Mike Levin

This is disgraceful. According to new reporting, Pete Hegseth pulled decorated officers from promotion lists after merit boards had already selected them. Staff printed out internet searches showing that officers had spoken at a Hispanic Heritage Month event, joined an International Women’s Day panel, or encouraged sailors to get vaccinated. Those printouts went into files the officers never saw, and they were used to end careers built over decades. On one Navy board, every woman and person of color who had been selected, except one, was removed. Every American should want the most qualified leaders in charge of our military, and these men and women earned their stars. Hegseth must come before Congress, testify under oath, and answer for his decisions. He has no business hiding while he sabotages careers. ms.now/news/pete-hegseth-pen…

Months after a fund tied to Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump put about $30 million into a nearly bankrupt spa company, the Trump administration awarded that company nearly $40 million in federal contracts to screen for Ebola. The company made most of its money from airport spas and waxing salons. It had never worked with Ebola. It had never worked overseas. Yet part of the money is for work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Ebola has killed more than 5,000 people this year. The company's CEO said, "I'm not sure we can do it." This keeps happening. The same Trump-linked fund invested in a drone company, and five months later that company got an Air Force contract worth up to $90 million. A startup linked to Trump Jr. got a $620 million Pentagon loan after a top White House aide stepped in. Their fund buys in, and federal money follows. Taxpayers foot the bill, and with Ebola, our safety is on the line too. This is all totally corrupt. Americans deserve answers under oath, and our conflict of interest and procurement laws must be enforced. propublica.org/article/trump…

This new Reuters report is stunning. A week before the U.S. captured Venezuela's leader, JD Vance reportedly met at a private Montana ski club with John Addison, an oil trader who had given $300,000 to help elect Vance to the Senate in 2022. Vance allegedly asked how fast Venezuela's oil could be sold if America took control of it. Both men deny the meeting. Flight records show their planes parked together that day. Two days after the Venezuela operation, Energy Secretary Chris Wright called Addison and offered his company, Vitol, the job of selling Venezuela's oil. There was no public bidding. Vitol and one rival have since made hundreds of millions of dollars. Addison and his wife also gave $7 million to help elect Trump, and he now chairs a board advising Secretary Wright. Congress has a duty to act. We should bring Secretary Wright, Vitol, and Addison in to testify under oath. We should demand the phone records, emails, and flight logs. We should find out whether anyone got a heads-up about a military operation. And we should require open, competitive bidding before any company profits from our foreign policy. If nothing was wrong, let’s see the records. reuters.com/business/energy/…

Daily reminder that some of the deepest Medicaid cuts in Trump and Republicans' Big Ugly Bill start hitting families at the beginning of 2027, just weeks from now. They timed the worst of it to land after the midterms. When Democrats take the gavels in January, one of our very first votes will be to reverse those cuts and restore the ACA tax credits that kept premiums affordable for millions of families.

Happy Veterans Day to every veteran who has worn our nation’s uniform. Your courage and sacrifice have kept us free, and we owe you a debt we can never fully repay. Serving you in Congress is one of the great honors of my life, and I’ll keep fighting to make sure you get the care, benefits, and respect you’ve earned. Thank you for all you have given this country.

New reporting from The New York Times raises serious questions about how ICE is screening the people it hires. The officer behind a fatal shooting in Maine this summer had a troubling work history, past complaints of domestic violence and abuse, mental health struggles, and a written record of hostility toward immigrants. ICE hired him anyway. Every American wants safe communities and law enforcement they can trust. Most people who wear a badge take that trust seriously, and they deserve colleagues held to the same standard. When we give someone a badge and a gun, we owe the public a thorough background check, real training, and accountability when things go wrong. In the rush to hire thousands of new agents for Trump's mass deportation agenda, those basic standards appear to have been cut. Warning signs that any careful process would catch are slipping through. Congress has a responsibility to keep pushing for common sense guardrails, including full background checks and training. As a member of the Appropriations Committee in the new majority, I will fight hard for these standards. Public safety depends on getting this right, and I will keep pushing until we do. nytimes.com/2026/11/11/us/da…

We must keep our most valuable technology kept out of the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. That’s why this week's reporting on Nvidia should alarm all of us. According to the New York Times, Marco Rubio personally briefed Trump in May that our intelligence had linked Nvidia's CEO to a Chinese spy. It was at least the second such warning in seven months. Trump brought Jensen Huang to Beijing anyway, straight into a summit with Xi Jinping. On Monday, asked whether he knew at the time, the President lied and claimed he didn’t. Let’s not forget Trump has a personal stake here, too. His own financial disclosures show he bought as much as $1.6 million in Nvidia stock in August alone, while his administration decided how freely Nvidia can sell its chips to China. Trump was warned about a possible intelligence threat, waved it off, denied he was told, and holds stock in the company involved. Our national security is clearly taking a back seat. In any other administration, this would bring hearings, resignations, and real reforms. Americans deserve answers about what Trump knew and why he ignored it. Congress must demand answers. nytimes.com/2026/11/10/us/po…

Blocking wind power drives up electricity rates. American consumers pay the price. This administration has already spent billions in tax dollars killing wind projects we'd already invested in, while electric bills keep climbing across the country. My Energy Bills Relief Act with Sean Casten is a real plan to bring working families relief from high energy costs by expanding the cleanest energy, which is also among the most affordable. If the President truly wants to lower bills for working families, he should support our bill.

