Shahid Buttar

Yesterday, the future took several steps backwards in Texas. We write to observe some patterns that you won't hear about from most news sources.

The latest mass shooting left 21 young people dead at an elementary school in a mostly Latino neighborhood outside San Antonio, just a week after a white supremacist murdered 10 Black shoppers in a grocery store in Buffalo, NY.

On the very same day that schoolchildren were executed en masse in Texas, local voters went to the polls for a runoff election in the 28th congressional district. Rather than embrace progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros, voters chose incumbent Henry Cuellar—a corporate Democrat backed by the National Rife Association who has also openly opposed abortion rights.

Can you join us today to continue the battle to hold corporate Democrats accountable? The movement may have lost a battle in Texas last night, but the class war pitting Wall Street against the rest of us continues, whether we like it or not.

Several patterns demand observation.

First, Cuellar's margin of victory was absurdly fragile. Based on last night's preliminary results, he exceeded Cisneros by less than 200 votes, in an election in which over 50,000 people voted.

In that context, Nancy Pelosi's outrageous support for Cuellar played a crucial role in keeping Cisneros out of the House, undermining widespread calls for both gun control and reproductive freedom.

While the press is reporting on last night's election as a Cuellar victory, or as a Cisneros loss, it's ultimately a victory for Pelosi, Wall Street, and the corruption of the past as it continues to undermine any hope for the future.

That's why it's important to hold leadership—who many other voices appear unwilling to name—accountable. And there's only one way to do that.

Are you outraged by the hypocrisy of leading Democrats who support Republican policies? You should be—but outrage is not enough. Can you join us today to reach more voters and inform them about ongoing patterns that the press refuses to observe?

Many voices across the country, from Bernie Sanders and Our Revolution to Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement, rallied around Cisneros. They remained unwilling, however, to challenge Pelosi or hold her accountable for backing Cuellar.

Their deference to the leadership, as much as anything else, cost Cisneros the election.

That deference is ultimately rooted in timidity. As a voice willing to embrace challenges from which others continue to shrink, it's sad to witness—though also predictable.

The strategy articulated by Justice Democrats, for example, focuses on identifying low turnout districts that theoretically present low-hanging electoral fruit. As we witnessed last night, however, party leaders can still lean on the scale in powerful ways, suggesting that focusing exclusively on low turnout races is a fool's errand.

Cisneros won over 22,000 votes last night. In AOC's 2018 primary victory, she won over 16,000.

In 2020, we won over 33,000 votes in the jungle primary and then 81,000 votes in November to end the Pelosi dynasty. We did that despite headwinds unrivaled by another campaign in the country, including a public character assassination relying on racial tropes in which the entire San Francisco Democratic Party—and every white writer in our city who covers politics—remains actively complicit.

Every single organization that supported Cisneros continues to bow to Pelosi, yet we won nearly four times as many votes in 2020 without their support.

Can you join us today to get guns off the street; defend the rights of women, girls, and trans folks; and end the era of corporate corruption in Washington? Outrage may be righteous—but without action, it does nothing to shift the future.

When corporate politicians feign concern over problems that they helped create, it's important to observe their hypocrisy and hold them accountable. We've watched organizations from labor unions to press outlets, however, foolishly resign accountability to throw their support behind unapologetic hypocrites.

When United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) recently endorsed Pelosi, they didn't just sell out their rank & file. They sold out kids around the country who have grown rightfully terrified of school because their lives are at risk due to the choices of self-serving politicians.

Every journalist who ever quotes Pelosi—without observing her history of ducking debates and smearing her opponents—plays into the pattern. Every "progressive" organization that continues to defer to Pelosi, from Progressive Democrats of America and Our Revolution to the Sunrise Movement and Dramatic Socialites of America, continues to undermine their own stated principles because they lack the courage of their convictions.

Some of us are willing to walk our talk, and my history proves how different I am from the prevaricators whose words fall on the shoals of their fears. We're confronting a powerful oligarch who already co-opted many others who mouth support for our principles. Can you take action today to help us shift the landscape?

