Jennifer L. McClellan
Representative for Virginia · Democratic · United States
“It was close to home, though they weren't open until the next morning. Tami thought: I can drive to Lynchburg, an hour away, or I can wait and go to an already scheduled appointment I have here, at that clinic, at 8 a.m. That is what she decided to do. She decided to wait.”
House of Representatives31 August 2026Source ↗
“Between 2022 and 2024, that hospital alone was the most common delivery hospital for women in Prince Edward County, where it is located. Now those women have to drive an hour away; like Tami Jaynes, who the day I was in Charlottesville, Charlottesville Tomorrow shared her story.”
House of Representatives31 August 2026Source ↗
“In a country that has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the industrialized world--and if you are a Black woman, you are three times more likely to die because of a childbirth related issue--these expectant mothers are now having to travel farther away for maternity care. Seniors are losing access to long-term care.”
House of Representatives31 August 2026Source ↗
“I couldn't help but think about when shortly after Speaker Johnson became Speaker, he said, I believe in a FOX News interview, that if you wanted to know his political views, read the Bible. Mr. Speaker, I have read all of it.”
House of Representatives31 August 2026Source ↗
“The American people were not put first by this President and this Congress, and this week's Special Order hour will offer members of the Congressional Black Caucus the opportunity to share what we heard, the stories we heard, and the real-life human impact of the Trump administration's decisions to take a chainsaw to Federal programs and…”
House of Representatives31 August 2026Source ↗
“Mr. Speaker, I told you my parents grew up during the Great Depression. They both shared stories of what it was like to go hungry. Children can't learn when they are hungry. People can't work when they are hungry. In 1939, as a pilot program to address record numbers of the hungry, Congress passed the SNAP program.”
House of Representatives31 August 2026Source ↗
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“We looked at expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and how would that address the maternal health crisis. We did expand Medicaid in Virginia, and we began to see that for many Medicaid expansion patients they ended up healthier because they were connected to medical help, getting regular checkups to catch things before they became deadly. All of that now is under attack. As we approach April every year, I like to commemorate National Minority Health Awareness Month through some sort of roundtable, but I especially like to commemorate Black Maternal Health Week because as I said when I started, that one is personal. As I got ready for Black Maternal Health Week, I wanted to first figure out is there a theme this year on which we should focus our efforts.”
House of Representatives28 April 2025Source ↗
“Many pregnant women, as I began talking to them, many Black, pregnant women had their first heart attack either while they were pregnant or shortly thereafter. Oh, by the way, the disparities in cardiovascular care for Black women and men: The death rate is higher than for White men and women. I began to look at how do we put policies in place that address the maternal mortality crisis as a whole, but the disparities in particular. I also noticed that many Black women died within the first year of childbirth, yet Medicaid for many of these women didn't cover the first year, so they didn't have health insurance when their first cardiac event or pregnancy-related event that led to their death occurred. We looked at expanding Medicaid to cover the first 12 months after birth, which we did here at the Federal level, as well.”
House of Representatives28 April 2025Source ↗
“I was on the Joint Commission on Health Care, and I began to really look into the maternal mortality crisis that we have in this country. We have higher death rates for women than many other Third World countries. I started looking at the data of why women were dying. Many of these deaths were preventable. There were differences. There were differences in the rate at which Black women died compared to White women, and there were differences in the reasons. In Virginia, the data showed us that for White women they were more likely to die due to postpartum depression leading to suicide or other mental health-related issues leading them to take their own life or to self-medicate and die of drug overdoses. For Black women in Virginia, their deaths were more likely caused by co-morbidities, mostly cardiovascular issues.”
House of Representatives28 April 2025Source ↗
“We rushed to the hospital, and I remember hearing the doctor in the emergency room saying that everything looked fine. Then less than three seconds later he said that we have got to go right now because both of our heart rates dropped. I remember thinking as the oxygen mask came on my face, please let me be asleep before my doctor starts cutting, and I was. I woke up a few hours later, and I had a baby girl, but I didn't get to see her until the next day. As I waited those 24 hours to see if she would make it, I realized that I almost became one of the Black women who are three times more likely to die due to pregnancy-related complications than White women. I was a State legislator at the time. This was my second child.”
House of Representatives28 April 2025Source ↗
“Every Member of Congress in this body was privileged enough to get a good education to get here, but not every child we represent has that same ability. The Congressional Black Caucus, as the conscience of Congress, will fight for every child no matter their ZIP Code, race, creed, or background to get that education. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for your attention tonight and I yield back the balance of my time.”
