Address from Congresswoman Kat Cammack (R-FL) | CPAC Women Warrior Summit

I can't tell you how excited I am to be here with you guys and we actually just got off the house floor. We are in the middle of a very heated debate over whether or not we should pass legislation to put the Women's History Museum on the National Mall. Now this has been a bipartisan effort up until a few months ago when some of my Democrat colleagues decided they didn't want to be a part of this effort because we wanted to tell the stories of biological women. And so not 30 minutes ago was I on the house floor with Augusta arguing that this museum should exist because all of the incredible, gritty, scrappy, stubborn women who have helped make America what it is today, they deserve to have their stories told. And my counterpart said, well what about the trans women? What about the men who have contributed to women's stories? And it's just crazy that in 2026 we have to have this fight, but as we all know the Republican Party is the party of women, right Augusta? Now admittedly my arm is about to give out. So I'm gonna ask my wonderful husband Matt, a firefighter SWAT medic from Gainesville. Oh there we go. Thank you honey. Now this is so important because I am struck every single day how what we think is common-sense has become a partisan dividing line in this country. And of course around the world we see where women truly have no rights. And some countries will say, oh but look we just gave women the right to drive. And they're patting themselves on the back. And over here we have an entire political party that can't even define what a woman is. It's disgusting. But what I do know is that as we head into the latter part of this year, it is more important than ever for us as women to stand up and tell our story. And to fight for the American dream that every single one of us has strived for our entire life. And I'll never forget when I first ran, I had been encouraged to say, oh highlight in your primary that you're the woman in the race. And I repeatedly pushed back. I said just because I'm the woman doesn't mean that that's why I want people to vote for me. I want them to vote for me because I'm the best damn person for the job. That was such a foreign concept for people to wrap their head around at the time that I laugh when I tell that story. But you think about how the left has regressed. And why it's so important that we step up and we be even more vocal and more loud about the contributions and the unique ability of women to reach out and get people and things done. So I say as the chair of the Republican Women's Caucus, which by the way was established when the bipartisan Women's Caucus unceremoniously voted me down 27 to 1 when it came to protecting women's sports and spaces. It was that moment that I knew that we needed a Republican Women's Caucus which had never existed before because it was clear that the so-called bipartisan Women's Caucus wasn't actually working for women. And so we have a long list of things that we have to do to get back on track. And this year we have to really go out to every community nook and corner and cranny and explain how Republicans, how conservatives are meeting the moment when it comes to women's issues. Which we all know in this room women's issues are American issues. We don't have a single, we're not single-issue voters, right? We care about national security. We care about the economy. We care about education. We care about health care, real health care. We care about a litany of issues but we're always talked to and talked down to like there's one issue that we care about. And that to me is one of the most frustrating things that I have run into. So on Capitol Hill you'll find women who are working and leading when it comes to getting government out of the way, when it comes to protecting girls and women's locker rooms and their sports. You'll find women leading when it comes to a strong border, a secure border, a strong national security policy. You'll find women leading on all these fronts but the media will never cover it. And that's where your voice comes in. And that is why we have to be unapologetically loud, unapologetically stubborn, gritty, scrappy. Because if we won't tell our stories we know the media sure as heck won't. So I'm counting on every single person in this room to reach out to the people that are in the middle. They're undecided. They don't like that their daughters have to compete against boys but they don't want to be labeled a certain way. You know? They want to have cheaper gas but man they just they don't like the tweets. It's our job. It is our job to step in and say guess what? This is bigger than any one person. This is bigger than any one moment. This is about our kids. It's about our daughters but it's also about our sons. It's about the future of our country. And I know that our future is exceptionally bright when we have women's voices at the table. Heck when we have women's elbows up on the table. I know my mom always told me don't put your elbows on the table. I'm like mom now it's like you just got to get in there. You got to do it. And she's she's good with me doing it now but it is it is such a pleasure to be in a room with with so many pioneers so many great women who are working so hard to