You have a tech billionaire who has made billions of dollars off the U.S. taxpayers, has no allegiance to anyone, but himself (Trump falsely thinks he has it), no security clearance and has neo nazi leanings. He now has access to million of Americans personal information, bank accounts, home address, business ledgers and payments and much more. AND THAT DOESN’T BOTHER YOU?

You Congressman swore to protect the country against enemies foreign and domestic. You pledged an oath to this country and your electorate.

DO YOUR JOB!!!!

Bicameral Democratic majorities can subpoena ICE, put agents under oath, expose the waste, and claw back billions Republicans locked-in for the agency during the current Congress.

Heather Cox Richardson writes "It seems that Musk and the technology billionaires want to smash the government to enable their futuristic visions, and Christian Nationalists like Russell Vought want to smash it to replace it with religious rule. Trump wants to smash it for money and power. But in the first two weeks of the new administration, their enthusiasm for breaking things has produced what Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo—even before today’s frantic attempt to blame Democrats for the air tragedy—called “a fairly epic face plant.”

It is pathetic that the GOP 119th is enabling this BS and treating their oaths as optional.

A whole group of former federal employees are on the ballot for Congress. Make sure you VOTE!

List compiled by Government Executive of former career civilian federal employees who advanced to general elections in upcoming congressional midterm races. 

Chris Backemeyer 
Party: Democratic 
District: Nebraska’s 1st 
Opponent: Incumbent Republican Rep. Mike Flood 
Backemeyer is a former State Department official who previously told Government Executive that he resigned from the government because of DOGE. 
“They just wanted me to fire a lot of people. We were asked to basically pick 15%, and that's when I realized that I was playing by different rules,” he said. “I was trying to be faithful to the oath that I took to the Constitution. But there wasn't any mission or purpose left when DOGE came in. It was just about destruction and retribution. 

Zach Dembo 
Party: Democratic 
District: Kentucky’s 6th 
Opponent: Republican Ralph Alvarado (former state senator) 
Dembo is a Navy veteran and former federal prosecutor who worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and as an assistant U.S. attorney in Kentucky. He said that he resigned due to the Trump administration’s “politicization” of the DOJ. 
“The overt hostility toward all these hard-working men and women I knew in the FBI and DOJ was really galling and unpatriotic for me,” he told The New York Times. 

Alissa Ellman 
Party: Democratic 
District: New York’s 24th 
Opponent: Incumbent Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney 
Ellman is an Army veteran who said that she lost her job at the Veterans Affairs Department because of DOGE. 
“When you can be thrown out like yesterday’s garbage, that does not make people want to come and work for VA,” she said in an interview with MS NOW. “And it does not make people want to come and take the pay cut from the private sector to work for the federal government.” 

Sam Forstag 
Party: Democratic 
District: Montana’s 1st  
Opponent: Republican Aaron Flint (former GOP staffer and Army veteran) 
Forstag was a smokejumper for the Forest Service. As the former vice president for National Federal of Federal Employees Local 60, he criticized DOGE’s cuts to public land agencies. 
“What got me into this race was this misnamed Department of Government Efficiency, where at least in our state, in my agency, the Forest Service, they just about exclusively came after the lowest paid workers we’ve got,” he told the Montana Free Press. “The first round of firings from DOGE, it was 360 Montanans in the Forest Service, 80% of them making $19.70 an hour or less.”

Hillary Herzig
Party: Republican
District: New Jersey’s 6th
Opponent: Incumbent Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone Jr.
Herzig was a military spouse who worked at several agencies, including the departments of Agriculture, Defense and Homeland Security. 
“Being in a lot of crisis situations in public service, making important decisions and seeing the emotional effects of how granting citizenship, for instance, affects a human and their emotions, I believe that’s what has prepared me to serve my community,” she said in an interview with 710 WOR.  

Kristin Hook 
Party: Democratic 
District: Texas’ 21st 
Opponent: Mark Teixeira (former professional baseball player) 
Hook is a scientist who worked for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as well as the National Institutes of Health and Government Accountability Office. 
“I worked in the federal government. I know that it can be a powerful force for good — for consumers, for children, for families,” she said in an interview with KSAT 12. “Right now, it’s being weaponized against us.”

