MAGA Report Cards — Alaska

Elon Musk's Super PAC Is Spending $5.1 Million on the Midterms, Almost All of It in Races With 18 Republicans on This Site. It Spent $3.7 Million of That Attacking Democrats.

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 08:44:19 +0000

In early September, a super PAC funded by Elon Musk dropped more than a million dollars into Michigan's Senate race in a matter of days. The money went to digital ads and mailers boosting Republican Mike Rogers (MI), the former seven-term congressman trying to win the seat, and attacking his Democratic opponent Abdul El-Sayed. It was part of $28 million in outside spending on that one race since the August 4 primary, according to Detroit News reporting.

Michigan is not the exception. It is one stop on a national tour.

We pulled every independent expenditure that Musk's America PAC has reported to the Federal Election Commission for the 2026 cycle. The filings show $5.1 million spent so far, spread across Senate and House races in seventeen states. Eighteen of the Republicans that money is meant to elect have report cards on this site. About $4.95 million of the total is in races those eighteen are running in; the remaining $199,000 is spread across four other races.

How the spending breaks down

America PAC's reported spending divides in two. Some of it pays for ads and mail supporting a Republican. The rest pays for ads and mail attacking that Republican's Democratic opponent. Here is how the support side breaks down for the eighteen candidates we track:

Candidate	Race	Reported in support
Mike Rogers (MI)	Michigan, Senate	$520,499
Jon Husted	Ohio, Senate	$397,848
Ken Paxton	Texas, Senate	$124,595
Randy Fine	Florida, 6th District	$87,134
Susan Collins	Maine, Senate	$78,306
Dan Sullivan	Alaska, Senate	$58,004
Ashley Hinson	Iowa, Senate	$27,300
Gabe Evans	Colorado, 8th District	$12,220
David Valadao	California, 22nd District	$12,220
Juan Ciscomani	Arizona, 6th District	$12,220
Jimmy Patronis	Florida, 1st District	$10,244
Rob Bresnahan	Pennsylvania, 8th District	$6,690
Scott Perry	Pennsylvania, 10th District	$6,431
Ryan Mackenzie	Pennsylvania, 7th District	$6,388
Tom Kean Jr.	New Jersey, 7th District	$5,908
Mike Lawler	New York, 17th District	$5,563
Derrick Van Orden	Wisconsin, 3rd District	$5,225
Jen Kiggans	Virginia, 2nd District	$5,000

That adds up to about $1.38 million. The other $3.7 million went somewhere else.

Nearly three-quarters of the money is an attack

Of the $5.1 million America PAC has reported this cycle, $3.7 million — about 73 cents of every dollar — was spent opposing Democratic candidates rather than supporting Republican ones.

The biggest single target is not a Republican's ally. It is James Talarico, the Democrat running against Ken Paxton in Texas, with $1.49 million spent against him. Sherrod Brown in Ohio drew $941,000. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan drew $527,000. Josh Turek in Iowa, Troy Jackson in Maine, Chris Pappas in New Hampshire and Mary Peltola in Alaska each drew six figures of opposition spending.

Put plainly: the single largest expense in Musk's entire 2026 portfolio is attacking one man in Texas. It is bigger than everything the PAC has spent supporting all eighteen Republicans on this list combined.

That is a choice about what the money is for. Ads that make a case for a candidate have to say something about the candidate. Ads that attack an opponent do not.

Four races got most of it. Eleven candidates got a rounding error.

The support money is not spread evenly either. Rogers, Husted, Paxton and Fine account for $1.13 million — 82% of everything America PAC has reported spending in support of the eighteen.

Eleven of the eighteen got less than $13,000 apiece. Five of them — Gabe Evans, David Valadao, Juan Ciscomani and two candidates without pages here — each show exactly $12,220, all of it billed to the same mail vendor on the same day — the signature of a single bundled buy split across districts rather than a campaign built for any one of them. Jen Kiggans shows $5,000 in support and $4,500 spent against her opponent Elaine Luria, which is to say Musk's PAC spent nearly as much attacking her opponent as backing her.

For most of this list, the money is not the point. Being on the list is.

What the man writing the checks wanted

Musk is not a stranger to these candidates. He ran the Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting operation that took an axe to federal agencies, contracts and grants — and several of the Republicans his PAC is now paying to protect defended those cuts while their own constituents absorbed them.

Jen Kiggans called the DOGE cuts "so necessary" while her Hampton Roads district lost at least 70 contracts with veteran-owned businesses. In Arizona, 700 people in Casa Grande lost their jobs, and six weeks later Juan Ciscomani brought the Speaker of the House there to celebrate. Susan Collins is running for a sixth term, and Musk's money went to Maine to keep her in the seat.

Ken Paxton is the clearest case of what the money buys. Republican donors spent months keeping their distance from a nominee who dragged out three felony counts including securities fraud for nearly nine years before settling them, and whose own party's Texas House impeached him 121 to 23. Trump and Musk are trying to buy him the seat anyway.

And America PAC's spending is not only ads. On August 29, the PAC's voter registration site gave itself the right to sell the personal information people type into it — the same registration push the PAC is running alongside these ads in Michigan.

Why this matters where you live

Every one of these eighteen races is a race for a seat that votes on your health care, your grocery bill and your taxes. None of the eighteen candidates raised this money. They do not have to disclose it, coordinate it, or answer for it, because independent expenditures are legally supposed to be independent.

But the money is not neutral about outcomes. One man with one fortune has picked eighteen Republicans on this site, and one Democrat to spend seven figures against, and he is doing it in seventeen states at once. When those eighteen get to Washington, the person who spent $5.1 million to put them there will have interests before the government they run — and every one of them will know exactly who it was.

What the filings show

Elon Musk's America PAC has reported $5.1 million in independent spending for the 2026 cycle, almost all of it in races with eighteen Republicans who have report cards on this site. Only $1.38 million of it — 27% — paid for anything supporting those candidates. The other $3.7 million paid to attack Democratic candidates, with $1.49 million aimed at Ken Paxton's opponent alone. Four races collected 82% of the support money; eleven of the eighteen candidates got less than $13,000 each.

Source

Detroit News, Elon Musk group wades into Michigan Senate race, boosting Mike Rogers. Spending figures are from America PAC's independent expenditure filings with the Federal Election Commission for the 2026 cycle, committee C00879510, retrieved September 10, 2026, with duplicate 24-hour-notice filings removed.

Dan Sullivan Used Official Senate Letterhead to Tell 19 Alaska Communities What He's Delivered for Them. Senate Rules Bar That Letterhead From Campaign Correspondence.

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 10:41:00 +0000

In the week before Labor Day 2026, thousands of Alaskans opened an email from their senior senator. The subject line said "Delivering for" — and then the name of their own town. Inside, on official United States Senate letterhead, was a list of everything he says he has won for that town.

Dan Sullivan is running for a third six-year term this November. Alaska reporter Dermot Cole, who published the emails, said readers sent him copies addressed to at least 19 different places: Fairbanks, Anchorage, Bethel, Nome, the Mat-Su Valley, Kenai, Juneau, Haines, Wrangell, Ketchikan, Kodiak, Homer, Prince of Wales Island, Sitka, Soldotna, North Pole, Utqiagvik, Delta Junction and Petersburg.

Every one of them opened the same way: "I am contacting you to share an update on some of the important work I've been doing on behalf of" — and then the town's name. Every one closed with a version of the same sentence: "The [town] community is so important to Alaska." Every one ended with his signature.

Nobody asked for these. Cole called them what they look like: unsolicited campaign material, sent at government expense, two months before an election.

What the Senate's own rules say

The Senate Select Committee on Ethics publishes a plain list of what official Senate letterhead may and may not be used for. It is not buried, and it is not ambiguous. Under Improper Use of Senate Letterhead, the very first items are:

Solicitation of a financial contribution or other form of assistance for any campaign or election.

...

Any campaign or campaign-related correspondence.

Personal correspondence.

Political or partisan correspondence, including political endorsements.

The reason the rule exists is money. Senate letterhead is bought and printed with public funds, and the Ethics Committee's guidance on campaign activity explains why that matters: under federal law, "official funds may only be used for the purposes for which they were appropriated. Accordingly, Senate resources may only be used for official purposes, and official resources may not be used to conduct campaign activity."

Sullivan has a campaign. It reported $7,295,069 in the bank at the end of July. It could have paid for these emails.

The timing is the tell

Congress wrote itself a rule about exactly this problem. Under the franking statute and Senate Rule 40, a senator may not send mass mailings in the 60 days before a general election. This year's election is November 3, which put the start of that blackout on September 4.

Sullivan's emails went out right before it.

The rule has a gap he can drive through, and he did. The Ethics Committee states flatly that "the Franking Regulations do not apply to electronic communications," and that the committee "does not generally review mass emails, as they are not sent under the frank."

So the mailbox rule and the inbox rule are not the same rule. But the letterhead rule does not care what the envelope is made of, and it is the letterhead rule that says campaign correspondence does not go on Senate stationery.

Congress noticed the blackout was coming and pushed material out ahead of it. That is not a Sullivan invention. Indiana's Mark Messmer bought a taxpayer-funded TV ad touting his votes that stopped running on September 2, exactly 62 days before Election Day — right at the line.

He will email your town. He will not stand in front of it.

Here is what makes the "Delivering for" emails hard to read as constituent service.

In March 2025, Alaskans in Fairbanks, Anchorage and Juneau organized their own town halls and Sullivan did not come to any of them. In Fairbanks, about 175 people packed the Noel Wien Public Library auditorium and set a life-size cardboard cutout of him in the middle of the room to stand in for him. One constituent told the room, "You should probably know my address by now; I leave you voicemails every single day." In Juneau, on March 20, nearly 170 people did the same thing at the Mendenhall Valley Public Library. Anchorage's, the same night, drew a crowd the organizers put at more than 600 and was well attended aside from the elected officials.

Asked about it in Juneau on March 20, 2025, Sullivan told reporters he had already held what he called "the ultimate town hall" — his own address to the Alaska Legislature, which he gave in Juneau that day. "There were 60 elected officials who could ask me any question they wanted," he said. As for the constituents in the library auditoriums: "If it's all about screaming and yelling and viral moments that they want to send out to their colleagues? You know, it's not necessarily the most constructive way to do what I just did in there."

Eighteen months later, with an election two months out, he emailed those same communities to say each one "is so important to Alaska," and that he is "honored to have the privilege of serving as your United States Senator."

The people in Haines and Bethel and Utqiagvik could not ask him a question in March 2025. They can receive his email now.

The same trick, over and over

Every member of Congress gets an allowance of public money to communicate with the people they represent. It exists so you can find out what your representative is doing. It is not a campaign budget, and the line between the two is the single most reliably abused line in Congress.

Minnesota's Michelle Fischbach spent $51,000 of public money in three months on mass communications while not holding an in-person town hall in her district.
Georgia's Mike Collins spent more than $400,000 in office money on TV ads built around Trump praising him, ads that look nearly identical to his campaign spots.
Pennsylvania's Rob Bresnahan had a taxpayer-funded video surface in Google's political ad library under his campaign account, and a constituent filed an ethics complaint.
Colorado's Gabe Evans spent more than $320,000 of public money advertising himself and routed $225,000 of it to the same firm his campaign pays.

None of them ran out of campaign money first. Neither did Sullivan.

Who is actually paying for his campaign

Sullivan's emails are addressed to Alaskans. His donors are not.

Individuals have given his campaign committee and his leadership PAC $10.15 million this cycle. Only $991,911 of it came from Alaska — more than 90% came from outside the state, and Florida, at $1,001,881, edged out the state he represents. Counting everything raised for him since 2020, campaign money and outside spending together, 7% has come from small grassroots donors and 73% from PACs, super PACs and large donors.

That is the campaign that had the money to send these emails. Instead they went out on the Senate's stationery.

What the record shows

Dan Sullivan sent at least 19 versions of a town-by-town list of his own accomplishments to thousands of Alaskans on official Senate letterhead, days before the September 4 start of the 60-day pre-election blackout on mass mailings. The Senate Ethics Committee's published rules say that letterhead may not be used for "any campaign or campaign-related correspondence," and federal law says Senate resources may only be used for official purposes. His campaign had $7.3 million in the bank, and more than 90% of the individual money behind him this cycle came from outside Alaska. The communities he emailed had already held town halls without him, in front of an empty chair.

Source

Dermot Cole, Sullivan misuses Senate letterhead for unsolicited campaign emails, Reporting From Alaska, September 6, 2026. Photo: official U.S. Senate portrait via Wikimedia Commons.

Sixty-Three House Republicans Told the Supreme Court the AR-15 Deserves Protection Because It Is a Military Weapon

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 06:53:08 +0000

On September 4, 2026, sixty-three Republican members of the U.S. House signed their names to a legal brief asking the Supreme Court to strike down bans on AR-15-style rifles.

The argument they signed is the part worth reading twice.

For years, the case against banning these rifles has been that they are ordinary — sporting guns, hunting guns, nothing special. This brief argues close to the opposite. It tells the justices that an AR-15's resemblance to a soldier's rifle is a reason the Constitution protects it.

The brief was led by Andrew Clyde, who represents Georgia's 9th District and owns two gun stores. It was written by the American Center for Law & Justice and filed in Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, the two cases the Supreme Court agreed on June 30 to hear together. They are the first cases in which the Court has ever taken up whether assault weapons bans are constitutional.

What the brief actually argues

The core claim is that lower courts have the test backwards.

Judges upholding these bans have pointed to a rifle's battlefield qualities — its design for combat, its resemblance to the military's M-16 — as the reason a state may restrict it. The brief says that reasoning inverts the Second Amendment. In its words, military usefulness "is, if anything, an indication that an arm lies within the Amendment's guarantee, not outside it."

It goes further. The brief describes AR-15-platform rifles as "the modern lineal descendants of the standard infantry arm the Militia Act of 1792 required citizens to keep," and says they "remain the basic individual weapon of light infantry forces."

So the argument is not that the AR-15 is a sporting rifle that happens to look scary. The argument is that it is the standard infantry weapon of our time, and that this is precisely why Congress and the states may not ban it.

Clyde put the political version more simply. "'Shall not be infringed' is not a suggestion, regardless of the firearm in question," he said. He called the bans "blatantly unconstitutional."

Who signed it

Sixty-three House Republicans put their names in the appendix. Fifty-seven of them have a report card on this site. Those fifty-seven are below, with the districts the brief gives:

Alabama: Barry Moore (AL-01)
Alaska: Nick Begich (AK-AL)
Arizona: Eli Crane (AZ-02), Paul Gosar (AZ-09)
California: Tom McClintock (CA-05)
Colorado: Lauren Boebert (CO-04)
Florida: Randy Fine (FL-06), Anna Paulina Luna (FL-13), John Rutherford (FL-05)
Georgia: Andrew Clyde (GA-09), Mike Collins (GA-10), Brian Jack (GA-03), Rich McCormick (GA-07)
Idaho: Russ Fulcher (ID-01)
Illinois: Mary Miller (IL-15)
Indiana: Jim Baird (IN-04), Erin Houchin (IN-09), Jefferson Shreve (IN-06)
Kansas: Tracey Mann (KS-01)
Louisiana: Clay Higgins (LA-03)
Maryland: Andy Harris (MD-01)
Mississippi: Michael Guest (MS-03)
Missouri: Eric Burlison (MO-07), Bob Onder (MO-03)
Montana: Troy Downing (MT-02)
Nebraska: Adrian Smith (NE-03)
New York: Claudia Tenney (NY-24)
North Carolina: Chuck Edwards (NC-11), Pat Harrigan (NC-10), Mark Harris (NC-08), Addison McDowell (NC-06)
North Dakota: Julie Fedorchak (ND-AL)
Ohio: Warren Davidson (OH-08), Michael Rulli (OH-06), David Taylor (OH-02)
Oklahoma: Josh Brecheen (OK-02), Kevin Hern (OK-01)
Pennsylvania: Scott Perry (PA-10), Guy Reschenthaler (PA-14)
South Carolina: Sheri Biggs (SC-03), Russell Fry (SC-07), Ralph Norman (SC-05)
Tennessee: Tim Burchett (TN-02), Scott DesJarlais (TN-04), Chuck Fleischmann (TN-03), Diana Harshbarger (TN-01), John Rose (TN-06)
Texas: Brian Babin (TX-36), Michael Cloud (TX-27), Brandon Gill (TX-26), Keith Self (TX-03), Beth Van Duyne (TX-24)
Virginia: Ben Cline (VA-06), Morgan Griffith (VA-09), John McGuire (VA-05)
West Virginia: Riley Moore (WV-02)
Wisconsin: Derrick Van Orden (WI-03)

Some of these names carry their own history

Illinois banned assault weapons statewide in January 2023, six months after a gunman fired on a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park with an AR-15-style rifle. Mary Miller, who signed this brief, represents Illinois. The Cook County ordinance now before the Supreme Court came first, and the Second Amendment Foundation, which brought both cases, describes it as the precursor to the nearly identical statewide law.

Jefferson Shreve ran for mayor of Indianapolis in 2023 on banning assault weapon sales, and the NRA gave him an F for it. He signed this brief. We wrote about that reversal when he cosponsored national concealed carry on his first day in Congress.

Tim Burchett signed. After a shooter killed three nine-year-olds and three adults at the Covenant School in his own state, Burchett was asked what could be done to protect children. He said that he and his wife homeschool their daughter.

Barry Moore signed. He is the member who wrote a bill to designate the AR-15 as the official national gun of the United States.

Andrew Clyde signed and led it. He owns two gun stores in Georgia, and he has separately asked the federal government to destroy the firearms records police use to trace guns recovered at crime scenes.

Clyde also recently led a letter asking the attorney general not to appeal a ruling that threw out the registration rules for silencers and short-barreled rifles. Thirty-three of the members who signed that letter have report cards here too.

Why the argument matters beyond this case

Courts do not just decide who wins. They decide what test applies next time.

If the Supreme Court adopts the reasoning in this brief — that a weapon's fitness for infantry combat weighs toward constitutional protection — the effect reaches past the AR-15. Every future restriction on a militarily useful firearm would have to survive a standard under which military usefulness is a point in the gun's favor.

The brief is careful to say the Second Amendment "does not protect every weapon merely because it is militarily useful." But the direction it pushes is unmistakable, and the members who signed it are asking the Court to push that way.

AR-15-style rifles were used at Sandy Hook, at Parkland, at Uvalde and at Highland Park. CBS News has called it the weapon of choice for mass shooters. The signers are telling the highest court in the country that the rifle's design for war is an argument for keeping it on the shelves.

What the filing shows

Sixty-three House Republicans, fifty-seven of whom this site tracks, signed a brief on September 4 asking the Supreme Court to hold that a rifle's usefulness as an infantry weapon counts in favor of protecting it. Among the signers are a member who wrote a bill making the AR-15 the national gun, a member who campaigned on banning assault weapons three years ago, a member who answered a school massacre in his own state by saying he homeschools his daughter, and the Georgia gun-store owner who organized the filing.

Source

Reporting by the North Gwinnett Voice, which published the full brief. Every quotation and every name above was taken from that filing.

Your Health Premiums Jumped 58%. House Republicans Came Back and Voted to Tell Colleges What They're Allowed to Boycott.

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 13:06:57 +0000

Your health insurance costs more than it used to. A lot more. When Congress let the enhanced premium tax credits expire at the end of 2025, what Marketplace enrollees pay toward their own premiums rose by an average of 58%, from $113 to $178 a month, according to KFF. Deductibles went up 37% — about $1,027 a person — to a record $3,786, the steepest jump this market has ever seen. And it is not done: insurers have filed for a median premium increase of another 15% in 2027, the second straight year of double-digit hikes.

The House came back from its August recess on August 31. Over the next four days it held twelve recorded votes. Not one of them was about your premiums.

Here is what the House did vote on instead, according to the Clerk's own record: a resolution condemning socialism, a constitutional amendment to freeze the Supreme Court at nine seats, a bill fast-tracking mining permits, a bill delaying protections for the endangered North Atlantic right whale, and — on Thursday morning — a bill that strips federal student aid from any college that boycotts Israel.

That last one is H.R. 4795, and it passed 237–169. House Republicans voted for it 203–2.

What the bill actually does

Read the text and the reach of it is the point. The bill amends the Higher Education Act so that any college taking part in a "nonexpressive commercial boycott" of Israel loses eligibility for federal student aid — Pell Grants, federal student loans, the money most students actually use to go to school. A second section says that if a school takes federal foreign-language and international-education funding, it has to file a certification every July 31 promising it will let students and faculty study in Israel on the same terms as anywhere else, and let Israeli students and faculty into its own programs on the same terms as students and faculty from any other foreign university. Miss the deadline and the money stops.

The operative text never says the word "Israel." It says "major strategic partner," and defines that by pointing at a 2014 law — the United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act. The bill's official title says Israel out loud.

What counts as a boycott is a "commercial action" meant to limit business with Israel that "is not based on a valid business reason." So a university has to be prepared to explain, to the federal government, that its business decisions had a valid business reason and not a political one.

Nobody is doing the thing the bill bans

At the Rules Committee markup, Democrats made a simple point. "There has not been a single case of an American college or university administration adopting the BDS movement policies that are described in the bill. Not one," Rep. Bobby Scott said.

Morgan Griffith, who voted yes, answered that argument by embracing it. "Let's take my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and their argument, and that is the bill does nothing, and there's nothing to see here," he said at the markup. "Then there's no harm in passing it."

That is the whole defense: a federal speech rule aimed at conduct nobody has engaged in, and the case for it is that it might not do anything.

This is control, not freedom

The bill is called the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act. It does the opposite. It tells private and public institutions what political positions they are allowed to take with their own money, and puts their students' tuition aid on the table if they get it wrong.

The word doing the work is "nonexpressive." Boycotting is speech — that is why people do it. Congress can't punish speech, so the bill relabels the boycott as commercial conduct and punishes that instead. The ACLU told Congress exactly what that is: "Many of those engaged in boycotts of Israel do so not for commercial reasons, but because they wish to express their political opposition to the policies of the Israeli government... HR 4795's labeling such boycotts as 'non-expressive' does nothing to change this reality."

Rep. Jerry Nadler, who opposes the boycott movement and said so at length, called the bill "a direct and gross violation of the First Amendment." His reason is the one that should matter to everybody, whatever they think about Israel: "The First Amendment right to free speech does not apply only to agreeable speech... I will always fight to protect Americans' right to speech with which I disagree. It is the only way to ensure speech I do agree with is equally protected." Nadler also warns that the bill's definition sweeps in the occupied West Bank, treating it as part of Israel and erasing the Green Line.

And the certification requirement flips a ban into a mandate. Lara Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peace put it plainly: "The goal here is to basically say every university not only cannot refuse cooperation with Israel but must actively seek every opportunity to cooperate with Israel... And if they're not doing that, they're pro-BDS and anti-Israel." She notes that any group that wants to can go hunting for a missing Israeli partnership and accuse a school of lying on its federal certification.

A government that decides which boycotts you may join, and requires you to prove your cooperation with a foreign country every July to keep your students' financial aid, is not protecting freedom. It is rationing it.

Two Republicans said no

Warren Davidson and Thomas Massie were the only two Republicans who voted against the bill. Thirty-three Democrats voted for it, and the bill's sole cosponsor is a Democrat, Josh Gottheimer. This was not a party-line vote. It was a vote where two Republicans out of 205 were willing to say that the federal government does not get to police what a college may boycott.

The bill now goes to the Senate.

The choice they made

Nobody has to guess at the priorities here. In the same four days the House found floor time to condemn socialism, to fast-track mines, to delay whale protections, to try to lock the Supreme Court at nine seats, and to police what colleges say about a foreign country, the premium bills already sitting on kitchen tables went up 58% and are set to climb again next year. The House has taken 295 recorded votes in 2026. It has not used one of them to put the premium tax credits back.

Every Republican we track who voted yes

These 184 members have a report card on this site and voted yes on H.R. 4795. (Kevin Kiley left the Republican Party in March 2026 but still caucuses with Republicans; he voted yes.)

Alabama: Barry Moore, Dale Strong, Gary Palmer, Mike Rogers, Robert Aderholt

Alaska: Nick Begich

Arizona: Abraham Hamadeh, Andy Biggs, David Schweikert, Eli Crane, Paul Gosar

Arkansas: Bruce Westerman, French Hill, Rick Crawford, Steve Womack

California: David Valadao, James Gallagher, Ken Calvert, Kevin Kiley, Tom McClintock, Vince Fong, Young Kim

Colorado: Gabe Evans, Jeff Crank, Jeff Hurd, Lauren Boebert

Florida: Aaron Bean, Anna Paulina Luna, Brian Mast, Carlos Gimenez, Greg Steube, Gus Bilirakis, Jimmy Patronis, John Rutherford, Kat Cammack, Laurel Lee, Maria Elvira Salazar, Mario Diaz-Balart, Mike Haridopolos, Randy Fine, Scott Franklin

Georgia: Andrew Clyde, Austin Scott, Brian Jack, Clay Fuller, Mike Collins, Rich McCormick, Rick Allen

Idaho: Mike Simpson, Russ Fulcher

Illinois: Darin LaHood, Mike Bost

Indiana: Erin Houchin, Jefferson Shreve, Jim Baird, Mark Messmer, Marlin Stutzman, Rudy Yakym

Iowa: Ashley Hinson, Zach Nunn

Kansas: Derek Schmidt, Ron Estes, Tracey Mann

Kentucky: Andy Barr, Brett Guthrie, Hal Rogers, James Comer

Louisiana: Clay Higgins, Julia Letlow, Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise

Maryland: Andy Harris

Michigan: Bill Huizenga, Jack Bergman, John James, John Moolenaar, Lisa McClain, Tim Walberg, Tom Barrett

Minnesota: Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach, Pete Stauber, Tom Emmer

Mississippi: Michael Guest, Mike Ezell, Trent Kelly

Missouri: Ann Wagner, Bob Onder, Eric Burlison, Jason Smith, Mark Alford

Montana: Troy Downing

Nebraska: Adrian Smith, Mike Flood

New Jersey: Chris Smith, Jeff Van Drew, Tom Kean Jr.

New York: Andrew Garbarino, Claudia Tenney, Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota, Nick Langworthy, Nicole Malliotakis

North Carolina: Brad Knott, Chuck Edwards, David Rouzer, Greg Murphy, Mark Harris, Pat Harrigan, Richard Hudson, Tim Moore, Virginia Foxx

North Dakota: Julie Fedorchak

Ohio: Bob Latta, David Joyce, David Taylor, Jim Jordan, Max Miller, Michael Rulli, Mike Carey, Mike Turner, Troy Balderson

Oklahoma: Frank Lucas, Josh Brecheen, Kevin Hern, Stephanie Bice, Tom Cole

Oregon: Cliff Bentz

Pennsylvania: Brian Fitzpatrick, Dan Meuser, Glenn Thompson, Guy Reschenthaler, John Joyce, Lloyd Smucker, Mike Kelly, Rob Bresnahan, Ryan Mackenzie, Scott Perry

South Carolina: Ralph Norman, Russell Fry, Sheri Biggs, William Timmons

Tennessee: Chuck Fleischmann, David Kustoff, Diana Harshbarger, John Rose, Matt Van Epps, Scott DesJarlais, Tim Burchett

Texas: August Pfluger, Beth Van Duyne, Brandon Gill, Brian Babin, Craig Goldman, Jake Ellzey, John Carter, Keith Self, Lance Gooden, Michael Cloud, Monica De La Cruz, Nathaniel Moran, Pat Fallon, Pete Sessions, Randy Weber, Roger Williams, Ronny Jackson

Utah: Blake Moore, Celeste Maloy, Mike Kennedy

Virginia: Ben Cline, Jen Kiggans, John McGuire, Morgan Griffith, Rob Wittman

Washington: Michael Baumgartner

West Virginia: Carol Miller, Riley Moore

Wisconsin: Bryan Steil, Derrick Van Orden, Glenn Grothman, Scott Fitzgerald, Tom Tiffany, Tony Wied

Wyoming: Harriet Hageman

How they voted

Americans Say Groceries Are Their Biggest Money Worry. House Republicans Spent the Evening of September 1 Voting to Condemn Socialism.

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 07:14:18 +0000

At 5:47 on the evening of Tuesday, September 1, the U.S. House of Representatives stopped what it was doing and voted on socialism.

The vote was 220 to 192, with two members voting present. Every single Republican who cast a vote — 211 of them — voted yes. Not one voted no. Eight Democrats crossed over.

The measure was H.Res. 1490, introduced five days earlier by Jeff Crank of Colorado. CBS News called it what it was: a political messaging exercise ahead of the November elections.

A House resolution is not a law. It does not go to the Senate. It does not go to the President. It cannot lower a grocery bill, cover a prescription, or hire an inspector. It is the House talking to itself, on the record, using floor time that belongs to the rest of us.

