MAGA Report Cards — North Carolina

Troy Downing Wrote a Bill to Cut Off Every HUD Housing Grant to Cities That Limit ICE Cooperation. Nineteen Republicans We Cover Signed On.

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 05:55:09 +0000

On September 2, 2026, Troy Downing of Montana introduced a bill that would strip every dollar of federal housing grant money from any city, county or state that limits how much its police help federal immigration agents.

Not immigration money. Housing money.

H.R. 10222, the No HUD Funding for Sanctuary Cities Act, says a "sanctuary jurisdiction" is "ineligible for any grant funds distributed by the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for use in such jurisdiction."

Any grant. All of them.

What that money actually pays for

The Department of Housing and Urban Development does not hand out one grant. It hands out many, and they are the backbone of how communities keep people off the street.

In Montana, the state's homelessness grant is worth about $7.2 million. Montana Free Press has described what it covers: "permanent supportive housing, rapid rehousing rental assistance, supportive services, transitional housing, youth homelessness programs and the state's database that housing providers use to place homeless people into housing programs and connect them to other resources."

That is the money Downing's bill would switch off — not for the people who wrote a city resolution, but for whoever is currently sleeping in a shelter it pays for.

How wide the net is

Read the definition carefully. The trigger is refusal. A place loses its housing money for what it declines to do, not for anything it does. Downing's bill covers any "State or political subdivision of a State" that has a law, an ordinance, a policy or even a "practice" telling its officials not to:

share information about someone's citizenship or immigration status with a federal, state or local agency, or
hold someone in jail past their release date when Homeland Security asks, or tell federal agents when that person is let go.

Decline either one and the entire jurisdiction is a sanctuary jurisdiction. The word "State" is in there. Under this bill an entire state can be declared a sanctuary jurisdiction and lose every HUD grant inside its borders. And the decision doesn't go to a court — HUD would consult with the Department of Homeland Security to decide who qualifies.

The Montana communities in the crosshairs

Downing has said what he thinks:

"If a sanctuary city is not complying with federal law, we should not allocate American taxpayers' hard-earned money to those areas."

He posted a sharper version on social media: "If a city refuses to cooperate with federal immigration law, it should not receive a dime in HUD funding."

Montana Free Press asked him a specific question — what would this bill have done to Helena? Helena passed a noncooperation resolution in January 2026, then rescinded it after Attorney General Austin Knudsen threatened to sue. Bozeman police say their job is public safety, not immigration enforcement. Missoula police don't ask about immigration status.

Downing did not respond.

That is the whole problem with the bill in one exchange. He will say the principle. He will not say which Montana towns lose their housing money under it, or how much.

Nineteen Republicans on this site signed it

Downing didn't do this alone. Nineteen of the Republicans we track cosponsored the bill within two days of introduction:

Warren Davidson (Ohio) · Pete Sessions (Texas) · Scott Fitzgerald (Wisconsin) · Rich McCormick (Georgia)
Scott Perry (Pennsylvania) · Michael Cloud (Texas) · Barry Moore (Alabama) · Harriet Hageman (Wyoming)
Ben Cline (Virginia) · Randy Weber (Texas) · Josh Brecheen (Oklahoma) · Sheri Biggs (South Carolina)
Andy Harris (Maryland) · Brian Babin (Texas) · Michael Rulli (Ohio) · Keith Self (Texas)
Tim Moore (North Carolina) · Andy Barr (Kentucky) · Pete Stauber (Minnesota)

Barry Loudermilk and Buddy Carter, both of Georgia, also signed; we don't have pages for them.

All but two of those names are printed in the bill's own text as introduced on September 2. Andy Barr and Pete Stauber added theirs the next day. Twenty-one Republicans in total. Not one Democrat.

The part nobody is saying out loud

There is a straightforward argument for making cities cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Six in 10 Montanans support local police working with ICE, according to Montana Free Press polling. Downing could make that argument on its merits and put it to a vote.

This bill doesn't do that. It takes housing assistance hostage.

The person who loses is not the city council member who voted for the resolution. It's the family in rapid rehousing, the teenager in a youth homelessness program, the person in permanent supportive housing who would otherwise be outside. None of them had a vote on the resolution. All of them are the leverage.

What the bill does

Troy Downing's bill would make any city, county or state that limits police cooperation with immigration agents ineligible for every housing grant the federal government gives out — homeless shelter money, rapid rehousing, youth homelessness programs and the rest. In Montana the homelessness grant alone is about $7.2 million. Nineteen Republicans we cover cosponsored it within two days, along with two more we do not track. Downing declined to say which Montana communities it would hit.

Sources

Tom Lutey, Downing proposes HUD cuts for cities noncompliant with ICE, Montana Free Press (September 4, 2026).
H.R. 10222, the No HUD Funding for Sanctuary Cities Act — full text and cosponsors, 119th Congress.
Katie Fairbanks, Montana could lose millions for low-income housing under new federal policy, Montana Free Press (November 26, 2025).

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

Michael Whatley Says Grocery, Gas and Housing Prices Are All Down and 'There Is No Inflation.' Groceries Cost 2.4% More at the End of 2025 Than at the Start.

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 06:45:28 +0000

Michael Whatley, the Republican nominee for Senate in North Carolina, has been telling voters that the cost of living has gone down.

Here is the sentence, from a clip his opponent is now running in an ad: "Grocery prices are down, gasoline prices are down, housing prices are down, inflation is down."

Here is another, from a podcast: "There is no inflation."

Neither of those is true. And when his campaign answered the ad in the Washington Post, it did not walk the claim back. It doubled down.

What his campaign told the Post

The Post's Dan Merica reported on the North Carolina Senate race on September 1, 2026. Whatley's campaign spokesperson defended the claim:

"Prices were down considerably in 2025 from the record-setting inflation caused by Joe Biden's reckless spending policies endorsed by Roy Cooper."

The Post checked it. Its conclusion, in plain words: "That point is not entirely correct: Inflation was lower in 2025 than the highs in 2022, but prices did not fall."

That distinction is the whole thing, and it is the one Whatley keeps collapsing. Slower inflation means prices are climbing more slowly. It does not mean prices came down. A grocery bill that goes up 2% instead of 8% is still a grocery bill that went up.

The government's own numbers

You do not have to take the Post's word for it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the Consumer Price Index every month, and it is a level, not a rate — you can look at where prices sat in December 2024 and where they sat in December 2025.

	Dec. 2024	Dec. 2025	Change
All items	315.6	324.1	up 2.7%
Groceries (food at home)	308.4	315.7	up 2.4%

Prices did not go down in 2025. They went up, and groceries — the first thing on Whatley's list — went up right alongside everything else.

They have kept going up since. By July 2026 the all-items index had reached 333.9, another 3% higher than where it ended 2025.

So when Whatley says "grocery prices are down," the answer is not a matter of opinion or framing. The federal statistic he is describing moved the other way.

"There is no inflation"

The second claim is worse, because it is not even a spin on a real number. If prices rose 2.7% in 2025 and roughly 3% again in the first seven months of 2026, there is inflation. It is simply lower than the 2022 peak.

Whatley's argument requires North Carolinians to accept that their own grocery receipts are wrong. Voters generally know what they paid last year.

This is the campaign's central fight, and he picked the wrong side of it

Affordability is the issue in the North Carolina Senate race. Both campaigns say so. Roy Cooper is running an ad on it, and the clip in it is Whatley's own voice saying prices are down.

There is a reason that clip is effective, and it is not clever editing. Whatley volunteered a claim that every shopper in the state can check against their own receipts, and it is wrong.

It is also not the first time his cost-of-living message has run into his own record. He and his wife own between $163,000 and $445,000 in Duke Energy stock while Duke seeks a residential rate increase in North Carolina — meaning the power bill going up is, for him, partly income. And his $1.5 million ad about driving a truck in a flannel shirt ran while his campaign committees were spending $136,000 on private jets.

What the record shows

Michael Whatley has said on camera that grocery, gasoline and housing prices are all down and that "there is no inflation." His campaign repeated the claim to the Washington Post on September 1, 2026, saying prices "were down considerably in 2025." Federal price data says the opposite: overall prices rose 2.7% across 2025, groceries rose 2.4%, and prices have risen roughly another 3% since. He is asking North Carolinians to believe a cost-of-living claim their own receipts disprove.

Source

Dan Merica, The Washington Post, September 1, 2026, "Why this popular Dem is running like he is behind" (republished by Jewish World Review). Price data: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The Super PAC Backing Michael Whatley Told a Grieving Father His Ad Was About Gun Violence. It Was an Attack Ad That Falsely Blames Roy Cooper for His Son's Murder.

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 07:10:51 +0000

Shemar Hayes was 23 years old and playing college football when he was murdered in Charlotte in March 2024. His father, Ronald Hayes, has spent the two and a half years since trying to turn that into something — he wrote a book about it, and he talks publicly about gun violence.

A video crew asked him to tell that story on camera. He agreed. He says he was told it was an independent group making an ad about gun violence.

It was not. It was a political attack ad against Roy Cooper, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat Michael Whatley is running for.

"I have already been swindled into an ad that was about politics, which I don't want to be about," Hayes told NC Newsline on Monday.

The ad has been viewed more than 25 million times on YouTube. It is part of a $17 million advertising campaign against Cooper, paid for by the Senate Leadership Fund — the super PAC aligned with Senate Republican leadership, working to put Whatley in the Senate.

The claim at the center of the ad is false

The ad implies that Cooper let Shemar Hayes' killer out of prison early, as part of a COVID-era legal settlement.

Tyzavian Smith, the man convicted of killing Shemar, was 18 years old at the time of the murder. He was not in prison. He had no prior adult record. There was no early release, because there was nothing to be released from.

That is not a matter of interpretation or emphasis. The ad's premise requires a man to have been let out of prison who had never been in one.

The father found out by watching television

Hayes said he called the ad's makers after he saw it.

"Once I saw the commercial, I called [the ad makers] back and I asked them again, and they stated again that they are independent. I told them that I felt that this was deceiving, it was conniving and it was sneaky how they used me and my family to get out their word."

He is a Democrat who says he has voted for Cooper in the past, and he now gets stopped in the street by people asking whether he's a Democrat or a Republican.

"The commercial looks as if I'm trying to sway North Carolinians from voting the way that they want to vote, and that wasn't my agenda. I wanted to let the community know about gun violence and about my son being murdered."

The crew filmed him talking about his book, Living Through Loss: A Journey of Healing and Hope, and took photographs of it. None of that made the ad.

"That was not their agenda. They could care less than a damn about me and my books."

Gun violence survivors' advocates want it off the air

North Carolinians Against Gun Violence, a statewide group, called on television stations across the state to pull the ad.

"Losing a child is every parent's worst nightmare," said executive director Becky Ceartas. "Every survivor of gun violence deserves to be treated with respect and care if they decide to relive the most horrible day of their lives by telling you their story."

"Our organization works with survivors of gun violence throughout the state, and we have witnessed how hard and traumatic it is for them to tell their stories. It requires an immense amount of trust and faith that the person you are sharing this deeply personal experience with will treat it with dignity and respect."

There is a bitter irony in what Hayes actually believes. He blames his son's death on gun laws he considers too weak to keep firearms away from people who will use them to hurt someone. The campaign that used his grief spent $17 million attacking Cooper, and put none of it toward the thing Hayes actually wanted to talk about.

This is not the only killing the same super PAC has used against Cooper

The Senate Leadership Fund has done a version of this more than once, for the same candidate, in the same race.

In August, Popular Information found that a site calling itself "The North Carolinian" — presenting as "Independent Journalism for North Carolina" — is fully controlled by the Senate Leadership Fund. Its unbylined article, published on August 21 — sixteen days after the Hayes ad went up — blamed Cooper for a killing, and never mentioned that the killing happened in South Carolina.

Two stories, two grieving families, two claims that fall apart the moment anyone checks the facts. Both paid for by the same super PAC, both aimed at the same opponent, both in service of the same candidate.

Whatley knows exactly how this works

Whatley is not a political novice who happens to be the accidental beneficiary of outside spending he doesn't understand. He ran the Republican National Committee — as recently as July 2025 he was giving interviews as "RNC chair", laying out the party's strategy for these midterms — and before that he chaired the North Carolina Republican Party. Running the party's political operation was his job.

NC Newsline could not reach the Senate Leadership Fund for comment.

Hayes, for his part, says he plans to talk to Cooper — to tell him the harm wasn't intended.

"I want to turn this tragedy into something beautiful that can possibly make a change. I want my son's name to be able to be used to make this change."

What the record shows

A super PAC spending $17 million to elect Michael Whatley to the Senate filmed a father talking about his murdered son, told him the ad was about gun violence, and used it to blame Roy Cooper for the killing. The man convicted of that murder was 18, had never been in prison, and had no prior adult record, so the ad's central claim cannot be true. The ad has been viewed more than 25 million times on YouTube. It is not the only killing the same super PAC has attached to Cooper on Whatley's behalf, and another one happened in a different state.

Sources

NC father at center of US Senate ad says he was 'swindled' by GOP political operatives — NC Newsline, August 31, 2026, by Greg Childress.

Robin Adams Cheeley: 'Deceitful, conniving and sneaky.' Anti-Cooper ad featuring grieving Black father twists facts — Greensboro News & Record, August 26, 2026.

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.

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.

Senate Republicans' Super PAC Runs a Fake North Carolina News Site. It Blamed Roy Cooper for a Murder That Happened in South Carolina.

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:40:01 +0000

There is a website called The North Carolinian. Across the top it says "Independent Journalism for North Carolina."

It is not independent journalism, and it is not really a news site. Popular Information reports that it is fully controlled by the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC that exists to win Senate seats for the party.

It is not the first one. On August 6, 2026, Judd Legum's Popular Information exposed a whole network of sites like it, and we covered that exposé when it broke: at least six of them in states with competitive Senate races, run by One Nation — the dark money group that has handed the Senate Leadership Fund over $70 million this cycle. Four were built around Republicans we track. North Carolina was not among them.

On August 27, Legum reported what the North Carolina site is now being used for.

The article

On August 21, The North Carolinian published a piece with no byline: "Families Demand Accountability for Repeat Offenders as North Carolina Prison Releases Face New Scrutiny."

It is built around the killing of 22-year-old Logan Federico. It dwells on the record of the man accused of murdering her, Alexander Dickey — "at least 48 crimes across 14 separate occasions, including 31 felony charges," in the article's own words. Then it connects her death to a decision by former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper's administration to release thousands of inmates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cooper is the Democratic candidate for North Carolina's open U.S. Senate seat. The implication is that a Democrat's policy got a young woman killed.

Here is what the article leaves out.

