Required Reading
MN-06 Daily: July 21, 2026
Four times in ten months, Rep. Tom Emmer has told a radio audience to read the same book. Last week he asked a room of congressional interns whether any of them had. None had. He told them all to go read it.
The book is Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. It says some things he has never mentioned.
MN-06 Watch is reader-supported accountability journalism. No ads, no institutional backing — just a constituent tracking the record so you don’t have to.
By the numbers: 31 posts across both accounts since July 16 — 25 from @GOPMajorityWhip, 6 from @tomemmer, 6 of them retweets. Zero mentioned the congressional stock-trading bill he is currently whipping. Zero named Iran.
Days since Rep. Emmer’s last in-person town hall in MN-06: 1,077 (Hamburg, Minnesota — August 9, 2023)
Days until the primary: 21 · Days until the general: 105
The Book He Keeps Recommending
On July 20, Emmer appeared on the Cats & Cosby Show on 77 WABC. He described a conversation with interns on Capitol Hill:
“I asked them all one question. I asked, how many of you have read The Road to Serfdom by Hayek? Not one hand went up. And I told them, you all need to go read it.”
It was at least the fourth time he has recommended the book publicly since September.
September 9, 2025 — Cats & Cosby Show, 77 WABC. Emmer described “a book that a famous Austrian economist wrote during World War II while he was exiled in Great Britain called The Road to Serfdom, because it applied then, it applies now.” He characterized it as “a story about to these academic elites telling them that this idea of a socialist utopia” would fail.
May 27, 2026 — The Brian Kilmeade Show, Fox News Radio. He called it “a book that everybody should have read at least as early as their freshman year of college,” named Hayek, and said: “He wrote it for his elitist buddies. He was an Austrian economist who was exiled to Great Britain during the war, and he wrote it to his Marxist, communist, socialist friends.”
June 25, 2026 — The John Fredericks Show. “People should go back to reading The Road to Serfdom. The great economist Hayek, who wrote this book for his political elites back during World War Two.”
July 20, 2026 — Cats & Cosby Show, 77 WABC. “That was Hayek writing that book during World War Two to his elitist intellectual buddies about why, quote-unquote, socialism only ends poorly.”
His summary of the argument has been consistent across all four. A central authority allocates scarce resources. It works if you are part of that authority. If you are not, and you complain, it restricts your liberty. In the September 2025 version, if you complain louder, “they might take a lot more than that from you.” By June 2026, the sentence had a new ending: “They might take away a lot more. They might take away your life before it’s over.”
What is in the book
Hayek dedicated The Road to Serfdom “To the Socialists of All Parties.” He addressed it to the people he was arguing against, not about them.
In Chapter 9, “Security and Freedom,” Hayek distinguished between security against severe physical privation and security of a particular standard of living relative to others. He endorsed the first for everyone, writing that there is no reason a society as wealthy as his own should not guarantee it to all “without endangering general freedom.” He wrote that the case for the state helping to organize “a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong.”
In Chapter 3, he wrote that limiting working hours, requiring certain sanitary arrangements, and restricting the use of poisonous substances are “fully compatible with the preservation of competition.” He wrote that the harmful effects of deforestation and of factory smoke cannot be confined to the property owner, and that in such cases “we must find some substitute for the regulation by the price mechanism.”
In Chapter 1, he wrote that nothing “has done so much harm to the liberal cause” as insistence on the principle of laissez-faire.
In the 1976 preface to the American edition, Hayek addressed a reading of his own book directly: it had frequently been alleged, he wrote, that he contended any movement toward socialism must lead to totalitarianism. “This is not what the book says.”
In four public recommendations across ten months, Rep. Emmer has not mentioned the dedication, the minimum-income passage, the social-insurance passage, the working-hours passage, the pollution passage, the laissez-faire passage, or the 1976 preface.
He has recommended the book. He has not mentioned any of that.
What He Actually Did
The House was in session Thursday and Monday. Per the Republican Cloakroom floor record, on July 20 the House passed H.R. 8823 by 396–0 (Roll no. 251) and the EARLY Act Reauthorization, H.R. 4541, by 394–6 (Roll no. 250), both under suspension of the rules. On July 16, a motion to recommit the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, H.R. 9237, failed 210–211 (Roll no. 249) after three Republicans voted with Democrats; the bill was pulled from the floor.
As Majority Whip, Emmer is responsible for counting votes on the week’s floor package. That package includes a bill worth reading carefully.
