Riley Moore has represented West Virginia's 2nd District since 2025. In his very first year, he landed a seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee, which controls federal funding. He's wasted no time using that power — mostly to gut the programs West Virginians count on.
Here are 3 things to know.
1. He punishes anyone who takes climate change seriously
Riley Moore has a 0% score from the League of Conservation Voters for 2025 — a perfect zero in his first year against clean air and water.
This isn't new for him. Back when he was West Virginia's State Treasurer, Moore barred five of the country's largest financial firms — BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo — from new state banking contracts. Their crime? Weighing climate risk in their investment decisions. Moore decided that even thinking about the climate was reason enough to punish them. That tells you exactly where his loyalties are.
2. He works for big business
Speaking of loyalties — look at who funds Riley Moore. His top donors include:
- Cleveland-Cliffs
- FirstEnergy Corp
- Koch Inc
- Valero Energy
- Marathon Petroleum
- Northrop Grumman
That's a roster of big steel, big energy, and big defense companies. When those are the people paying for your campaign, it's not surprising you'd spend your first year in Congress looking out for them instead of the folks back home. See for yourself at Who Bought My Rep.
3. He led the DOGE cuts — then begged for the money he slashed
This is the one that really stings. While Elon Musk's DOGE was hacking grants and jobs out of West Virginia, Moore wasn't just standing by. He was leading the charge to make the cuts permanent.
He was appointed to head the Republican Study Committee's Task Force on Rescissions — the group in charge of turning DOGE's chaotic cuts into actual law. He called it "only the first step — more cuts are coming." He helped push through a $9.4 billion package of cuts, slashing things like public broadcasting and foreign aid.
Then he came home and asked for money — from a program his own side is trying to gut. In 2026, Moore requested $250 million to fix West Virginia's drinking water, paid for by an EPA fund the Trump budget wants to shrink to about a fifth of its size. On June 3, 2026, he literally held up a jar of brown tap water from a McDowell County home and pleaded for a scaled-back $50 million. The Appropriations Committee — the very committee he serves on, controlled by his own party — voted him down.
You can't spend a year cheering on the cuts and then act shocked when the money for clean water isn't there.
The bottom line
That's 3 things to know about Riley Moore. He punishes banks for taking the climate seriously, he takes his money from big business, and he led the DOGE cuts before begging for the funding he helped destroy.
We deserve better.