Logan Federico was killed in South Carolina. Dickey is a South Carolina man. Every one of his prior crimes was committed in South Carolina. He had been incarcerated in South Carolina, and he was released from the Lexington County Detention Center — a South Carolina jail — by a South Carolina judge.

Roy Cooper was never governor of South Carolina. He had no authority over that jail, that judge, or that release. No North Carolina policy, and nothing Cooper did, had anything to do with it.

The article never mentions South Carolina at all.

Why they needed a fake newspaper

This is the part worth sitting with. A political committee can say almost anything in an ad. What it cannot do is make the claim look like it came from somewhere other than a political committee.

That's what The North Carolinian is for. An unbylined article on a site branded as independent local journalism reads like reporting. Popular Information's assessment is blunt: this is a smear published in a form no legitimate outlet would print, dressed up to look like it was.

And it isn't sitting there passively. The Senate Leadership Fund is paying to put the fake article in front of North Carolina residents through ads on Meta's platforms.

The television ad does the same trick

The online push runs alongside an SLF television ad, and the ad uses the same technique in a more precise way.

It shows an image of a news report about the murder from WCNC — a real television station, in Charlotte, North Carolina — carrying a "Charlotte, N.C." dateline. A viewer sees a North Carolina newsroom reporting a North Carolina story.

The ad obscures the part of the WCNC piece that says the crime took place in South Carolina.

That is not a framing choice or an unfortunate omission. Someone looked at a real news report, identified the sentence that would collapse the entire argument, and covered it up before putting it on television.

Where Michael Whatley comes into it

The Senate Leadership Fund is spending this money to elect Michael Whatley, Cooper's Republican opponent. And Logan Federico's father has appeared with Whatley on the campaign trail.

Whatley did not build the website, and there is no reporting that he directed any of this. But he is the sole beneficiary, and he is not a bystander to the story the ads tell — he has campaigned alongside the grieving parent whose daughter's death is being misattributed to his opponent.

He is also uniquely positioned to know how this works. Before running for Senate he was chairman of the Republican National Committee. Asked what he thinks of a super PAC supporting him running a counterfeit North Carolina newspaper to blame Cooper for a South Carolina crime, he could answer at any time.

It fits the pattern around his campaign, which we have documented before: police called on reporters who came to ask him questions, and a "truck ad" biography that his committees' own spending reports contradict.

What we know

The Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC of Senate Republicans, secretly controls a website called The North Carolinian that presents itself as "Independent Journalism for North Carolina." On August 21, 2026, that site published an unbylined article blaming former Gov. Roy Cooper's pandemic-era prison releases for the murder of 22-year-old Logan Federico — a killing committed in South Carolina, by a South Carolina man released from a South Carolina jail by a South Carolina judge. The article never mentions South Carolina. SLF is paying to promote it to North Carolina voters on Meta, and its companion TV ad displays a real Charlotte station's report with the line identifying South Carolina obscured. SLF is spending that money to elect Michael Whatley.

Source

Judd Legum, "UPDATE: Senate GOP's fake news website falsely links Democrat to murder", Popular Information, August 27, 2026.

Michael Whatley Spent $1.5 Million on an Ad About His Truck. His Campaign Committees Spent $136,000 on Private Jets.

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 07:55:38 +0000

The ad opens with a truck.

Michael Whatley, in a flannel shirt, turns the key on a GMC pickup. "Whatley's driven thousands of miles across North Carolina trying to fix our country and help working families," the narrator says. Then the ad cuts to his Democratic opponent, former Governor Roy Cooper, in a tuxedo, accused of "siding with national liberals."

The message is not subtle. One of these men drives a truck. The other one wears a tuxedo.

Whatley has spent more than $1.5 million airing that ad across North Carolina, according to estimates by AdImpact.

Here is what the flannel shirt is covering up. Since last September, Whatley's campaign committees have spent over $136,000 on private jet travel — including more than $104,000 flying a $1.9 million Cessna that a reporter traced, through a shell company and a P.O. Box, to a construction executive who went to federal prison for defrauding the government and was pardoned by Donald Trump.

That reporting comes from Judd Legum at Popular Information, who went through thousands of pages of campaign finance filings to find it.

$104,749.73 to a shell company in Wyoming

Start with the paper trail, because Whatley's campaign clearly did not want anyone to follow it.

In 2025, the Whatley for Senate campaign reported five payments for "airfare" to something called N5YD LLC. They ranged from $8,243.10 to $21,615.24.

In 2026, two more payments — $8,426.28 and $9,575.87 — went to N5YD LLC from the Whatley Buckhout Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee that benefits Whatley and Laurie Buckhout, a Republican running for Congress in North Carolina. The most recent payment, $19,701.42 on June 23, came from the Whatley Victory Committee. You can find it on page 4,946 of that committee's quarterly filing.

Add it up: $104,749.73.

N5YD LLC was registered anonymously in Wyoming in 2022. Wyoming is where you go when you don't want your name on a company. But the filings gave it away anyway.

The first payment listed N5YD LLC's address as 1613 W Roosevelt Blvd in Monroe, North Carolina. That is the address of the Boggs Group, a large construction company that rebranded itself as TrueRock in 2023. Later payments switched to a P.O. Box in Monroe — the same P.O. Box the Boggs Group uses, and the same one Drew Boggs used in 2021 to make a $10,490.58 in-kind contribution to the North Carolina Republican Party.

Whatley was the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party in 2021.

Union County's own public tax records finish the job. They show that N5YD LLC is a shell for a 2001 Cessna 525A valued at $1,931,487. N5YD is the jet's tail number. The company that "owns" the plane is named after the plane.

One more detail worth sitting with: N5YD LLC was formally dissolved by the state of Wyoming in 2023 for tax delinquency. Whatley's committees have been writing checks to a company that legally stopped existing three years ago.

The man behind the jet went to prison for cheating the government

In 2015, Carl Andrew "Drew" Boggs was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Department of Transportation and money laundering conspiracy.

The scheme ran for ten years. Boggs and his co-defendants won federally and state-funded construction contracts by falsely certifying that a "disadvantaged business enterprise" would do part of the work and get paid for it. That program exists to give small, disadvantaged contractors a real shot at public work. Boggs used it as a password.

In reality, Boggs's own companies did the work. The disadvantaged business — a trucking company called Styx Cuthbertson Trucking — got a kickback for going along with it.

The cover-up is the part people remember. Prosecutors described payments routed through Styx's bank accounts, and magnetic decals with the "Styx" logo stuck over the "Boggs" logo on company trucks. Peel off the sticker and the real name is underneath.

Over those ten years, Boggs took in 37 federal contracts worth $87.6 million.

Another North Carolina Republican wanted nothing to do with that money. In 2014, Governor Pat McCrory gave away more than $10,000 in contributions tied to Boggs and his family, donating it to the Durham Rescue Mission and the Joe Martin ALS Foundation. "Taking advantage of a program designed to help disadvantaged businesses is wrong and our campaign will not be associated with these actions," a McCrory spokesperson said at the time.

Whatley's committees kept paying to fly the plane. Boggs also donated $6,612 directly to the Whatley Victory Committee in May and June of this year.

Trump pardoned him on the last day of his first term

Drew Boggs was pardoned by President Trump on January 20, 2021 — the final day of Trump's first term. "Since his release, Mr. Boggs has rebuilt his company, has employed hundreds of people, and has dedicated countless hours and financial resources to his community," the White House said.

Whatley has defended Trump's pardons before. He has publicly defended the January 6 pardons, calling the prosecutions a "ridiculous persecution" and backing payments to rioters — including men who were later convicted of child sex crimes.

Now a jet that traces back to a Trump pardon recipient is how he gets around North Carolina.

And a second jet, from a second donor

The Cessna linked to Boggs isn't the whole bill.

On June 16, the Whatley Victory Committee paid $31,247.46 to Old Well Aviation LLC for more private jet travel. FAA records show Old Well Aviation owns a Cessna 525 CitationJet. The company is managed by Charlotte-area developers — one of them, Eric Wood, donated $2,500 to the Whatley Victory Committee in May 2026.

So the pattern is the same twice over. A donor is tied to a jet company. The donor gives Whatley money. Whatley's committees pay that company for flights.

Total private jet spending: about $136,000 since last September.

This is not the first time his story hasn't matched his record

Whatley's whole pitch is that he's the regular guy in the race. The trouble is how often the receipts say otherwise.

He spent a decade lobbying for oil and gas — his firm took $3.5 million, including $1.2 million from energy clients — and his campaign bio doesn't mention the career at all.

He and his wife hold between $163,000 and $445,000 in Duke Energy stock, while Duke has spent the last year asking North Carolina regulators to raise residential power bills.

And when reporters have shown up with questions, organizers at his events have called the police on them rather than let them in.

Popular Information asked his campaign about the jet flights. The Whatley campaign did not respond.

Is any of this illegal? No.

Nothing described here is against the law. The flights are ordinary campaign expenditures, disclosed in Whatley's own filings — which is how a reporter found them. Nobody has alleged a deal, and this post is not alleging one.

What is left is a question of judgment, and it is a fair one to ask of a Senate candidate. Whatley is running for a seat that helps decide how federal contracting works. The man the plane traces back to won $87.6 million in federal contracts by faking his way through a program built for disadvantaged businesses. Another North Carolina Republican, Pat McCrory, looked at money connected to that same man and gave it away. Whatley took the flights, and took $6,612 from him on top of them.

What the filings show

Whatley spent $1.5 million telling North Carolina he drives a truck, while his campaign committees paid about $136,000 to fly on private jets tied to two of his donors — one of them a construction executive who went to prison for defrauding the federal government and was pardoned by Trump. Asked about it, his campaign said nothing.

Source

Judd Legum, "GOP Senate candidate, campaigning as truck-driving everyman, travels by private jet", Popular Information, August 24, 2026.

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

Richard Hudson Told House Republicans to Stop Holding In-Person Town Halls. Since Then They Have Held 231. Democrats Have Held 1,042.

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 09:48:32 +0000

Here is a number worth sitting with.

Through June 29 of this year, Republicans in Congress had held 39 in-person town halls — 17% of all the town halls they held at all. Democrats held 451 town halls in the same six months, two-thirds of them in person.

That count comes from LegiStorm, which has been tracking town halls for years. Those 39 are the fewest in-person town halls the company has ever recorded for Republicans in the first half of any year.

It did not used to be this way. In the first half of 2024, Republicans held more town halls than Democrats — 309 to 214 — and 229 of theirs, nearly three quarters, were in person. Then came 2025: Republicans held 378 town halls but only 122 in person, while Democrats jumped to 924. This year Republicans are down to 234 town halls, 39 of them in person.

Something changed between those two years. We know exactly what it was, because it was said out loud in a room full of members of Congress.

The order

On Tuesday, March 4, 2025, House Republicans went into a closed-door conference meeting. Richard Hudson — the North Carolina congressman who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, the group that raises the money and runs the campaigns for every House Republican on the ballot — stood up and told them to stop holding in-person town halls.

NOTUS reported it from the meeting: Hudson told members to switch to tele-town halls or Facebook Lives instead. His stated reason was that they could still hear from constituents that way, without "disruption from activists."

The unstated reason was in the same story. Going online would also avoid "the recent images of Republicans running off stage, getting drowned out by boos and being challenged on unpopular cuts to programs like Medicare and Medicaid." At the time, Congress was writing the budget bill that would cut $2 trillion in spending, much of it out of Medicaid.

Speaker Mike Johnson backed him at his weekly press conference: "There are other avenues to do it than just going in to try to give the other side sound bites."

We wrote about that meeting, and about the tele-town hall Hudson went on to hold himself — 50 minutes, eleven screened callers, and a constituent who asked about Medicaid and got told the cuts were "just rumors". Seventy-two days after he said that, he voted for the cuts.

Now the receipts are in. Since March 2025, Republicans have held 231 in-person town halls. Democrats have held 1,042. The advice worked. Republicans stopped showing up, and they have not started again.

"It's a good way to get shot"

MS NOW's Mychael Schnell asked House Republicans why, and several answered on condition that their names not be used. That detail alone tells you something: these are elected officials who wouldn't put their name on their reason for not meeting voters.

"They're a setup. It's just a setup to get us — get you off something off guard. And for me, personally, it's a good way to get shot. There's a lot of crazies out there right now."

The same lawmaker added: "I just don't feel like there is any gain to be had."

Another said the reasons were political, logistical and about safety: "It's the disruptive factor. It's the screaming factor. But it's also, truthfully, a security factor."

Nobody should wave away the safety part. Political violence in this country is real and members of both parties have been targeted. But Democrats have held 1,042 in-person town halls since Hudson gave that advice, under exactly the same threat environment. Whatever is different here, it isn't the danger. It's the questions.

And listen to the order those reasons come in. Disruptive. Screaming. Then security.

Jeff Van Drew blames the voters

Jeff Van Drew, the New Jersey Republican who switched parties in 2019, gave MS NOW the version with no hedging in it. He endorsed the virtual events fully, and he blamed the people who show up at the real ones.

"The Democrats have bastardized this and ruined town halls."

He called the traditional format "completely nonfunctional and noninformational," and said town halls that are "completely weaponized and abusive and demeaning and crude and rude" don't work for anybody.

This is Van Drew's long-running position, not a new one. He told the Press of Atlantic City last year that in-person events just bring out "the same 50 or 100 people who just don't like you."

On March 13, 2025, about 600 people lined the road outside his Northfield office to ask him to protect Medicaid and Social Security. They brought their concerns in writing to hand in at the door. The doors were locked and the building was closed.

Six hundred is not fifty. And the "crude and rude" framing is how this always gets sold — Mike Bost said his constituents' protests were staged, with paid protesters, and offered nicer-looking signs as evidence. Brian Fitzpatrick went on national television to call in-person town halls a "three-ring circus". Dan Meuser, asked to name a recent town hall, couldn't come up with one — and says he won't turn up at his constituents' weekly protests because he doesn't want to be a "piñata."

Angry voters are not a scheduling problem. They're the feedback.

What replaced it

The replacement is the telephone town hall, and it's worth being clear about what that is. Your congressman's office picks who gets to speak. It picks the order. It cuts the line whenever it wants, and nobody in the room can see anybody else's face — because there is no room.

Rob Bresnahan, the Pennsylvania Republican, is a clean example. In March 2025 he held his first telephone town hall, an hour long, taken from his office in Washington. More than 9,000 constituents dialed in. His office put out another release later celebrating that 15,000-plus people joined a telephone town hall about the government shutdown.

The big participation numbers are always the pitch. They're also the point — 15,000 people on a phone line is 15,000 people who each got, at best, one question and no follow-up.

