MAGA Report Cards — Utah

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

What the bill actually does

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

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

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

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

Joe Wilson wrote it

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ohio said no in 2011. Jim Jordan signed anyway.

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

Jim Jordan is Ohio's signature on this bill.

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

Pennsylvania sent five signatures on a law it never wanted

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

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

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

What it costs a paycheck

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

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

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

This is not a one-off

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

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

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

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

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

Sources

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is actually being taken away

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And TSA screeners got the same treatment

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

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

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

The House had a bill to end it permanently

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

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

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

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

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

The 20 Republicans who voted yes

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

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

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

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

The 195 who voted no

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

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

Alaska — Nick Begich

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

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

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

Colorado — Lauren Boebert, Jeff Crank, Jeff Hurd

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

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

Idaho — Russ Fulcher, Mike Simpson

Illinois — Darin LaHood, Mary Miller

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

Iowa — Ashley Hinson

Kansas — Ron Estes, Tracey Mann, Derek Schmidt

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

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

Maryland — Andy Harris

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

Minnesota — Tom Emmer, Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach

Mississippi — Mike Ezell, Michael Guest, Trent Kelly

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

Montana — Troy Downing

Nebraska — Mike Flood, Adrian Smith

New York — Nick Langworthy, Claudia Tenney

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

North Dakota — Julie Fedorchak

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

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

Oregon — Cliff Bentz

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

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

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

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

Utah — Mike Kennedy, Celeste Maloy, Blake Moore

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

Washington — Michael Baumgartner

West Virginia — Carol Miller, Riley Moore

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

Wyoming — Harriet Hageman

The Senate has done nothing for eight months

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

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

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

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

This is not a fringe position they're protecting

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

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

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

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

We deserve better.

How they voted

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

Source

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

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.

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.

Utah Voters Banned Gerrymandering. Celeste Maloy Sued in Federal Court to Undo It — Then Ran on the Map She Tried to Kill.

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 12:04:37 +0000

In 2018, Utah voters passed Proposition 4. The idea was simple and popular: politicians shouldn't get to draw the districts they run in. The initiative set neutral standards for congressional maps and created an independent commission to draw them.

The Legislature gutted it and drew its own map anyway — four safe Republican seats, with Salt Lake County, the state's Democratic center, sliced into all four.

In November 2025, a state judge finally enforced what voters had passed. Third District Judge Dianna Gibson found lawmakers hadn't followed Prop 4's standards and adopted a replacement map — one that keeps Salt Lake County almost entirely inside a single district, which makes that district winnable for a Democrat.

Twelve weeks later, Celeste Maloy went to federal court to get rid of it.

What she asked a court to do

On February 2, 2026, Maloy — along with fellow Rep. Burgess Owens and nearly a dozen local officials — filed suit in federal court to block the new map before the midterms.

Their argument, in the lawsuit's own words: the U.S. Constitution and the Utah Constitution give redistricting power to the state Legislature, and "courts have no authority to draw a congressional map."

The remedy they wanted was for Utah to go back to the districts the Legislature last approved in 2021 — the four-safe-seats map — unless lawmakers replaced them.

Read that again slowly. Utah voters passed a law to take map-drawing away from politicians. A judge enforced it. And a sitting member of Congress asked a federal court to rule that judges can't do that, and to restore the politicians' map.

Katharine Biele, president of the League of Women Voters of Utah — one of the groups that brought the original case — answered in a sentence: "The map currently in place is fair and legal."

The injury she claimed was her own inconvenience

Buried in the filing is the part that tells you what this was really about.

Neither Maloy nor Owens had filed for reelection yet, and the lawsuit explained why: "their districts have been shifted to a point where the Representatives do not know which district to choose."

That's the harm. Not that anyone's vote was diluted. Not that any Utahn lost representation. Two incumbents weren't sure which seat to run for.

Three federal judges said no. Unanimously.

On February 23, 2026, a three-judge panel rejected it — Circuit Judge Timothy Tymkovich, District Judge Robert Shelby and District Judge Holly Teeter.

In a 39-page ruling, the judges wrote that the Republican officials "have not shown they are likely to succeed on their alleged constitutional violation." They hadn't earned the "extraordinary relief" of blocking a map weeks before candidate filing opened.

The panel also leaned on the Purcell principle — the Supreme Court rule that courts shouldn't change election rules right before an election, because it confuses voters. "Under Purcell, it is simply too close to Utah's formal election process for this court to insert itself," they wrote.

Tymkovich disagreed on the timing — he thought there was still room to act. He agreed on everything else, including the central point: "I also do not believe we have the power to resurrect the 2021 Map, the remedy requested by the Plaintiffs."

So the one judge most sympathetic to hearing the case still said the thing Maloy asked for was something a federal court cannot do.

The plaintiffs' response was a statement saying they were disappointed but had "respect for the Court's careful review," and that the case "concerns the Constitution's allocation of authority over federal elections, a question of lasting importance beyond any single election cycle."

Biele's response was blunter: "We only wish that the futile attempts to undermine this fair map would cease so we could focus on what is important to Utahns."

Then she ran on the map — and won

Here's how the rest of it went.

In March 2026, Owens announced he wouldn't seek reelection once it was clear the new map was staying. That left three conservative districts for the three remaining Republican incumbents — Maloy, Blake Moore and Mike Kennedy — and no incumbent scramble.

Maloy filed in the redrawn 3rd District. On June 23 she won the Republican primary against former state Rep. Phil Lyman by 39 points.

Two weeks later, with the primary behind her, she and her co-plaintiffs quietly filed to dismiss the lawsuit. No explanation was given. Judge Shelby closed the case the next day, without prejudice, with no fees awarded either way.

The map was fine once she'd won under it.

This is a Utah pattern, not a Maloy quirk

Maloy's colleague Blake Moore helped launch the campaign that created Prop 4 back in 2017 — and when a judge finally enforced it, he criticized the ruling, asked the group he co-founded to stand down, and started talking about a constitutional amendment to clarify that voter initiatives cannot override the Legislature's policy authority.

The Legislature, meanwhile, is still working the other end of it. It's trying to overturn a 2024 state Supreme Court ruling that said it overstepped when it altered Prop 4. It has repeatedly floated a constitutional amendment that would let lawmakers rewrite voter-passed initiatives and draw maps without following Prop 4's neutral standards at all — it failed to reach the 2024 ballot, and GOP leaders shelved another attempt this year while the cases play out. And while the map fight was live, the state Supreme Court was expanded from five justices to seven; new justices are appointed by the governor, and Gov. Spencer Cox has denied the change was politically motivated.

It's the same thing happening in state after state. In South Carolina, a member of Congress said out loud that a 7-0 Republican delegation "would definitely reflect our values". In Tennessee, the only majority-Black district got split three ways and a Republican member said he was "thankful that the state did what President Trump asked them to do."

Utah's version is quieter, but it's the same instinct: when voters take the pen away, take it back.

The bottom line

Celeste Maloy sits in Congress because Utahns vote. In 2018 those same Utahns voted for a rule that politicians don't draw their own districts.

When a court enforced that rule, Maloy's response was to ask a federal court to declare that courts can't enforce it — and to put the politicians' map back. Three judges told her no, without a single dissent on the merits. She dropped the case only after she'd won a primary under the map she'd sued to destroy.

She's on the ballot in November in a district drawn under the standards Utah voters chose. She fought in court to make sure that district didn't exist.

Source

Burgess Owens, Celeste Maloy dismiss their lawsuit over Utah's new congressional map — KSL, July 10, 2026. Photo: Tess Crowley, Deseret News.
Reps. Maloy and Owens sue to try to stop Utah's redrawn congressional map — KUER/AP, February 3, 2026
Federal judges reject Owens-Maloy bid to toss Utah's redrawn congressional map — KUER, February 23, 2026

Celeste Maloy Wrote the Bill a Golf Developer Needed. Three Days After It Passed, He Wrote Her a $15,500 Check.

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 12:02:28 +0000

On March 16, 2026, the U.S. House passed a bill written by Utah Congresswoman Celeste Maloy. It took forty minutes of debate and a voice vote — no roll call, no record of who was for it.

Three days later, a resort developer who needed that bill gave $15,500 to a fundraising committee set up in Maloy's name. The next day he gave $4,500 more.

He had already given her campaign $10,500 in December.

Total: $30,500 from one man — the managing partner of the Black Desert Resort, whose developer wants to build a 1,250-acre golf resort on the Shivwits Band of Paiutes reservation and needs Maloy's bill to do it on the terms it wants.

What the bill actually does

The Shivwits Band of Paiutes Jurisdictional Clarity Act sounds like housekeeping. It isn't.

It does two things:

It moves lawsuits off the reservation and out of tribal court. As The Salt Lake Tribune puts it, the legislation "would shift civil jurisdiction on trust lands from tribal to state courts": any civil case the Shivwits Band is party to that arises on the band's trust land can now be heard by a Utah state judge. A separate section, headed "Federal Court Jurisdiction," also opens federal court to any dispute arising from a contract or lease on that land — a developer's lease included — and declares those agreements "commerce" under the Federal Arbitration Act. Either way, a fight between the band and a developer is not decided in the tribe's own court.
It lets the band sign leases for up to 99 years. That's not a lease. That's four generations.

Maloy introduced it on April 29, 2025. It sat in the Natural Resources Committee — a committee she sits on — until January 2026, then moved to the floor and passed by voice vote in March. It's now in the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, where an identical bill from Utah Sen. John Curtis has already had a hearing.

Who needed it

In October 2025, Shivwits Band leaders announced a joint venture with Reef Capital Partners, the developer behind the Black Desert Resort in nearby Ivins. The plan: three 18-hole golf courses, a practice course, a hotel, a sports complex, restaurants, cabins, and more, spread across 1,250 acres of reservation land west of St. George.

Patrick Manning is the managing partner and developer of Reef Capital's Black Desert Resort. He is also the man who wrote the $30,500 in checks.

Manning has been open about why the bill matters to him. He told KSL it gives "clearer legal certainty around civil matters tied to agreements on Shivwits lands," and that "that kind of certainty can support responsible investment and long-term planning."

That's the honest version. A company building a resort on tribal land wants to know that if the deal goes bad, it can sue in a court it understands, under rules it knows — not in the tribe's own court.

The bill delivers exactly that. And the man who wanted it delivered $30,500.

The timing is the story

Campaign money to a member of Congress isn't unusual. The calendar here is what makes it hard to look at.

Date	Amount	To
Dec. 19, 2025	$10,500	Celeste for Congress
March 16, 2026	—	House passes H.R. 3073
March 19, 2026	$15,500	Team Celeste
March 20, 2026	$4,500	Team Celeste

All of it is on the record at the Federal Election Commission, filed under Manning's name with his employer listed as Reef Capital Partners and his city as St. George. Team Celeste is a joint fundraising committee — a vehicle that lets one donor write a much bigger check than the law allows for a campaign account alone. Its listed participants are Maloy's campaign and the National Republican Congressional Committee, and most of the $20,000 does not stay with Maloy. Damon Cann, a campaign finance expert at Utah State University, told the Tribune that the timing looks suspect but that no laws appear to have been broken, and that Maloy will likely see very little of that money directly — most of it goes on to other Republican candidates. The benefit to her, he said, "is the credit that comes with having facilitated donations to the national Republican Party."

$20,000 of the $30,500 arrived in the four days after the House passed his bill.

The band is split, and the people who lost are the ones who live there

Maloy's defense is that she was doing what the tribe asked. "This legislation is the result of those conversations and reflects the solutions the tribe believes will help them move forward while serving their members," she said in a statement on the House floor. The elected Shivwits Band Council backs the bill, saying it "supports self-determination and sovereignty" and helps "remove uncertainty that can discourage responsible investment."

But the band is not of one mind, and the people objecting are band members.

Mary Snow, a band member who runs a group called Red Mountain Land Preservers, laid out the mechanism plainly to KSL:

"In order for big companies to have businesses on federal land, those businesses don't want to have to go through tribal court. So they come with their deals and their agreements, and part of that agreement is you give up sovereignty, which is the protection of the federal government. Then they take you to state court and you lose sovereignty to that land."

She also pointed out what a 99-year lease means in practice: "They're telling us that we don't have to go up to 99 years, but the thing is, that once this development is built, it's not going anywhere."

Other band members have said the project would sit on ground they consider sacred. Land resource manager Lawrence Snow told St. George News that Red Mountain is "a spiritual place. That's where the spirits go." Elder Joel Bushhead put it harder: "They stabbed us in the back. For their money."

Members told that paper the deal was announced on October 3 with almost no advance notice to the community, that they raised objections in council meetings and weren't heard, and that the lease agreement itself was never made available for them to read.

And then there's the water

Southern Utah is in an emergency drought. Gov. Spencer Cox declared one after a record-low snowpack. In the middle of that, the plan is three golf courses in the desert.

Opponents inside the band argue the resort would soak up all or most of the band's water rights, leaving nothing for anything the Shivwits might want to build for themselves later. Band leadership says there's enough water. Nobody disputes that a 99-year lease locks in whichever answer turns out to be wrong.