Days like yesterday are tough for all of us. Mourning tragic events, while watching ignorance eclipse opportunities to do anything to stem the tide, might feel like a reason to feel dejected.

We encourage you to lean into your outrage instead—and then to go further, by taking action to challenge corruption.

Thanks for standing with us as we continue to walk where others talk!

Your voice,
Shahid

PS -- If you want to help but aren't in a position to consider a financial contribution, please sign up to volunteer with us! Your time can make a big difference from wherever you live.

This week, Congress approved another $40 billion of weapons purchases. That’s twice the amount it would have taken to end homeless across the United States.

Half a million Americans live without housing. Congress made an affirmative choice to abandon their needs, prioritizing the profits of weapons manufacturers first.

Would you rather see our city’s voice in Washington working to establish a right to housing than selling weapons abroad?

The human rights crisis in Ukraine is real. The Pentagon—enabled by Congress—also helped instigate it.

Meanwhile, at least 20 Members of Congress are personally invested in the publicly traded stocks of weapons manufacturers, positioning them to personally profit from their decisions.

This is worse than mere corruption. This is corruption enabling international conflict.

Would you rather see San Francisco’s voice in Washington advocating for a ban on congressional insider trading to stem this corrupting corporate influence on Congress, or instead embodying that corruption?

Since Pelosi is continuing to duck debates—for the 35th year in a row—we’ve been forced to get creative in exposing her record and the alternative that we present.

Our latest volunteer-led project is a video comparing our comments and perspectives on insider trading by Members of Congress.

The video is available on YouTube, as well as Facebook and Twitter, and we encourage you to share it on whichever platforms you use.

Can you consider a campaign contribution today to help us inform more voters about the contrasts between their choices on the ballot? Your support makes a crucial difference as we work around the continuing media whiteout.

Thanks for standing with us and helping defend the future from the failures of the past!

Your voice,
Shahid

Whether your mother's still in your life, or has instead already moved beyond this one, we wish you a healthy and insightful Mothers Day.

While many celebrate Mothers Day as a celebration of mothers, it began as a commemoration of interests shared by mothers around the world. Advocate Julia Ward Howe wrote a Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870, almost two generations before Mothers Day became an official holiday in the U.S.

Can you join us today so that we can stand taller in Julia Ward Howe's footsteps and help educate more voters previously unaware of how the corporate Democratic Party actively undermines its stated values under its current leadership?

Julia Ward Howe wrote:

“Arise, then… women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage,
for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: Disarm, Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
nor violence vindicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
at the summons of war,
let women now leave all that may be left of home
for a great and earnest day of council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means
whereby the great human family can live in peace,
each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality,
may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient,
and at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
to promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
the amicable settlement of international questions,
the great and general interests of peace.“

~ Julia Ward Howe

Join us today to send a voice to Washington who has stood with mothers who prefer peace over militarism, to help end the cycle of corrupt weapons contracting that continues to drive conflict around the world!

I am often driven to consider the families left behind in the wake of Washington's bombs.

It's those mothers, from Laos to Yemen, and from Nicaragua to Afghanistan—and their counterparts who our country's corporate weapons drove to early graves—who I remember on Mothers Day.

That's why this isn't a day I particularly think of as "happy."

Thankfully, my mother died peacefully from natural causes. She had access to medical care throughout the illness that eventually took her from us in 2016. I held her hand in the moments that she left us, and feel as close to her now as I did when she was alive. My memories of her are generally joyful.

But she didn't raise me to think only of myself, or of her.

Too many today have been forced to mourn either their mothers, or their children, or others in their family denied the basic right to healthcare, or subjected to predatory policing, or sacrificed in a war for Wall Street.

Too many more are poised to mourn in the future if we don't force change on Washington now.

Can you join us today to finally help bring the cycle of misery and destruction to an end? We'd rather spend the $33 billion Congress is currently considering for weapons on ending homelessness and child poverty instead.