We've watched how these go. Mike Carey promised to post the call-in number for his telephone town hall, never did, and then put out a press release celebrating that 12,000 people joined. Brad Knott's first three town halls were all by telephone; when a constituent in rural Harnett County got through to ask how he could vote to cut Medicaid, he answered that lawmakers "stand ready" to fix it later.

That is the format Hudson recommended, and that is what it produces.

One Republican still does it

Not everyone took the advice. Mike Flood, who represents a safe Republican district in Nebraska, was lambasted at a forum in May 2025 — and kept holding them. He told MS NOW he promised in 2022 to hold three town halls a year and intends to keep the promise.

"Things only get better when you go to the town square and you have an exchange of ideas. For me, it works."

He also punctured the excuse his colleagues are using. The viral clips, he said, come from a tiny slice of the event: "The reality is, a lot of the times, the same people that might be animated against me, they're clapping with me when I'm talking about supporting Ukraine or where I'm at on certain issues."

One Republican stood in the room, took the shouting, and reports that it's fine. That is the whole case against every excuse in this story, delivered by a Republican.

Someone else is holding their town halls

The seats aren't staying empty. Democrats have been going into Republican districts and holding the events themselves.

In December 2025, Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania traveled into Bresnahan's district — Pennsylvania's 8th — to take questions from voters who aren't his. He told MS NOW he may do it again.

"Republicans know their agenda is deeply unpopular, so they're hiding from their constituents. After voting to gut healthcare, raise costs and shower billionaires with tax breaks, they won't even defend their record back home."

The NRCC's response, from spokesman Mike Marinella, was that "House Republicans are meeting voters where they are, delivering results that matter to working families."

Meeting voters where they are. The voters are in Northeastern Pennsylvania, in Fayetteville, in South Jersey. The congressman is on a phone in Washington choosing which of them gets to talk.

The part that isn't about town halls

A town hall is not a favor. It's the one hour where the person casting votes in your name has to stand in a room, in front of neighbors who can see his face, and account for them — and where the follow-up question is not his to switch off.

That's why they stopped. Not because voters got ruder, but because the votes got harder to defend: Medicaid cuts, rising costs, the Epstein files, a war nobody voted on. Every one of those is a question with no good answer at a microphone, and every one of them is a question a screener can drop.

Hudson didn't invent members ducking their constituents. What he did was turn it into official party guidance, in his capacity as the man who funds their campaigns — and 231 to 1,042 is what that guidance bought.

Source

The Republican town hall is vanishing — and Democrats see an opening — Mychael Schnell, MS NOW, August 20, 2026, and Why Republicans are hiding from their own voters — Nick Hilden, AlterNet, August 20, 2026. Photo of Rep. Richard Hudson: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images.

2.6 Million Americans Have Already Lost Their Health Insurance. These Republicans Voted to Let It Happen.

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 12:09:54 +0000

For four years, people who buy their own health insurance got enhanced tax credits that held their premiums down. Those credits expired at the end of 2025. Congress could have extended them. It didn't.

We now know exactly what that cost.

Nationally, the number of people actually enrolled and paying for ACA coverage fell from 21,776,626 to 19,169,147 — a loss of 2,607,479 people, or 12%, in a single year. That's the first drop in seven years, and it's KFF's own July 28 analysis of federal data, not a projection.

What enrollees actually paid — premiums net of tax credits — rose an average of 58%. Enrollment fell in 49 of 50 states. The only exception was New Mexico, which spent state money to fill the gap.

Here is what it cost the twelve states represented by the Republicans below:

State	Lost coverage	Drop
Ohio	161,385	−32%
Oklahoma	85,557	−32%
Arizona	107,183	−30%
South Carolina	159,190	−29%
Indiana	78,096	−28%
Michigan	130,789	−27%
Mississippi	68,658	−26%
Missouri	86,425	−25%
North Carolina	164,682	−21%
Kansas	36,040	−20%
Florida	442,785	−10%
Texas	146,345	−4%

Two votes decided this. On December 11, 2025, Senate Republicans blocked S. 3385, which would have extended the credits — the motion to even begin debate got 51 of the 60 votes it needed. Six days later, on December 17, the House passed H.R. 6703, 216–211, a bill titled the "Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act" that contains no extension of the credits at all.

Ten of those twelve states lost a bigger share of their coverage than the country did, and Ohio and Oklahoma lost the biggest shares in America. These are the members who represent them — and who voted for it anyway.

Jim Jordan — Ohio, −32%

No state lost a larger share of its coverage than Ohio — 32.4%, just ahead of Oklahoma's 32.3%. That is 161,385 Ohioans, nearly a third of the state's marketplace, gone in a single year. Only Florida and North Carolina lost more people outright, and both are far bigger states.

Jim Jordan voted yes on the House bill.

Ohio's own numbers were not a surprise to anyone in its delegation. An estimated 356,000 Ohio residents are projected to lose health coverage under the Trump spending law — a projection that comes on top of the 161,385 Ohioans above, who had already lost marketplace coverage when the tax credits were allowed to expire. The state also stands to lose an estimated $33 billion in federal Medicaid funds over the next decade.

Jordan is not a backbencher who got rolled by leadership. He is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, a founder of the Freedom Caucus, and one of the handful of members who can genuinely move House Republicans when he wants to. When Jordan decides something matters, the conference hears about it.

He has been in Congress since 2007 — nineteen years — and in that time has never sponsored a single bill that became law. Not one.

That is the record he brings to the worst-hit state in the country: maximum leverage, and nothing built with it.

Stephanie Bice — Oklahoma, −32%

Stephanie Bice voted yes on the House bill. Oklahoma lost 85,557 people, tied for the steepest percentage drop in the country.

Bice went to Congress saying she would fight for affordable health care. She then voted against capping insulin at $35 a month and against letting Medicare negotiate lower drug prices — in a state where 13.2% of adults have been told they have diabetes.

But the case that captures this best is a household the Oklahoma Policy Institute modeled. A 60-year-old Oklahoma couple earning $85,000 would pay $30,784 a year without the enhanced credits, against $7,225 with them.

That is not a rate increase. That is a family being priced out of the insurance market. And $85,000 for a couple is precisely the income the enhanced credits were designed to reach — people who earn too much for the old subsidy cliff and nowhere near enough to absorb a $30,000 premium.

Oklahoma hospital leaders also warn that the budget bill Bice voted for will cut reimbursements to Oklahoma hospitals by $8.7 billion over the next decade and eliminate nearly 15,000 jobs. Ten Oklahoma hospitals have closed since 2005, one of those hospital leaders noted, and he expects the cuts to bring more.

Juan Ciscomani — Arizona, −30%

Juan Ciscomani voted yes. Arizona lost 107,183 people, a 30% collapse.

Ciscomani represents a swing district and has spent two years insisting he's a moderate on health care. The arithmetic doesn't care about positioning. Arizona's marketplace shed nearly a third of its enrollment in twelve months — 107,183 people who were paying for coverage in 2025 and are not in 2026.

That is the part that gets missed about the subsidy expiration. When 107,000 people lose insurance, they don't stop getting sick. They show up at an emergency room uninsured, and the hospital absorbs the bill. In rural Arizona there isn't much hospital left to absorb it.

It also fits his pattern. Six weeks after 700 people in Casa Grande lost their jobs, Ciscomani brought the Speaker of the House there to celebrate. The announcement and the aftermath keep pointing in opposite directions.

Sheri Biggs — South Carolina, −29%

Sheri Biggs voted yes. South Carolina lost 159,190 people — the fourth-largest raw loss in the country, from a state of five million.

Biggs is a nurse practitioner. She has spent a career in exam rooms with patients who couldn't afford care.

In her own district, an estimated 27,623 people in SC-03 are projected to lose health coverage — 24,900 of them losing ACA marketplace coverage, 2,723 losing Medicaid, according to the Joint Economic Committee's House Minority staff.

She, more than almost anyone who cast this vote, knows exactly what happens to a person who stops being able to afford their medication. She voted for it anyway.

Victoria Spartz — Indiana, −28%

Indiana lost 78,096 people, more than a quarter of its marketplace. Victoria Spartz voted yes.

On top of that, an estimated 650,000 Hoosiers on Medicaid expansion are at risk of losing coverage under the budget bill — a number that would devastate hospitals and rural communities across the state.

What separates Spartz from most of this list is that she actually showed up to hear about it.

In late March 2025, after Republican leaders advised members against holding town halls at all, Spartz held two anyway on back-to-back days, in Westfield and Muncie. Credit where it's due; most of her colleagues hid.

Then she stood there while her constituents chanted "Do your job!" and protested outside.

Showing up is the first step. It isn't the whole job. Spartz heard directly from Hoosiers about what these cuts would do, in a room, to her face — and nearly nine months later voted for the bill that let their premiums jump anyway.

Lisa McClain — Michigan, −27%

Michigan lost 130,789 people. Lisa McClain voted yes.

McClain is not a rank-and-file member. She serves as House Republican Conference Chair — the fourth-highest position in House Republican leadership. She is in the room where the conference decides what it will and won't bring to the floor.

Michigan was already exposed. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer estimated 200,000 Michiganders could lose Medicaid coverage under the budget bill, and a report from the state Senate warned it could blow a $2 billion hole in the state budget — because 70% of Michigan's Medicaid spending comes from federal dollars.

Stack that on 130,789 people already out of the marketplace, and Michigan is absorbing losses from two directions at once. The member of its delegation with the most influence over what House Republicans do next is the one who helped set the agenda that produced it.

Michael Guest — Mississippi, −26%

Michael Guest voted yes. Mississippi lost 68,658 people — in the state that can least afford it.

Mississippi already runs on Medicaid: 714,600 people, or 24.2% of the entire state population, were covered by it in FY 2024. It is also one of the ten states that never expanded Medicaid, so working-age adults who lose marketplace coverage there usually have nowhere else to go.

Guest has form on this. He spent his August recess promoting $206 million for Mississippi's rural hospitals — after voting for the law projected to take billions out of the state's Medicaid funding. The pattern repeats: vote for the cut, announce the crumb.

Jason Smith — Missouri, −25%

Missouri lost 86,425 people. Jason Smith voted yes — and he is the single member on this list with the clearest jurisdiction over the thing that expired.

Smith chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, the most powerful tax committee in Congress. He writes the nation's tax laws.

The enhanced ACA premium tax credits are, literally, a tax credit. They live in the tax code. Extending them is a Ways and Means matter. When people ask which committee could have moved an extension through the House, the answer is his — and he has held the gavel since 2023.

Missouri's own reporting matches the federal numbers almost exactly: more than 86,000 Missourians dropped ACA marketplace coverage between February 2025 and February 2026 — a nearly 25% decline, among the steepest in the country — explicitly attributed to the expiration of the enhanced credits. That reporting draws on the same CMS release, so it is the federal number seen up close rather than a second one.

And the forecast was published before the vote. An estimated 160,000 more Missourians are projected to be uninsured by 2034 under the budget bill — rising to 230,000 if the enhanced ACA premium tax credits were also allowed to expire.

They were allowed to expire. The chairman of the committee that writes tax law voted for the bill that didn't extend them.

Virginia Foxx — North Carolina, −21%

North Carolina lost 164,682 people — the largest raw loss of any state in this group, and second nationally only to Florida.

Virginia Foxx voted yes. And of everyone on this list, she is the one who most directly controlled whether the House got to vote on anything else.

Foxx chairs the House Rules Committee. That is the panel that decides what reaches the floor and which amendments may even be offered — Speaker Johnson appointed her to it. Nothing gets a vote in the House of Representatives without going through her committee first.

So consider what the House actually voted on in December. Not an extension of the expiring credits. A substitute bill that doesn't extend them, brought to the floor under a rule.

Foxx has been in Congress since 2005 — twenty-one years — and is the former chair of the Education and the Workforce Committee, which writes the rules for employer health plans. She is not a member who lacks the standing or the procedural knowledge to force a health care vote. She is the member who decides which ones happen.

Meanwhile North Carolina stands to lose an estimated $49.9 billion in federal Medicaid funds over the next decade, with up to another 195,000 residents at risk of losing coverage on top of the 164,682 already gone.

Roger Marshall — Kansas, −20%

Roger Marshall is the one who said the quiet part out loud, and he's a doctor.

Marshall is an OB-GYN who sits on the Senate's health committee. He voted to block the extension. Kansas lost 36,040 people, a 20% drop.

Asked about the expiring subsidies in December 2025, he shrugged: some people's premiums, he said, "are going to go up some."

What people pay went up 58% on average. For the Oklahoma couple in OK Policy's model, it is 326%.

This is the same senator who once explained the uninsured this way: "There is a group of people that just don't want health care and aren't going to take care of themselves."

A physician is allowed to hold conservative views about how health care should be financed. What's harder to defend is a physician who describes a 58% premium spike as going up "some," and who ascribes the resulting uninsurance to people not wanting coverage.

Florida — 442,785 people, the biggest loss in America

Florida's −10% looks mild next to Ohio's −32%. Don't be fooled by the percentage. Florida's marketplace is enormous — 4.3 million people were enrolled and paying in February 2025, more than in any other state — so a 10% drop means 442,785 Floridians lost coverage, nearly three times as many as any other state on this list.

No state has more people on this coverage than Florida. That is why the two Florida members below matter more than their percentage suggests.

Ashley Moody

Ashley Moody was one of the senators who blocked the extension. On December 11, 2025, she voted against even taking up a three-year extension of the ACA premium tax credits. The motion drew 51 votes — nine short of the 60 needed to advance.

She cast that vote knowing more of her own constituents rely on this coverage than in any other state.

It isn't a new position for her. As Florida's Attorney General, Moody kept the state in the lawsuit seeking to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act — a position she maintained in May 2020, in the middle of the COVID pandemic, with more than a million Floridians having filed unemployment claims since mid-March.

First she tried to have the law struck down in court. Then, in the Senate, she voted to let the part holding premiums down expire. The method changed; the outcome she was working toward did not.

Gus Bilirakis

Gus Bilirakis voted yes on the House bill. He has been in Congress 19 years, chairs the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, and sits on that committee's Health Subcommittee — the panel with jurisdiction over much of federal health policy.

His donor list is where this gets uncomfortable. GuideWell, the parent company of Florida Blue, has given his campaign $22,500 — and Florida Blue is the dominant insurer on the very ACA marketplace that just shed 442,785 customers. BioMarin Pharmaceutical has given $47,500, from a drugmaker whose approvals and pricing run through his Health Subcommittee.

