U.S. Congress
Here's a look at documents from all members of the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate
Featured Stories
Grassley Demands Telecommunications Companies, Federal Entities Turn Over All Records Provided to Jack Smith
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued the following news release:
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Grassley Demands Telecommunications Companies, Federal Entities Turn Over All Records Provided to Jack Smith
As part of his ongoing Arctic Frost oversight, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent letters to four telecommunications companies and five federal entities requesting they provide to Congress all records that were handed over to former Special Counsel Jack Smith as part of his elector case against President Trump. Smith's
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WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued the following news release:
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Grassley Demands Telecommunications Companies, Federal Entities Turn Over All Records Provided to Jack Smith
As part of his ongoing Arctic Frost oversight, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent letters to four telecommunications companies and five federal entities requesting they provide to Congress all records that were handed over to former Special Counsel Jack Smith as part of his elector case against President Trump. Smith'scase began at the Biden Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under the codename "Arctic Frost."
Grassley's oversight recently revealed Smith and the Biden FBI secretly subpoenaed phone records from nine Republican Members of Congress, as well as records from 92 other Republican targets, as part of the partisan Arctic Frost probe. Grassley last week led his colleagues in requesting the Department of Justice and FBI provide all records related to the targeting of congressional members during Arctic Frost.
Grassley sent letters to the following telecommunications companies:
1. Verizon
2. AT&T
3. T-Mobile
4. Lumen
Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), John Kennedy (R-La.), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Katie Britt (R-Ala.) and Ashley Moody (R-Fla.), as well as Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), co-signed the letters.
Additionally, Grassley and Johnson sent letters to the following federal entities:
1. Department of Homeland Security
2. Department of Defense
3. Office of the Director of National Intelligence
4. National Archives and Records Administration
5. U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia
Learn more about Grassley's Arctic Frost oversight:
* October 10, 2025: Grassley and Johnson Lead Colleagues in Seeking Release of All DOJ, FBI Records Detailing Biden Administration's Targeting of Sitting Members of Congress
* October 10, 2025: ICYMI: Grassley Oversight of Arctic Frost Yields Ongoing Results and Draws National Attention
* October 6, 2025: Biden FBI Spied on Eight Republican Senators as Part of Arctic Frost Investigation, Grassley Oversight Reveals
* September 16, 2025: Grassley Opens Senate Judiciary FBI Oversight Hearing, Releases Additional Records Demonstrating Political Weaponization and Misconduct at Biden FBI
* April 8, 2025: Grassley, Johnson Release Additional Arctic Frost Records Detailing Sweeping Anti-Trump Investigation
* March 14, 2025: Grassley, Johnson Release Records Showing FBI Obtained Trump, Pence Cell Phones, Conducted Sweeping Interviews to Advance Anti-Trump Arctic Frost Investigation
* February 3, 2025: Grassley Underscores FBI Supervisor Misconduct in Trump-Targeted Arctic Frost Investigation
* January 30, 2025: Grassley Opening Statement on Kash Patel's Nomination to be FBI Director
* January 30, 2025: Grassley, Johnson Make Public Whistleblower Records Revealing DOJ and FBI Plot to Pin Trump in Jack Smith Elector Case
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Original text here: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/releases/grassley-demands-telecommunications-companies-federal-entities-turn-over-all-records-provided-to-jack-smith
Federalist CEO Davis Testifies Before Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee released the following testimony by Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of the Federalist, from an Oct. 8, 2025, hearing entitled "Shut Your App: How Uncle Sam Jawboned Big Tech Into Silencing Americans":
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Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify on behalf of First Amendment speech and press rights and against authoritarian censorship designed to shut down the free speech rights of American citizens.
My name is Sean Davis, and I am the CEO and co-founder
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WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee released the following testimony by Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of the Federalist, from an Oct. 8, 2025, hearing entitled "Shut Your App: How Uncle Sam Jawboned Big Tech Into Silencing Americans":
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Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify on behalf of First Amendment speech and press rights and against authoritarian censorship designed to shut down the free speech rights of American citizens.
My name is Sean Davis, and I am the CEO and co-founderof The Federalist, a conservative digital media company focused on politics, culture, and religion. I am a Christian, a conservative, and a political commentator and reporter. I am also the victim of illegal and unconstitutional censorship by my government which was targeted at my publication, my publication, and me personally.