It's tough to think of mothers today, in 2022, without considering the women across the U.S. living in fear of being forced to bring unwanted pregnancies to term should the Supreme Court ultimately issue a majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization aligned with the one that was recently leaked.

This is a frustrating moment for many reasons, not the least of which is that Democrats could have stopped this from happening in any number of ways. Pelosi could have passed a bill to codify Roe when Democrats held both the Senate and the House, but she chose other priorities. She could have at least delayed the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, but she chose instead to defer, while Sen. Dianne Feinstein outrageously described her confirmation hearings as among the proudest moments of her career!

We need not accept congressional complicity. I first suggested last week in an interview with Katie Halper, and explored again with Mutiny Radio yesterday, a strategy for blue states to escalate resistance to the Supreme Court’s demagoguery and force the Court to reconsider its reactionary assault on fundamental rights.

When North Carolina passed a bill in 2016 to marginalize trans community members by restricting their access to public restrooms assigned to their chosen gender, allies elsewhere responded by passing boycotts. Artists refused to perform. Corporations relocated their conferences. North Carolina paid an economic price for choosing to discriminate, and ultimately stepped back from its previous stance within a year.

If blue states pass boycott bills pledging to prohibit public spending within states that deny women’s rights, the economic impacts of the 2016 boycotts targeting North Carolina would pale by comparison. If California leads, other states would likely follow. That strategy would threaten interstate commerce and capital, which are the only things to which Washington shows any loyalty.

Can you support our campaign today? With less than a month before the jungle primary on June 7 to replace a conservative Democrat complicit in the rise of the right wing, your support could not come at a more crucial time.

I’m eager to serve in Washington as a representative of San Francisco, and the visionary values that once inspired our city to lead the progressive movement. But even without a seat in Congress, I've built a long history of building grassroots action opportunities to hold institutional power accountable.

I wish that history were less relevant today, and hope that your celebration of mothers can include a reflection on the concerns that have united so many of them for so long across so many countries.

Your voice,
Shahid

Trigger warning: This email will address the Supreme Court's attacks on the rights of women, girls, non-binary, and trans folks.

I'm outraged by the news out of Washington—but I'm not surprised.

Join us later today at the federal building near Civic Center to raise our voices in defense of reproductive liberty and the right of women to control their own bodies!

Some of us saw today's attacks on Roe v. Wade coming well over a decade ago. I published a proposal in 2008 to stop it, and am running for office to remove an incumbent complicit in the rise of the right-wing Supreme Court and finally implement that plan in Congress.

The right to control one's own body is fundamental. No government has any right to dictate the terms of pregnancies, or to impede healthcare or family planning decisions, including the choice to have an abortion.

It’s a matter of self-control, and respect for individuals to make their own choices and live their own lives.

It's also a matter of appropriate limits on the role of the state, and the reeking hypocrisy of right-wing voices—including multiple Justices of the Supreme Court—who mouth empty words about "liberty" and "conservative" values while launching reactionary attacks on rights on which hundreds of millions of Americans depend.

That’s why we’ve warned for years that Roe was at risk, starting in 2007 when the Supreme Court overruled it—without admitting it had done so—in Gonzales v. Carhart. In the words of Pamela Karlan, the Court “circumruled” Roe, effectively overruling it through circumvention.

This afternoon, we're converging on the federal building at 450 Golden Gate at 5pm to raise our voices in defense of reproductive liberty, and the rights of women, girls, non-binary, and trans folks to control their own bodies. Join us!

When the Supreme Court decided Carhart in 2007, few voices in the press mustered the insight to observe the broader implications of the ruling. Most journalists lack the independence to critically examine the institutions on which they report, reducing them to covering what the Justices admit to doing, rather than the reality of their rulings and their functional impact on the ground.

My views of law and policy are informed by legal realism. It remains painfully absent across most of the institutional landscape: most policymakers distract themselves—and voters—with buzzwords. But I pay too much attention to policy, jurisprudence, and history to be distracted by political theater.