This is the same move, over and over

Maloy's whole record in Congress runs one direction on land. She pushed to sell more than 10,000 acres of Utah public land as an amendment to Trump's budget bill. She sponsored a bill to strip presidents of the power to create national monuments. And in July 2026 she stood next to Trump as he cut nearly 3 million acres out of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, then said she wanted Congress to make the cuts permanent. The League of Conservation Voters scores her at 3% for 2025 and 5% for her career.

She is not the only Republican writing law about Native land while Native constituents object. In Alaska, delegates at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention voted to formally oppose a bill written by their own congressman — who said he was only asking for feedback.

The bottom line

Nobody has shown that Celeste Maloy traded a bill for a check. She says she wrote the bill because tribal leaders asked her to, and Manning says his contributions came in response to routine solicitations from her campaign, not in "exchange for her sponsorship or advocacy for the bill."

Here is what is on the record anyway. She sponsored a bill that moves tribal court cases into state court and unlocks 99-year leases. A developer needed both of those things to build a resort on that land. That developer's managing partner gave her campaign and her joint fundraising committee $30,500 — with $20,000 of it landing in the four days after the House passed the bill.

If you are the band member who stood up in a council meeting and got told no, you don't need a prosecutor to tell you what that looks like. And the bill is still moving. It's in the Senate now.

Source

Celeste Maloy faces questions over donations from developer backing proposed Shivwits golf resort — The Salt Lake Tribune, June 16, 2026
House passes bill for Shivwits Band's 99-year land lease with Black Desert Resort — KSL, March 18, 2026

Mike Kennedy's First Bill Would Freeze Road Management on 6 Million Acres of Utah — Until Courts Settle 12,500 Claimed "Roads"

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 07:46:30 +0000

The very first bill Mike Kennedy introduced after being sworn into Congress was not about health care, which is his profession. It was about dirt roads.

On January 14, 2025 — eleven days into the job — he filed H.R. 376, the Historic Roadways Protection Act. Sen. Mike Lee filed the matching Senate bill the same day. Kennedy's three fellow Utah House Republicans signed on as cosponsors.

Here is how Kennedy explained it in Lee's announcement:

"The Bureau of Land Management has a long history of overreach in rural Utah, and their attempt to make decisions about road access on public lands—before these roads are fully identified and established—is yet another overstep. I am pushing back with this legislation."

That sounds modest. Finish identifying the roads first, then plan around them. Reasonable, even.

It is not modest at all, and the reason is buried in the phrase "fully identified and established."

What has to happen first

The roads Kennedy is talking about are R.S. 2477 claims. R.S. 2477 was a line in an 1866 mining law that let states and counties build roads across federal land to encourage settlement of the West. Congress repealed it in 1976, but preserved any right-of-way that already existed.

So who owns which two-track in the desert is now a question for the courts. And Utah went to court in a big way.

According to the State of Utah's own public lands office, the state and 22 of its counties filed litigation covering 12,500 right-of-way claims. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance counts more than two dozen lawsuits filed in 2011 and 2012, claiming title to over 12,000 alleged rights-of-way totaling more than 35,000 miles across public land.

How is that going? The state's own website answers it. In 2015 the federal district court set up a "bellwether" process: pick 15 representative rights-of-way in Kane County, resolve the legal questions those raise, and only then appoint special masters to work through the rest of the state.

Fifteen, out of 12,500. That process started more than a decade ago. As SUWA puts it: since Utah filed in 2011–12, "not a single case has been adjudicated by the district court."

Kennedy's bill says the Bureau of Land Management may not finalize or implement travel plans until those cases are adjudicated. Given the pace of the actual litigation, that is not a pause. It is a stop.

What the "historic roadways" actually are

The name of the bill does a lot of work. It conjures wagon ruts and pioneer trails.

Roughly 80% of Utah's claimed rights-of-way are unimproved dirt roads and trails — cow paths, stream bottoms, faded two-tracks. SUWA notes that some "do not even exist on the ground and are instead simply lines on a map." The photograph at the top of this post is one of the claims.

The claims are not confined to backcountry nobody cares about, either. Utah and its counties are claiming rights-of-way inside national parks, national wildlife refuges, national monuments, national recreation areas, congressionally designated wilderness, wilderness study areas, critical habitat, and archaeological sites. And SUWA says the state isn't only seeking title — it wants the right to improve and widen these routes, in some cases up to 66 feet wide. Utah's public lands office says the opposite: that the litigation "does not seek new roads or the expansion of existing rights-of-way."

Sixty-six feet is a six-lane road's worth of disturbance through a slot canyon approach or an archaeological site.

The four plans he'd cancel

H.R. 376 isn't only forward-looking. The bill text names four travel management plans the BLM has already finished and bars spending any money to implement them: Indian Creek (Canyon Rims), San Rafael Desert, San Rafael Swell, and Labyrinth/Gemini Bridges.

It also bars any new plan for ten named travel management areas: the Henry Mountains and Fremont Gorge, Dinosaur (North), the Book Cliffs in both the Vernal and Moab field offices, Nine Mile Canyon in both the Vernal and Price field offices, the San Rafael Swell, the Dolores River, Trail Canyon, and Paunsaugunt.

And read how the freeze ends. The prohibition runs until "the Secretary certifies to Congress that each of the R.S. 2477 cases has been adjudicated" — and the bill then lists those cases by name and docket number. There are 22 of them, one per county, and every docket number starts with 11 or 12. Every single one of them has to be finished before the BLM can plan a route anywhere on that list.

Kennedy's bill would leave those lands with no current plan at all — which, in practice, means whatever anyone drives on becomes the route.

Add it up and SUWA's estimate is that the legislation would stop the BLM from managing motorized vehicle use across more than 6 million acres of Utah redrock.

"If Senator Lee had his way, millions of acres of southern Utah would be a motorized playground free-for-all," said SUWA staff attorney Laura Peterson. She named the places at stake: "Labyrinth Canyon, the San Rafael Swell, and the Dirty Devil."

Why it matters that it's him

Kennedy is not a bystander on this. He is Vice Chair of the Federal Lands Subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee — the panel that writes the rules for the land that makes up most of his state.

And this isn't the only place his committee work has landed. Utah's congressional delegation, Kennedy included, welcomed Trump's shrinking of Utah's national monuments as "appropriate" — a move that turned out to be the largest removal of protected land by any president in American history, by more than five times over.

The Historic Roadways Protection Act is moving. On February 4, 2026, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved the Senate version on a party-line vote, 11 to 9.

The tell

Strip away the pioneer framing and the structure of the bill is simple.

Kennedy wants public-land management suspended until a court finishes a job that has produced zero final decisions in fourteen years and, by design, has to work through fifteen sample routes before it can even start on the other 12,485.

If you genuinely wanted the roads sorted out first, you would push to speed up the litigation. This bill doesn't touch the litigation. It just turns off the management and waits.

The waiting is the point.

Sources

Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, "SUWA Statement on Historic Roadways Protection Act", February 4, 2026. Photo: an R.S. 2477 claim on Utah public land, courtesy SUWA. Bill quotes from Sen. Mike Lee's announcement, January 14, 2025.

The House Went 54 Days Without a Single Vote. Mike Kennedy Said Bringing It Back Would Be "of No Value."

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 07:44:00 +0000

On Monday, November 3, 2025, Mike Kennedy stood at a news conference at the Utah Capitol. The federal government had been shut down for 34 days. Food assistance for tens of thousands of Utah households had run out two days earlier.

Reporters asked him whether the House of Representatives should come back to Washington.

Kennedy said no:

"To call us back to have debates when the Democrats are not willing to open the government up is of no value."

He was not describing a hypothetical. He was describing what had already been happening for six weeks, and what would keep happening for another nine days.

54 days, zero votes

You don't have to take anyone's characterization of this. The House clerk publishes every recorded vote.

The last one before the shutdown was Roll Call 282, on September 19, 2025. The next one was Roll Call 283, on November 12, 2025 — a procedural vote on the rule for the bill that reopened the government, which passed two hours later.

Between those two dates the House of Representatives recorded no votes at all. Not on a bill to pay federal workers. Not on a bill to fund food assistance. Not on the health care fight at the center of the whole standoff. Fifty-four days.

The shutdown itself ran from October 1 to November 12 — 43 days, the longest full government shutdown in U.S. history. At least 670,000 federal employees were furloughed and roughly 730,000 more kept working without pay.

Kennedy's position was that this was fine. Not a failure to be fixed, not an emergency, but a reasonable use of the time.

The Republican senator from his own state saw it differently. Three days before Kennedy spoke, John Curtis became the first Republican senator to directly call on Speaker Mike Johnson to bring the House back into session:

"Speaker Johnson, I love you, I love what you've done, but it's time to come back to work."

Same state, same party, same week. One of them thought the House had a job to do.

"There's nothing for me to talk with them about"

At that same November 3 appearance, KSL asked Kennedy about talking to the other side.

"I haven't talked to any Democrats because there's nothing for me to talk with them about."

He described where things stood this way:

"We know you can only hold your breath for so long. This is a breath-holding contest."

He also said the American people "should be disgusted, frankly, that five Senate Democrats can't come on board with a clean continuing resolution."

Take those three statements together and you have the whole posture. The other side is not worth speaking to. The situation is a contest of endurance. And the fault belongs entirely elsewhere — so there is nothing for him to do but wait.

There is a name for a member of Congress who won't negotiate, won't legislate, and won't show up: not on the job.

Who was holding their breath

The people in Kennedy's state weren't in a contest. They were out of money.

Food assistance ran out on November 1, 2025. State officials counted about 86,000 Utah households receiving those benefits, and nobody could tell them how much they'd get or when. Two federal judges eventually ordered the Trump administration to partially fund the program.

Kennedy said he supported that partial funding. He was also asked how long emergency food resources could carry people:

"How long is that going to be able to function? Not for very long."

He was right about that. He just didn't think it was worth a vote.

Meanwhile, the fight that caused the shutdown was about health insurance — whether to extend the enhanced tax credits that hold down premiums on the individual market. Those credits were allowed to expire. In December, Kennedy was one of 216 Republicans who passed a health bill that left them expiring instead of extending them. He is a practicing family physician.

The paycheck

Give him this much: Kennedy did not take his own pay during the shutdown.

He sent a letter to the House financial office rejecting his salary, his office telling Deseret News he finds it "wildly inappropriate" for lawmakers to accept money while federal employees had no such choice. Sen. Curtis and Rep. Blake Moore did the same.

At the start of the shutdown, he introduced the No Work, No Pay Act to make that automatic for everyone in Congress in future shutdowns. He was still pushing it in May 2026, arguing a law would be harder to undo than a Senate policy.

That's a real gesture, and it cost him real money. But look at what it concedes. "No work, no pay" is an admission that no work was being done. He built a bill around the fact that the House wasn't working, and then argued the House had no reason to come back and work.

Declining a paycheck is not the job. Voting is the job.

And the filibuster

The other thing Kennedy did with the time was muse about Senate rules.

"The 60-vote threshold is really interesting, and it seems to be a real struggle for us. Why not 55? Why not 53?"

He is a member of the House. He does not vote on the Senate's rules, and changing them would not have put a single dollar of food assistance into a Utah family's account in November 2025. It was the one procedural question in the building he had no say over — and it was the one he wanted to talk about.

His own chamber, the one he actually belongs to, sat out 54 days without recording a vote. He was asked to come back and do something about it, and he said it would be of no value.

Source

Salt Lake Tribune, "Rep. Mike Kennedy says no need for House members to be in Washington, floats changing the filibuster", November 2025. Photo: Chris Samuels / The Salt Lake Tribune.

Mike Kennedy Grew Up on Government Assistance. His First-Year Bill Would Make a 59-Year-Old Prove She's Working to Keep Her Groceries.

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 07:42:00 +0000

Six weeks into his first term in Congress, Mike Kennedy introduced a bill about who deserves to eat.

It is called the Let's Get to Work Act of 2025, filed on February 11, 2025. Two other members of Congress signed on. It has never gotten a vote.

It was not his own idea. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida had filed a word-for-word identical bill in the Senate four weeks earlier, on January 14, 2025, and Kennedy put his name on the House version. But it is worth reading anyway, because a bill that never gets a vote is a member telling you what he would do given a free hand — before leadership, before the whip count, before the talking points get sanded down. And what Kennedy filed, in his first six weeks, was a plan to make it harder for older people, parents, and families in public housing to keep food on the table.

Here is how he explained it at the time:

"Growing up receiving government assistance and working since I was 12, I know firsthand that the key to making government support truly effective is pairing it with hard work. By expanding work requirements in programs like SNAP and HUD housing, we're ensuring that all capable individuals contribute to their own success and to the future of this country."

Read that again. He got the help. He is now a physician, an attorney, and a member of Congress. The help worked. And the lesson he drew from it was that the next family needs less of it.

What the bill actually does

Federal food assistance already has work rules. Adults the government calls "able-bodied adults without dependents" have to work or train for a set number of hours or they lose benefits after three months. There are exemptions — for older adults, for parents, for people the rules would obviously crush.