The stock-trading bill, and what got attached to it
H.R. 7008, the Stop Insider Trading Act, would bar members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children from buying individual stocks. It was introduced by Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI) in January and reported out of the Committee on House Administration 7–4.
On July 17, the House Rules Committee published Rules Committee Print 119-38. That print folds the text of a second Steil bill, H.R. 9368, the Voter ID Act, into the stock-trading bill. H.R. 9368 would require government-issued photo identification to vote in federal elections, including for mail-in ballots — the voter-ID provisions of the SAVE Act.
On July 20, the Rules Committee reported the rule by a record vote of 8–4. H.R. 7008 comes to the floor under a closed rule, with the merged print considered as adopted and no amendments in order. Among the amendments the committee declined to make in order was one from Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) that would have extended the trading ban to the President, the Vice President, Cabinet officers, and judicial officers. It was defeated 4–8.
Rep. Emmer is not a cosponsor of H.R. 7008. He is not a cosponsor of H.R. 5106, the Restore Trust in Congress Act, which has 135 cosponsors. He is not a cosponsor of H.R. 396, the TRUST in Congress Act, which has 101. MN-06 Watch found no public statement by Rep. Emmer, in favor or against, on banning congressional stock trading.
He has been considerably more forthcoming about the other half of the bill. On June 25 — the same day he recommended Hayek on the Fredericks show — he described the strategy for moving SAVE through a Senate that has not passed it:
“We put it on a reconciliation bill here in the House. We add the Save America Act to it, John. We send it to the Senate. They will give it to their parliamentarian, which they always do, and I would fully expect the parliamentarian to drop it out of the bill and say, well, this isn’t appropriate for this bill. At that point, guess what? It only takes 50 plus one Senators to overrule the parliamentarian.”
Four days before Emmer posted “We need to SAVE America now!”, the only Senate Republican to state her opposition unambiguously explained herself in print. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published July 17, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) wrote that she supports the bill’s core tenets — that only citizens vote, and that voters show identification — but remains opposed to the legislation. Her stated objection is implementation: the documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement, which in some cases must be presented in person, would fall hardest on rural and Native Alaskan communities, and the bill provides no time for proper implementation before November.
Murkowski was the only Republican to vote against opening debate on the bill in March. She later joined Sens. Collins, Tillis, and McConnell in blocking an attempt to attach it to an immigration funding package.
No post from either Emmer account in this window mentioned Murkowski, her op-ed, or the implementation objection.
The floor vote on H.R. 7008 is expected this week. MN-06 Watch will report the roll call when it is recorded.
What He Tweeted
Four posts pushed the SAVE Act. On July 21, @GOPMajorityWhip posted “We need to SAVE America now!” and, separately, “Keep them coming! Fraud is no longer an option.” @tomemmer posted that Democrats are “complete CHEATERS” and that the SAVE Act must pass. The official account retweeted Speaker Mike Johnson’s announcement that the House would move the “SAVE and Protect America Act” this week — a separate vehicle from H.R. 7008, and a reconciliation measure rather than the SAVE Act itself.
Immigration and assimilation were key themes. On July 21: “If you come to this country and become a citizen, you’re an American. If you don’t want to assimilate, then get the hell out of here.” A separate post the same day addressed a criminal case, stating that cultural background “is not an excuse for breaking the law in the United States.”
Six posts concerned Gov. Tim Walz and the pardon of Tou Lue Vang, including a July 19 post calling the Minnesota Star Tribune a “depraved rag” and a July 17 @tomemmer post reading, in full: “Friendly reminder: You lost to Donald Trump by a landslide. Sit down, Timmy!”
On July 17, he marked one year since House passage of the CLARITY Act and said it is time for the Senate to act. On the same day: “Communism is built on dependence and the loss of the freedoms we utilize every day... We cannot let communism win.” Two days later he retweeted Speaker Johnson’s post warning of a “ROAD TO COMMUNISM.”
What He Didn’t Mention
The stock-trading half of the bill he is whipping. Thirty-one posts in six days. Four on the SAVE Act. None on H.R. 7008’s provisions governing members of Congress and their families.
Iran. On July 18, @GOPMajorityWhip posted: “Horrible news. Jacquie and I are praying for these American heroes. May God comfort their loved ones during this tragic time.” The post does not name the conflict, the location, or the operation. It is the only post from either account in this window that acknowledges American deaths, and it does not mention Iran.