The First Amendment affirms and protects five God-given rights: free speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition. In my capacity as the publisher of a major national media outlet which produces news and opinion, an infringement on or abridgement of any one of those five rights can be cataclysmic.
Unfortunately, my publication, our writers, and I were all directly targeted for destruction by my own government, using my tax dollars. Even worse, much of the targeting was done in secret, by individuals and institutions who were desperate to hide their illegal and unconstitutional actions against us. This long-running conspiracy to deprive us of our God-given First Amendment rights is illegal, unconstitutional, and unconscionable. Sadly, many senators who sit on this committee either refused to condemn and fight these censorship efforts, or outright supported them.
In the summer of 2020, at the behest of foreign government-connected organizations, Google attempted to demonetize The Federalist for the apparent crime of criticizing American government response to and media coverage of COVID-19 and the violent Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots that raged throughout the country. The apparent article that triggered this outrageous attack on us and our First Amendment rights was entitled, "The Media Are Lying To You About Everything, Including The Riots." This was all orchestrated secretly behind closed doors between a foreign NBC News cell and corrupt Google executives, despite the fact that we had broken zero rules. But that was only the beginning.
Unbeknownst to us at the time, a government department called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was also directing and funding censorship efforts against my colleagues and me because of our reporting on unprecedented new election laws rammed through ahead of the 2020 election. This agency is supposed to prevent attacks on American infrastructure, but at some point its leaders apparently decided that its real objective was to censor American citizens and journalists for criticizing their own government.
My colleagues and I were deliberately singled out for censorship because our own government decided our rights as citizens and members of the news media needed to be crushed. The agency and its partners used a ticketing system to flag and report social media posts that it wanted to be eliminated and funded efforts to badger and threaten tech companies, many of which had effective monopolies over online content, to delete social posts that the government and its partners found inconvenient.
For those who know me or follow me on social media, I can be opinionated and provocative. But in this particular case, it wasn't even one of my spicier tweets that attracted the ire of Orwellian government censors. In a tweet targeted for censorship, I posted a screenshot of and a link to a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision which stated that mail-in ballots received after the election and containing no postmark still had to be presumed as cast on-time, and counted. Anyone who understands basic logic can see the problems with such a declaration: ballots cast and mailed long after the election, potentially even after preliminary results were known, would still have to be counted, creating huge incentives to flood the system with late, invalid ballots.
My tweet with the link to and screenshot of that Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision was censored by Twitter, and it was done so at the direct demand of a U.S. federal government-sponsored censorship consortium. Another one of my tweets, in which I alleged that the best evidence that the 2020 election was being rigged was the fact that tweets stating the election was being rigged were being censored, was censored. Another ticket demanding censorship of me stated, "[S]ame guy (sean davis) continues to post about this. has spread to thousands on [Facebook] because of Federalist article[.]" According to JIRA ticket data obtained and release by the House Judiciary Committee, at least 21 separate tickets were submitted to censor Twitter posts from me. Several of those tickets also demanded censorship by Facebook.
Kafka-esque doesn't even begin to describe this madness.
My colleague Mollie Hemingway, who wrote a national best-selling and rigorously researched and fact-checked book about 2020 election shenanigans, was also censored by Twitter at the demand of the federal government and its partners. Multiple censorship tickets were submitted to shut down her social media presence. The most ridiculous example was a demand to censor a tweet from Mollie which contained a link to an article published by The Federalist. The headline of that article? "America won't trust elections until the voter fraud is investigated." Imagine how deranged and authoritarian you must be to want to censor a post about how addressing voter fraud is key to ensuring election integrity.
Though we noticed and wrote about that censorship at the time, we had no idea that it was our own government which funded and targeted our speech for censorship, nor did we understand how often we had been targeted, both personally and institutionally. It was only through dogged investigation and oversight from people like Rep. Jim Jordan and then-Missouri Attorney General and now-Sen. Eric Schmitt that the depths of the government scheming against us even began to be plumbed.