The Florida Policy Institute, working from KFF's projections, puts the combined effect of the budget bill and the ACA marketplace changes at 1.5 million Floridians losing their health insurance — an estimated range of 1.1 million to 1.9 million — of which 1.4 million, 93%, is down to the marketplace changes rather than the Medicaid cuts. Florida's uninsured rate is projected to go from a historic low of 10.7% in 2023 to 16.7% starting in 2026.

A member on the Health Subcommittee, funded by the health industry, representing the state with the most to lose, voted for it.

Texas — the thinnest safety net in America, cut anyway

Texas lost 146,345 people — a 4% drop that sounds small and isn't, because of where it landed.

Texas already had the highest uninsured rate in the United States: 19.2% among people under 65, nearly double the national rate of 9.8%, according to KFF's read of 2024 Census data. The Texas Tribune counts nearly 5 million children and adults under 65 there without coverage. Texas is also one of the ten states that never expanded Medicaid.

That combination is what makes a "mild" percentage brutal. In a state with expanded Medicaid, some people who lose marketplace coverage land somewhere. In Texas, most of them land nowhere.

And the forecast was ugly before this vote: KFF projects 480,000 more uninsured Texans by 2034 because of the budget bill, with Texas set to lose $27.9 billion in federal Medicaid funding over ten years.

Every Texas Republican in the House voted for H.R. 6703. Two of them stand out.

Monica De La Cruz

Monica De La Cruz represents TX-15 in South Texas, and she sits on the Ways and Means Committee — the same committee Jason Smith chairs, the one with jurisdiction over the tax credits that expired.

Her own district is among the hardest hit in the country. An estimated 65,193 people in TX-15 are projected to lose health coverage, per the same Joint Economic Committee minority analysis — and note the split: 61,700 of them losing ACA marketplace coverage, against 3,493 losing Medicaid.

This is not a Medicaid story in her district. It is almost entirely a marketplace story — which is to say, it is almost entirely about the credits her own committee could have extended.

Ronny Jackson

Ronny Jackson is a doctor. He served as White House physician to three presidents before taking TX-13 in 2021.

He is the third clinician on this list, after a nurse practitioner in South Carolina and an OB-GYN in Kansas. All three voted the same way.

There is no version of a medical career that leaves you unaware of what happens when a patient's coverage lapses. You see it directly: the delayed scan, the rationed insulin, the condition that was manageable in March and is not in September. Jackson spent decades close enough to that to know.

He voted yes.

The through-line

Look at the vote counts again. The Senate blocked the extension by nine votes short of cloture. The House passed its substitute 216–211. Neither outcome was inevitable; a handful of members in either chamber could have changed it.

Then look at who these fourteen people are. This is not a list of backbenchers who got steamrolled:

Jason Smith chairs Ways and Means, the committee that writes tax law — and these were tax credits. Monica De La Cruz sits on it too.
Virginia Foxx chairs Rules, the committee that decides what reaches the floor at all.
Lisa McClain is Conference Chair, fourth in House Republican leadership.
Jim Jordan chairs Judiciary and founded the Freedom Caucus.
Gus Bilirakis sits on the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee.
Roger Marshall is a physician on the Senate health committee, and Ronny Jackson was White House physician to three presidents.
Sheri Biggs is a nurse practitioner.

Four of them held the gavels or the leadership posts that control what the House votes on. Two sit on the committee that writes tax law, and two more on the health panels themselves. Three of them treat patients for a living. If any group in Congress had both the power and the knowledge to force a different result, it was these fourteen — and their own states include the two that lost the biggest share of their coverage in America, and the one that lost the most people outright.

And notice what the House actually passed. Not a repeal. A bill named "Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act," which loosens rules on association health plans and does nothing about the credits whose expiration was about to raise what enrollees pay by 58%. It exists so that members can say they voted to lower premiums.

Every member above can now go home and say exactly that. The 2.6 million people who lost coverage this year are the reason it isn't true.

We've documented what this looks like on the ground in Alabama, Wisconsin, Arkansas and Ohio, and the full national tally of both votes is here.

The credits are gone. The people are uninsured. The votes are on the record with names attached — and in 2026, so are the members who cast them.

Every State Has a Squad That Catches People Who Abuse Nursing Home Patients. Thirteen Republicans Want Them Investigating You Instead.

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 11:32:57 +0000

Every state has a small team of investigators whose job is catching people who steal from Medicaid.

They do two things. They go after the companies, clinics and caregivers who bill Medicaid for care they never gave. And they build criminal cases against people who beat, starve or neglect patients in nursing homes.

That second part is not a footnote. Last year those teams won 329 convictions for abusing or neglecting patients.

There is now a bill in Congress to give those same investigators a new target: the people who apply for Medicaid.

The Bill Is Three Phrases Long

The law that created these teams points them at "providers of" Medicaid services — the doctors, the clinics, the home care companies.

The bill inserts six words after that phrase, in every place it appears:

", and individuals applying for or receiving,"

Two more insertions do the same work on "the provision of," adding "application for" and "receipt of" — one in the same section, one in a conforming change alongside it. A start date 180 days after signing is the rest of it.

But those six words change who the investigators work on. Today they investigate the providers who take Medicaid money. Under this bill they would also investigate the people who sign up for it.

Right now they mostly can't: Arkansas has limited authority to prosecute Medicaid beneficiaries unless they are working with providers to commit fraud. Attorney General Tim Griffin said so at a press conference on August 14: "We cannot, and we know that, right? We can't go after them alone."

That limit is exactly what the bill removes.

These Teams Are Already Very Good at the Job They Have

Here's the part that makes the case for the bill hard to follow.

Last year, these investigators nationwide won 1,185 convictions and brought back nearly $2 billion. Running them cost about $424 million in federal and state money combined.

The government's own math: $4.64 comes back for every $1 spent.

That money comes from the provider side, because providers are the only side these units are allowed to work. The biggest single group convicted of fraud was home care attendants, at 326 cases.

The bill does not give these teams a single extra dollar. It just adds everyone who applies for or receives Medicaid to their workload.

So something has to give. Every hour spent going through somebody's Medicaid application is an hour not spent on a nursing home abuse case.

Who's Behind It

Ashley Moody of Florida filed the Senate version on March 24. Tom Cotton announced on August 14 that he would sign on as a cosponsor; he had not been added to the official list yet when this was written.

Derek Schmidt of Kansas filed the House version. Nine members signed on, and these are Republicans we track:

Russell Fry (South Carolina)
Tracey Mann (Kansas)
Ben Cline (Virginia)
Joe Wilson (South Carolina)
Brian Jack (Georgia)
Mike Haridopolos (Florida)
David Taylor (Ohio)
Tim Moore (North Carolina)
David Rouzer (North Carolina)

Governor Sarah Sanders stood with Cotton and Griffin at that August 14 press conference to back it.

Their Argument, and the Numbers Under It

Sanders put it this way: "When we have bad actors that cheat the system, it leaves less funding for those who really need that critical support."

Cotton added: "That's $2 billion that wouldn't have, or that should have gone to those needy individuals or rural hospitals and doctors."

Now look at what Arkansas actually found. Sanders said the state's Medicaid investigations team turned up $8 million in overpayments last year. Griffin's office reported 130 arrests, 114 convictions, more than $2.5 million paid back in criminal cases and more than $7.8 million recovered in civil ones.

Those are real numbers, and they were found under the rules we already have, by investigators already doing the work.

Now Put That Next to What They Did to Medicaid

Two days after that press conference, we wrote about the 200,000 Arkansans who could lose the coverage they have. The Trump administration refused to renew the deal that lets Arkansas run its Medicaid program the way it does, using power it got from the 2025 budget bill.

Every Arkansas Republican in Congress voted for that bill. Cotton voted for it, and two weeks after the rejection he came home to call Medicaid "an important program for sick children, pregnant women, the elderly, and the poor".

So hold the two numbers side by side:


Medicaid overpayments Arkansas found last year	$8 million
Arkansans who could lose coverage from the budget bill	200,000

The worry, they say, is that cheating "leaves less funding for those who really need that critical support."

But the budget bill is what put that support on a countdown clock — for 200,000 people nobody accused of anything.

One of those problems is getting new investigators. The other one they did on purpose.

What It Would Feel Like to You

Forget the bill for a second. Here is what changes for a regular person.

Today, if you apply for Medicaid and get something wrong on the form — the wrong month's income, an old address, the wrong number of people in your house because your grown kid moved back in — that's a paperwork problem. The state Medicaid office sorts it out. You fix it, or you pay it back.

Under this bill, that same form can land on the desk of a criminal fraud investigator. The same one who works nursing home abuse cases.

Nobody has to be charged for that to change how it feels to ask for help. And thirteen Republicans are asking for it at the same moment their own votes are taking coverage away from people who did nothing wrong at all.

Sources

The bill's full text (S. 4176, filed March 24, 2026) and the House version's cosponsor list — Congress.gov
Medicaid Fraud Control Units Annual Report: Fiscal Year 2025 — U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General
Arkansas leaders back bill to expand Medicaid fraud investigations — KATV, August 14, 2026

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.

Republicans Once Voted for a 12-Year Limit on Congress. Forty-Six on This Site Are Already Past It — by 909 Years.

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 19:09:29 +0000

On Sunday, August 16, 2026, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear went on CBS's Face the Nation and told Ed O'Keefe what he thinks it would take to fix the federal government. Here is what he said:

"Constitutional amendment. It is time. It should outlaw partisan redistricting and enshrine part of the Voting Rights Act right there in the constitution. It should create term limits for Congress and the Supreme Court."

He is not a lonely voice, and this is not a Democratic idea. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, has pushed a 12-year cap on congressional service for years. But when the House has actually voted on it — in 1995, and again in 1997 — it was the Republican Party's own proposal, and the number both times was 12 years.

Ordinary Americans are not close to divided on this. When Pew Research Center asked in 2023, 87% favored limiting how long members of Congress can serve — 56% strongly. Only 12% were opposed. Republicans and Republican leaners said yes at 90%. Democrats and Democratic leaners, 86%.

There is almost nothing in American politics that 87% of people agree on.

So let's use their own number. Twelve years. Here is who is already past it.

The 12-year line, and the 46 people over it

In 1995, term limits were a plank in the Contract with America — the Citizen Legislature Act, which promised "a first-ever vote on term limits to replace career politicians with citizen legislators." The amendment Republican leaders then brought to the floor, H.J. Res. 73, capped service at 12 years: six terms in the House, two in the Senate. That is the standard Republicans wrote for themselves.

These are the Republicans with a report card on this site who have already served 12 years or more in Congress, without a break. Years and ages are as of today, August 17, 2026.

Name	Years	Age	Seat	In office since
Chris Smith	45	73	New Jersey-4	January 1981
Hal Rogers	45	88	Kentucky-5	January 1981
Ken Calvert	33	73	California-41	January 1993
Frank Lucas	32	66	Oklahoma-3	May 1994
Robert Aderholt	29	61	Alabama-4	January 1997
Susan Collins	29	73	Maine, U.S. Senate	January 1997
Mike Simpson	27	75	Idaho-2	January 1999
Shelley Moore Capito	25	72	West Virginia, U.S. Senate	January 2001
Joe Wilson	24	79	South Carolina-2	December 2001
John Carter	23	84	Texas-31	January 2003
Mario Diaz-Balart	23	64	Florida-26	January 2003
Marsha Blackburn	23	74	Tennessee, U.S. Senate	January 2003
Mike Rogers	23	68	Alabama-3	January 2003
Mike Turner	23	66	Ohio-10	January 2003
Tom Cole	23	77	Oklahoma-4	January 2003
Virginia Foxx	21	83	North Carolina-5	January 2005
Adrian Smith	19	55	Nebraska-3	January 2007
Gus Bilirakis	19	63	Florida-12	January 2007
Jim Jordan	19	62	Ohio-4	January 2007
Bob Latta	18	70	Ohio-5	December 2007
Rob Wittman	18	67	Virginia-1	December 2007
Steve Scalise	18	60	Louisiana-1	May 2008
Brett Guthrie	17	62	Kentucky-2	January 2009
Glenn Thompson	17	67	Pennsylvania-15	January 2009
Jim Risch	17	83	Idaho, U.S. Senate	January 2009
Tom McClintock	17	70	California-5	January 2009
Andy Harris	15	69	Maryland-1	January 2011
Austin Scott	15	56	Georgia-8	January 2011
Bill Huizenga	15	57	Michigan-4	January 2011
Chuck Fleischmann	15	63	Tennessee-3	January 2011
Mike Kelly	15	78	Pennsylvania-16	January 2011
Morgan Griffith	15	68	Virginia-9	January 2011
Paul Gosar	15	67	Arizona-9	January 2011
Rick Crawford	15	60	Arkansas-1	January 2011
Scott DesJarlais	15	62	Tennessee-4	January 2011
Steve Womack	15	69	Arkansas-3	January 2011
Tim Walberg	15	75	Michigan-5	January 2011
Andy Barr	13	53	Kentucky-6	January 2013
Ann Wagner	13	63	Missouri-2	January 2013
David Joyce	13	69	Ohio-14	January 2013
Randy Weber	13	73	Texas-14	January 2013
Richard Hudson	13	54	North Carolina-9	January 2013
Roger Williams	13	76	Texas-25	January 2013
Scott Perry	13	64	Pennsylvania-10	January 2013
Tom Cotton	13	49	Arkansas, U.S. Senate	January 2013
Jason Smith	13	46	Missouri-8	June 2013

Forty-six people. Twenty-four states. 909 years.

Nine of them have served double the limit their own party proposed. Two of them — Hal Rogers and Chris Smith — are approaching four times it. Eighteen of the 46 are 70 or older. Four are past 80.

Two of them were sworn in before Reagan was inaugurated

Hal Rogers and Chris Smith both took office on January 5, 1981 — fifteen days before Ronald Reagan's inauguration. They have both been in the House ever since. Forty-five years.

Rogers has been there so long there is a title for it. The House's own historians keep the list: he has been Dean of the House — the longest-serving member of the entire chamber — since 2022, through three Speakers.

He is 88 years old. In November 2025 he filed for re-election again, and in May 2026 he beat four primary challengers for the nomination. If he wins in November, he starts his 24th term at 89.

Four of them were there for the vote. Two voted for the limit.

Here is the part that should end the argument.

On March 29, 1995, the House voted on that amendment. Four of the forty-six were already in Congress that day. Here is the roll call:

Ken Calvert — Aye. He had served two years. He has served 31 more since.
Frank Lucas — Aye. He had been there ten months. He has served 31 more since.
Hal Rogers — No.
Chris Smith — No.

The amendment got 227 votes to 204. A constitutional amendment needs two-thirds, so it failed.