Four of its five demands are words. The fifth one isn't.

Read the resolution and you find it asks the House to do five things. It condemns socialism. It reaffirms support for free and fair elections. It reiterates that American elections are for citizens. It recommits itself to the Constitution.

Then comes number five, and it is the only part with an object in the real world. The House "calls for enactment of the SAVE America Act."

That is the whole trick. Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar said Democrats had offered their own version of a socialism resolution with that clause taken out. "We're capitalists. We believe in a capitalist system and rules and laws," he said. "But what Republicans are seeking to do here is to just add in another talking point where they can talk about the SAVE Act."

Majority Leader Steve Scalise did not pretend otherwise. "Not only do we denounce socialism, but also the idea of people that aren't American citizens voting in our elections, because that's part of their platform," he said.

What the SAVE America Act would actually do to voters

The House passed the SAVE America Act in February with the support of all 217 House Republicans and one Democrat. It has sat in the Senate ever since, short of the votes.

It would require every person registering to vote in a federal election to hand over a document proving citizenship. Today a new registrant swears to it under penalty of perjury. Under this bill you bring a passport, a birth certificate, or a naturalization certificate — in person. It would also require photo identification to vote, and force states to run their voter rolls through a Department of Homeland Security database. Every provision takes effect immediately on enactment.

Three states currently require new registrants to prove citizenship. Twenty-seven states do not require photo ID to vote. And a 2023 survey by SSRS for the University of Maryland and three voting-rights groups found that 9% of voting-age citizens do not have easy access to a document proving their citizenship. Because the proof has to be presented in person, the bill would also effectively end registering by mail or online.

We already know what this looks like, because a state tried it. After Kansas began requiring proof of citizenship in 2013, 31,089 people could not register because they could not produce the document — 12% of everyone who tried to register in that period. Over the previous 14 years, Kansas had identified 39 confirmed noncitizens on its rolls. A court struck the law down in 2018.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon put it plainly: "This is bad for voters, but this will be a nightmare for election administrators." In Orange County, California, the registrar calculated what it would have taken to verify citizenship for the 633,568 people who registered or updated a registration in 2024. The answer was 59 more staff and $6 million.

The emergency the resolution describes

The resolution's own evidence is thin enough to read in full.

It cites New Jersey, where roughly 6,600 noncitizens ended up on the voter rolls. That happened because of a motor vehicle software error that mislabeled people who had truthfully answered that they were not citizens. Fewer than 400 of them voted, and Governor Mikie Sherrill said there was "no evidence at this time that any elections were swayed" as a result.

It cites a federal investigation that charged four people.

That is the case for rebuilding voter registration for every American.

What was actually in front of them that week

The same afternoon, a group of Republican hardliners voted against their own party's procedural rule to protest a short-term government funding bill. The federal fiscal year ends September 30. Funding the government is the one job the Constitution actually assigns the House.

Outside the chamber:

A survey of 30,000 Americans by the McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation found that 90% named groceries and food prices as a top cost concern — ahead of housing, ahead of healthcare. Food-at-home prices are up about 25% over five years. Nearly one in ten adults has used a buy-now-pay-later loan to buy groceries.
Health insurers have proposed a median premium increase of 15% for 2027 across 276 companies in all 50 states and D.C. That is the second straight year of double-digit increases. Insurers themselves attribute roughly 4 percentage points of it to Congress letting the enhanced premium tax credits die — which these same members voted to do.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he would vote no because of the SAVE America Act clause. "House Republicans continue to desperately push toxic voter suppression legislation instead of working to make life more affordable for everyday Americans in the midst of a searing cost-of-living crisis."

In their own words

The Republican Study Committee put out a press release collecting what its members had to say about the evening. Not one of the quotes mentions a grocery bill or an insurance premium. The one that mentions a paycheck is about the government taking more of it.

Jeff Crank, who wrote it: "This evening's vote showed who stands for freedom, and others who stand with socialism."

August Pfluger, who chairs the committee: "Today's vote puts the Left on the record and removes any doubt about where my colleagues on the other side of the aisle stand."

Riley Moore of West Virginia: "Socialism has no place in America. It is driven by envy and resentment... America is a Christian nation and we must never accept socialism."

Lance Gooden of Texas: "With the enemy already inside our gates, we must reject this failed ideology wherever it exists."

Harriet Hageman of Wyoming: "We will never succumb to ideologies behind history's worst episodes of destruction and despair."

Robert Aderholt of Alabama, Nicole Malliotakis of New York, Warren Davidson of Ohio, Tim Walberg of Michigan, Jack Bergman of Michigan, William Timmons of South Carolina, Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma, Sheri Biggs of South Carolina, James Gallagher of California, Addison McDowell of North Carolina, Troy Nehls of Texas, Matt Van Epps of Tennessee, Nick Langworthy of New York and Mike Kennedy of Utah all added statements of their own.

That is the work product. A resolution that becomes nothing, a demand for a bill that is going nowhere, and a press release.

The 189 who voted yes

These are the members who voted for H.Res. 1490 and have a report card on this site.

Alabama — Barry Moore, Dale Strong, Gary Palmer, Mike Rogers, Robert Aderholt

Alaska — Nick Begich

Arizona — Abraham Hamadeh, Andy Biggs, David Schweikert, Eli Crane, Juan Ciscomani, Paul Gosar

Arkansas — Bruce Westerman, French Hill, Rick Crawford, Steve Womack

California — David Valadao, James Gallagher, Ken Calvert, Kevin Kiley, Tom McClintock, Vince Fong, Young Kim

Colorado — Gabe Evans, Jeff Crank, Jeff Hurd, Lauren Boebert

Florida — Aaron Bean, Anna Paulina Luna, Brian Mast, Carlos Gimenez, Greg Steube, Gus Bilirakis, Jimmy Patronis, John Rutherford, Kat Cammack, Laurel Lee, Maria Elvira Salazar, Mario Diaz-Balart, Mike Haridopolos, Randy Fine, Scott Franklin

Georgia — Andrew Clyde, Austin Scott, Brian Jack, Clay Fuller, Mike Collins, Rich McCormick, Rick Allen

Idaho — Mike Simpson, Russ Fulcher

Illinois — Darin LaHood, Mike Bost

Indiana — Erin Houchin, Jefferson Shreve, Jim Baird, Mark Messmer, Marlin Stutzman, Rudy Yakym, Victoria Spartz

Iowa — Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Zach Nunn

Kansas — Derek Schmidt, Ron Estes, Tracey Mann

Kentucky — Andy Barr, Brett Guthrie, Hal Rogers, James Comer

Louisiana — Clay Higgins, Julia Letlow, Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise

Maryland — Andy Harris

Michigan — Bill Huizenga, Jack Bergman, John James, John Moolenaar, Lisa McClain, Tim Walberg, Tom Barrett

Minnesota — Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach, Pete Stauber, Tom Emmer

Mississippi — Michael Guest, Mike Ezell, Trent Kelly

Missouri — Ann Wagner, Bob Onder, Eric Burlison, Jason Smith, Mark Alford

Montana — Troy Downing

Nebraska — Adrian Smith, Mike Flood

New Jersey — Chris Smith, Jeff Van Drew

New York — Andrew Garbarino, Claudia Tenney, Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota, Nick Langworthy, Nicole Malliotakis

North Carolina — Addison McDowell, Brad Knott, Chuck Edwards, David Rouzer, Greg Murphy, Mark Harris, Pat Harrigan, Richard Hudson, Tim Moore, Virginia Foxx

North Dakota — Julie Fedorchak

Ohio — Bob Latta, David Joyce, David Taylor, Jim Jordan, Max Miller, Michael Rulli, Mike Carey, Mike Turner, Troy Balderson, Warren Davidson

Oklahoma — Frank Lucas, Josh Brecheen, Kevin Hern, Stephanie Bice, Tom Cole

Oregon — Cliff Bentz

Pennsylvania — Brian Fitzpatrick, Dan Meuser, Glenn Thompson, Guy Reschenthaler, John Joyce, Lloyd Smucker, Mike Kelly, Rob Bresnahan, Ryan Mackenzie, Scott Perry

South Carolina — Joe Wilson, Ralph Norman, Russell Fry, Sheri Biggs, William Timmons

Tennessee — Chuck Fleischmann, David Kustoff, Diana Harshbarger, John Rose, Matt Van Epps, Scott DesJarlais, Tim Burchett

Texas — August Pfluger, Beth Van Duyne, Brandon Gill, Brian Babin, Craig Goldman, Jake Ellzey, John Carter, Keith Self, Lance Gooden, Michael Cloud, Monica De La Cruz, Nathaniel Moran, Pat Fallon, Pete Sessions, Randy Weber, Roger Williams, Ronny Jackson

Utah — Blake Moore, Celeste Maloy, Mike Kennedy

Virginia — Ben Cline, Jen Kiggans, John McGuire, Morgan Griffith, Rob Wittman

Washington — Michael Baumgartner

West Virginia — Carol Miller, Riley Moore

Wisconsin — Bryan Steil, Derrick Van Orden, Glenn Grothman, Scott Fitzgerald, Tom Tiffany, Tony Wied

Wyoming — Harriet Hageman

How they voted

Roll Call 289, H.Res. 1490 — Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives (September 1, 2026)
Full text of H.Res. 1490

These 188 Republicans Voted to Lock the Supreme Court at Nine Seats While Republican Appointees Hold Six of Them

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 07:11:10 +0000

On September 2, 2026, the House voted on a change to the United States Constitution. Not a bill. Not a spending fight. An amendment to the founding document itself — one that would have written a single sentence into it: "The Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine justices consisting of one chief justice and eight associate justices."

It failed, 212 to 206. Amendments need two-thirds of the House, and it did not come close. But 211 Republicans voted for it, and 188 of them have a report card on this site.

The number nine is not in the Constitution

That is the part worth sitting with. The founders wrote Article III and left the size of the Supreme Court blank on purpose. As the federal courts' own historians put it, the Constitution "leaves for Congress to determine the size and responsibilities of the Court."

And Congress has determined it, over and over. The Judiciary Act of 1789 created a Court of six. A seventh justice was added in 1807. An eighth and a ninth in 1837. A tenth in 1863. In 1866 Congress shrank it back to seven. In 1869 Congress settled on nine, and there it has stayed ever since.

Five changes. Every one of them made by ordinary law, by the elected representatives of the people, exactly as the founders designed it.

What they were actually voting on

The amendment would not have frozen the justices themselves. Justices still die. Justices still retire. Seats still come open, and whoever is president when that happens still fills them. That much stays the same.

What the amendment would have frozen is the number — and, more to the point, it would have taken that number out of Congress's hands and put it somewhere Congress cannot reach. An ordinary law can be changed by the next Congress. A constitutional amendment can only be undone by another constitutional amendment: two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate, and ratification by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states. Thirty-eight of them.

So the question is not really about the number nine. It is about who gets to decide, and when they decided to stop deciding.

The timing

Six of the nine sitting justices were appointed by Republican presidents: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Three of those six — Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett — were put there by Donald Trump. The other three justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, were appointed by Democrats.

That six-to-three majority is not an abstraction. It is the majority that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending the constitutional right to an abortion in this country and handing the question to state legislatures. Six of them ruled for Mississippi. Five of the six voted to throw out Roe itself — Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett. Chief Justice Roberts would not go that far, writing that he would "take a more measured course."

Republicans chose this moment — with that Court seated and that record on the books — to try to bolt the door shut behind it.

Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania said on the floor that the amendment would "lock in for a generation or more a right-wing majority." Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, called it "another partisan power grab." The office of House Minority Whip Katherine Clark told members it would "strip Congress of yet another constitutional authority that is meant to be controlled by the American people's representatives."

Who pushed it

The amendment was written by Arizona's Andy Biggs, who is now running for governor of his state. He introduced it on the first day of this Congress and picked up exactly two cosponsors along the way: Georgia's Rick Allen and Kansas's Derek Schmidt. The House Judiciary Committee sent it to the floor on a 15-to-8 vote in June, and Speaker Mike Johnson brought it up for a vote on September 2.

Biggs argued the change was about fairness across administrations. "If a sitting majority can change the size of the Supreme Court the moment it dislikes rulings, what happens the next time the other side is in power?" he asked. In a statement after the committee vote, he said special interests were "threatening to pack this iconic American institution to ensure favorable outcomes for their causes," and that his amendment would "protect the Court's legitimacy."

North Carolina's Mark Harris said the push from the left was meant "to consolidate power and intimidate the court."

Here is the trouble with that argument. There is exactly one bill in this Congress to add seats to the Supreme Court. Texas Democrat Al Green introduced it on May 4, 2026, it would raise the number from nine to thirteen, and it has picked up zero cosponsors. It was referred to the House Judiciary Committee — the committee Republicans run — and it has not moved since. No hearing. No markup. No vote.

So nothing was being stopped on September 2. What was on the floor was a permanent change to the Constitution, offered by the side that currently holds the advantage, at the exact moment it holds it. If the principle really is that the rules should be the same no matter who is in power, the year to write it down is not the year your own appointees hold six of the nine seats.

Only one Democrat, Rep. Don Davis of North Carolina, voted yes.

Who voted to freeze the Court

188 Republicans with a report card on this site voted for the amendment. Here they are, grouped by state:

Alabama: Barry Moore, Dale Strong, Gary Palmer, Mike Rogers, Robert Aderholt

Alaska: Nick Begich

Arizona: Abraham Hamadeh, Andy Biggs, David Schweikert, Eli Crane, Juan Ciscomani, Paul Gosar

Arkansas: Bruce Westerman, French Hill, Rick Crawford, Steve Womack

California: David Valadao, James Gallagher, Ken Calvert, Tom McClintock, Vince Fong, Young Kim

Colorado: Gabe Evans, Jeff Crank, Jeff Hurd, Lauren Boebert

Georgia: Andrew Clyde, Austin Scott, Brian Jack, Clay Fuller, Mike Collins, Rich McCormick, Rick Allen

Idaho: Mike Simpson, Russ Fulcher

Illinois: Darin LaHood, Mike Bost

Indiana: Erin Houchin, Jefferson Shreve, Jim Baird, Mark Messmer, Marlin Stutzman, Rudy Yakym, Victoria Spartz

Iowa: Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Zach Nunn

Kansas: Derek Schmidt, Ron Estes, Tracey Mann

Kentucky: Andy Barr, Brett Guthrie, Hal Rogers, James Comer

Louisiana: Clay Higgins, Julia Letlow, Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise

Maryland: Andy Harris

Michigan: Bill Huizenga, Jack Bergman, John James, John Moolenaar, Lisa McClain, Tim Walberg, Tom Barrett

Minnesota: Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach, Pete Stauber, Tom Emmer

Mississippi: Michael Guest, Mike Ezell, Trent Kelly

Missouri: Ann Wagner, Bob Onder, Eric Burlison, Jason Smith, Mark Alford

Montana: Troy Downing

Nebraska: Adrian Smith, Mike Flood

New Jersey: Chris Smith, Jeff Van Drew

New York: Andrew Garbarino, Claudia Tenney, Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota, Nick Langworthy, Nicole Malliotakis

North Carolina: Brad Knott, Chuck Edwards, David Rouzer, Greg Murphy, Mark Harris, Pat Harrigan, Richard Hudson, Tim Moore, Virginia Foxx

North Dakota: Julie Fedorchak

Ohio: Bob Latta, David Joyce, David Taylor, Jim Jordan, Max Miller, Michael Rulli, Mike Carey, Mike Turner, Troy Balderson, Warren Davidson

Oklahoma: Frank Lucas, Josh Brecheen, Kevin Hern, Stephanie Bice, Tom Cole

Oregon: Cliff Bentz

Pennsylvania: Brian Fitzpatrick, Dan Meuser, Glenn Thompson, Guy Reschenthaler, John Joyce, Lloyd Smucker, Mike Kelly, Rob Bresnahan, Ryan Mackenzie, Scott Perry

South Carolina: Joe Wilson, Ralph Norman, Russell Fry, Sheri Biggs, William Timmons

Tennessee: Andy Ogles, Chuck Fleischmann, David Kustoff, Diana Harshbarger, John Rose, Matt Van Epps, Scott DesJarlais, Tim Burchett

Utah: Blake Moore, Celeste Maloy, Mike Kennedy

Virginia: Ben Cline, Jen Kiggans, John McGuire, Morgan Griffith, Rob Wittman

Washington: Michael Baumgartner

West Virginia: Carol Miller, Riley Moore

Wisconsin: Bryan Steil, Derrick Van Orden, Glenn Grothman, Scott Fitzgerald, Tom Tiffany, Tony Wied

Wyoming: Harriet Hageman

How they voted

House Roll Call 293, September 2, 2026 — the official record of every member's vote
Full member-by-member XML from the Clerk of the House
The text of H.J.Res. 1 as reported to the House
The Federal Judicial Center on Congress's power over the Court's size

Fifty Republican Senators Voted Against Even Debating an End to the Boat Strikes. A Year Into the Campaign, 227 People Are Dead in a "Year of Murders".

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 06:38:45 +0000

On September 2, 2025, the U.S. military blew up a speedboat in the Caribbean Sea. Eleven men were on it.

Two of them lived through it. They pulled themselves onto a piece of the overturned hull and floated there for about 45 minutes, holding on, with nowhere to go.

Then a second missile killed them.

That was the first strike. One year later, The Intercept reports that the campaign has never stopped. The U.S. has carried out more than 65 attacks in the Caribbean and the Pacific. 227 people are dead. The most recent strike, on August 25, killed four.

Congress never voted to authorize any of it.

Congress did get the chance to stop it. Five weeks in, the Senate held that vote. Fifty Republicans voted no.

We do not know who most of these people were

Start with the part that should end the argument on its own.

Of the 227 people killed, 26 have been identified by name. That number comes from Airwars, a U.K.-based group that monitors conflicts around the world and worked with the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism to put names to the dead. The U.S. government has not named a single victim.

Every person identified so far appears to be a man. The ones whose ages are known were between 24 and 46. Of the 41 identified by nationality, 18 were Venezuelan, 13 Mexican, three Colombian, three Ecuadorian, two from Trinidad and Tobago, and two from Saint Lucia.

Reporters who managed to put names to some of them found a bus driver. A mototaxi driver. Men who fished or worked in the seafood trade. A futsal player. They came from poor towns, and whatever connection they had to the drug trade was at the very bottom of it.

Families in six countries still do not know whether the men they are missing were on one of those boats.

What the Senate actually voted on

On September 18, 2025 — sixteen days after the first strike — Senators Adam Schiff and Tim Kaine introduced Senate Joint Resolution 83.

It is a short document, and it is not complicated. It says Congress has the sole power to declare war. It says Congress has not declared war on, or authorized force against, any group the administration newly labeled a terrorist organization, any country those groups operate in, or "any non-state organization engaged in the promotion, trafficking, and distribution of illegal drugs and other related activities." It says calling a group a terrorist organization does not by itself give a president permission to kill its members. And it says none of those groups have attacked the United States.

What it comes down to is simple. If you want to shoot at people, come ask Congress first.

The resolution was parked in the Foreign Relations Committee, which is where things go to be ignored. So on October 8, 2025, the Senate held a vote on whether to pull it out of committee so the full chamber could debate it at all.

Not a vote to end the strikes. A vote on whether senators would be permitted to discuss ending the strikes.

It failed, 48 to 51.

Fifty Republicans voted no. Only two voted yes: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Ted Cruz did not vote. One Democrat, John Fetterman, voted with the Republicans.

These are the fourteen Republican senators we track who voted to keep the question off the Senate floor:

Alabama — Tommy Tuberville
Alaska — Dan Sullivan
Arkansas — Tom Cotton
Florida — Ashley Moody
Idaho — Jim Risch
Kansas — Roger Marshall
Maine — Susan Collins
Mississippi — Cindy Hyde-Smith
Nebraska — Pete Ricketts
Ohio — Jon Husted
South Dakota — Mike Rounds
Tennessee — Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty
West Virginia — Shelley Moore Capito

Two of them switching sides would have carried it.

Then they did it again. And again. And again.

October was not a one-time thing. The Senate came back to this three more times, and the same names kept showing up on the same side.

November 6, 2025. A second resolution, this one specifically about Venezuela. Same procedure, same result: rejected, 49 to 51. Again, the only two Republicans voting yes were Murkowski and Paul.

January 8, 2026. Something changed. Five Republicans crossed over and the motion passed, 52 to 47. For six days it looked like the Senate might actually take a position.

January 14, 2026. It didn't. A procedural objection was raised — a challenge to whether the resolution even qualified for the fast track that guarantees it a floor vote. It is a way to kill a measure without anyone having to say out loud whether the killings should stop. Two of the five Republicans who had just voted yes, Josh Hawley and Todd Young, switched back. The chamber split 50 to 50, and Vice President JD Vance came over to break the tie in favor of shutting it down.

Thirteen of the fourteen senators listed above voted to block every one of those resolutions. All four times. Susan Collins is the only one who broke ranks, and only in January — on the October and November resolutions she voted with the rest of them.

If this pattern feels familiar, it should. It is the same thirteen senators who, on July 30, 2026, voted to keep the Senate from debating an end to the Iran war — the thirteenth time that chamber had taken up the question. And Jim Risch chairs the committee where all of these resolutions were buried in the first place. He is the one who decides whether a subject gets a public hearing, and on Trump's Iran war he decided it wouldn't.

The legal case for all this is classified

Here is the reasoning the administration is operating on, according to the classified Justice Department opinion The Intercept describes: the drugs on the boats are a legitimate military target, because selling them makes money for cartels, and the cartels are supposedly in an armed conflict with the United States. Attached to that memo is a secret list of the groups it applies to.

The list is secret. The memo is secret. The Pentagon has withheld both from Congress, along with the basic facts about who has been killed.

A government official who has read the opinion called it "flimsy yet expansive," and said that even under its own generous terms, the U.S. has killed people it did not cover.

Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who specializes in the laws of war, put it more bluntly:

"There is no plausible legal justification for the strikes. They're obviously not occurring in the context of an armed conflict and outside of armed conflict, the term for premeditated killing is murder."

U.S. Southern Command disagrees. Its spokesman, Steven McLoud, said every operation is "planned and executed within the full bounds of our legal framework, ensuring that every target meets the legal criteria established by our Office of Legal Counsel." That is the same Office of Legal Counsel whose opinion nobody outside the executive branch is allowed to read.

Senator Tim Kaine, who sits on both the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, reviewed the highly classified material and wrote to the president in August. His conclusion was that the "available evidence suggests that the United States has killed individuals who are not involved in narcotrafficking."

The House looked into it for ten days

The Senate is not the only chamber that folded.

When the Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had verbally ordered the crew to "kill everybody," the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee promised a full accounting. Mike Rogers of Alabama and his ranking Democrat put out a joint statement about "rigorous oversight" and "bipartisan action."

Ten days later, after one classified briefing, he told reporters "it's done" and closed the inquiry. The video the committee watched has still never been released.

The one piece of real pressure Congress has managed in a year is buried in this year's defense policy bill: it holds back 25 percent of the travel money for the Defense Secretary's office until the Pentagon turns over the overdue reports and the unedited strike footage lawmakers have been asking for.

A quarter of a travel budget. That is what a year of accountability looks like.

What the record shows

In the twelve months since the first strike, the U.S. military has killed 227 people at sea in a campaign Congress never authorized, and has publicly named none of them. Twenty-six were identified by outside journalists; the dead include a bus driver, a mototaxi driver and men who worked in fishing. The Senate voted four times on whether to make the president come to Congress first, and fourteen Republican senators we track voted no the first time — thirteen of them voted no every time. That first vote, five weeks into the killings, came down to two senators.

Source

Nick Turse, "The U.S. Has Killed 227 Civilians in Boat Strikes During 'A Year of Murders'", The Intercept, September 2, 2026. Lead image: a U.S. Southern Command social media post from August 25, 2026, showing a vessel in the Caribbean moments before a U.S. strike killed four people. Screenshot: @Southcom on X, via The Intercept.

208 House Republicans Just Voted to Lock In the Food-Safety Layoffs. Complaints About Contaminated Meat Had Risen 40%.

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 07:51:48 +0000

Last year, complaints to the federal government about contaminated meat, poultry and egg products rose by nearly 40% — from 1,443 to 2,016 — according to the USDA's own Food Safety and Inspection Service.

That happened because the people who do the inspecting had been leaving in numbers. Since the start of 2025, the FDA has laid off nearly 4,300 employees, and the Food Safety and Inspection Service — the branch that puts inspectors physically inside slaughterhouses and processing plants — has lost roughly 900 positions, about 9% of its workforce in six months.

On June 4, 2026, the House had a chance to decide what to do about that. It voted, 213 to 210, to leave it alone.

What the bill actually does

Be precise here, because Republicans dispute the word "cut," and on one point they have a case.

H.R. 8646 is the agriculture and Food and Drug Administration spending bill for 2027. By the Appropriations Committee's own summary, it:

provides $26.27 billion in total — $380 million, or 1.4%, below the level enacted for 2026;
gives the FDA $7.1 billion; and
claims to increase money for the Food Safety and Inspection Service "to fund frontline meat and poultry inspectors and bolster support for state inspection programs."

So this is not a bill that zeroes out food safety, and anyone telling you it is has skipped the document.

Here is the line that matters instead. It sits in the committee's own list of the bill's accomplishments, under "Safeguards American taxpayer dollars":

"Reducing salaries and expenses where appropriate to account for staffing reductions and shrinking grant programs that housed canceled grants."

Read that in plain English. Thousands of federal food-safety staff were fired. Congress's response was not to fund those jobs back. It was to lower the budget line to match the emptier building — and to call that a saving.

That is what 213 members voted for. The staffing losses stop being an emergency and become the new baseline.

The man who quit over this said so at the time

None of this was a surprise to anyone in the building.

Jim Jones, who ran the FDA's food division, resigned in February 2025. His resignation letter named the number: "The indiscriminate firing of 89 staff in the Human Foods Program is beyond short sighted." He wrote that the people fired "represent the future of the agency," and that staying on would be "fruitless" given the administration's "disdain for the very people necessary to implement" its own agenda.

Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group called his departure "a huge step backward for the FDA and the safety of our food."

The consequences reached specific places. On April 21, 2025, the FDA's Division of Dairy Safety suspended its proficiency testing program for Grade A raw milk and finished dairy products, because its Moffett Center laboratory was "no longer able to provide laboratory support for proficiency testing and data analysis." Grade A milk kept being tested. What stopped was the federal government's annual check that the labs doing the testing are getting it right — the same staffing problem, one more thing the government stopped doing.