Kennedy's bill goes after the exemptions. From the text of H.R. 1198:

Older adults. The bill strikes the age exemption — a three-step phase-in that had settled at 55 — and replaces the whole thing with a flat number: benefits are protected only for someone "over 60 years of age." A 58-year-old laid off from a warehouse job has to document her hours or lose her food benefits. So does a 59-year-old.

Parents. Right now a parent responsible for a dependent child is exempt. Kennedy's bill narrows that to a parent of a child "under 6 years of age." The moment your youngest starts first grade, the clock starts on you. Parents of school-age kids get six months instead of three before the cutoff — a slightly longer runway to the same cliff.

And then there's Section 3. This is the half of the bill he named in his own statement. It takes those same food-stamp work rules and bolts them onto housing. It amends the United States Housing Act of 1937 so the requirements apply to "any individual who is a member of a family residing in a public housing dwelling," and again to "any individual who is a member of a family receiving tenant-based assistance" — that's a Section 8 voucher.

So a family that falls out of compliance doesn't just lose groceries. Under Kennedy's bill, the same paperwork failure reaches their housing.

The part he keeps calling "dependency"

Kennedy described the goal to KSL in plain terms: the reforms would "reduce dependency on welfare," and it was time to "empower able-bodied Americans to reenter the workforce."

That framing rests on an assumption — that the people on these programs aren't working. It is the same assumption Republicans made about Medicaid, and it did not survive contact with the data: 92% of the Medicaid adults such rules would reach were already working, caregiving, in school, or unable to work. What the rules actually catch is the paperwork: the shift that got cut, the online portal that timed out, the notice mailed to an old address.

We have watched this happen in real time. After Trump's budget bill pushed the top age from 54 all the way to 64 and dropped the parent exemption to children under 14, about four million Americans came off food assistance. The Congressional Budget Office had estimated the work-rule changes alone would cut roughly 2.4 million people in an average month. Those weren't 2.4 million people who found jobs.

Kennedy filed his version nearly five months before that law passed. He wanted the age at 60 when the statute still said 54. The final bill went past him — and he voted for it.

He is not alone in this. Aaron Bean of Florida wrote the Medicaid work requirement as a standalone bill twice before it was folded into the budget. Darin LaHood, who chairs the subcommittee over cash aid to poor families, wrote a TANF rewrite built on "personal responsibility agreements". The work-requirement push isn't a stray idea. It's a project, and members put their names on the pieces.

What this means in Utah

This is not abstract in his state.

About 176,200 Utahns receive food assistance every month. Roughly 1 in 5 Utah kids faces hunger. When the government shut down last fall and November benefits were in doubt, state officials put the number of Utah households on SNAP at about 86,000.

Those are the households Kennedy's bill is aimed at. Not fraud — households. A 59-year-old in Provo. A mother in Orem whose kid just turned seven.

The doctor part

The thing that makes this land differently is that Mike Kennedy is a practicing family physician.

He knows what happens to a patient who stops eating well. He knows what happens when a family with an unstable roof over their heads tries to manage a chronic illness. Food and housing are not adjacent to health care — for a family doctor, they are health care, and they show up in the exam room long before anything else does.

He voted for the budget bill anyway, the one KFF projects will leave 77,000 more Utahns uninsured by 2034. Then he defended the Medicaid cuts in an op-ed he signed with Utah's three other House Republicans, which said they "cut waste while preserving resources for the people it was intended to serve."

The Let's Get to Work Act says the quiet part earlier and more clearly than any vote does. It went in under his name, in his first six weeks, with nobody making him carry it.

He grew up on government assistance. He wants the next kid's family to have a harder time getting it.

Source

Cami Mondeaux, "Utah congressman pushes to expand work requirements for SNAP assistance", Deseret News / KSL, February 17, 2025. Photo: l i g h t p o e t / Shutterstock, via KSL.

$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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The answer is 45.

What the STOCK Act actually asks

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

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

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

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

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

The roll call

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

The biggest offenders:

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

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

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

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

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

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

"My broker did it"

Read the responses side by side and a script emerges.

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

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

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

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

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

The penalty is $200

Here's why none of them seem especially worried.

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

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

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

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

Why the timing is the whole story

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

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

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

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

The ones who campaigned on this

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He has been late on his own disclosures twice.

Back to that July vote

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

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

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

The bottom line

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

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

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

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

We deserve better.

Blake Moore Broke the Stock Disclosure Law 70 Times in His First Six Months. The Fine Was $200.

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 15:20:08 +0000

Blake Moore was sworn into Congress in January 2021. Within six months he had broken a federal transparency law more than 70 times.

The law is the STOCK Act, passed in 2012 after a national scandal over members of Congress trading on what they learn at work. It is not complicated. If you buy or sell stock, you disclose it within 45 days. That is the whole obligation.

Moore didn't file for about six months.

What was in the trades

TownLift, the Park City outlet that first reported it, found Moore was "weeks or months late in reporting more than 70 trades" worth as much as $1.1 million across the first half of 2021.

Two of them stand out.

Raytheon. Moore bought up to $60,000 of stock in one of the largest defense contractors in the United States — while sitting on the House Armed Services Committee, the committee that authorizes what the Pentagon buys and from whom. That trade was among the ones he did not disclose on time.

Alibaba. He made seven separate transactions in the Chinese e-commerce giant. During the same period, Moore was publicly describing the Chinese Communist Party as a "strategic adversary."

Neither of those is illegal on its own. Members of Congress can own defense stocks while writing defense policy, and they can own Chinese stocks while giving speeches about China. That is the American system, for now. The STOCK Act's entire premise is that if they are going to do it, the public gets to see it in real time and draw its own conclusions.

Moore's trades were the exact category the disclosure rule exists for, and those are the ones the public didn't get to see.

The watchdog complaint

On July 29, 2021, the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics over "70 separate stock and stock-option trades" worth "at least $70,000 and as much as $1.1 million."

CLC made the point that matters. Every member of Congress receives mandatory STOCK Act training. When members say they didn't know about their own transactions, that is "not an exception under the law." And without real enforcement, members can simply wait for the annual disclosure and pay a nominal fee — which defeats the purpose of the statute entirely.

That is not a hypothetical. It is a description of what happened next.

The $200

The House Ethics Committee fined him $200 for more than 70 late disclosures covering up to $1.1 million in trades.

Not $200 per violation. $200.

If you take the top of the range, that is a fee of roughly two hundredths of one percent of the value involved. It is less than a parking ticket in some cities. It is the cheapest possible price for six months of invisibility, and it is why the law does not work.

Moore's office said at the time that he had transferred 401(k) funds to a Utah financial firm managing his investments, that he had since established a compliance process with the firm and the Ethics Committee, and that he paid the late fee in full.

And here is the part that deserves credit, because it is more than most members do. His spokesperson said in 2022 that "without any requirement to do so, Blake has since put all his assets in a qualified blind trust," and that he cosponsored the TRUST in Congress Act to make blind trusts mandatory for every member. He still holds his investments that way. That is the right answer, and he got there.

He is not alone, which is the point

This is not a one-off. We have written up the same law being broken by Susan Collins, who helped pass it, and by Byron Donalds, who went on television demanding sanctions for members who do it before disclosing 108 late trades of his own.

Three members, three parties' worth of embarrassment, one common feature: nothing happened to any of them.

What he does now

Since 2023, Moore has sat on the Ways and Means Committee — the committee that writes the tax code for every industry in the country. He is also the House Republican Conference Vice Chair, the fifth-ranking Republican in the chamber, and by his own account he helped author the tax portion of the 2025 budget law.

His words about landing that seat: "House Republican Leadership placed me on the Ways and Means Committee my sophomore term, and I used this runway to prepare for this very moment."

A member with that job has advance knowledge of tax changes that move entire sectors of the market. The disclosure rule is the only thing standing between that knowledge and the public's ability to check what he does with it.

The first time he was tested on it, he went dark for six months across 70 trades. The bill came to $200.

Source

Park City Congressman Blake Moore violated federal law by not disclosing stock trades — TownLift, July 27, 2021
Three Members of Congress Face STOCK Act Violation Complaints — Campaign Legal Center, July 29, 2021

Congress Banned Mass Mailers Before an Election. Blake Moore's Office Sent Them in Batches of 499.

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 15:20:07 +0000

There is a rule in federal law that exists for an obvious reason. A member of Congress gets to send mail to constituents at taxpayer expense — it's called franked mail, and it's meant for legislative updates and constituent services. But in the 60 days before an election that member is running in, they cannot send mass communications. Otherwise every incumbent in America would spend the last two months of every campaign mailing self-promotional literature on the public's dime.

The rule has a number attached. A communication counts as "mass" once it goes to 500 or more people.

In June 2026, in the run-up to his own contested Republican primary, Blake Moore's congressional office sent constituents mailers and texts touting his work on Medicaid and on funding for Hill Air Force Base.

His office's explanation for how that was allowed, as reported by ABC4: they sent them in batches of 499.

One under the line.

The number is the story

Nobody arrives at 499 by accident.

Every other detail here is arguable. Whether the content was promotional is a judgment call. Whether Medicaid work and a Hill Air Force Base funding win are legitimate constituent updates — sure, they might be. Whether it's fair for an incumbent to have a taxpayer-funded communications operation at all is an old argument.

But 499 is not a judgment call. It is a number chosen with reference to a different number. Somebody in that office knew the threshold was 500, knew the blackout applied, and structured the sends so that no single one crossed it. The rule was not misunderstood. It was measured.

Moore's chief of staff, Rachel Wagley, pushed back hard when an opposing campaign staffer called the batching a loophole: "Nope. This is not a 'loophole,' as you well know. This is constituent communication. The Congressman's constituents routinely tell us how much they appreciate hearing from their congressman so they can follow what he's working on."

A spokesperson added that recipients "live in the current CD1, including communities that received Community Project Funding awards," and that the office uses "congressionally approved funds to communicate back to our constituents with legislative updates, constituent services, and wins for the district year-round."

Year-round. Including the 60 days when Congress said not to.

The district detail makes it worse, not better

Here is the wrinkle that turns this from a technicality into something stranger.

Moore currently represents Utah's 1st District. Because of the new court-ordered map, he was running in the new 2nd District. His office says the mailers went to voters in the current CD1.

So one of two things is true. Either the mailers went to people who are not going to be voting on him — in which case what, exactly, was the point of sending them in the 60-day window at a cost to taxpayers? Or the overlap between the old and new districts is where the value was, and the CD1 framing is the paperwork that makes it defensible.

Moore's opponent's campaign alleged the second thing: that voters in the parts of the new district that don't overlap with the old one got nothing.

There is a reason the office cannot simply target the new district's Republican primary voters. As ABC4 noted, the House Communications Standards Commission — the body that used to be called the Franking Commission — bars franked mail from being sent in a partisan manner. An office cannot mail only Republicans. So you mail the district you technically represent, in slices of 499, and let the overlap do the work.

It is legal, and that is the problem

We should be straight about this: nobody has said Moore broke the law.

Adam Gardiner — a former staffer for Rep. Rob Bishop and Mitt Romney's state director in Utah, and not remotely a hostile witness — told ABC4 exactly that. "Nothing in this race is new. Blake Moore isn't doing anything illegal, and it happened with Congressman Jim Matheson and Mia Love in their races. But Lisonbee's camp has every right to be upset, as the advantages of incumbency can be frustrating."

That is a fair assessment, and it is also the indictment. The blackout rule was written to stop incumbents from campaigning at public expense in the final stretch. Everyone involved understands the purpose. And the standard practice, across parties and across years, is to satisfy the letter of it while defeating the point of it — a practice sitting members of Congress have every ability to fix and no incentive to.

Moore is not a rank-and-file member here. He is the House Republican Conference Vice Chair, the fifth-ranking Republican in the chamber. If the 500-person threshold is being routinely sliced into 499s by congressional offices, he is among the few dozen people in the country positioned to close it.

His office's answer was that it isn't a loophole.

What his constituents paid for

The mailers went out in the days before a primary in which Moore was being seriously challenged — a race in which he had already lost his own party's convention vote to a state legislator by nearly thirty points.

He won the primary. The mailers were a small part of why, if they were part of it at all — incumbency advantages rarely turn on one thing.

But every one of those 499-person batches was paid for by the same people it was sent to, in the window Congress specifically set aside so that wouldn't happen. That is worth knowing about the person who represents you, even when — especially when — it is technically fine.

Source

Congressman Blake Moore's office defends constituent mailers before primary election day — ABC4 Utah, June 2026

Blake Moore Helped Launch Utah's Anti-Gerrymandering Movement. When a Judge Finally Enforced It, He Turned On It.

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 15:20:06 +0000

In 2017, before he ever ran for office, Blake Moore was one of the original Republican co-chairs of Better Boundaries — the Utah group formed to take congressional map-drawing away from politicians. He was one of the original signatories on the application to gather signatures putting Proposition 4 on the ballot.

Utah voters passed it in 2018. It created an independent redistricting commission and standards for fair maps.