Michael Masuda
Party: Democratic 
District: California’s 5th 
Opponent: Incumbent Republican Rep. Tom McClintock 
Masuda is an engineer and former State Department officer. Running to represent his hometown, Masuda argued in an interview with The New York Times* *that working at an agency is ideal preparation for serving as a member of Congress. 
“We had to work across the federal government and understand how those other agencies operate, what they care about, what their priorities are and how to get things done in this very complicated, bureaucratic environment,” he said.

Karen Ortiz
Party: Independent 
District: New York’s 12th 
Opponents: Democrat Micah Lasher (state assemblyman) and Republican Caroline Shinkle (attorney) 
Ortiz was fired last year as an administrative judge for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after opposing an agency order to deprioritize gender identity discrimination cases.
“I may be an introvert, but I don’t stay quiet when I see harm being done,” she said in an interview with Marie Claire. 

Lauren Reinhold 
Party: Democratic 
District: Kansas’ 1st 
Opponent: Incumbent Republican Rep. Tracey Mann.  
Reinhold served in several different roles at the Social Security Administration and National Labor Relations Board. She decided to leave government after the Trump administration began implementing Schedule Policy/Career, which removed civil service protections from about 8,000 federal positions, and was motivated to run for Congress because of the Trump administration’s cuts to federal agencies. 
“I want to be an ambassador to restore trust in our federal services,” she previously said in an interview with Government Executive. “Get people to recognize the importance of federal services — the ways they depend on it, even if they don't agree with everything the way it's done. For the most part, people see my experience as good.”

Ceretta Smith 
Party: Democratic 
District: Georgia’s 12th 
Opponent: Incumbent Republican Rep. Rick Allen 
Smith is a former Army medic, city councilmember, and past president and member of American Federation of Government Employees Local 2017, which represents Army employees at Fort Gordon, who worked in the federal government for 24 years. 
In an interview with 13 WMAZ, she said that “understanding what our local federal government workers bring to our community and do” sets her apart as a candidate. 

Trina Swanson
Party: Democratic 
District: Minnesota’s 8th
Opponent: Incumbent Republican Rep. Pete Stauber 
Swanson previously worked for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, ultimately becoming the agency’s director of international operations. She told MinnPost* *that she left after the Trump administration pressured her “to do things I thought were unethical,” including checking the visa for the spouse of a nanny who worked for a DOGE official.

Why arent any of you or your committees doing anything? I hope we turn over every single seat in congress and you all lose your jobs. Republicans and dems both!!!

I don’t understand how this never gets brought up…

https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/hegseth-trump-mental-stability-video-b2967518.html

REPORTER: Tell me about your proposal to address the visa backlog through budget reconciliation.

RK: If you are an H1B visa holder today applying from a country like India, it will take 80 years to get your green card. That's unacceptable because these folks are essentially going to be unable to start businesses, buy homes, buy cars, employ Americans, and contribute to the prosperity of this country. Instead they’ll take their inventions and skills back home to compete with us to their home countries.

And so it doesn't make any sense. Especially given that we often train them and provide them with the skills and the know how in the first place.

And so we've got to bring these people here. We’ve got to keep hardworking, talented, entrepreneurial people here.

As an immigrant, this is a personal issue to me. This is our number one killer competitive app as a country: immigration,

No other country, not China, not any other country has anything like this.

REPORTER: Anything like the visa backlog or anything like the potential of immigrants?

RK: ...the potential to bring the best and the brightest from the rest of the world here and become Americans. And so that's why I feel so passionate about this issue. And I'm not going to stop. I'm going to keep pushing.

REPORTER: Do you see immigration reform as paying for part of the budget reconciliation?

I personally think it's a net positive.

We'll see how the CBO and others score this but my understanding is this is a net positive.

A study came out recently where they estimate $1 trillion in additional GDP over time from addressing the visa backlog. Why would you ever turn away a trillion dollars? You know, it's not like we have a trillion lying here and a trillion lying there. This is like real money that can really improve the lives of all Americans, not just the immigrants.

REPORTER: Beyond the parliamentarian, what are the political obstacles from including your proposal in the budget reconciliation?

From what I understand the majority of Americans want this to be included in the reconciliation process. They understand that we're just paralyzed right now, because of the culture wars. We got to get past the culture wars. You know why? Our legal immigration system is so messed up in this country, that it's no wonder that we drive people to desperation. We don't need to do that. We need to have a sane, rational legal immigration system through a comprehensive legal immigration reform process … to get the best and the brightest, the hardest working people here in this country, allow them to come out of the shadows, be legal, and pay taxes and grow our economy.