The 188 who voted yes

Everyone below has a page on this site and is recorded voting Yea on H.R. 8646. All but one are Republicans — the clerk records Kevin Kiley of California as an independent. Grouped by state:

Alabama (5) — Barry Moore, Dale Strong, Gary Palmer, Mike Rogers, Robert Aderholt
Alaska (1) — Nick Begich
Arizona (6) — Abraham Hamadeh, Andy Biggs, David Schweikert, Eli Crane, Juan Ciscomani, Paul Gosar
Arkansas (4) — Bruce Westerman, French Hill, Rick Crawford, Steve Womack
California (6) — David Valadao, Jay Obernolte, Ken Calvert, Kevin Kiley, Vince Fong, Young Kim
Colorado (4) — Gabe Evans, Jeff Crank, Jeff Hurd, Lauren Boebert
Florida (16) — Aaron Bean, Anna Paulina Luna, Brian Mast, Byron Donalds, Carlos Gimenez, Cory Mills, Gus Bilirakis, Jimmy Patronis, John Rutherford, Kat Cammack, Laurel Lee, Maria Elvira Salazar, Mario Diaz-Balart, Mike Haridopolos, Randy Fine, Scott Franklin
Georgia (7) — Andrew Clyde, Austin Scott, Brian Jack, Clay Fuller, Mike Collins, Rich McCormick, Rick Allen
Idaho (2) — Mike Simpson, Russ Fulcher
Illinois (3) — Darin LaHood, Mary Miller, Mike Bost
Indiana (7) — Erin Houchin, Jefferson Shreve, Jim Baird, Mark Messmer, Marlin Stutzman, Rudy Yakym, Victoria Spartz
Iowa (3) — Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Zach Nunn
Kansas (3) — Derek Schmidt, Ron Estes, Tracey Mann
Kentucky (4) — Andy Barr, Brett Guthrie, Hal Rogers, James Comer
Louisiana (4) — Clay Higgins, Julia Letlow, Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise
Maryland (1) — Andy Harris
Michigan (7) — Bill Huizenga, Jack Bergman, John James, John Moolenaar, Lisa McClain, Tim Walberg, Tom Barrett
Minnesota (4) — Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach, Pete Stauber, Tom Emmer
Mississippi (3) — Michael Guest, Mike Ezell, Trent Kelly
Missouri (5) — Ann Wagner, Bob Onder, Eric Burlison, Jason Smith, Mark Alford
Montana (1) — Troy Downing
Nebraska (2) — Adrian Smith, Mike Flood
New Jersey (2) — Chris Smith, Jeff Van Drew
New York (6) — Andrew Garbarino, Claudia Tenney, Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota, Nick Langworthy, Nicole Malliotakis
North Carolina (10) — Addison McDowell, Brad Knott, Chuck Edwards, David Rouzer, Greg Murphy, Mark Harris, Pat Harrigan, Richard Hudson, Tim Moore, Virginia Foxx
North Dakota (1) — Julie Fedorchak
Ohio (10) — Bob Latta, David Joyce, David Taylor, Jim Jordan, Max Miller, Michael Rulli, Mike Carey, Mike Turner, Troy Balderson, Warren Davidson
Oklahoma (5) — Frank Lucas, Josh Brecheen, Kevin Hern, Stephanie Bice, Tom Cole
Oregon (1) — Cliff Bentz
Pennsylvania (8) — Dan Meuser, Glenn Thompson, Guy Reschenthaler, John Joyce, Lloyd Smucker, Mike Kelly, Ryan Mackenzie, Scott Perry
South Carolina (4) — Joe Wilson, Russell Fry, Sheri Biggs, William Timmons
Tennessee (8) — Andy Ogles, Chuck Fleischmann, David Kustoff, Diana Harshbarger, John Rose, Matt Van Epps, Scott DesJarlais, Tim Burchett
Texas (17) — August Pfluger, Beth Van Duyne, Brandon Gill, Brian Babin, Craig Goldman, Jake Ellzey, John Carter, Keith Self, Lance Gooden, Michael Cloud, Monica De La Cruz, Nathaniel Moran, Pat Fallon, Pete Sessions, Randy Weber, Roger Williams, Ronny Jackson
Utah (3) — Blake Moore, Celeste Maloy, Mike Kennedy
Virginia (5) — Ben Cline, Jen Kiggans, John McGuire, Morgan Griffith, Rob Wittman
Washington (1) — Michael Baumgartner
West Virginia (2) — Carol Miller, Riley Moore
Wisconsin (6) — Bryan Steil, Derrick Van Orden, Glenn Grothman, Scott Fitzgerald, Tom Tiffany, Tony Wied
Wyoming (1) — Harriet Hageman

The four who voted no

Only five House Republicans in the entire chamber voted against this bill. Four of them have pages here, and they deserve to be named for it:

Brian Fitzpatrick (Pennsylvania)
Rob Bresnahan (Pennsylvania)
Tom McClintock (California)
Greg Steube (Florida)

The fifth was Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who has no page on this site. Their reasons were not identical and several are fiscal conservatives who vote against spending bills as a matter of course — but on this roll call, they are the Republicans who did not vote to bank the losses.

Four more Republicans did not vote at all: Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, Tom Kean of New Jersey, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, and Chip Roy of Texas. Not voting is not a no, and none of them are on either list above.

What the record shows

Complaints about contaminated meat, poultry and eggs climbed nearly 40% in one year, to 2,016, after the FDA shed nearly 4,300 employees and the federal meat inspection service about 900. On June 4, 2026, the House passed a spending bill that comes in $380 million under last year and, by the Appropriations Committee's own description, trims salaries and expenses "to account for staffing reductions" rather than restoring them. It passed 213-210. Two hundred and eight Republicans voted for it, 187 of them people we track — 188 counting Kevin Kiley of California, whom the clerk records as an independent. Five Republicans voted no.

How they voted

The official record: Roll Call 205, H.R. 8646, 119th Congress, 2nd Session, June 4, 2026 — On Passage, Passed 213-210. Bill details from the House Appropriations Committee. Staffing figures from UpNorthNews.

Dan Sullivan Sold Up to $100,000 of His Family's Stock After Closed-Door COVID Briefings. Two Weeks Later It Fell by a Third.

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 07:28:03 +0000

In early 2020, before most Americans understood what was coming, U.S. senators were getting closed-door briefings from federal health officials about COVID-19. Dan Sullivan was in those briefings. On social media, he was telling Alaskans not to panic and pointing the blame at China.

On February 27, 2020, he sold up to $100,000 in stock.

About two weeks later, the pandemic shut down the global economy and that stock — RPM International, the multi-billion-dollar chemical company his family owns — fell by roughly a third.

That is one of four suspiciously timed trades identified in a new review of Sullivan's Senate financial disclosures by The Alaska Current.

Four sales, four convenient moments

Here is what the disclosure records show, according to that review:

February 27, 2020 — sold up to $100,000 in RPM stock, after meeting with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials about COVID-19 preparedness, and at a time when RPM itself was publicly signaling steadiness or growth. The crash came about two weeks later.
September 25, 2018 — sold up to $15,000 in RPM shares one week before the company released weaker-than-expected earnings that pushed the stock down.
November 30, 2022 — sold up to $50,000 in RPM stock one month before the company reported "tepid" earnings, sending the price down about 6%.
March and May 2018 — two RPM sales that were not officially reported until late July 2018, well past the 45-day deadline the law allows.

Sullivan has sold roughly $800,000 worth of RPM stock during his time in the Senate. He still holds up to $5 million of it.

The 2020 briefings were not a secret scandal that only he had

Sullivan was not alone. In April 2020 the Campaign Legal Center reviewed congressional stock trading in the weeks before the crash and counted at least 227 Senate transactions, worth up to $98.3 million, by 12 senators. Sullivan is one of the 12 named in its table, with two transactions ranging up to $200,000. CLC accused none of them of insider trading — it wrote that these transactions "have not been tied to allegations of insider trading," unlike Richard Burr's — and argued that the volume of it was the problem on its own.

What the Campaign Legal Center's report did not capture is the part that makes his case worse than most: the stock he was selling was his own family's company.

RPM International was founded by Sullivan's grandfather. It is run today by his brother, Frank C. Sullivan, as chairman and CEO. We've written before about what else that company has done — RPM paid nearly $61 million in 2013 to settle charges that it cheated the federal government, and kept winning federal contracts anyway, while Sullivan profited the whole time.

So the man selling ahead of the crash was not an ordinary investor reading the news. He was a sitting senator, in closed-door briefings from federal health officials, holding up to $5 million of stock in a company his brother runs.

He was already caught once, and used the same excuse twice

Sullivan was publicly identified in 2022 as having violated the STOCK Act — the 2012 transparency law that requires members of Congress to report their trades within 45 days, so the public can see them while they still matter.

His explanation then was that his stock managers hadn't told him about the trades in time.

The new review shows he had used that same excuse before. The March and May 2018 RPM sales weren't reported until late July 2018, and in a comment attached to one of those late filings Sullivan again said his stock managers didn't notify him until after the deadline had passed.

Two sets of late filings, four years apart, same explanation. The law does not have an exception for that. Members of Congress are responsible for their own disclosures — that is the entire design. He is not the only one who has tested it: Susan Collins helped write the STOCK Act and then failed to report up to $395,000 in trades, and Sheri Biggs was months late on more than 170 trades worth up to $13.6 million.

The rest of Alaska's delegation doesn't do this

The comparison inside his own state is the sharpest part of the record.

Over the past decade, Sullivan is the busiest stock trader in Alaska's congressional delegation — an estimated $2 million in trades while in office. Republican Rep. Nick Begich, in his first term, has reported up to $550,000 in transactions, including up to a $500,000 investment in a venture capital fund.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, former Rep. Mary Peltola, and the late Rep. Don Young all reported no trades at all while in office.

Sullivan's own assets, meanwhile, have grown to a disclosed range of $4.1 million to $12.3 million. Federal disclosure forms let filers report ranges instead of exact numbers, which is why every figure here is a "up to."

His business dealings are now a central issue in his re-election. Peltola, who finished seven points ahead of him in Alaska's open Senate primary, is running an ad whose line is that "Dan Sullivan is really good at looking out for Dan Sullivan."

What the filings show

Dan Sullivan's Senate disclosures record four well-timed sales of stock in the company his brother runs — including up to $100,000 unloaded on February 27, 2020, after closed-door COVID-19 briefings and about two weeks before that stock fell by roughly a third. Two more sales landed just ahead of disappointing earnings reports. Two others were filed months late, and when he was caught he blamed his stock managers, the same explanation he gave when he was caught again in 2022. He has traded an estimated $2 million while in office. Three of the four other Alaskans who have held those seats over the same period traded nothing.

Source

Matt Acuña Buxton, Dan Sullivan's time in the US Senate has been marked by well-timed stock trades, The Alaska Current, August 27, 2026. Photo: Mariam Zuhaib / AP.

Twelve Republicans We Track Told Voters High Prices Aren't Really a Problem. One Said to Pick a Different Protein.

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 07:08:19 +0000

Groceries cost more. Gas costs about a dollar more per gallon than it did when Trump took office. Only 16 percent of Americans think the country is headed in the right direction.

This week NOTUS published a column by Dana Milbank collecting what Republican candidates have been telling voters about all of this. The answer, over and over, was some version of: you're wrong, or you're whining, or you should try harder.

Twelve of the Republicans he quoted on the cost of living have report cards on this site. Here is what each of them said.

"You have so many proteins to choose from"

Cindy Hyde-Smith is a senator from Mississippi. She is also a cattle rancher and sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee — which is to say, beef prices are her actual subject.

In February 2026 a host at the Gulf Coast station WLOX asked her what Republicans were doing about the cost of living, and specifically about the price of beef. Her answer, as the Mississippi Free Press reported, was: "You have so many proteins to choose from." She added that all commodities go through peaks and valleys.

The advice to people who could no longer afford meat was to buy different meat.

"The Democrats invented this term 'affordability'"

Derrick Van Orden represents western Wisconsin. On Fox Business in July 2026 he said the quiet part out loud: the Democrats invented the word.

Not that affordability is improving. That it isn't a real thing.

"Earn more"

Jon Husted was appointed to Ohio's Senate seat at the start of 2025. His advice to Ohioans struggling with affordability was two words: earn more.

In a January 16 interview with WOWO radio in Fort Wayne, discussing a bill he wrote to let states impose stricter work requirements on public assistance, Husted said, "Our work ethic is broken." He has also said that people living in poverty are "not very experienced at navigating the real world."

This week the Ohio Capital Journal reported that his wife held Intel stock while he worked to push federal money to the company.

"Gasoline prices are down 40 percent"

Michael Whatley is the Republican Senate nominee in North Carolina. In June 2025, when he was chairman of the Republican National Committee, he told a New York State Conservative Party dinner: "Gasoline prices are down 40 percent. Grocery prices are down … and inflation is dramatically down. Everything [Trump] said he was going to do, he has done."

Gas averaged $4.12 a gallon in April and sits around there now — roughly a dollar above where it was when Trump took office. The 40 percent claim was not true when he made it, either. In June 2025 the national average for regular gasoline was about $3.15 a gallon — slightly more than the $3.11 it cost the week Trump was sworn in.

Whatley is the same candidate who holds Duke Energy stock while the utility pursues a rate increase on North Carolina customers.

"Gas prices are at five-year lows"

Ashley Hinson is the Republican Senate nominee in Iowa. In an opinion column in January she wrote that "Under President Trump's leadership, America is back on the right track," that "Gas prices are at five-year lows," and that paychecks "finally go further at the grocery store."

By the time Milbank was writing, gas was about a dollar higher than at the start of the administration. Hinson's own money helps explain the enthusiasm: she has taken $64,500 from oil and gas companies and voted six times to keep the Iran war going — the war that pushed pump prices up.

The rest of the list

Mike Lawler, of New York's Hudson Valley, told NewsNation last year that the long-term benefits of Trump's tariffs were worth "a little bit of short-term pain." On CNN in July he said eliminating the threat from Iran was worth it — meaning worth the higher gas prices.
Mike Rogers (MI) is the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan. At a town hall in Metamora in September 2025 he mocked what he expected to hear "when the Democrats start getting at us" over prices: "Oh my gosh, coffee went up."
Zach Nunn represents central Iowa. In Politico in May he said inflation driven by the Iran war was "overhyped, candidly, by the media."
David Valadao represents California's Central Valley. He told a local station in March that "to pretend that Iran is the first reason why fuel prices are going up is false."
Dan Sullivan is a senator from Alaska. In February he still thought things were going in the "right direction." In May he sent out a fundraising email asking for donations in part to "pay for gas as we visit isolated rural areas of Alaska."
Mike Collins is the Republican Senate nominee in Georgia. As recently as June he still believed "the economy is moving."
Jim Desmond is a Republican running for the House in California. In a March interview on Real America's Voice he said of high oil prices: "No pain, no gain."

What they have in common

None of these are gaffes in the ordinary sense. A gaffe is a slip. This is a position, and it is remarkably consistent across twelve people in ten states: the prices are fine, or the pain is worth it, or the problem is the person complaining.

Nine of the twelve currently serve in Congress, and their voting records are part of why the prices are what they are. Every one of the twelve has a record on this site, and the pattern is the same — the Iran war that moved gas prices, the tariffs that moved grocery prices, the Medicaid and food-assistance cuts that moved what families have left over.

There is one honest note in the whole collection, and it is Dan Sullivan's fundraising email. When he was talking to voters in February, things were headed in the right direction. When he was asking his donors for money in May, gas was expensive enough to itemize.

The short version

Twelve Republicans with report cards on this site — three sitting senators, four House members, four Senate nominees and a House candidate — publicly told voters that the cost-of-living crisis was overhyped, invented, worth it, or their own fault. A senator on the Agriculture Committee told people priced out of beef to choose another protein. A Senate nominee said gasoline was down 40 percent at a moment when the pump price had not fallen at all, and it is about a dollar a gallon higher now than when this administration started. And a senator who said things were going in the right direction in February asked donors three months later to help cover his gas.

Source

Dana Milbank, NOTUS: "The Republican Midterm Message on Inflation? Stop Whining!". Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AP.

Fourteen Republican Senators We Track Confirmed RFK Jr. After He Said His Samoa Trip Had 'Nothing to Do With Vaccines.' He Had Already Written the Prime Minister Asking to Study Samoa's MMR Vaccines.

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 07:08:16 +0000

In late January 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sat in front of two Senate committees and needed Republican votes to become health secretary. One of the questions senators kept coming back to was about a trip.

In 2019, Kennedy — then the chairman of an anti-vaccine nonprofit — flew to Samoa. Months later, the island nation had a measles outbreak that killed 83 people, most of them children under five. Senators wanted to know what he had been doing there.

He told them it had nothing to do with vaccines.

Asked by Sen. Ron Wyden, he said: "I went there, nothing to do with vaccines. I went there to introduce a medical informatics system that would digitalize records in Samoa and make health delivery much more efficient." The next day Sen. Ed Markey asked the same thing. "My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines," Kennedy said.

On August 27, 2026, The Associated Press and The Guardian published a letter that Kennedy wrote to Samoa's prime minister on January 20, 2019 — before the trip, on the letterhead of his anti-vaccine group. In it he asked to send his team to Samoa to run a "detailed health informatics assessment" of "what happened with your MMR vaccines." He used the word vaccine or vaccination eight times.

The prime minister wrote back a month later and welcomed the visit, saying Samoa would benefit from an "independent health assessment of our MMR Vaccines."

What Kennedy did not tell the senators

The backstory matters, because the letter fits into it exactly.

In July 2018, two Samoan children died after being given an MMR shot that had been mixed incorrectly. Two nurses were criminally charged and later pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Samoa stopped all vaccinations for ten months while it sorted it out. Vaccination rates collapsed.

Kennedy's organization, Children's Health Defense, started contacting the Samoan government during that shutdown. Kennedy's letter told the prime minister he suspected the deaths might have come from problems with the vaccine itself — with particular batches — and offered to have his team check.

By the time Kennedy actually arrived in May and June of 2019, Samoa's own top health official had already announced the answer: human error, not the vaccine. Kennedy went anyway, and while he was there he met with anti-vaccine activists. Months later, with vaccination rates still dangerously low, measles broke out and swept the country.

Kennedy's department told the AP the visit "was unrelated to vaccines" and called any suggestion that he lied "outright defamatory." Kennedy was not under oath at his confirmation hearings. Knowingly giving materially false testimony to Congress is a crime anyway, sworn or not, though the AP notes it is rarely prosecuted.

The fourteen votes

On February 13, 2025, the Senate confirmed Kennedy 52 to 48. Every yes vote was a Republican. Mitch McConnell was the only Republican to vote no.

Fourteen of those yes votes came from Republicans we track:

Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, now running for governor
Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia
Susan Collins of Maine
Tom Cotton of Arkansas
Bill Hagerty of Tennessee
Jon Husted of Ohio
Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi
Roger Marshall of Kansas
Ashley Moody of Florida
Pete Ricketts of Nebraska
Jim Risch of Idaho
Mike Rounds of South Dakota
Dan Sullivan of Alaska
Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, now running for governor

Thirteen of these fourteen voted again this month, at 4:17 in the morning, to make Trump's personal lawyer the attorney general. Collins was the one who did not. Confirmation votes are where a senator's private assurances meet the public record, and the assurances keep losing.

What Susan Collins was promised

Two days before the vote, Collins told Maine Public why she was voting yes. Kennedy had assured her the polio vaccine works and that he would not restrict access to it. He had promised to back research on a Lyme disease vaccine. He had said he would revisit the administration's cuts to research funding that Maine labs depend on. And Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana doctor who chairs the Senate health committee, had assured her that the committee would hold regular oversight hearings on whatever Kennedy did.

"Based on all of that, I reached the decision to vote for him," Collins said.

She also explained the underlying rule she was following: "In general, I give deference to presidents to build their own team, whether they are Democratic presidents or Republican presidents." She has voted against roughly ten of nearly 200 nominees in her career. More than 180 Maine doctors had signed a national letter, endorsed by about 22,000 physicians, calling Kennedy "actively dangerous" to public health. She voted for him anyway.

That is the same senator the Bangor Daily News found had cast 200 deciding votes in her Senate career. Maine Democrats count 19 of them as deciding votes for Trump nominees, and none against one.

What happened to the promises

Cassidy's stated reason for voting yes was that Kennedy had pledged to leave the government's vaccine advisory committee "without changes." Once in office, Kennedy removed all 17 members of that committee and named his own advisers.

By August of 2025, the Trump administration had fired the CDC director three weeks into the job, after she reportedly refused to sign off on vaccine changes. Collins said she was "alarmed." She said she did not agree with Kennedy's approach to the vaccine committee, which she said "is likely to weaken the independent and professional recommendations of the committee." Then she added: "But, I do believe that he has some valid points about ultra-processed foods and their impact on obesity and the health of many Americans."

Her proposed remedy was oversight. Cassidy's was oversight. Neither of them has a vote to take back.

By June of 2026, Cassidy was on CBS saying flatly that the commitments made to him had been violated, and accusing Kennedy of building public health "upon a foundation of lies."

Roger Marshall celebrated instead. Marshall is a physician, and on the day of the vote he put out a statement calling it "a great day for America, particularly for our nation's children" and thanking the "Make America Healthy Again movement" for pushing Kennedy "across the finish line." He is also the senator who spread COVID misinformation for years and is still saying it.

The MMR vaccine is now the target

Here is what the Samoa letter is worth reading next to.

On August 10, 2026, with Kennedy standing beside him, President Trump signed an executive order telling federal officials to draw up plans, within 90 days, for splitting combination childhood shots into separate injections — the MMR shot specifically — and for spreading vaccine appointments further apart.

There are no separate measles, mumps or rubella vaccines sold in the United States. Every version the FDA has approved is a combination shot, and has been since the 1970s. Breaking the MMR apart would turn two doctor visits into six, and would require drug companies to spend years and tens of millions of dollars on new studies and new factories to make shots nobody has asked for.

"To date, there has been no published scientific evidence that shows any benefit in separating the combination MMR vaccine into three individual shots," Merck said.

Dr. Anna Durbin of Johns Hopkins put the consequence plainly: "It's going to be less convenient, more expensive and you're going to have fewer people getting vaccinated."

Meanwhile, the CDC's own count says the United States has confirmed 2,777 measles cases in 2026 as of August 20 — more than the 2,289 recorded in all of 2025, with four months of the year still to run. Ninety-four percent of this year's cases are in people who were unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown. Kindergarten MMR coverage has slid from 95.2 percent in the 2019–20 school year to 92.4 percent in 2025–26, which the CDC estimates leaves about 280,000 kindergartners unprotected.

This is the same secretary who headlined a May fundraiser in San Antonio for a Republican congressional candidate, six weeks after a judge ruled his vaccine rollbacks unlawful. And it is the same political movement that produced a nominee for governor of Florida who, asked directly whether parents should vaccinate their children against measles, answered "No".

Who would have to investigate

Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, says he will press Republicans to refer the matter to the Justice Department, and that he will pursue it if Democrats take the Senate this fall. "There are consequences for lying to Congress," he said.

Attorneys told the AP that lawmakers could use Kennedy's statements as the basis for hearings, an investigation, or an impeachment inquiry. The AP also noted the obvious: none of that is likely to happen in a Republican Congress aligned with the administration.

That is not an abstract institutional problem. It is a decision that belongs to specific people. Collins sits on the health committee that was promised regular oversight hearings on exactly this. Capito, Cotton, Hagerty, Husted, Hyde-Smith, Marshall, Moody, Ricketts, Risch, Rounds and Sullivan all still hold the seats they voted from, and any of them can ask for a hearing.

What the record shows

Fourteen Republican senators we track voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after he told Congress his 2019 Samoa trip had nothing to do with vaccines. A letter he wrote before that trip, obtained by the AP and the Guardian, asked Samoa's prime minister to let his team study the country's MMR vaccines and used the word vaccine or vaccination eight times. Once in office he removed all 17 members of the vaccine advisory committee whose survival was the stated condition of Bill Cassidy's vote, and this month he stood beside the president as Trump ordered planning to break the MMR shot into three. There have been 2,777 confirmed measles cases in the United States so far this year, more than in all of 2025, and the AP reports that an investigation is unlikely in a Republican Congress.

Source

Ali Swenson, "Exclusive: RFK Jr. said a Samoa trip had nothing to do with vaccines. New documents refute that," The Associated Press, August 27, 2026. Photo: Misiona Simo / Samoa Observer via AP.

One Hundred Nine Republicans We Track Signed a Bill to Impose Right-to-Work on Every State. Twenty of Them Come From States That Don't Have It.

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 13:15:56 +0000

"Right-to-work" has always been a decision each state makes for itself. Some states passed it. Some never did. Two have put one on the books and then, in the last decade, taken it back off.

There is a bill sitting in the House right now that would end that argument by taking the decision away from all fifty of them.

It's called the National Right-to-Work Act, H.R. 1232. It has 124 cosponsors. One hundred eight of them are Republicans we track on this site — and so is the man who wrote it.

What the bill actually does

Strip out the legal language and it's one move.

Right now, federal law lets a union and an employer write a contract saying that everyone the contract covers helps pay for it. Not that you have to join the union, and not that you have to agree with its politics — just that if the union negotiates your wages, your overtime, your safety rules and your grievance process, you chip in for the cost of that.

H.R. 1232 deletes that permission — out of the National Labor Relations Act, which covers most private workers, and out of the Railway Labor Act, which covers railroads and airlines. It doesn't preempt state law or overrule anybody's legislature. It does something simpler: it makes those agreements illegal everywhere, so no state's answer matters anymore.

The bill's own stated purpose is "to preserve and protect the free choice of individual employees." The free choice it protects is the choice to take everything a union bargains for you and pay nothing toward it. Do that at scale and the union runs out of money to bargain with. That is not a side effect. That is the mechanism.

Joe Wilson wrote it

Joe Wilson of South Carolina is the sponsor. He introduced it on February 12, 2025, with 74 original cosponsors already attached, and it went to the Education and Workforce Committee, where it has sat ever since.

South Carolina is already a right-to-work state, and 2.7% of its workers belonged to a union in 2025 — among the lowest rates in the country. Wilson is not fighting for something his own constituents are being denied. He already has it at home. The bill is about the other states.

Missouri voted this down by 35 points. All three Missouri signers went ahead anyway.

In 2017, Missouri Republicans passed a right-to-work law. Unions gathered signatures to put it to a public vote before it ever took effect.

On August 7, 2018, Missouri voters repealed it 67.5% to 32.5%. Not a legislature, not a court. The voters, by almost 35 points.

Mark Alford, Eric Burlison and Bob Onder all represent that state in Congress. All three signed H.R. 1232 as original cosponsors, on the day it was introduced.

Missourians were asked this exact question and gave an answer that was not close. Their congressmen's response was to sign a bill that would make the answer irrelevant.

Michigan repealed it. Three Michigan Republicans want it back — from Washington.

Michigan passed right-to-work in 2012. Eleven years later it changed its mind: in March 2023 the legislature repealed the law and Governor Whitmer signed it, and the repeal took effect on February 13, 2024. Michigan was the first state in decades to repeal a right-to-work law — the last was Indiana, in 1965.

John Moolenaar signed H.R. 1232 as an original cosponsor. John James and Tom Barrett signed on after.

All three represent a state that tried right-to-work, lived with it for a decade, and voted to end it. The bill they signed would put it back — permanently, and without Michigan getting a say the next time.

Ohio said no in 2011. Jim Jordan signed anyway.

Ohio has never had right-to-work, and the last time Ohio Republicans came for collective bargaining, it did not go well for them. Senate Bill 5 would have limited bargaining for the state's 400,000 public workers. On November 8, 2011, Ohio voters repealed it 61% to 39% — a campaign carried by firefighters, police officers and teachers.

Jim Jordan is Ohio's signature on this bill.

It is worth knowing who funds that position. Jordan's donors include $32,500 from Associated Builders and Contractors, the anti-union construction lobby — which has business before the Oversight Committee he sits on.

Pennsylvania sent five signatures on a law it never wanted

Pennsylvania is not a right-to-work state and never has been. Five Pennsylvania Republicans put their names on the bill that would make it one: Scott Perry, Mike Kelly, John Joyce, Glenn Thompson and Lloyd Smucker.

They are joined by signers from seven more states that have declined to pass right-to-work on their own: Cliff Bentz of Oregon, Mary Miller of Illinois, Jay Obernolte and Ken Calvert of California, Jeff Crank of Colorado, Troy Downing of Montana, Michael Baumgartner of Washington, and Nick Begich of Alaska.

Twenty members, eleven states, one bill to overrule all of them at once.

What it costs a paycheck

The argument for right-to-work is always freedom. The measurable result is smaller paychecks.

An August 2014 study by researchers at the University of Illinois and the Illinois Economic Policy Institute found that, controlling for other variables, right-to-work laws reduced workers' wages and salaries by 3.2% on average. The same study found the laws cut union membership by almost 10%, and reduced the share of workers with health insurance by 3.5% and with a pension by 3%. Those figures were reported this month by Civic Media and the Milwaukee Courier in their look at Wisconsin's own right-to-work record.

That last number is the one that compounds. Wisconsin's experience is the clearest case: after Act 10 and a 2015 right-to-work law, the state lost about 137,000 union members between 2010 and 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This is not a one-off

H.R. 1232 has been filed in Congress after Congress, and this version has not moved out of the Education and Workforce Committee since February 2025. It is easy to write it off as a message bill.

Don't. Look at what these same members do when a labor question actually reaches the floor. When a bipartisan bill to restore collective bargaining to more than a million federal workers came up, it passed the House 231–195 — and 195 Republicans voted no. The Senate has sat on it since.

And this is the third time we've had to write about the same group. We've covered the Republicans with the worst records on workers and unions, and the ones who voted against the CHIPS Act and then took credit for the factories. Different bills, overlapping signatures, one direction of travel.

One hundred nine Republicans we track have already told you where they stand on this, and one hundred five of them are still running. It's in writing, with their names on it, filed with the Clerk of the House. Missouri asked its voters and got 67% the other way. Michigan tried it and undid it.

The bill is still sitting there, waiting for a Congress willing to move it.

Sources

H.R. 1232 — National Right-to-Work Act, sponsor and full cosponsor list, 119th Congress
Full text of H.R. 1232 as introduced — U.S. Government Publishing Office
Missouri Proposition A, Right to Work Referendum (August 2018) — Ballotpedia
Michigan's repeal of right-to-work — Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity
Ohio Senate Bill 5 Veto Referendum, Issue 2 (2011) — Ballotpedia

One in Every 14 Union Members in America Just Lost Their Contract by Executive Order. 195 House Republicans Voted to Keep It That Way.

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:25:23 +0000

More than a million federal workers lost the right to negotiate their own contracts in the space of five months, and it happened by memo.