Then the Legislature replaced it with a version of its own and drew a map splitting Salt Lake County four ways. Activist groups sued in 2022. Last November a judge sided with them and adopted the plaintiffs' map — which cut Utah's solid Republican seats from four to three and created a Democratic-leaning district covering most of Salt Lake County.

The reform Moore helped start finally worked. And Moore, by then the fifth-ranking Republican in the U.S. House, criticized the ruling and called on Better Boundaries to stand down.

What he says now

Moore has not renounced Prop 4 outright. Asked about it, he says: "I don't regret taking a principled position. I think every state should reckon with this."

But look at what he has actually done since the map came down:

He publicly opposed the court rulings, arguing the judge should have sent the map back to the Legislature to redraw rather than adopt the plaintiffs' version.
He called on Better Boundaries to stop its campaign — the campaign to block a Republican effort to repeal Prop 4.
He now says he intends to be "the most credible voice" on a future constitutional amendment clarifying that ballot initiatives cannot override lawmakers' policy authority.

That last one is the tell. Proposition 4 was a ballot initiative overriding lawmakers' policy authority. That is the entire mechanism. Moore is not just unhappy with one judge's map — he wants to amend the state constitution so that the tool he used in 2017 cannot be used the same way again.

You can hold the position that courts overstepped. You cannot simultaneously claim you don't regret the principled position while working to disarm the instrument that made it real.

His proposed fix for gerrymandering is not a fix

In May 2026, Moore sat with the KSL and Deseret News editorial boards and said he wants to end the national redistricting arms race. His words:

"I think the American people are seeing how much of a race to the bottom that constant gerrymandering every two years will do to us, and I want to be a part of it not existing."

Then he was asked how. His answer:

"I think all 50 governors in 2030 should get together and say: 'Enough's enough. We're all going to stick to some very basic standards in place.'"

Fifty governors. Voluntarily. In four years. Of both parties, in the middle of the most aggressive redistricting war in modern American history, with no enforcement mechanism and nothing binding anyone to anything.

Moore is a member of the United States House of Representatives — the one institution that could actually set national standards for how congressional districts are drawn. He is not a bystander to it. He is the House Republican Conference Vice Chair, the fifth-ranking Republican in the chamber. And his proposal is that somebody else handle it, later, on the honor system.

To be fair: he did break with his party once

Moore's record here is not uniformly bad, and it should be said plainly.

When Texas Republicans moved to redraw their map mid-decade in August 2025 at Trump's urging, Moore put out a statement against it: "It undermines established norms and gives blue states a glaring green light to do the same. Partisan gerrymandering is clearly done by both sides, but to allow this wildfire to spread mid-decade is a step too far."

He was right, and almost nobody in his party said it. He has also called out his own side's double standard — noting how "ironic and even frustrating" it is that Republicans cheered a Virginia court for stepping into a map fight there while blasting the Utah court for doing the same thing here.

That is a real observation, honestly made. It also makes the rest harder to explain, not easier. He can see the double standard clearly enough to name it in an interview. He just lands on the side of it anyway when it is his own map, his own state, and his own primary.

Which is where the primary comes in

State Rep. Karianne Lisonbee challenged Moore in the June 2026 Republican primary and made his Better Boundaries history the centerpiece, pinning the new Democratic seat on him personally. Utah Republican delegates then rejected him at the state convention on April 25, giving Lisonbee 61.5% to Moore's 33.7%. The fifth-ranking Republican in the House lost his own party's convention vote and only reached the ballot because he had gathered signatures.

He won the June primary anyway.

He survived. But the sequence tells you what the pressure was, and which direction it pushed him: away from the reform, toward an amendment that would neuter citizen initiatives, and toward a national "solution" that requires nothing of him.

Utah is not the only place where this has played out. In Missouri this month, voters rejected by 80% a measure to hand one congressional district veto power over citizen initiatives — the same instinct, put directly to voters, and buried. Voters like being able to override the legislature. Legislators, and the members of Congress they produce, keep trying to take it back.

The bottom line

Blake Moore in 2017: helped launch the movement to stop politicians from drawing their own districts.

Blake Moore in 2026: opposes the ruling that enforced it, asks the group he co-founded to stand down, wants to amend the constitution so initiatives can't override legislators, and offers as his gerrymandering fix a voluntary 2030 handshake among fifty governors.

The principle didn't change when the facts did. It changed when the map did.

Source

Blake Moore says it's up to states to stop 'race to the bottom' on gerrymandering — KSL, May 12, 2026. Photo: Kristin Murphy, Deseret News.
New Utah map creates primary challenge for House GOP leader Moore — Deseret News, April 20, 2026

It's Official: Trump's Utah Land Grab Is the Biggest in American History — and Utah's Republicans Called It 'Appropriate'

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 19:19:18 +0000

When President Trump signed away protections for nearly 3 million acres of Utah in July, Utah's Republicans in Congress told everyone to calm down. It was normal. It was legal. It was, in their words, "a return to an appropriate application of the Antiquities Act as Congress intended."

Now we know exactly how normal it was.

A new investigation by The Emancipator went through every single time a president has pulled land out of national monument protection since the Antiquities Act passed in 1906. The reporters checked the National Park Service database, cross-checked it against the actual presidential proclamations and historical acreage records, and even found a pair of exclusions the government had miscoded.

The finding: Trump just removed more than five times as much protected land as every other president in American history combined.

Not five times more than the previous record-holder. Five times more than all of them, added together, across 120 years.

What "all of them combined" actually means

Here's the scale, from the investigation's numbers.

Only seven other presidents have ever done this — Taft, Wilson, Coolidge, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. Put every one of their cuts in a pile and you get a little more than 550,000 acres. And while they were cutting, those same presidents added almost 10,000 acres of new land to the monuments they were trimming.

Trump took nearly 3 million acres and added nothing.

The old record was set in 1915, when Woodrow Wilson pulled a little more than 300,000 acres out of Olympic National Monument — land that later became Olympic National Park. That stood as the largest for 111 years.

And before Trump came along, the last president to touch this power was John F. Kennedy, in 1963. He cut about 4,000 acres from Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico — and then handed back almost 3,000 acres of different land, so the monument shrank by only about a thousand acres, net.

That's the company Utah's delegation is describing as "appropriate." Six decades of presidents in both parties leaving this power alone, and the largest cut in all of American history before this one coming in at one-tenth its size.

The statement Utah's delegation signed

On the day it happened, the Utah federal delegation put out a joint press release welcoming the move. Three of the people quoted in it represent Utah in the House: Blake Moore, Celeste Maloy, and Mike Kennedy.

The release makes a specific factual promise. Read it carefully:

"The lands outside the modified monument boundaries remain federal public lands and continue to be protected under existing federal laws. Today's action does not remove those protections."

That is not true, and the White House said so itself.

The administration's own fact sheet on the same proclamations says the excluded land becomes "available for multiple-use, sustained-yield management," and then lists what that means: "grazing, timber harvest, fishing, hunting, resource development, infrastructure upgrades, and motorized recreation."

"Resource development" is the phrase to watch. Trump's own executive order is blunter about the point of the whole exercise, saying the Bears Ears region holds "critical minerals such as silver, copper, molybdenum, lead, uranium, vanadium, and zinc."

So the delegation told Utahns nothing was being taken away, on the same day the White House published a list of the extraction activities that are now allowed there. Both documents came out July 13. They cannot both be right.

"The smallest area possible"

Moore's own quote in that release is the one that ages worst:

"If the Antiquities Act is going to be used, it needs to be on the smallest area possible—that's what we're doing here."

What they were doing there was the largest monument clawback ever recorded. You don't have to take a critic's word for the size of it — the administration published the numbers itself. Bears Ears went from about 1.36 million acres to about 121,100. Grand Staircase-Escalante went from about 1.87 million acres to about 181,500. That's a cut of roughly 91% and 90%. Calling what's left "the smallest area possible" is true only in the sense that almost nothing is left. The Grand Canyon Trust, which has worked on this land for decades, called the move an attempt "to gut Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments for a second time."

Kennedy's quote leaned on local control: "The people of Utah understand these lands better than any distant bureaucracy ever could." Four months earlier, Kennedy had introduced a bill with a name that says the quiet part out loud — the License to Drill Act, which passed the House in 2026.

Maloy said the action "honors that goal while following the law Congress passed." She had also spent the spring trying to get there without the president's help: in March 2026 she introduced a resolution to overturn the Bureau of Land Management's management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante outright. That was four months before Trump signed. We've written before about how hard Maloy has worked to make these cuts permanent, including sponsoring a bill to gut the Antiquities Act itself.

There's also a real legal problem underneath all the confident talk about "following the law." The Antiquities Act lets a president create a monument. It never says a president can shrink or erase one. The administration is relying on a 2025 Justice Department memo asserting that power — a memo that contradicts the conclusion a previous U.S. Attorney General reached on the same question. Courts have not settled this.

Who was actually on that land

Bears Ears is not empty ground. Five tribal nations — the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and Pueblo of Zuni — came together to protect it. The Native American Rights Fund says all of them "hold the region as sacred," and that the tribes "continue to rely on Bears Ears for subsistence, hunting, and collecting plants and medicines found throughout the entire region."

Rebecca Nagle, a writer and member of the Cherokee Nation, pointed out that the area holds "over 100,000 archaeological and cultural sites — some dating back 10,000 to 13,000 years," and drew a comparison worth sitting with:

"The reverence for places like Mount Rushmore alongside the disregard for places like Bears Ears shows the racist double standard of what kind of history the current administration is willing to celebrate and protect."

That contrast isn't hypothetical. One Republican member of Congress thought Mount Rushmore was so important she filed a bill to carve Trump's face into it eight days into his second term. Utah's delegation spent that same period cheering on the removal of protection from most of the land that holds those 100,000 sites.

Georgie Pongyesva of the Hopi Tribe answered the administration's argument that these sites are just "ruins":

"These places are not abandoned, nor are they ruined. These are living landscapes for which Tribes are the original stewards."

The record behind the statement

None of this is out of character for these three. Their environmental voting records are close to a straight line.

Mike Kennedy — 0% from the League of Conservation Voters in 2025, and a 0% lifetime score. Every single vote against the environment.
Blake Moore — 0% in 2025, 7% lifetime.
Celeste Maloy — 3% in 2025, 5% lifetime.

It also fits a pattern that runs well past Utah. In Minnesota, Pete Stauber pushed through a resolution reopening mining near the Boundary Waters that legal experts warned could throw hundreds of forest plans into jeopardy. The playbook is the same: call the giveaway a restoration of balance, and hope nobody counts the acres.

Somebody counted. Utah's three House Republicans represent a state that ranks 10th out of 50 on the measures we track — a state that is doing well in large part because of what hasn't been sold. They had a chance to say something honest about the biggest land protection rollback in the country's history. Instead they signed a statement saying nothing had been lost, while the White House published the list of what could now be dug out of it.

The Emancipator asked the White House to comment on its findings. It didn't respond.

Source

This post was reported from The Emancipator's investigation by Kate Amistoso and Daniel Mollenkamp, published August 6, 2026, along with the Utah delegation's own press release and the White House fact sheet. Photo: Bears Ears National Monument welcome sign, G. Edward Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons.

Five Houses in Little Rock. Two of Them Occupied by Christians. That's the Sharia Takeover.

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 19:12:00 +0000

On July 17, 2026, the governor of Arkansas posted this to her official accounts:

"In our state, you cannot replace Arkansas law with Sharia law. We will not allow it. Period."

Her attorney general quote-tweeted her an hour later to agree that Arkansas is governed by law, "not religious legal codes."

Here is what they were protecting Arkansas from.

Five houses off John Barrow Road

New Africa is a small subdivision in Little Rock's John Barrow neighborhood, built by a local mosque, the Islamic Center for Human Excellence. The Arkansas Times went out and looked at it this month.

It's five houses. Two of them are lived in by Christians. The imam lives in another. The only sign it exists is a sign that says "New Africa Community." It has been there for nearly two decades.

Buyers sign a Bill of Assurance — the same kind of covenant a homeowners association makes you sign, with rules about upkeep and conduct. That document says the development exists "for the purpose of creating a wholly owned residential Al-Islamic community conforming to the social guidelines given in the Quran." That's the sentence that launched a thousand posts.

Tauheed Salaam, part of the development team, explained what it actually means: no stealing, no crime, take care of your family, keep the property up. Nobody is made to wear a hijab or convert. The rules cover the community's public spaces, not what you do inside your own home — you can have a drink in your own house.

And he reached for an analogy that ought to stop this whole story cold. They hope people take examples from the Quran, he said, the same way a Christian might hope people follow the Ten Commandments.

Hold onto that one.

How five houses became a statewide emergency

The Arkansas Times traced the panic back to its source, and it isn't a court case or a police report. It's a content pipeline.

On March 31, the RAIR Foundation — an outlet the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as an anti-Muslim hate group — published a piece claiming Little Rock had been "conquered" by Islam, with a section on New Africa.
On April 4, pro-Trump influencer Terrence K. Williams pushed the story to his 4.5 million Facebook followers. It drew more than 18,300 likes, 7,800 comments and 6,300 shares.
That same day, Arkansas state Rep. Alyssa Brown posted about "a story out of Little Rock about an Islamic Shariah organization" that "is going viral" and "deserves more attention."
Brown then co-sponsored House Resolution 1016, the "Arkansas Property Rights Protection From Sharia Law Act," with primary sponsor Rep. Marcus Richmond. In a later post, Brown cited "a viral post about the Islamic Center compound here in Arkansas."

