true. Every day, my colleagues and I in the Congressional Equality
Caucus, which is over 190 strong, are fighting for you.
  I know it is hard right now, but you are not alone. Even with all the
antitrans attacks coming from this Chamber, my colleagues in the
Equality Caucus and I have been successful in blocking the worst of the
worst from becoming law.
  We successfully blocked every antitransgender rider in the fiscal
year 2026 government funding bills from becoming law. Not a single bill
exclusively focused on attacking our rights has made it to the
President's desk in this Congress.
  We are still fighting for a brighter tomorrow, and I hope you are,
too.
  Mr. Speaker, let me just say that it has been my profound honor to
celebrate the LGBTQI+ community and honor the conclusion of Pride Month
with my colleagues here tonight.
  Pride began as a protest, as a demand--a demand for equal dignity,
equal treatment, and equal justice for LGBTQI+ people. As we continue
our fight for the rights of LGBTQI+ people here and in the Halls of
Congress, that spirit is what drives us.
  To every American watching tonight, I want you to know that we will
never give up. We will never stop fighting for equality.
  To you all, to every American across this country, from Maine to
Hawaii to the territories, I say happy Pride.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                      HONORING FREDERICK DOUGLASS

  (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Ms.
Pressley of Massachusetts is recognized for the remainder of the hour
as the designee of the minority leader.)
  Ms. PRESSLEY. Mr. Speaker, in 1852, Frederick Douglass, an
abolitionist, orator, and formerly enslaved man, delivered one of
America's most famous speeches: ``What to the Slave Is the Fourth of
July?''
  He addressed a nation celebrating freedom while denying it to
millions. With moral clarity and urgency, he exposed the stark
contradiction between America's founding ideals and the lived reality
of Black people, calling out a democracy that had excluded those who it
claimed to liberate.
  As our Nation celebrates its 250-year anniversary, that tension still
resonates. Black Americans continue to confront systemic inequities
that have been legislated and codified. Douglass' words endure as both
a mirror and a mandate, revealing uncomfortable truths while urging us
to fight for an America as good as its promise.
  Before I begin, I recognize and thank Mass Humanities for sustaining
this vital tradition through public readings of Douglass' speech across
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, ensuring that its message continues
to educate, challenge, and inspire new generations.
  Now, I invite you to listen and to consider these words not as
distant history but as a call to action today.
  ``What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?''

       Mr. President, Friends, and Fellow Citizens:
       The task before me is one which requires much previous
     thought and study for its proper performance. The papers and
     placards say that I am to deliver a Fourth of July oration.
     This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for
     it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in
     this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me
     with their presence. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the
     distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from
     which I escaped, is considerable--and the difficulties to be
     overcome in getting from the latter to the former are by no
     means slight. That I am here today is, to me, a matter of
     astonishment as well as of gratitude.
       This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the Fourth of
     July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and
     of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover
     was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds
     back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance.
       This celebration also marks the beginning of another year
     of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of
     America is now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that
     your nation is so young.
       You are, even now, only in the beginning of your national
     career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat,
     I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope
     is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the
     horizon.
       Fellow-citizens, the simple story is that, 76 years ago,
     the people of this country were British subjects. The style
     and title of your ``sovereign people'' (in which you now
     glory) was not then born. You were under the British Crown.
     Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home
     government. England as the fatherland, although a
     considerable distance from your home, impose, in the exercise
     of its parental prerogatives, upon its colonial children such
     restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature
     judgment, it deemed wise, right, and proper.
       But your fathers, who had not adopted the idea of the
     infallibility of government, and the absolute character of
     its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in
     respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those
     burdens and restraints. They went so far as to pronounce the
     measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive,
     and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to.
     I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of
     those measures fully accords with that of your fathers.
       Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home
     government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of
     spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and
     remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and
     loyal manner. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They
     saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness,
     and scorn.
       Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers became
     restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the
     victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their
     colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy
     for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of
     the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling
     idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard
     it. The timid and the prudent of that day, were, of course,
     shocked and alarmed by it. Their opposition to the then-
     dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all
     their terror and affrighted vociferations against it, the
     alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country
     with it.

                              {time}  1850

       On the Second of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress,
     to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshippers of
     property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority
     of national sanction. They did so in the form of a
     resolution. We seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our
     day, whose transparency is at all equal it: ``Resolved, That
     these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and
     Independent States; that they are absolved from all
     allegiance to the British Crown.''
       Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They
     succeeded; and today you reap the fruits of their success.
     The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly
     celebrate this anniversary. The Fourth of July is the first
     great fact in your nation's history--the very ring-bolt in
     the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.
       My business, if I have any here today, is with the present.
     The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living
     now. We have to do with the past only as we can make it
     useful to the present and to the future. Now is the time, the
     important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done
     their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must
     die, and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy a
     child's share in the labor of your fathers, unless your
     children are to be blest by your labors. You have no right to
     wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to
     cover your indolence.
       Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I
     called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I
     represent, to do with your national independence? Are the
     great principles of political freedom and of natural justice,
     embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?
     And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering
     to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and
     express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from
     your independence to us?
       The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not
     enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty,
     prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is
     shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and
     healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This
     Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice; I must
     mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated
     temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous
     anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you
     mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?
     Fellow citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear
     the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and
     grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by
     the jubilee shouts that reach them.
       My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I
     shall see this day and its popular characteristics, from the
     slave's point of view. Standing here identified with the
     American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate
     to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct
     of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth
     of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or
     to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation
     seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the
     past, false to the