In March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order using a rarely-used national security exception in a 1978 law to strip federal workers of collective bargaining — the right to negotiate as a group over pay, schedules, staffing and safety. On August 28, 2025 he signed a second order widening it further.

Together the two orders ended collective bargaining for more than a million federal workers. Counted alongside an earlier decision to end bargaining at the Transportation Security Administration, the Center for American Progress puts the total at 84.4 percent of the unionized federal workforce, or one out of every 14 workers in the entire country covered by a union contract. Federal News Network put the reach of the two orders alone at "an estimated two-thirds of the federal workforce".

Congress had a clean chance to reverse it. A bipartisan bill to give those workers their contracts back passed the House on December 11, 2025.

195 Republicans voted no. The Senate has not touched it since.

What is actually being taken away

"Collective bargaining" is a bloodless phrase for a very specific thing.

It is the reason a nurse at a VA hospital can say "this unit is short-staffed and it isn't safe" without her manager being the only person who decides what happens to her next. It is the reason a shift assignment or a schedule change is something you negotiate rather than something you're handed. It is a written agreement, and a process for enforcing it, that exists whether or not the person above you is having a good day.

Cancel the contract and every one of those questions goes back to being settled by management alone — no agreement to point to, no process to invoke.

That is what more than a million workers lost, and what the House voted in December to give back.

The VA has now tried to cancel the same contract three times in one year

On Friday, August 7, 2026, a federal judge in Rhode Island had to tell the Department of Veterans Affairs the same thing she had already told it twice before: you cannot cancel your workers' union contract.

The contract covers about 320,000 VA employees — the nurses, claims processors, housekeepers and schedulers who take care of veterans. U.S. District Court Judge Melissa DuBose said the VA's plan to end it was "in direct contravention" of her orders. The department had informed the union on July 24 that it intended to terminate the agreement on August 8.

Think about what that means. A federal agency has been ordered by a court, three separate times, to stop doing something — and it keeps trying anyway. The only thing standing between 320,000 workers and the loss of their contract is one judge's patience.

And TSA screeners got the same treatment

This was never limited to the VA. On December 12, 2025, TSA announced it would tear up the contract covering 47,000 airport screeners — the people who run security at every airport in the country. A federal judge had blocked exactly that back in June, finding the effort was aimed at "punishing" the union. Government Executive called the announcement an apparent violation of a court order that had been in place since June.

The pattern is the same everywhere: cancel the contract, lose in court, wait, try again.

That pattern is itself the strategy. Every round costs the union money and staff time it would otherwise spend representing its members, and the agency only has to win once.

The House had a bill to end it permanently

It was called the Protect America's Workforce Act, H.R. 2550. It did one simple thing: give federal workers their union back. It wiped out the executive order and barred agencies from tearing up contracts that existed before it.

It was not a party-line bill. It was led by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, and Jared Golden, a Maine Democrat — Golden introduced it and Fitzpatrick was its first Republican cosponsor, on the day it was filed.

Republican leadership never scheduled a vote on it. So rank-and-file members went around them, using something called a discharge petition — a rule that forces a bill onto the floor if a majority of the House, 218 members, signs their name to it in public. The petition hit 218 in November 2025.

On December 11, 2025, the bill passed 231 to 195.

Every Democrat who was present voted for it. Twenty Republicans joined them. 195 Republicans voted against it — including Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who voted down a bill their own conference member co-led.

The 20 Republicans who voted yes

They deserve to be named, because they prove the rest had a choice:

Don Bacon (NE), Mike Bost (IL), Rob Bresnahan (PA), Gabe Evans (CO), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Andrew Garbarino (NY), David Joyce (OH), Tom Kean Jr. (NJ), Nick LaLota (NY), Mike Lawler (NY), Ryan Mackenzie (PA), Nicole Malliotakis (NY), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA), Zach Nunn (IA), Chris Smith (NJ), Pete Stauber (MN), Mike Turner (OH), David Valadao (CA), Jeff Van Drew (NJ) and Derrick Van Orden (WI).

Twenty Republicans looked at this bill and decided their constituents mattered more than the White House. That is the whole point. Nobody who voted no can say the party made them do it.

Being on the right side of one vote does not settle the account, either — and if you're going to judge these members, judge them on the procedural votes too, not the press releases. Pete Stauber voted for this bill, then six months later voted twice against his own union bill on the procedural votes that decided whether it would reach the floor, then put out a press release taking credit when it passed anyway.

The 195 who voted no

169 of them have a report card on this site. Here they are, by state:

Alabama — Robert Aderholt, Barry Moore, Gary Palmer, Mike Rogers, Dale Strong

Alaska — Nick Begich

Arizona — Andy Biggs, Juan Ciscomani, Eli Crane, Paul Gosar, Abraham Hamadeh, David Schweikert

Arkansas — Rick Crawford, French Hill, Bruce Westerman, Steve Womack

California — Ken Calvert, Vince Fong, Kevin Kiley, Young Kim, Tom McClintock, Jay Obernolte

Colorado — Lauren Boebert, Jeff Crank, Jeff Hurd

Florida — Aaron Bean, Gus Bilirakis, Kat Cammack, Randy Fine, Scott Franklin, Mike Haridopolos, Laurel Lee, Anna Paulina Luna, Brian Mast, Cory Mills, Jimmy Patronis, Greg Steube

Georgia — Rick Allen, Andrew Clyde, Mike Collins, Brian Jack, Rich McCormick, Austin Scott

Idaho — Russ Fulcher, Mike Simpson

Illinois — Darin LaHood, Mary Miller

Indiana — Jim Baird, Erin Houchin, Mark Messmer, Jefferson Shreve, Victoria Spartz, Marlin Stutzman, Rudy Yakym

Iowa — Ashley Hinson

Kansas — Ron Estes, Tracey Mann, Derek Schmidt

Kentucky — Andy Barr, James Comer, Brett Guthrie, Hal Rogers

Louisiana — Clay Higgins, Mike Johnson, Julia Letlow, Steve Scalise

Maryland — Andy Harris

Michigan — Tom Barrett, Jack Bergman, Bill Huizenga, John James, Lisa McClain, John Moolenaar, Tim Walberg

Minnesota — Tom Emmer, Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach

Mississippi — Mike Ezell, Michael Guest, Trent Kelly

Missouri — Mark Alford, Eric Burlison, Bob Onder, Jason Smith, Ann Wagner

Montana — Troy Downing

Nebraska — Mike Flood, Adrian Smith

New York — Nick Langworthy, Claudia Tenney

North Carolina — Chuck Edwards, Virginia Foxx, Pat Harrigan, Mark Harris, Richard Hudson, Brad Knott, Addison McDowell, Tim Moore, Greg Murphy, David Rouzer

North Dakota — Julie Fedorchak

Ohio — Troy Balderson, Mike Carey, Warren Davidson, Jim Jordan, Bob Latta, Max Miller, Michael Rulli, David Taylor

Oklahoma — Stephanie Bice, Josh Brecheen, Tom Cole, Kevin Hern, Frank Lucas

Oregon — Cliff Bentz

Pennsylvania — John Joyce, Mike Kelly, Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler, Lloyd Smucker, Glenn Thompson

South Carolina — Sheri Biggs, Russell Fry, Ralph Norman, William Timmons, Joe Wilson

Tennessee — Tim Burchett, Scott DesJarlais, Matt Van Epps, Chuck Fleischmann, Diana Harshbarger, David Kustoff, Andy Ogles, John Rose

Texas — Brian Babin, John Carter, Michael Cloud, Monica De La Cruz, Beth Van Duyne, Jake Ellzey, Pat Fallon, Brandon Gill, Craig Goldman, Lance Gooden, Ronny Jackson, Nathaniel Moran, August Pfluger, Keith Self, Pete Sessions, Randy Weber, Roger Williams

Utah — Mike Kennedy, Celeste Maloy, Blake Moore

Virginia — Ben Cline, Morgan Griffith, Jen Kiggans, John McGuire, Rob Wittman

Washington — Michael Baumgartner

West Virginia — Carol Miller, Riley Moore

Wisconsin — Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman, Bryan Steil, Tom Tiffany, Tony Wied

Wyoming — Harriet Hageman

The Senate has done nothing for eight months

The bill passed the House on December 11. It has sat in the Senate ever since. No hearing, no vote, no floor time.

That is not an accident of the calendar. Senate Republicans had already put themselves on the record on the same question. On April 4, 2025 — eight days after the executive order was signed — they voted down a budget amendment whose stated purpose was "prohibiting attacks on Federal employees by protecting legally binding collective bargaining agreements and the right to organize." It was rejected 48 to 51.

Fifty-one Republicans voted no. Two voted yes: Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.

So both chambers have now been asked, and both times the answer from most Republicans was the same. Which is why a district judge in Rhode Island is still doing this job one emergency order at a time.

This is not a fringe position they're protecting

Unions are not unpopular. Gallup's August 2026 poll put approval at 71 percent, tying its recent high, extending a six-year stretch in which it has stayed between 67 and 71 percent. A year earlier, when Gallup broke that approval out by party, it was "90% of Democrats, 69% of independents and 41% of Republicans".

Forty-one percent of Republicans. There are union households in every one of the districts on that list above, and a lot of them sent these members to Washington.

And these are not abstract workers. They are VA nurses and TSA screeners. Some of the same members who voted to take away their union have spent the last year arguing there are too many of them anyway — Glenn Grothman went on public radio during the 2025 shutdown and asked the president to cut up to 200,000 federal jobs on the grounds that "a lot of these people are not working very hard at all."

A union contract is how a nurse at a VA hospital says "this unit is short-staffed and it isn't safe" without losing her job for saying it. That is the thing 195 House Republicans voted to keep out of her hands, and the thing 51 Senate Republicans voted down before them.

We deserve better.

How they voted

House Roll Call 332, December 11, 2025 — H.R. 2550, the Protect America's Workforce Act. Passed 231–195.
Senate Roll Call 175, April 4, 2025 — budget-resolution amendment on protecting federal collective bargaining agreements and the right to organize. Rejected 48–51.

Source

Judge orders VA again to maintain collective bargaining with AFGE — Federal News Network, August 10, 2026. Photo: Getty Images.

Nick Begich Says Tariffs Will Bring Jobs Home. He Built a Company With 150 Employees and Not One of Them Was an Alaskan.

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:21:31 +0000

Nick Begich has one main argument for why Alaskans should accept higher prices at the store: the tariffs causing them will bring jobs and factories back to America.

He told Alaska Public Media that tariffs were needed to restore American manufacturing. In June 2025 he opened a thread on X with "Tariff-driven inflation hasn't materialized" and argued that while in "a perfect vacuum" tariffs "would likely result in a one-time bump in inflation," in the real world they had "thus far resulted in lower inflation and unparalleled domestic investment."

Before he was elected to Congress in 2024, Begich was the CEO of an Anchorage information technology company called FarShore. It made him millions.

In 2022, the Alaska Dispatch News asked him about it. Here is what they found:

"The company grew to be worth millions, with around 150 employees. Most of them are in India and Croatia, and none of them are in Alaska."

The reporter asked Begich whether he had any concerns about creating jobs in other countries — noting that his payroll included no Alaskans but himself.

His answer:

"We have to recognize we live in a global world, right? … I think we do well to remember that here in Alaska we're part of a global community."

That was Nick Begich explaining why a 150-person payroll with no Alaskan on it but his own was fine. Four years later he is explaining why Alaskans should pay more at the grocery store so that jobs come back.

He's Voted Seven Times to Keep the Tariffs

This isn't a matter of a stray comment on cable news. Begich has voted seven separate times to block bipartisan efforts to repeal Trump's tariffs.

The clearest example came this February. On Wednesday, February 11, 2026, the House voted 219–211 to end Trump's national emergency at the Canadian border and end the tariffs on Canadian goods. Alaska Beacon's headline said it plainly: "As U.S. House votes to end Canadian tariffs, Alaska's Begich seeks to extend them."

Alaska's own delegation split. The Senate had already passed a separate measure to end the markup on Canadian goods: Sen. Lisa Murkowski voted to end the tariffs, Sen. Dan Sullivan voted to keep them. Begich voted to keep them.

Asked about the vote, his office gave the Beacon a written statement:

"My priority is ensuring that Alaska's fishermen, energy producers, and manufacturers are not disadvantaged in international trade negotiations. Like any tool in trade policy, tariffs are most effective when used strategically to strengthen domestic industries and secure a level playing field for our producers."

What That Means for Alaska's Fishermen

Begich named Alaska's fishermen as his priority. So let's check on them.

Alaska's seafood industry employs nearly 70,000 people and generates over $5 billion a year, and its supply chain runs straight through the tariffs. Over half of Alaska's fish is sent to China, where the pin bones are removed by cheap labor, then re-imported to the United States for sale. Must Read Alaska warned as the 2025 season opened that the tariffs would increase the cost of processing, which would be passed on to consumers and could soften demand for wild Alaska salmon.

Bringing the work home is no bargain either. Processing fillets and removing pin bones is labor-intensive, and doing it in Alaska costs far more than the near-forced labor China uses. The tariff doesn't make the fish cheaper. It makes it more expensive.

Sen. Murkowski warned about exactly this, telling reporters that tariffs could hit hard for Alaska's fishing and mining sectors.

The Bill Every Alaska Household Is Paying

A tariff is a tax on imported goods, and it's paid by the American importer — who passes it to you at the register.

The nonpartisan Tax Foundation calculated that the tariffs worked out to an average tax increase of about $1,000 per American household last year.

In Alaska, where nearly everything on a store shelf arrived by barge or plane, that math is not kinder. It's harsher.

Begich told Alaskans the tariffs had "thus far resulted in lower inflation and unparalleled domestic investment." The bill came anyway.

The Pattern

There is a consistent shape to how Begich handles the gap between what's good for Nick Begich and what's good for Alaska.

He owns up to $1 million in Bitcoin — and wrote the bill making the government buy a national stockpile of it.
He wrote a Marine Mammal Protection Act rewrite that Alaska Federation of Natives delegates voted to oppose.
He held an invitation-only rally with the House Speaker — photo ID at the door, no press allowed, protesters outside.

When Begich built his own company, "we live in a global world" was a good enough reason to hire around 150 people everywhere except Alaska. Now that he's voting on your grocery bill, the global world is the problem, and you're the one being asked to pay to fix it.

He got the millions. Alaskans got the receipt.

Source

Nick Begich defended tariffs and outsourced jobs — Jesse Valentine, American Journal News, August 17, 2026. Photo: Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call via AP Images.

Republicans Are Coming for IVF and Surrogacy. Twenty-Five of the Ones We Track Signed the Bill.

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:31:40 +0000

For years, the political line on in vitro fertilization was simple. Everybody said they were for it. It is one of the most popular things in American medicine — this March, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology reported that for the first time, more than 100,000 babies were born in a single year with the help of IVF. Even Donald Trump has talked about making it cheaper.

That line is breaking. And you can watch it break in two places at once: in state Republican party platforms, and in a bill sitting in Congress right now with a long list of Republican names on it.

What the state parties wrote down

In June, the Texas Republican Party adopted a 2026 platform that opposes public funding for IVF and calls for regulating the whole assisted-reproduction industry, including mandatory reporting on how embryos are created and stored. One section says the Texas Legislature must "protect fetal life from destructive practices, such as IVF and commercial surrogacy."

Another section goes after surrogacy directly:

"We support a ban on contract surrogacy involving foreign nationals, which may involve a form of trafficking and may lead to claims of citizenship. We also support prohibiting third-party egg and sperm donations and the commercialization of human reproduction in Texas; and support policies that promote the welfare of children, medical transparency, and the protection of biological parents."

The Idaho Republican Party added language to its own 2026 platform opposing "the destruction of human embryos." Republicans in Missouri, North Carolina and Oklahoma adopted similar language in 2024 and 2025. That is five states in two years.

Party platforms are not law. But they tell you where a party is heading. As Sean Tipton of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine put it to Stateline, "Party platforms are mostly about intraparty politics and jockeying for position, but at the same time, you have to pay attention, because that symbolism matters."

The bill below is what happens when the symbolism grows teeth.

The SAFE KIDS Act

On November 4, 2025, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida introduced S. 3101, the SAFE KIDS Act. On January 13, 2026, Rep. Blake Moore of Utah introduced the House version, H.R. 7040.

Here is what it does, in the sponsors' own words: it "invalidates commercial surrogacy agreements with citizens of foreign adversary countries, such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and creates a misdemeanor for brokers — not surrogates — who knowingly facilitate these agreements."

Read that again. A surrogacy contract — the document that protects the surrogate, the intended parents, and the child — becomes legally void if one of the parties holds the wrong passport. The people who signed it in good faith are left with nothing to enforce.

The bill is pitched almost entirely as a national security measure. John Moolenaar of Michigan, who chairs the House Select Committee on China, said Chinese nationals "are exploiting gaps in US law to buy children from America," and that "this legislation will ensure accountability and protect innocent children from nationals of foreign adversary countries who want to buy American babies."

Blake Moore said the "espionage risks that could emerge from China and Russia bringing children with U.S. passports into their countries should be further cause for alarm."

Rich McCormick of Georgia was blunter about which door this actually opens:

"The SAFE KIDS Act closes a dangerous loophole that allows foreign adversaries to exploit our 14th Amendment through surrogate pregnancies. This bill protects vulnerable women and children while preventing hostile regimes from abusing U.S. birthright citizenship."

That is the tell. The 14th Amendment "loophole" McCormick is describing is birthright citizenship — the rule that people born here are citizens, in place since 1868. The Supreme Court upheld it on June 30, 2026, rejecting Trump's order trying to end it. Republicans have been hunting for a way around that ruling ever since, and subpoenaing maternity clinics while they look. Surrogacy is the newest angle of attack.

Robert Aderholt of Alabama, Jen Kiggans of Virginia, Nathaniel Moran of Texas, Mike Kennedy of Utah, Addison McDowell of North Carolina, John McGuire of Virginia and Jefferson Shreve of Indiana all supplied supporting statements for the same announcement.

Who signed it

These are the cosponsors who have report cards on this site. In the House, alongside Moore and Moolenaar:

Robert Aderholt
Jen Kiggans
Nathaniel Moran
Paul Gosar
Diana Harshbarger
Rich McCormick
Michael Rulli
Addison McDowell
Mike Kennedy
John McGuire
Pete Sessions
Jefferson Shreve
John Rose
Ben Cline
Harriet Hageman
Andy Harris
Chuck Fleischmann
Sheri Biggs

And in the Senate, on Rick Scott's version: Dan Sullivan, Pete Ricketts, Ashley Moody, Marsha Blackburn and Mike Rounds.

Neither bill has passed. The Senate version was referred to the Judiciary Committee the day it was introduced and has not moved since. But 25 sitting members of Congress decided this was worth attaching their name to.

The part they don't put in the press release

Here is the thing about the "we support IVF, we just want guardrails" position: four of the senators on that list already had a chance to vote on protecting IVF, and did not take it.

On September 17, 2024, the Senate voted on whether to take up the Right to IVF Act, which would have written a federal right to fertility treatment into law. Sen. Tammy Duckworth rewrote an earlier version of it after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February 2024 that discarded embryos were children under state law — a ruling that prompted doctors in that state to halt IVF procedures.

The motion needed 60 votes to advance and failed 51–44. Two Republicans voted to advance it: Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. Sen. John Thune told reporters that week, "Republicans support IVF full stop," and called the vote an attempt "to create a political issue where there isn't one."

The roll call says otherwise. Dan Sullivan voted no. Marsha Blackburn voted no. Pete Ricketts voted no. Mike Rounds did not vote at all.

Rick Scott — who would introduce the surrogacy bill fourteen months later — spent that week floating his own IVF proposal to expand health savings accounts, and noted that his own daughter was undergoing IVF. Duckworth's answer to him at the time reads differently now: "you can't support a fertilized egg being a human being — this personhood stuff which Rick Scott has said he supported — and also say you support IVF. The two are contradictory."

This is the same pattern at the state level. In Nevada, a bill writing a right to IVF into state law passed the state Senate with Republican votes — and Joe Lombardo vetoed it anyway, while saying he supports making IVF more accessible.

Saying you support IVF costs nothing. Voting for it costs something.

Why surrogacy, and why now

The people pushing this are not shy about the reasoning. Emma Waters, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation — the group behind Project 2025 — calls surrogacy "baby selling," and says people from countries hostile to the U.S. can hire a surrogate to obtain citizenship. She has said that by age 35, a surrogate-born child from China could run for president.

Waters also thinks couples turn to IVF too early without exploring the underlying causes of infertility, an idea tied to a conservative philosophy called restorative reproductive medicine that also discourages birth control. In a blog post last month, she said that over the past six months she has received more requests for help drafting surrogacy legislation than on any other topic.

Tipton, of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, thinks the appeal is broader than national security. "For groups like Heritage, (surrogacy) is a nice synergy that allows them to be xenophobic, homophobic and anti-choice all at once," he said.

There is a reason he says homophobic. Many same-sex couples build their families through IVF and surrogacy. There is no other route.

The numbers do not support a crisis. Babies born through surrogacy made up about 14 out of every 100,000 deliveries between 2017 and 2020, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. A study found about 32% of surrogate pregnancies between 2014 and 2020 were for international couples, and about 41% of those were from China — where surrogacy is illegal, which is why people leave.

Meanwhile, as of June, lawmakers in at least 17 states had introduced 36 bills this year to give embryos or fetuses legal personhood, according to a Guttmacher Institute count reported by Stateline. Those are the bills that actually threaten IVF, because a clinic that discards an embryo is suddenly exposed. Opponents beat them back by arguing that they might limit IVF — which remains broadly popular.

What this costs real people

Ashley Kirk-Robertson, an Idaho woman who has carried four surrogate pregnancies, described what these arrangements actually look like. Her first was for a single father from Spain, where surrogacy is illegal. The second was for a husband and wife from Israel. The third was for a same-sex couple from Israel. The fourth was for Brooke Green, a Democratic Idaho state representative who could not carry a second child because she was diagnosed with a hormone-fueled breast cancer weeks before her last embryo was to be implanted.

"They truly are just here because coming here for the surrogacy is cheaper or because in their country it's not allowed," Kirk-Robertson said.

None of Kirk-Robertson's four contracts would be touched by the SAFE KIDS Act. It reaches only prospective parents who are citizens or permanent residents of the four countries the defense code calls foreign entities of concern — North Korea, China, Russia and Iran — and Spain and Israel are not among them. But look at where the bill draws its line. Not at whether anyone was harmed. At a passport.

Twenty-five Republicans on this site's report cards signed their names to that.

Source

Kelcie Moseley-Morris, Stateline: "More GOP party platforms include anti-IVF language. Is surrogacy next?" Cosponsor lists from congress.gov; sponsor statements from Rep. Blake Moore's office.

Max Miller's PAC Gave $70,000 to 16 Republicans in Tight Races. Exactly One Gave It Back.

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 10:13:33 +0000

There is a simple test in politics for whether a scandal is real to a party or just inconvenient. It's the money.

Max Miller runs a leadership PAC called Dependable Conservative Leadership. According to FEC records reviewed by POLITICO, that PAC has given more than $70,000 to 16 Republican incumbents in the toughest races on the 2026 map — mostly in chunks of $1,000, $2,500 and $5,000, with maxed-out $10,000 donations to some of them.

Miller's ex-wife, Emily Moreno, has accused him of assaulting her and their young child. She is also the daughter of Ohio Republican Senator Bernie Moreno. Miller denies the accusations. He refused to leave the race before Ohio's deadline to replace him on the ballot, which means his party is stuck with him.

This week POLITICO went to all 16 recipients and asked a single question: are you giving the money back?

One said yes.

The tally

Brad Finstad (Minnesota) — returned the $5,000. That's it. That's the entire list of Republicans who gave it back.
Mike Lawler (New York) — took $10,000 and is keeping it. His spokesman's justification was that Lawler's Democratic opponent attended a fundraiser hosted by former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who resigned in 2008 in a prostitution scandal.
Derrick Van Orden (Wisconsin) — took $2,500. Asked about it Tuesday night, he refused to discuss it, describing the accusations against Miller as "allegations" he had heard about "the day before yesterday."
The other 13 said nothing at all. Their offices and campaigns did not return POLITICO's requests for comment.

Those 13: Jon Husted of Ohio, Rob Bresnahan, Ryan Mackenzie and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, Nick Begich of Alaska, Tom Barrett of Michigan, Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, Gabe Evans of Colorado, Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey, Jen Kiggans of Virginia, and David Valadao of California.

Husted is the one to look at

Jon Husted publicly said Max Miller should not run for reelection.

Husted also took a maxed-out $10,000 from Miller's PAC and, when asked this week whether he'd return it, said nothing.

That is the whole story in one man. He'll say the words. He won't write the check.

Husted is running against former Senator Sherrod Brown in what is expected to be one of the closest Senate races in the country. Ten thousand dollars is not what decides that race. Which is exactly why keeping it is a choice about something other than money.

What Van Orden said

Van Orden's answer deserves its own look, because he gave one.

He called the accusations "allegations" he'd heard about "the day before yesterday."

The allegations against Max Miller have been public and heavily reported for months. We wrote about the domestic violence lawsuits and about the House Ethics Committee opening a probe. Ohio's two Republican senators had already called on him to quit. Republicans have been openly worried about the seat since at least early August.

"The day before yesterday" is not a timeline. It's a way of not answering.

The pattern, not the exception

None of this is new behavior around Max Miller.

Popular Information found — and we checked the FEC filings ourselves — that dozens of major corporations are funding Miller's own campaign this cycle, several of them with checks that arrived after the allegations were published. Stanley Black & Decker gave $10,000. Elevance gave $7,000. Kroger, an Ohio company, gave $3,500.

Meanwhile Trump's political team urged Ohio Republicans to hold off on publicly pressuring Miller to drop out, so the party wouldn't look divided.

So: corporations keep paying him, the White House told his own state party to keep quiet, and 15 of the 16 colleagues who took his money won't say whether they'll give it back.

The one consistent principle is that nobody wants to give up anything.

Why it matters where you live

If you vote in Pennsylvania, Iowa, Alaska, Michigan, Arizona, Colorado, New Jersey, Virginia, California, Wisconsin or New York — or in Ohio's Senate race — there is a good chance one of the people on that list is on your ballot.

They were each asked a yes-or-no question about money from a man accused of assaulting his wife and small child. Fifteen of them declined to say yes.

Brad Finstad managed it. It took a $5,000 check and about one sentence.

Source

Eli Okun and Mia McCarthy, "Republicans stay mum on whether they'll return campaign cash from embattled Max Miller", POLITICO, August 12, 2026.

Congress Gave ICE $70 Billion and No Rules on Conduct. Now ICE Is Buying Electric Shock Gloves.

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 17:51:14 +0000

On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security published a purchase notice. By Tuesday the Associated Press had read it and written it up: Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to spend up to $20 million on thousands of gloves that deliver painful electric shocks, and it wants them in agents' hands by March.

The notice said the solicitation for a no-bid contract could go out as soon as Friday.

That is the whole story of what a blank check does. Two months ago Congress handed ICE roughly $70 billion and declined to write a single rule about how its agents may treat people. This is one of the things the agency decided to buy with a budget nobody attached conditions to.

What the gloves are

The device is called the G.L.O.V.E. — Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter — made by Compliant Technologies LLC of Lexington, Kentucky. In the DHS notice they are described, without apparent irony, as "conductive distraction and de-escalation devices."

They look and work like ordinary patrol gloves until the officer flips a switch. Then the officer has to touch bare skin to deliver the shock. The company's pitch is speed: it advertises "3 seconds or less" as the typical time to compliance in reported field use, promises to bring "resisting subjects into compliance in seconds, without lasting harm to anyone involved," and bills the product as the best hands-on de-escalation tool on the market.

John Peters, who runs the Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths and is studying how the device gets used, described the sensation to the AP:

"It's immediate and sharp, and it will distract you. I call it like a bee sting."

Peters said he believed the order would likely be the largest the company has ever received, and that he could picture officers using the gloves to pull uncooperative people out of cars and houses and in and out of detention facilities.

The warnings come from the company that sells them

Here is the part worth slowing down for. The manufacturer itself warns that the device should not be used as punishment, should not be used on people who are merely showing "verbal defiance or belligerence," and should not be used on high-risk populations — children, pregnant women, elderly people, disabled people.

Those are not rules. They are a vendor's recommendations. Nothing in the law that paid for these gloves requires ICE to follow any of them, because that law does not contain rules about agent conduct at all.

Jenn Rolnick Borchetta of the ACLU put the practical problem plainly:

"ICE spent the last year showing this country they are too quick to use force. Now they will be able to deploy electric shocks with the slight push of a button that maybe nobody else can see them do."

Kica Matos of the National Immigration Law Center told Common Dreams the same thing in fewer words: Congress must end the blank check to ICE.