You know, one of the things that the census revealed just recently is that we had the slowest periods of growth in our population over the last 10 years. And what that means is that we don't have enough young workers over time supporting our social safety net powering our accounts with their talent ... so we’ve got to inject some vital energy and momentum into the economy and in my opinion, immigration is the source.

"So much of the blame for what’s happening belongs to our dysfunctional Congress. For years, it failed to accomplish anything to the point that Americans now cheer on a tyrannical executive branch merely because it seems able to execute on SOMETHING. People prefer action, even if it is chaotic/random, over sheer paralysis. We’d rather get in a car with a drunk driver than be stuck in the parking garage forever like that one episode of Seinfeld."

Source: It was never going to be me [The Rubesletter]

If you’re curious about how Congress is handling the budget take a look here at the bill

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/14/all-actions?r=1&s=6&q=%7B%22action-by%22%3A%22Senate%22%7D

The text for those curious

https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hconres14/BILLS-119hconres14pcs.pdf

Actions taken on the bill

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/14/all-actions?s=6&r=1

All Amendments

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/14/amendments?s=6&r=1

and Amendments NOT AGREED TO (I filtered to get these results)

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/14/amendments?r=1&s=6&q=%7B%22status%22%3A%22Senate+amendment+not+agreed+to%22%7D

These votes happened last night in case you were wondering and no one seems to be talking about it for some reason.

UPDATE

I’m really glad people are taking interest and stopping by, but I’ll be honest, I’m still chipping away at reading the bill as well

If you want a TLDR pop the text into AI software and ask it to summarize it. I’m glad you all are asking question but I do this research on my own time to educate myself and others, but it doesn’t mean I have all the answers

I work a full time job where I don’t have access to Reddit, and political text has nothing to do with my job, so I don’t have much time to help out with these requests

But please realize the reason why people are not informed better is because they rather watch addicting new than read the bill. So please try with me and collectively we’ll be more educated on how to read these bills

The First Amendment Accountability Act (H.R. 162) just dropped, and it lets you sue federal employees for violating your First Amendment rights. It can be quite alarming if I do say so....

• You can take federal employees to court if they violate your rights.

• Covers free speech, religion, press, assembly, etc.

• Courts can even award attorney’s fees if you win.

This feels like a way to attack federal workers and it is an entirely red republican bill with no backing from the left. Moreover, it has been modified recently after being introduced a month ago....

Sources:
https://www.billtracks.fyi/chat?packageID=BILLS-119hr162ih
https://www.billtracks.fyi/bill?displayID=BILLS-119hr162ih&packageID=119hr162
https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/BILLS-119hr162ih

Hi everyone. Pablo here. Below I post all 16 documents I found in a shiny blue folder stamped "United States Senate" on Tuesday afternoon in the Senate Refectory. Redacted in black acrylic paint are phone numbers and addresses. Support this work by subscribing to Capitol.press (or buy me a beer on Venmo / Cash App.).

• NEWSWEEK: Ted Cruz Documents Leak: Everything We Know

To Those Entrusted With Power, and to Those Who Report on It.

This is a letter written not in anger alone, but in alarm and sadness.

American democracy is not dying quietly— It is being recklessly dismantled.

The Constitution, which members of Congress swear to defend, is being slowly suffocated in plain view. Norms are ignored, laws are bent or selectively enforced, and armed or empowered agents of the state are deployed in ways that would have once been unthinkable in a free society.

And yet, Congress largely sits on its hands. Amid indifference and excuses.

Where there should be forceful oversight, there is silence. Where there should be public accountability, there is partisan calculation. Where there should be courage, there is career preservation. The legislative branch—designed to be a coequal check on executive overreach—has instead become a passive observer while constitutional boundaries are mocked and trampled by government goons operating with impunity.

This is a failure of will.

To elected representatives: You will not be remembered for what you said you believed, but for what you did when it mattered. Many of you will be footnotes—names attached to the moment democracy faltered because of your complicity. Future generations will ask why, when the warning signs were unmistakable, you stood by and did nothing.

To the media: A free press is not meant to manage outrage cycles; it is meant to confront power with truth, relentlessly and without fear. Democracy does not collapse only through force—it collapses through normalization. When spectacle replaces scrutiny.

Democracy is not guaranteed.

The Constitution is not optional.

History is not fooled by speeches, press releases, or performative outrage.

Democracy does not die alone in darkness. Sometimes it dies under bright lights, while everyone watches, and those who could have stopped it chose not to.

Concerned Citizen