Again, the censorship didn't stop there, and it didn't remain contained within CISA. We were also targeted for outright bankruptcy and destruction by the U.S. State Department and its Global Engagement Center (GEC). Despite the fact that GEC was explicitly prohibited by both the U.S. Constitution via the First Amendment and by the very statute which created and authorized the agency from targeting domestic speech, it nonetheless sought to drive us out of business by funding, developing, and distributing technologies and tools to reduce our reach, by bullying advertisers into blacklisting us and many other conservative outlets, and by coercing Big Tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google to throttle access to our content. In essence, our own government secretly and without any due process charged us with thoughtcrimes, convicted us, and sentenced The Federalist to death.
We survived, but just barely.
Once the censorship-industrial complex injected its lies into the bloodstream of the body politic, the effects became endemic and permanent. To this day, we are still dealing with the effects of their blatantly illegal and unconstitutional censorship efforts. Although we sued in federal court nearly two years ago, we are still awaiting relief. Although the President and Vice President of the United States admitted that these illegal censorships efforts were undertaken, we are still awaiting relief. And although the U.S. Secretary of State himself, whose agency targeted The Federalist, plainly admitted in our very pages that the State Department did exactly what we alleged, we are still awaiting relief. Some members of this committee have supported our efforts to vindicate our rights. Many, however, haven't said a word in our defense, a fact which suggests that defenses of media millionaires like Jimmy Kimmel are based more on partisanship than any sort of actual belief in free speech.
And it is worth noting that unlike Mr. Kimmel, who is employed and distributed by a broadcaster who is required to abide by well-known rules as a condition of operating a monopoly on publicly owned airwaves--rules that were drafted and enacted by this very legislative body--my colleagues and I are independent journalists who operate online, far outside the regulatory purview of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). FCC rules and regulations, which radio and television broadcasters like Mr. Kimmel are required to obey, do not apply to us. It also takes real chutzpah, in the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk--who was brutally murdered while peacefully debating a college student about transgender ideology--to try and make Jimmy Kimmel a free speech martyr just to cynically change the subject from yet another example of left-wing violence designed to permanently silence not just speech, but its speakers.
As we noted in our complaint against the State Department, we are the victims of one of the most audacious, manipulative, secretive, and gravest abuses of First Amendment rights by the federal government in American history.
I have no doubt today that we will hear words like "disinformation," "misinformation," and "malinformation" thrown around by politicians desperate to create a pretext for censoring speech and speakers they don't like. Make no mistake: these types of labels exist entirely to justify illegal and unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment rights of every American.
Americans are allowed to say ridiculous things on the Internet. They are allowed to post things you don't think are true. They are allowed to publish things that are mean. They are allowed to be hateful. Politicians and government officials do not have the authority to bootstrap their way to censorship by baselessly throwing a "Russian disinformation" label on every post or news article they don't like. In fact, the more a particular politician dislikes a particular political statement, the more it is protected by the First Amendment. We don't really need laws to protect popular speech. It is the unpopular speech, the speech that criticizes government, that is most desperately in need of protection.
It also is imperative that everyone lives under the exact same speech regime. A legal regime in which one party or one side of the political spectrum has free speech, while another is subjected to speech controls, is an abomination, and one that should not be tolerated. It is absurd to watch the government crack down on accurate reporting, like that of the New York Post, which was censored for reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop, and then watch publications that repeatedly published falsehood after falsehood not just escape scrutiny, but receive lucrative journalism prizes and rewards for their nonsense.
I would prefer that everyone live under a legal regime that treasures and protects free speech and freedom of the press. In fact, I have fought for that for years. But I will not abide a system that illegally cracks down on conservative media while doing nothing to stem left-wing lies. Everyone should live under the same set of rules.
The best antidote to speech you don't like is more speech. That is why the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They understood that a government could not purport to represent its people if it prohibited their rights to speech, assembly, religion, press, and petition. It is time to return to a world where we can say what we wish without fear of being censored, or deplatformed, or shot dead.
If you woke up two weeks ago and suddenly decided you care about free speech, I invite you to prove it. I invite you to demonstrate to the world that your commitment to free speech is principled, rather than an attempt to change the subject because one of your famous millionaire friends on television received 1/1,000,000,000th of the treatment that conservatives have been subjected to for years. I invite you to condemn the nakedly illegal and unconstitutional censorship efforts of the last 5 years. I invite you to apologize for any past support of censorship. I invite you to finally stand up for speech you don't like from people you don't like. And I invite you to condemn any and all violence meant to permanently silence speech, and speakers, even if you hate them.