The guardrail she points to is $2 million for de-escalation training

Of the 52 Republican senators who voted for the money, the one taking the most heat for it right now is Susan Collins, who is in a tough reelection fight in a state where an ICE officer shot and killed a young father last month.

When Democratic Governor Janet Mills wrote to her about that killing, Collins wrote back on July 16 with a list of what she had secured in this year's Homeland Security spending bill. Three items:

$20 million for body-worn cameras
$2 million for de-escalation training, plus new de-escalation training requirements for ICE and CBP officers
a 17 percent increase for the DHS Inspector General

Set that against Monday's notice. ICE is prepared to spend $20 million on shock gloves — ten times the entire de-escalation training budget Collins points to, and dollar for dollar the same amount she secured for the cameras.

Both purchases are filed under the same word. One of them trains officers to talk someone down. The other lets an officer end the conversation with a button. ICE is spending ten times more on the button.

Collins' office did not immediately respond when Common Dreams asked whether she considers electric shock gloves a good form of de-escalation. Asked after the Biddeford shooting whether she regretted her vote for the funding, she declined to say she did.

The pain tool takes seven months. The accountability tool took five years.

Compare the two timelines, because the contrast is the argument.

The gloves: notice published Monday, no-bid solicitation possibly by Friday, thousands of units by March. Seven months, no competitive bidding.

The body cameras: ICE started testing them in 2021 and had distributed 1,400 by 2024. Returning to office in 2025, Trump cancelled the Biden order requiring federal law enforcement agencies to use them. The agency did not buy cameras even after receiving a $75 billion infusion in 2025 and hiring thousands of new officers. It finally spent $30.9 million on Axon equipment in July — the spending beginning one day after an ICE officer shot and killed a 25-year-old motorist in Maine. Days before that, another ICE officer shot and killed a Houston homebuilder driving to work. Neither shooting was recorded, because neither officer had a camera.

Jason Houser, who was ICE chief of staff under Biden and helped implement the camera pilot program, told the AP the delay was a choice: "This is not hard to deploy, but they've slow-rolled it."

And the cameras Congress paid for come with a policy that decides for itself what the public sees. ICE will promptly release video of a shooting or a death only after determining "it is in the best interests of the agency" to do so, and the director can block or indefinitely delay any release by finding "specific and compelling circumstances." Even when footage does come out, every officer's face, name and badge number gets redacted.

Katherine Hawkins of the Project On Government Oversight said the policy makes the recordings "virtually useless": "Without any clear way for the public to get access to it, it doesn't do much good."

One more detail on the reform Collins has been promoting. On July 31 she announced that body cameras would be deployed nationwide by the end of August, and added that the acting ICE director had agreed to prioritize delivery to Maine "at my request". That was eight weeks after she voted, on June 5, against Senator Alex Padilla's amendment to this same bill, which would have set aside at least $300 million to deploy body cameras and to store the footage and make it accessible to Congress and to the people filmed. It was rejected 46 to 53. A week later, ICE told the AP the rest of its field officers would get cameras by the end of September, a timeline the AP noted pushes back the agency's earlier public statements.

Congress wrote guardrails. They were about equipment.

This is not a case where lawmakers tried to attach conditions and lost. They wrote restrictions into the $70 billion law — the restrictions were just about procurement. No money for surveillance towers that haven't passed acceptance testing. No hiring processing coordinators after October 2028.

As we found reading the bill, that is the entire list. Congress found time to specify what gear CBP is allowed to buy, and no time to specify what agents may do with the gear. No conduct rules. No requirement that agents be identifiable. No mandatory reporting on who is detained, where, or for how long.

Which is why there is no provision anyone can point to now that says a federal officer may not press a shock button against a child, or against someone who talked back. The vendor says don't. The law says nothing.

We've also written about the ICE record arrest month that followed — 51,000 arrests in July, with fewer than a third of people in detention holding a criminal conviction — and about the House Homeland Security chairman who held the hearing on body cameras, funded them, and voted for the three more years of money anyway.

Two votes made this possible

The money came through in two roll calls, days apart.

The Senate, 52 to 47, at 4:42 in the morning on June 5. Every Republican voted yes except Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Not one Democrat voted for it. Our writeup of that vote is here.

The House, 214 to 212, on June 9 — a two-vote margin, meaning every Republican yes was a deciding vote. Zero Republicans voted no. The bill became law the next day.

That is the chain. Two roll calls, no conduct rules, and eight weeks later a no-bid order for thousands of devices designed to hurt people into compliance.

The 201 with report cards on this site

Two hundred sixty-six Republicans in the two chambers voted for this money. These are the ones with a report card here, by state — senators marked, everyone else voted in the House:

Alabama: Tommy Tuberville (Sen.), Robert Aderholt, Barry Moore, Gary Palmer, Mike Rogers, Dale Strong Alaska: Dan Sullivan (Sen.), Nick Begich Arizona: Andy Biggs, Juan Ciscomani, Eli Crane, Paul Gosar, Abraham Hamadeh Arkansas: Tom Cotton (Sen.), Rick Crawford, French Hill, Bruce Westerman, Steve Womack California: Ken Calvert, Vince Fong, Young Kim, Tom McClintock, Jay Obernolte, David Valadao Colorado: Lauren Boebert, Jeff Crank, Gabe Evans, Jeff Hurd Florida: Ashley Moody (Sen.), Aaron Bean, Gus Bilirakis, Kat Cammack, Mario Diaz-Balart, Byron Donalds, Randy Fine, Scott Franklin, Carlos Gimenez, Mike Haridopolos, Laurel Lee, Anna Paulina Luna, Brian Mast, Cory Mills, Jimmy Patronis, John Rutherford, Maria Elvira Salazar, Greg Steube Georgia: Rick Allen, Andrew Clyde, Mike Collins, Clay Fuller, Brian Jack, Rich McCormick, Austin Scott Idaho: Jim Risch (Sen.), Russ Fulcher, Mike Simpson Illinois: Mike Bost, Darin LaHood, Mary Miller Indiana: Jim Baird, Erin Houchin, Mark Messmer, Jefferson Shreve, Victoria Spartz, Marlin Stutzman, Rudy Yakym Iowa: Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Zach Nunn Kansas: Roger Marshall (Sen.), Ron Estes, Tracey Mann, Derek Schmidt Kentucky: Andy Barr, James Comer, Brett Guthrie, Hal Rogers Louisiana: Clay Higgins, Mike Johnson, Julia Letlow, Steve Scalise Maine: Susan Collins (Sen.) Maryland: Andy Harris Michigan: Tom Barrett, Jack Bergman, Bill Huizenga, John James, Lisa McClain, John Moolenaar, Tim Walberg Minnesota: Tom Emmer, Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach, Pete Stauber Mississippi: Cindy Hyde-Smith (Sen.), Mike Ezell, Michael Guest, Trent Kelly Missouri: Mark Alford, Eric Burlison, Bob Onder, Jason Smith, Ann Wagner Montana: Troy Downing Nebraska: Pete Ricketts (Sen.), Mike Flood, Adrian Smith New Jersey: Chris Smith, Jeff Van Drew New York: Andrew Garbarino, Nick LaLota, Nick Langworthy, Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis, Claudia Tenney North Carolina: Virginia Foxx, Pat Harrigan, Mark Harris, Richard Hudson, Brad Knott, Addison McDowell, Tim Moore, Greg Murphy, David Rouzer North Dakota: Julie Fedorchak Ohio: Jon Husted (Sen.), Troy Balderson, Mike Carey, Warren Davidson, Jim Jordan, David Joyce, Bob Latta, Max Miller, Michael Rulli, David Taylor, Mike Turner Oklahoma: Stephanie Bice, Josh Brecheen, Tom Cole, Kevin Hern, Frank Lucas Oregon: Cliff Bentz Pennsylvania: Rob Bresnahan, Brian Fitzpatrick, John Joyce, Mike Kelly, Ryan Mackenzie, Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler, Lloyd Smucker, Glenn Thompson South Carolina: Sheri Biggs, Russell Fry, William Timmons, Joe Wilson South Dakota: Mike Rounds (Sen.) Tennessee: Marsha Blackburn (Sen.), Bill Hagerty (Sen.), Tim Burchett, Scott DesJarlais, Chuck Fleischmann, Diana Harshbarger, David Kustoff, Matt Van Epps Texas: Brian Babin, John Carter, Michael Cloud, Jake Ellzey, Pat Fallon, Brandon Gill, Craig Goldman, Lance Gooden, Ronny Jackson, Monica De La Cruz, Nathaniel Moran, August Pfluger, Keith Self, Pete Sessions, Beth Van Duyne, Randy Weber, Roger Williams Utah: Mike Kennedy, Celeste Maloy, Blake Moore Virginia: Ben Cline, Morgan Griffith, Jen Kiggans, John McGuire, Rob Wittman Washington: Michael Baumgartner West Virginia: Shelley Moore Capito (Sen.), Carol Miller, Riley Moore Wisconsin: Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman, Bryan Steil, Tom Tiffany, Derrick Van Orden, Tony Wied Wyoming: Harriet Hageman

None of them wrote the shock-glove order. That's the point. They wrote a check with no conditions on it and handed it to an agency, and now the agency is deciding what to buy with it — quickly, without competitive bidding, and with the only limits on use coming from the vendor's brochure.

If your senator or representative is on that list and tells you they have concerns about how ICE is behaving, the question to ask is simple: which rule did you write?

Source

Stephen Prager, "ICE Funding Approved by Susan Collins and Trump GOP to Deliver Electric Shock Gloves to Agents Nationwide," Common Dreams, August 12, 2026. The underlying reporting on the purchase notice is by Ryan J. Foley of the Associated Press. Photo: a federal agent walks near tear gas used on protesters in Minneapolis, January 14, 2026, by Seth Herald/Reuters.

$70 Billion for ICE Passed the House by Two Votes. Not One Republican Voted No.

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:57:39 +0000

Most big bills pass with room to spare. This one didn't.

On June 9, 2026, the House passed S. 2 — the "Secure America Act" — by 214 votes to 212. The next day it became Public Law 119-98.

Two votes. That's the whole margin. And when a bill passes by two, there is no such thing as a symbolic yes. Every single Republican who pressed the green button that day cast a deciding vote. If any one of them had voted no instead, the bill would have tied 213 to 213 and failed on the floor.

Not one of them did. Zero Republicans voted against it. All 211 Democrats present voted no, along with the House's one independent. Three Republicans didn't vote at all.

We've already written about the Senate half of this bill, which passed 52 to 47 at 4:42 in the morning on June 5. This is the other half — the one that actually made it law, by the narrowest margin either chamber managed.

What the money is for

S. 2 puts $70 billion into the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and it keeps that money available through fiscal year 2029.

The official summary of the law spells out what ICE's share pays for: hiring, paying and training personnel; transportation; facilities and fleet; 287(g) agreements, which deputize state and local police to do federal immigration enforcement; the agency's legal office; and, in the summary's own words, "operations by ICE to arrest certain unlawful aliens."

CBP's share buys agents and hardware — surveillance towers along the southern and northern borders, air and marine platforms, biometric entry-and-exit systems, and inspection equipment the summary describes as using "artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other innovative technologies."

This is not a border-security budget in the ordinary sense. It is the interior enforcement machine: the arrests, the local police partnerships, the surveillance, all funded four years out in a single lump.

The only limits Congress wrote were about equipment

Here is the detail that tells you what this Congress cared about.

S. 2 does contain restrictions. Read the summary and you'll find them. Funds can't be used to hire or train processing coordinators after October 31, 2028. And no money may go to surveillance towers "that have not been tested and accepted by CBP to deliver autonomous capabilities."

Those two, plus a handful of clauses steering Title I money to work other than immigration enforcement, are the whole of it. The guardrails Congress bothered to write into a $70 billion law are about procurement — what gear CBP is allowed to buy, and when it may stop hiring a particular job title.

Nothing about what agents may do. No body-camera requirement. No rule against agents concealing their identities. No limit on funding family separation. No mandated reporting on who is being detained, or where, or for how long. Congress found the time to specify that a surveillance tower must pass acceptance testing, and did not find the time to specify that the people operating it must be identifiable.

That omission is a choice, and it was made by the 214 members below the line.

Why the margin matters more than the bill

We write up a lot of party-line votes. Usually the honest framing is that any one member's vote didn't change the outcome — 220 Republicans vote yes, and the bill passes whether or not your representative shows up.

This vote was not that. At 214–212, the outcome turned on every last one of them.

That means the usual answer — I was one vote out of hundreds, leadership had the votes anyway — is factually unavailable here. Any one of these members could have walked to the well and changed the result. It would have taken one person out of 214 deciding that a $70 billion enforcement fund with no conduct rules attached was worth a second look.

Two. Out of 214. And the number who did it was zero.

That's worth remembering the next time one of them tells a town hall they have concerns about how ICE is operating. They had a moment where their individual vote was the whole ballgame, and they used it to hand the agency four years of money with no strings on its conduct.

The 187 with report cards

Two hundred fourteen Republicans voted yes. These are the ones who have a report card on this site and were still in their races when this published, by state:

Alabama: Robert Aderholt, Barry Moore, Gary Palmer, Mike Rogers, Dale Strong Alaska: Nick Begich Arizona: Andy Biggs, Juan Ciscomani, Eli Crane, Paul Gosar, Abraham Hamadeh Arkansas: Rick Crawford, French Hill, Bruce Westerman, Steve Womack California: Ken Calvert, Vince Fong, Young Kim, Tom McClintock, Jay Obernolte, David Valadao Colorado: Lauren Boebert, Jeff Crank, Gabe Evans, Jeff Hurd Florida: Aaron Bean, Gus Bilirakis, Kat Cammack, Mario Diaz-Balart, Byron Donalds, Randy Fine, Scott Franklin, Carlos Gimenez, Mike Haridopolos, Laurel Lee, Anna Paulina Luna, Brian Mast, Cory Mills, Jimmy Patronis, John Rutherford, Maria Elvira Salazar, Greg Steube Georgia: Rick Allen, Andrew Clyde, Mike Collins, Clay Fuller, Brian Jack, Rich McCormick, Austin Scott Idaho: Russ Fulcher, Mike Simpson Illinois: Mike Bost, Darin LaHood, Mary Miller Indiana: Jim Baird, Erin Houchin, Mark Messmer, Jefferson Shreve, Victoria Spartz, Marlin Stutzman, Rudy Yakym Iowa: Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Zach Nunn Kansas: Ron Estes, Tracey Mann, Derek Schmidt Kentucky: Andy Barr, James Comer, Brett Guthrie, Hal Rogers Louisiana: Clay Higgins, Mike Johnson, Julia Letlow, Steve Scalise Maryland: Andy Harris Michigan: Tom Barrett, Jack Bergman, Bill Huizenga, John James, Lisa McClain, John Moolenaar, Tim Walberg Minnesota: Tom Emmer, Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach, Pete Stauber Mississippi: Mike Ezell, Michael Guest, Trent Kelly Missouri: Mark Alford, Eric Burlison, Bob Onder, Jason Smith, Ann Wagner Montana: Troy Downing Nebraska: Mike Flood, Adrian Smith New Jersey: Chris Smith, Jeff Van Drew New York: Andrew Garbarino, Nick LaLota, Nick Langworthy, Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis, Claudia Tenney North Carolina: Virginia Foxx, Pat Harrigan, Mark Harris, Richard Hudson, Brad Knott, Addison McDowell, Tim Moore, Greg Murphy, David Rouzer North Dakota: Julie Fedorchak Ohio: Troy Balderson, Mike Carey, Warren Davidson, Jim Jordan, David Joyce, Bob Latta, Max Miller, Michael Rulli, David Taylor, Mike Turner Oklahoma: Stephanie Bice, Josh Brecheen, Tom Cole, Kevin Hern, Frank Lucas Oregon: Cliff Bentz Pennsylvania: Rob Bresnahan, Brian Fitzpatrick, John Joyce, Mike Kelly, Ryan Mackenzie, Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler, Lloyd Smucker, Glenn Thompson South Carolina: Sheri Biggs, Russell Fry, William Timmons, Joe Wilson Tennessee: Tim Burchett, Scott DesJarlais, Chuck Fleischmann, Diana Harshbarger, David Kustoff, Matt Van Epps Texas: Brian Babin, John Carter, Michael Cloud, Monica De La Cruz, Jake Ellzey, Pat Fallon, Brandon Gill, Craig Goldman, Lance Gooden, Ronny Jackson, Nathaniel Moran, August Pfluger, Keith Self, Pete Sessions, Beth Van Duyne, Randy Weber, Roger Williams Utah: Mike Kennedy, Celeste Maloy, Blake Moore Virginia: Ben Cline, Morgan Griffith, Jen Kiggans, John McGuire, Rob Wittman Washington: Michael Baumgartner West Virginia: Carol Miller, Riley Moore Wisconsin: Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman, Bryan Steil, Tom Tiffany, Derrick Van Orden, Tony Wied Wyoming: Harriet Hageman

How they voted

None of this is our characterization. It's the official record, and it will be there permanently: the House Clerk's roll call for vote 214 on S. 2, June 9, 2026 — every name, every vote — and the bill itself on congress.gov, including the summary of what the $70 billion buys.

If your representative is on that list, this bill needed their vote to pass.

Alaska Natives Voted Against Nick Begich's Marine Mammal Bill. He Said He Was Just Asking for Feedback.

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 21:51:45 +0000

In October 2025, delegates at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention voted to formally oppose a bill written by their own congressman.

It was Resolution 25-42, and its operative line is one sentence: the delegates "express our opposition to the HB draft currently being considered in the House Natural Resources Committee." The amendments were Nick Begich's.

Begich's response, reported by KNOM's Ben Townsend, was that he had only been asking:

"It was presented for the purposes of soliciting feedback, and we'll certainly take that feedback under consideration."

The feedback had been arriving for months. He had not taken it under consideration then either.

What the draft would actually do

The Marine Mammal Protection Act became law in 1972, after commercial hunting had pushed whale species close to extinction. Today tens of thousands of whales migrate to and around Alaska's waters every year.

On July 22, 2025, Begich brought a "discussion draft" rewriting it to the House Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries. Kodiak's KMXT reported what was in it, and the draft itself — 32 pages, filed under his name on July 8, 2025 — spells it out:

The law's population goal, "optimum sustainable population," is rewritten by striking the words "which will result in the maximum productivity" and inserting "necessary to support the continued survival." In plain terms: from thriving to not extinct yet.
The language defining harm and harassment of marine mammals is softened.
Permits get automatic approval on a clock. A request "shall be deemed approved and the applicant may proceed with the specified activity" if the Secretary fails to act within 165 days. A second category is deemed approved after 135 days. Nobody has to have read it.
One provision states that two key prohibitions of the Endangered Species Act "shall not apply" to a marine mammal taken under one of those authorizations.

Begich's stated reason was that the law causes "confusion, delay, and unintended harm," and that it has held up energy development and port construction.

The witness who backed him up at that hearing was Forrest Burkholder, president and CEO of SAExploration, a Texas-based seismic survey company that works for the oil industry. Burkholder testified that "decades of regulation and litigation" had caused the act "to be interpreted far more expansively than Congress intended."

"My goal is simple," Begich said. "I want a bill that protects marine mammals and also works for the people who live and work alongside them."

The people who live and work alongside them said no

Alaska Native organizations did not read it as protection.

August 4, 2025 — Kawerak, Inc., the regional tribal nonprofit for the Bering Strait region, sent a letter warning that the amendments "would undo decades of progress and risk irreparable harm" to marine ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.

August 25, 2025 — the Eskimo Walrus Commission opposed the proposal in a letter signed by its director, Vera Metcalf, urging Begich to move carefully and to bring Alaska Native co-management organizations into the process.

October 18, 2025 — AFN delegates passed Resolution 25-42, submitted by the Nome Eskimo Community and the Bering Straits Regional Caucus. It warned the changes would weaken protections for the whales, seals and polar bears that Alaska Native subsistence and culture depend on.

Delbert Rexford, a delegate from the Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation, put the stakes directly:

"The magnitude of the intent to amend MMPA is going to threaten and jeopardize our continued protection of subsistence harvest."

That is the part worth sitting with. Alaska Native communities harvest marine mammals under the Marine Mammal Protection Act's own subsistence exemption. Their right to hunt is written into the same law Begich proposed to loosen for industry. When populations crash, the subsistence harvest is what gets restricted — not the seismic surveys.

The whales are already dying

This wasn't a theoretical debate about paperwork.

Between 2018 and 2023, nearly one-third of the Eastern North Pacific gray whale population died in what NOAA declared an unusual mortality event. The federal scientists found the whales died mainly of starvation, with others killed by orcas, entanglement in fishing gear, and ship strikes.

Matt Van Daele, natural resources director for the Sun'aq Tribe, told KMXT that at least 10 dead gray whales and another 10 humpbacks had been reported in the area that summer alone, three of them washed up on Kodiak's road system.

Lauren Eckert, board president of the Alaska Whale Foundation, told KMXT that the permitting process is deliberately slow, and that speeding it up could do irreparable damage: "Large projects may be approved because there's no ability to regulate them under this incidental harm concern only for us to find out and provide evidence 10 years later that a project has caused considerable harm to a species, at which point, it may be too late."

To be fair to Begich: the Alaska Department of Fish and Game backed the effort, publishing a key-points document on September 23, 2025 supporting an update to the law. Begich also argued that marine mammal predation is itself hurting subsistence harvests.

But a state agency's endorsement is not the same as the consent of the people whose food security is on the line. AFN, Kawerak and the Eskimo Walrus Commission all represent those people. All three said no.

"Soliciting feedback" is not an answer

After the July hearing, the subcommittee adjourned without acting and set the marine mammal rewrite aside. It has not moved since. The MMPA bills Begich has formally introduced are all narrow ones, and not one of them is the rewrite. The ARTIST Act (H.R. 5694), filed October 6, 2025, bars states from banning the sale of Alaska Native ivory, bone and baleen handicrafts. H.R. 6251, filed on November 21 — a month after the AFN vote — would let hunters import polar bear trophies from sport hunts in Canada. H.R. 8401, from April 2026, would allow the sale of pelts and handicrafts from northern sea otters taken for subsistence.

So the draft is sitting there. Not withdrawn. Not rewritten with the co-management organizations at the table, the way the Eskimo Walrus Commission asked. Just quiet.

Begich says he was soliciting feedback. He got it, in writing, from Kawerak and the Eskimo Walrus Commission, and then on the floor of the AFN convention by formal vote. A congressman who meant it would have said what he was changing.

It fits a habit. In March 2026, National Fisherman reported that more than 5,000 Alaskans had signed a letter delivered to Begich urging him to pursue a ban on bottom trawling in federal waters off Alaska. Melissa Norris of Fish Alaska Magazine, one of the people quoted, said Begich had told Alaskans on the campaign trail that "domestic trawling is not sustainable and major reform is needed" — and then put it the same way the marine mammal fight ended: "Alaskans are still waiting to hear from Nick following through on the stance he took during the campaign."

And it's the same congressman who won't hold an in-person town hall — whose own campaign rally with the Speaker of the House this month required a photo ID and barred reporters.

Alaskans keep telling him what they want. He keeps saying he's listening.

Source

Ben Townsend, "AFN delegates vote to oppose proposed Marine Mammal Act changes," KNOM, October 18, 2025, and Brian Venua, "Begich proposes to roll back parts of the Marine Mammal Protection Act," KMXT, July 29, 2025. Photo: Ben Townsend/KNOM.

Nick Begich Owns Up to $1 Million in Bitcoin. He Wrote the Bill Making the Government Buy a Million Coins.

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 21:48:23 +0000

In 2013, a curious businessman in Alaska spent $100 on Bitcoin.

"I was just curious about how it worked," Nick Begich told Alaska Public Media. "And so I bought a little bit, and I bought a little bit more, and I think I put maybe $5,100 into Bitcoin."

That $100 is now worth about $760,000. Begich confirmed the math himself. His congressional financial disclosure reports one cryptocurrency line — "BTC, XRP, BCH, XLM, LTC, EOS, BSV" — worth between $500,001 and $1 million. Begich told Ruskin that band is his Bitcoin: "So it's between half a million and $1 million."

Two months into his first term in Congress, he introduced a bill ordering the United States government to start buying Bitcoin — 200,000 coins a year, every year, for five years.

What the bill actually says

Begich's BITCOIN Act of 2025, H.R. 2032, was filed on March 11, 2025. Section 5 is not vague:

"The Secretary shall establish a Bitcoin Purchase Program which shall — purchase 200,000 Bitcoins per year over a 5-year period, for a total acquisition of 1,000,000 Bitcoins."

One million Bitcoin is about 5% of every coin that will ever exist. At the price when Alaska Public Media's Liz Ruskin asked him about it in August 2025, that came to more than $20 billion a year.

And once the government bought them, it could not sell them. The bill locks every coin in the reserve for at least 20 years: no Bitcoin "may be sold, swapped, auctioned, encumbered, or otherwise disposed of" during that window.

Put plainly, the bill would make the U.S. Treasury the single largest buyer in the Bitcoin market — a buyer that is legally forbidden from ever taking profits, for two decades. There is only one direction that pushes a price with a fixed supply.

Begich, meanwhile, owns Bitcoin.

The ethics group's warning

Noah Bookbinder runs Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Ruskin asked him about it.

"This raises all sorts of red flags," Bookbinder said.

Even assuming Begich's motives are pure, Bookbinder said, the bill would increase the value of the exact cryptocurrency Begich owns. It is legal. It is not a good look.

"We want our members of Congress to be making decisions that are in the best interest of the country, not in their personal financial interest," he said.

Begich's answer was that plenty of Americans own Bitcoin, and that he owns other things too:

"I'm a homeowner who would benefit from lower interest rates, but I advocate for lower interest rates."

That comparison does not hold up. Interest rates move the cost of a mortgage, a car loan and a credit card for essentially every household in the country. A federal mandate to buy roughly 5% of the world's supply of one specific asset — an asset with no dividends and no earnings, whose price moves purely on demand — is a much narrower favor, aimed at a much smaller group.

Begich is in that group. By his own account, he got in early and cheap.

Three days after he filed it, a Bitcoin billionaire maxed out

Federal Election Commission records show what happened next.

Begich filed the BITCOIN Act on March 11, 2025.

On March 14, 2025 — three days later — Cameron Winklevoss gave his campaign $3,500, and $7,000 for the year: the legal maximum for both the primary and the general.
On March 18, 2025 — one week after the bill — his twin brother Tyler Winklevoss did the same. Another $7,000.

Both twins listed their employer as Winklevoss Capital Management. They are the founders of the crypto exchange Gemini and two of the best-known Bitcoin investors in the world.

The pattern continued. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong maxed out at $7,000 on April 28, 2026. Coinbase's chief policy officer, Faryar Shirzad, gave $3,500 a month later.

None of that is illegal. All of it is the industry that stands to gain from a mandatory federal Bitcoin buying program, writing checks to the man who wrote it.

We have seen this shape before. Nebraska's Mike Flood wrote his state's crypto banking law, then watched the nation's first crypto bank land in his hometown with its founder among his biggest donors. Georgia's Mike Collins bought Ether nine days before he voted on a bill that sent its price up.

Version two: he took out the part he couldn't defend

In that August 2025 interview, Begich told Ruskin that a future version of the bill might drop the purchase requirement.

On May 21, 2026, he introduced it. The American Reserve Modernization Act, H.R. 8957, replaces the Bitcoin Purchase Program with something quieter: a study on whether the government could buy Bitcoin in a "budget neutral manner."

What survived is the part that matters to a Bitcoin holder. Section 5 still locks every federal coin up for 20 years. Section 7 orders every federal agency to hand over its Bitcoin, and bars any agency from selling a coin in the meantime except for national security or on a court order.

The federal government's Bitcoin comes mostly from seizures — the bill's own definition of "qualifying Bitcoin" is coins "finally forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings" or taken to satisfy a penalty. Until now, the government could turn around and sell them. Begich's bill ends that. For 20 years, by law.

A permanent buyer who never sells is the best possible news for everyone who already owns the asset.

What Alaska got instead

Begich has been in Congress for a year and a half. In that time he voted for a budget bill that cut Medicaid and food assistance in a state that ranks 36th of 50 on the measures we track, and told Alaskans the bill was "great" for the state anyway. In January 2026 he voted against a three-year extension of the health insurance subsidies that hold down premiums for Alaskans who buy their own coverage, even as 17 Republicans broke with leadership to save them.

He has not held an in-person town hall where Alaskans could ask him about any of it. His campaign's own rally with the Speaker of the House this month required a photo ID and barred the press.

Neither Bitcoin bill has gotten a hearing.

That's the scorecard: no hearing for the crypto bill, no hearing for the constituents, and a personal Bitcoin position that gets more valuable every time Washington moves his way.