That’s why, over a decade ago, I proposed a way for Congress to check and balance the Supreme Court in order to constrain its arbitrariness and offer greater protections for our rights.

Want a voice in Congress that sees problems coming ten years in advance? I’ve been seeing the future for twenty years, and doing everything possible to defend it from the past. Join us today at the federal building!

Before explaining the solution that I offered over a decade ago, it’s worth examining the record of the incumbent who we’re challenging in the upcoming election.

Nancy Pelosi has been the Speaker of the House at two different points in our nation’s history. When she led the House a decade ago, she chose not to codify Roe v Wade, deferring to Obama’s decision to de-prioritize that campaign promise. While the House more recently did vote to codify Roe, it did so only after the Senate was co-opted by the partisan gridlock that has made it a graveyard for everything from economic stimulus plans to proposals for worker rights, civil rights, voting rights, and more.

That’s not all. In addition to slow-walking the codification of reproductive liberty, Pelosi has also taken political positions undermining it, by endorsing anti-choice conservatives in races against progressive women who favor the right to choose. That’s a pattern that has recurred for several years, and continues in 2022: Pelosi recently endorsed Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), who faces an impending run-off in a challenge from Jessica Cisneros.

Want a voice in Congress who has stood for women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and worker rights when Pelosi refused? We’ll do so again this afternoon, and invite you to join us.

San Francisco’s octogenarians in Washington have also been complicit in the rise of the right-wing Supreme Court in other ways. When Justice Amy Coney Barrett was nominated by President Trump in 2020, Senator Dianne Feinstein—who once served as San Francisco’s conservative mayor—praised Barrett’s confirmation hearings as “one of the best set of hearings that I’ve participated in,” ignoring the writing on the wall that so many are only now coming to recognize.

Meanwhile, Pelosi had the unique power to force the Senate to suspend Barrett's nomination hearings in order to focus instead on Articles of Impeachment. That could have imposed enough delay to block the nomination, as the GOP did with Merrick Garland's four years earlier. But rather than allow the impeachment process to proceed, or include all the charges, Pelosi slow-walked the process to give the Senate time to confirm Barrett, before then limiting the Articles of Impeachment to exclude the corruption charges on which Trump was most vulnerable.

Are you tired of a dynastic oligarch standing in the way of your rights? Together, we can end this madness.

As the only grassroots Democrat to ever reach the general election against Pelosi, I've been proud to champion your rights despite lacking any position of authority. Can you join us today to share our outrage as those rights hang in the balance?

After Justices Alito and Roberts joined the bench in 2007, I wrote a series of articles on Huffington Post explaining the tremendous import of their decisions in Carhart and Parents Involved. It was just a few years after I’d graduated from Stanford Law School, but I’d already had the chance to represent Jason West in a groundbreaking marriage equality case in the State of New York and was working on the senior staff of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy in Washington, DC.

My series culminated with a proposal for Congress to end judicial life tenure in order to force turnover on the bench. In the years since then, our proposal has attracted support from figures including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA).

I’ve tried for years to warn Americans about the issues that millions are coming to recognize only now.

Today's attacks on Roe are not the end. Having worked in the courts to establish LGBTQ marriage equality long before Obergefell v. Hodges finally put an end to our struggle and enshrined marriage equality as the law of the land, I have no doubt that the right-wing has its sights on Obergefell next.

Its attacks on voting rights are already well-established: the Shelby County v. Holder decision (which in 2013 struck down the Voting Rights Act’s enforcement provisions) plays a key role in insulating the political establishment in Washington from electoral accountability.

From women’s rights to LGBTQ rights, and from voting rights to other civil rights, all of our rights are threatened today.

Can you join us later today at the federal building to stand with women, the right to choose, and overdue limits on the right-wing Supreme Court?

Thanks for standing with us! Having fought for the future for over 20 years, I’m grateful to see more and more Americans coming to recognize our concerns every day.