Prove your commitment to the First Amendment is real by finally admitting to the censorship schemes many of you cheered, and working to make sure nothing like that ever happens again.
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Original text here: https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/44A97DED-3EFB-499B-BB8A-F9CCA7B2794A
Ernst Names Small Business of the Week, LT Farms
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, chair of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, posted the following news release on Oct. 14, 2025:
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Ernst Names Small Business of the Week, LT Farms
RED OAK, Iowa - U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Chair of the Senate Small Business Committee, today announced her Small Business of the Week: LT Farms of Ringgold County. Throughout the 119th Congress, Chair Ernst plans to recognize a small business in each of Iowa's 99 counties.
"Since 2022, LT Farms has been mixing up the snack industry with their irre-zest-ible flavors
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WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, chair of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, posted the following news release on Oct. 14, 2025:
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Ernst Names Small Business of the Week, LT Farms
RED OAK, Iowa - U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Chair of the Senate Small Business Committee, today announced her Small Business of the Week: LT Farms of Ringgold County. Throughout the 119th Congress, Chair Ernst plans to recognize a small business in each of Iowa's 99 counties.
"Since 2022, LT Farms has been mixing up the snack industry with their irre-zest-ible flavorsand community spirit," said Chair Ernst. "This family-owned and -operated small business has quickly become a fan favorite across Iowa and beyond."
At the ages of twelve and eight, brothers Lane and Tyce Parish launched LT Farms with the help of their parents, Lincoln and Shawna. Their entrepreneurial spirits ignited when they were selling eggs at the local farmers market. Then, they expanded to developing and selling their mom's snack mix, which she had been gifting to family and friends for years. What started as a timeless family recipe has since grown into a thriving small business, offering unique flavors that represent each member of their family. LT Farms gives back to the community through themed giveaways, fundraising support, and event sponsorships. Most recently, they donated 100 mini snack mix bags for the Mount Ayr School District's Hall of Fame banquet.
Stay tuned as Chair Ernst continues to recognize outstanding Iowa small businesses with her Small Business of the Week award.
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Original text here: https://www.sbc.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=F53A1201-36F1-440C-9DA9-69593E6CE909
Democratic Ranking Members to FEMA Head and DHS Inspector General: Stop Retaliation Against FEMA Whistleblowers
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Washington, ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, issued the following news release on Oct. 14, 2025:
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Democratic Ranking Members to FEMA Head and DHS Inspector General: Stop Retaliation Against FEMA Whistleblowers
Today, House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Ranking Member Rick Larsen (D-WA), Subcommittee on Public Buildings, Economic Development and Emergency Management Ranking Member Greg Stanton (D-AZ), House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-CA) and
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WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Washington, ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, issued the following news release on Oct. 14, 2025:
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Democratic Ranking Members to FEMA Head and DHS Inspector General: Stop Retaliation Against FEMA Whistleblowers
Today, House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Ranking Member Rick Larsen (D-WA), Subcommittee on Public Buildings, Economic Development and Emergency Management Ranking Member Greg Stanton (D-AZ), House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-CA) andHouse Committee on Homeland Security Ranking Member Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) sent follow-up letters to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Senior Official David Richardson and Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari following the Trump Administration's unlawful retaliation against FEMA employees that sounded the alarm about failed Agency operations. This letter comes after the Administration took continued retaliatory actions against the whistleblowers following the Members' initial calls for their reinstatement.
"[M]ore than 190 FEMA employees made a protected whistleblower disclosure to Congress, called the Katrina Declaration, detailing various serious ways in which Trump Administration officials are putting lives at risk by undermining FEMA's ability to perform disaster response and recovery," the Members wrote.
"FEMA leadership's punitive response against courageous whistleblowers sends a chilling message to other federal employees and undermines the integrity of whistleblower protection," the Members continued. "Actions silencing whistleblowers fosters an environment that discourages employees from reporting malfeasance within the federal government."
The Members concluded by demanding FEMA follow the law and reinstate the whistleblowers and cease all retaliatory actions immediately.