Everyone wants lower electric bills. So why is the Trump Administration paying foreign energy giants and Trump donors billions in tax dollars to abandon American wind projects? Now you’re on the hook twice. Once when your tax dollars fund the buyout, and again when less power on the grid drives your electric bill up. Here’s how the scheme works.

Some thoughts on Pete Hegseth’s impeachment and what comes next: First, make no mistake, Hegseth deserves to be impeached. The reasons are simple, and they come straight from the Constitution and the law. Only Congress can send this country to war. Congress never approved a war with Iran, and the law gives a president 60 days before troops have to come home without that approval. Instead, the war has gone on for more than eight months. The House voted in June and again in July to end it, and Secretary Hegseth kept it going anyway. When pressed, he claimed a ceasefire paused the legal deadline. The law does not account for that. He also broke the rules our own military lives by. In September 2025, two men survived a strike on a boat in the Caribbean and were clinging to the wreckage. They were killed in a second strike. Killing shipwrecked survivors is banned under the Pentagon's own rulebook. On the first day of the Iran war, a missile hit a girls' elementary school after reported warnings that the targeting information was years out of date. The Pentagon still hasn't told us what went wrong. Rep. Massie's articles of impeachment lay all of this and much more out with real care. They are grounded in the law, well documented, and written by a Republican who put his oath ahead of his party. I disagree with Massie on many things, but he has done the country a genuine service, and I respect him for it. Now the question is whether Mike Johnson will let the Senate do its job if we impeach in the House. In September he canceled our last day of votes before the election to keep this off the floor, and called it a stunt. If Johnson sits on the articles instead of sending them to the Senate for a full trial, he will be failing our Constitution and the institution he swore to lead. It would also be a fitting end to Johnson’s speakership. Time and again he has handed away powers the Constitution gave to Congress, sending members home, burying votes, and deferring to the White House at every turn. A coequal branch only stays coequal if its leaders defend it. History will remember Mike Johnson as a sycophant who put Trump’s approval above the people's House he was elected to lead. He still has a few weeks to prove otherwise, but I’m not holding my breath.

Happy 251st birthday to the United States Marine Corps! It is a tremendous honor to represent Camp Pendleton. For 251 years, Marines have stood as the finest fighting force in the world, carrying a courage, integrity, and devotion to the Constitution that few can match. Once a Marine, always a Marine. To every Marine, active and veteran, thank you for your service and sacrifice. Semper Fi.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is the leading voice in the cabinet pushing to open America's public lands to AI data centers. Arthur Ventures, the investment firm Burgum co-founded, holds an estimated $18 million to $64 million in AI companies that depend on those same data centers.  Burgum agreed to step down from his roles at the firm when he joined the administration, but he kept his financial stake. A recent investigation found that he’s not alone. Hundreds of Trump appointees or their spouses have financial ties to tech giants betting big on AI. When this administration decides how to regulate data centers and whether to build them on our public lands, who comes out ahead? The American people, or the officials hoping to cash in? Either we will end this corruption, or it will be the end of us. propublica.org/article/burgu…

Daily reminder that some of the deepest Medicaid cuts in Trump and Republicans' Big Ugly Bill start hitting families at the beginning of 2027, just weeks from now. They timed the worst of it to land after the midterms. When Democrats take the gavels in January, one of our very first votes will be to reverse those cuts and restore the ACA tax credits that kept premiums affordable for millions of families.

Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in American history, and nobody else comes close. When billions of dollars pour into his family's businesses from foreign companies looking to buy influence in the White House, "I know nothing about it" is a simply pathetic answer.  I launched the End Corruption Caucus with Jason Crow and AOC to follow the money, get real answers, hold people accountable, and prevent this from happening again. We won't stop until the job is done. Either we will end the corruption, or the corruption will be the end of us.

To every family who lost someone in the Iran War, I'm so sorry you had to hear the president downplay your loss. Before they wore the uniform, those who lost their lives were your sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands, wives, and parents. Whatever any of us think about this war, their sacrifice deserves the truth. We can never repay what your families have given, but we can make sure no one ever erases it.

Donald Trump told 60 Minutes he wants to work with Democrats on immigration at roughly the same time he made Stephen Miller, the architect of his administration’s mass deportation agenda, his White House chief of staff. Not great. The truth is Congressional Republicans and Democrats have already done the hard work of writing a bill together. I helped introduce the bipartisan Dignity Act, and it’s ready for Congress to take up. It strengthens border security and speeds up asylum decisions. It gives eligible immigrants who have lived here for years a chance to earn legal status and keep working if they pass background checks and meet requirements. It also gives Dreamers a path to citizenship. If President Trump meant what he said, he can show it by backing the Dignity Act and asking Congressional leaders to bring it to a vote.

Stephen Miller is an extremist who has spent his whole career treating the Constitution as an obstacle, and now Donald Trump has made him White House Chief of Staff. Other than Trump himself, Miller may be the most dangerous man in America. Miller said the administration was actively looking at suspending habeas corpus, which would let the government seize people, detain them, and deport them with no judge, no hearing, and no lawyer.  Miller is the man behind the policy that tore children from their parents at the border.  Miller once went on national television and declared that the president's powers "will not be questioned." Miller has spent years operating in the shadows with no one to answer to. That ends in January. Democrats will hold the gavels. Miller will answer to Congress, under oath, for what he's done and what he's planning. Or he will suffer the consequences. We will defend the Constitution with everything we have. nbcnews.com/politics/donald-…