Mike Levin

Proud husband/dad, SoCal native, clean energy advocate, environmental attorney, Stanford/Duke alum. U.S. Representative for CA-49. All tweets by me.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is really stupid, and it’s not getting enough attention.

The Trump administration is pulling a working $368 million ocean monitoring system out of the water, equipment taxpayers already bought, built, and sank into the deep ocean.

And they are doing it right when the oceans are behaving in ways that alarm the scientists who study them.

Record-breaking temperatures.

A system of Atlantic currents that may be lurching toward collapse.

The response?

Yank out the instruments and walk away.

That is not budgeting. That is smashing the gauges while the engine is on fire and calling it efficiency.

For what? The Trump administration dressed it up as a “nimbler approach” and “smart lifecycle management,” which is fancy nonsense for “we shut it off and hoped nobody would ask why.” There is no return-on-investment analysis. They cannot show taxpayers save a dime, because the gear is already paid for and the science it produces protects real money and real lives.

The kicker: the same people killing the monitors want to mine the deep sea for minerals. So they are destroying the only tools that could measure what that mining does. That is not an accident.

That is the point. You cannot see the damage if you break the instruments first.
https://t.co/MzE4AW1QBv

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Trump launched the war in February over Iran’s nuclear program.

Now he is celebrating a framework that does not resolve that program at all.

The nuclear question gets kicked to a future round of talks.

What this agreement mainly does is reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But the strait was open the day the war began. Iran closed it to gain leverage.

Trump went to war and the headline result is undoing a problem Iran created in response to that war.

Meanwhile the deal text is apparently a page and a half, and we are being asked to call this a victory before anyone outside the room has seen the terms.

I will keep pushing for a real classified briefing where all of our questions can be answered. The lack of information and utter disrespect from this White House to Congress is truly disgraceful.

But based on everything we know so far, we spent lives and treasure to get back to roughly where we started, with the central danger still unaddressed.

https://t.co/kE7DTPekC8

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

The Mateo Fire has burned close to 1,000 acres at Camp Pendleton, and right now firefighters are still on the lines working to get it under control.

So far there are no reported injuries and no structural damage, and I am grateful to every crew putting in the hard hours to keep our community safe. I am watching this closely and staying in touch with local officials.

To everyone near the base, please stay alert and follow their guidance.
https://t.co/RPXU1LnXIr

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

It’s a great day for the White House to explain why Howard Lutnick still runs the Commerce Department.

For years, Lutnick downplayed his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. He claimed he was so disgusted by Epstein that he cut ties back in 2005. Then the Epstein Files came out. They show Lutnick visited Epstein’s private island in 2012, four years after Epstein’s 2008 sex-crime conviction.

This past April 1, just weeks after the House Oversight Committee arranged to question him about Epstein, Lutnick donated $5 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC for House Republicans and Mike Johnson. That PAC bankrolls the very members who then heard his testimony. It was his first political donation as a sitting Cabinet secretary. He gave his closed-door deposition on May 6 and walked out still holding his job.

Even the Republican chairman admitted Lutnick had not been fully truthful about the island visit.

Lutnick must resign.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Trump looked into the camera and said of the ballroom, “This is taxpayer-free. We have no taxpayer putting up 10 cents.”

Three weeks earlier, his own contractor had already put it in writing. The ballroom would cost $600 million, with half of it from you, the taxpayer.

Trump knew. He said it anyway.

This administration has no problem shortchanging Medicaid or food for kids.

But $300 million for a ballroom and a private bunker? Found that money instantly.

I am an appropriator. I see the budget. This was never about what we can afford. It is about who they choose to spend it on.

I will fight this in every hearing, every markup, every vote, until the last dime is accounted for.

Most of my Republican colleagues are silent while the public is robbed in broad daylight.

Where in the hell are they?
https://t.co/rAptrfcaCd

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

The corporations bankrolling Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom have received more than $50 billion in new or expanded federal contracts in the six months since they wrote those checks.

Of 27 known donors, 16 had federal enforcement actions suspended, dropped, or scaled back. And the White House still will not say how much each donor gave.

That is not a healthy democracy.

That is pay-to-play running out of the People’s House. It is why I helped launch the End Corruption Caucus. I take no corporate PAC money and I do not trade stocks, because public office should never be a personal cash machine.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

The corporations bankrolling Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom have received more than $50 billion in new or expanded federal contracts in the six months since they wrote those checks.

