This year, Memorial Day comes with many caveats and asterisks. Much of the country will welcome the unofficial start of summer with stay-at-home orders still in place, necessitating the cancellation or reduction of community observances and gatherings.

While this Memorial Day will differ from Memorial Days of years past, I’m confident that the essence of the day—gratitude—will remain front and center for Americans across the country.
Last month, Congress made history by passing the CARES Act — the $2 trillion coronavirus pandemic relief package — by voice vote. Last week, the House safely, albeit briefly, returned to extend several programs. Otherwise, however, Congress has been eerily silent.

No doubt individual members have been busy working via Zoom and conference call — I certainly have. But Congress needs to lead by example and return to full session, following the House rules for amendment and debate. The House was expected back in D.C. on May 4, but now Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has a new plan.
If you want a preview of Democrats’ agenda should they gain more political power this fall, look no further than coronavirus legislation that Nancy Pelosi released last month. That bill includes an array of liberal spending provisions out of sync with the American people’s priorities — including taxpayer funding of plans that cover abortion.

One costly provision in Democrats’ 1,404-page monstrosity would significantly expand the Obamacare insurance subsidy system. These provisions, which Pelosi wants to enact under the guise of the coronavirus emergency, would raise federal spending on these insurance subsidies in perpetuity — without attempting to pay for this new spending.
Right now, thousands of Americans are sick with the novel coronavirus that physicians still don’t fully understand. Thousands lay dead and millions are experiencing anxiety about the prospect of friends and loved ones contracting this potentially deadly virus.

Whether urban or rural, every part of America is under some form of declared disaster with substantial, albeit varying, restrictions on the economy and on individual freedom in order to deal with the threat to public health.
Unless Congress comes to an agreement by the end of this week, three provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) will expire. Some may recall that last December, Inspector General Michael Horowitz identified numerous abuses of the surveillance law that the FBI famously used to monitor a member of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. Today, it seems that Congress is about to settle for an underwhelming deal that pays lip service to reform while upholding a broken status quo.
When our Founding Fathers established this American Republic, a wise group insisted that our Constitution include the Bill of Rights to ensure that the federal government they created could not infringe on the natural rights of Americans. The First and Second Amendments protect speech and the right to bear arms, respectively. After these essential freedoms, however, comes an amendment that most consider obsolete: the Third, which prohibits the federal government from quartering soldiers in Americans’ homes during peacetime.
The start of the year is a time when millions of Americans make promises to improve their lives by changing habits or adopting new ones. Some of the most common resolutions revolve around improving our health: quitting smoking, eating healthier, or exercising more regularly.
A well-intended, zealously pursued, quest often has negative consequences. Such is currently the case with the Corporate Transparency Act, which is being pushed by some of my colleagues on the House Financial Services Committee. In their quest to reduce corruption and weed out bad actors in the business world, their work is jeopardizing the privacy of millions of Americans and strangling a key engine of American economic growth—small businesses.
President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of forces from Syria and elsewhere is appropriate and long overdue. It’s a necessary return to America’s traditional foreign policy. It’s a rejection of the neoconservative doctrine, which has contributed to the broken state of affairs in the Middle East.