April, 02 2020, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Quigley
317-752-9150
Patriotic Millionaires Endorse Eight 2020 Congressional Challengers
"Congress needs fewer corporate defenders and more champions of normal, everyday Americans"
WASHINGTON
This afternoon, the Patriotic Millionaires announced their endorsement of 8 candidates running to unseat incumbent members of Congress in 2020.
In times of crisis, elected officials reveal their true priorities, and the last several weeks have demonstrated that we must change the makeup of Congress if we want to give all Americans the chance to enjoy a stable and prosperous future. Working Americans need champions in Congress, and the status quo is plainly not good enough.
The endorsed candidates listed below represent good opportunities to throw terrible members of Congress out of power, but our endorsement comes because we have determined each and every one would be magnificent public servants in their own right. For their dedication to fighting for all Americans, not just the rich and powerful, the following candidates have earned our endorsement in the 2020 cycle:
Betsy Dirksen Londrigan (IL-13)
Jon Hoadley (MI-06)
Kathy Ellis (MO-08)
Deborah Ross (NC-02)
Moe Davis (NC-11)
Mike Siegel (TX-10)
Julie Oliver (TX-25)
Vangie Williams (VA-01)
This is the second round of 2020 endorsements from the Patriotic Millionaires. A list of the first round of endorsements, incumbent members of Congress we supported in 2018, can be viewed on our website HERE. Over the next several months we will be endorsing many more high-quality candidates ready and willing to uphold our principles.
"Right now, our society, particularly its least fortunate members, is going through a dislocation that will have repercussions that persist for generations," said Morris Pearl, Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, and former managing director at BlackRock, Inc. "Fortunately, there are some bold, smart, and energetic leaders out there who can rise to the occasion and help us weather this crisis. We need to support them now more than ever."
Betsy Dirksen Londrigan, candidate for Congress in Illinois' 13th District, shared her thoughts: "While career politicians like my opponent champion tax cuts for big corporations and the rich at the expense of middle class families, I'm glad to have the support of an organization dedicated to ensuring millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share."
"I'm honored to work with Patriotic Millionaires in my campaign as we work to replace one of the most corrupt members of Congress, Michael McCaul," said Mike Siegel, candidate for Congress in Texas' 10th District. "My commitment is to build a progressive future that includes a living wage, fair tax policies, and fundamental campaign finance reform. And what better way to start than by removing the GOP Congressman who engages in more insider stock trading--and who casts more votes that benefit his own massive wealth--than any other? We've got a lot of work to do to get real representation in TX-10, and I'm glad to be in this fight with the Patriotic Millionaires."
"In a time of crisis, you can never have too many members of Congress fighting for working people. Last week's stimulus bill, full of corporate handouts while offering inadequate aid to poor and middle-class families, proves that Congress needs fewer corporate defenders and more champions of normal, everyday Americans." said Erica Payne, Founder and President of the Patriotic Millionaires. "If these candidates were in office right now fighting for working Americans, last week's stimulus bill would have ended up in better shape."
The Patriotic Millionaires is a group of high-net worth Americans who share a profound concern about the destabilizing level of inequality in America. Our work centers on the two things that matter most in a capitalist democracy: power and money. Our goal is to ensure that the country's political economy is structured to meet the needs of regular Americans, rather than just millionaires. We focus on three "first" principles: a highly progressive tax system, a livable minimum wage, and equal political representation for all citizens.
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"2025 was full of stark reminders of the urgent need to cut climate pollution, invest in clean energy, and tackle the climate crisis now."
Dec 30, 2025
Climate change driven by human burning of fossil fuels helped make 2025 one of the hottest years ever recorded, a scientific report published Monday affirmed, prompting renewed calls for urgent action to combat the worsening planetary emergency.
Researchers at World Weather Attribution (WWA) found that "although 2025 was slightly cooler than 2024 globally, it was still far hotter than almost any other year on record," with only two other recent years recording a higher average worldwide temperature.
For the first time, the three-year running average will end the year above the 1.5°C warming goal, relative to preindustrial levels, established a decade ago under the landmark Paris climate agreement.
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"Across the 22 extreme events we analyzed in depth, heatwaves, floods, storms, droughts, and wildfires claimed lives, destroyed communities, and wiped out crops," the researchers wrote. "Together, these events paint a stark picture of the escalating risks we face in a warming world."
