A non-partisan satirical dossier on the permanent political class — the 535 people with a 10% approval rating and the job security of a barnacle.
They approve of themselves. You don’t. And yet, election after election, the same faces come back — because the machine was built to make sure they would. This is the paper that reads them their record, cites every line, and reminds you of the one button that still works.
Every figure is sourced inside the files. None of them are improving.
The whole idea, in one breath
In 2011, Throw Them All Out laid out how politicians of both parties get rich off the rules they write for everyone else. A mortified Congress passed a reform law — then quietly gutted it two years later, by unanimous consent, in about ten seconds. That’s the whole game: perform outrage, defang the fix, run for re-election.
This isn’t a left problem or a right problem. It’s an incumbent problem.
We don’t care which team the incumbent plays for. We care that a body the public rates at 10% keeps a 98% retention rate — and that both numbers are, at this point, a choice. Ours.
File No. 010After 14 years of a law with a $200 fine and zero prosecutions, the House finally passed a "ban" that lets members hold everything they own, exempts the president, and comes pre-loaded with a poison pill.
232–198The July 22, 2026 House vote to ‘ban’ its own stock trading — 13 Democrats aboard
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File No. 020The 118th passed the fewest laws since the Civil War, the 119th ran the longest shutdown in history, and the $174,000-a-year membership would like some credit for the effort.
274Laws passed by the 118th Congress — the fewest since the Civil War
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File No. 030A nation that can't stand Congress keeps re-hiring it — because the machine was built to make sure you would.
98%Incumbents re-elected in 2024 — while Congress polled 10% approval
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File No. 035For a century the rule was that you rigged districts once a decade and lied about why. In 2025 everyone skipped both parts.
+5 / +5Seats Texas drew for one party and California drew for the other, in the same twelve months, on purpose
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File No. 040Term limits poll at 83% across every party — which is precisely why the 97%-reelected incumbent class has kept the amendment quietly stalled in committee since 1995.
83%Americans who want term limits — 85% R, 80% D, 84% I
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File No. 050The House just voted to restrict its own stock trading — while lobbying hit a record $4.4 billion, dark money nearly doubled, and 866 alumni sprinted to K Street.
$4.4BFederal lobbying in 2024 — an all-time record
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File No. 055In the 1970s fewer than one in ten members left Congress for lobbying. It is now roughly two in three — and the record is being broken by their staff.
10% → 66%Share of departing members of Congress who become lobbyists, 1970s versus recent years
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File No. 060Impeached twice, acquitted twice, and now tabled on a schedule — how both parties turned the Constitution's emergency brake into a novelty rubber stamp.
2×Impeachments of Trump — acquitted both times; the only president impeached twice
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File No. 061The Framers gave the president a mercy pen. This administration turned it into a drive-thru window where the special is "Always Vote Republican."
~1,500January 6 defendants pardoned on Day One — including 10 seditious-conspiracy convicts
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File No. 062A sitting president built a $1.4 billion crypto empire where the citizen is the exit liquidity — and the check comes denominated in anonymous wallets.
$1.4B+Trump's reported 2025 crypto income — his single largest income source
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File No. 063A midnight watchdog purge, a 227-year-old wartime law, tanks aimed at cardboard signs, and $200 billion in "emergency" tariffs — while Congress set an out-of-office reply.
17+Independent inspectors general fired in the January 2025 overnight purge
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File No. 070Nine unelected referees finally wrote an ethics code, then forgot to hire anyone allowed to enforce it.
42%SCOTUS job approval, near record low (Gallup, Sept 2025)
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File No. 071The most consequential orders of the year now arrive unsigned, unexplained, and often after midnight — from a docket the Court would rather you called something else.
32 vs 8Emergency applications filed by this administration in 2025 alone, versus Bush and Obama combined across sixteen years
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File No. 072File in the right small town and a single judge you chose in advance can suspend a federal policy for all 340 million Americans.
1 of 677District judges it can take to freeze a nationwide policy — if the filer picks the courthouse
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File No. 073Nine lifetime appointments, no fixed terms, and a nation refreshing an obituary page to find out what its rights will be for the next thirty years.
67%Republicans who support Supreme Court term limits — alongside 85% of Democrats (PRRI, 2025)
Open the file →Not a fairy tale
Congress expelled George Santos 311–114. Voters flipped 63 House seats in a single 2010 night. Fifteen states enacted term limits by ballot initiative. One 60 Minutes segment turned a stalled reform bill into law almost overnight. The permanent political class wants you to believe accountability is impossible. The historical record disagrees — loudly.
See how it’s done →Registering takes about two minutes and costs nothing. So does checking you’re still on the rolls.