Source

Liz Ruskin, "Rep. Nick Begich did well with Bitcoin. He wants the government to own some, too," Alaska Public Media, August 26, 2025. Photo: Liz Ruskin / Alaska Public Media.

Nick Begich's "Grassroots Rally" Had a Secret Address, an ID Check, and No Press Allowed

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 21:30:51 +0000

On Friday, August 7, 2026, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives flew to Alaska to campaign for Nick Begich.

The event was held in an airplane hangar in Palmer. It was called the "Grassroots Rally in the Valley."

Here is what the flyer for that grassroots rally said, according to the Anchorage Daily News:

Do not share the address.
RSVP in advance.
Bring a photo ID.
No press. No media.

About 100 people got in, by the estimate of one protester outside. Dozens of others stood on Cope-Industrial Way.

"Grassroots" with a guest list

Alaska's News Source asked to cover the event. They were told no. Begich campaign spokesperson Paul Smith told the station it was "closed press" and did not explain why.

State Sen. George Rauscher, a Republican from Sutton who RSVP'd and got in, told the ADN he figured the tight controls were about security for the Speaker.

Maybe. But a security perimeter does not require that the address itself be kept secret from the public, and it does not require that reporters be turned away at the door. Those are two different decisions, and the second one was Begich's campaign to make.

Outside, people held signs reading "Why a private grassroots rally?" and "Release the Trumpstein files."

Pete Bauer, a retired Air Force colonel and the Democrat challenging Rauscher for his state Senate seat, protested outside. He put it plainly:

"Obviously, Mike Johnson and Nick Begich have time to talk to the people of Alaska, but they choose to only talk to those they want to speak with behind closed doors and who are their higher donors."

Bauer also said a man he didn't know got in his face and made a "pistol" gesture with his hands, pointed at Bauer's head. "I didn't see a weapon on him, but he rapidly drew his hands within inches of my face to gesture as if he wanted to shoot me," Bauer said. "I didn't back down, and he left."

The Speaker who told them to hide is the one who came to help

There is a detail here that makes the whole thing worse.

In March 2025, Mike Johnson stood at a news conference and told Republicans in Congress to stop holding in-person town halls. Angry crowds were showing up. Johnson's explanation, reported by the Associated Press, was that the people in those crowds weren't real:

"They're professional protesters. So why would we give them a forum to do that right now?"

Instead of town halls, Johnson told his members to use "smaller community gatherings" and telephone town halls — formats where the office picks who talks.

Seventeen months later, the man who issued that instruction flew 3,000 miles to headline a closed, ID-checked, no-press event for a member who followed it.

On the radio that evening, Johnson told Alaskans why Begich has to win: "These crazy communists who are trying to take over the Democrat Party have a target on Nick's back."

Begich, on the same show, called the visit "historic." "When you've got the attention of leadership, you have the ability to influence policy that impacts so many people here in Alaska," he said.

That is the pitch: Begich has the attention of leadership. What he does not have, and has not had since he took office, is a room where any Alaskan can walk in and ask him a question.

The tele-town hall that Alaskans called propaganda

Begich did hold a constituent forum. His first one came in February 2025, six weeks after he was sworn in. It was virtual.

More than 3,000 people took part — the phone system failed for many of them, who watched the Facebook livestream instead and left more than 2,000 comments. Seven questions got asked in 50 minutes. Begich's own state director ran the queue and picked which ones went through.

The first person selected was PeggyAnn McConnochie — a longtime local Republican party official who had campaigned for Begich, the Juneau Empire's Jasz Garrett reported.

Juneau resident Angela Imholt typed into the livestream what a lot of people were thinking:

"This is no town hall. This is propaganda."

Another Juneau resident, Larri Spengler, registered to ask a question by phone and never got a call. She posted: "How about answering some of the real, actual, pressing questions that real, worried Alaskans are posting here?"

Alaska Public Media watched the same event and described the moderator softening questions before passing them to Begich — asking him how to contact his office and what "America First" means — while questions about federal job losses and frozen funding filled the comments unanswered. One caller who did get through to ask about Trump's executive actions had his line drop mid-question.

That format — office controls the invite, the queue, the questions — is the exact one Speaker Johnson recommended. Begich is not the only Republican who took the advice. Ohio's Mike Carey ran a tele-town hall his office never posted the call-in number for, then put out a press release celebrating that 12,000 people joined, because his office had dialed them.

The pattern outside the hangar

The closed rally isn't a one-off. It fits a record his constituents have been documenting for a year and a half.

In May 2026, Alaska Public Media's Liz Ruskin asked Begich's office where he stood on a nearly $1.8 billion federal fund the Trump administration set up to pay people it says were "victimized" by the Justice Department — a fund Sen. Lisa Murkowski called a slush fund. His office did not respond to interview requests or to written questions. He also skipped a May 22 meet-and-greet in Kodiak, billed as a session with him and Sen. Dan Sullivan, where constituents had come with questions for both. His campaign said notice of the event went out before his travel schedule was final, and the organizer confirmed that.

Bill Hill, the independent challenging Begich, says he hears the same complaint everywhere he goes: calls and emails to Begich's office go unanswered.

"Nick Begich calling up the party boss to hold closed events — from my perspective, it sounds like he's nervous," Hill said.

The ADN's own summary of Begich's first term is blunt: he "has been a reliable supporter of Trump's," and has "often been criticized by some constituents for his lack of public engagement, including through town hall meetings."

Why this matters more than a bad optics story

Access is not a courtesy. It is the only tool most people have.

In the year and a half Begich has been in office, he has voted for a budget bill that cuts Medicaid and food assistance in a state that ranks 36th of 50 on the measures we track. He voted against extending the health insurance subsidies that hold down premiums for Alaskans who buy their own coverage — while 17 Republicans broke with leadership to vote for them. He told Alaskans the bill was "great" for the state despite the Medicaid and SNAP cuts inside it.

Those are the votes people want to ask him about. That is exactly why they don't get to.

A congressman who is proud of his record holds a room. A congressman who is not tells you to bring a photo ID, keeps the address off the flyer, and locks the reporters outside.

Early voting in Alaska has already begun. The primary is August 18; under Alaska's top-four system the general election follows on November 3.

Source

Alex DeMarban, "U.S. House Speaker Johnson appears at tightly controlled Palmer event to support Nick Begich's reelection," Anchorage Daily News, August 8, 2026. Photo: House Speaker Mike Johnson with Nick Begich III at a ceremonial swearing-in at the Capitol, Jan. 3, 2025 (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).

45 Republicans We Cover Broke the Law That's Supposed to Stop Insider Trading in Congress

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 14:36:26 +0000

On July 22, 2026, the U.S. House passed a bill called the Stop Insider Trading Act. It passed 232 to 198, and every single Republican who voted — all 218 of them — voted yes.

Watching that, you'd think Congress had finally decided to deal with its stock trading problem.

Congress does have a stock trading problem. But there is already a law on the books meant to handle the most basic part of it, and it has been there since 2012. It asks members of Congress to do one simple thing.

We went through the report cards on this site and counted how many of the Republicans we cover have failed to do that one simple thing.

The answer is 45.

What the STOCK Act actually asks

The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act — the STOCK Act — was signed into law on April 4, 2012 after a national scandal over lawmakers appearing to profit from what they learned on the job. The Brennan Center describes it as closing part of a loophole that had exempted Congress from rules other traders had lived under since 1934.

The core requirement is almost embarrassingly easy. If you, your spouse, or your kids buy or sell a stock, a bond, or crypto worth more than $1,000, you file a form. You have 30 days from when you find out about it, and no more than 45 days from the trade itself.

That's the whole thing. It doesn't stop anyone from trading. It doesn't limit what they can own. It just says: tell us.

And there's a good reason it says that. Members of Congress know things before we do. They know which company is about to win a federal contract, which industry is about to get a tax break, whether the tariffs are real. If we can see what they bought and when they bought it, we can hold their trades up against their votes and decide for ourselves who they're working for.

Disclosure is the only tool voters get. Miss the deadline, and by the time we find out, the vote has happened, the profit is banked, and the election is over.

The roll call

Here's what "breaking a transparency law" looks like in practice. All of these are Republicans with report cards on this site.

The biggest offenders:

Rick Allen (GA) — failed to properly report 136 transactions worth between $3.05 million and $8.56 million. The oldest was a Monsanto purchase from February 2017 that he didn't disclose until August 2023 — roughly six and a half years late.
Diana Harshbarger (TN) — late on more than 700 stock trades worth between $728,000 and $10.9 million.
Julia Letlow (LA) — late on more than 210 stock and bond trades worth $225,000 to $3.3 million, some by more than a year.
Tommy Tuberville (AL) — in his first year in the Senate, disclosed 132 trades late, worth at least $894,000.
John James (MI) — 145 stock trades not disclosed on time, worth up to $2.2 million, the oldest more than eight months late. The campaign finance group End Citizens United filed an ethics complaint over them.
Lisa McClain (MI) — the No. 4 Republican in House leadership broke the law twice in 2025: first on more than 500 transactions, then again months later on $360,000 to $900,000 of her husband's trades, including up to $450,000 of Palantir stock.
Byron Donalds (FL) — months late on up to $1.6 million in trades.
Blake Moore (UT) — broke it more than 70 times in his first six months in office, on trades worth as much as $1.1 million.

The two the ethics office formally looked at. In May 2022 the nonpartisan Office of Congressional Ethics found "substantial reason to believe" that two Republicans had violated the law. Pat Fallon (TX) had failed to timely disclose 122 transactions worth between $9 million and $21 million in 2021 alone. John Rutherford (FL) had 157 late transactions worth $652,000 to $3.5 million, stretching back to the year he was sworn in.

Caught by watchdogs and reporters. A 2021 Campaign Legal Center complaint reported by NPR named three Republicans. Roger Williams (TX) filed no transaction reports for three of his wife's 2019 stock sales — General Electric, Nvidia and Disney. Warren Davidson (OH) sold $50,000 to $100,000 in Workhorse Group stock in 2020 with no disclosure form on file at all. And Lance Gooden (TX) reported a dozen stock purchases worth between $60,019 and $376,000 on his annual disclosure — American Airlines, Delta, Royal Caribbean, Hertz, Marathon Oil and others — without ever filing the transaction reports for them. All three sat on the House Financial Services Committee. What made that complaint unusual, NPR noted, is that these members appeared never to have filed reports at all. NOTUS's August 2025 investigation into late filings named Scott Franklin (FL), Brandon Gill (TX), Tim Moore (NC), Austin Scott (GA) and Dan Meuser (PA). A 2021 Business Insider review flagged Victoria Spartz (IN) and Mike Kelly (PA), whose wife's purchase of Beauty Health Company stock went unreported for more than seven weeks past the deadline.

And the rest. Raw Story's September 2024 investigation into 62 members of Congress who broke the law included Stephanie Bice (OK), Ron Estes (KS), Russ Fulcher (ID), Glenn Grothman (WI), Bill Hagerty (TN), Bill Huizenga (MI), David Joyce (OH), Tom Kean Jr. (NJ), Darin LaHood (IL), Nicole Malliotakis (NY), Maria Elvira Salazar (FL), Adrian Smith (NE), Rob Wittman (VA) and Mike Collins (GA). Add Dan Sullivan (AK), who sold Mowi and Five Below stock in August 2022 and didn't report either sale until November 3; Mike Rounds (SD), more than five months late on a $1 million to $5 million stock sale; Kevin Hern (OK), nearly two dozen trades worth up to $2.7 million; Brian Mast (FL), a year and a half late on an Ideal Power sale; Carol Miller (WV), almost a year late on at least $217,000 of her husband's trades; August Pfluger (TX), late on family trades worth up to $150,000; Juan Ciscomani (AZ), about nine months late on a Treasury bond worth up to $50,000; plus Susan Collins (ME), Roger Marshall (KS), Chuck Fleischmann (TN) and Pete Sessions (TX), whose stories are below.

Not all of these are the same size. Bill Huizenga filed an annual report ten days late. Nicole Malliotakis was late on two transactions in the $1,001-to-$15,000 range. That is nothing like Rick Allen's six and a half years, and we're saying so.

The point isn't that all 45 are equally bad. The point is that 45 of them couldn't clear a bar this low.

"My broker did it"

Read the responses side by side and a script emerges.

Rick Allen's office said his trades are "handled by a financial adviser" and blamed a compliance firm. Harshbarger's chief of staff blamed a financial advisor's "gross oversight." Julia Letlow's spokesman said she was "two layers removed" because Merrill Lynch had discretionary trading authority and "did not consult with the congresswoman." Mike Rounds's office said the sale "happened via a third-party investment firm" and that the senator "does not have direct involvement." Susan Collins's spokesperson blamed "a delay in notification from the third-party advisor." Tom Kean Jr. blamed an attorney and a family trust. Kevin Hern's office said he and his accountant forgot to hit send. Bill Hagerty called it a "clerical error."

Chuck Fleischmann's office went one better. He first reported that "a dependent child had made these trades" — then acknowledged he has no dependent children, and filed an amended disclosure six days later saying it was his financial advisor after all.

This got common enough that NOTUS ran a whole piece on it in August 2025, headlined "Lawmakers' New Botched Stock Disclosure Scapegoat: Financial Advisers." That story quoted the House Ethics Committee's own written guidance, which settles the argument in one sentence:

"You are personally responsible for incomplete and inaccurate information contained in your [financial reports], regardless of who assisted in preparation."

If you hire someone and they don't do the job, it's still your problem. Every one of us knows that from our own lives. A late mortgage payment doesn't get forgiven because the bank's website was confusing.

The penalty is $200

Here's why none of them seem especially worried.

The fine for filing late is $200 — what the Campaign Legal Center calls "a hardly impactful deterrence from the potential millions to be made off the stock market." Blake Moore broke the law more than 70 times and, as we've written before, paid $200 total. Dan Meuser was more than a year late reporting as much as $600,000 in family trades made at the very bottom of the pandemic market crash. He paid $200.

It gets softer than that. A January 2023 House Ethics memo says a report "is late if submitted any time after the due date, but there is a 30-day grace period before late fees are imposed." Chuck Fleischmann's office used exactly that to avoid paying anything at all. And the fees that do get assessed are frequently waived by the ethics committees.

The criminal side is emptier still. No member of Congress has ever been prosecuted for insider trading under the STOCK Act. The Bangor Daily News reported the same thing this June, alongside the long-standing criticism that the law "has no teeth."

So the deal on offer to a member of Congress is this: disclose your trades and let voters judge you, or don't, and risk a $200 fee you can ask to have waived. Forty-five of the Republicans on this site took the second option.

Why the timing is the whole story

A late form sounds like a paperwork problem. It isn't. It matters because of what stays hidden and for how long.

Tim Moore failed to disclose 12 trades made around Trump's April 2025 tariff announcement — the announcement that moved every market in the country.
Ron Estes was about four months late reporting up to $45,000 in Treasury savings bonds. He sits on the Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the nation's bonded debt.
Blake Moore bought up to $60,000 of Raytheon stock while sitting on the House Armed Services Committee, and didn't report it on time.
David Joyce was nearly two years late on trades that included Boeing, Citigroup and TC Energy.
Scott Franklin's late-reported trades included General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin — federal contractors.

None of that is proof anybody traded on inside information. That's exactly the point. The disclosure rule exists so the question can be asked while it still matters. When a member reports a trade two years after making it, nobody can hold it up against the vote he cast that week. The delay isn't a side effect of breaking the rule. The delay is what the rule was written to prevent.

We know what it looks like when the timeline is visible. Mike Kelly's wife bought 5,000 shares of Cleveland-Cliffs the morning after his office learned the Butler steel plant would get the federal help he had been lobbying for, then sold at a $64,476 profit — and the House Ethics Committee voted unanimously to formally reprove him, one of the very few times any of this produced a real consequence. Rob Bresnahan sold six figures of Medicaid company stock a week before voting to cut Medicaid. We only know either of those things because the filings eventually surfaced.

The ones who campaigned on this

The hypocrisy isn't incidental. It's the pattern.

Susan Collins helped write the law. She helped write it in 2012, alongside the late Sen. Joe Lieberman. In February 2026 she disclosed her husband's purchase of a Pfizer corporate bond five days after the deadline — a violation FactCheck.org confirmed even while knocking down a separate Democratic attack ad against her as false. A review of her earlier filings found 24 transactions from 2013 to 2018 reported more than 100 days late, worth up to $395,000. Her campaign notes she has never personally bought or sold an individual stock — her husband's outside advisor makes those calls.

Byron Donalds went on television in March 2022 to demand consequences for members who violate the STOCK Act — "That's when you have to have sanctions and the House has to get real" — and then broke it himself. He is now running for governor of Florida.

Maria Elvira Salazar attacked her Democratic predecessor in April 2020 over financial disclosure problems, writing that Donna Shalala "violates and skirts federal law with her own finances." Then she filed late herself — more than two months past the deadline on a Cano Health transaction worth up to $500,000 — and asked for the $200 penalty to be waived.

Tom Kean Jr. won his seat in 2022 by hammering his opponent over late stock disclosures and promising "the highest level of ethics and transparency." He has violated the STOCK Act repeatedly since.

Roger Marshall hid a dependent child's pandemic-era trades for 17 months — then, in March 2026, put his name on a bill to ban exactly that.

Mike Collins endorsed a ban on congressional stock trading while being one of the busiest crypto traders in Congress. He was also late reporting two Ethereum purchases.

And then there's Pete Sessions, who is at least consistent. He opposes banning congressional stock trading, calling it a "populist move" and saying, "I think we have enough rules and regulations." His argument for leaving things as they are was this: "If you have nothing to hide, then transparency is your friend."

He has been late on his own disclosures twice.

Back to that July vote

Which brings us back to the bill all 218 voting Republicans supported on July 22.

The Stop Insider Trading Act bans members from making new purchases of individual stocks — but lets them keep everything they already own, reinvest the dividends, and sell later. Rep. Pramila Jayapal called it a "so-called stock trading ban that literally does nothing of the sort." Rep. Joe Morelle said it was "so filled with holes, it would make Swiss cheese blush." And the bill carried a second payload most people never heard about: a set of strict new voter ID rules that would bar student IDs and require voters to photocopy their ID to vote by mail.

So the same members who couldn't be bothered to file a form got to vote for a "ban" that grandfathers in everything they already hold — and attached new hurdles for the rest of us to vote, on the way through.

The bottom line

Nobody here is on trial. Most of these are late forms, and late forms are boring.

But a democracy runs on a handful of small, boring obligations, and this is one of them. Congress wrote itself the gentlest possible rule — trade all you want, just tell us within 45 days — attached a $200 fine, waived the fine much of the time, and has never once prosecuted anyone under it. Forty-five of the Republicans we cover still couldn't follow it.

Every time one of them misses that deadline, we lose the only thing the law was ever designed to give us: the ability to look at what they bought, look at how they voted, and draw our own conclusions while it still matters.

They know that. That's why the deadline keeps getting missed.

We deserve better.

A State Had to Sue the Federal Government to Investigate Child Sex Crimes. Three Days Later, 50 Republicans Promoted the Man It Sued.

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:23:04 +0000

On Wednesday, August 5, 2026, the state of New Mexico did something states almost never have to do.

It sued the United States Department of Justice.

Not over a regulation. Not over funding. New Mexico sued because it says the federal government is blocking a live criminal investigation into the sexual abuse of women and girls at Jeffrey Epstein's ranch — crimes that happened inside New Mexico's own borders, to New Mexico's own people.

The lawsuit names acting Attorney General Todd Blanche personally.

Three days later, at 4:17 in the morning, fifty Republican senators voted to give Blanche the job permanently.

What New Mexico is asking for

The state's complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., asks a judge to order the Justice Department to hand over unredacted Epstein investigative files.

New Mexico argues the refusal breaks federal law and stomps on the state's basic authority to investigate and prosecute crimes committed on its own soil. That's not a small claim. It's the argument that a state gets to police its own territory.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat, put it plainly:

"We asked the Department of Justice to cooperate by providing access to records that may be critical to identifying victims, witnesses, and additional criminal conduct at Zorro Ranch. Their delay is actively hurting our criminal investigation and delaying justice Epstein survivors deserve."

On a call with reporters, Torrez said his office has made ten separate requests for information. Every one has been ignored or denied.

"We have heard repeatedly they will cooperate and what our team has experienced is anything but cooperation."

And:

"Todd Blanche today with a stroke of a pen could grant us the access that he claimed. Instead they have decided to stonewall, to obstruct and to frankly conceal for whatever reason."

This isn't the first time the feds told New Mexico to sit down

Here's the part that should make you angry.

Back in 2019, federal prosecutors asked New Mexico to pause its own investigation. They promised to share what they found when they were done.

They never did.

Former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas — the man who agreed to that deal — wrote to Torrez in a July 20 letter saying the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York simply failed to honor it.

So the timeline is: the federal government told a state to stand down on a child sex abuse investigation, promised to share the evidence, kept the evidence, and is now refusing to hand it over seven years later.

New Mexico reopened the case in February 2026. Since then, the state — not the FBI, not the Justice Department — conducted the first law enforcement search of Zorro Ranch that has ever been done.

Epstein bought that property in 1993. He died in 2019. Nobody searched it while he was alive.

What they're looking for

A separate bipartisan panel — New Mexico's Truth Commission, a four-person legislative subcommittee with two Democrats and two Republicans on it — released its first report the same day the lawsuit was filed.

The findings so far, reported by FOX 4 and confirmed by the Christian Science Monitor:

Evidence that Epstein abused about five women and girls at Zorro Ranch between 1996 and 2012.
Roughly 30 other people who may have been victims, witnesses, or facilitators — or some combination.
Federal redactions in the released files are actively blocking the commission from verifying what it has.

The commission has issued 20 subpoenas and gotten back more than 100,000 records. Seven of those subpoenas were flat-out ignored — including by the Federal Aviation Administration and by the same U.S. Attorney's Office in New York that told New Mexico to stand down in the first place.

Rep. Andrea Romero, who chairs the commission, described what that silence has cost:

"In the seven years since Jeffrey Epstein died, in the two decades since his crimes first drew attention of law enforcement, no government, federal, state, or local, has ever compiled an account of what he did in New Mexico."

Twenty years. Nobody wrote it down.

The Justice Department's excuse, and what survivors said about it

The Justice Department's answer is that court orders bar it from disclosing "victim-identifying information carte blanche," and that New Mexico hasn't given a lawful reason for such sweeping disclosures. It says protecting victim privacy is a top priority.

Torrez's response was that his office has "provided them with ample legal justifications," and that the department is hiding "behind the Epstein survivors."

The survivors themselves answered that one. In a joint statement to NBC News, some of the women Epstein abused said:

"The DOJ's argument that it won't hand over files in order to protect survivors' identities is laughable, when the DOJ has already revealed their names and personal information. By holding onto these files, Todd Blanche's DOJ is simply continuing to protect abusers."

That is not a partisan talking point. That is the people the policy claims to protect saying the policy is a lie.

It lands harder because the Justice Department's actual record on redactions is a mess. When it began releasing Epstein records in December under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, what came out was largely material that was already public or blacked out so heavily it meant nothing — while accusers' personal details slipped through.

Now: the part that's on Republican senators

New Mexico filed this lawsuit on Wednesday, August 5. It was national news that day and the next.

The Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general on Saturday, August 8, by a vote of 50 to 49.

Every yes vote was a Republican. The margin was one.

Fourteen of those yes votes came from senators we track: Marsha Blackburn, Shelley Moore Capito, Tom Cotton, Darline Graham, Bill Hagerty, Jon Husted, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Roger Marshall, Ashley Moody, Pete Ricketts, Jim Risch, Mike Rounds, Dan Sullivan, and Tommy Tuberville.

They had the information. A state attorney general had just gone to federal court and accused this man, by name, of obstructing a criminal sex trafficking investigation. Lisa Murkowski, one of only two Republicans who voted no, said the Justice Department's "handling of files" connected to Epstein was part of her reason.

Fifty of her colleagues shrugged and confirmed him before sunrise, then left town for a month of vacation.

They already voted to keep these files sealed once

This is the pattern, and it is on the record.

On September 10, 2025, the Senate voted on an amendment whose stated purpose was, in the Senate's own words, "To direct the Attorney General to make publicly available documents related to Jeffrey Epstein."

Republican leadership moved to table it — the procedural way of killing something without having to vote on it directly. The motion to table passed 51 to 49. Two votes the other way and the files would be public today. Rand Paul and Josh Hawley were the only Republicans who broke ranks.

We pulled the roll call. Every single senator on this list who was in the Senate that day voted to table:

Blackburn. Capito. Cotton. Hagerty. Husted. Hyde-Smith. Marshall. Moody. Ricketts. Risch. Rounds. Sullivan. Tuberville.

Thirteen for thirteen.

The same thirteen then voted to make Todd Blanche deputy attorney general in March 2025, and voted for him again in August 2026 after a state sued him for withholding the very documents they'd voted to keep sealed.

That's three chances. Three times the same answer.

Dan Sullivan's case is the sharpest: he voted to keep the files sealed and then took campaign checks from two men who appear in them. Over in the House, Ashley Hinson refused to sign the petition to force the files open while billionaires named in those files wrote her nearly $90,000 in checks. And Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who never misses a chance to promote his committee's investigations, has stayed conspicuously quiet about the Epstein one — the one his own son runs.

Who this actually hurts

While all of this plays out in Washington, the ranch itself has moved on.

Epstein's estate sold Zorro Ranch in 2023 to the family of Don Huffines, a Texas Republican recently appointed his state's comptroller. Huffines has said the property is being renamed San Rafael Ranch, after a saint associated with healing, and that his family plans to run a Christian retreat there.

A healing retreat, on the property where nobody has finished asking who was hurt.

Meanwhile a New Mexico survivor named Rachel Benavidez sat in a hearing room in Santa Fe last Wednesday and asked, again, for the evidence to be released.

"I use this survivor platform to stand on the right side of every survivor's journey toward truth and justice. I am holding onto faith that real accountability will be achieved."

She is holding onto faith. Her state had to sue the federal government to get a look at the files. And the senators who could have made this a condition of confirming an attorney general — who had the leverage, in a vote decided by one — used it for nothing.

Fourteen of them are on this site. You can look up every one.

We deserve better.

Source

Daniel Miller, "New Mexico sues federal government for release of Epstein files" (FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth, August 6, 2026). Additional reporting from NBC News and the Associated Press and Source New Mexico. The Truth Commission's interim report is public. Photo: NBC News.

At 4:17 in the Morning, 50 Republican Senators Handed the Justice Department to Trump's Personal Lawyer

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 22:20:53 +0000

At 4:17 a.m. on Saturday, August 8, 2026, the United States Senate made Todd Blanche the attorney general of the United States.

The vote was 50 to 49. Every one of the 50 yes votes was a Republican. Every Democrat voted no. Two Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — voted no with them. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky did not vote.

One vote. That's the whole margin.

Todd Blanche is Donald Trump's personal criminal defense lawyer. Not "was, a long time ago." He was hired in 2023 to defend Trump against criminal charges, he was a lead attorney on Trump's defense team at the hush-money trial in New York, and he defended Trump in the two federal cases brought by the Justice Department he now runs.

Fifty Republican senators looked at that and said: perfect, give him the whole building.

What they actually voted for

This wasn't a close call that turned on some technical dispute. The objections were enormous, they were public for weeks, and several Republicans raised them out loud before folding.

A $1.8 billion fund for Trump's supporters. Trump sued the IRS. Then he settled that lawsuit with his own administration. The settlement created a $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" to pay people who say the criminal justice system mistreated them — and Trump was explicit that he meant the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6. He called them "great American Patriots."

Tax audit immunity for the Trump family. The same settlement shielded Trump, two of his sons, and the Trump Organization from IRS audits and enforcement on past returns. A federal judge who handled the IRS case described Trump's lawsuit as an improper exercise in self-dealing. The union representing IRS workers went to court two days before the vote to try to block the immunity deal.

Prosecuting the president's enemies. Under Blanche, the Justice Department charged former FBI Director James Comey with threatening the president — over a photo of seashells arranged to read "86 47" that Comey posted online. It charged the Southern Poverty Law Center. It opened an investigation into the lawsuits E. Jean Carroll brought and won against Trump for sexual abuse and defamation. Comey's lawyers are asking a judge to throw his case out, accusing the department of misleading judges and withholding key facts.

Blanche's answer to all of this was two letters, written on August 2. One said the order creating the fund "is rescinded and shall have no force or effect." The other narrowed the tax immunity deal.

That was enough for fifty senators.

The letters aren't worth much

Here is the part nobody should skip past.

ABC News reported that the agreement Cornyn and Tillis accepted contains no language preventing the fund from being brought back under a different name or a different method. The Judiciary Committee advanced Blanche anyway on August 4, on a 12–10 vote along party lines.