advance the cause and I am absolutely not a rule follower. My saying in life is break the rules not the law. So Mercedes, Matt, I don't know what the rules are here but we're about to break them. Thank you Matt. I would love to hear from you guys. What questions do you have? I know this is not a shy group. I'm not gonna call on the guy first. Come on right here. What you got? First of all thank you for representing the great state of Florida. Free state of Florida. That's right and your baby is not only beautiful but a great traveler. Oh yes. I just wanted to see what your thoughts were on the Islamic Republic of Iran and the situation in Iran and where we're gonna let those evil bastards, excuse my French, to be gone so our women there can also be free and not be hanged and raped every day. Absolutely. That's a great question. The crazy part about even having a discussion today with the other side on this is this is a regime that has not only engaged in killing Americans for decades without any recourse but they have no problem killing their own people. They have no problem engaging in revenge rape, right? They have no problem stoning women to death. They have no problem with the most heinous crimes against women and yet when we step in and we say no more all of a sudden we're attacked. We're the ones who are the bad guys here. That's absurd. So I love that President Trump has finally come in and said no more. We have seen too many Americans die at the hands of the largest state sponsor of terror in the world and we know that if we can make sure that the strait is open and that commerce is free through the Strait of Hormuz, gas prices will come down and that to me is worth that effort in Iran because I don't want to see another American come home in a coffin. I don't want to see any more state sponsor of terror being planted around the globe and let us not forget the relationship and the tie between Venezuela, Iran, China, North Korea because everyone thinks oh this is just this is this is America going after Iran. No, let us not forget that Iran was sending their top terrorists to Venezuela. Venezuela was then giving them official passports and then they were being smuggled across an open southwestern border because Biden was hoping to fill the voter rolls with illegals. They set up terror cells in the United States. They set up terror cells in Canada and we are still cleaning up the Biden mess and so when people say oh well this is this is just you know President Trump on an ego trip. Absolutely not. He is making sure that they these crazy terrorists never have a nuclear weapon one and two they will no longer be able to export terror around the world. Iran exports terror the way that other countries export goods. It is it it is absolutely absurd that there is any question of what we should be doing right now in Iran. So I appreciate the question. Thank you for that and I encourage the president to keep on keeping on. Don't negotiate with terrorists. No negotiation. They have to go because they gonna destroy all the Western country. No negotiation. They have to go. It's just there is nothing to do. They have to go. There is no place for the terrorists. You guys remember the movies of the 90s right like Harrison Ford Air Force One like or there was like what was it the American president. Those were great movies and it was it was such a testament to American culture at the time. There was always one fundamental underlying principle of all these movies in the plot. You don't negotiate with terrorists. America does not negotiate with terrorists. I grew up watching those movies. I'll never forget that crazy. It was awful CGI at the time but when Air Force One gets hijacked by these terrorists you know and Harrison Ford it's just a badass. He's like we don't negotiate with terrorists right. That's always been our stance. When did it suddenly become apropos for us to start engaging in talks with these people who fundamentally hate who we are and who our friends are and want to wipe us off the face of the planet. When we shipped a pallet of cash and Obama went on the global apology tour. That's when that happened. That is what we're clawing our way back to is the dignity pre-Obama when people knew what we stood for. What when our allies knew that they could depend on us and our and our enemies feared us. That is what we're getting back to. So a hundred percent you cannot negotiate with terrorists. Hi Congressman Kat. Can you explain to us this congressional redistricting that we keep seeing. So I'm in Virginia and thank goodness. Yes I know. But we used to be red and now we're blue and they really pushed through this redistricting amendment and our voters went and it was a very tight but thank goodness our Virginia Supreme Court stopped that redistricting. Thank God. To me it's common sense. You have to abide by our state's Constitution and they did not. So explain to us what each state is kind of doing and what Florida is up to next on redistricting. Well and I would say Virginia technically still is a red state. It just so happens that all of the bureaucrats in Washington they went and moved to northern Virginia and they took their bad voting policies with them. So Virginia really is red except for the really bright blue spots up north. And when you guys