In solidarity,

Shahid

PS -- Not in the Bay Area? Even if you can't join us today at the federal building, you can volunteer with us from wherever you live in a range of other ways, from phone banking (to inform either voters about their choices on the ballot, or local volunteers about upcoming events) to writing emails inviting journalists to cover our race, supporting hosts of virtual outreach gatherings, and more! Sign up today to make sure you receive updates & invitations going forward.

April 20 is an annual holiday in many circles, particularly here in my neighborhood, Haight-Ashbury. It played a special role in the emergence of psychedelic counter-culture in the 1960s. And while the community has been dramatically gentrified in the years since then, it remains a beacon of the same ethos that drove so many to look beyond conventional wisdom.

I’m grateful, among other things, for the acceptance of traditional plant medicines expanding so far beyond my neighborhood. While laws decriminalizing cannabis at the state level continue to sweep across the United States, a great deal of work remains to be done. Congress needs not only to legalize cannabis at the federal level to enable banking services and interstate commerce, but also to legislate limits on grow operations to preserve space for small and family farmers and growers.

Can you donate $4.20 or $42 to strengthen Congress by adding a voice committed to ending the racist war on drugs?

The community that preceded the emergence of a cannabis industry is withering, as small and legacy growers find themselves squeezed by larger operations financed by corporate capital. Outrageously, some of that capital is coming from former corporate politicians like John Boehner, who built careers on the backs of incarcerated people, their families, and their communities, before now seeking profit from the very same activities they once criminalized.

Beyond legalizing cannabis and protecting opportunities for small growers, I also hope to work in Congress to legalize psychedelics. While they offer a safe and effective treatment for many conditions and alternatives to less effective and more dangerous corporate pharmaceuticals, my vision for legalizing psychedelics goes beyond the medical setting to include recreational and spiritual uses.

One reason it’s important to legalize mind-altering substances is to offer an alternative to the black market, where trade—and product safety—are effectively unregulated. San Francisco is reeling from a dramatic rise in overdoses, often suffered by people who didn’t realize that fentanyl had been added to what they thought was another substance.

Our policy vision threatens the prison, policing, and pharmaceutical industries (in addition to those manufacturing fossil fuels and weapons). Can you make a campaign contribution today to fuel our challenge to the corporate Democratic establishment?

Earlier today, we posted a short video (also available on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube) explaining part of the forgotten history behind the war on drugs. In particular, I observe the CIA's role, documented by journalist Gary Webb in his groundbreaking book Dark Alliance, and the implications of Webb's revelations in light of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s analysis of the three “intersecting evils” and Eisenhower’s parallel concerns about the military-industrial complex threatening democracy in America.

Ending the drug war will require more than criminal justice reform. And it will take more than electing District Attorneys critical of mass incarceration.

Ending the war on drugs will require making better decisions on issues from criminal justice to judicial nominations and foreign policy. It will require policymakers willing to challenge militarism, and support the whistleblowers and publishers—from Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden to Chelsea Manning, Reality Winner, and Julian Assange—who expose government secrets.

I'm eager to serve you, our democracy, and the future in that role.

Can you make a contribution today to help extend our reach as we close in on the primary election in just 7 weeks? We're working hard despite a dramatic deficit relative to the dynastic oligarch we're challenging. Your support helps level the playing field.  

Thank you for your support! It's your help that determines the strength and reach of our voice and the power of the alternative that we offer.

Shahid

PS — Not in a position to donate today? Join us as a volunteer! Your time can make an even bigger difference than a contribution, and opportunities abound from wherever you live.

This past Thursday, the House Committee on Administration held a hearing on congressional insider trading. It was an important milestone in the ongoing battle for ethics in Washington.

But that milestone comes decades late, and far more than just a dollar short. The several reform proposals discussed at the hearing all remain charitable to the corporate corruption that insider trading has long invited—and continues to entrench.