Read that again. Calvert and Lucas voted for a rule that would have ended their own House careers after twelve years. Both are now past thirty. Rogers and Smith voted to keep the door open — and then stayed another 31 years apiece.

Nobody in that group ever needed a law to leave. They could have just left.

Five of them are cosponsoring a three-term cap right now

This is not history everyone has quietly moved on from. It is happening in this Congress.

On January 6, 2025, Rep. Ralph Norman introduced House Joint Resolution 12, a constitutional amendment with a much harsher line than 1995's: "No person who has served 3 terms as a Representative shall be eligible for election to the House of Representatives." Three terms. Six years.

Five people on the list above signed their names to it. Every one of them is already past three terms:

Cosponsor	Terms served	Signed on
Scott Perry	7	January 6, 2025
Richard Hudson	7	January 13, 2025
Gus Bilirakis	10	March 10, 2025
Frank Lucas	17	April 8, 2025
Ann Wagner	7	August 8, 2025

Frank Lucas is cosponsoring a cap of three terms in his seventeenth.

None of them is required to quit for signing it — these amendments are written to apply going forward, and the pledge groups never ask anyone to pack up. But that is exactly the point. Putting your name on a resolution that will die in committee costs nothing. Leaving costs something. Guess which one keeps happening.

We have watched this move up close before. Alabama's Gary Palmer promised voters he'd serve five terms, then ran for a seventh and said he'd prayed about it. Pennsylvania's Guy Reschenthaler quietly stopped signing the term-limits amendment he'd backed three times — and signed again only eleven days after a billboard about it went up in his district.

Why they don't leave: eleven of thirteen gavels

None of this is an accident. Congress hands out power by seniority, and the gavels are where the money gets decided.

Look at the House Appropriations Committee, which writes the federal spending bills. It has one full-committee chair and twelve subcommittee chairs. Per the committee's own subcommittee rosters, eleven of those thirteen gavels belong to people on the list above:

Tom Cole — chairman of the full committee
Hal Rogers — Commerce, Justice, Science
Ken Calvert — Defense
Mike Simpson — Interior and Environment
Robert Aderholt — Labor, Health and Human Services, Education
John Carter — Military Construction and Veterans Affairs
Mario Diaz-Balart — National Security and State
Andy Harris — Agriculture and the FDA
Chuck Fleischmann — Energy and Water
David Joyce — Financial Services
Steve Womack — Transportation and Housing

Over in the Senate, Susan Collins chairs the Appropriations Committee too. Steve Scalise is the House Majority Leader. Jim Jordan chairs the Judiciary Committee. Virginia Foxx — 21 years in, and 83 — was handed the Rules Committee by Speaker Mike Johnson, the panel that decides which bills reach the floor and whether anyone gets to amend them.

We have already shown what those gavels buy. Rogers chaired the subcommittee controlling the entire Homeland Security budget — and a New York Times investigation found he steered a national ID-card program into a town of 8,000 in his own district while taking eleven trips, six of them to Hawaii, from a group in line to profit from a no-bid contract he arranged. Calvert campaigns on bringing home more federal money than any member in California history; the LA Times found $16 million of it landing within a few miles of rental properties he owns, including a building he had never disclosed.

Even Khanna, who wants the 12-year cap, admits out loud why this is hard. Describing the pushback he gets, he put the objection this way: "Well, look, we finally got seniority in a system where you have to wait 10 years before the voice really matters."

That is the whole trap in one sentence. The system is built so a new member has no power — and that is then used as the argument for why the old ones can never go.

The ones who won't even stand in a room

Long tenure would be easier to defend if it came with more accountability. It comes with less.

John Carter has held Texas's 31st District since 2003. His last documented in-person town hall was in 2013. When about 150 constituents held one for him in Belton in March 2025, they brought a life-size cardboard cutout to stand in for him, and his office dismissed them as "the far-left Indivisible group."

Mike Turner has held Ohio's 10th since 2003. When his opponent publicly asked him to debate and the Dayton Daily News put the question to him directly — would he debate, or hold a town hall? — he answered a different question entirely, responding with a press release about her health care plan. Not a yes. Not a no. Not one word about either.

That is what a safe seat buys you after two decades: you stop having to explain yourself.

And then there's Grassley

Iowa's Chuck Grassley doesn't have a report card here, because we track people on the 2026 ballot and he isn't on it. But he is the clearest picture of where this road ends.

Grassley has been in Congress since January 1975 — six years in the House, then the Senate ever since. That is 51 years, more than four times the limit his party once voted on. He is 92. His current term runs to January 2029, when he'll be 95.

He has already filed a statement of candidacy with the FEC for 2028. Asked in August 2025 whether he'd actually run for a ninth term, he wouldn't rule it out — his answer was "ask me the question in a couple of years."

A ninth Senate term would run to January 2035. Grassley was born on September 17, 1933. He would be 101 years old on the last day of it.

This was supposed to be a job you leave

Nobody on that list is there because of a conspiracy. They are there because they keep winning, in districts drawn to make sure they keep winning, with money that flows to incumbents because incumbents hold the gavels.

But "it's legal" and "they got elected" are answers to a question nobody asked. The question is whether a dozen years is enough — and Republicans themselves already answered it, on the record, in 1995. Twelve years. Six terms. Then go home and live under the laws you wrote.

Forty-six of them are past that line. Nine are past double it. Two are near four times it. Not one has treated their own party's number as binding on themselves.

Serving in Congress was supposed to be something you do for a while, as your part of the deal, and then hand off. A civic duty with an end date. Not a career, not a pension plan, and not a chair you sit in until you are 101.

Eighty-seven percent of Americans already agree. So does a Democratic governor in Kentucky, a Democratic congressman from Silicon Valley, and — in writing, twice, thirty years apart — the Republican Party itself.

They don't need a constitutional amendment to do the right thing. They could just go home.

Sources

Transcript: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," Aug. 16, 2026 — CBS News
How Americans View Proposals to Change the Political System — Pew Research Center, 2023
Roll Call 277, H.J. Res. 73, 104th Congress — Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives
H.J. Res. 12, 119th Congress — text and cosponsor list, Congress.gov

Years of service, term counts and ages are calculated from the public congress-legislators dataset, compiled from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress and the official House and Senate rosters. "Years" counts continuous service, so a member who left and later returned is credited only from their return.

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.

Michael Whatley Spent a Decade Lobbying for Oil and Gas. You Won't Find a Word of It on His Campaign Website.

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 10:38:08 +0000

Michael Whatley's campaign website tells you he was a federal law clerk. It tells you he was chief of staff to a U.S. senator. It tells you he chaired the Republican National Committee.

It does not tell you that he spent over a decade as a lobbyist for oil and natural gas companies.

Spectrum News reported this week that Whatley's biography leaves out the entire chapter — and when reporters asked the campaign why, "the campaign didn't provide an answer."

What's missing from the résumé

In 2009, Whatley helped found HBW Resources, a lobbying and public relations firm. Spectrum News reviewed 12 years of lobbying disclosure reports and found that Whatley and other lobbyists at the firm took in $3.5 million total, with $1.2 million of it coming from energy clients.

Until 2019, he was executive vice president of the Consumer Energy Alliance — a group that presents itself as a voice for energy consumers. It is nothing of the sort. The research outfit DeSmog says CEA was founded by Whatley of HBW Resources. The Energy and Policy Institute, which tracks utility and fossil-fuel front groups, reports that CEA "is operated out of the offices of the Houston-based public relations and lobbying firm HBW Resources," that its tax filings show it "has no staff," and that "nearly all the representatives listed on CEA's website are HBW employees" — and that CEA has routed $26.5 million, 56 percent of everything it has raised since 2010, straight to HBW.

In other words: Whatley was a partner in a lobbying firm, and an officer of the "consumer group" that hired his lobbying firm.

Its funders include ExxonMobil and Chevron.

He still owns the stock

Whatley's family holds hundreds of thousands of dollars in Exxon and Chevron shares.

Duke Energy was also a Consumer Energy Alliance client during Whatley's tenure. His family still owns Duke shares.

We've written about that last one before. Whatley and his wife own up to $445,000 in Duke Energy stock — while Duke has been asking North Carolina regulators for permission to raise power bills across the state. Now we know the company was a client of the front group where he was executive vice president.

That's the part the missing résumé line hides. Without it, the Duke shares look like an ordinary investment. With it, they look like the last thread of a working relationship.

The pattern of not answering

The campaign declining to explain the omission is not a one-off. It's Whatley's standard operating procedure:

Organizers at one of his events called the police on a reporter, and his spokesman declined to address it.
He would not say a word about taking money from Chemours, the company that contaminated the drinking water of half a million North Carolinians.
Trump named him Hurricane Helene "recovery czar" — and then audio surfaced of Whatley saying he'd told Trump to get rid of FEMA.

Every one of those is the same shape: a documented fact about Whatley's record, and a candidate who will not discuss it.

Why it matters for North Carolinians' bills

North Carolina is a state where energy policy lands directly on household budgets. Duke Energy is the dominant utility. Rate cases decide what people pay to keep the lights on. Coastal drilling and pipeline fights decide what the state's economy and shoreline look like for decades.

A senator's history of being paid by oil and gas companies — and serving as an officer of a front group funded by them — is exactly the kind of thing voters weigh before handing him a vote on all of it.

Whatley is asking North Carolina to send him to the Senate on a biography that lists the law clerkship and skips the decade he spent working for Exxon's and Chevron's side of the argument.

Voters can decide whether that's an oversight. But they can only decide it if somebody tells them, because his website won't.

Source

Reuben Jones and Ashley Gatz, "Whatley's lobbying work not featured on campaign website," Spectrum News, Aug. 14, 2026. Photo: AP, via Spectrum News.

More Than 40 Republicans Just Asked the Attorney General Not to Defend a 92-Year-Old Gun Law in Court

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 10:07:38 +0000

Since 1934, if you wanted to buy a silencer, a short-barreled rifle, or a sawed-off shotgun in America, you had to register it with the federal government. Fingerprints. Paperwork. A background check. A $200 tax stamp. That law — the National Firearms Act — was written during the gangster era for exactly the categories of weapon Congress decided were too dangerous to sell over a counter like a scope or a sling.

On August 5, 2026, a federal judge in Texas threw the registration requirement out.

Six days later, more than 40 congressional Republicans wrote to the Attorney General asking him not to fight it.

What the judge did

U.S. District Judge James Hendrix ruled that the National Firearms Act's registration scheme can no longer be enforced against suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns. He wrote the order to reach only the parties to the case — two consolidated lawsuits whose plaintiffs include fifteen states, Gun Owners of America, the NRA's Texas affiliate and a set of manufacturers and retailers, plus those companies' current and future customers — and held it for a week so the government could appeal.

His reasoning turned on something Congress itself did. The NFA has always been justified as a tax law — the registration and paperwork were legal because they helped collect the $200 tax. In Trump's 2025 budget bill, Republicans set that tax to zero for these three categories. Hendrix concluded that when the tax went away, the constitutional basis for the paperwork went with it.

"No longer can the challenged NFA provisions be justified — as they have been for nearly 90 years — under Congress's taxing power."

Adam Skaggs, chief counsel at the Giffords Law Center, described what was actually lost: "That process effectively functioned as a heightened background check for NFA weapons, and that process is no longer enforceable."

So Republicans zeroed out the tax in a budget bill. A judge then used the missing tax to strike down the background check. And now the same members of Congress are writing to make sure nobody appeals.

What the letter asks for

On August 11, 2026, Senator Steve Daines and Andrew Clyde sent a letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche with three requests:

Don't appeal. They ask DOJ "to decline any appeal of the court's decision."
Apply it to everyone, right now. Apply the ruling "nationwide to all persons, regardless of whether they are formally covered by the court's injunction."
Make it permanent. Start rulemaking "to rescind or amend the challenged NFA regulations as to untaxed firearms," and don't wait for that process to finish before changing enforcement practice.

Read that first item again. These are members of Congress asking the government's own lawyer to stop defending a federal statute in court.

That's not a policy disagreement. Congress has a way to repeal a law: pass a bill. They've tried — Michael Cloud has a bill to strike silencers from the National Firearms Act entirely and void state silencer taxes and registration rules on top. It hasn't passed. So the ask here is for the executive branch to deliver by non-enforcement what the legislative branch couldn't deliver by vote.

The man who led it sells the products

Andrew Clyde owns two gun stores — Clyde Armory, which by his own account "currently operates two brick-and-mortar locations in Georgia."

That is not an insinuation; it's his business. And it's the second time this month he's asked a federal agency to unwind gun rules that touch what he sells. On August 5 — the very day the Texas ruling came down — Clyde led a separate letter asking the ATF to start destroying firearm transaction records, the records police use to trace guns recovered at crime scenes.

Destroy the trace records. Skip the appeal on registration. Two letters, six days apart, from a sitting congressman who runs gun shops.

Who signed

Thirty-three of the signers have a report card on this site.

In the Senate: Roger Marshall joined Daines, along with John Barrasso, John Cornyn, Mike Crapo, Mike Lee, and Cynthia Lummis.

In the House, the signers include Brian Babin, Sheri Biggs, Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Josh Brecheen, Tim Burchett, Eric Burlison, Kat Cammack, Ben Cline, Michael Cloud, Mike Collins, Eli Crane, Warren Davidson, Scott DesJarlais, Morgan Griffith, Clay Higgins, Richard Hudson, Mary Miller, Riley Moore, Ralph Norman, Jimmy Patronis, Scott Perry, Derek Schmidt, Austin Scott, Keith Self, Pete Sessions, Victoria Spartz, Claudia Tenney, Derrick Van Orden, Randy Weber, and Bruce Westerman.

Some of these names should look familiar. Jimmy Patronis filed what gun media called the first bill ever written to fully repeal America's machine gun ban — the single sentence of federal law that also makes Glock switches illegal. Michael Cloud wants silencers treated like accessories. Clyde wants the trace records gone.

This letter is where those separate efforts converge on one target.

What registration was actually doing

Gun-rights groups describe suppressors as hearing protection. The Giffords Law Center's research says the hearing math doesn't work: a gunshot exceeds 140 decibels, the most effective silencers cut about 28 decibels, and ordinary dual ear protection cuts 40 to 50.

What silencers do reliably is make gunfire harder to recognize and harder to locate.

In 2023 alone, the ATF recovered and traced more than 400 silencers from crime scenes.
When a gunman opened fire in Virginia Beach in 2019 with a silenced .45-caliber handgun, survivors said they thought they heard a nail gun — so they didn't evacuate.
Three months before the 2023 Lewiston, Maine mass shooting, the gunman tried to buy a silencer and was denied. On the federal form required to complete the transfer he checked the box saying he had been committed to a mental institution, and the store's staff read it and refused to hand the silencer over.

