In 2000 the South Carolina Senate voted 36 to 7 to take the Confederate battle flag off the Statehouse dome. Joe Wilson was one of the seven — and he's kept voting that way in Congress ever since.
Before Orthodox Christian clergy showed up on Capitol Hill, Wilson sent Pam Bondi a letter asking the Justice Department to look into their church — and told his colleagues not to meet with them. A South Carolina Republican called it 'actual Soviet stuff.'
In December 2003, Essie Mae Washington-Williams revealed she was Strom Thurmond's daughter. South Carolina's Joe Wilson said he didn't believe her, called it 'unseemly,' and said she should have kept quiet. Days later the Thurmond family confirmed her story.
Food, rent, electricity, healthcare - in America we should be able to afford these basic necessities of life without going bankrupt.
Joe Wilson has supported the current administration's tariffs and other policies which have led to:
Half of all Americans struggling to afford groceries
47% struggling to afford their utility bills
47% struggling to afford healthcare
48% struggling to afford housing
1 in 4 Americans saying they have skipped a medical checkup due to affordability
23% skipping a prescription dose
Gas prices skyrocketing
South Carolina's auto industry gets hit coming and going. Manufacturers here mostly build for export — South Carolina-made cars went to Germany ($3.9 billion), South Korea ($1.3 billion) and Belgium ($1 billion) in 2024 — while the parts to build them come from Mexico ($2.9 billion) and Germany ($2 billion). "They're seeing increased cost on the production side, as well as lower demand from their consumer base, so it can hurt them in both ways," University of South Carolina economist Joey Von Nessen told the SC Daily Gazette. A Clemson University economist estimated the 25% tariff on foreign-made auto parts would raise the cost of a car built and sold in the U.S. by $3,000 to $7,000.
It is not only cars. Boeing's North Charleston plant, which assembles the 787 Dreamliner, relies on a global supply chain, and University of South Carolina economist William Hauk warns that steel and aluminum tariffs are "particularly troublesome for aircraft manufacturers." He also notes the money goes to Washington, not Columbia: "While the federal government may raise revenues from tariffs, the state government will not."
And South Carolinians pay for it at the register. A Yale University study found the tariffs would cost the average American household $2,400 in 2025, with shoes 39% more expensive and apparel 37% more expensive in the short run — and the overall consumer tariff rate of 18.6% was the highest since 1933, in the middle of the Great Depression.
We are feeling this directly in our wallets. What is Joe Wilson doing about that? Making things worse. We deserve better.
We all deserve access to quality healthcare so we can live healthy and productive lives.
Joe Wilson disagrees:
He voted to cut more than $1 trillion in federal health care and food assistance as part of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act"
He voted to let ACA tax credits expire, increasing health costs for millions of Americans, driving many of them to switch to cheaper plans or abandon health insurance coverage altogether. And the less people there are with coverage, the higher the rest of our premiums will be.
He wants to repeal the ACA, reduce Medicare and Medicaid spending, and add work requirements to Medicaid.
Wants to Gut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security
Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security aren't handouts. They're earned benefits that we pay into out of every single paycheck, our entire working lives, so that we can see a doctor, take care of our parents, and retire with dignity instead of going bankrupt when we get old or sick.
For years, Joe Wilson and his party have been quietly laying the groundwork to gut these programs. Now they've said the quiet part out loud.
They admitted the plan. Speaker Mike Johnson told the "Moon Griffon Show" that "entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and things like Social Security ... have to be adjusted and fixed," and that "We have a plan to do that next year ... desperate times call for desperate measures."
We know what the plan looks like. The Republican Study Committee — a caucus of more than 170 House Republicans that includes Speaker Johnson and his top three deputies in leadership — released a budget calling for raising the Social Security retirement age for future retirees and converting Medicare into a privatized "premium support" model that would hand seniors over to for-profit insurance companies.
They already started. The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that Joe Wilson supported cut roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid to help pay for tax cuts for the richest 1 percent.
Even Republicans admit what "reform" means. Sen. Josh Hawley, on the push to "address" and "reform" these programs: "That's usually code for 'cut.' I'm not in favor of that."
It's a broken promise. Donald Trump pledged in 2024, "I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare." Joe Wilson and his party are now preparing to do exactly that.
