Representative Lizzie Fletcher

Dear Neighbor,

Once again, it was another busy week! I spent the first two days of the week at home in Houston and headed back to Washington for votes on Wednesday. I was sorry we had to reschedule our town hall, but want to be sure to share our new date: Tuesday, April 4, 2023. I hope you can make it. You can RSVP here or by clicking on the photo below.

It was great to have a few extra days at home to visit with people across the district. Among the highlights: attending the Shandong Fellowship Association of Southern USA's Annual Meeting and Gala, where I was glad to honor the work they do in our community and to enjoy the festivities!

We got a late start this week, so we spent most of the week debating and voting on procedural motions and amendments related to H.R. 5, which was titled the Parents Bill of Rights Act.

Residents of Texas’ diverse Seventh Congressional District care deeply about ensuring quality education for our children, and the active engagement of parents across the district is vital to that effort. But this disingenuously named bill does not take meaningful steps to increase or support parental engagement in schools or create parental rights for our diverse families. Instead, it seeks to draw our schools and our students into political culture wars. It creates unnecessary and burdensome reporting requirements for schools, diverts essential resources, promotes censorship, and creates a hostile school environment for LGBTQI+ students.

At home and in Washington we see the dangerous efforts of politicians interfering in our schools under false pretenses, and this bill is no different. For these reasons, I voted no today on H.R. 5. Instead, I voted for alternative legislation House Democrats offered that, if enacted, would create a designated parent coordinator at every public school, increase funding for statewide family engagement centers, increase funding for full-service community schools, prevent schools from banning books and censoring the teaching of history, including Black history, Latino history, AAPI history, Native American history, LBGTQI+ history, women’s history, and the Holocaust. This alternative legislation did not pass, but H.R. 5 passed by a vote of 213-208 and will now head to the Senate for consideration.

All our children deserve a safe and affirming school environment. As a Vice Chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, and a representative for many LGBTQI+ kids and families in our district, I am deeply disappointed that through this bill the new Republican majority has chosen to prioritize legislation that isolates LGBTQI+ students in particular and exacerbates the challenges they already face by creating a hostile environment at school. Our focus must be on building safe, inclusive, and supportive learning environments for all students.

Despite this highly partisan and divided debate and votes on the House floor, the House did pass a few things on a bipartisan basis this week, all of which I voted for:

A bill to direct the Secretary of State to submit to Congress a report on implementation of the advanced capabilities pillar of the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States;
A bill to amend the Taiwan Assurance Act of 2020 to require periodic reviews and updated reports relating to the Department of State's Taiwan Guidelines, and;
A bill to authorize Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center for a ceremony as part of the commemoration of the days of remembrance of victims of the Holocaust.

As a reminder, you can see all of my votes on bills, amendments, and motions on my website under the section called “How I Voted.”

The House is deep in appropriations requests right now. Our legislative team and I have worked throughout the week (and the past few weeks) with governments in our district to develop proposals for community funded projects this year.

We have also been advocating for funding for all kinds of projects as part of this process. Among the requests I am leading, Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01) and I led 19 of our colleagues in sending a bipartisan letter to House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education & Related Agencies making the case for including $60 million for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Primary and Behavioral Health Care Grants in Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations legislation. This funding would help to implement behavioral health care more widely into primary care settings, and, for the first time, would provide funding to implement the Collaborative Care Model (CoCM), a team-based model of integrated psychiatric and primary care that treats mental illnesses in the primary care setting.

I also co-sponsored several pieces of legislation on issues important to our community, including:

The Abortion is Health Care Everywhere Act, H.R. 1723, to repeal the Helms Amendment, a 50 year-old policy that blocks the use of U.S. foreign assistance to expand access to abortion and keeps safe abortion care out of reach for those served by U.S. foreign assistance, including global health, gender-based violence, and humanitarian programs; and
The Transparency in Government Contracts Act, H.R. 1774, to improve contracting opportunities for businesses owned by minorities, women, and people with disabilities by requiring the federal government to disaggregate the contracts it awards to businesses owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.

On Thursday, the Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing entitled “TikTok: How Congress Can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children From Online Harms” with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.

TikTok is now the preferred platform for many Americans, especially younger ones, and it is used as a creative outlet and to share important content. At the same time, there are important concerns about both the harms to mental health that the algorithm-based content has, especially on young people, as well as the privacy of data that apps, like TikTok, are collecting, and the way that data is used. This hearing was an important step toward establishing a comprehensive set of data privacy laws in the United States.

The purpose of the hearing was to learn about a complex set of issues that relate to TikTok and how to address them—issues important for reasons of national security and for the safety and protection of American citizens, especially our children and young adults. (Last Congress, we held a similar hearing with Facebook/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.)

TikTok is the preferred platform of many Americans, especially younger ones. And they use it for all kinds of creative and important things. But there are also some dangerous things we know it is and has been used for—from addictive, algorithm-based content to the collection, use, and sharing of data. There are industry-wide challenges and TikTok-specific issues that the committee covered in the hearing. The hearing affirmed my view that we need a comprehensive set of data privacy laws. We passed a data privacy bill out of our committee last Congress, but it did not become law. We will continue the work, and I’ll keep you posted here.

After the hearing, and continuing until mid-day Friday, we marked up 19 bills different bills on communications and technology, energy, and health matters. It was a busy week in the E&C committee room.

This short and busy week meant fewer opportunities to visit in the office. I was glad to have the chance to say a quick hello to several Houstonians in the hallway outside the E&C Committee room, including energy industry leaders who were in town for meetings and representatives from Lone Star Legal Aid.

3.24 Houstonians-Gretchen Watkins and Lone Star Legal Aid

And it was great to see Team TX-07 Constituent Advocate Fatimah at the Capitol this week while she attended conferences on the Hill to expand our office’s resources and capacity for casework.

On Wednesday, I was honored to receive the Humane Award from the Humane Society Legislative Fund, which is awarded to Members of Congress who demonstrated leadership on animal protection and legislation in 2022. I received a perfect score on the 2022 Humane Scorecard for my legislative record on animal protection issues.

Also on Wednesday, I joined President Biden, First Lady Dr. Biden, congressional colleagues, and women leaders from across our country at the White House to celebrate Women’s History Month and the contributions of women to society and to our country.

Our teams in Washington and Houston were busy this week as well! In Washington, staff met with representatives from Texas groups like Catholic Charities of Galveston-Houston, Texas TRIO, Galveston Bay Foundation, and Houston Air Alliance. They also met with national organizations whose work touches our district, like the American Water Works Association, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Talos Energy, Purpose Built Communities, the Federal Bar Association and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund.

Back home, our Houston team was out in the community at this week’s Texas Education Association HISD Information Session, the International Management District's Board Meeting, and HPD Midwest Division's Coffee with a Cop. Team TX-07 also helped serve food and get the word out about our office’s constituent services at BakerRipley's Senior Center at Alief Community College. And later in the week, staff attended the Harris County Precinct 4 Women’s Empowerment Expo with Harris County Commissioner Lesley Briones, the Houston Dash’s Sophie Schmidt, and Houston City Council Member Tiffany Thomas.

Are you a student interested in public service, or do you know one? Applications for summer internships are due soon. Click here to access the application and learn more.

As always, I am proud to represent you and I am here to help you. Please call my office at (713) 353-8680 or (202) 225-2571 or email here at any time to ask for assistance or share your thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,