saw the redistricting effort which a hundred percent unconstitutional had no basis for it. I mean they even used an open session from when Governor Yunkin was still in. It was crazy how they had to do it. And I get asked you know what I think about their maps. Guys I'm right-handed. That looked like something I would draw with my left hand. Not good. I mean it was squiggles and squiggles and squiggles and it just went all the way down. It was bizarre. Thankfully the Virginia Supreme Court had enough sense to say no we're not gonna do this and it got overturned. And Hakeem Jeffries and company well they just lit 70 million dollars on fire so sorry. Sorry but not sorry. But what it did was it sent a message around the country that if you want to play stupid games you're gonna win stupid prizes. And the South we know how to win. We're the SEC baby. We know. We take we take things very seriously. Football, sweet tea, and politics. And we know how to win at all three. I'm telling you when the Supreme Court finally came down with their ruling it sent the green light that we will no longer draw these lines based on race but on keeping our communities compact the way that they should have been drawn all along. And I love it when my friends on the other side of the aisle say Pat that's just wrong. You look at all these horrible districts. I'm like look at Florida's map. Look that's a square. That's a square. That's a rectangle. That's a square. That's a rectangle. That's a hexagon but it's still compact. And I'm like look at Illinois. Illinois looks like a bunch of rattlesnakes fighting. It's just squiggles. It makes no sense. They cannot justify their continued use of gerrymandering for political gain. They cannot. So the South has taken it upon themselves to draw real compact constitutional legal districts. And in the case of Florida we have been fighting a faulty census going back to 2020. Remember how there was a big fight during COVID about whether or not we were gonna allow non-citizens to be counted in the census? And the left said absolutely we're gonna do that. Let me tell you why they were doing that because in New York they needed those illegals in order to keep congressional districts. And so they ended up shorting states like Texas and Florida congressional representation. And so we have been fighting all along for this redistricting effort because we were shorted congressional seats. And there's not much that you can say to Governor DeSantis about whether or not we were right or wrong right? Because I think we all agree he's right. We needed to do this. When he stands there and says my citizens in the state of Florida deserve constitutional representation, he delivers. And that is exactly what we did when we drew four new seats, compact, non-gerrymandered, kept communities and counties together. That is why we are so proud to be in the Sunshine State. Because we are delivering for our people in a way that is meaningful and it matters. And you're seeing that across all of the southern states. So I am hopeful that we will see about 17 new districts drawn and they will actually make sense. I think I'm being told I'm allowed one more question. Okay. I'm listening to Mercedes. Sorry Parker. Coming soon. So we do have to get a solution. And it can be a week or so before the election. We do need to hear from you what the plan is from the Republicans. The word affordability is coming up again all the time. Rightly so. I was just in Europe where my family is from and we had gas prices. Your accent didn't give that away at all. Which was just four times as high as here. And I think we do. America has to come up with a solution. I mean I know trying to engage Iran is probably preferable. But it's going on for a while. I think it can look like we are just really dabbling around and waiting for them to help us out. They won't. So what is what is the stand. How can we finally get the economy going by bringing the oil price down and by opening the straight up homes. Absolutely. So a couple things. When I was at the Naval War College the first thing that they taught us was not how to plan a war but how to get out of one. And I think that that is one of the big things that has driven most of my conversations with the administration in the White House. What is our exit strategy. What is plan A B C D E F G. Because every plan is great until you get punched in the face right. That's kind of life in general. We have seen where no one was anticipating or not a lot of people certainly not our allies around the world were anticipating that the Iranians were going to start mining the strait. And so not only have we had to surge resources to start demining the strait but our allies are sitting on the sidelines saying thanks for doing that for us. And we are carrying the weight of that effort. And then you look at Lloyds of London and they're the insurers for all these vessels coming through. They have decided to capitalize on this. They've decided to make it so expensive to ensure cargo coming through the Strait of Hormuz that people are saying it's not really worth it. Once again it falls to the Americans to be the steady principled leaders working to conduct freedom of navigation in a critical choke point around the world. Now that process will continue. And I agree we have