These programs are a promise: work hard, pay in your whole life, and your country will be there for you when you need it. Joe Wilson wants to break that promise so he can keep cutting taxes for billionaires. We deserve better.
Cut Taxes for the Rich, While Making the Rest of Us Pay For It
We all need to pay our fair share to the government so it can provide the services that benefit all of us.
But billionaires in the U.S. pay a smaller tax rate than most teachers and nurses. That's not fair.
The wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the U.S. paid an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2 percent. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13 percent.
23 of the largest and most profitable companies in the US paid no federal corporate income taxes from 2018-2022. And 109 corporations paid zero federal tax in at least one of those years.
The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that Joe Wilson supported will reduce taxes for the top 1 percent of taxpayers by more than $1 trillion over the next decade, while raising taxes for the poorest Americans.
Joe Wilson is on the side of the billionaires and big business. We deserve better.
We all deserve clean air, clean water, and a healthy planet to live on.
Joe Wilson has supported the repealing and rolling back of environmental protections and climate change regulations, all so that billionaires and big business can plunder natural resources and destroy our environment in the name of profit.
Is Intentionally Wrecking Our Public Schools and Our Kids' Futures
Nine out of ten American children — 49.6 million of them — go to a public school. It's where they learn to read, where they eat breakfast and lunch, where kids with disabilities are guaranteed an education by law, and where a kid from any family, rich or poor, religious or not, gets a fair shot.
Joe Wilson and his party are taking that apart on purpose: draining public school money into private and religious schools, pushing one religion into everybody else's classrooms, and shutting down the federal department that is supposed to look out for our kids.
He voted to create the first national private school voucher in American history. It is hidden inside the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act." You give up to $1,700 a year to a charity that hands out private school scholarships, and the government gives you back every penny you gave on your taxes. It costs you nothing — no other tax break in the country works that way. Each person is capped at $1,700, but any number of people can do it, so there is no limit on what it drains from the Treasury. It starts January 1, 2027. Congress's own scorekeepers say $26 billion over ten years; one tax research group says as much as $51 billion every year — more than the government spends on Title I ($18.4 billion) for poor schools and IDEA ($14.6 billion) for kids with disabilities combined. And "low-income" means a family earning three times what a normal family in their area earns still qualifies — in some places, $500,000 a year.
They are giving away our tax dollars to families who are already wealthy and were never in public school to begin with. Every state that has tried it gets the same result — the money goes to people already paying private tuition: 95% of Arkansas voucher users never attended a public school. In Florida's first year of universal vouchers, 69% of new recipients were already in private school and only 13% had ever set foot in a public one. In Iowa, two-thirds were already in private school. We aren't rescuing kids from bad schools — we're cutting checks to families who never needed them, with the money coming out of the schools 90% of our kids actually attend.
And the kids who do switch end up doing worse. Four careful studies found the same thing. In Washington, DC, voucher kids fell behind in math. In Louisiana, a student who started in the middle of the class dropped to the bottom third in math after three years. Indiana and Ohio found the same. Kids with disabilities lost the most.
The money goes to religious schools that can turn our kids away. Ohio now spends nearly $1 billion a year on vouchers, the vast majority going to Catholic and evangelical schools — schools that, unlike public schools, can reject your child over their religion, their disability, or who their parents are, or for ANY REASON AT ALL with almost no accountability for the public money they take. Many have simply raised tuition to capture the vouchers instead of enrolling more students.
The governor has proposed $61 million to put 5,000 more students on vouchers, and South Carolina has opted in to the federal program. $61 million of state money, for 5,000 kids. Every dollar of it is a dollar the General Assembly doesn't put into the public schools where the overwhelming majority of South Carolina's children — roughly 9 in 10 nationally — actually sit.
Our public schools took generations to build, and they are the one institution that has to take every single child who walks in the door. Joe Wilson is helping tear them down and hand the pieces to private interests. Our kids will pay for it for the rest of their lives. We deserve better.
A good job where we can make a living to support our families, own a home, and have a good life. That's the American Dream.
Joe Wilson supports policies and an administration that are turning the American Dream into a nightmare.
