He dropped the R after redistricting made his seat harder, kept caucusing with Republicans, lost his committee seats for a month, and got all three back — plus his subcommittee gavel — from Republican chairs.
In 2021 San Diego County voted 3-2 to start a harm reduction program. Desmond voted no, saying giving out needles still had the appearance of promoting drug abuse. The CDC's own research says the opposite — participants are five times as likely to enter treatment.
In December 2024 San Diego County voted to stop handing people to ICE without a judge's warrant. Desmond was the lone no. Three months later he brought a motion to repeal it, and it failed. He's now the Republican candidate in CA-48.
In June 2020 Gallagher got a Sutter County judge to suspend Newsom's pandemic ballot order, then voted for the law requiring a ballot for every registered voter anyway. He kept suing to limit the governor's emergency powers for another year — and lost at every court above Sutter County.
Gallagher's district contains the town destroyed by the deadliest wildfire in California history. In eleven years in the Legislature he compiled an 11% lifetime environmental score — 0% in 2022, when every one of his recorded votes was against.
Gallagher's amendment to the defense bill would have opened a study into how federal authority can 'preempt or otherwise mitigate' state fuel policies. Seven Republicans joined 209 Democrats to kill it, 212-216.
Within a day of each other, three House Republicans and a group of senators introduced seven resolutions to strip the clean-air rules that 17 states and D.C. rely on. Two Koch-funded groups were quoted cheering in the press release.
More than 27% of households in Valadao's Central Valley district get SNAP, against 17% nationally. He voted for the bill that cut it — which cleared the House 215 to 214 — and told HuffPost the drop in enrollment doesn't worry him.
A Wall Street Journal investigation found ICE is paying contractors millions to scan social media around the clock, then using subpoenas to unmask Americans who criticize the agency. Nobody has been charged. That may be the point.