A hate group's blog post became a bill in the Arkansas Legislature in four days.

It died. On April 15, the House Rules Committee rejected it — and the man who took it apart was a fellow Republican. Rep. Jeremiah Moore pointed out the bill wouldn't even reach a white supremacist compound in northeast Arkansas:

"If we're trying to worry about disclosures for Sharia Law, I would also like to cover the white supremacists up near Ravenden. I'm pretty sure they're trying to do the exact thing that you're describing here…"

That was in a session so short that lawmakers had to vote just to consider non-budget bills. On the same day, another Republican was begging the committee to let him raise the homestead property tax credit because "gasoline is high, groceries are high." The imaginary threat got a named bill with three sponsors. The compound Moore was talking about got nothing.

Then the governor picked it up anyway

Three months after her own party's committee killed the bill, Sarah Sanders posted her warning to Arkansas.

Nobody could say why. Commenters under her own Facebook post asked where it came from — "Where did this come from lmao," one wrote; another called it "a dog whistle inviting hate crimes and deportations." A spokesperson for Sanders didn't respond when the Arkansas Times asked what inspired it.

Attorney General Tim Griffin amplified her post about an hour later with his own, on X and on Facebook. His office said it had "received repeated inquiries about the status of Sharia law in Arkansas." When the Times filed a public records request to see those inquiries, the AG's office refused to release them, claiming an exemption for the attorney general's working papers.

So the official story is: we responded to concerned citizens, and no, you can't see them.

There is no takeover. There never was.

Let's be clear about the thing itself. "Sharia" is a religious framework — prayer, fasting, charity, how you treat your family, how you do business honestly. It does not override American law, any more than kosher rules or Catholic canon law do. American courts answer to the Constitution.

This panic is also not new, and it has never once found anything. A 2013 Brennan Center report counted lawmakers in 32 states introducing "foreign law" bans, and found the practical result wasn't safety — it was confusion over marriages, divorces and prenuptial agreements with religious or foreign origins, and over how international businesses do deals here.

Texas has been running the play the longest. In 2015, a mosque in Irving offered its members voluntary mediation. Then-mayor Beth Van Duyne accused the mosque's leaders of creating separate laws for Muslims and "bypassing American courts," and led Irving officials in endorsing a state bill to forbid judges from using foreign laws. Mosque leaders said she was stirring up anti-Muslim feeling. Eleven years later, nobody has produced the takeover.

Texas passed a "Sharia ban" that never mentions Sharia

Greg Abbott has told Texans he banned Sharia law. He didn't.

The law he signed is House Bill 4211, signed June 20, 2025. Its official title is "Relating to certain residential property interests controlled by certain entities." It governs how business entities own and sell homes in a development. Read the text yourself: the words "Sharia," "Islam," and "Muslim" do not appear in it a single time.

That didn't stop Abbott from posting that he had banned "Sharia law" and "Sharia compounds," and telling Texans to report anyone attempting "Sharia compliance" to law enforcement. CAIR-Texas called it "reckless, discriminatory, and divorced from reality" — and pointed out that the developers of EPIC City, the Muslim community near Dallas the law was aimed at, had said they supported the bill, because they were already following the rules.

They were telling the truth. The Justice Department closed its investigation into EPIC City without bringing any charges.

None of that slowed anything down. In the March 2026 Republican primary, the state party put "Texas should prohibit Sharia law" on the ballot as Proposition 10 — one of ten advisory questions used to set party priorities. It passed with 94.81%, and Abbott promised more:

"Even though I've signed a law that bans Sharia law in the state of Texas, this is going to be something that we take going into the next session and make more crystal clear and more expansive."

He is promising to expand a ban on something that isn't happening, under a law that doesn't say what he says it says.

Congress had already built a caucus

Washington did not need Little Rock. The organization was there first: on December 18, 2025 — three months before the RAIR post — Keith Self of Texas and Chip Roy launched the "Sharia Free America Caucus." Within a month it had 26 members from 17 states. By March it had 50.

The roster reads like a directory of this site: Majority Whip Tom Emmer, plus Reps. Brandon Gill, Michael Cloud, Mary Miller, Andy Biggs, Eli Crane, Byron Donalds, Scott Perry, Randy Fine, Andy Ogles, Eric Burlison, Josh Brecheen, Sheri Biggs, Ralph Norman, Barry Moore, Tracey Mann, Russ Fulcher, Mike Kelly, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Clyde, Mark Harris, Nick Begich, Cory Mills and Mike Haridopolos.

Read their own words in Self's press release and watch how fast "we're protecting the Constitution" turns into something else. Cloud called it "an assault on our Constitution, our freedoms, and the Christian foundations of our nation." Gill complained about "the rise of mass Islamic immigration in north Texas." Ogles skipped the legal argument entirely:

"Islam is a religion of violence, abuse of women, and ruthless political conquest."

That is not a statement about a legal code. It's a statement about a faith and the people who practice it. Ogles kept going: in March 2026 he posted that "Muslims don't belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie." The same week, Randy Fine wrote that "we need more Islamophobia, not less," and Tommy Tuberville posted a photo of the September 11 attacks beside a photo of New York's Muslim mayor, captioned "The enemy is inside the gates."

In February 2026, CAIR designated the caucus an anti-Muslim hate group — the first time in the group's 32-year history it has designated a congressional caucus. The reason was the legislation. One bill members back, the Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act, would let the government revoke visas and deport any foreign national judged to be "an adherent of Sharia law." There is no test for "adherent." It's an official deciding whether your prayers count against you.

This isn't only an objection from the left. At the House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Republicans themselves called in February, George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin testified against the bill, arguing it violates the First Amendment's protections for free speech and free exercise of religion, sweeps in enormous numbers of people who pose no threat, and would actually harm national security by handing extremists a recruiting pitch.

The Senate has a bill by the same name, and it belongs to Alabama's Tommy Tuberville, who introduced S. 3009, the "Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act," on October 15, 2025 — along with S. 3008, the "No Shari'a Act," the same day.

A different Senate bill goes after Sharia in American businesses. On February 12, 2026, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas introduced S. 3887, the "Defeat Sharia Law in America Act," with Tuberville as his only co-sponsor. It would amend the Civil Rights Act so that a business covered by its public-accommodations section that provides goods or services "by implementing Sharia law" counts as discriminating on the ground of religion. Cornyn described a religion practiced by nearly two billion people as "an existential threat to our way of life." CAIR's Alabama chapter called the bill an "unconstitutional attack on religious freedom," pointing out that Sharia guides daily religious practice much the way Jewish Halacha does.

Follow the money, and the calendar

If this were a legal emergency, you'd see it in the courts. Instead you see it in ad buys.

Republicans spent more than $10 million on TV ads mentioning "Sharia" or "Islam" negatively, according to figures the ad-tracking firm AdImpact gave NPR — most of it in Texas, right before its primaries. That's roughly ten times what was spent in each of the last four election cycles.

Sabina Mohyuddin, who runs the American Muslim Advisory Council in Tennessee, put it plainly: "It is an election year and these politicians believe if they spew this hateful rhetoric, they are going to get more votes."

House Speaker Mike Johnson defended the rhetoric, saying "there's a lot of energy in the country and a lot of popular sentiment that the demand to impose Sharia law in America is a serious problem." NPR added the part he left out: Sharia is a religious framework, and it does not have standing over the U.S. Constitution.

A few Republicans wouldn't play along. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis said "freedom of religion is a pillar of our nation and broad brush statements like this are offensive and completely inappropriate." Most of the conference said nothing — a long way from 2019, when Republican leaders condemned Rep. Steve King over his comments on white nationalism and stripped him of his committee assignments.

The freedom argument falls apart on contact

Now go back to Salaam's line: they hope people learn from the Quran the way a Christian might hope people follow the Ten Commandments.

Because three days before Sanders warned Arkansas about religious law, she stood with the First Liberty Institute to announce that Arkansas ranks #1 in the nation for religious liberty. "Every American should be free to live according to their faith and conscience," she said. And one of the laws she credited for the ranking was Act 573 — the law putting the Ten Commandments in every Arkansas classroom.

So: a religious code in every public school is religious liberty. A religious code in a five-house subdivision is an invasion.

That's not the only place the principle collapses.

Texas requires the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom. Abbott signed that bill, and in April 2026 the Fifth Circuit upheld the law. A religious text, in every room, by order of the state.
A federal judge threw Arkansas's version out. In March 2026, Judge Timothy Brooks wrote that "nothing could possibly justify hanging the Ten Commandments — with or without historical context — in a calculus, chemistry, French, or woodworking class." Sanders called the Ten Commandments "the basis of all Western law and morality" and vowed to appeal. The lawyer running that appeal is Tim Griffin — the same attorney general who told Arkansas that the state is governed by law, "not religious legal codes."
Arkansas librarians can now face jail. On July 30, 2026, a federal appeals court let Act 372 take effect. Handing a minor an item deemed "harmful" is a Class A misdemeanor carrying up to a year in prison; a separate provision makes some cases a felony carrying up to six. Griffin praised the ruling.
Texas is near the top of the country in pulling books from schools. PEN America counted 1,781 book bans in Texas in the 2024–25 school year alone.
Texas bans abortion at about six weeks, with no exception for rape or incest. Abbott signed it, then told Texans not to worry because the state would "eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas."

The government tells you what religious text hangs in your kid's classroom, what books the librarian can hand your teenager, and what you can do about your own pregnancy — and that's liberty. But a Muslim family following religious guidance in their private life is a threat to the Republic.

That's not a principle. That's a target.

Who actually pays

The imam at the Islamic Center for Human Excellence said they haven't had any incidents from all this. They increased their security anyway. That's what it costs to be five houses on the wrong end of a viral post.

It costs more elsewhere. "We know this kind of rhetoric leads to more bullying in school, discrimination in the workplace, hate crimes and vandalism against mosques," Mohyuddin said. By her estimate, Ogles alone has tens of thousands of Muslim constituents in his own district.

And it isn't over. The Arkansas Legislature convenes a regular session in January 2027, and the Arkansas Times notes the Sharia bill could come back. Abbott has promised a "more expansive" version in Texas. The caucus keeps growing.

Every hour spent on an invented takeover is an hour not spent on what was actually squeezing families in that Arkansas hearing room — the price of gas, the price of groceries, the cost of seeing a doctor. Ask your representative what they did about your health insurance premium this year. Then count how many times they said the word "Sharia."

One of those numbers is going to be much bigger than the other.

Sources

Despite debunkings, misinformation about Little Rock's 'New Africa' persists — Arkansas Times, August 4, 2026
Arkansas homestead tax credit proposal advances, Sharia Law resolution fails in committee — Arkansas Advocate, April 15, 2026
House GOP leadership silent as more members post anti-Muslim statements — NPR, March 14, 2026
CAIR Designates House's 'Sharia-Free Caucus' an Anti-Muslim Hate Group — CAIR, February 18, 2026
CAIR-Texas Calls Gov. Abbott's Claim to Sign a 'Sharia Law' Ban 'Divorced from Reality' — CAIR-Texas, September 12, 2025
Sanders' July 17 post and Griffin's reply on X

Photo: Rep. Andy Ogles addresses the New York Young Republican Club, Dec. 13, 2025. Adam Gray/Getty Images.

ICE Is Reading Your Posts. Congress Paid for It.

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 18:30:00 +0000

Somebody on Reddit used the handle Tired_Thumb. Over two months, they left three comments that mentioned ICE. Two of them included the letters "ACAB" — an old protest slogan that stands for "all cops are bastards." One of them shared a phone number for an agent, pulled off a public records website, with the link to that website pasted right underneath.

For that, the federal government has spent six months trying to learn their name.

First the Department of Homeland Security sent Reddit an administrative subpoena asking for the poster's name, address and billing records. It didn't say what law had been broken. When a legal nonprofit fought back, the government dropped that subpoena — and came back with a grand jury subpoena, which carries more weight, asking for another month of the person's activity.

Nobody has been charged with anything. The government just wants to know who they are.

That story comes from a Wall Street Journal investigation published August 3, 2026, by Hannah Critchfield and Shane Shifflett. And Tired_Thumb, as the Journal put it, is far from alone.

A round-the-clock dragnet

Here is what the Journal found.

ICE now runs a nonstop digital operation that scans the public internet — Facebook, Instagram, X, and close to 20 platforms in all, including Reddit, Discord, Snapchat and LinkedIn — looking for speech the agency decides is dangerous to its mission. Not just threats to agents. Also, in the government's own contracting language, "activities that could disrupt ICE's operations."

Private contractors do the work. They write daily reports and build files on people. Those files can include a person's name, location, date of birth, workplace, Social Security number, vehicle registration and criminal history.