There were 20.8 million layoffs in the U.S. in 2025
55% of employed Americans say they're concerned about losing their jobs
The unemployment rate is 4.2%
In 2025 the U.S. economy averaged just 15,000 jobs added per month, a dramatic decrease from the monthly average of 125,000 the year before Trump took office.
Overall employment for workers without college degrees fell by 361,000 jobs from January to September 2025.
58,000 net manufacturing jobs have been lost from April, when the administration announced "Liberation Day" tariffs, to September 2025.
Works for Billionaires, Big Business & Special Interests and Not for Us
Our elected officials should work for us, the people.
Joe Wilson works for the weapons industry and foreign-policy money, not for us. He sits on both the Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee — so he votes on the defense budget and on the foreign policy it serves. AIPAC has put $141,854 into his campaign this cycle, and Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Honeywell fund him from the other side of the same equation. Look at who some of his top funders are:
Pro-Israel PACs, led by AIPAC — $405,073
The weapons makers before his Armed Services Committee: Boeing ($34,000), Honeywell ($34,000) and Northrop Grumman
Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina — $38,500 from its PAC
Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough — $40,000 from the South Carolina law and lobbying firm
Aflac — $37,500 from the insurer
People at The Capital Corp
Joe Wilson is funded by billionaires, big business and special interests. No wonder he's not doing anything to improve OUR lives. We deserve better.
Let Elon Musk and DOGE Cut More Than $291 MILLION from South Carolina
We all want a government that works for us as efficiently and effectively as possible. Unfortunately our government doesn't always work that way, so reform is badly needed. Given how big and complicated the government is, it's a tough problem that needs well-thought out solutions, so that we don't make things worse.
That's not what we got.
Joe Wilson stood idly by while billionaire and ketamine-addled chaos monkey Elon Musk and his DOGE goons chainsawed their way through the U.S. government, promising to save the government at least $2 trillion annually in waste, fraud and abuse. Because they had no idea what they were doing and no one to stop them, in the end our government suffered, people suffered, South Carolina suffered, government spending actually went UP and Elon Musk became even richer.
Elon Musk and DOGE:
Had access to and exfiltrated (stole) all our sensitive personal information.
Kneecapped the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had returned over $26 billion to the American people since 2011.
Attempted to cut $4 billion in funding for medical research.
Will cost the federal government an estimated $500 billion in lost tax revenue (that could pay for programs for us), due to cuts at the IRS.
Laid waste to the employees at several government departments, removing their top experts and most skilled practitioners, and making their services less effective for all of us. This badly affected veterans, who make up 30% of the federal workforce.
We'd like to thank you, Joe Wilson, for doing absolutely nothing while an unelected South African big tech billionaire took a chainsaw to vital U.S. government functions and completely failed to make the government more efficient. We deserve better.
As a member of Congress, part of Joe Wilson's job is to act as a check and balance to the executive branch. He and his fellow members of Congress from South Carolina have completely abdicated their responsibility. These spineless cowards are rubber stamping everything Donald Trump wants to do, no matter how crazy, dangerous or harmful. And we've seen the results. We deserve better.
Protected Pedophiles by Blocking Release of the Epstein Files
Jeffrey Epstein ran a global sex trafficking network that sexually abused dozens of girls and women for decades. The FBI identified at least 35 minors with similar abuse histories. When finally released in 2026, the files — over 3 million pages, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images — revealed what UN human rights experts called "disturbing and credible evidence" of a possible global criminal enterprise. Those experts said some of the conduct may meet the threshold for crimes against humanity, including sexual slavery, torture, and enforced disappearance.
For months, House Republican leadership blocked every vote to release these files — and Joe Wilson went along.
We deserve to feel safe in our neighborhoods, schools, and places of worship.
In order to do that, we need to take real steps to prevent gun violence. And despite what we've been told, it is possible to support the 2nd Amendment and support common-sense gun safety laws at the same time. But Joe Wilson has opposed bipartisan gun safety laws, while offering meaningless thoughts and prayers every time there's a new mass shooting.
A child or adolescent is killed with a gun every 2 hours and 48 minutes in the U.S.
Age-adjusted firearm homicide rates in the U.S. are 33 times greater than in Australia and 77 times greater than in Germany
Every day, 125 Americans are killed with guns, and more than 200 are shot and wounded
Women in the U.S. are 28 times more likely to be killed with a gun than women in other high-income countries.
