the chair of the foreign affairs committee, greg meeks of new york, greg meeks of new york, following in the footsteps of another new yorker, eliot engel. and the chair of the ag committee, david scott from georgia, the first african-american ever chosen to be the chair of the agriculture committee. pretty exciting. following in the footsteps of the great leadership of collin peterson. greg meeks is also african-american. pretty historic. a woman and african-american. contested races. throughout our leadership, half of the leadership were women and people of color in chairs of the committee. there are more chairs to be announced, but these are the ones that related to rules and budget related to the steering and policy committees. those were two of the speaker's announcements that i made. others will follow. as i said to the members then, we held the house. we'll hold the gavels. 132 of them starting with the 18 that were chosen yesterday. but i'm excited about it because when they made their presentations of the several days this week, it was a demonstration of values, of knowledge,

greg meeks, also african-american. it is pretty historic, a woman and two african-americans in contested races. throughout our leadership, half of the leadership were women and people of color in chairs of the committee. there are more chairs to be announced, but these are the ones that related to rules and budget related to the steering and policy committees. those were two of the speaker's announcements that i made. there are others that will follow. as i said to the members then, we held the house. we'll hold the gavels. 132 of them starting with the 18 that were chosen yesterday. but i'm excited about it because when they made their presentations of the several days this week, it was a demonstration of values, of knowledge, of commitment to america's working families in every one of our committees. a beautiful diversity of those committees as well. so it was a cause for celebration. as you know, we are in the -- let me do this right. oh, wow. it hurts. but it will stay up. we are in the lame-duck session. we have i

the chair of the foreign affairs committee, greg meeks of new york, another new yorker, elliott angle, and the chair of the ag committee, david scott from georgia, first african-american chosen to be the chair of the agriculture committee following in the footsteps of the leadership of colin peterson. greg meeks also african-american, prehistoric woman, pretty contested races but throughout, women or people of color, more chairs to be announced but these were the ones that related to rules and budgets related to steering and policy committee, two of the speakers announcement that were made and others follow. we held the house, pulled the gap 132 of them starting with 18 that were chosen yesterday. i am excited, when they made their presentations over several days this week it was a demonstration of values and knowledge of commitment for working families a every one of our committees, and the diversity of those as wella cause for celebration. we are in lame-duck session. we have important work to do here. we spent the first part of lame-duck on national defense authorization legislatio

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those of greg meeks and mike mccaul. and i look forward to extraordinary contributions on this committee in the future. under that leadership. andobservation about kosovo that is america often takes -- is accused much being anti-muslim. nothing could be further from the truth. and nothing could illustrate that to a greater degree than the fact that we bombed a christian country in order to preserve the kosovars and prevent ethnic cleansing. that story needs to be repeated again and again throughout the muslim world by both the united states and kosovo. i hope that we get time to focus on bulgaria and greece in this hearing on o the balkans, but naturally we are focusing our attention on the former yugoslavia. as i turn to my questions, i realize this may be the last time i ask my questions immediately after the gentleman from the bronx, and maybe the last time i get to ask questions immediately before the gentleman from queens. following the 2016 coup attempt in turkey, erdogan blamed the followers of guilan, bosnian off