That last one is the whole argument in a single fact. The paperwork worked. It stopped a sale to a man who went on to commit a mass shooting three months later. That paperwork — the NFA's registration and application requirements — is what this letter asks the Justice Department to stop enforcing.

The pattern

Every step of this happened in public and each step looked small on its own.

A tax rate set to zero, buried in a budget bill. A district court ruling in one Texas courthouse. A letter on Senate letterhead.

Put together, they make a 92-year-old federal registration requirement unenforceable for three categories of weapon — for the plaintiffs now, and for everyone if the Justice Department does what the letter asks — without a single floor vote to repeal it, and with a request that the government decline to defend the law on appeal so no higher court ever reviews the question.

If you live in one of these members' districts, they signed their name to that.

Source

"Daines, Clyde Lead Letter Urging DOJ to Protect Second Amendment Rights, Apply Ruling Nationwide", Office of Sen. Steve Daines, August 11, 2026, including the full signatory list. Ruling coverage: Associated Press, "Texas Judge Strikes Down Law Regulating Firearm Suppressors and Some Guns", August 10, 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.

One in Ten of Greg Murphy's Constituents Is a Veteran. Asked If VA Cuts Would Hurt Them, He Said: "No, I Can't Guarantee Anything."

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:48:36 +0000

On March 3, 2025, CNN's Brianna Keilar asked Greg Murphy a simple question: could he guarantee that veterans' benefits and care would not be affected by the cuts the Trump administration was making at the Department of Veterans Affairs?

His answer, as The Hill reported, was five words long.

"No, I can't guarantee anything."

He then explained why that was acceptable:

"But the whole purpose, again, of restructuring is to make sure that that agency is efficient."

Murphy is not a random backbencher on this subject. He sits on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee. And he told Keilar exactly what his district looks like:

"Look, I care for our veterans. One out of 10 constituents of mine are veterans. It's a real issue in eastern North Carolina."

He's right about the district. North Carolina's 3rd takes in Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune and the Marine Corps Air Stations at Cherry Point and New River. Camp Lejeune is the largest Marine Corps base on the East Coast.

So a member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, representing Camp Lejeune, was asked whether the people who live around those bases would be hurt. He said he couldn't promise they wouldn't. And he said the cuts should go ahead.

"Short-term pain"

Keilar asked what he was hearing from constituents. Murphy acknowledged the calls were coming in:

"Sure, sure. I mean, we're hearing voters. A lot are calling our offices, of course. They're calling all Republican offices, voicing concerns."

And then:

"Is there going to be short-term pain? Is there going to be some issues? Absolutely, and this is what happens with restructuring. But we have to get government back to doing what it's supposed to be doing, and that's working for the people."

At the moment he said that, the VA had cut about 1,400 employees the previous Monday, after roughly 1,000 in February. VA Secretary Doug Collins had also announced the cancellation of up to 875 contracts, then paused that effort a day later after an outcry from veterans' groups.

Collins's position at the time was firmer than Murphy's. "These moves will not hurt VA health care, benefits or beneficiaries," he said. "In fact, Veterans are going to notice a change for the better."

The Secretary guaranteed it. The congressman on the oversight committee wouldn't.

What actually happened

On July 7, 2025, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced that it was on track to shed nearly 30,000 employees by the end of the fiscal year — about 17,000 gone between January and June, and another 12,000 expected by September 30. The department got there through a governmentwide hiring freeze, deferred resignations, early retirements and ordinary attrition.

Collins had originally floated cutting around 80,000. The 30,000 figure was the walk-back.

Thirty thousand people is not a restructuring. It is tens of thousands of workers gone in nine months, at an agency whose central problem — the one Murphy himself named in that CNN interview — is that veterans wait too long for appointments.

Here is what Murphy said the real failure was:

"But the real issue is also when somebody can't get benefits and they've put off their doctor's appointments for eight or 10 months when they can't get care. That is where an agency has failed."

He is describing a staffing problem. His answer was to cut staff.

This is not hypothetical anymore

What a shrunken VA looks like in practice is already on the record elsewhere. In March 2026 the VA announced it was closing the only clinic in McMinnville, Tennessee, because a contractor couldn't keep it staffed — sending about 1,840 veterans to clinics 45 minutes away or farther. We wrote about what the congressman there did about it, which was to say he'd had no warning, and then to announce the clinic had been saved.

That is the model. Nobody votes to close a clinic. The staff just stop being there, and one day the doors don't open.

Murphy has a real advantage over most of his colleagues here: he is the only actively practicing physician in Congress, as we've written before, and he knows what happens to a patient who can't get an appointment. He said so on television. Then he called the consequences short-term pain.

The parts he does show up for

To be fair to the record, Murphy does constituent work on veterans. He has hosted a North Carolina constituent to testify before the VA Committee, and he runs an annual Veterans History Project event in the district.

None of that is the same as oversight. Oversight is what a member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee does when an administration announces it is removing tens of thousands of people from the agency he's supposed to be watching. On March 3, 2025, Murphy was handed the microphone and asked to hold the line for the one in ten of his own constituents he'd just described as veterans.

He said he couldn't guarantee anything, and moved on.

Sources

House Republican says he 'can't guarantee' staff cuts won't impact veterans, The Hill, March 3, 2025
Republican 'Can't Guarantee' Trump-Backed Budget Cuts Won't Hurt Veterans, Newsweek
VA to reduce staff by nearly 30K by end of FY2025, Department of Veterans Affairs, July 7, 2025

Greg Murphy Voted Against Throwing Out Arizona's Votes. Then He Voted to Throw Out Pennsylvania's. Four Weeks Earlier He'd Asked the Supreme Court to Do It for Him.

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:45:03 +0000

There's a version of the January 6 story where every Republican did the same thing, and so no individual is really responsible for any of it. Greg Murphy doesn't fit that version, which is why his record is worth reading closely.

He voted against one of the two objections. That is unusual. It also makes the rest of what he did harder to explain, not easier.

Here is the record, from the primary sources.

December 1, 2020: the letter to the Attorney General

Murphy signed a letter to Attorney General Bill Barr — his signature is on page two, second name in the block — complaining about "the shocking lack of action from the Justice Department" a month after the election.

The letter said there were "a number of anomalies, statistical improbabilities and accusations of fraud that bring the election results in several states into question." Then it made a demand:

"More than enough evidence has been presented to warrant the issuing of subpoenas, search warrants and the impounding of ballot materials and election devices for forensic analysis."

Members of Congress asked the Justice Department to seize voting machines. Here is the thing about the date on that letter. On that same day, December 1, 2020, Barr told the Associated Press that "to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election" — and said specifically that the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security had looked into the claim that voting machines were programmed to skew results and found nothing to substantiate it.

Trump's own Attorney General had checked the voting machines. The letter asked him to impound them anyway.

December 10, 2020: the Supreme Court brief

Nine days later, Murphy put his name on the amicus brief of 126 House Republicans supporting Texas v. Pennsylvania — the lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to void the presidential results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin.

He is listed by name: "Amicus U.S. Representative Gregory Murphy, M.D. represents the Third Congressional District" of North Carolina.

That's the part worth holding onto. Four weeks before the electoral count, Murphy had already asked the highest court in the country to throw out Pennsylvania's votes. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

January 6 and 7, 2021: the split

Then came the count itself, and the mob.

On the night of January 6, after the Capitol was cleared, the House voted on the objection to Arizona's electoral votes. It failed 121–303, and Murphy voted Nay — with the majority, against the objection.

The next day, on the objection to Pennsylvania's electoral votes, eighteen members who had voted no the night before switched to yes; one of the Arizona yes votes was absent, so the total rose by seventeen. Murphy was one of the eighteen. He voted Yea. That objection failed too, 138–282.

So he was not swept along. He made a distinction. He looked at two states and picked one.

And the one he picked was the one he'd already gone to the Supreme Court about.

What the objection would have done

Strip away the procedure. A successful objection to Pennsylvania would have discarded every ballot cast in that state — millions of them, counted, certified by the state, and already litigated to a dead end in court after court.

Murphy's own constituents in eastern North Carolina voted in the same election, under the same federal law, with their votes certified the same way. He did not propose throwing those out.

Then he voted against finding out what happened

Everything after this is about whether the country would be permitted to investigate.

January 13, 2021 — the House impeached Trump for inciting the attack. Murphy was recorded as Not Voting; he was in North Carolina caring for his wife after back surgery. He issued a statement opposing impeachment anyway: "The President has committed to a smooth transfer of power. We should let that happen and work on uniting the country rather than dividing it further. I strongly oppose this action taken by the House today."
May 19, 2021 — the House voted to create an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate January 6, modeled on the 9/11 Commission. Murphy voted Nay.
June 30, 2021 — after Senate Republicans killed the independent commission, the House created a select committee instead. Murphy voted Nay.

He voted against both ways of investigating it. There was no third option he was holding out for.

What he said on the anniversary

On January 6, 2022, Murphy put out a statement calling the attack "shameful" and "a terrible, yet avoidable, security failure," and said those who entered the Capitol unlawfully should be held accountable.

The rest of it was about Democrats. He accused House leadership of "exploiting the tragic events of January 6th for political gain" instead of supporting Capitol security upgrades.

A security failure is a story about doors and staffing. It is not a story about why several thousand people came to Washington believing the election had been stolen, or about the members of Congress who spent December telling them so in letters and legal briefs.

Murphy was one of those members. His statement does not mention that.

The part that isn't in the past

Murphy is running for re-election in 2026 against Democrat Raymond Smith Jr., who won the March primary. Murphy's district was redrawn ahead of this cycle.

There is no public record of him retracting the December letter, and nothing he has said explains why Pennsylvania's voters were different from Arizona's. His own announcement the day before the count said only that he would object to "certain Electoral College votes". He was, in the end, a little more careful than most of his colleagues on that first vote — which means he thought about it, and then did it anyway.

We've written about the rest of his record: what he says about health insurers versus how he votes on coverage, and three other things worth knowing.

Sources

Letter to Attorney General William Barr, December 1, 2020 (Murphy's signature, p. 2)
Texas v. Pennsylvania — Amicus Brief of 126 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Supreme Court of the United States
House Roll Call votes 10, 11, 17, 154 and 197, Office of the Clerk

Greg Murphy Says Drug Cartels Are More Ethical Than Health Insurers. Then He Voted for the Bill That Puts Coverage for 195,000 North Carolinians at Risk.

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:40:22 +0000

Greg Murphy is the only member of Congress who still sees patients. He's a urologist in Greenville, North Carolina, and he does it unpaid. "I can't get paid, I have to do it for free," he says.

That gives him standing almost nobody else in the building has. And when he uses it, he is worth listening to.

At a House Ways and Means hearing in January 2026, Murphy told a row of health insurance executives:

"You have put profits above patients and you have put profits above those who care for patients."

And then:

"You guys need to be broken up. The vertical integration has destroyed competition in this country and again if I had my way, I'd turn all of you guys into dust, we'd start back from scratch, we'd have competition in the industry, we'd have associated health plans, and we would have nonprofit hospitals."

On a physicians' podcast he went further, saying of insurers: "Some of our drug cartels are more ethical than our insurance companies." Of UnitedHealthcare specifically: "I think some of those people ought to go to jail."

He isn't performing. He knows the machine from both ends. About a year and a half before he spoke to Spectrum, a benign tumor was found in Murphy's brain, and he had two surgeries for it. He then needed medication to do the job his pituitary gland no longer could. Here is what happened to a sitting United States congressman with a brain tumor:

"I had a total of eight denials from the beginning of trying to get the first medicine to finally trying to get the last medicine before I got it."

We checked his money, because that's usually where these stories go. It doesn't go there. Murphy's campaign has taken nothing from UnitedHealth, Cigna, Elevance, Humana, CVS/Aetna, Centene, Molina, or the insurance industry's trade group this cycle, according to his FEC filings. Nobody bought this position. He means it.

Which makes what he did with his vote much harder to explain.

The vote

On July 3, 2025, the House took up the final version of Trump's budget bill. Murphy voted Aye.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that bill cuts federal Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over a decade and leaves 7.5 million more people uninsured. For North Carolina specifically, state health officials say North Carolina is bracing for a $49.9 billion decrease in federal Medicaid funding over the next decade — money that pays rural hospitals and the doctors in them. Up to 195,000 North Carolinians are at risk of losing coverage — and the state's own health secretary, Dev Sangvai, put the number at a quarter of a million.

Murphy's district is eastern North Carolina. It is not the part of the state with spare hospitals.

Here is the thing a urologist knows better than a lobbyist: a patient with no insurance at all does not get a prior-authorization denial. They get nothing. There is no appeal, no eighth attempt, no medication at the end of it. The people Murphy voted to knock off Medicaid don't get to have the fight he had. They don't get to the starting line.

He told insurance executives they put profits above patients. Then he voted for a bill that takes the patients out of the equation entirely.

The vote he wasn't there for

On December 17, 2025, the House passed H.R. 6703, the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act. It was the vehicle for dealing with the expiring health insurance tax credits — the ones whose lapse is driving premiums up for millions of people.

The clerk's record for Roll Call 349 lists Greg Murphy as Not Voting.

That was not a choice about this bill. Murphy missed every recorded vote in the House from December 15, 2025 through January 20, 2026 — 61 of them — and on December 16, the day before the premium vote, his office announced that he would "soon undergo follow-up treatment" for the benign pituitary condition. He cast his next vote on January 21.

So there is no dodge here. There is a gap. The one member of Congress who actually practices medicine, the one who says insurers belong in prison, has no recorded position on the health insurance premium bill.

What he does instead

Murphy's actual legislative energy goes somewhere narrower. In May 2026 the Ways and Means Committee passed his Provider Reimbursement Stability Act, H.R. 8163, on a 44-0 vote. It raises the spending threshold that triggers automatic Medicare fee cuts from $20 million to $54.3 million and caps year-to-year swings in physician payment.

That's a decent bill. It also happens to be the bill the doctors' lobbies want most. Seven medical specialty PACs — anesthesiologists, ophthalmologists, radiologists, orthopaedic surgeons, neurosurgeons, dermatologists and urologists — have together given Murphy more than $250,000 across his FEC filings. We've written before about the health industry money behind him.

So the pattern isn't that Murphy is bought by insurers. It's narrower and stranger than that. On the fights where physicians and insurers are the two parties, he shows up swinging. On the fight over whether ordinary people have any coverage at all, he voted with his party and moved on.

What it would take to mean it

Murphy is right that insurance companies deny care for profit. He's right that vertical integration has hollowed out competition. He is one of the few Republicans in Congress willing to say so with the CEOs in the room.