House of Representatives7 April 2025Source ↗
“Mr. Speaker, I want to end where I began and that is with the story of my mother who lived to be 94. She was the third youngest of 14 children in the Gulf Coast of Mississippi where the only school available to her was the Catholic church because Mississippi did not deem Black children important enough to educate. She wanted more than the life that was available to her siblings, her parents, her great-grandparents, and her grandparents. She had to move to go to high school. She ended up running the Federal TRiO programs at Virginia State University to ensure that a little girl, whether she is in Petersburg, Virginia, or a little boy on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, would have the same access to an education, no matter their parents' financial situation, no matter the obstacles in their way.”
House of Representatives7 April 2025Source ↗
“Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.”
House of Representatives7 April 2025Source ↗
“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Georgia for speaking. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore), who represents the State's Fourth District.”
House of Representatives7 April 2025Source ↗
“Mr. Speaker, I thank the Honorable Mr. Clyburn for his speech. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Mrs. McBath), who represents the State's Seventh District.”
House of Representatives7 April 2025Source ↗
“We owe it to our parents, our grandparents, and our great- grandparents to protect and build upon the progress that they have made. We owe it to our children and theirs to fight efforts to roll back that progress now. Mr. Speaker, it is now my privilege to yield to the gentleman from the great State of South Carolina, the Honorable James Clyburn.”
House of Representatives7 April 2025Source ↗
“In my own State of Virginia, State and local officials and educators right now fear that local agencies and the Virginia Department of Education will not have the funding or the staff to handle the workload, especially in areas like special education. The block grant funding that the Trump administration promises comes with little accountability, making it unclear whether the funds will actually reach the students and schools that need them the most: children with disabilities in rural and low-income communities. Education lays the foundation for a strong future. Our Founding Fathers understood that. Today's students are the entrepreneurs, civic leaders, teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and Members of Congress of tomorrow.”
House of Representatives7 April 2025Source ↗
“For the past 20 years, first as a State legislator and now in Congress, I have worked to ensure that every child in Virginia could have a good education. As the mother of two children in public schools, I know that, even with bipartisan and Herculean efforts, there are still gaps in Virginia and across the country. The Department of Education was created to fill those gaps. The Department protects students' civil rights, particularly those with disabilities who often need special accommodation to learn. It provides support to attract, train, and retain the best and brightest teachers, school administrators, support personnel such as counselors, nurses, and mental and behavioral health specialists, especially in hard-to- staff rural or urban schools.”
House of Representatives7 April 2025Source ↗
“These are federally funded programs run by the Department of Education to work to ensure that children like her have the support they need to go to and graduate college. My parents understood how important a good education is not only to individual opportunity, but to a thriving, healthy economy, community, and democracy. Like my grandparents and great-grandparents before them, they dedicated their lives to ensuring not only that their children had a good education but every child did. Not every child is so lucky. The legacy of 300 years of slavery and Jim Crow, massive resistance, and chronic underfunding have created too many obstacles to the ability of States and local governments to give every child an opportunity for a good education.”
House of Representatives7 April 2025Source ↗
“Mr. Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today to co-anchor this CBC Special Order hour along with my distinguished colleague, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn). For the next 60 minutes, members of the CBC have an opportunity to speak directly to the American people on education, an issue of great importance to the Congressional Black Caucus, Congress, and the constituents who we represent. Mr. Speaker, in the 1880s, my great-grandfather founded a school in his rural community because the State of Alabama did not provide a good education to Black children. As explained in his autobiography, he wanted to teach children, whose parents and grandparents had been enslaved on plantations nearby, to be of better service to themselves, their employers, and the community in which they lived.”
House of Representatives7 April 2025Source ↗
“Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of this Special Order hour.”
House of Representatives7 April 2025Source ↗
“Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.”
House of Representatives31 March 2025Source ↗
“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois for his remarks. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.”
House of Representatives31 March 2025Source ↗
“Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include any extraneous material on the subject this Special Order.”
House of Representatives31 March 2025Source ↗
“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak out on behalf of our beleaguered Federal workforce which is currently under attack by the Musk-Trump-Vance administration. Trump's OMB nominee, Russell Vought, said: ``We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. . . .”
House of Representatives5 February 2025Source ↗
“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to draw attention to the detrimental impacts that President Trump's recent flurry of executive orders targeting our workforce are already having. Despite being in office for less than 3 days, President Trump has already caused major disruptions to the Federal workforce in my district. The first casualty is the healthcare provided to our veterans.”
House of Representatives23 January 2025Source ↗