Two Decades of a Clear and Progressive Record

Matt Diemer published an attack on my record the day I arrived home from the West Bank. He has said for years that America must cherish its relationship with Israel. That is his real grievance. So here is my record

In October 2022, running for Congress, Matt Diemer told the Cleveland Jewish News that the United States has to “uphold and cherish” its relationship with Israel.

That is his position. He is attacking me because I dare criticize Israel. I have called out the genocide in Gaza, and I have called for zeroing out American military aid. I signed the Track AIPAC PEACE pledge.

Then I went to the West Bank. I landed home on Friday. He published that same day. That is not a coincidence.

That is the disagreement between us. His piece attacks my endorsements of progressive candidates across the country. This includes Brian Poindexter, the union ironworker running in Ohio’s 7th. His co-author, Laura Rodriguez-Carbone, ran against Poindexter in the May 5 primary there and lost. Diemer ran for that seat in 2022 and 2024 and lost both times.

Detained in the West Bank

I was standing in the ruins of Khirbet Zanuta, a Palestinian Bedouin village emptied by settler attacks and then demolished. A car of armed men pulled up and blocked the only road out.

Israeli soldiers arrived. I assumed they were there to help us pass. Instead they smoked cigarettes, talked with the settlers, and then moved one of their own vehicles to block the road. We were held there for ninety minutes. This has been confirmed and reported on by organizations from the New York Times to the Jerusalem Post.

I got out because I am a member of Congress and calls were made to the U.S. embassy. Palestinians do not get that call. If they can make a United States Congressman feel powerless for ninety minutes, imagine what they do every day to people with nobody to call.

Deindustrialization Is Not a New Talking Point to Me

I grew up in Bucks County. My father was a chemical engineer. Our middle-class life came from a man who made things for a living. U.S. Steel’s Fairless Works closed in Lower Bucks while I was in high school. Eight thousand people lost their jobs. I grew up watching American decay and deindustrialization happen around me.

In 2012, four years before I was elected to anything, I wrote a book called Entrepreneurial Nation: Why Manufacturing Is Still Key to America’s Future. It was blurbed by the president of the AFL-CIO. In 2022 I wrote a second, Dignity in a Digital Age, on moving technology jobs into the places globalization left behind. That same year Politico followed me through Trump country while I apologized for what my own party’s trade policy did to those towns.

My first Congressional trip after being sworn in was to Paintsville, Kentucky to meet coal miners learning to write code. Then Youngstown, Flint, Beckley, New Castle, Clarksdale, and Johnstown. In 2024 I introduced the Modern Steel Act to build steel plants in these de-industralized towns.

Twenty Years on the Record

The Iraq war: I opposed it in 2003. In 2004, at 27, I ran an anti-war primary campaign against Tom Lantos, a 24-year incumbent, and lost badly. During the campaign, The Nation praised me for pushing an entrenched, respected incumbent to “come home, to answer questions about his votes on issues like the war and the Patriot Act. This is exactly what primaries are for.”

Bernie Sanders: I endorsed him in 2016 while running to represent Silicon Valley, and co-chaired his presidential campaign in 2020. In 2026, together we introduced the Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act, a 5 percent tax on America’s 938 billionaires that raises $4.4 trillion over a decade. Elon Musk alone would owe $42 billion.

PAC money: I launched the No PAC Caucus in 2017. I have never taken a dollar of PAC or lobbyist money, from anyone, in any year.

The Internet Bill of Rights: I introduced it in 2017 with Tim Berners-Lee, when the surveillance economy was still being celebrated in my own district.

Amazon’s $15 wage: In 2018 I wrote the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act with Bernie Sanders, to strip federal subsidies from corporations refusing to pay $15 an hour. Weeks later Amazon raised its minimum wage to $15. Hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers got a raise.

Yemen: In 2019 I led the Yemen War Powers Resolution, the first in history to pass both chambers of Congress.

The Essential Workers Bill of Rights: I wrote it with Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2020: safety standards, paid leave, and hazard pay for the people stocking shelves and staffing hospitals. Elements passed the House in the HEROES Act.

