy

text: Roy's first speech as a representative was on immigration and what he called "chaos and lawlessness on the southern border." He complained that "members of both sides of the aisle have buried their heads in the sand over the last several decades, talking instead of doing." Right-leaning news outlets hailed Roy's speech; ConservativeMedia.com posted it in its entirety.


title: Chip Roy

text: Soon after taking office, Roy opposed a bill in the House that tried to prevent Trump from withdrawing from NATO without Congress's consent. It passed, 357 to 22. When the House voted to give back pay to the 800,000 federal workers affected by the government shutdown, Roy opposed the measure. He said: "I was voting against Congress essentially giving itself a get out of jail free card to just continue to just put shutdowns on autopilot. …I just think too many of our colleagues say, 'Hey, I just want to avoid tough votes'." Roy was one of few Republicans to vote against the measure, which passed 411 to 7. Trump signed the bill into law.


title: Chip Roy

text: In July 2021, Roy voted against the bipartisan ALLIES Act, which would increase by 8,000 the number of special immigrant visas for Afghan allies of the U.S. military during its invasion of Afghanistan, while also reducing some application requirements that caused long application backlogs; the bill passed in the House 407–16.


title: Chip Roy

text: In 2021, a recording of Roy surfaced in which he said he wanted "18 more months of chaos and the inability to get stuff done" during a Democratic-controlled Congress and presidency.


title: Chip Roy

text: On May 24, 2019, Roy singlehandedly halted a House disaster relief funding bill that gave $19 billion in relief for communities hit by disasters, including $900 million for hurricane-damaged Puerto Rico, and fast-tracked $4 billion in grants to Texans suffering due to the effects of Hurricane Harvey. The money for Texas had been approved in 2018 but held up due to working out regulations with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Office of Management and Budget. Cornyn had championed the bill and Cruz voted for it. House leaders of both parties had agreed to advance the bill under a quick procedure rule that required unanimous consent of those in the chamber. Most members of Congress had already left Washington for the Memorial Day recess. The day before, the Senate had passed the bill 85-8, and the House had passed a similar version earlier in the month 257-150. Due to Roy's objection, the unanimous consent vote was derailed.


title: Chip Roy

text: Roy blamed Nancy Pelosi for the previous delay in Texans receiving the funds and voiced his dislike of procedure being used: "Today I stood to object to the unanimous consent of a $19.1 billion emergency supplemental bill that has been languishing for over eight months because Speaker Pelosi would rather play politics on impeachment than do the work of the people. I objected primarily because had I not, Congress would have passed into law a bill that spends a significant amount of taxpayer money without members of Congress even being present in our nation's capitol to vote on it." He tweeted that his actions were "to try to stop business as usual in the swamp. This is about saving the Republic for our kids. Washington is broken. We should debate, vote, & do our jobs." Cornyn's office had already released a statement calling on the OMB director to disburse the funds "which Texans desperately need to rebuild as soon as possible" with hurricane season a week away.


title: Chip Roy

text: During other pro forma sessions, Roy's tactic was adopted by Representatives Thomas Massie and John Rose, who returned to Washington during the recess week for two more similar unanimous consent request attempts. Ultimately Roy's action delayed the bill's passage for several days until lawmakers returned from recess. Representative Lizzie Fletcher, who had worked on the earlier House version of the bill, said, "I am disappointed that a member of the Texas delegation has further delayed desperately needed funds for communities across Texas, including my own…This delay—at the start of hurricane season, no less—is an affront." The Lone Star Project, a Democratic PAC, released a statement in response to Roy's actions that concluded, "Texans shouldn't have to suffer these tragedies and then be forced to overcome another disaster like Republican Congressman Chip Roy."


title: Chip Roy

text: Hurricane season began on June 1 and coastal communities soon began seeing flooding amid strong storms. The bill was stalled for 11 days before passing on June 3 by a margin of 354–58, with Roy voting against it. He received bipartisan criticism for his objection to the bill. He explained his vote against the measure, saying it added to the national debt and did not include additional spending for federal operations along the U.S.–Mexico border. Five other Texas representatives joined Roy in opposing the bill: Lance Gooden, John Ratcliffe, Van Taylor, Ron Wright, and Michael Cloud (whose district bore the direct brunt of Hurricane Harvey). When asked about Roy's use of procedural tactics, Cornyn replied, "Look, I try not to tell the House guys how to run their shop, and they don't tell the Senate how to run ours. I understand his point. That's probably all I'm going to say about that."


title: Chip Roy

text: On June 12, 2019, Roy derailed the usually uneventful House procedural process for appropriation bills. During the first debate of a four-bill spending package of the upcoming 2020 fiscal year the chamber scheduled for working through amendments through most of the day, with roll call votes not expected until around 5:30 p.m., Roy rose in an effort to protest what he saw as Democratic inaction on Trump's $4.5 billion supplemental funding request for the Department of Homeland Security (to address what his administration held was urgently needed due to an increasing number of migrants at the southern border). From the floor he declared, "It is unconscionable that this body will not address it" and halted the normal process by making a motion to adjourn at 12:14 p.m. The motion was defeated 146-244. Representative Andy Biggs then made another motion to adjourn, which was defeated 140-254. Members of both parties voted against the motions and voiced complaints about the disruption. Members had been forced to leave committee hearings, markups, lunches, and other events for the unscheduled votes.


title: Chip Roy

text: After the votes the House resumed normal business, beginning a debate on a rule governing proceedings on the fiscal package. While managing the debate on the rule for the Republican minority, Woodall yielded his time to several members of his conference. Each requested unanimous consent for immediate consideration of the border funding supplemental. The chair declined these, ruling the time may be yielded only for debate on the rule in question. When proceedings shifted to amendment debate and lawmakers proceeded to call for a voice vote on many of the amendments (most of them uncontroversial), Roy objected and asked for roll call votes on each one. This once again caused members to have to return to the chamber for an unscheduled vote, and as Roy continued to use this tactic it became clear that the previous schedule, which anticipated finishing up no later than 11 p.m., would be extended until early in the morning.