Of 27 known donors, 16 had federal enforcement actions suspended, dropped, or scaled back. And the White House still will not say how much each donor gave.

That is not a healthy democracy.

That is pay-to-play running out of the People’s House. It is why I helped launch the End Corruption Caucus. I take no corporate PAC money and I do not trade stocks, because public office should never be a personal cash machine.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Stephen Miller wants to flip a switch and erase one of your oldest rights.

It’s called habeas corpus.

Fancy words but a simple idea that the government can’t just grab you and lock you away. It has to prove to a judge why you’re behind bars. That right is 800 years old.

It’s older than America itself.

And Miller tried to kill it.

New reporting confirms it. Inside the White House, Miller pushed to suspend habeas corpus so agents could seize people, detain them, and deport them with no judge, no hearing, no chance to say “you’ve got the wrong guy.”

Even Trump’s own lawyers put in writing that this is illegal. Miller pushed anyway.
Miller screams “invasion” because the Constitution only allows this sort of thing during an invasion. But this same crowd brags every day that border crossings hit record lows. So which is it?

The right to challenge your own detention is the line between a republic and a regime. Lose it, and the government can disappear anyone.

I will fight this with everything I have.

The Constitution is not optional.

Not for Stephen Miller. Not for anyone.
https://t.co/cklllxnJMd

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is how you capture the press. You let the friendly billionaire buy it, and you clear the path.

Here’s what just happened:

Career DOJ antitrust lawyers spent months investigating Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. They were leaning toward challenging it as anticompetitive. Then leadership shut it down before staff could even file their recommendation.

Paramount is run by David Ellison, son of Trump ally Larry Ellison. And Warner Bros owns CNN.

Ellison told Trump officials he would make sweeping changes to CNN. He already installed Bari Weiss atop CBS News, and she is expected to help oversee CNN. As Pete Hegseth said out loud, “the sooner David Ellison takes over that network the better.”

So connect the dots.

A regulator overrides its own experts to greenlight a deal.

The deal hands a Trump ally control of a major newsroom. And the administration barely hides its enthusiasm for what comes next.

https://t.co/QLkFtrO5MU

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is your daily reminder that Trump and Republicans are spending billions of your tax dollars on an unauthorized war in Iran and Stephen Miller’s ICE agenda while gutting Medicaid, slashing SNAP, and driving up your health care costs.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is your daily reminder that Trump and Republicans are spending billions of your tax dollars on an unauthorized war in Iran and Stephen Miller’s ICE agenda while gutting Medicaid, slashing SNAP, and driving up your health care costs.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Mike Johnson recently went on the radio and called for “desperate measures” on Social Security and Medicare, promising Republicans “have a plan” to “adjust and fix” them next year.

Don’t believe his equivocations that it’s just about waste, fraud and abuse.

We know exactly what Mike Johnson means when he says “adjust,” because he laid out the plan before he was Speaker.

Johnson ran the Republican Study Committee, the largest and most powerful conservative bloc in the House, where he advocated raising the Social Security retirement age to 69, pushing the early retirement age to 64, and shrinking the annual cost-of-living increases seniors depend on.

He also wanted to turn Medicare into a voucher program and raise the eligibility age, then tie it to life expectancy so it keeps climbing higher and higher.

When the Speaker of the House now says he has “a plan,” believe him.

Mike Johnson cannot be trusted with your earned benefits. He must be stopped. https://t.co/LoXKl0wdG3

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is your daily reminder that Trump and Republicans are spending billions of your tax dollars on an unauthorized war in Iran and Stephen Miller’s ICE agenda while gutting Medicaid, slashing SNAP, and driving up your health care costs.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

As far as I can tell, Tulsi’s big “secret biolab” bombshell is recycled Kremlin propaganda. These labs were never secret.

The U.S. spent decades funding biosafety and disease-surveillance work abroad under Nunn-Lugar, with the facility lists posted publicly by the State Department and our own embassy in Kyiv.

Russia invented the “secret bioweapons” spin in 2022 to help justify invading Ukraine. Our own intelligence flagged it as disinformation. Now Tulsi is laundering that exact line, while conveniently forgetting the first Trump administration funded this same research.

Nothing was hidden and the only thing being manufactured here is the coverup.

Tulsi, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Mike Johnson recently went on the radio and called for “desperate measures” on Social Security and Medicare, promising Republicans “have a plan” to “adjust and fix” them next year.