Are you outraged by policymakers profiting from their positions? The only way to hold accountable a career politician is to remove them from office. We’re working to do precisely that for the most privileged among them, but need your help to level the playing field.

On Wednesday, we posted a short video explaining the issue. In it, I explain two sets of questions evading the discussion in Congress, and offer a few suggestions for people who share our concerns.

The video has been viewed over 50,000 times across platforms including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. We encourage you to share it and add your comments or questions!

We’re grateful to all of our supporters—including you—for forcing a controversy that Washington would rather avoid.

Can you contribute $27 today to help our campaign produce & distribute more videos like this to explain the issues that corporate news outlets continue to misrepresent? Your support helps us reach and educate more voters.

I raise these questions about congressional ethics 20 years after working on Shays v. FEC, one of the last successful legal appeals defending campaign finance reform from the corporate counter-attack that ultimately led to the notorious Citizens United decision.

That theme of challenging money in politics has echoed across my career. Today, we're working together to challenge an oligarch reportedly worth $200 million.

As an immigrant with neither property nor a family legacy, I recognize that our challenge to the establishment relies on the support of others.

Can you help us punch above our weight and continue forcing accountability on Washington?

Our campaign to challenge the corrupt establishment in Washington has drawn support from concerned Americans in every state in the country.

Whether or not I'll have the chance to represent your district, I'm looking forward to representing your values until November—and, with your support, beyond that, in Congress.

Thanks for standing with us!

Your voice,
Shahid

We’re excited today by the Senate’s confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

As the first Black woman to join the Court, Justice Jackson’s confirmation is a triumph for race, gender—and also much more.

A policy I proposed over a decade ago could remove long-serving Justices from the Supreme Court, making space for Justice Jackson's vision to influence jurisprudence. Can you join us today to continue offering novel solutions to problems long before others see the need?

Judges are institutionally responsible for guarding constitutional rights, limiting the executive branch, and serving as a bulwark to defend people from power run amok. Seen through that lens, Justice Jackson's confirmation is significant not only for her identity, but also her experience as a Public Defender.

Unlike her colleagues on the bench, she built her career standing up to the government, defending vulnerable people in a “justice” system whose continuing biases are notorious.

The co-optation of the Rehnquist and Roberts Court by veterans of the executive branch has had tragic consequences which Justice Jackson is uniquely poised to help address. Her experience positions her to lead a jurisprudential movement to revive judicial checks & balances on executive power abandoned by the Rehnquist & Roberts Court.

She could help enable the courts to do their jobs. Her confirmation is a victory for all Americans, as well as law and jurisprudence.

Having worked on federal judicial nominations since 2005, I'm better prepared than most Members of Congress to defend constitutional rights in Congress and hold the Article III courts accountable to political neutrality. Can you send me to Washington to champion checks and balances on executive authority, alongside judicial independence?

Will Justice Jackson be able to revive the constitutional separation of powers, or impose checks and balances, or enable a vision of law as a tool to defend people from arbitrary power run amok?

Not by herself. On a Court composed on nine Justices, six votes are held by reliable ideological reactionaries. And because Justices are appointed for life, the current balance of power could hold for a generation or more—unless something changes.

We’d like to support the chance for KBJ’s jurisprudence to influence the law. A proposal that I explained over a decade ago would do precisely that: ending judicial life tenure in order to force overdue turnover on the bench by imposing 18-year staggered terms on her predecessors.

The proposal has been endorsed more recently by figures including Andrew Yang and Ro Khanna. It offers a path to restore judicial independence.

We're eager to bring it to Congress.

Can you help us continue developing novel ideas to shake loose generational stasis in Washington, break the logjams that limit our institutions, and serve the long overlooked needs of our communities? I’m eager to help, but need your support.

While so many challenges persist across our country, days like today give me hope.

I hope it offers you hope, as well!