Brandon DeBot of the Tax Law Center at NYU Law told NPR what the letters were worth:

"These assurances are not worth the paper they're written on. They don't pull back on the attempts to give the president and his affiliates unauthorized immunity from tax audits. And they don't do anything new to stop the president from trying to bring back the fund."

And the president himself spent the week before the vote saying he wanted the fund back. Trump told reporters the fund would have been "very fair," that it could have given "some solace" to Jan. 6 defendants, and: "I view that fund as a positive, and a lot of Republicans do too."

So the deal was: Trump says out loud he still wants it, his own lawyer signs a piece of paper saying it's cancelled, and the Senate calls that a win and goes home for a month.

Thirteen of them had already done this once

This is the fact that should follow every one of these senators around.

On March 5, 2025, the Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as deputy attorney general — the number-two job — by 52 to 46. Everything anyone objected to on Saturday morning happened after that vote, on the job that vote handed him.

Every single Republican we track who was in the Senate in March 2025 voted yes then, too. Blackburn, Capito, Cotton, Hagerty, Husted, Hyde-Smith, Marshall, Moody, Ricketts, Risch, Rounds, Sullivan, Tuberville — all yes, both times.

They didn't get fooled. They got exactly what they voted for, twice.

Susan Collins voted yes in March 2025 as well, and then announced a no vote on August 4 — hours after the two Republicans with real leverage had already given theirs away.

What Blanche did to the Justice Department

Before the vote, more than 1,200 former Justice Department employees — people who served across 14 administrations, including dozens of former U.S. attorneys — signed a letter to the Judiciary Committee urging senators to reject him.

Their director, Stacey Young, put it this way:

"Since his confirmation as Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche has shown time and again that his guiding star is fealty to the President, not the Constitution."

The letter's numbers are the part that should worry anyone who has ever called the FBI or reported a fraud. Under Blanche's watch, over 16,000 employees left the department, including more than a quarter of its attorneys. Agents, analysts, immigration judges and career prosecutors were fired for declining to bring vindictive prosecutions, for refusing to lie in court, or for working assigned cases the president didn't like. Others were pulled off their real work to patrol streets in Washington, D.C.

The letter says the consequences reach far past the Justice Department's own hallways:

"They've meant that much of the department's vital work isn't being done, or isn't being done as well – leaving communities less safe, Americans' rights less protected, and our national security more vulnerable."

That is 1,200 people who spent their careers inside the Justice Department, serving under presidents of both parties, telling the Senate this man should not get the job. Fifty senators voted yes anyway.

The Epstein survivors told them, too

Murkowski, one of the two Republican no votes, said part of her reason was the Justice Department's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. She wasn't alone — Sen. Thom Tillis had pushed Blanche to meet with Epstein survivors, and Blanche finally did in July.

It did not go well. Afterward, survivor Annie Farmer said in a July 16 statement that she found Blanche "abrasive, condescending, and intentionally noncommittal to survivors," and survivors urged senators to block him.

Blanche was the public face of the Epstein files at the Justice Department. He is the official who personally sat down with Ghislaine Maxwell in a Florida courthouse for two days of interviews on July 24 and 25, 2025, after granting her limited immunity so she could talk without fear of being prosecuted over what she said. She told him she never saw Trump act inappropriately. Shortly afterward she was moved from a low-security prison in Florida to a minimum-security camp in Texas. Neither her lawyer nor the Bureau of Prisons has explained why.

Fourteen senators on this site voted to promote him. One of them, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, voted to keep the Epstein files sealed and then took checks from two men named in them.

The fourteen we track

Ashley Moody of Florida spent six years as her state's attorney general before Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed her to the Senate. She knows better than almost anyone in that chamber what it means for a chief law enforcement officer to be independent of the politician above him. She sits on the Judiciary Committee. She voted yes.

Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee also sits on Judiciary, and is running for governor while she does it.

Darline Graham of South Carolina has been a senator since July 14. Nobody elected her — Gov. Henry McMaster appointed her to the seat left vacant by the death of her brother, Lindsey Graham, on Trump's public recommendation. She has never held elected office in her life. She now sits on the Judiciary Committee, and the first bill she put her name on was one that would make it harder for millions of citizens to register to vote. Now she's voted to confirm the president's defense lawyer as attorney general.

Jon Husted of Ohio spent the same week writing a brand-new photo ID bill that the Senate voted on nineteen minutes after it confirmed Blanche. His state lost more Obamacare coverage than any other in the country this year.

Tommy Tuberville of Alabama is running for governor while still holding his Senate seat.

And the rest voted yes without much comment: Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Jim Risch of Idaho, and Mike Rounds of South Dakota.

The three who talked tough and voted yes anyway

The best part — if you like this sort of thing — is who made the noise.

Cornyn and Tillis spent two weeks holding the nomination hostage. Cornyn accused the Justice Department of having "stonewalled" him and said flatly, "They've simply refused to cooperate." Tillis said the fund was "an insult to the police officers and the people that defended us on January the 6th." Then he said, "It's done. It's been rescinded, and I am satisfied." Both of them voted yes.

Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was the decisive vote. He listed the problems himself — the $1.8 billion fund, the tax immunity deal, the prosecutions of Trump's political opponents — and then said: "This is not a referendum on President Trump. It is a decision regarding Mr. Blanche in very specific circumstances."

Here's what those three men have in common. All of them are on their way out. Cornyn lost his May primary to Ken Paxton after Trump endorsed against him. Tillis isn't running again. Cassidy lost his primary this year to a Trump-backed challenger.

The only Republicans who used any leverage at all were the three with nothing left to lose. And they gave it away for two letters.

That tells you what the other 47 yes votes were really about.

What they did with the night

The Senate pulled an all-nighter to get this done. In the same session it confirmed Blanche, passed a stopgap funding bill, and held a pre-dawn vote on a photo ID requirement for voting. Then everyone went home for a month of recess.

They did not lower anyone's grocery bill. They did not lower anyone's rent, or premiums, or electric bill.

They stayed up until 4:17 in the morning to hand the Justice Department to the president's defense attorney, and then they left town.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told them what the moment was before they voted:

"If there is ever a moment in history when we need an Attorney General above reproach, who is clearly dedicated to ending corruption, even at the highest level of our government, it's right now."

Fifty of them heard that and voted for the president's defense attorney anyway.

We deserve better.

Source

Alanna Durkin Richer and Lisa Mascaro, "Todd Blanche narrowly confirmed as Trump's attorney general in overnight vote" (Associated Press via PBS News, August 8, 2026). Additional reporting from the Associated Press, NPR, and The Hill. Roll call from Senate vote #230. Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters.

At 4:36 in the Morning, 52 Republican Senators Voted to Put a New Hurdle Between You and the Ballot Box

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 13:55:00 +0000

The U.S. Senate stayed up all night on Friday. Then, at 4:36 in the morning on Saturday, August 8, 2026, it took a vote on whether Americans should have to show a photo ID to vote in a federal election.

The vote failed, 52 to 46. It needed 60. Every Democrat who was there voted no.

Then the senators went home for a month.

That's the part worth sitting with. The Senate pulled an all-nighter, confirmed a new attorney general, passed a bill to keep the government's lights on — and squeezed in one more vote on making it harder to cast a ballot. Then everyone left for August recess.

The bill was three days old

The measure was S. 5271, and it is about as fresh as legislation gets. According to the official record at Congress.gov, it was introduced on August 5, 2026 — three days before the Senate voted on it. Its full official title is "A bill to amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require voters to provide photo identification."

The sponsor was Jon Husted, the Republican senator from Ohio.

It picked up exactly two cosponsors, both on August 7 — the day before the vote. They were Ashley Moody of Florida and Dan Sullivan of Alaska.

So: a bill written by one senator, signed onto by two more, introduced on a Wednesday, and voted on before dawn on a Saturday. That is not how you pass a law. That is how you stage a vote.

What "show your ID" actually means for millions of people

Here's the thing about a photo ID requirement. It sounds like nothing. Most of us have a driver's license in our wallet right now. So what's the problem?

The problem is the people who don't — and the people whose ID doesn't match.

A national study from the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland found that about 2.6 million U.S. citizens over 18 have no government-issued photo ID of any kind.

And the bigger number is the one nobody talks about. That same study estimated that 34.5 million people don't have a driver's license or state ID card with their current name and address on it.

Think about who that is. Someone who just moved. Someone who got married and changed their name. A college student. A young person who's lived at three addresses in two years. An older widow who never updated her license. None of them committed fraud. All of them could get turned away.

Noncitizens, meanwhile, are already barred from voting in state, federal and almost all local elections. That has been true this whole time.

This is the same fight, wearing a different hat

Husted's photo ID bill isn't a standalone idea. It's a piece broken off from the SAVE America Act — the bigger Republican bill that would require voters to show documentary proof of citizenship when they register and a photo ID when they vote.

We've written about that bill a lot, because Republicans keep bringing it back. The SAVE Act is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist — and the citizenship-document half of it is even harsher than the ID half. The Brennan Center and its partners found that 21.3 million American citizens of voting age don't have ready access to a document proving citizenship.

President Trump has pushed hard for it. He wanted the Senate to skip its recess and stay in Washington until it passed. Republican leaders told him repeatedly that the votes aren't there — and Saturday morning proved them right.

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, one of the loudest voices for the bill, wasn't discouraged. "This fight's not over," he said afterward. "We're just getting started."

Believe him. Republicans have tried to attach voter restrictions to an affordable housing bill and to a party-line budget bill. When the front door is locked, they try the windows.

The fifteen we track

Fifteen of the Republicans on this site voted yes on Saturday morning. Here they are, with what we already knew about each one.

Jon Husted wrote the bill. This is the same senator whose state lost more Obamacare coverage than any other in America — a man with plenty of real problems back home who chose to spend his August writing a new voting restriction instead.

Ashley Moody and Dan Sullivan put their names on it as cosponsors the day before the vote.

Darline Graham of South Carolina was sworn in only days ago to fill her late brother's seat — and the very first bill she cosponsored was the SAVE Act. Her South Carolina primary is Tuesday, August 11.

Roger Marshall of Kansas spent the week before this vote demanding a floor vote on the SAVE Act on Fox News while describing it to Kansans as a simple "voter ID" bill. It isn't, and this week's separate photo ID vote makes that plain: if the SAVE Act were just voter ID, Husted wouldn't have needed to write a voter ID bill.

Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, now running for governor, has his own history of repeating SAVE Act talking points that don't survive contact with the bill text.

And the rest voted yes without much comment: Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Jim Risch of Idaho, and Mike Rounds of South Dakota.

Two senators didn't vote at all: Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who is recovering from a health issue, and Democrat Peter Welch of Vermont.

What they didn't do before they left

It's worth naming what else was on the table that week, because it tells you what the Senate treats as urgent.

The Senate did pass a stopgap funding bill, 90 to 6, to keep the government running through December 11 — though the House passed a different version, so that isn't settled. It confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general, with Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski voting no. It passed a Russia sanctions package, 86 to 11.

What it did not do was lower anyone's grocery bill, or their rent, or their electric bill, or their premiums.

It did find time, at 4:36 a.m., to vote on making people prove who they are at the polls.

Fifty-two Republicans thought that was worth staying up for.

Source

Reporting by Shauneen Miranda for States Newsroom: "US Senate leaves town for recess after passing stopgap spending bill, blocking photo ID for voting" (Michigan Advance, August 7, 2026). Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom. Roll call details from Senate vote #231.

She Flew to Washington Three Times to Ask Dan Sullivan About Medicaid. He Sent a Staffer Who Doodled.

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 11:45:00 +0000

Betty Redd-Mendez has been a caregiver for almost 28 years. Her brother, her son and her father all live with her in Wasilla and depend on her.

When she found out what the Medicaid cuts in Trump's budget bill would do to Alaska, she wanted to ask her senator about it. So she spent weeks arranging coverage for three family members, and she flew to Washington, D.C.

Here's what happened, in her words:

"After sitting and waiting for an hour with my fellow union members, Sullivan refused to speak with us. Finally, Sullivan caved and sent a staff member to sit with us for all of 15 minutes … and I could see that instead of taking notes, he was just doodling in his notebook."

That was one of three trips she's made where Dan Sullivan wouldn't meet with her.

The question she wanted answered

It wasn't complicated. She wanted to know why he voted for the cuts.

"Why won't Sullivan meet with the Alaskans he was elected to represent? Is he ignorant of the crisis he's created? Is he ashamed of his votes to rip away care and coverage? Scared to face us?"

Redd-Mendez is a member of SEIU 775, the caregivers union representing more than 60,000 long-term care workers across Washington, Montana and Alaska. She is not an outside agitator. She is a woman from Wasilla who takes care of three sick relatives and wanted fifteen real minutes with her senator.

She got fifteen minutes with someone drawing in a notebook.

What Sullivan said the bill would do

Sullivan didn't just vote for the budget bill. He sold it, hard.

After it passed, he told Alaskans, "I think it's fair to say no state fared better from this bill." He wrote an op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News titled "Big beautiful wins for Alaska in the Big Beautiful Bill." His office put out a release saying he'd shaped the bill to "strengthen health care."

What the bill actually did

Alaska stands to lose an estimated $1.5 to $2.5 billion in federal Medicaid funds over the next decade — an 11% cut.

A report prepared for the Alaska Department of Health projects more than 9,000 Alaskans will lose Medicaid coverage because of the law's new work requirements.

Redd-Mendez says the projection has already come true: since the bill was signed, nearly 10,000 Alaskans have dropped off the Medicaid rolls.

"I'm confident that those 10,000 Alaskans weren't magically able to afford healthcare elsewhere."

Why this hits Alaska harder than most places

One in three Alaskans is on Medicaid.

Alaska is rural, which means its hospitals run on Medicaid revenue. When that revenue disappears, the hospital doesn't just serve fewer Medicaid patients — it raises prices, cuts services, or closes. Everybody in the region pays for that, insured or not.

Alaska is also one of the fastest-aging states in the country, and already has one of the highest rates of people who can't get the services they need. Paid family caregiving — the thing Redd-Mendez does — is the cheap end of the system. It keeps people out of nursing homes and hospitals. Roughly 8 million family caregivers nationally rely on Medicaid for their own medical care, and 11 million receive stipends through it.

Cut that, and the crisis doesn't get smaller. It just moves somewhere more expensive.

The pattern

This isn't the first time Sullivan has been hard to find. Alaskans have written to us before about a senator who is more available to donors than constituents — we've covered his Epstein-linked donors, his luxury golf resort travel, and the fraud settlement at a company he led.

The through-line is a senator who shows up for some rooms and not others.

Redd-Mendez put it plainly:

"Our safety net is being stripped, and Dan Sullivan refuses to take accountability for his actions. It's clear he has simply lost touch with Alaskans."

An hour in a hallway. Fifteen minutes with a staffer. Three trips. And a doodle.

Source

Anchorage Daily News, "Opinion: I'm a caregiver. Sen. Dan Sullivan won't answer my questions about Medicaid cuts," by Betty Redd-Mendez, August 6, 2026.

Four Republican Senators Are Being Boosted by Fake Local News Sites Run by a Dark Money Group

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:05:00 +0000

There is a website called the Alaska Navigator. It calls itself "independent news covering the Last Frontier." It has headlines, a news section, and articles with no byline.

It is not a news outlet. It is owned and operated by One Nation, the dark money group that works hand in hand with the Senate Leadership Fund — the super PAC that exists to elect Senate Republicans. One Nation has handed that super PAC over $70 million this election cycle alone.

And the Alaska Navigator is not the only one. Popular Information found at least six of these fake local news sites, one in each state with a competitive Senate race. Four of them are built around Republicans we track: Dan Sullivan in Alaska, Susan Collins in Maine, Jon Husted in Ohio, and Ashley Hinson in Iowa.

If you live in one of those states and you have scrolled past one of these articles on Facebook, you were the target.

What the Alaska site told voters about Dan Sullivan

On June 10, the Alaska Navigator published a piece headlined "As Fentanyl Deaths Rise in Alaska, Sullivan Pushes Tougher Penalties and Enforcement." It has no author's name on it. It says Dan Sullivan "is leading efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking and support law enforcement agencies confronting the epidemic."

Sullivan has been a senator for more than a decade. To back up the claim that he is "leading" on fentanyl, the article offers exactly one thing: his vote for the HALT Fentanyl Act in March 2025.

Eighty-four senators voted for that bill. Sullivan did not write it. He was not one of its 16 original cosponsors. He signed on about a week before it passed.

That is not leadership. That is being present.

The article also credits a retired Alaska Wildlife Trooper director with praising Sullivan — without a single direct quote from him, without explaining what Sullivan supposedly did, and without mentioning that the man is himself running for the state legislature as a Republican. Popular Information could find no record of him ever saying anything publicly about Sullivan on fentanyl or anything else.

Then One Nation spent tens of thousands of dollars pushing this article into Alaskans' Facebook feeds — with an ad announcing a "New Bill to Crack Down on Fentanyl Trafficking, Supported By Dan Sullivan." There was no new bill. The only bill in the article was signed into law in July 2025.

The site was built to look older than it is

The domain thealaskanavigator.com was registered on March 20, 2026 — a few months before it started flooding Facebook.

But the site carries an article dated January 2026, which makes it look like an outlet with some history behind it. According to the website's own source code, that article was generated with a WordPress plugin called FakerPress, which advertises itself as "a clean way to generate fake and dummy content."

They faked a back catalog so the propaganda would look like a newspaper.

Maine, Ohio, and Iowa got their own versions

The other sites run the same play with the same design and the same purpose.

Maine Policy Updates calls itself "Maine's News Source." Its front page is a wall of praise for Susan Collins: "Susan Collins Secures $150 Million+ for Maine Water Projects," "Senator Susan Collins Delivers $190M Lifeline for Rural Health Care in Maine," "Senator Collins Secures Record Diabetes Research Funding." It has been running since January — longer than any of the others.

Ohio Pulse bills itself as "your trusted source for local news, investigative journalism, and community stories across the Buckeye State." Its investigative journalism includes "Husted Announces $19.5M For East Toledo Project" and "Husted Announces $60 Million For Ohio Military Installations." Jon Husted is on the ballot in Ohio this year, and nearly every headline on the site is an announcement of money he says he delivered.

Iowa Voice — "Stay Informed. Stay Iowa" — is built around Ashley Hinson, including "Iowa Congresswoman Hinson Co-Sponsoring Bill to Limit Birthright Citizenship" and an item literally headlined "OPINION: Ignore The Lies; Ashley Hinson Bill Backs Farmers, Consumers."

There is one more detail worth knowing. The image files on these "independent" outlets are served from numbered folders on a single shared WordPress installation — Maine is site 2, Ohio is site 12, Iowa is site 13. Six local newspapers, one machine.

And at the bottom of each homepage, in small faint type, the same four words: "Paid for by One Nation."

The other two sites run the opposite play

Georgia and New Hampshire are the states in this group where the seat is held or sought by a Democrat. Those sites don't praise a Republican. They go after the Democrat.

Peach State Post — "Georgia's Premier News Source" — leads with a July 30 piece headlined "Jon Ossoff Tax Vote Renews Debate Over Expiring Tax Cuts and Their Impact on Georgia Families," which falsely suggests Georgia's Democratic senator opposes increasing the Child Tax Credit — the same attack running in a One Nation TV ad. The rest of the front page is Trump: his Georgia visit, his endorsements.

New Hampshire Daily — "an independent news organization dedicated to covering the stories that matter most to Granite State residents" — runs as its top story a letter to the editor headlined "Chris Pappas raises taxes, while John Sununu cuts." Below it: "Questions About Congressional Ethics Resurface Over of Rep. Chris Pappas Relationship With Amazon Lobbyist." (The garbled "Over of" is theirs.)

So the network has two settings. Where a Republican holds the seat, it's a praise machine. Where a Democrat does, it's an attack machine. Same platform, same funder, same disclosure buried in the footer.

The Iowa story that quoted no Iowans

Iowa Voice ran a piece headlined "Iowa Farmers Say Potential 'Death Tax' Threatens Family Succession Plans." It praises Hinson for being an original cosponsor of the Death Tax Repeal Act, which would wipe out the federal estate tax.

That part is true. Congressional records confirm Hinson signed on to H.R. 1301 as an original cosponsor on February 13, 2025, alongside 174 other Republicans.

Here is what the article leaves out. The federal estate tax barely touches farms at all. The USDA's own economists estimate that about 0.3 percent of farm estates — 141 estates in 2024 — would owe any estate tax. Repealing it is a tax cut for the wealthiest estates in the country, dressed up as saving the family farm.

And despite the headline claiming "Iowa Farmers Say," the piece does not quote or paraphrase a single farmer.

This is the same playbook Hinson's own campaign used when it attacked her opponent with three claims he had never made within an hour of him winning his primary. The difference is that an attack ad says who paid for it.

You are not supposed to know who is behind it

That is the whole point.

One Nation is organized as a 501(c)(4), which means it never has to say who gives it money. So nobody knows who is funding these websites. When One Nation buys a Facebook ad pushing one of these articles, the ad discloses that One Nation paid for it — but never that One Nation owns the website the ad points to. That fact appears only in small, faint type at the very bottom of each site.

The sites also borrow credibility from real journalists — and they do it more than once.

Peach State Post republished an entire 11Alive story about former Atlanta officials being denied clemency, presented it as its own work, and tacked "Read more here" onto the end — even though there was nothing more to read.

New Hampshire Daily does the same thing to public radio. Its story "Police on patrol in NH now have quicker access to bail information," bylined "Josh Rogers, Dan Tuohy," is NHPR's reporting, published by NHPR on June 29, 2026 — reporters' names and all, sitting on a site owned by a Senate super PAC's dark money arm.

That is the trick that makes the rest work. Real journalism from real newsrooms is used as ballast, so the paid attacks alongside it look like they came from the same place.

Across all six sites, One Nation has spent between $198,900 and $274,640 on Meta ads. One Nation did not respond to Popular Information's request for comment.

Why this matters more than a normal ad

Sullivan, Collins, Husted, and Hinson all have real records. Voters can look up how they voted on healthcare, on food assistance, on taxes, and decide.

These websites exist so that voters don't do that. They are built to intercept people who are trying to be informed — someone searching for local news about their senator, someone scrolling past what looks like a hometown paper. Real local newsrooms have been closing across all four of these states for years. Dark money moved into the empty space and put up a storefront.

None of these four senators has said a word about it.

We have written before about the money that surrounds them: the billionaire super PAC money flowing into Maine for Collins, and the utility and tech companies funding Husted while Ohioans' electric bills climb. Those are at least disclosed. This is the version where the spending hides inside something that looks like the news.

If you see a story about your senator on a site you have never heard of, check who owns it. In at least six states right now, the answer is a super PAC.

Source

Senate Republicans launch network of fake news sites — Judd Legum, Popular Information, August 6, 2026. Image: Popular Information.

Five Houses in Little Rock. Two of Them Occupied by Christians. That's the Sharia Takeover.

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 19:12:00 +0000

On July 17, 2026, the governor of Arkansas posted this to her official accounts:

"In our state, you cannot replace Arkansas law with Sharia law. We will not allow it. Period."

Her attorney general quote-tweeted her an hour later to agree that Arkansas is governed by law, "not religious legal codes."

Here is what they were protecting Arkansas from.

Five houses off John Barrow Road

New Africa is a small subdivision in Little Rock's John Barrow neighborhood, built by a local mosque, the Islamic Center for Human Excellence. The Arkansas Times went out and looked at it this month.

It's five houses. Two of them are lived in by Christians. The imam lives in another. The only sign it exists is a sign that says "New Africa Community." It has been there for nearly two decades.

Buyers sign a Bill of Assurance — the same kind of covenant a homeowners association makes you sign, with rules about upkeep and conduct. That document says the development exists "for the purpose of creating a wholly owned residential Al-Islamic community conforming to the social guidelines given in the Quran." That's the sentence that launched a thousand posts.

Tauheed Salaam, part of the development team, explained what it actually means: no stealing, no crime, take care of your family, keep the property up. Nobody is made to wear a hijab or convert. The rules cover the community's public spaces, not what you do inside your own home — you can have a drink in your own house.

And he reached for an analogy that ought to stop this whole story cold. They hope people take examples from the Quran, he said, the same way a Christian might hope people follow the Ten Commandments.

Hold onto that one.

How five houses became a statewide emergency

The Arkansas Times traced the panic back to its source, and it isn't a court case or a police report. It's a content pipeline.

On March 31, the RAIR Foundation — an outlet the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as an anti-Muslim hate group — published a piece claiming Little Rock had been "conquered" by Islam, with a section on New Africa.
On April 4, pro-Trump influencer Terrence K. Williams pushed the story to his 4.5 million Facebook followers. It drew more than 18,300 likes, 7,800 comments and 6,300 shares.
That same day, Arkansas state Rep. Alyssa Brown posted about "a story out of Little Rock about an Islamic Shariah organization" that "is going viral" and "deserves more attention."
Brown then co-sponsored House Resolution 1016, the "Arkansas Property Rights Protection From Sharia Law Act," with primary sponsor Rep. Marcus Richmond. In a later post, Brown cited "a viral post about the Islamic Center compound here in Arkansas."

A hate group's blog post became a bill in the Arkansas Legislature in four days.

It died. On April 15, the House Rules Committee rejected it — and the man who took it apart was a fellow Republican. Rep. Jeremiah Moore pointed out the bill wouldn't even reach a white supremacist compound in northeast Arkansas:

"If we're trying to worry about disclosures for Sharia Law, I would also like to cover the white supremacists up near Ravenden. I'm pretty sure they're trying to do the exact thing that you're describing here…"

That was in a session so short that lawmakers had to vote just to consider non-budget bills. On the same day, another Republican was begging the committee to let him raise the homestead property tax credit because "gasoline is high, groceries are high." The imaginary threat got a named bill with three sponsors. The compound Moore was talking about got nothing.

Then the governor picked it up anyway

Three months after her own party's committee killed the bill, Sarah Sanders posted her warning to Arkansas.

Nobody could say why. Commenters under her own Facebook post asked where it came from — "Where did this come from lmao," one wrote; another called it "a dog whistle inviting hate crimes and deportations." A spokesperson for Sanders didn't respond when the Arkansas Times asked what inspired it.

Attorney General Tim Griffin amplified her post about an hour later with his own, on X and on Facebook. His office said it had "received repeated inquiries about the status of Sharia law in Arkansas." When the Times filed a public records request to see those inquiries, the AG's office refused to release them, claiming an exemption for the attorney general's working papers.

So the official story is: we responded to concerned citizens, and no, you can't see them.

There is no takeover. There never was.

Let's be clear about the thing itself. "Sharia" is a religious framework — prayer, fasting, charity, how you treat your family, how you do business honestly. It does not override American law, any more than kosher rules or Catholic canon law do. American courts answer to the Constitution.

This panic is also not new, and it has never once found anything. A 2013 Brennan Center report counted lawmakers in 32 states introducing "foreign law" bans, and found the practical result wasn't safety — it was confusion over marriages, divorces and prenuptial agreements with religious or foreign origins, and over how international businesses do deals here.

Texas has been running the play the longest. In 2015, a mosque in Irving offered its members voluntary mediation. Then-mayor Beth Van Duyne accused the mosque's leaders of creating separate laws for Muslims and "bypassing American courts," and led Irving officials in endorsing a state bill to forbid judges from using foreign laws. Mosque leaders said she was stirring up anti-Muslim feeling. Eleven years later, nobody has produced the takeover.

Texas passed a "Sharia ban" that never mentions Sharia

Greg Abbott has told Texans he banned Sharia law. He didn't.

The law he signed is House Bill 4211, signed June 20, 2025. Its official title is "Relating to certain residential property interests controlled by certain entities." It governs how business entities own and sell homes in a development. Read the text yourself: the words "Sharia," "Islam," and "Muslim" do not appear in it a single time.

That didn't stop Abbott from posting that he had banned "Sharia law" and "Sharia compounds," and telling Texans to report anyone attempting "Sharia compliance" to law enforcement. CAIR-Texas called it "reckless, discriminatory, and divorced from reality" — and pointed out that the developers of EPIC City, the Muslim community near Dallas the law was aimed at, had said they supported the bill, because they were already following the rules.

They were telling the truth. The Justice Department closed its investigation into EPIC City without bringing any charges.

None of that slowed anything down. In the March 2026 Republican primary, the state party put "Texas should prohibit Sharia law" on the ballot as Proposition 10 — one of ten advisory questions used to set party priorities. It passed with 94.81%, and Abbott promised more:

"Even though I've signed a law that bans Sharia law in the state of Texas, this is going to be something that we take going into the next session and make more crystal clear and more expansive."

He is promising to expand a ban on something that isn't happening, under a law that doesn't say what he says it says.