Don’t believe his equivocations that it’s just about waste, fraud and abuse.

We know exactly what Mike Johnson means when he says “adjust,” because he laid out the plan before he was Speaker.

Johnson ran the Republican Study Committee, the largest and most powerful conservative bloc in the House, where he advocated raising the Social Security retirement age to 69, pushing the early retirement age to 64, and shrinking the annual cost-of-living increases seniors depend on.

He also wanted to turn Medicare into a voucher program and raise the eligibility age, then tie it to life expectancy so it keeps climbing higher and higher.

When the Speaker of the House now says he has “a plan,” believe him.

Mike Johnson cannot be trusted with your earned benefits. He must be stopped. https://t.co/LoXKl0wdG3

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Even the weather is celebrating 🌈

[philip lewis @Phil_Lewis_]

There’s a rainbow outside the Kennedy Center right now as a crowd awaits Trump’s name to be pulled off the arts venue

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Inflation just hit its highest level since April 2023. Prices are rising faster than paychecks. 

Asked about it this week, President Trump called the numbers “great” and said, and I quote, “I love the inflation.”

Weeks earlier, he told reporters “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”

The inflation he says he loves is the same inflation straining family budgets, squeezing farmers trying to keep food on all of our tables, and forcing seniors on fixed incomes to choose between groceries and bills.

If this is what the president loves, what in the world does he hate?

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

A decade ago today, a gunman took 49 lives at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. This Pride Month, we remember every one of them. And we keep fighting against hate and gun violence, for as long as it takes.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

69 people baked to death when Portland hit 116 degrees.

Scientists concluded that heat wave would have been extraordinarily unlikely without human-caused climate change.

Before the National Academies of Sciences could even publish its report on that science, the campaign to discredit it was already underway.

Opposition researchers digging through scientists’ emails. One panel member resigning out of fear she’d be targeted. Another removed the same day an oil-industry website attacked her.

A member of congress heavily funded by oil and gas demanding records from the National Academies.

All before a single page was released.

If you think the science is wrong, argue with the science.

Going after the scientists before the report even exists is something else entirely.
https://t.co/B4IW9MW7is

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

As far as I can tell, Tulsi’s big “secret biolab” bombshell is recycled Kremlin propaganda. These labs were never secret.

The U.S. spent decades funding biosafety and disease-surveillance work abroad under Nunn-Lugar, with the facility lists posted publicly by the State Department and our own embassy in Kyiv.

Russia invented the “secret bioweapons” spin in 2022 to help justify invading Ukraine. Our own intelligence flagged it as disinformation. Now Tulsi is laundering that exact line, while conveniently forgetting the first Trump administration funded this same research.

Nothing was hidden and the only thing being manufactured here is the coverup.

Tulsi, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

[DNI Tulsi Gabbard @DNIGabbard]

Today, I’m releasing never before seen intelligence revealing new evidence of past US government funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries, including Ukraine.

In support of President Trump‘s Executive Order to end federal funding of dangerous gain of function research around the world, and increase transparency and accountability, ODNI will continue working with partners across the Administration to identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain, and what “research” is being conducted.

https://t.co/pLMD0krc69

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Veterans kept their promise to America.

America should keep its promise to them.

No veteran should lose a home because help was not there when it was needed most.

On May 1, 2025, the VA ended its foreclosure rescue program for struggling veteran homeowners. No replacement was available when the program ended. The replacement was not signed into law until July 30.

That left a months-long gap during which veterans facing financial hardship had fewer tools available to avoid foreclosure. Some veterans entered foreclosure during that period, losing their homes before the replacement program existed.
Congress eventually approved a new program with bipartisan support, and that was a good thing. But it did not change what had already happened.

Relief that arrives after a foreclosure cannot prevent a foreclosure.

The new program can help bring a loan current by moving missed payments into a separate, interest-free balance owed to the government. What it generally cannot do is lower a monthly mortgage payment that has become unaffordable because of a job loss, disability, or other financial hardship.

The basic problem was totally predictable. One foreclosure-prevention program ended before the next one was ready. Veterans who served this country were left to navigate that gap at precisely the moment they needed help most.

Despite all the talk of helping veterans, this administration ended one safety net before the next was ready, and left veterans to absorb the gap for months.
https://t.co/Oj7TQkZ7eP