The money grew fast. ICE spending on surveillance technology and consultants hit $258 million during President Trump's first full year back in office — a 57% jump from the year before, according to the Journal's analysis of federal budget data. The agency has signed at least six contracts to scan public records for "threats," paying out nearly $50 million since 2020, with more than half of that money committed since last January.

One of those contracts went to a small Virginia software firm called Amivero — more than $8 million to monitor social media. Amivero handed the actual work to Guidehouse, a big consulting company that also works on defense and intelligence. Neither company would talk to the Journal.

The government's shopping list for this program asks contractors to pull DMV records and police reports, map out who a flagged user knows, and use machine learning for something called "anticipatory threat intelligence" — software that guesses at threats before anything happens.

To find out who anonymous critics are, DHS has sent hundreds of subpoenas to social media companies.

Reddit said no. The government kept going.

Between July and December of last year, DHS sent Reddit administrative subpoenas for the information behind 11 accounts that had posted "content critical of federal actions."

Reddit looked at them and concluded these users were doing something the First Amendment protects. The company objected to every single one. DHS eventually withdrew all of them.

"Privacy is central to how Reddit operates," said Ben Lee, the company's chief legal officer, adding that Reddit routinely objects to government requests that are "overbroad or threaten users' privacy or civil rights, including their First Amendment rights."

So the government switched tools. It started using grand jury subpoenas instead, which are harder to fight.

The Journal identified 10 people — nine Americans and one Canadian — who tried to stop the government from unmasking them. Judges upheld four of the grand jury subpoenas. The government gave up on three cases. Three are still going.

No charges have been filed in any of them.

That pattern is the whole story. As civil-rights attorney Lauren Regan told the Journal:

"They're not actually filing any criminal charges where we can challenge the vagueness, the overreach and the abuse of that statute. If they just want to use this as an intimidation tactic, it's not even a fair fight."

What actually counts as "doxxing"

The administration has been rewriting a word.

In September 2025, President Trump signed a national security memo called NSPM-7. It lists "organized doxing campaigns" alongside swatting, rioting, looting, trespass and assault as the kinds of acts that can get a group labeled a domestic terrorist organization. It specifically names ICE agents in Los Angeles as an example.

Congress never voted on any of that. It's a presidential memo. As Government Executive reported, the structure "allows the president to direct law enforcement and national security agencies, with little opportunity for congressional oversight." Thirty-one members of Congress wrote to Trump in October 2025 warning of "serious constitutional, statutory and civil liberties risks." Nothing changed.

The ACLU called the memo "a fever dream of conspiracies, outright falsehoods," and warned that it "stitches together a few disparate, serious acts of actual or attempted criminal conduct with First Amendment-protected beliefs and protests against the president and his policies."

From there, the definition kept stretching. DHS has argued that filming law enforcement doing their job in public and posting the video counts as doxxing.

It even applied that logic to a newspaper. When the Minnesota Star Tribune named Jonathan Ross as the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good — a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three — in Minneapolis on January 7, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin responded with this:

"The Star Tribune should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for their reckless behavior, and they should delete their story immediately."

Ross has not been charged. The Star Tribune did not delete the story.

Here's the thing about all of this: the Supreme Court drew this line back in 1969. In Watts v. United States, the Court threw out a conviction and wrote that "the language of the political arena, like the language used in labor disputes, is often vituperative, abusive, and inexact." Real threats aren't protected. Angry political talk is. That's not a new or controversial idea. It's 57 years old.

Two agents, a printed screenshot, and a form to sign

On Election Day in New York — June 23, 2026 — a poll worker named Paigelynne Gonyea was working at the Central Library in Syracuse when she got a voicemail from a man who said he was a Homeland Security special agent.

He said agents had just been by her apartment. He said they were calling about a post "where you doxxed an ICE agent back in January."

Then two agents with ICE badges walked into the polling place. They carried a file on her with her name, address, date of birth, height, weight and eye color, plus printed screenshots of her posts. They asked her to sign a notice from ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility. It said, in capital letters at the top, "YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW," and directed her to "promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior."

What had she posted? On January 8, the day after Renee Good was killed, she wrote this:

"The ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in broad daylight has been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune. I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted!"

That's it. A newspaper's reporting, repeated, plus an opinion that a man should face a grand jury.

Gonyea refused to sign. She refused to delete the post. DHS later told NPR she had published an ICE officer's address online — but has not produced any evidence of that, and Gonyea says she has looked through her own accounts and can't find any address.

A local Republican election commissioner confirmed to NPR that the badges were real. He called the whole thing "a comedy of errors" and said it was "a mistake" for agents to enter a polling site at all. Federal law bars armed federal officers from polling places — NPR notes it's unclear whether these two were armed — and New York has a state law barring immigration agents from voting sites, period.

Perry Grossman of the New York Civil Liberties Union put it plainly:

"If this is the kind of speech that the administration, that DHS wants to go after, then they are trying to fundamentally redefine the First Amendment and the scope of permissible public debate. And that is wrong. That is ridiculous."

According to the Journal, the agents who visited Gonyea delivered that same letter to several other people that day. One recipient sued. A special agent tracked down David Streever while he was on vacation — five months after Streever emailed then-acting ICE director Todd Lyons following the killing of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse shot by federal agents in Minneapolis on January 24, and called Lyons "a monstrous human being." Streever says DHS is retaliating against protected speech and that it will chill the public.

The number they won't show you

DHS's whole defense rests on a statistic: an 8,000% increase in death threats against ICE officers since Trump took office.

Go read the press release it comes from. It's dated January 26, 2026. It contains one voicemail transcript and the number. No counts. No baseline. No time period. No methodology. Nothing you could check.

We've been here before with this agency. A September 2025 executive order claimed assaults on ICE agents were up "more than 1,000 percent." NPR and Colorado Public Radio went and pulled five years of federal court records to check. Comparing charges for assaulting a federal officer through mid-September 2025 against the same stretch a year earlier, they found about a 25% rise — not 1,000%.

When reporters asked DHS to show its work, the department "repeatedly declined to provide any justification." It sent back links to its own earlier press releases repeating the same number.

Bob Pence, a 30-year FBI veteran, told NPR why that matters:

"There are a number of ramifications, if the public can't believe what law enforcement is saying then law enforcement probably can't depend on the cooperation of citizens to report information to them accurately."

By January 2026, the same DHS press release that carried the 8,000% figure had bumped the assault claim up to "more than 1,300%."

Congress wrote the check

None of this built itself. It runs on money, and money comes from Congress.

In June, Senate Republicans passed S. 2 — the "Secure America Act" — at 4:42 in the morning by a vote of 52 to 47, handing ICE and Border Patrol nearly $70 billion. Combined with the mass-deportation money approved the year before, that's close to a quarter of a trillion dollars.

They moved it through a fast-track budget process that needed only a simple majority, which let them strip out the guardrails that normally ride along with funding bills — required oversight of detention conditions, transparency rules forcing ICE to report basic data to the public, and civil-rights protections in enforcement. Those protections aren't in the law. That was a choice, and you can read the full breakdown in our post on the senators who voted yes.

Be clear about the timeline, because it matters. This vote did not create the dragnet — the Amivero contract was signed in September 2025, and attorneys started seeing the subpoena spike that same month. The surveillance operation was already running.

What these senators did was vote, on June 5, 2026, to pour another $70 billion into the agency running it — five months after federal immigration agents killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, and Alex Pretti weeks after her — and to do it in a way that left out the transparency requirements that would make a program like this visible to the public in the first place.

The Senate: 52 to 47

Fourteen of the senators who voted yes have report cards on this site:

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

The House: 214 to 212

Four days later, on June 9, 2026, the House passed the same bill by 214 to 212 and sent it to the president, who signed it the next day as Public Law 119-98.

Look closely at that roll call, because the margin hides something. It was two votes — but not because Republicans were split. Every single Republican who cast a vote voted yes. Not one voted no. Three didn't vote at all: Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey, and Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman of South Carolina. The 212 no votes came from 211 Democrats and one independent.

It was close because it was unanimous on one side and near-unanimous on the other.

A hundred and ninety of the House members who voted yes have report cards here:

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

One name is missing from that list on purpose. Kevin Kiley of California, who the clerk's roll call lists as an independent rather than a Republican, voted no. He is the only member tracked on this site outside the Democratic caucus who did.

Twenty-four other House Republicans voted yes and don't have pages here yet.

Not one of the 204 members listed above made the money conditional on ICE telling the public what it collects, or on whom.

So who is watching the surveillance program? On paper, the ICE Privacy Office, in consultation with the DHS Privacy Office. The Journal reports the ICE Privacy Office is down to two full-time staffers.

Two people. Overseeing a $258-million-a-year surveillance operation with hundreds of subpoenas and files on American citizens.

And when members of Congress did go looking, it was one party doing the asking. Rep. Maxwell Frost and 11 other Democrats wrote to DHS in February asking what data the department collects on protesters. Lyons wrote back on April 21. He denied ICE keeps a database of protesters — but acknowledged that ICE collects "essential biographic and biometric information and situational details" on people it believes may be interfering with its operations, and keeps those records even when nobody is arrested.

ACLU attorney Scarlet Kim noticed what the letter left out: "He did not deny that, essentially, that information would not be placed in other existing databases."

The Republicans who control both chambers wrote the checks and stripped the guardrails. The questions about what ICE is collecting on Americans came from the minority.

Why this should bother you even if you never post about ICE

You might think none of this touches you. Look at the actual conduct that drew federal attention here.

A Reddit comment with the letters "ACAB" in it. An Instagram post saying an agent should be indicted, quoting a newspaper. An angry email to an agency head. Filming officers in public.

That is the ordinary stuff of American political argument. It is exactly what the Supreme Court described as "vituperative, abusive, and inexact" — and protected.

Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Virginia who studies privacy and cyberstalking, pointed out the part that ties it all together:

"We're seeing the weaponization of privacy in ways that privilege the powerful, and in particular, law enforcement. Law enforcement who are serving the public, they're hiding their names. They're hiding their faces. If they had their names on badges and they weren't wearing masks, you might see less of this activity."

That's the trade being made. Agents get anonymity. You get a file.

And notice how little the government has to do to win. It doesn't need convictions. It doesn't even need charges. It needs you to see two agents walk into your workplace holding a printout of your Instagram, and decide it isn't worth posting again.

Some of what the government is looking at is genuinely ugly. One woman the Journal spoke to had compared ICE officers to Nazis on X in January and written that "All ICE Agents need to be put down like the dogs they are." That's a vile thing to write, and nobody has to defend it.

But look at what happened next. Roughly four months later, plainclothes ICE agents showed up at her home, told her not to post like that again, and left. She was never charged. She has curbed what she says online.

If the government believed that post was a real threat, there is a courtroom for that. It went to her doorstep instead. And that tells you which outcome it was after.

That's not law enforcement. That's a warning system, paid for with public money, aimed at the public.

Source

Hannah Critchfield and Shane Shifflett, "How ICE Is Weaponizing Social Media Against Its Critics", The Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2026.
Photo: federal agents inside the Syracuse polling place where Paigelynne Gonyea was working, June 23, 2026. Video by Gracious Golden via Facebook; screenshot by NPR.

What Utah's Republicans in Congress Are Costing You

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:17:08 +0000

Utah ranks 10th out of 50 on the measures we track — health, crime, food security, education, life expectancy, and more. That's one of the best scores in the country, and it isn't an accident. It's insured families, funded hospitals, kids who eat, a university that does real research, and land nobody sold.

Most of that was built here. A lot of it is paid for in Washington. And the three Utahns who represent this state in the House have spent the past two years voting to spend it down.

Blake Moore, the House Republican Conference Vice Chair and a senior member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. Celeste Maloy, who sits on Appropriations and Natural Resources. Mike Kennedy, a practicing family physician who serves as Vice Chair of the Federal Lands Subcommittee.

All three voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 3, 2025 — the law that cuts health coverage and food aid to pay for tax breaks. All three voted twice to lock DOGE's cuts into permanent law, in June 2025 and again in July. And on February 11, 2026, when the House actually passed a resolution to end the tariff emergency, 219–211, all three voted no.

Here's what those votes cost.

77,000 more Utahns projected to lose their health insurance — and a doctor cast one of the votes

KFF projects that Trump's budget bill will leave 77,000 more Utahns uninsured by 2034, with a published range of 58,000 to 97,000 — working families, people with disabilities, and rural communities that already drive furthest for care.

Utah's strong health ranking is exactly the thing 77,000 lost policies eats into. High rankings are built out of people having a doctor.

Mike Kennedy is a family physician. He voted for the bill anyway, and then defended the Medicaid cuts in a published op-ed, writing that they "cut waste while preserving resources for the people it was intended to serve." He has eight children. Presumably he'd want them to be able to see a doctor.

Utah's Republicans celebrated the bill's passage while health advocates in the state said plainly what it would do.

One in five Utah kids is hungry

Here in Utah, 1 in 5 kids faces hunger. About 176,200 Utahns — roughly 5% of the state — receive SNAP benefits every month to put food on the table.

Utah's SNAP enrollment is one of the lowest rates in the country. That is not a program running wild. It's a thin program in a state that already leans hard on churches, food banks, and neighbors — and the megabill the delegation voted for tightens who qualifies on top of it.

