Why did Josh Riley vote for legislation that will help Donald Trump to enact his plan for fascist scapegoating and punishment of immigrants in America? Ithaca voters want an explanation. So far, Congressman Josh Riley has offered only silence.

The topic of today’s episode is Congressman Josh Riley's vote for H.R. 29, the Laken Riley Act. The Laken Riley Act takes away the right to fair trial, not just from undocumented immigrants, but also from many immigrants who are legally authorized to be in the United States, including Dreamers and refugees from political violence.

H.R. 29 requires local law enforcement to send these legal immigrants to squalid Department of Homeland Security prison camps if they have been merely accused of shoplifting a candy bar - even if no criminal charges are filed, or criminal charges are dropped due to lack of evidence or mistaken identity. The State of Texas has offered thousands of acres of its public lands for the construction of massive new prisons that can only be described as concentration camps.

To summarize the problems with H.R. 29:

• The bill requires local and state law enforcement to target individuals who are arrested but not charged with any crime, and those charged but not convicted. The new law will ensnare individuals mistakenly arrested due to police errors in a system that deprives them of their rights, sending them off to harsh Department of Homeland Security prison camps. This provision effectively strips individuals of their right to a fair trial, a cornerstone of the American legal system.

• The act extends its reach to individuals legally residing and working in the United States, including Dreamers, refugees seeking assylum, legal immigrants awaiting green cards, and even children. The broad scope of the people that H.R. 29 targets creates a huge potential to disrupt the lives of law-abiding individuals and families. Entire communities, including citizens of the United States, will be irreparably harmed, socially and economically, if law enforcement complies with the provisions of this new law.

• The legislation empowers states and federal courts to potentially overrule immigration decisions made by the Executive Branch. This shift in power could result in states like Texas inundating federal courts with lawsuits aimed at increasing immigrant detention. A cascade of legal actions by the most extreme MAGA state governments could easily lead to the rapid development of a system of concentration camps with so many prisoners packed so tightly together that human rights abuses would be almost certain to take place.

• The Laken Riley Act grants federal courts the authority to impose travel bans on entire countries that refuse to accept deportations from the U.S. This means that foreign students, professional experts, and other people who have been welcomed as legal travelers to the United States could suddenly have their visas revoked. Such travel bans will trigger diplomatic crises, disrupt global trade, and harm the American economy by exacerbating existing trade tensions already made worse by Donald Trump’s belligerent threats and insults of America’s allies.

Congressman Riley's vote for the Laken Riley Act has ignited a fierce backlash among his constituents in Ithaca and Tompkins County. They are outraged at the legislation’s attacks on due process of law, the constitutional right to a fair trial, and its irrational scapegoating of immigrants.

It would be unfair to reject Josh Riley just because of this one vote. Maybe Congressman Riley, newly arrived in Washington DC got in over his head, and made one bad decision.

Josh Riley Watch will keep watching what Josh Riley does with his power as a member of the US House of Representatives, profiling Riley’s actions on significant legislation, whether that action is positive or negative, so that the voters of Ithaca and Tompkins County can make an informed decision in the election of November 2026.

Josh Riley is a first term congressman, occupying a seat in the US House of Representatives on behalf of the residents of New York’s 19th congressional district, which stretches from Tompkins County in the west all the way across the Hudson River to Rensselaer County and Columbia County bordering Massachusetts in the East.

This is no time to stop paying attention to politics.

This is a pivotal time in American history. We are facing immense challenges such as disasters catalyzed by anthropogenic climate change and the social and economic disruption caused artificial intelligence. The core issue of our time, however, is the struggle between democracy and fascism.

Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, but he failed to achieve a strong mandate. Trump could not quite achieve 50 percent of the vote. He obtained just 49.8 percent of the popular vote, and Kamala Harris was not far behind that, with 48.3 percent. That’s just a 1.5 percent difference, a very slim margin of victory.

What kind of voters supported Josh Riley in 2024?

The race in New York’s 19th congressional district had a slim margin of victory not much bigger than what we saw in the presidential election.

In the 2024 election, the incumbent congressman, Republican Marc Molinaro, lost to Democrat Josh Riley. Josh Riley won with 192,647 votes, 51.1% of the electorate, while Marc Molinaro had 184,290 votes, 48.9% of ballots. Josh Riley won by only 8,357 votes.

Out of the eleven counties in the 19th congressional district, seven counties voted in favor of the re-election of Marc Molinaro. So, how did Josh Riley manage to win the election?

It wasn’t because of Broome County, where Riley’s margin of victory failed to make up for Molinaro’s edge elsewhere. In Broome County, Riley won by only 1,929 votes, a small margin that was more than made up for with Molinaro’s victory in Chenango by over 5,000 votes.

It was Tompkins County, home to the city of Ithaca, that gave Josh Riley his victory in the 2024 congressional election. In Tompkins County, Josh Riley got 75 percent of the vote, an astounding 50 percent lead over Marc Molinaro. Josh Riley banked 22,924 more votes than Marc Molinaro in Tompkins County. That’s more than Riley’s margin of victory in the other three Democratic-leaning counties of the district combined.

The mathematics of Josh Riley’s 2024 victory are plain and simple. It was Ithaca, New York and Tompkins County that delivered the election to Riley. Without the remarkable achievement of the voters of Tompkins County, Josh Riley would have lost the election.

The Democrats of Ithaca and Tompkins County are not conservative, or even centrist. The Democratic Party voters of Tompkins County are strongly liberal. The same goes for independent voters in the Ithaca area. They’re progressives, not swing voters. Josh Riley was sent to the US Congress by the liberal voters of Ithaca and Tompkins County.

You would think that Josh Riley would act accordingly in his work in the US House of Representatives. You would think that Josh Riley would be one of the most strongly progressive members of Congress.

Unfortunately, in 2025, nothing can be taken for granted. The voters of Ithaca and Tompkins County know that they can’t just sit back and relax, confident that Josh Riley is going to represent their values in Congress. The responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy don’t end on Election Day. We need to track every significant vote made by Congressman Josh Riley.

Josh Riley Watch will help voters in Ithaca and Tompkins County to follow the record of Josh Riley in Congress. We will cover his most significant votes, whether they are positive or negative.

As of the moment that I’m recording this podcast episode, there have already been two significant votes on standalone legislation by Representative Josh Riley. Check back in soon for a summary of that legislation, and what it reveals about the politics of Riley in action.