None of that is worth much to a family in Pitt or Craven County who loses Medicaid. They will not be denied care by an algorithm. They'll just stop going.

Murphy asked to have his own pay withheld during the March 2026 Homeland Security funding lapse, saying members of Congress should not be paid "if we fail to accomplish the basic responsibility of keeping the government open." It was a real gesture and it cost him something. Constituents in his district have been demanding a town hall and holding one without him when he didn't come.

He should go. He'd be the most credible person in the room on what insurance companies do to sick people. He'd also have to explain the vote.

Sources

Rep. Murphy shares personal story and struggles with insurance companies, Spectrum News, February 5, 2026
Congressman Greg Murphy: Even Drug Cartels Are More Ethical Than Health Insurance Companies, Offcall
House Roll Call 190 — One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Murphy: Aye) and Roll Call 349 — H.R. 6703 (Murphy: Not Voting), Office of the Clerk
Dr. Murphy Update, Office of Rep. Greg Murphy, December 16, 2025
Quarter of the 1 million Medicaid insured patients in NC could lose their benefits: DHHS, ABC11/WTVD, July 14, 2025

A Constituent in Angier Asked Brad Knott How He Could Vote to Cut Medicaid. His Answer Was That Congress Could Always Fix It Later.

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:31:52 +0000

On September 19, 2025, WUNC's Colin Campbell wrote up a town hall that Brad Knott had held for North Carolina's 13th District.

The first sentence of the story tells you most of what you need to know:

"Instead of holding an in-person town hall, Knott took questions from his constituents over the phone for about 45 minutes."

It was his third such event since taking office in January 2025. All by telephone. To join, you registered in advance and waited for an automated call.

Then a constituent asked him about Medicaid.

The question

A resident of Angier — a small town in Harnett County, in the rural southern end of Knott's district — asked him about the Medicaid cuts in Trump's budget bill, which Knott had voted for.

"As our representative, how do you support these cuts? How do you reconcile them with the need to ensure continued access to health care for rural communities like the one I live in?"

That is a direct, specific, entirely fair question from someone who lives with the consequences.

The answer

"We allocated tens of billions of dollars if there are emergencies in rural healthcare spheres and spaces, and if there are changes that need to be made, we stand ready to do it, whether it's in Congress or the state legislature of North Carolina."

Take that apart.

"We allocated tens of billions of dollars if there are emergencies." That's the rural health fund written into the same law that made the cuts — money states have to apply for, set against a much larger permanent reduction. It's the standard answer, and we've watched it get used before: Mississippi's Michael Guest spent a recess promoting $206 million from that fund after voting for the law projected to take billions out of the state's Medicaid funding.

"If there are changes that need to be made, we stand ready to do it." He is describing a future Congress fixing a law he voted for. He was in the room when it passed. He had a vote. He used it.

"whether it's in Congress or the state legislature of North Carolina." And here the responsibility gets handed to Raleigh — to the state that will be absorbing the loss.

The other argument he made was that the provisions wouldn't take effect for two years, leaving time to adjust.

It is closer to fifteen months. Both the work requirement and the new six-month eligibility redeterminations begin with the first quarter that starts after December 31, 2026 — January 1, 2027, about fifteen months after he said it. What he has right is the part he didn't say out loud: the date falls after the next election.

What's actually coming to North Carolina

North Carolina stands to lose an estimated $49.9 billion in federal Medicaid funds over the next decade. The Modern Medicaid Alliance puts up to 195,000 North Carolinians at risk of losing coverage.

In the same WUNC story, Governor Josh Stein is cited warning that the bill could threaten five North Carolina hospitals with closure, as they take on more uninsured patients who can't pay their bills.

And this is a young program in North Carolina. The state expanded Medicaid only at the end of 2023; hundreds of thousands of people gained coverage, many of them in exactly the rural counties Knott represents. The ink was barely dry when Congress voted to pull the funding out from under it.

The Angier resident wasn't asking a hypothetical.

Three town halls, zero rooms

There's a reason the format matters here.

On a telephone town hall, the office controls who gets on the line, which questions reach the member, and when the call ends. There's no follow-up. There's no one else in the room hearing the answer and deciding whether it satisfied them. There's no moment where a congressman has to look at a person and say "the fund will cover it."

In March 2025, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Richard Hudson — himself a North Carolina congressman — told House Republicans in a closed-door meeting to stop holding in-person town halls and use tele-town halls and Facebook Live instead. We wrote about what happened when Hudson took his own advice and told his constituents the Medicaid cuts were "just rumors."

Knott's constituents have asked for the real thing. In April 2025, the Johnston County Democratic Party publicized an Indivisible invitation to Knott for a town hall in Johnston County. What his district got instead were three calls.

To Knott's credit, on that third call he did take a hard question and answer it in his own words rather than dodge it. The problem isn't that he refused to speak. It's what he said — and that he said it to a phone line he controlled instead of a room he didn't.

What he's told them since

This is the same member of Congress who voted for the SAVE Act months after having voted from an address he didn't live at, and who got to Washington on nearly $2 million his own family put into a super PAC.

The pattern isn't hard to read. On the votes that cost his district money, he votes with his party. On the questions his district asks about it, he takes them by phone.

The Angier resident wanted to know how a representative reconciles a vote with the people it hurts.

Two years, he said. We stand ready.

Source

Colin Campbell, "In telephone town hall, NC Congressman Knott talks healthcare, guns, immigration," WUNC, September 19, 2025. Photo: Office of Congressman Brad Knott, via WUNC.

Brad Knott's Family Put $1.96 Million Into a Super PAC. It Was 76% of Everything That PAC Raised — and It Bought Him a Seat in Congress.

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:27:50 +0000

In December 2023, WUNC ran a story about a strange thing happening in North Carolina's 13th Congressional District. A super PAC nobody had heard of was carpet-bombing the airwaves for a candidate nobody had heard of, months before anyone votes.

WUNC described Brad Knott as a "little-known Republican candidate" and a former federal prosecutor who "hasn't run for office before, and few people in political circles had heard of him." He was one of at least 11 Republicans in the race. And he had the advantage of being one of the first with regular TV ads, thanks to about $500,000 the group spent in November and early December of 2023 alone.

The group is called The American Foundations Committee.

Federal Election Commission records show where its money came from.

$1,960,000 of $2,587,500

Over the 2024 election cycle, The American Foundations Committee — registered with the FEC as an independent-expenditure-only super PAC, based in Louisburg, North Carolina — took in $2,587,500.

Money from people named Knott accounted for $1,960,000 of it. That's 76 cents of every dollar.

Here's the breakdown, straight from the FEC's Schedule A filings:

Donor	Listed occupation	Total
Thomas R. Knott (New York)	Private equity	$1,735,000 (incl. a $500,000 loan)
J. Tucker Knott (Washington, DC)	Chief of staff	$75,000
Sarah Tucker Knott (Raleigh)	Homemaker	$50,000
Joe T. Knott III (Raleigh)	Attorney	$50,000
Mary Garland Knott	Nurse	$25,000
Sarah Katherine Knott Kane (Raleigh)	Event manager	$25,000

Thomas R. Knott by himself put in $1,735,000 — 67% of the PAC's entire haul — in seven payments between November 2023 and April 2024, including two of $500,000 each. The first, on November 14, 2023, was a straight contribution. The second, on April 10, 2024, the committee reported not as a contribution but as a loan — and its Schedule C filings show it has never been repaid: $500,000 borrowed, $0 paid back, $500,000 still carried as a debt on the committee's most recent report.

The Assembly, which covered the primary in detail, identified Thomas Knott as Brad's brother, a New York investor. It identified J. Tucker Knott as another brother — chief of staff to U.S. Senator Ted Budd, and before that chief of staff to former Rep. George Holding. Joseph Knott is their father, a Raleigh attorney who served on the UNC Board of Governors.

The only donor outside the family who gave six figures was Reynolds Services Company of Winston-Salem, at $200,000.

What the money bought

Super PACs are legally forbidden from coordinating with the candidate they support. What they can do is spend unlimited money on their own. The FEC requires them to report every dollar and say whether it supports or opposes a specific candidate.

Here is what The American Foundations Committee reported for the 2024 cycle, from its independent expenditure filings:

$1,334,358 supporting Brad Knott
$678,086 opposing Kelly Daughtry, his chief rival in the primary
$381,905 opposing Fred von Canon, another Republican in the race

Read those numbers again. The family-funded super PAC spent $1,059,991 tearing down two other Republicans — 44 cents of every dollar it spent, and nearly as much as it spent promoting Knott himself.

Fourteen Republicans ran in the March 5, 2024 primary. Daughtry finished first and Knott second, forcing a runoff. Then Donald Trump endorsed Knott, posting that "Brad Knott is a strong patriot who is running for congress in North Carolina's 13th Congressional District against a RINO, Kelly Daughtry."

Daughtry quit the race on May 2, 2024, twelve days before the runoff:

"In light of President Trump's endorsement of Brad Knott for the Congressional seat in District 13, it has become clear that a pathway to victory is no longer feasible."

The runoff went ahead anyway on May 14 — early voting was already underway and it was too late to take her name off the ballot. Knott won it 90.8% to 9.2%, 19,632 votes to 1,998, and won the seat that November.

The scale of it

For comparison: Knott's own campaign committee reported $2,473,896 in receipts for the whole 2024 cycle — and $780,000 of that was loans.

So the super PAC took in slightly more than the actual campaign did — and 76% of it came from six people with the same last name.

Meanwhile, the contributions small enough that the FEC doesn't require them to be itemized — the $20 and $50 donations from ordinary people — came to $39,304. Out of $2.47 million. That's about one and a half cents on the dollar.

That imbalance didn't stop when he got to Washington. Today only about 2% of Knott's money comes from small grassroots donors, and Who Bought My Rep ranks him #244 out of 440 House members on grassroots funding. His top contributors now read like a Washington lobbying directory: the American Institute of CPAs, the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers and the National Association of Realtors — all of it PAC money — plus the consulting giant Accenture and the drugmaker Novo Nordisk.

Why this matters past the gossip

There is nothing illegal here. A brother in private equity is allowed to write a $500,000 check to a super PAC, and then lend it another $500,000. That's what Citizens United means in practice.

But it's worth being clear-eyed about what happened in NC-13.

Fourteen Republicans ran. One of them had a family that could put nearly $2 million behind him before most voters knew his name. That money bought the earliest ads, spent over $1 million tearing down two rivals, and turned an unknown into a runoff finalist. In a district drawn to elect a Republican, the primary is the real election.

The voters of NC-13 got a choice. They just got it after the field had been narrowed by a checkbook.

And the man that checkbook sent to Congress now sits on the House Judiciary Committee, the Homeland Security Committee, and — per his own office — the House Ethics Committee.

The record since

Since arriving, Knott has voted the way the money that sent him would want. He has a 0% score from the League of Conservation Voters for 2025 and a 0% lifetime score. He voted for the SAVE Act, the bill requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote — after having spent nine years voting from an address he didn't live at.

His district takes in Raleigh and seven surrounding counties — and North Carolina lost at least $714 million in federal grants to DOGE's cuts. We wrote up his first-year record in our earlier piece on Knott, and what his whole delegation's votes are doing to the state in what North Carolina's Republicans in Congress are costing you.

Sources

Colin Campbell, "Super PAC spends big on obscure Congressional candidate with early TV push," WUNC, December 14, 2023; "A Runoff Reveals A GOP Family Feud," The Assembly. Dollar figures verified against Federal Election Commission filings for committee C00514125. Photo: The Assembly.

Brad Knott Voted in Five Elections From an Address He Didn't Live At. Then He Went to Congress and Voted for the SAVE Act.

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:25:08 +0000

Brad Knott was a federal prosecutor before he ran for office. By his own account, he "worked alongside law enforcement at all levels to prosecute organized crime" — drug cartels, human trafficking, financial crimes, national gangs. Prosecutors are people who read forms carefully for a living. That's most of the job.

In February 2024, while he was running for Congress, WRAL's Paul Specht reported what the election records showed: Knott had been voting from an address where he didn't live.

Not once. Five general elections.

What the records show

Knott listed a property on Oberlin Road in Raleigh as his voting address from November 30, 2010 until November 30, 2023. That's his parents' house — the one he grew up in. He confirmed as much to WRAL in a phone interview.

But in April 2014, Knott bought a house on Allister Drive in Raleigh. He told WRAL it had been his residence since 2015 or 2016 — "somewhere in there."

He didn't update the registration. In his words, it "slipped my mind."

In the years between buying the Allister Drive house and finally changing his registration at the end of 2023, records show he voted in person in five general elections while registered at his parents' address.

What that means under North Carolina law

This is where a former prosecutor's explanation gets uncomfortable.

When North Carolinians vote in person, they give their address to a poll worker and sign a form testifying to their eligibility to vote in that precinct. WRAL quoted the disclaimer printed on the form:

"Fraudulently or falsely completing this form is a Class I felony under Chapter 163 of the NC General Statutes."

A Class I felony in North Carolina can carry up to two years in prison.

Knott's answer was that he didn't remember the address ever coming up:

"I can't remember specifically how the ballot exchange happened. It was just one of those things where, [the polling site] was where I'd always voted."

And his framing of the whole thing:

"It's a paperwork issue. I should have done it when I bought this place, when I moved in. But it's one of those things where I didn't do it."

He also told WRAL his votes didn't compromise the integrity of any election. WRAL asked his campaign to clarify whether he had knowingly misrepresented his address. The campaign didn't immediately comment.

Nobody came after him — and that's the point

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman didn't comment on Knott specifically, but she described to WRAL how her office handles this kind of case. Sometimes it's a verbal warning. Her explanation of why:

"It generally can be difficult to prove that the individual did not have some basis to believe they could be considered a resident of the address they used to vote."

If a board of elections found a voter had no basis to claim the residence "and the conduct was persistent, then a criminal investigation may be appropriate," she said.

Knott also told WRAL that even after buying the Allister Drive house he lived with his parents and his in-laws "for extended periods of time" — around his wedding, and while his own house was being renovated. "When I moved back with my parents during renovations, should I have filed it back? Maybe so. When I moved in with my in-laws after I got married for a few months, should I have filed it there? Maybe so," Knott said. "But, you know, we missed it. We will acknowledge that."

Neither the state nor the Wake County elections board had received any challenge to Knott's ballots.

So he got the benefit of the doubt. A system that assumes good faith, gives people room for an honest mistake, and doesn't treat a paperwork slip as a crime. That's the right way for it to work.

Hold onto that.