One in five kids goes hungry in a state that ranks 10th overall. Voting to make the food line shorter doesn't make the hunger smaller.

DOGE claimed $157 million. The University of Utah paid part of the bill.

DOGE says it "saved" Utah more than $157 million. Some of what that bought:

DOGE canceled 77 research grants at the University of Utah, costing $28.4 million in lost funding for medical and scientific research. That's not an abstraction in a state whose health ranking runs partly through its own research hospital.

Blake Moore isn't a bystander here — he co-chairs the House DOGE Caucus, which he helped launch in December 2024 alongside Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. But by his own account his northern Utah district ranks in the top 5% of all 435 congressional districts for federal workforce size — Hill Air Force Base, the IRS processing facility in Ogden, the veterans hospital, air traffic control, TSA, BLM, the Forest Service. When the cuts hit those workers, Moore told a February 2025 tele-town hall that "the communication that's come out from the DOGE world has been antagonistic" and that "I've been very, very frustrated at this alongside you." He helped build the bulldozer, then complained about the damage.

Celeste Maloy is a DOGE Caucus member too, and told Utahns she'd "like to see agencies do less with less" — advising them to ignore "the hysteria" as the cuts hit national parks, the IRS, and federal workers across the state. For someone crusading against government waste, she has her own history with public money: before Congress, she personally lobbied Utah lawmakers in 2019 to hand $300,000 in state funds to a public-lands nonprofit she had helped launch and later led. Watchdog reporting found "scant evidence" of what it accomplished. It dissolved in 2023 when she ran for Congress.

Meanwhile there were 267,000 layoffs in Utah in 2025. Utah's delegation spent that year voting to add to the pile.

They tried to sell 10,000 acres of Utah to pay for the tax cuts

This is the one that's specific to us.

Celeste Maloy pushed to sell more than 10,000 acres of Utah public land — parcels across Washington County near St. George — as an amendment to Trump's budget bill. The proposal drew bipartisan opposition and was stripped from the final bill. It failed because Utahns and others objected, not because she stopped pushing.

She also sponsored the Ending Presidential Overreach on Public Lands Act, which would require Congress to sign off on every new national monument — gutting the century-old law that protected millions of acres of American wilderness, a lot of it here.

Maloy is the cousin of Ammon Bundy and niece of Cliven Bundy, the family behind the 2014 armed standoff with federal agents over public land. Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, put it this way: "Leave it to a member of the Bundy family to lead an egregious attack on America's public lands, this time from within the halls of Congress."

On the environment generally, none of the three is close to a defender. Moore holds a 0% score from the League of Conservation Voters in 2025 and 7% lifetime. Maloy is at 3% in 2025, 5% lifetime. Kennedy is at 0% in 2025 with a 0% lifetime score — every single vote against the environment.

450 Utahns a year, and ICE arrests doubled

Utah has about 13.3 gun deaths per 100,000 people — 4% above the national average, with about 450 Utahns dying from gun violence every year. That's one of the places a top-10 state is not doing well, and there's no bill from this delegation to fix it.

And ICE arrests in Utah more than doubled in 2025 — over 4,000 people, about 17% of them with no criminal history at all. One Utah father applying for a green card was arrested at his own immigration interview and shipped to a detention center in Las Vegas.

Mike Kennedy went further than a vote. In April 2025 he toured El Salvador's notorious CECOT maximum-security prison, where deportees — including wrongly deported Americans — are held in brutal conditions. He called the visit "sobering" and praised El Salvador for putting "the safety of their citizens first." He did not meet with or speak up for any of the wrongly deported Americans held there.

Utahns already told them

In March 2025, Maloy and Kennedy held a joint town hall at the University of Utah. Roughly 300 people showed up and heckled and shouted them down over DOGE cuts, federal layoffs, and health care. Kennedy suggested police remove a man he dubbed "Mr. Outburst." When Maloy insisted "I'm here to answer questions," the crowd shouted back "no you're not!"

By 2026, Maloy had moved to tightly managed events. At an Americans for Prosperity–sponsored town hall in St. George on January 28, 2026, more than two dozen residents protested outside, saying they'd spent months trying to get a real town hall with a congresswoman who was "always unavailable."

Who voted for this

These are the three members of Congress representing Utah in the House who voted for the budget law behind the health and food cuts, voted twice to codify DOGE's cuts, and voted to keep the tariffs:

Blake Moore — House Republican Conference Vice Chair, Ways and Means Committee, DOGE Caucus co-chair
Celeste Maloy — Appropriations and Natural Resources Committees
Mike Kennedy — family physician, Vice Chair of the Federal Lands Subcommittee

Utah sits at 10th because generations of people here paid for hospitals, schools, universities, and land they never put up for sale. A high ranking is the most expensive thing a state owns and the easiest to spend: 77,000 people projected off insurance, $28.4 million out of the U, 267,000 layoffs, and 10,000 acres nearly auctioned off is what spending it looks like.

In 2026, Utahns decide whether the three people who cast those votes get to keep casting them.

Compare Utah to Other States →

182 House Republicans Just Voted to Keep Us in Trump's Iran War — And Lost

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:20:15 +0000

The war with Iran started in February. Congress never voted to authorize it. Five months later, American troops are still dying in it.

On Thursday, July 23, 2026, the House of Representatives voted 214 to 208 to order the president to pull U.S. forces out of the fighting. The resolution — H. Con. Res. 89, written by Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington — passed.

It passed despite 207 Republicans voting against it. Only four Republicans in the entire House voted yes.

182 of the Republicans who voted no have a report card on this site. Their names are below.

What they were voting on

Nothing complicated. The resolution said: the president does not have authorization from Congress for this war, so bring the troops home.

That's not a partisan idea. It's the War Powers Resolution, the law Congress wrote precisely so a president couldn't keep the country in a war on his own indefinitely. Voting yes meant Congress gets a say. Voting no meant the president decides alone.

182 Republicans we track voted for the president deciding alone.

The cost while they stalled

This isn't an abstract fight over process. According to the Pentagon, 18 U.S. troops have died since the fighting broke out in February — and four of those deaths came after July 17 alone. U.S. forces have suffered nearly 500 injuries, 100 of them in the two weeks before this vote.

The fighting is getting worse, not better. And back home, the bill keeps arriving in other forms: gas prices climbed after the Iran war started, squeezing drivers, farmers, and families who never got a vote on any of it.

A majority of Americans oppose military action in Iran. A majority of the House now agrees. The war continues anyway.

Congress already said no. Twice.

Here's the part that should make you angry.

This was not the first time. On June 3, the House passed an almost identical resolution, H. Con. Res. 86. On June 23, the Senate agreed to that same resolution, 50 to 48.

Both chambers of Congress. The same resolution. Already passed.

The administration ignored it and kept fighting. That's why the House had to vote again on July 23 — and why Rep. Gregory Meeks, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, announced he would file a lawsuit to enforce the resolution Congress already adopted.

And when the second vote came, the same Republicans lined up the same way. Of the 182 Republicans on this list, 181 voted no both times — in June and again in July. They watched Congress get overruled by the White House, and their response was to vote to be overruled again.

The president, for his part, has called these votes "meaningless" and dismissed them as Democrats "fueled by Trump Derangement Syndrome." When 182 members of his own party vote to make Congress irrelevant, it's hard to argue he's wrong about the "meaningless" part.

The Senate blocked the version with teeth

There's a catch in all of this, and it's worth understanding, because it's how the whole thing gets to keep happening.

H. Con. Res. 89 is a concurrent resolution. As Roll Call explained, it "did not go to the president for his signature and therefore had little power to actually force him to withdraw troops from the war." It's a formal statement, not a binding order.

The binding version came up in the Senate the very same day. Sen. Chris Van Hollen's S.J. Res. 180 was a joint resolution — the kind with legal force. The House finished voting at 10:24 a.m. At 11:51 a.m., about ninety minutes later, the Senate rejected the binding version, 47 to 49. Susan Collins of Maine was the only Republican who voted to advance it.

So on one day in July, Congress voted for the version that can't stop the war and voted down the version that could.

Who leads this

Some of the names on this list aren't backbenchers. They're the people who decide what the House does.

Speaker Mike Johnson voted no. So did Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Majority Whip Tom Emmer. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Brian Mast of Florida, held up photographs of U.S. service members killed in the war during floor debate and said, "To belittle this mission is to belittle and demean the very service these members gave their life for."

That's the argument: because Americans have died, Congress must not be allowed to ask whether they should have been sent. It gets the moral logic exactly backwards. The way you honor a service member's life is by voting before you spend it — not by using their death to shut down the vote.

Jayapal put the other side plainly after the resolution passed: "From the beginning, this war has had no clear mission, no strategy, no end goal. Congress has not been consulted."

Four Republicans managed it

It was possible to vote yes. Four Republicans did: Tom Barrett of Michigan, Warren Davidson of Ohio, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

Four out of 211. Nobody on the list below can claim there was no room to break ranks — four of their colleagues stood in exactly that room.

The 182 who voted to keep the war going

Every one of these Republicans has a report card on this site, and every one of them is recorded on the official House roll call voting no on ordering U.S. forces out of an unauthorized war:

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

Alaska — Nick Begich

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

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

California — Ken Calvert, Vince Fong, Young Kim, Tom McClintock, Jay Obernolte, David Valadao

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

Florida — Aaron Bean, Gus Bilirakis, Mario Diaz-Balart, Byron Donalds, Randy Fine, 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

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 — James Comer, Brett Guthrie, Hal Rogers

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

Maryland — Andy Harris

Michigan — 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 — 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, 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, 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, Andy Ogles, 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

The bottom line

Going to war is the most serious thing a government does. The Constitution deliberately made it hard, and gave the decision to Congress — the branch that has to go home and face the voters.

These 182 Republicans had the simplest possible chance to do that job. Not to end the war on their own, not to overrule the president — just to record that Congress, the branch that represents us, wants the fighting to stop. A majority of their colleagues managed it. Four members of their own party managed it. Both chambers of Congress had already managed it once in June.

They voted no anyway. And they'll vote no again unless something changes.

Eighteen families have buried someone in a war nobody in Congress ever authorized. Nearly 500 more troops have been wounded. When the next vote comes, remember which of your representatives thought the question wasn't worth asking.

We deserve representatives who answer to us — not to a president who calls our Constitution "meaningless."

How they voted

This post is based on the official congressional roll calls:

House Roll Call 282 — H. Con. Res. 89, July 23, 2026 (passed 214–208)
House Roll Call 199 — H. Con. Res. 86, June 3, 2026 (passed 215–208)
Senate Vote 184 — H. Con. Res. 86, June 23, 2026 (agreed to 50–48)
Senate Vote 207 — S.J. Res. 180, July 23, 2026 (rejected 47–49)

With reporting from NPR and Roll Call.

Trump Just Gutted Utah's National Monuments by 90% — and Celeste Maloy Wants to Make It Permanent

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 16:29:04 +0000

On July 13, 2026, President Trump signed two proclamations that stripped protections from nearly 3 million acres of public land in Utah. Standing near him as he did it was Utah Congresswoman Celeste Maloy.

Trump shrank Bears Ears National Monument from about 1.36 million acres down to roughly 121,100 acres — a cut of about 91%. He shrank Grand Staircase-Escalante from about 1.87 million acres to roughly 181,500 acres — another 90% cut. Groups that track public lands called it the largest rollback of land protections in U.S. history.

This is land that belongs to all of us. And Maloy didn't just watch it happen. She wants to make sure it can never be undone.

What just happened to your public land

Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante aren't empty desert. They hold ancient cliff dwellings, rock art, fossils, and sacred sites. Five tribes — the Hopi, Navajo, Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni — came together as the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition to protect that ground.

Now most of it loses its shield. According to the White House's own fact sheet, the land pulled out of the monuments becomes open again to grazing, timber cutting, "resource development," road building, and motorized vehicles. In plain English, that means the door reopens to mining and drilling — including the coal buried under the Kaiparowits Plateau that the Grand Staircase monument was created to shield in the first place.

Tribes, conservation groups, archaeologists, and outdoor businesses all pushed back. Many of them point to the same legal problem: the Antiquities Act of 1906 lets a president create a national monument, but it does not clearly give a president the power to erase or gut one. That power, they argue, belongs to Congress. A court fight is expected.

This has happened before. Trump shrank both monuments during his first term. President Biden restored them. Now Trump has cut them again — and this time, Maloy and her fellow Utah Republicans want to slam the door shut for good.

Maloy was in the room — and wants Congress to lock it in

Maloy was there for the signing alongside Gov. Spencer Cox, Sen. Mike Lee, and Sen. John Curtis. And she made clear she doesn't want this to be something a future president can reverse. She said she'd like to "take the instability out of this process and make it something Congress has to do."

She waved off the people alarmed by a 90% cut, chalking their worry up to "misunderstandings of how federal land management works."

That's a remarkable thing to tell the tribes who consider this land sacred and the Utahns who hike, hunt, and camp there. Their concern isn't a misunderstanding. They understand exactly what happens when protections vanish and the bulldozers and drill rigs are allowed back in.