To read the full letters and list of questions, click here (https://democrats-transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/second_whistleblower_letter_to_fema_head.docx) and here (https://democrats-transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/second_fema_whistleblower_letter_to_oig.pdf).
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Original text here: https://democrats-transportation.house.gov/news/press-releases/democratic-ranking-members-to-fema-head-and-dhs-inspector-general-stop-retaliation-against-fema-whistleblowers
Congresswoman Maxine Waters Blasts Trump's Argentina Bailout as American Families Miss Paychecks, Suffer Economic Hardship Amid Trump-Republican Shutdown
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, issued the following news release on Oct. 14, 2025:
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Congresswoman Maxine Waters Blasts Trump's Argentina Bailout as American Families Miss Paychecks, Suffer Economic Hardship Amid Trump-Republican Shutdown
Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, released this statement in light of President Trump's meeting with Argentine President Javier Milei to announce the United States' bailout to the government of Argentina.
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WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, issued the following news release on Oct. 14, 2025:
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Congresswoman Maxine Waters Blasts Trump's Argentina Bailout as American Families Miss Paychecks, Suffer Economic Hardship Amid Trump-Republican Shutdown
Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, released this statement in light of President Trump's meeting with Argentine President Javier Milei to announce the United States' bailout to the government of Argentina.The U.S. Department of the Treasury--whose international activities and any use of the Exchange Stabilization Fund--are overseen by the House Financial Services Committee, has yet to share the terms and conditions of this deal to allow Congress and the public to understand what impact this will have on American taxpayers.
"Today, while several million federal government workers are set to miss their paychecks and millions of American families are watching their health care premiums skyrocket, Donald Trump hosted the President of Argentina for lunch at the White House to announce a U.S. government bailout of Argentina.
Ironically, while the President has time to meet with foreign leaders, he refuses to sit down with Democratic lawmakers in his own country to resolve his Trump-Republican government shutdown, now entering its third week. Instead of re-opening the government, Trump is prioritizing a foreign financial bailout, in part, to prop up an ideological ally in a coming election.
This deal is being done without a vote from Congress and with zero transparency from the Trump Administration to understand what this means for American taxpayers. What we do know is that Trump's donors and Treasury Secretary Bessent's friends made terrible bets buying up Argentina's debt, but now will see windfalls because of the Trump bailout.
Adding insult to injury, while Wall Street executives get even richer, President Trump is delivering another slap in the face to hardworking American families and farmers: Argentina followed the news of the Trump billion-dollar bailout to announce it is selling its soybeans to China, displacing sales American farmers had until Trump started a trade war. It is beyond the pale that Trump refuses to address the rising costs of millions of Americans' health care even as he spends tens of billions of dollars to bailout Argentina and his buddies on Wall Street."
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Original text here: https://democrats-financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=413878
Congresswoman Maxine Waters Blasts President Trump's Cruel and Unlawful Move to Fire Hundreds of HUD Employees Amid Trump-Republican Shutdown
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, issued the following news release on Oct. 14, 2025:
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Congresswoman Maxine Waters Blasts President Trump's Cruel and Unlawful Move to Fire Hundreds of HUD Employees Amid Trump-Republican Shutdown
Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, released the following statement after President Donald Trump ordered the mass firing of Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) employees in the midst of the Trump-Republican
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WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, issued the following news release on Oct. 14, 2025:
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Congresswoman Maxine Waters Blasts President Trump's Cruel and Unlawful Move to Fire Hundreds of HUD Employees Amid Trump-Republican Shutdown
Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, released the following statement after President Donald Trump ordered the mass firing of Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) employees in the midst of the Trump-Republicangovernment shutdown--which Republicans initiated because of their refusal to negotiate with Democrats to protect health care for millions of Americans.
According to the Office of Management and Budget, approximately 442 HUD employees were terminated, including 103 from the Office of Public and Indian Housing, 36 from Housing Counseling, 50 from Housing Operations, 114 from Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, and 30 from Community Planning and Development. The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity alone has already seen its workforce cut by 45 percent since Trump took office, leaving critical housing programs deeply understaffed and millions of Americans at risk.
"This is cruel, dangerous, and disgraceful. President Trump has once again chosen to attack working families and the very public servants who help keep roofs over their heads. By firing 442 HUD employees, many of whom support housing counseling and community development programs, he is deliberately weakening an agency that millions of Americans depend on.
