Every new majority in Congress arrives with a plan. Usually, the plan is about how to make life better for everyday Americans. On Nov. 3, Democrats won both chambers of Congress. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., has already told us what they have in mind instead: intimidating the young people who show up to serve.
On Oct. 13, three weeks before the vote, the Michigan Democrat spoke at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics about what her party would do with power. I was on campus that day. Her message was aimed at students like me.
“I want young people coming out of school to say, should I go work for the Trump administration?” she said. She wants them to think, “Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want.” And she was clear about the goal: “I want that deterrence message.”
Not one of those words is about a crime. None is about catching people who broke the law. They are about graduates who have not even taken a job yet. Her target is the decision to serve.
Picture who that is. A 22-year-old young man who grew up watching the news at the kitchen table with his parents. Who spent college summers interning for free and sleeping on a friend’s couch. Who finally gets the call offering a job answering phones at a federal agency or the White House. The pay is modest, and the hours are long, but he takes it anyway because he loves his country and believes he can help make it better.
That is who works in an administration: schedulers, press assistants, and policy analysts in their 20s who are proud just to have a badge and a desk. They took those jobs to carry out the agenda Americans voted for in 2016 and again in 2024. They are not plotting anything illegal; they are trying to do right by the people who sent them there.
Slotkin wants that young man to look at the offer and see a threat.
Here is what the threat looks like. A congressional subpoena does not come with a public defender. A young staffer who gets one has to hire a lawyer or face Congress alone. Cabinet secretaries and senior officials have the salaries, the connections, and the legal teams to absorb the cost of a subpoena. A low-level staffer with student loans and an entry-level paycheck does not.
That is the point. The investigation does not have to find anything. It only has to cost enough to ruin someone. A young man who wanted nothing more than to serve his country starts to wonder if his career is over before it starts. His parents worry about the legal bills. His friends tell him to get out while he can. And the next class of graduates, watching all of it, quietly takes a job somewhere else. Slotkin is describing a plan to bankrupt young conservative people for the crime of public service.
On the campaign trail barely two weeks later, Slotkin was caught on a video describing a list of cases Democrats would pursue on every committee, “assuming we win both houses, even if we just win one.” Every committee.
That is not a stray comment at a campus event. That is an agenda for an entire congressional majority, and now Democrats have the gavels to carry it out.
When the backlash came, Slotkin called it “manufactured outrage.” She has not walked any of her comments back.
Congressional Democrats’ first priority with their new majority will not be affordability, the border, or the safety of your neighborhood. It will be subpoenas. It will be making examples of the young conservative Americans who answered the call to serve, so the next generation never does.
A government that scares away its young people does not become more accountable. It becomes emptier. Public service only works if each generation believes it is welcome to step forward, whatever its politics.
I want my classmates to believe that. So I filed a complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, whose own rules cover “improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate.” I have also started a Change.org petition asking the committee to review that complaint and make its findings public.
If you believe a senator should never threaten to ruin young Americans for choosing to serve their country, sign the petition at Change.org/stopslotkin.
Slotkin sent young conservatives a message. We heard it. Now the Senate should respond to it.
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