On Thursday, the committee chairman, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., opened the hearing by holding a moment of silence in memory of those who had died in Texas.
“After Columbine, after Sandy Hook, after Parkland, after each of these and other massacres, we as educators did our best to look parents in their eyes and assure them that we'll do everything to protect their babies,” Cardona said, referencing school shootings in Colorado, Connecticut and Florida. Providing no specifics, he said, “we need action now” to protect America's children. “Let's not normalize this,” he said. “Let's use every ounce of influence that we have to get something done to help prevent this from happening again.”Cardona told lawmakers that he would be"failing you as secretary of education if I didn’t tell you I was ashamed, I am, that we as a country are becoming desensitized to the murder of children.