Let's be clear: Trump, with full support from Republicans, is illegally using this shutdown as a pretext to undermine our housing system and dismantle programs that protect millions of families in dire need of federal assistance. From the beginning he has made no secret of his intent. He said himself that he's 'cutting Democrat programs.' Since when is housing a Democratic issue?
Since taking office, Trump has done everything he can to dismantle HUD, including violating the law, gutting fair housing enforcement, defunding federal housing programs, and now, eliminating the very staff needed to help carry out essential agency operations.
While Trump wages war on working Americans, I and my Democratic colleagues remain steadfast in our commitment to protecting families, restoring HUD's mission, and holding this Administration accountable. I will never stop fighting to rebuild HUD and ensure every person and family--regardless of race, zip code, or income--have a safe and affordable place to call home."
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Original text here: https://democrats-financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=413879
Chair Cassidy Raises Concern Over Cybersecurity Threats to America's National Security, Economy
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, issued the following news on Oct. 14, 2025:
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Chair Cassidy Raises Concern Over Cybersecurity Threats to America's National Security, Economy
U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, raised concerns over recent cybersecurity vulnerabilities affecting Cisco, the largest provider of network infrastructure in the world. This comes after the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
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WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 -- Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, issued the following news on Oct. 14, 2025:
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Chair Cassidy Raises Concern Over Cybersecurity Threats to America's National Security, Economy
U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, raised concerns over recent cybersecurity vulnerabilities affecting Cisco, the largest provider of network infrastructure in the world. This comes after the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)directed federal agencies to quickly disconnect from certain Cisco devices due to an active cybersecurity threat.
Cybersecurity vulnerabilities affecting Cisco's systems are a grave national security threat and have the potential to impact nearly every federal agency and business in the United States, exposing Americans' data to attacks from hostile actors like China, Russia, and Iran.
"As cyber incidents continue to increase, it is essential that the public and private sector take steps to safeguard the information of millions of patients, students, and employees across America," wrote Dr. Cassidy. "These efforts also are critical to protect our national security interests."
Read the full letter here (https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/bc_letter_to_cisco_on_cybersecurity.pdf) or below.
Dear Mr. Robbins,
Cybersecurity incidents pose a substantial threat to the American economy and the consumer. In 2024, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimated that cyber crimes resulted in over $16 billion in losses.1 The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) is conducting an investigation of these challenges and an assessment of initiatives underway to respond.
As cyber incidents continue to increase, it is essential that the public and private sector take steps to safeguard the information of millions of patients, students, and employees across America. These efforts also are critical to protect our national security interests. The emergency directive issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on September 25 directed federal agencies to disconnect certain Cisco devices from federal systems in just one day in response to evidence of an active cybersecurity threat. 2 Recent reports indicate at least one federal agency has already been breached as a result of this vulnerability. This incident highlights the growing threat of sophisticated attacks from hostile actors, such as China, Russia, and Iran.
As the largest provider of network infrastructure in the world, Cisco holds a unique position in delivering tools not only to the federal government, but virtually all businesses. These tools connect consumers and businesses to care services, educational tools, and platforms businesses need to operate. Any vulnerability in Cisco's systems would jeopardize this access for millions of Americans.
As Cisco works with the federal government to patch any cybersecurity vulnerabilities, it must work with these stakeholders to ensure their systems are protected as well. To that end, I request answers to the following questions by October 27, 2025:
1. Has Cisco identified any specific threats to individual customers? If so, how is it communicating next steps or security patches?
2. How is Cisco proactively communicating with customers as Cisco identifies more about the potential threat?
3. Is Cisco currently recommending that individual customers disconnect or upgrade end-of support devices as CISA directed federal agencies do on September 25?3
4. How is Cisco engaging with specific federal agencies, including the Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services to provide sector-specific services or assistance to impacted entities?
5. Estimates are that 45% of companies in the United States do not employ a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).4 How is Cisco working to communicate with individual customers, specifically health care providers, schools, and small businesses, to ensure they have current information about ways to address any cybersecurity vulnerabilities?
Sincerely,
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Original text here: https://www.help.senate.gov/rep/newsroom/press/chair-cassidy-raises-concern-over-cybersecurity-threats-to-americas-national-security-economy