This is the whole reason Maloy is in Congress

None of this is a surprise if you know Maloy's record. Attacking public land protections isn't a side project for her — it's her signature issue.

She already sponsored the Ending Presidential Overreach on Public Lands Act, which would require an act of Congress to create any new national monument — gutting the same century-old law that protected Bears Ears and Grand Staircase in the first place.
She pushed to sell off more than 10,000 acres of Utah public land — parcels near St. George — as an add-on to Trump's budget bill. The idea drew bipartisan opposition and was stripped out.
She sits on the House Natural Resources Committee and the Appropriations subcommittee on the Interior and Environment — the exact panels that write the rules for public lands. She's not on the sidelines. She's holding the pen.

Maloy is also the cousin of Ammon Bundy and the niece of Cliven Bundy — the family behind the 2014 armed standoff against federal agents over grazing on public land. The anti-public-lands fight that once played out at gunpoint in the Nevada desert now plays out with Maloy's vote in Washington.

Her environmental record backs it up. The League of Conservation Voters gives Maloy a 3% score for 2025 and a 5% lifetime score. That's not a lawmaker who occasionally sides with polluters. That's a near-perfect record of voting against clean air, clean water, and public land — over and over.

Who wins, and who loses

Ask who actually benefits when 3 million acres of protected land is handed back to "resource development." It isn't the family that camps in Grand Staircase. It isn't the tribes whose ancestors are buried there. It isn't the small towns whose economies run on hikers, hunters, and tourists.

It's the mining and drilling companies who've eyed that coal and mineral country for decades. Maloy has spent her short time in Congress trying to sell public land, kill the monument law, and now permanently shrink two of Utah's crown jewels. When she says the worried public just doesn't "understand" land management, what she really means is that they understand it too well.

Utah's public lands belong to every American — including the ones who won't be born for a hundred years. Celeste Maloy is fighting to make sure that when the drills and bulldozers move in, no future president can ever protect them again.

Source

This post was reported from the Missouri Independent / States Newsroom coverage of Trump's July 2026 monument proclamations, plus the White House fact sheet, Deseret News, and Salt Lake Tribune.

These 188 Republicans Voted to Let an Energy Board Block Clean-Air Rules

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 21:53:44 +0000

On December 17, 2025, the House passed a bill with a friendly-sounding name — the Reliable Power Act — by a vote of 225 to 203. The name is about the only friendly thing about it.

Here is what the bill actually does. It rewrites the Federal Power Act so that whenever the grid's reliability watchdog flags a risk that the country could run short on electricity, the Environmental Protection Agency — and every other federal agency — has to hand its rules over to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission before those rules can take effect. And here's the kicker: the agency cannot finalize the rule until FERC decides it won't hurt the power supply. In plain English, a panel of energy regulators gets to stand in the way of clean-air and climate rules on power plants.

Why this matters to you

Power plants that burn coal and gas are some of the biggest sources of the pollution that lands in the air your kids breathe. For decades, the EPA has been the agency that tells those plants how much soot, mercury, and carbon they're allowed to dump on the rest of us. This bill hands another agency a way to block those protections before they ever start.

The League of Conservation Voters — which tracks how members of Congress vote on the environment — urged lawmakers to reject the bill, warning that it would give FERC "the over-reaching authority to suggest changes and block any rule from any other agency if it relates to any electricity generation resource." That's not a narrow fix. That's a veto over clean-air rules, dressed up as a reliability study.

It was written by Ohio's own Troy Balderson, with Texas's Randy Weber and North Dakota's Julie Fedorchak as the lead cosponsors. When the roll was called, every Republican on the floor voted yes — not a single Republican voted against it.

Who voted to block the clean-air rules

188 Republicans on this site's report cards voted for the Reliable Power Act. Here they are, grouped by state:

Alabama: 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

California: David Valadao, Jay Obernolte, 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, Byron Donalds, Carlos Gimenez, Cory Mills, 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, Mike Collins, Rich McCormick, Rick Allen

Idaho: Mike Simpson, Russ Fulcher

Illinois: Darin LaHood, Mary Miller, 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, 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, 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

The vote

None of this is our opinion about how they voted. It's the official record. You can read every name and every vote for yourself on the House Clerk's roll call for H.R. 3616, and the full text of the bill that spells out the new roadblock for clean-air rules. When your representative tells you they're looking out for the air you breathe, ask them why they voted to give a panel of energy regulators the power to stop the EPA from cleaning up the plants next door.

Mike Kennedy Is a Family Physician. He Voted for a Bill KFF Projects Will Leave 77,000 More Utahns Uninsured.

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Mike Kennedy has represented Utah in Congress since January 2025. Here's the thing that makes his record stand out: he's a family physician. A doctor. Someone who took an oath to care for people's health. That makes some of his votes especially hard to explain.

Here are 3 things to know.

1. He's a doctor who voted to take away people's health care

Mike Kennedy is a practicing family physician. He's spent his career caring for patients. Then he voted for Trump's budget bill, which KFF projects will leave 77,000 more Utahns uninsured by 2034 — somewhere between 58,000 and 97,000.

And he didn't do it quietly. He defended the Medicaid cuts in a published op-ed, writing that they "cut waste while preserving resources for the people it was intended to serve." Tell that to the families who are about to lose their doctor. Kennedy has eight children of his own — presumably he'd want every one of them to be able to see a physician when they're sick. He just voted to take that away from a lot of other people's kids.

2. He embraced the gun fringe after a school shooting

After the 2018 Parkland school massacre, Kennedy — then a Utah state legislator — spearheaded the state's School Safety Commission. Sounds good, right?

Here's what happened next. Just days later, he publicly touted a meeting with the founders of the Utah Gun Exchange — the group that rallied roughly 1,000 counter-protesters and a turret-topped, military-style vehicle against the 8,000 students who marched for gun control at March For Our Lives. The man in charge of Utah's school safety effort was buddying up with the people mocking kids who just wanted to stop getting shot. As the Salt Lake Tribune's columnist put it, the guy behind Utah's school safety push "embraces the gun fringe."

3. He put the government in charge of families' medical decisions

Kennedy talks a lot about freedom and getting government out of your life. But as a Utah state senator, he sponsored SB16, the 2023 law that bans gender-affirming surgery and hormone therapy for transgender minors.

Think about what that means. A family, working with their own doctor, makes a private medical decision for their child — and Mike Kennedy's law overrides them. Kennedy, himself a physician, called that kind of care "a radical and dangerous push for children." This from a man who otherwise insists the government should stay out of your business. The bill passed and became law.

A doctor, sworn to do no harm

Take all three together and the contradiction is hard to miss. Mike Kennedy spent a career as a physician — then voted for a law projected to cost 77,000 of his neighbors their coverage, sided with the gun fringe after kids were shot at school, and put politicians in the exam room in place of families and their own doctors. The oath was to put patients first. His record in Congress puts something else there. Utah decides which one shows up in 2026.

Celeste Maloy Tells Utahns to 'Ignore the Hysteria' Over Government Cuts. She Lobbied Utah Lawmakers for $300,000 for a Nonprofit She Helped Launch.

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0000

Celeste Maloy has represented Utah in Congress since November 2023. She sits on both the Appropriations and Natural Resources Committees — putting her in charge of the public lands and environment policies that shape life across the West. Here's what she's done with that seat.

Here are 3 things to know.

1. She tried to sell off Utah's public lands

Utah's public lands — its canyons, deserts, and wilderness — belong to all of us. Celeste Maloy tried to put a chunk of them up for sale.

She pushed to sell more than 10,000 acres of Utah public land near St. George, slipping it in as an amendment to Trump's budget bill to help pay for tax cuts. The idea drew bipartisan opposition and was eventually stripped out. She also sponsored the Ending Presidential Overreach on Public Lands Act, which would gut a century-old conservation law that has protected millions of acres of American wilderness. It fits her record: a 3% score from the League of Conservation Voters in 2025.

2. She works for billionaires and big business

Look at who's funding Celeste Maloy. Her top donors include:

AIPAC
Berkshire Hathaway
SpaceX
Delta Airlines

That's billionaires, big tech, and powerful interest groups — not the families of southern Utah. When those are the names on your donor list, it's worth asking whose interests really come first. You can dig into it at Who Bought My Rep.

3. She crusades against "waste" — after steering taxpayer money to her own nonprofit

Maloy is a member of the House DOGE Caucus, publicly backing the mass firings and spending cuts that have hit Utah families. She tells Utahns to "ignore the hysteria" over the cuts and says she'd "like to see agencies do less with less" — even as those cuts hammer national parks, the IRS, and federal workers across the state.

But here's the part she'd rather you didn't know. For someone crusading against "government waste," Maloy has her own history with taxpayer dollars. Before Congress, she personally lobbied Utah lawmakers in 2019 to hand $300,000 in state money to a public-lands nonprofit she had helped launch and later led as president. Watchdog reporting found "scant evidence" of what the group actually accomplished — and it was quietly dissolved in 2023, right when she launched her run for Congress. Waste, it seems, is only a problem when someone else is spending the money.

What ties it all together

Sell off the public lands Utahns share, take the money from billionaires and big business, preach against "waste" while steering tax dollars to your own nonprofit. The theme running through all three is the gap between what Celeste Maloy says and who she actually works for. Utahns get to close that gap at the ballot box in 2026.

197 Republicans Voted to Spike Your Health Insurance Premiums

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

If you buy your own health insurance, your bill is about to jump. The extra help that millions of families use to afford their plans — the enhanced premium tax credits — expired at the end of 2025. Congress could have stopped that. Republicans had two chances. They blew both on purpose.

Here's what happened, and here's every Republican we track who made it happen.

Two votes, one result

First, the Senate. On December 11, 2025, the Senate took up a bill (S. 3385) to extend the very tax credits that keep insurance affordable. Republicans filibustered it. The motion to move forward failed 51–48 — it needed 60 votes — so the bill died without ever getting an up-or-down vote.

Then, the House. On December 17, 2025, House Republicans passed their own health bill, H.R. 6703, and gave it a friendly name: the "Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act." There was just one problem. It does not extend the expiring tax credits — the one thing that would actually keep premiums down for next year. The Congressional Budget Office found it would leave about 100,000 more people uninsured.

So one chamber blocked the fix, and the other passed a fake one. Same outcome: your costs go up.

What it costs you

This isn't a small change. If the tax credits go away, the amount families actually pay out of pocket for the same plan would more than double — about a 114% jump on average.

On top of that, insurance companies are raising their sticker prices about 26% for 2026. Put those together and a lot of people simply can't afford to stay covered. Enrollment is projected to fall from 22.3 million people in 2025 to around 17.5 million in 2026 — millions of Americans priced out of their own health insurance.

These are the people who get hit: small-business owners, farmers, early retirees, gig workers, and anyone who doesn't get insurance through a big employer. In other words, a huge share of the working families these members were elected to represent.

The "alternative" that wasn't

When you block the real fix, you need something to point to. That's what H.R. 6703 is for. It loosens the rules on "association health plans" — cheaper plans that don't have to cover all the benefits a normal plan does. It lets members go home and say they "voted to lower premiums." But the bill leaves the actual price hike in place, and the CBO says it covers fewer people, not more. It's a press release, not a solution.

The Senators who blocked the fix

These Republican senators we track voted to filibuster the extension and let your premiums climb:

Tommy Tuberville (Alabama)
Tom Cotton (Arkansas)
Ashley Moody (Florida)
Jim Risch (Idaho)
Roger Marshall (Kansas)
Cindy Hyde-Smith (Mississippi)
Pete Ricketts (Nebraska)
Jon Husted (Ohio)
Mike Rounds (South Dakota)
Bill Hagerty (Tennessee)
Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia)

The Representatives who voted for the fake fix

185 Republican House members we track voted to pass H.R. 6703 — the bill that slaps a "lower premiums" label on a plan that doesn't lower premiums:

Alabama: Dale Strong, 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
California: David Valadao, Jay Obernolte, 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, Byron Donalds, Carlos Gimenez, Cory Mills, Greg Steube, Gus Bilirakis, Jimmy Patronis, John Rutherford, Kat Cammack, Laurel Lee, Maria Elvira Salazar, Mario Diaz-Balart, Mike Haridopolos, Randy Fine
Georgia: Andrew Clyde, Brian Jack, Mike Collins, Rich McCormick, Rick Allen
Idaho: Mike Simpson, Russ Fulcher
Illinois: Darin LaHood, Mary Miller, 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, 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, Russell Fry, Sheri Biggs, William Timmons
Tennessee: Andy Ogles, 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

The bottom line

Every one of these members will tell you they care about the cost of living. But when a bill landed on their desk that would have kept health insurance affordable for millions of their own constituents, they killed it — and then voted for a knockoff designed to give them cover. The price hike is real. The "alternative" is not. And in 2026, the people paying double for their insurance get to remember exactly who chose that for them.

How they voted

Senate — S. 3385, Roll Call Vote 644 (Dec 11, 2025)
House — H.R. 6703, Roll Call Vote 349 (Dec 17, 2025)