The CHIPS and Science Act: I co-authored the Endless Frontier Act with Senator Schumer, Senator Young, and Rep. Gallagher, the bill that became its foundation. As lead House sponsor I got it across the finish line and stood beside President Biden as he signed it into law.

The Epstein files: I wrote the Epstein Files Transparency Act with Thomas Massie, a Republican. My own leadership did not want it. We forced a discharge petition to 218 signatures over the objection of the Speaker and the President. The House passed it 427 to 1. It is now federal law.

Iran War Powers: In March I forced a floor vote with Massie to end the war. Centrist Democrats in my own party ran a competing resolution to water it down. We lost, 212 to 219. I will force it again.

The Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act: Every year it has been introduced, I have cosponsored it. It starts at $50 million: 2 percent a year on wealth above that line, and it reaches the money inside irrevocable trusts, taxed to the grantor who set them up. Moving a fortune into a trust should not take it off the books.

I have supported Medicare for All since I arrived in Congress. I co-introduced the Living Wage for All Act, a $25 minimum wage. I introduced ten-dollar-a-day childcare. I have stood on picket lines with striking workers, not for a photograph, but because that is where the fight was.

Matt Diemer’s piece does not mention the Epstein files. It does not mention Yemen, or Amazon, or the CHIPS Act, or either of the books I wrote about American manufacturing. It does not mention Israel. He is not arguing with my record. He is arguing with what I have said about Israel.

The Tech Oligarchs:

In April 2025 I stood at the City Club of Cleveland and called out Peter Thiel and Elon Musk by name. I voted to subpoena Musk in the Oversight Committee, and he has since threatened to sue me and called for my arrest. I was the first Bay Area member of Congress to refuse all donations tied to Thiel’s company, Palantir, and I gave away the $49,000 I had taken from Palantir executives since 2011. When the oligarchs ran a primary challenger in response to my support of a Billionaire Wealth Tax, they spent over $1 million on him. He received 6 percent of the vote.

My Household’s Investments

On the question of whether I personally trade stocks, the answer is straightforward. I do not.

My household’s only investments sit in a trust my in-laws established before my marriage, managed by an independent third-party trustee, in full compliance with the Office of Government Ethics and House rules. Neither my wife nor I direct a trade. For ten years I have filed every disclosure accurately and on time, with zero violations. Quiver Quantitative, Ed Krassenstein, Adam Carlson, and Jay Hunter of the Hunter Index have each reviewed those disclosures and confirmed it. These are the accounts that drive viral attention to other members’ trading.

The numbers show that any allegation of insider trading is defamatory and absurd.

I cosponsor the TRUST in Congress Act, which would bar members of Congress, their spouses, and their dependent children from trading individual stocks in office. We must pass my 5-Point Political Reform Plan: ban lobbyist and PAC money, ban congressional stock trading, impose a lifetime lobbying ban on former members, set term limits for Congress and the Supreme Court, and enforce a binding Supreme Court code of ethics.

Philanthropy and the American Dream

My father-in-law, Monte Ahuja, came to this country from Punjab in 1969 with twelve dollars. He earned an MBA at Cleveland State at night while working full time, and in 1975 turned a class project into Transtar Industries, which became the largest transmission parts distributor in America.

He gave $30 million to University Hospitals, which built the UH Ahuja Medical Center. He gave $10 million to Cleveland State, the largest gift in that school’s history, and the business school carries his name. He gave more than $10 million to the UH Rainbow Ahuja Center for Women and Children in MidTown Cleveland, which provides maternal and pediatric care in a neighborhood that was going without it.

That is the American dream working exactly as it is supposed to, and I am not going to be embarrassed about it.

What I Came From

I was born to a middle class family in Bucks County and went to public school. I took out over a hundred thousand dollars in student loans and put them into forbearance in my 20s. I carried bad credit card debt through my twenties after my first run for Congress protesting the War in Iraq. I moved to California with no family here, no savings, and a pile of debt.

That is the record. I am grateful to serve, and I look forward to continuing this work.