to get gas prices down. That is of the utmost importance because energy is the foundation of our economy and it drives the cost of everything else from fertilizer to groceries. You name it, it is the driver. But we need to start really pushing aggressively for the near and on-shoring of our critical industries. Things like our refineries. Right now we can't process enough phosphate. I'm really nerding out. Sorry Mercedes. Right now we can't process enough phosphate which is a critical input for agriculture because we get most of our sulfur from Iran. Now if we were to increase our capacity in our refineries around the Gulf of Mexico we would be able to depend on our own folks for sulfur which would then drive down the cost of fertilizer which then brings down the cost of food. And that is why it is so important that we work on permitting reform and gutting the regulatory regime in America. That is huge. And if we are able to do that, pass the REINS Act, that means that 2.5 trillion dollars of our money it will no longer belong to the deep state. It will no longer belong to the unelected nameless faceless bureaucrats that dwell in basements all over Washington. It comes back to us. Because every single one of us in this room pays $15,000 more every year for those swamp creatures to continue to do swampy things in the name of the regulatory regime. We tackle the regulatory regime here. When President Trump says we're the hottest ticket in town, we're the hottest country in the world, dang right we are. Because everyone's gonna want to do business with us and we will be self-sufficient. So permitting reform, regulatory reform, getting our allies to the table and holding them accountable. That's how we do that. I think I've got one more, right? You had one back there, right? No? Okay, you right there, ma'am. What concrete reforms do you believe are needed to improve educational outcomes in public schools? I know because I'm short on time, I'll try to be brief. 32% of eighth graders in America today are literate. 32% are literate. Yeah, only 32% of eighth graders today are functionally literate. Let that sink in. When the majority of the population cannot read, that in my mind is a national security issue. Because at that point you're relying on other people to tell you, to share with you, to educate you. If we have a population that can't read, we're in big trouble. And right now we're in trouble. And I would say that that is in large part because we have had for the last 50 years a system that was designed to take money from the states, build up a bureaucracy in Washington, and apply a one-size-fits-all model to every single student in America. And then we never let that money follow that student. We never let parents engage in meaningful ways to determine how best to educate their kids. And then when COVID hit, we all started finding out what those teachers were teaching our kids. Now don't get me wrong, we've got great teachers around the country. But we also have some really crappy teachers around the country that want to shove a political ideology onto our kids. And this is where we started seeing parents really engage. And then the big state, the big, deep state came in and said, no, no, no, parents, we don't like you engaging. This right now, this moment, is where we have an opportunity. I think Secretary McMahon is doing a fabulous job dismantling the Department of Education that was never about education, it was about indoctrination. And something that I will tell you, this is a secret, this is a big secret, and I want you guys to not keep the secret, okay? I want you to tattletale. Members of Congress, have access to unlimited amounts of books through the Library of Congress, because the Library of Congress is the world's repository for copyrighted material. They get 22,000 books a day, and they cannot house them all. So they open it up to members of Congress and they say, hey, you have schools or libraries or nonprofits that need books? We would love for you to come take them. So my team, we literally truck books to the district, give them out to kids, because what I have found is you have parents that aren't literate, they don't know how to read, so then they don't read to their kids, and then their kids don't know how to read. And you can track a kid, by the time that they're in the third grade, if they cannot read, that is a life that statistically will lead them to either drugs, poverty, or jail. Not always the case, but the data shows that there is a direct tie to literacy and success. And so I want to make sure that people know that Congress has resources to put books in the hands of parents and teachers and kids all over this country. Because I don't want my daughter, who you just met, Augusta, I don't want her to be growing up being taught how to read, or being taught what to think by an AI chatbot. I don't want that for her. I want her to be able to think critically and make her own decisions and ask questions. And that, to me, is what is needing to change in this country. Changing the indoctrination to actual education, empowering parents, getting government the heck out of the way. I know I'm way over time, so I am gonna say thank you again so much to Matt and Mercedes for having me. I love you guys. You guys are the best. Thank you.