Note from the author: If you want any of our free booklets, guides, model legislation, and more, check out our library at the bottom of this piece.
The Make Corrupt Politicians Pay Act is a complete model state bill that makes public officials return the profit they earn trading on nonpublic government information, and the campaign funding its delivery to 1,580 offices is live today. The full statute, the budget, and the mailing plan are one link away: https://gofund.me/f62f9e8ec
The same five lines the campaign page uses state the act:
Disgorgement: the full profit goes back.
Treble damages: the traders harmed collect three times their losses.
Civil fines run up to three times the profit.
Felony charges scale with the dollar amount.
A convicted official loses the public pension.
A victims restitution fund pays the people harmed before the state keeps a dollar.
Each of the five sections exists in current law and is enforced somewhere right now: the Supreme Court approved fund-routed disgorgement in Liu v. SEC, antitrust law supplies the treble multiplier, section 21A of the Securities Exchange Act already sets fines at three times the profit, the states grade theft by dollar amount in their own codes, and Pennsylvania and New York forfeit pensions on conviction under current law. You can even check the drafter’s notes, which map every section to its source, and the sources answer the quiet question a reader asks, whether any of this can happen.
This campaign prints the act and mails it to each and every Democratic legislator in the sixteen states where Democrats control both chambers and the governorship, while email carries the same package to Democratic legislators in the other thirty-four states and both channels reach the 24 Democratic governors and the 57 state party chairs. The budget, the accountability terms, and the complete statute appear on the campaign page at the link above, and The Existentialist Republic publishes the record afterward, office by office: received, filed, declined, or unanswered.
This mailing is one piece of a larger push. Activists in The Existentialist Republic’s Discord are contacting legislators, subscribers are reaching out to their own representatives as constituents, and each envelope arrives in an office already hearing from the voters that office answers to. We are flooding the politicians’ zone, and the two actions at the end are your part of the flood.
Objections arrive quickly, and each answer below is written so you can easily repost it word for word.
“This is performative. It will never pass.” Federal bills stall because passage needs votes Democrats do not have. This one is a state bill. Democrats control both chambers and the governorship in sixteen states, which means introduction the day a session opens and a floor vote soon after without one Republican. Nothing performative about it and not a single excuse available for voting no.
“Federal officials are immune to state law.” No statute says so. The immunity courts recognize covers a federal officer performing a lawful and constitutionally valid federal duty, and the Supreme Court held in Mesa v. California that an on-duty federal employee still answers to state law when the act itself serves no such duty. Trading stocks appears in no official’s duties. Same as a DUI: the job changes nothing about the charge.
“This is just a bill aimed at Trump.” The act names no one and takes effect only for conduct after passage. The same sections govern both parties, federal officials along with state and local ones, and the act reaches whoever chooses to trade on nonpublic information once the law exists.
“Why not prosecute the trades already in the news?” The Constitution bars punishment under a law that did not exist when the conduct occurred; the term is ex post facto. The act runs forward from passage. Officials file public disclosure reports for each transaction, and any matched purchase and sale within six months after enactment makes the profit recoverable on the public record alone.
“Fines let them off easy.” The opposite complaint arrives in the same threads: “Prison goes too far.” The act answers both at once: disgorgement recovers the gain, treble damages repay the traders’ losses, the restitution fund pays victims first, and intentional violations carry felony charges graded by amount. Neither remedy replaces the other.
The Existentialist Republic drafted this act because prosecuting financial crimes is far easier than prosecuting treason. We organized this mailing list because sixteen legislatures have democratic control and this is an opportunity to deliver for voters in a way that will not just be newsworthy, it will represent a historic turning point in US history. Delivery is the remaining step, and the campaign funds the delivery. And if this campaign gets a big enough response, we do the same thing for the next bill, and the one after, getting more sophisticated each iteration.
Two Ways to Flood the Zone
Fund the Mailing
Donate at https://gofund.me/f62f9e8ec. About $1.50 prints, stuffs, and mails one envelope, $15 covers ten offices, and $2,400 mails the full run.
The full act, the budget, and the accountability terms are on the page, readable before you give a dollar.
Call To Action
Contact Your Legislator
Write your state legislators in your own words. Identical form messages get counted once and filed, and your own words are what works.
Points to cover: you are a constituent, you want the Make Corrupt Politicians Pay Act introduced in the next session, the full text is on the campaign page where you can copy the 5 images containing the text and share them with your representatives.
Reach the office however you like: email, a call, a fax through FaxZero, or a printed letter. A call covers the same points, spoken in your own words.
If you can’t give today, share the link instead https://gofund.me/f62f9e8ec
GoFundMe decides which campaigns are worth promoting based on link shares more than contributions, so sending this link to a few folks and posting it a few places are legitimate contributions in their own right.
If you value this work and want to see it continue, most of The Existentialist Republic’s funding comes from right here on Substack. Don’t let this be the reason you skip a meal or miss rent, but if you want to see more Musk lawsuits, Federal Agent Prosecution Referrals, Chief Justice Roberts’ Disbarment Complaints, and laws that will actually result in serious change, then this is the community to be in.
THE EXISTENTIALIST REPUBLIC LIBRARY
You can get a FREE PDF of the book in the BMAC shop for $0.00 by clicking on this sentence.
The Existentialist Republic Library
Conservatism: America’s Personality Disorder — physical copy / free download
Intro to Soft Secession — physical copy / free download
Oppositional Federalism and You — physical copy / free download
Toppling Tyrants: A Field Guide to Dismantling American Fascism — physical copy / free download
Grab Them By The E.A.R.R.: How to Get Politicians to Do What You Want — physical copy / free download
Being Dangerous: Go From Activist to Operative
More Free downloads:
Soft Secession: 100 Policies That Pass
All Four Completed Model Legislation Bills
The Opposition Guide to Tax Warfare
Six-Panel Soft Secession Brochure
Congratulations, Chris, now you're talking! Only money does anything in the America of Trump's régime. I want to donate to this and am going to click on all the links mentioned in this substack, however, I've done that before and I've told you that "buy me a coffee" takes even more of a percentage than credit card companies and all the rest. Substack isn't programmed for anything but subscription choices and I've already subscribed to you so only bumping up to "founding member" might help but not this specific campaign. I don't understand how "go fund me" works or what's their take. Please set up a simple donation that gets to this type of campaign action and just send that link once and for all. For my part I'm looking to sue the U.S. for wasting tax money and that will cost me.
Excellent as usual. And I don't see this as simply targeted at Trump and his cronies - corrupt politicians have no bounds.