Then he got to Washington

On April 10, 2025 — his first spring in Congress — Knott voted for the SAVE Act. It passed 220 to 208, with 216 of the yes votes coming from Republicans.

The SAVE Act would require every American to show documentary proof of citizenship in person to register to vote or to update their registration information.

Think about what that means for someone in exactly Knott's situation. Under the SAVE Act, moving across town and updating your address isn't a form you mail in. It's a trip to an election office with a passport or a birth certificate in hand.

More than 21 million Americans of voting age don't have ready access to proof of citizenship. And 84% of women who marry change their surname, which means the name on their birth certificate no longer matches the name on their ID — a mismatch that can stop a registration cold. We laid out the full picture in our breakdown of the SAVE Act: a solution to a problem that barely exists, with a price paid by tens of millions of eligible citizens.

Knott would have been fine. He has the documents. He has a lawyer's comfort with paperwork. The people who wouldn't be fine are the ones without a filing cabinet and a spare weekday morning.

The two standards

Here is the whole thing in two sentences.

When Brad Knott spent nine years registered at his parents’ address after buying his own house, and voted five times that way, the correct response — and the one he got — was that people make mistakes and the system should absorb them.

When ordinary North Carolinians want to register or move, his vote says the system should assume they might be lying until they produce a birth certificate.

He's not the first Republican from North Carolina to campaign on election integrity with an awkward file behind him. Mark Harris — whose 2018 congressional election was thrown out over absentee ballot fraud by his own operative — took the House floor in February 2026 to demand proof of citizenship and photo ID. He's now Knott's colleague in the North Carolina delegation.

What he actually knows

Brad Knott isn't a man who stumbled into this. He prosecuted federal crime for a living. He now sits on the House Judiciary Committee, the Homeland Security Committee — and the House Ethics Committee. He knows the difference between an error and a fraud, and he knows how rare the second one is, which is why he could say with a straight face that his own five votes compromised nothing.

He was right about that.

He just voted to make sure nobody else gets the same benefit of the doubt.

Source

Paul Specht, "A Republican candidate voted from the wrong address. Will it affect his bid for Congress?" WRAL, February 28, 2024. Photo: WRAL.

$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.

Richard Hudson's Signature Bill Would Override North Carolina's Gun Permit Law. The Fraternal Order of Police Is Begging Congress to Kill It.

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 16:37:23 +0000

North Carolina makes you earn a concealed carry permit. You have to be 21. You have to have lived here 30 days. You have to complete an approved firearms safety course that includes actually firing the handgun and covers state law on deadly force. And your county sheriff has to sign off — and is required by law to say no if you're a fugitive, under felony indictment, or in a long list of other categories.

Richard Hudson has spent eleven years trying to make all of that unenforceable against anyone from out of state.

His bill is H.R. 38, the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act. He introduced this version on the first day of the current Congress with more than 120 cosponsors — it's now up to 189. The House Judiciary Committee approved it 18–9 in March 2025, and it has been sitting on the House calendar since October 3, 2025, waiting for a floor vote that could come at any time.

And the biggest organization of rank-and-file police officers in America is trying to stop it.

What the bill actually does

Congress's own summary is not subtle. H.R. 38 "preempts most state and local laws related to concealed carry" and creates a private right of action — a lawsuit — for anyone adversely affected by interference with the carrying right it creates.

In practice, two things happen:

A permit from any state works in every state. Not just states with comparable standards — any state.
A resident of a state with no permit requirement at all can carry here without one. Gun Owners of America counts 29 states with permitless or "constitutional" carry in its own statement praising Hudson's bill.

So a visitor from a permitless state can carry a concealed handgun through downtown Fayetteville without ever taking the safety class, without ever firing the gun in front of an instructor, and without a North Carolina sheriff ever looking at their name. The North Carolinian standing next to them had to do all three.

Everytown for Gun Safety's objection, as MS NOW summarized it, is that the bill could let many people carry concealed weapons without passing a background check, going through safety training, or having any experience handling a gun. That's not a stretch of the text. That's the text.

The police union that endorsed Trump is fighting Hudson's bill

On November 17, 2025, the National Fraternal Order of Police — the largest police union in the country, and an openly pro-Trump one — issued a joint call to action with the International Association of Chiefs of Police urging Congress to reject H.R. 38.

Their objection isn't about the Second Amendment. It's about what the bill does to officers on a traffic stop:

"The legislation exempts any person with a valid photographic identification from state or local firearms law who asserts that they are lawfully carrying a firearm under the laws of their own state of residence. This is problematic, but the most concerning provision of H.R. 38 is that it prohibits law enforcement officers from making any arrest or detaining a suspect for any violation of state or local law pertaining to the possession, transportation, or carriage of a firearm."

The two groups also warned that this "makes it impossible for an officer to conduct any investigation with respect to ascertaining if the person is in fact compliant with the firearms law in their state of residence," and that "officers would be expected to interpret and apply laws from all 50 states in real time, without reliable means to verify an individual's eligibility to carry concealed weapons."

Read that again. A driver produces a photo ID and says he's allowed to carry back home, and the officer has to take his word for it — and can be sued if he doesn't.

Gun Owners of America's response to the country's biggest police union was to accuse it of betrayal. "Fraternal Order of Police betrays the Second Amendment by opposing H.R. 38," the group posted the next day.

Hudson's answer to the police has been to keep going. "I will not stop fighting to get this legislation signed into law," he said when he introduced it.

The people who wanted this bill have paid him for it

Hudson's report card lays out where his money comes from, and guns are near the top of it. The National Rifle Association has given him $39,650 — one of his largest single sources, and it is not a mystery what it bought. When he introduced H.R. 38, NRA-ILA executive director John Commerford put out a statement thanking him by name: "NRA applauds and thanks Rep. Hudson for his longstanding and unwavering leadership in the fight for right-to-carry reciprocity."

Gun Owners of America called the bill "the greatest legislative victory for the gun rights movement in a century."

Overall, only 3% of Hudson's campaign money comes from small grassroots donors, and he ranks 343rd out of 440 House members in grassroots funding. He is funded by organizations, and he legislates for them.

Josh Horwitz, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, described national reciprocity to The Trace as "the absolute prize" for Republicans. Hudson is the man carrying it.

This has been his project since 2015

Hudson first filed it as H.R. 986 in February 2015. The House actually passed a version once, on December 6, 2017, by a vote of 231–198. The Senate never took it up, and it died.

He has reintroduced it in every Congress since. What's different now is that Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House, and Trump has said he'd sign it. This is the closest the bill has ever been to becoming law — which is exactly why the police unions moved when they did.

Hudson isn't alone in North Carolina, either. His colleague Pat Harrigan filed a bill in April 2026 that would override every state's carry laws for special operations veterans — and, unlike the retired-police law it copies, waives the yearly requalification. Two members from the same state, both writing bills whose effect is to move the decision about who may carry a concealed gun in North Carolina out of North Carolina.

What it means where he lives

North Carolina loses about 1,800 people a year to gun violence — a rate 27 percent above the national average. Hudson's district includes Fort Bragg, part of Fayetteville, and all of Hoke, Moore, Randolph, and Alamance counties. The sheriffs in those counties are the officials whose sign-off H.R. 38 makes irrelevant for everyone driving in from out of state, and their deputies are the ones the FOP says would lose the authority to check.

Hudson has been in Congress since 2013 — thirteen years. In that time the single piece of legislation most associated with his name is one that takes a safety decision away from North Carolina sheriffs, hands it to whichever state has the loosest rules in the country, and lets the gun owner sue the cop who questions it.

The NRA thanked him for it. The police are asking Congress to stop him.

Source

Concealed carry 'reciprocity' law splits MAGA gun and law enforcement groups — Ja'han Jones, MS NOW, November 21, 2025. The FOP and IACP joint call to action is available from the Fraternal Order of Police.

Richard Hudson Told Every House Republican to Stop Meeting Voters. Then He Got on the Phone and Told His Own Constituents Medicaid Cuts Were 'Just Rumors.'

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 16:34:16 +0000

On Tuesday, March 4, 2025, House Republicans filed into a closed-door conference meeting. Their constituents were furious — about DOGE, about mass firings, about what was coming for Medicaid — and members were getting shouted down at town halls back home. Video of Republicans walking off stages was everywhere.

Richard Hudson, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, stood up and gave them a solution.

Stop holding in-person town halls.

As NOTUS reported from the meeting, Hudson told his colleagues to switch to tele-town halls or Facebook Lives instead. His reasoning was that members could still hear from constituents that way, while avoiding "disruption from activists."

The other way to describe that is: you can hear the voters, but the voters can't be seen or heard by anyone else.

The advice was about the pictures, not the listening

The timing tells you what this was about. The same reporting noted that going online would avoid "the recent images of Republicans running off stage, getting drowned out by boos and being challenged on unpopular cuts to programs like Medicare and Medicaid." Congress was in the middle of writing a budget bill that would cut $2 trillion in spending, much of it out of Medicaid.

Speaker Mike Johnson backed him up at his weekly press conference: "The best thing that our members can do is communicate directly, frequently, consistently, with their constituents. There are other avenues to do it than just going in to try to give the other side sound bites."

Hudson's spokesperson, Will Kiley, posted on X that Hudson supports members talking to as many constituents as possible. "Using technology makes this a heck of lot easier," he wrote.

Democrats' campaign arm was blunter. "So House Republicans' political strategy is 'see no families nor workers,' 'hear no protesters', 'speak to no one' and hope everyone gets less angry at them when they rip away Americans' health care? Got it," said DCCC spokesperson Viet Shelton.

It's worth being precise about who said this and what job he holds. Hudson isn't a random member with an opinion about scheduling. The NRCC chairman raises the money, recruits the candidates, and sets the campaign strategy for every House Republican on the ballot. When he tells the conference to stop appearing in public, that's the party's official advice to more than 200 members of Congress about whether to face the people who elected them.

Then he showed everyone how it's done

On April 22, 2025, Hudson took his own advice and held a tele-town hall. CityView, the nonprofit newsroom in Fayetteville, listened to the whole thing.

Here's what a Hudson town hall looks like:

50 minutes long. Eleven questions.
Callers apologized for barking dogs and asked "can you hear me?" before speaking.
Hudson's office ran a telephone survey during the event — "press 1 for jobs and the economy," "press 2 for immigration and border security" — five separate times, which CityView compared to a customer-service hold loop. CityView could not establish how the moderators chose the questions, or whether the survey fed into the choice.
Nearly half the questions were about veterans and the military — safe ground in a district that includes Fort Bragg.

One caller got through on DOGE. A Fayetteville veteran named Sam told him: "I've worked on Fort Bragg. I've been to Europe fighting. And you know, I'm just wondering what you are going to do about an unelected official who is ransacking our government. You are an elected official and I just hope that you do something."

Hudson's answer was that Elon Musk only made recommendations, and cabinet secretaries made the decisions. "In some cases, maybe they move too fast," he said. "And so I've asked some questions about some specific moves in certain agencies, but overall, I think the process has been good."

He'd already told the Associated Press that voters would "reward us" for the DOGE cuts.

The Medicaid answer

The most important moment of that call came from a woman named Sylvia. She said she had taught in the Fayetteville area for 16 years and could no longer work because of a disability. She had health coverage because North Carolina expanded Medicaid to cover single adults like her. She wanted to know if Republicans were going to take it.

It was a sharp question, and she had the mechanics right. North Carolina's expansion is written so that it rolls back automatically if Washington stops covering 90% of the cost. And Hudson sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which had just been handed the job of finding $880 billion in cuts from the programs it oversees — Medicaid included.

Here is what he told her:

"There's been a lot of rumors that Republicans in Congress are going to cut Medicaid. That's just simply not true. But what we are going to do is we're going to look and see how many illegals are on Medicaid and we're going to stop giving them the benefits. We're going to look at able-bodied adults. And if you're an able-bodied adult with no dependents and you can work, then you either need to be looking for a job, getting an education or working."

Seventy-two days later, on July 3, 2025, Hudson voted for the budget bill that cut Medicaid. His "Aye" is on the roll call.

North Carolina stands to lose an estimated $49.9 billion in federal Medicaid money over the next decade because of it. Up to 195,000 North Carolinians are at risk of losing coverage — from the same expansion that covered hundreds of thousands of people like Sylvia. We put the full accounting of what that bill costs the state — Medicaid, food aid, farmers, DOGE grants — and the name of every North Carolina Republican who voted for it in one place.

Sylvia didn't get a straight answer. She got the word "rumors."

Somebody else had to hold the town hall

Two days after Hudson's phone call, Democrats brought an in-person town hall to his district anyway. On April 24, 2025, about 400 people packed the Haw River Ballroom to hear Sen. Chris Murphy, Rep. Maxwell Frost, state Democratic chair Anderson Clayton, state House Minority Leader Robert Reives, and state Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls. Murphy's line was that a congressman's job is to show up for his constituents, and that Hudson was hiding.

It became a national program. Democrats launched "People's Town Halls" in Republican districts that spring, and their pitch named him directly: "Voters across the country are furious, and instead of facing their constituents, Republicans are avoiding hosting in-person town halls because NRCC Chair Richard Hudson told them to hide."

By October 2025, NC Newsline reported, no North Carolina Republican had held an in-person town hall since the one in Asheville that March.

Why this one matters more than most

Plenty of members of Congress avoid their constituents. We've written about a lot of them — in Pennsylvania, constituents have protested outside one congressman's office every Monday for over a year asking for an open town hall, and he can name none that he has held, and says he won't turn up at the protests because he doesn't want to be a "piñata".

What makes Hudson different is that he didn't just dodge. He institutionalized the dodge. He took a personal instinct to avoid an uncomfortable room and turned it into official party guidance for the entire House Republican conference, in his capacity as the man who funds their campaigns.

Hudson has been in Congress since 2013 — thirteen years — representing the 8th District until redistricting renumbered his seat the 9th in 2023. The district covers part of Cumberland County including Fort Bragg and parts of Fayetteville, plus all of Hoke, Moore, Randolph, and Alamance counties. Those are the people who don't get to ask him a follow-up question, because the format doesn't allow one.

A town hall isn't a gift a congressman gives you when he's feeling generous. It's the one moment where the person casting votes in your name has to stand in a room and account for them, in front of neighbors who can see his face while he answers. Hudson's advice to his party was that this part of the job is optional now.

Then he went and proved it. Fifty minutes, eleven callers, and a Medicaid answer that his own vote contradicted ten weeks later.

Source

N.C. Rep. Richard Hudson Tells Republicans to Quit Doing In-Person Townhalls — Daniella Diaz and Reese Gorman, NOTUS, republished by The Assembly, March 4, 2025. Photo: Angelina Katsanis/POLITICO via AP Images.