On a Tuesday in May, Republican voters in Kentucky’s Fourth District retired the most stubborn man in Congress. @RepThomasMassie, an MIT-trained engineer and seven-term incumbent, lost his primary to Trump-endorsed @EdGallrein in a race that drew more than $32 million in ad spending, the most expensive House primary in American history. All of this to decide who would occupy one seat out of 435. So why that seat, and why so much? Massie was a particular kind of irritant. He arrived in Washington in 2012, the year @RonPaul departed (after an awesome mic drop), carrying Paul’s endorsement and much of his creed. He took up Paul’s old cause of auditing the Federal Reserve, reintroducing the bill Congress after Congress. He voted against deficits, no matter which party created them. In March 2020, as leaders of both parties prepared to pass a $2 trillion stimulus package by voice vote in a mostly empty chamber, Massie demanded a recorded vote, saying he refused to let the republic die “by unanimous consent and an empty chamber.” The president called him a “third-rate grandstander.” Massie’s great sin was wanting the public to know who voted for legislation so economically consequential. Last year he did something rarer still. When House leadership refused to bring the Epstein Files Transparency Act to the floor, Massie gathered 218 signatures on a discharge petition and forced the vote over the objections of the Speaker and the White House. It passed 427 to 1. One member of Congress, armed with nothing but the rules, had compelled the government to open its files. For this he was marked. Continue reading in the link below…