Two days later he discussed the war at length on two programs. On The Matt Gaetz Show, the host’s opening segment described a ninth consecutive day of renewed hostilities, American combat deaths, strikes on Bahrain and Kuwait, and a closed Strait of Hormuz, then asked Emmer directly whether he was “planning to sell to voters in the upcoming midterms an ongoing war.” Emmer credited the President’s handling of it and answered: “No, I don’t think the war will” become more popular. On Cats & Cosby the same day, he said the President is willing to “identify the problem and deal with it” and predicted the strait “is going to be reopened again.”
Neither account posted anything naming Iran, the strait, or the war in the six days covered here. A constituent following only @GOPMajorityWhip and @tomemmer would have seen a condolence post with no war attached to it.
Cuba. On the Gaetz program, the host described Emmer as having led the effort to normalize relations with Cuba and end the embargo; Emmer did not dispute the characterization. Asked about Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s report on Cuban influence, Emmer endorsed the report and separately restated that the embargo “only hurts the people that you’re trying to help.” No post in the window mentioned Cuba.
Questions for the Whip
Submitted through the official contact form at emmer.house.gov.
In four public recommendations of The Road to Serfdom since September 2025, you have not mentioned that Hayek endorsed a guaranteed minimum standard of subsistence for all citizens and wrote that the case for a comprehensive state-organized social insurance system is very strong. Do you agree with Hayek on those points?
You have described Hayek as writing to his “elitist buddies,” “academic elites,” and “elitist intellectual buddies.” The book is dedicated “To the Socialists of All Parties.” Have you read the dedication, and does it change how you would describe the book’s intended audience?
You are whipping H.R. 7008, the Stop Insider Trading Act. You are not a cosponsor of it, or of H.R. 5106, or of H.R. 396. Do you support a ban on individual stock trading by members of Congress, and how will you vote?
Rules Committee Print 119-38 merged voter-ID legislation into the stock-trading bill and it will be considered under a closed rule. Why were the two bills combined rather than given separate votes, and did you support that decision?
It has been 1,077 days since your last in-person town hall in this district. The primary is in 21 days. Will you hold one before August 11?
As of publication, still awaiting a response.
🔗 MN-06 Watch Tools: Vote Tracker • Bills • Transcripts • Tweets • Articles
We document what your representative does. You decide what it means.
Subscribe to MN-06 Watch for daily accountability coverage of Rep. Tom Emmer.
Sources
Transcripts (MN-06 Watch archive, mn06watch.com/transcripts/)
Rep. Tom Emmer, Cats and Cosby Show, 77 WABC, September 9, 2025 —
Rep. Tom Emmer, The Brian Kilmeade Show, Fox News Radio, May 27, 2026 —
Rep. Tom Emmer, The John Fredericks Show, June 25, 2026 —
Rep. Tom Emmer, Cats and Cosby Show, 77 WABC, July 20, 2026 —
Rep. Tom Emmer, The Matt Gaetz Show, July 20, 2026 —
The Road to Serfdom
F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, George Routledge & Sons, 1944 (Chapters 1, 3)
F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents, The Definitive Edition, University of Chicago Press, 2007 (Chapter 9, pp. 147–148; 1976 preface to the American edition)
University of Chicago Press publication record — https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo4138549.html
Legislation
H.R. 7008, Stop Insider Trading Act — https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7008
H.R. 7008 cosponsors — https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7008/cosponsors
H.R. 5106 cosponsors — https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5106/cosponsors
H.R. 396 cosponsors — https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/396/cosponsors
House Rules Committee, H.R. 7008 (rule, committee votes, amendment dispositions) — https://rules.house.gov/bill/119/hr-7008
Rules Committee Print 119-38 — https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20260720/RCP2_STOPINSIDERTRADING_xml.pdf
Republican Cloakroom, floor proceedings, July 20, 2026 — https://repcloakroom.house.gov/floor/monday-july-20th-2026/
Murkowski op-ed
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, opinion essay on the SAVE America Act, The Wall Street Journal, July 17, 2026
Democracy Docket, “Murkowski slams door shut on supporting SAVE America Act” — https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/murkowski-slams-door-shut-on-supporting-save-america-act/
Newsweek, “Murkowski Says SAVE Act Could Require $1,000 Trips to Register to Vote” — https://www.newsweek.com/murkowski-save-act-could-require-1000-trips-to-register-to-vote-12214305
Accounts
@GOPMajorityWhip — https://x.com/GOPMajorityWhip
@tomemmer — https://x.com/tomemmer
It certainly sounds like all decorum and civility is gone from Tom Emmer. His lasting legacy is ugly smears, shuck and jive, and middle school tripes. The Republican Party is no longer.