On Monday, the House considered and passed several bills by voice vote, including a resolution I co-sponsored expressing condolences and support for the victims of the July 4 flooding in Texas, honoring acts of heroism, and committing to stand with those impacted by these floods (H.Res. 782).  This resolution honors the victims and those who risked their lives to help them in this year's devastating floods in the Hill Country, which brought heartbreak and loss to communities throughout Texas, especially in our district in Houston.

On Tuesday, the House finally considered the Epstein Files Transparency Act, H.Res. 581, to force the Trump administration to release all files related to the sex-trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein at the Department of Justice.  The survivors of Jeffrey Epstein deserve justice and the American people deserve the truth.  Until days ago, when passage of this legislation became all but guaranteed, President Trump and his allies in Congress did everything in their power to prevent this vote from happening, from sending the House home early in July to delaying the swearing in of Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva—the final member needed to force this vote—for 50 days.  President Trump has—and has had—the power to release the Epstein files without congressional approval.  But with an overwhelming desire from the American people to release the files, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have taken matters into our own hands and advanced this bill to release the files.  Only then did the President encourage Republicans to vote for it.  The bill passed the House 427-1.  The Senate later passed the bill by unanimous consent.  And the President signed the bill into law.  I will not stop working to provide transparency, accountability, and justice for the survivors.  Finding justice for the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein is essential for their healing and also for restoring public trust in institutions that failed to protect them and preventing such abuses from happening again.

As I wrote to you last week, the bill the House passed last week to reopen the government contained provisions guaranteeing eight Republican Senators at least one million dollars each because their phone records were subpoenaed in connection with the investigation of the January 6 insurrection.  These obscene payments for a specific group of Senators never should have been included in the funding bill.  On Wednesday, the House considered and passed a bill to repeal these provisions, H.R. 6019.  I voted in favor of the bill, which passed the House unanimously by a vote of 426 - 0.  It is not clear whether the Senate even considered this bill, which is why the House should never have passed it in the first place.  Earlier in the week, I also cosponsored the No Payola Act, H.R. 6049, a separate bill to repeal the payout provisions in the government funding bill. 

As the House has done often this year, it devoted much of its limited floor time to bills relating to the District of Columbia.  On Wednesday, the House voted on the District of Columbia Cash Bail Reform Act of 2025 (H.R. 5214), which would alter bail procedures, and the Common-Sense Law Enforcement and Accountability Now in DC Act of 2025 (H.R. 5107), which repeals the majority of police reforms passed by the D.C. Council in 2020.  I voted against these bills, consistent with my prior votes and my view that the House should not undermine the self-determination of nearly 700,000 residents in Washington, D.C. and impede the D.C. government’s ability to govern through its elected representatives.  The bills passed the House by votes of 237-179 and 233-190, respectively.

On Thursday, the House considered two energy bills.  The REFINER Act (H.R. 3109), which I co-sponsored, requires the National Petroleum Council to study the state of U.S. refineries and make recommendations to maintain their capabilities.  I voted for it, and it passed the House 230-176.  The Unlocking our Domestic LNG Potential Act of 2025 (H.R. 1949) creates a new regulatory framework for liquified natural gas (LNG) infrastructure and exports.  LNG is a crucial geopolitical tool to support our allies, an economic driver for Houston, and a lower-emissions alternative to foreign sources of energy.  I’ve worked for years to improve the federal regulation of LNG, through bills like my LNG Coordination Act.  The Unlocking our Domestic LNG Potential Act creates a streamlined, de-politicized regulatory framework for LNG, housed at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), an independent agency that is not subject to political interference.  While I have expressed some reservations about some of the details of the bill in the past, I voted for this bill when it came to the floor this week, and it passed 217-188.

Finally, on Friday, the House convened for debate on House Concurrent Resolution 58, titled ‘Denouncing the Horrors of Socialism.’ We have voted on this resolution before, and I voted against it.  I voted against it again.  As my friend and colleague Jamie Raskin explained during debate, many of our strongest democratic allies, including Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and Finland, lead strong democratic socialist governments and thriving societies and economies, but the resolution advances a false equation between democratic socialism and Communist dictatorship, a preposterous assertion.  It equates the great programmatic achievements of American democracy as ‘socialist,’ including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, public education, public health measures and the Affordable Care Act.  As Raskin explained, “by defining essential democratic public programs as ‘socialist’ and claiming that socialism inevitably leads to Stalinist communism and societal collapse, these plutocrat Republicans are plainly working to undermine the living standards of the American majority and rip up the social fabric of the nation.”

Also, throughout the week, after more than six weeks out of session and with major work to do before the next government funding deadline on January 30 of next year, the House spent floor time addressing several motions from lawmakers in efforts to censure, admonish, or remove other members from the House committees.  I voted to table these resolutions or refer them to the House Ethics Committee, which is the appropriate committee to address these matters at this time.

As a reminder, you can always find a list of all of the votes I have taken for the district on my website.

This week, I joined my colleagues in sending more letters, including:

• a letter to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Acting Director Jim O’Neil expressing concerns about the CDC’s recent acceptance of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ (ACIP) September 2025 vaccine recommendations and the lack of scientific integrity in the CDC’s vaccine recommendation process;
• a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. expressing concerns about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) removing information from its website that stated that there was no link between vaccines and autism. In its place, the CDC added a line to its website that states, “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”
• a letter to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner requesting the Department work with Congress to prevent significant and unnecessary delays in federal funding for the Continuum of Care (CoC) Program that will leave a significant gap in funding for housing services.   
• a letter to Speaker Johnson urging the Speaker to condemn the rise in dehumanizing rhetoric targeting the transgender community and to ensure members of his conference are abiding by rules of decorum and not using their platforms to demonize and scapegoat the transgender community, including by ensuring members are not using slurs to refer to the transgender community; and
• a letter to House Agriculture Committee Chairman GT Thompson and Ranking Member Angie Craig opposing the inclusion of the Save Our Bacon (SOB) Act in the Farm Bill.  The SOB Act would override state laws that have created minimum space and housing requirements for animals kept in smaller spaces and have banned the sale of products from animals kept in spaces that are smaller than the law requires.

Another important thing happened this week, not in Washington, but affecting representation in Washington for Texans.  On Tuesday, a three-judge panel in El Paso federal court considering the case of LULAC v. Abbott issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the use of the new congressional map that the Texas Legislature passed and Governor Greg Abbott signed into law just this fall.

The court concluded that the new Texas congressional map should not go into effect for the 2026 elections and that the elections should proceed with the congressional districts as they are currently configured.  In reaching its conclusion, the court found that the Plaintiffs in the case have shown a likelihood of success on their racial-gerrymandering challenges to the 2025 map.  The evidence before the court made clear that race drove Texas’s mid-decade redistricting efforts and both the process and the map itself discriminate against Black and Hispanic Texans.  The 2025 map should offend every Texan–no matter who they vote for–because it betrays the fundamental principle that Texans should have a say in our government.

Governor Abbott has appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court.