Your voice,
Shahid

PS – If you’re in the Bay Area, join us tonight for a discussion about biased policing at the SF Public Library in Civic Center (at 100 Larkin) from 6:00-7:30pm! With your support, we hope to offer an opportunity to hold publicly accountable a wealthy officeholder who'll be speaking on the panel despite an unfortunate pattern of orchestrating racist accusations as an election strategy. Text 415-761-3475 if you're available to join us.

We’ve all been outraged by the corporate corruption of Congress. It might even be why you joined our campaign!

It’s also why we’re so grateful to each of our supporters who’ve enabled our work calling out the congressional insider trading that invites and entrenches corporate rule.

This Thursday, the House Committee on Administration will hold a hearing on the ethics concerns raised by policymakers trading stocks. We’re eager to see where the discussion leads—and, having raised this issue for years, we’re also eager what issues it will predictably fail to address.

Can you join us today to continue forcing issues into the headlines that corporate Democrats would rather avoid?

This week’s hearing is long overdue, and is also far from enough. We can’t let Congress slide by with the bare minimum while ultimately doing nothing meaningful to address the issue of corporate corruption invited by conflicts of interest and divided loyalties. If the debate continues as it has, any resulting legislation will include massive loopholes and fail to address the problem.

Having raised concerns for years over Pelosi’s legendary conflicts of interest, I’ve also identified several questions that remain unasked. These concerns have not only evaded the long overdue controversy that you helped us force, but also remain absent from the competing reform proposals introduced in response to it.

Can you contribute $27 today to help us expose the issues that remain absent from the policy debate?

Among the several issues that should be at the center of the debate, only a few have been acknowledged, let alone resolved in any way that would favor the public, rather than oligarchs masquerading as policymakers.

1. Loopholes: Will the proposed ban on congressional insider trading include members of their families and their staff, as do existing laws constraining corporate executives? Pending reform proposals differ on this point, while entirely ignoring each of those below.
2. Underinclusion: What other requirements beyond a proposed ban on insider trading will prevent similar conflicts of interest introduced through other means beyond ownership positions (e.g. relationships with lobbyists, corporate executives, or billionaires)?
3. Correcting policy impacts: Which areas of federal policymaking have been skewed as a result of the divided loyalties of Members of Congress? On what schedule will Congress revisit previous policies addressing issues such as healthcare, climate justice, and social needs, on which their decisions were unethically influenced by conflicts of interest?
4. Other conflicts of interest beyond stock positions: Beyond insider trading, how else do the financial interests of policymakers undermine their independence and capacity to represent their constituents? For example, Nancy Pelosi’s substantial real estate portfolio introduces conflicts of interest beyond her stock positions that skew her decisions on policies related to housing and financial regulation. Similarly, laws intended to stop money laundering have long blocked transparency into private equity instruments and hedge funds, making them among the preferred methods of money laundering for oligarchs from America to Russia.
   
   
5. Consequences: Will the vulture-capitalists-masquerading-as-policymakers be required to return their fraudulent capital gains enabled by insider trading in the past?
6. The Emoluments Clause (for which Pelosi twice gave Trump a free pass) prohibits self-enrichment by public officials at the public’s expense. Have policymakers who have traded stocks, equities, commodities, and related derivatives have violated the Emoluments Clause? Who is poised, other than voters, to enforce that constitutional prohibition and hold corrupt politicians accountable?

The volume of our message depends on the resources behind it. Can you consider a contribution today to help level the playing field against the corporate establishment?

Insider trading is the cornerstone of the corporate corruption infecting every single issue that Congress considers. Just a few weeks ago, members of Congress were caught making private trades to profit from energy prices in the days before escalation in Ukraine drove up the price of oil.

Private portfolio positions that profit from international conflict are a perfect example of a disturbing pattern poised to continue even under the reform proposals that have been announced. Media outlets have covered other examples of congressional conflicts of interest, but only voters can take the next step of forcing accountability at the ballot box.

Thanks for helping us inform the debate, force this controversy into the public, and hold Congress accountable!

We couldn’t do it without you.

Your voice,
Shahid