The WWA researchers' findings tracked with the findings of United Nations experts and others that 2025 would be the third-hottest year on record.
According to the WWA study:
This year highlighted again, in stark terms, how unfairly the consequences of human-induced climate change are distributed, consistently hitting those who are already marginalized within their societies the hardest. But the inequity goes deeper: The scientific evidence base itself is uneven. Many of our studies in 2025 focused on heavy rainfall events in the Global South, and time and again we found that gaps in observational data and the reliance on climate models developed primarily for the Global North prevented us from drawing confident conclusions. This unequal foundation in climate science mirrors the broader injustices of the climate crisis.
The events of 2025 make it clear that while we urgently need to transition away from fossil fuels, we also must invest in adaptation measures. Many deaths and other impacts could be prevented with timely action. But events like Hurricane Melissa highlight the limits of preparedness and adaptation: When an intense storm strikes small islands such as Jamaica and other Caribbean nations, even relatively high levels of preparedness cannot prevent extreme losses and damage. This underscores that adaptation alone is not enough; rapid emission reductions remain essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
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The WWA study's publication comes a month after this year's United Nations Climate Change Conference—or COP30—ended in Brazil with little meaningful progress toward a transition from fossil fuels.
Responding to the new study, Climate Action Campaign director Margie Alt said in a statement that "2025 was full of stark reminders of the urgent need to cut climate pollution, invest in clean energy, and tackle the climate crisis now."
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The administration had argued that the Federal Reserve should not be making payments to the CFPB because it has been operating at a loss since 2022, when it began a series of aggressive interest rate hikes aimed at taming inflation.
However, Jackson rejected this reasoning and accused the administration of using it as a cover to defund an agency that the president and top officials such as Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, had long expressed a desire to abolish.
"It appears that defendants’ new understanding of 'combined earnings' is an unsupported and transparent attempt to starve the CPFB of funding," the judge wrote.
The CFPB must now be funded at least until the DC Circuit of Appeals weighs in on an ongoing lawsuit brought by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) against Vought over layoffs at the agency that is scheduled for hearings in February.
The NTEU took a victory lap in the wake of the ruling and taunted Vought for his defeat.
"Yet another loss for Rusty Vought," the union posted on Bluesky. "Wonder how much longer Donald is going to put up with this?"
While it will continue to receive funding for the time being, the CFPB has still seen its ability to fulfill its mission severely diminished during Trump's second term.
A Tuesday report from Reuters claimed that the CFPB is "on the brink of collapse" given that the Trump administration, congressional Republicans, and industry lawsuits have "undone a decade's worth of CFPB rules on matters ranging from medical debt and student loans to credit card late fees, overdraft charges and mortgage lending."
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After weeks of pushing for access to el-Fasher, the city in Sudan's Darfur region that was taken over by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in October, United Nations officials reported on Tuesday that their recent visit to the city showed evidence of a "crime scene," with the few people remaining there showing signs of trauma from the mass atrocities they suffered and witnessed.
UN humanitarian workers gained access to the city last Friday, two months after the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) lost control of el-Fasher to the United Arab Emirates-backed RSF.
The city was the SAF's last major stronghold in Darfur, and fighting has now escalated in the Kordofan region.
Reuters reported that the RSF has attempted to portray el-Fasher as "back to normal" since its takeover, even as the Yale Humanitan Research Lab published a report earlier this month on the mass killings that the paramilitary group have sought hide evidence of "through burial, burning, and removal of human remains on a mass scale."
Denise Brown, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, told Reuters that the few people remaining in el-Fasher are living in empty buildings or tents made of plastic sheets. A small market was operating, but was selling only locally grown vegetables.
"The town was not teeming with people," Brown said. "There were very few people that [we] were able to see... We have photos of people, and you can see clearly on their faces the accumulation of fatigue, of stress, of anxiety, of loss."
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Yale's report earlier this month relied partially in satellite imagery taken between October 26-November 28, which showed clusters of what researchers said were consistent with human remains in and around el-Fasher. More than 70% of the clusters had become smaller in satellite images by late November, and 38% were no longer visible.
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Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, said the UN's discovery of few signs of life in el-Fasher corroborated the lab's findings.
Brown said the UN team is "still very concerned about those who are injured, who we didn’t see, those who may be detained," and told Reuters the officials plan to return to assess water and sanitation access.
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