South Carolina has one of the highest gun death rates in the nation — 19.5 per 100,000 people, about 52% higher than the national average, with around 1,100 people dying from gun violence every year.
Joe Wilson is OK with our kids dying, as long as he has his guns. We deserve better.
America is the land of FREEDOM. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to start a business, freedom to choose your own career path, freedom to make your own medical decisions, freedom to raise your children according to your values, and freedom to pursue happiness. Freedom is what makes America great.
Unless you're a woman and you're making the deeply personal decision about whether to have a baby or not. A decision that will dramatically affect the rest of your life. In that case Joe Wilson thinks that your freedom doesn't matter and that the government should get to control your body. That's not freedom, that's tyranny.
Joe Wilson:
Opposed Roe v. Wade
Supported federal efforts to ban abortion
Attacked Planned Parenthood throughout his career
Here in South Carolina, abortion is banned after about 6 weeks — before many women even know they're pregnant. Abortions in the state fell from 8,187 in 2023 to 3,025 in 2024, and a clinic reported that 75% of people seeking care had to be turned away for being too far along.
Arkansas House of Representatives candidate (and pastor) Robb Ryerse stated it well: "Abortion should remain safe and legal. These are personal decisions best made by patients, their doctors, and their faith — not politicians. You don't have to agree with every decision someone makes to believe they should be free to make it. That's what personal liberty means." Almost 2/3 of Americans agree and believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But Joe Wilson thinks he knows better, and doesn't believe that we should have the freedom to make our own decisions. We deserve better.
In America our vote represents our will. It gives us the power to make the change that we want to see in the world.
Unfortunately that's not a sentiment that Joe Wilson's billionaire and big business donors can stomach. Because when we have voting power, we use it to make our lives better, and they lose power. Read about all the ways they're trying to take away our voting power on our about page, then come back here.
Joe Wilson has opposed legislation to make voting easier while supporting the SAVE Act, which would force every single American citizen to prove their citizenship status in person when registering to vote or updating their voter registration information. For the vast majority of Americans, this would mean presenting a passport or birth certificate at their local election office. This would disenfranchise millions of U.S. citizens: 146 million Americans do not have a passport, and 69 million women who have married do not have a birth certificate that matches their new legal name. Working-class and low-income Americans would also be disproportionately disenfranchised if the bill became law, as the vast majority of these groups do not possess a passport.
YOU HAVE POWER. Why else do you think Joe Wilson and his bosses are working so hard to take it away? Don't let them. We deserve better.
Whether white, black, or brown, we should all be able to live in America and exercise our constitutional rights without fear that law enforcement will turn on us.
But the current administration has created a secret police force that is abusing their power against anyone who stands in their way, U.S. citizen or not. They claim to be going after "the worst of the worst", but are taking daycare workers, day laborers, grandmas and kids who are valued members of our communities. And Joe Wilson, staunch defender of the Second Amendment to fight back against government tyranny, is doing nothing while the government tyrannizes us.
ProPublica:They describe the legions of masked immigration officers operating in near-total anonymity on the orders of the president as the crossing of a line that had long set the United States apart from the world's most repressive regimes. ICE, in their view, has become an unfettered and unaccountable national police force.
ProPublica:Accosting people outside of their immigration court hearings where they're showing up and trying to do the right thing and then hauling them off to an immigration jail in the middle of the country where they can't access loved ones or speak to counsel. Bands of masked men apprehending people in broad daylight in the streets and hauling them off. Disappearing people to a third country, to a prison where there's a documented record of serious torture and human rights abuse.
New York Times:Masked and heavily armed, ICE agents are sent to cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis to terrorize immigrant communities and brutalize people who challenge their efforts to stop and detain anyone deemed suspicious. To expand its reach, ICE greatly lowered its recruitment standards, effectively enlisting anyone who cares to sign up. To attract new officers, ICE advertises the chance to do violence to people deemed "enemies" of the United States, likening civil immigration enforcement to a war on a dangerous, alien force. The result is an agency whose agents' first recourse appears to be violence or the threat of violence.
They are executing American citizens. On January 7, 2026 an ICE agent in Minneapolis murdered an American citizen, a mother of 3, by shooting her in the face as she tried to drive away. Then the killer walked away, and our government lied and tried to gaslight us about what happened. Decent politicians condemned the murder. What did Joe Wilson have to say? Nothing.