Congress had already built a caucus

Washington did not need Little Rock. The organization was there first: on December 18, 2025 — three months before the RAIR post — Keith Self of Texas and Chip Roy launched the "Sharia Free America Caucus." Within a month it had 26 members from 17 states. By March it had 50.

The roster reads like a directory of this site: Majority Whip Tom Emmer, plus Reps. Brandon Gill, Michael Cloud, Mary Miller, Andy Biggs, Eli Crane, Byron Donalds, Scott Perry, Randy Fine, Andy Ogles, Eric Burlison, Josh Brecheen, Sheri Biggs, Ralph Norman, Barry Moore, Tracey Mann, Russ Fulcher, Mike Kelly, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Clyde, Mark Harris, Nick Begich, Cory Mills and Mike Haridopolos.

Read their own words in Self's press release and watch how fast "we're protecting the Constitution" turns into something else. Cloud called it "an assault on our Constitution, our freedoms, and the Christian foundations of our nation." Gill complained about "the rise of mass Islamic immigration in north Texas." Ogles skipped the legal argument entirely:

"Islam is a religion of violence, abuse of women, and ruthless political conquest."

That is not a statement about a legal code. It's a statement about a faith and the people who practice it. Ogles kept going: in March 2026 he posted that "Muslims don't belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie." The same week, Randy Fine wrote that "we need more Islamophobia, not less," and Tommy Tuberville posted a photo of the September 11 attacks beside a photo of New York's Muslim mayor, captioned "The enemy is inside the gates."

In February 2026, CAIR designated the caucus an anti-Muslim hate group — the first time in the group's 32-year history it has designated a congressional caucus. The reason was the legislation. One bill members back, the Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act, would let the government revoke visas and deport any foreign national judged to be "an adherent of Sharia law." There is no test for "adherent." It's an official deciding whether your prayers count against you.

This isn't only an objection from the left. At the House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Republicans themselves called in February, George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin testified against the bill, arguing it violates the First Amendment's protections for free speech and free exercise of religion, sweeps in enormous numbers of people who pose no threat, and would actually harm national security by handing extremists a recruiting pitch.

The Senate has a bill by the same name, and it belongs to Alabama's Tommy Tuberville, who introduced S. 3009, the "Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act," on October 15, 2025 — along with S. 3008, the "No Shari'a Act," the same day.

A different Senate bill goes after Sharia in American businesses. On February 12, 2026, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas introduced S. 3887, the "Defeat Sharia Law in America Act," with Tuberville as his only co-sponsor. It would amend the Civil Rights Act so that a business covered by its public-accommodations section that provides goods or services "by implementing Sharia law" counts as discriminating on the ground of religion. Cornyn described a religion practiced by nearly two billion people as "an existential threat to our way of life." CAIR's Alabama chapter called the bill an "unconstitutional attack on religious freedom," pointing out that Sharia guides daily religious practice much the way Jewish Halacha does.

Follow the money, and the calendar

If this were a legal emergency, you'd see it in the courts. Instead you see it in ad buys.

Republicans spent more than $10 million on TV ads mentioning "Sharia" or "Islam" negatively, according to figures the ad-tracking firm AdImpact gave NPR — most of it in Texas, right before its primaries. That's roughly ten times what was spent in each of the last four election cycles.

Sabina Mohyuddin, who runs the American Muslim Advisory Council in Tennessee, put it plainly: "It is an election year and these politicians believe if they spew this hateful rhetoric, they are going to get more votes."

House Speaker Mike Johnson defended the rhetoric, saying "there's a lot of energy in the country and a lot of popular sentiment that the demand to impose Sharia law in America is a serious problem." NPR added the part he left out: Sharia is a religious framework, and it does not have standing over the U.S. Constitution.

A few Republicans wouldn't play along. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis said "freedom of religion is a pillar of our nation and broad brush statements like this are offensive and completely inappropriate." Most of the conference said nothing — a long way from 2019, when Republican leaders condemned Rep. Steve King over his comments on white nationalism and stripped him of his committee assignments.

The freedom argument falls apart on contact

Now go back to Salaam's line: they hope people learn from the Quran the way a Christian might hope people follow the Ten Commandments.

Because three days before Sanders warned Arkansas about religious law, she stood with the First Liberty Institute to announce that Arkansas ranks #1 in the nation for religious liberty. "Every American should be free to live according to their faith and conscience," she said. And one of the laws she credited for the ranking was Act 573 — the law putting the Ten Commandments in every Arkansas classroom.

So: a religious code in every public school is religious liberty. A religious code in a five-house subdivision is an invasion.

That's not the only place the principle collapses.

Texas requires the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom. Abbott signed that bill, and in April 2026 the Fifth Circuit upheld the law. A religious text, in every room, by order of the state.
A federal judge threw Arkansas's version out. In March 2026, Judge Timothy Brooks wrote that "nothing could possibly justify hanging the Ten Commandments — with or without historical context — in a calculus, chemistry, French, or woodworking class." Sanders called the Ten Commandments "the basis of all Western law and morality" and vowed to appeal. The lawyer running that appeal is Tim Griffin — the same attorney general who told Arkansas that the state is governed by law, "not religious legal codes."
Arkansas librarians can now face jail. On July 30, 2026, a federal appeals court let Act 372 take effect. Handing a minor an item deemed "harmful" is a Class A misdemeanor carrying up to a year in prison; a separate provision makes some cases a felony carrying up to six. Griffin praised the ruling.
Texas is near the top of the country in pulling books from schools. PEN America counted 1,781 book bans in Texas in the 2024–25 school year alone.
Texas bans abortion at about six weeks, with no exception for rape or incest. Abbott signed it, then told Texans not to worry because the state would "eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas."

The government tells you what religious text hangs in your kid's classroom, what books the librarian can hand your teenager, and what you can do about your own pregnancy — and that's liberty. But a Muslim family following religious guidance in their private life is a threat to the Republic.

That's not a principle. That's a target.

Who actually pays

The imam at the Islamic Center for Human Excellence said they haven't had any incidents from all this. They increased their security anyway. That's what it costs to be five houses on the wrong end of a viral post.

It costs more elsewhere. "We know this kind of rhetoric leads to more bullying in school, discrimination in the workplace, hate crimes and vandalism against mosques," Mohyuddin said. By her estimate, Ogles alone has tens of thousands of Muslim constituents in his own district.

And it isn't over. The Arkansas Legislature convenes a regular session in January 2027, and the Arkansas Times notes the Sharia bill could come back. Abbott has promised a "more expansive" version in Texas. The caucus keeps growing.

Every hour spent on an invented takeover is an hour not spent on what was actually squeezing families in that Arkansas hearing room — the price of gas, the price of groceries, the cost of seeing a doctor. Ask your representative what they did about your health insurance premium this year. Then count how many times they said the word "Sharia."

One of those numbers is going to be much bigger than the other.

Sources

Despite debunkings, misinformation about Little Rock's 'New Africa' persists — Arkansas Times, August 4, 2026
Arkansas homestead tax credit proposal advances, Sharia Law resolution fails in committee — Arkansas Advocate, April 15, 2026
House GOP leadership silent as more members post anti-Muslim statements — NPR, March 14, 2026
CAIR Designates House's 'Sharia-Free Caucus' an Anti-Muslim Hate Group — CAIR, February 18, 2026
CAIR-Texas Calls Gov. Abbott's Claim to Sign a 'Sharia Law' Ban 'Divorced from Reality' — CAIR-Texas, September 12, 2025
Sanders' July 17 post and Griffin's reply on X

Photo: Rep. Andy Ogles addresses the New York Young Republican Club, Dec. 13, 2025. Adam Gray/Getty Images.

ICE Is Reading Your Posts. Congress Paid for It.

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 18:30:00 +0000

Somebody on Reddit used the handle Tired_Thumb. Over two months, they left three comments that mentioned ICE. Two of them included the letters "ACAB" — an old protest slogan that stands for "all cops are bastards." One of them shared a phone number for an agent, pulled off a public records website, with the link to that website pasted right underneath.

For that, the federal government has spent six months trying to learn their name.

First the Department of Homeland Security sent Reddit an administrative subpoena asking for the poster's name, address and billing records. It didn't say what law had been broken. When a legal nonprofit fought back, the government dropped that subpoena — and came back with a grand jury subpoena, which carries more weight, asking for another month of the person's activity.

Nobody has been charged with anything. The government just wants to know who they are.

That story comes from a Wall Street Journal investigation published August 3, 2026, by Hannah Critchfield and Shane Shifflett. And Tired_Thumb, as the Journal put it, is far from alone.

A round-the-clock dragnet

Here is what the Journal found.

ICE now runs a nonstop digital operation that scans the public internet — Facebook, Instagram, X, and close to 20 platforms in all, including Reddit, Discord, Snapchat and LinkedIn — looking for speech the agency decides is dangerous to its mission. Not just threats to agents. Also, in the government's own contracting language, "activities that could disrupt ICE's operations."

Private contractors do the work. They write daily reports and build files on people. Those files can include a person's name, location, date of birth, workplace, Social Security number, vehicle registration and criminal history.

The money grew fast. ICE spending on surveillance technology and consultants hit $258 million during President Trump's first full year back in office — a 57% jump from the year before, according to the Journal's analysis of federal budget data. The agency has signed at least six contracts to scan public records for "threats," paying out nearly $50 million since 2020, with more than half of that money committed since last January.

One of those contracts went to a small Virginia software firm called Amivero — more than $8 million to monitor social media. Amivero handed the actual work to Guidehouse, a big consulting company that also works on defense and intelligence. Neither company would talk to the Journal.

The government's shopping list for this program asks contractors to pull DMV records and police reports, map out who a flagged user knows, and use machine learning for something called "anticipatory threat intelligence" — software that guesses at threats before anything happens.

To find out who anonymous critics are, DHS has sent hundreds of subpoenas to social media companies.

Reddit said no. The government kept going.

Between July and December of last year, DHS sent Reddit administrative subpoenas for the information behind 11 accounts that had posted "content critical of federal actions."

Reddit looked at them and concluded these users were doing something the First Amendment protects. The company objected to every single one. DHS eventually withdrew all of them.

"Privacy is central to how Reddit operates," said Ben Lee, the company's chief legal officer, adding that Reddit routinely objects to government requests that are "overbroad or threaten users' privacy or civil rights, including their First Amendment rights."

So the government switched tools. It started using grand jury subpoenas instead, which are harder to fight.

The Journal identified 10 people — nine Americans and one Canadian — who tried to stop the government from unmasking them. Judges upheld four of the grand jury subpoenas. The government gave up on three cases. Three are still going.

No charges have been filed in any of them.

That pattern is the whole story. As civil-rights attorney Lauren Regan told the Journal:

"They're not actually filing any criminal charges where we can challenge the vagueness, the overreach and the abuse of that statute. If they just want to use this as an intimidation tactic, it's not even a fair fight."

What actually counts as "doxxing"

The administration has been rewriting a word.

In September 2025, President Trump signed a national security memo called NSPM-7. It lists "organized doxing campaigns" alongside swatting, rioting, looting, trespass and assault as the kinds of acts that can get a group labeled a domestic terrorist organization. It specifically names ICE agents in Los Angeles as an example.

Congress never voted on any of that. It's a presidential memo. As Government Executive reported, the structure "allows the president to direct law enforcement and national security agencies, with little opportunity for congressional oversight." Thirty-one members of Congress wrote to Trump in October 2025 warning of "serious constitutional, statutory and civil liberties risks." Nothing changed.

The ACLU called the memo "a fever dream of conspiracies, outright falsehoods," and warned that it "stitches together a few disparate, serious acts of actual or attempted criminal conduct with First Amendment-protected beliefs and protests against the president and his policies."

From there, the definition kept stretching. DHS has argued that filming law enforcement doing their job in public and posting the video counts as doxxing.

It even applied that logic to a newspaper. When the Minnesota Star Tribune named Jonathan Ross as the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good — a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three — in Minneapolis on January 7, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin responded with this:

"The Star Tribune should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for their reckless behavior, and they should delete their story immediately."

Ross has not been charged. The Star Tribune did not delete the story.

Here's the thing about all of this: the Supreme Court drew this line back in 1969. In Watts v. United States, the Court threw out a conviction and wrote that "the language of the political arena, like the language used in labor disputes, is often vituperative, abusive, and inexact." Real threats aren't protected. Angry political talk is. That's not a new or controversial idea. It's 57 years old.

Two agents, a printed screenshot, and a form to sign

On Election Day in New York — June 23, 2026 — a poll worker named Paigelynne Gonyea was working at the Central Library in Syracuse when she got a voicemail from a man who said he was a Homeland Security special agent.

He said agents had just been by her apartment. He said they were calling about a post "where you doxxed an ICE agent back in January."

Then two agents with ICE badges walked into the polling place. They carried a file on her with her name, address, date of birth, height, weight and eye color, plus printed screenshots of her posts. They asked her to sign a notice from ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility. It said, in capital letters at the top, "YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW," and directed her to "promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior."

What had she posted? On January 8, the day after Renee Good was killed, she wrote this:

"The ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in broad daylight has been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune. I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted!"

That's it. A newspaper's reporting, repeated, plus an opinion that a man should face a grand jury.

Gonyea refused to sign. She refused to delete the post. DHS later told NPR she had published an ICE officer's address online — but has not produced any evidence of that, and Gonyea says she has looked through her own accounts and can't find any address.

A local Republican election commissioner confirmed to NPR that the badges were real. He called the whole thing "a comedy of errors" and said it was "a mistake" for agents to enter a polling site at all. Federal law bars armed federal officers from polling places — NPR notes it's unclear whether these two were armed — and New York has a state law barring immigration agents from voting sites, period.

Perry Grossman of the New York Civil Liberties Union put it plainly:

"If this is the kind of speech that the administration, that DHS wants to go after, then they are trying to fundamentally redefine the First Amendment and the scope of permissible public debate. And that is wrong. That is ridiculous."

According to the Journal, the agents who visited Gonyea delivered that same letter to several other people that day. One recipient sued. A special agent tracked down David Streever while he was on vacation — five months after Streever emailed then-acting ICE director Todd Lyons following the killing of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse shot by federal agents in Minneapolis on January 24, and called Lyons "a monstrous human being." Streever says DHS is retaliating against protected speech and that it will chill the public.

The number they won't show you

DHS's whole defense rests on a statistic: an 8,000% increase in death threats against ICE officers since Trump took office.

Go read the press release it comes from. It's dated January 26, 2026. It contains one voicemail transcript and the number. No counts. No baseline. No time period. No methodology. Nothing you could check.

We've been here before with this agency. A September 2025 executive order claimed assaults on ICE agents were up "more than 1,000 percent." NPR and Colorado Public Radio went and pulled five years of federal court records to check. Comparing charges for assaulting a federal officer through mid-September 2025 against the same stretch a year earlier, they found about a 25% rise — not 1,000%.

When reporters asked DHS to show its work, the department "repeatedly declined to provide any justification." It sent back links to its own earlier press releases repeating the same number.

Bob Pence, a 30-year FBI veteran, told NPR why that matters:

"There are a number of ramifications, if the public can't believe what law enforcement is saying then law enforcement probably can't depend on the cooperation of citizens to report information to them accurately."

By January 2026, the same DHS press release that carried the 8,000% figure had bumped the assault claim up to "more than 1,300%."

Congress wrote the check

None of this built itself. It runs on money, and money comes from Congress.

In June, Senate Republicans passed S. 2 — the "Secure America Act" — at 4:42 in the morning by a vote of 52 to 47, handing ICE and Border Patrol nearly $70 billion. Combined with the mass-deportation money approved the year before, that's close to a quarter of a trillion dollars.

They moved it through a fast-track budget process that needed only a simple majority, which let them strip out the guardrails that normally ride along with funding bills — required oversight of detention conditions, transparency rules forcing ICE to report basic data to the public, and civil-rights protections in enforcement. Those protections aren't in the law. That was a choice, and you can read the full breakdown in our post on the senators who voted yes.

Be clear about the timeline, because it matters. This vote did not create the dragnet — the Amivero contract was signed in September 2025, and attorneys started seeing the subpoena spike that same month. The surveillance operation was already running.

What these senators did was vote, on June 5, 2026, to pour another $70 billion into the agency running it — five months after federal immigration agents killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, and Alex Pretti weeks after her — and to do it in a way that left out the transparency requirements that would make a program like this visible to the public in the first place.

The Senate: 52 to 47

Fourteen of the senators who voted yes have report cards on this site:

Alabama — Tommy Tuberville
Alaska — Dan Sullivan
Arkansas — Tom Cotton
Florida — Ashley Moody
Idaho — Jim Risch
Kansas — Roger Marshall
Maine — Susan Collins
Mississippi — Cindy Hyde-Smith
Nebraska — Pete Ricketts
Ohio — Jon Husted
South Dakota — Mike Rounds
Tennessee — Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty
West Virginia — Shelley Moore Capito

The House: 214 to 212

Four days later, on June 9, 2026, the House passed the same bill by 214 to 212 and sent it to the president, who signed it the next day as Public Law 119-98.

Look closely at that roll call, because the margin hides something. It was two votes — but not because Republicans were split. Every single Republican who cast a vote voted yes. Not one voted no. Three didn't vote at all: Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey, and Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman of South Carolina. The 212 no votes came from 211 Democrats and one independent.

It was close because it was unanimous on one side and near-unanimous on the other.

A hundred and ninety of the House members who voted yes have report cards here:

Alabama — Robert Aderholt, Gary Palmer, Mike Rogers, Dale Strong
Alaska — Nick Begich
Arizona — Andy Biggs, Juan Ciscomani, Eli Crane, Paul Gosar, Abraham Hamadeh, David Schweikert
Arkansas — Rick Crawford, French Hill, Bruce Westerman, Steve Womack
California — Ken Calvert, Vince Fong, Young Kim, Tom McClintock, Jay Obernolte, David Valadao
Colorado — Lauren Boebert, Jeff Crank, Gabe Evans, Jeff Hurd
Florida — Aaron Bean, Gus Bilirakis, Kat Cammack, Mario Diaz-Balart, Byron Donalds, Randy Fine, Scott Franklin, Carlos Gimenez, Mike Haridopolos, Laurel Lee, Anna Paulina Luna, Brian Mast, Cory Mills, Jimmy Patronis, John Rutherford, Maria Elvira Salazar, Greg Steube
Georgia — Rick Allen, Andrew Clyde, Mike Collins, Clay Fuller, Brian Jack, Rich McCormick, Austin Scott
Idaho — Russ Fulcher, Mike Simpson
Illinois — Mike Bost, Darin LaHood, Mary Miller
Indiana — Jim Baird, Erin Houchin, Mark Messmer, Jefferson Shreve, Victoria Spartz, Marlin Stutzman, Rudy Yakym
Iowa — Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Zach Nunn
Kansas — Ron Estes, Tracey Mann, Derek Schmidt
Kentucky — Andy Barr, James Comer, Brett Guthrie, Hal Rogers
Louisiana — Clay Higgins, Mike Johnson, Julia Letlow, Steve Scalise
Maryland — Andy Harris
Michigan — Tom Barrett, Jack Bergman, Bill Huizenga, John James, Lisa McClain, John Moolenaar, Tim Walberg
Minnesota — Tom Emmer, Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach, Pete Stauber
Mississippi — Mike Ezell, Michael Guest, Trent Kelly
Missouri — Mark Alford, Eric Burlison, Bob Onder, Jason Smith, Ann Wagner
Montana — Troy Downing
Nebraska — Mike Flood, Adrian Smith
New Jersey — Jeff Van Drew, Chris Smith
New York — Andrew Garbarino, Nick LaLota, Nick Langworthy, Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis, Claudia Tenney
North Carolina — Chuck Edwards, Virginia Foxx, Pat Harrigan, Mark Harris, Richard Hudson, Brad Knott, Addison McDowell, Tim Moore, Greg Murphy, David Rouzer
North Dakota — Julie Fedorchak
Ohio — Troy Balderson, Mike Carey, Warren Davidson, Jim Jordan, David Joyce, Bob Latta, Max Miller, Michael Rulli, David Taylor, Mike Turner
Oklahoma — Stephanie Bice, Josh Brecheen, Tom Cole, Kevin Hern, Frank Lucas
Oregon — Cliff Bentz
Pennsylvania — Rob Bresnahan, Brian Fitzpatrick, John Joyce, Mike Kelly, Ryan Mackenzie, Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler, Lloyd Smucker, Glenn Thompson
South Carolina — Sheri Biggs, Russell Fry, William Timmons, Joe Wilson
Tennessee — Tim Burchett, Scott DesJarlais, Matt Van Epps, Chuck Fleischmann, Diana Harshbarger, David Kustoff, Andy Ogles, John Rose
Texas — Brian Babin, John Carter, Michael Cloud, Monica De La Cruz, Beth Van Duyne, Jake Ellzey, Pat Fallon, Brandon Gill, Craig Goldman, Lance Gooden, Ronny Jackson, Nathaniel Moran, August Pfluger, Keith Self, Pete Sessions, Randy Weber, Roger Williams
Utah — Mike Kennedy, Celeste Maloy, Blake Moore
Virginia — Ben Cline, Morgan Griffith, Jen Kiggans, John McGuire, Rob Wittman
Washington — Michael Baumgartner
West Virginia — Carol Miller, Riley Moore
Wisconsin — Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman, Derrick Van Orden, Bryan Steil, Tom Tiffany, Tony Wied
Wyoming — Harriet Hageman

One name is missing from that list on purpose. Kevin Kiley of California, who the clerk's roll call lists as an independent rather than a Republican, voted no. He is the only member tracked on this site outside the Democratic caucus who did.

Twenty-four other House Republicans voted yes and don't have pages here yet.

Not one of the 204 members listed above made the money conditional on ICE telling the public what it collects, or on whom.

So who is watching the surveillance program? On paper, the ICE Privacy Office, in consultation with the DHS Privacy Office. The Journal reports the ICE Privacy Office is down to two full-time staffers.

Two people. Overseeing a $258-million-a-year surveillance operation with hundreds of subpoenas and files on American citizens.

And when members of Congress did go looking, it was one party doing the asking. Rep. Maxwell Frost and 11 other Democrats wrote to DHS in February asking what data the department collects on protesters. Lyons wrote back on April 21. He denied ICE keeps a database of protesters — but acknowledged that ICE collects "essential biographic and biometric information and situational details" on people it believes may be interfering with its operations, and keeps those records even when nobody is arrested.

ACLU attorney Scarlet Kim noticed what the letter left out: "He did not deny that, essentially, that information would not be placed in other existing databases."

The Republicans who control both chambers wrote the checks and stripped the guardrails. The questions about what ICE is collecting on Americans came from the minority.

Why this should bother you even if you never post about ICE

You might think none of this touches you. Look at the actual conduct that drew federal attention here.

A Reddit comment with the letters "ACAB" in it. An Instagram post saying an agent should be indicted, quoting a newspaper. An angry email to an agency head. Filming officers in public.

That is the ordinary stuff of American political argument. It is exactly what the Supreme Court described as "vituperative, abusive, and inexact" — and protected.

Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Virginia who studies privacy and cyberstalking, pointed out the part that ties it all together:

"We're seeing the weaponization of privacy in ways that privilege the powerful, and in particular, law enforcement. Law enforcement who are serving the public, they're hiding their names. They're hiding their faces. If they had their names on badges and they weren't wearing masks, you might see less of this activity."

That's the trade being made. Agents get anonymity. You get a file.

And notice how little the government has to do to win. It doesn't need convictions. It doesn't even need charges. It needs you to see two agents walk into your workplace holding a printout of your Instagram, and decide it isn't worth posting again.

Some of what the government is looking at is genuinely ugly. One woman the Journal spoke to had compared ICE officers to Nazis on X in January and written that "All ICE Agents need to be put down like the dogs they are." That's a vile thing to write, and nobody has to defend it.

But look at what happened next. Roughly four months later, plainclothes ICE agents showed up at her home, told her not to post like that again, and left. She was never charged. She has curbed what she says online.

If the government believed that post was a real threat, there is a courtroom for that. It went to her doorstep instead. And that tells you which outcome it was after.

That's not law enforcement. That's a warning system, paid for with public money, aimed at the public.

Source

Hannah Critchfield and Shane Shifflett, "How ICE Is Weaponizing Social Media Against Its Critics", The Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2026.
Photo: federal agents inside the Syracuse polling place where Paigelynne Gonyea was working, June 23, 2026. Video by Gracious Golden via Facebook; screenshot by NPR.

14 Republican Senators Just Voted to Let Your Child Care Bill Go Up

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 11:06:01 +0000

Child care is one of the biggest bills a working family pays. It now runs more than $13,000 a year per child, and it went up another 5% between August 2024 and August 2025.

On Thursday, July 30, 2026, the Senate had a simple, direct chance to stop that bill from going up even more for about a million low-income families. It voted 47 to 52 not to.

What the rule did — and what Trump's HHS did to it

There's a federal program called the Child Care and Development Fund. It helps roughly 994,000 low-income families pay for child care so parents can work, go to school, or train for a job.

In 2024, the government set some basic ground rules for it. The most important one: a family's copayment couldn't exceed 7% of their household income. That's the federally recognized benchmark for what "affordable" child care actually means. Two other rules made providers more stable — states had to pay them up front and based on enrollment rather than daily attendance, and had to use grants and contracts to build up child care supply in places the market wasn't serving.

In May 2026, Trump's Department of Health and Human Services published a rule called "Restoring Flexibility in the Child Care and Development Fund" that wiped out all three. It took effect July 13.

Note what HHS did not do: it didn't replace the 7% cap with a different affordability standard. It didn't propose a cheaper path. It just removed the ceiling and left nothing in its place. As the Southern Education Foundation noted in its analysis, before the 2024 rule several Southern states were charging families well above the benchmark — Alabama 10%, Florida 9%, North Carolina 10%, Missouri 14%. With the cap gone, those rates can come right back.

Ohio families lose the most

The Center for American Progress ran the numbers in April. Ten states still hadn't reached the 7% benchmark, with maximum copayments running from 7.8% of income in Wisconsin all the way up to 27% of income in Ohio. Families in those states stood to save between $440 and more than $15,000 a year once the cap kicked in.

Ohio was the worst case in the country. An Ohio family at the top of the eligibility range could have saved as much as $15,482 a year — a figure reported by Common Dreams from that CAP analysis. That's not a rounding error. For a family scraping by on the kind of income that qualifies for child care assistance, $15,000 is the difference between making rent and not.

Ohio Senator Jon Husted voted to keep that money out of his own constituents' pockets.

Maine is on that list too — it was operating under a waiver from the cap as of December 2024, meaning Maine families hadn't seen the savings yet either. Susan Collins voted no as well.

The 2024 rule required states to work toward the 7% threshold, with waivers for states that needed more time. Scrapping it means states are no longer obligated to get there at all. Families in those states now have no path to relief — not a slower path, no path.

It was a one-page vote

This wasn't a complicated bill with tradeoffs buried in the fine print. Senator Patty Murray brought it under the Congressional Review Act, which exists precisely so Congress can cancel an executive branch rule it disagrees with. A simple majority would have done it.

Murray was blunt about the stakes on the floor: "If Trump had simply done nothing, and left the seven percent cap in place, some of these families would have ended up saving as much as $15,000 a year for their family. This is really a slap in the face to moms and dads all over the country."

She also named the tradeoff these same senators keep making. "How about instead of a $1.5 trillion war budget, we make sure every working family in America can afford child care?" she asked — pointing out that Trump's tariffs already tax diapers, formula, and car seats before you even get to the child care bill.

Every Republican in the chamber voted against it except Mitch McConnell, who was absent.

The senators who voted no

Fourteen of them have report cards on this site. Each one cast a Nay:

Alabama — Tommy Tuberville
Alaska — Dan Sullivan
Arkansas — Tom Cotton
Florida — Ashley Moody
Idaho — Jim Risch
Kansas — Roger Marshall
Maine — Susan Collins
Mississippi — Cindy Hyde-Smith
Nebraska — Pete Ricketts
Ohio — Jon Husted
South Dakota — Mike Rounds
Tennessee — Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty
West Virginia — Shelley Moore Capito

Two of them — Tuberville in Alabama and Moody in Florida — represent states that were already charging families above the 7% benchmark before the cap existed.

The part that should stick

These are the same senators who talk constantly about the cost of living and about supporting families. Here was a vote where those two things were the entire question. No amendments, no procedural fog, no partisan poison pill. Just: should a working parent have to hand over more than 7% of their paycheck for child care?

They said yes, she should. And the program only reaches 13% of eligible families in the first place — so this was a vote to make an already-thin lifeline thinner.

How they voted

The record is public and permanent: the official Senate roll call for vote 215 on S.J.Res. 199, July 30, 2026.