Josh Riley, a vulnerable House Democrat from New York who's desperately clinging to the false image of centrism, has once again exposed his true radical colors. Riley recently attended an event hosted by an anti-Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE), defund-the-police organization, and to make matters worse, followed it up by blatantly lying about President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, misleading voters in a pathetic attempt to score cheap political points. Riley’s actions are just the latest reminder that beneath the polished campaign rhetoric is a progressive candidate who is far more aligned with the radical fringe than with the hardworking Americans he claims to represent.
Riley has been fearmongering Americans about Medicaid, falsely claiming the Republicans' Big Beautiful Bill would “rip hundreds of billions of dollars-worth of health care away” from kids, babies, and seniors. However, in reality, the bill actually protects Medicaid by eliminating coverage for 1.4 million illegal immigrants, 4.8 million able-bodied adults who are choosing not to work, and 1.2 million recipients who are just completely ineligible for the program.
In fact, polls show that the changes in Medicaid are widely popular with Americans nationwide.
Riley attended an event organized by Citizen Action of New York, which has openly pushed to defund the police. In 2020, the group urged then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to use his power to reduce the presence of police officers in the city.
In 2021, the group once again called for defunding the police in a blog post, saying, "One of the roots of modern policing is the slave patrols of the south that punished slaves… policing is doing more harm to already traumatized communities."
Instead, Citizen Action of New York said it wants to see those resources going toward communities “disproportionately impacted by policing.”
Additionally, the group has endorsed Riley for several years and attended an event calling for ICE to be abolished. In 2019, it said ICE was conducting “cruel and inhumane raids,” saying the agency “must stop.” The group also accused ICE of charging people in detention centers for soap and basic necessities.
“ICE is trying to take away masks from the hospitals that need them so they can continue breaking apart families. #AbolishICE,” the group claimed in a 2020 Facebook post.
The group has endorsed Riley for several years, which comes as no surprise since Riley himself has received a $1,000 donation from Voters of Tomorrow, a radical group that has called for abolishing cash bail.
In 2022, Riley pocketed $2,500 from the far-left Working Families Party National PAC and raked in over $21,000 in support from the New York Working Families Party.
“Josh Riley is a complete fraud. He claims to care about protecting Medicaid for his constituents, but he voted against a bill to do just that. He claims to be a moderate, but he's headlining events with defund-the-police radicals. We can't wait to see what this out-of-touch Democrat lies about next,” NRCC Spokeswoman Maureen O’Toole said in a statement to Townhall.
The bottom line: Riley’s ties to a radical, far-left group are a serious liability for a candidate who barely squeaked by with less than a three-point win last November, especially in a state where crime has been a major concern for years.