They are executing American citizens: Part 2. On January 24, 2026 ICE agents in Minneapolis murdered an American citizen, a 37 year old ICU nurse, who was filming their activity and trying to help others. Then our government lied and tried to gaslight us about what happened.
And the list of the dead keeps growing. ICE agents — on duty and off — keep killing members of our communities, while Joe Wilson says nothing:
On December 31, 2025, an off-duty ICE officer in Northridge, Los Angeles shot and killed Keith Porter Jr., a 43-year-old U.S. citizen and father of two who was born and raised in Compton. Federal officials called it self-defense against an "active shooter," but Porter's family says he was peacefully returning home and never posed a threat — and witnesses reported only three shots, matching his autopsy and contradicting claims of an exchange of gunfire.
On July 7, 2026, an ICE officer in Houston shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three and small-business owner who had lived in the U.S. for 35 years. Agents had been hunting a different white van. Harris County's medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, and his co-workers disputed ICE's claim that he used his vehicle as a weapon.
On July 13, 2026, an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine shot and killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian father who was legally authorized to work in the U.S. and supported his wife and 3-year-old daughter by delivering food and cleaning a veterinary clinic. He was not the target of ICE's warrant — agents were looking for someone else — and were not wearing body cameras. Even Maine's Republican Senator Susan Collins urged DHS to halt non-urgent vehicle stops in the state.
If ICE can murder innocent U.S. citizens without repercussions, what could they do to you? ICE is out of control and a danger to us all - no one is safe. What's Joe Wilson going to do about it? Absolutely nothing. We deserve better.
Voted for the Unnecessary and Unpopular War in Iran
War destroys human lives, families and innocent people, causes economic ruin, and triggers immense suffering. War should always be the option of last resort.
In order to distract from the Epstein Files, Donald Trump started an illegal war of choice with Iran, and now:
We are being dog-walked by Israel, who has been trying to convince presidents to attack Iran forever, and finally found one dumb enough to do so
Pro-Israel PACs, led by AIPAC, have given Joe Wilson $405,073.
The American people don't want this war with Iran. But Joe Wilson supports this madness and voted against the War Powers Resolution that would have stopped it. Does Joe Wilson work for Israel or the people of South Carolina? We deserve better.
Avoids His Constituents and Refuses to Hold In-Person Town Halls
Good leaders meet with their constituents and have town halls where citizens can voice concerns, ask questions, and provide input on policies. Joe Wilson doesn't want to hear what we have to say. He only wants to talk to his rich donors or people who agree with him.
It wasn't the first time. In 2002, on a live C-SPAN broadcast, Wilson insisted that the U.S. providing Iraq with chemical and biological weapons in the 1980s was "made up" and told Rep. Bob Filner, "This hatred of America by some people is just outrageous. And you need to get over that." Over the next minute he accused Filner of harboring "hatred of America" four more times, of being "hateful" three times, and of being "viscerally anti-American."
Hates Democracy and Tried to Steal the 2020 Election
Joe Wilson signed the Supreme Court brief backing Texas's lawsuit to throw out the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — arguing that state legislatures, not the voters, should decide who got those electoral votes
Just hours after the Capitol attack, Wilson voted to reject Biden's Electoral College win in both Arizona and Pennsylvania — working to overturn a free and fair election
While South Carolina families struggle to afford groceries, look at what Wilson has been working on. In February 2025 he introduced the "Donald J. Trump $250 Bill Act" — a bill to print Trump's face on a new $250 bill, rewriting a 19th-century law that bans living people from appearing on U.S. currency. In his own words: "Bidenflation has destroyed the economy forcing American families to carry more cash... The most valuable bill for the most valuable President!"
He didn't just vote to keep it — he defended the Confederacy itself. Pushing back on comparisons between the flag and Nazi imagery, Wilson told BBC News: "That's offensive to me that they would take my heritage and make it into a Holocaust era type description. I find that very offensive, and it's not true." He went on to say that "the Southern heritage, the Confederate heritage is very honorable."
We're all going to pay the price for this with increased rates of asthma, cancer, and premature deaths. We deserve better.
