Representative Justin Amash

Justin A. Amash (ə-MAHSH; born April 18, 1980) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the U.S. representative for Michigan’s 3rd congressional district from January 3, 2011, to January 3, 2021. A prominent libertarian voice in national politics, he was the second Palestinian American and Syrian American member of Congress and, upon leaving office, the only member ever to have served in Congress as a Libertarian. Originally elected as a Republican, Amash became an independent in 2019 and joined the Libertarian Party in 2020, before returning to the Republican Party in 2024. Over five terms in the House of Representatives, he participated actively in the legislative process and represented the interests of his western Michigan constituents during a significant period in American political history.

Amash was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on April 18, 1980, to Palestinian and Syrian immigrant parents. His father, Attallah Amash, was a Palestinian Christian refugee who had fled from the West Bank, then under Jordanian control, and later settled in the United States, where he became a small business owner. His mother, Mimi Amash, was a Syrian immigrant from Damascus. Raised in a culturally Middle Eastern Christian household, Amash grew up in the Grand Rapids area and attended local schools, where he developed an early interest in government, history, and public affairs.

Amash attended Grand Rapids Christian High School, graduating as co-valedictorian. He went on to the University of Michigan, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics with high honors. He then attended the University of Michigan Law School, receiving his Juris Doctor. After law school, he worked briefly in the private sector as a corporate attorney and also assisted in his family’s business. His training in economics and law, combined with his family’s experience as small business owners and immigrants, helped shape his later emphasis on limited government, individual liberty, and constitutional constraints on state power.

Amash entered elective office in the Michigan House of Representatives after the 2008 election. When Glenn Steil Sr., the incumbent state representative for Michigan’s 72nd House District, was unable to run for reelection due to term limits, Amash ran in the Republican primary. He defeated four other candidates for the nomination and then won the general election against Democratic nominee Albert Abbasse. During his initial tenure in the State House, Amash sponsored five resolutions and twelve bills, none of which were enacted. He distinguished himself, however, through an unusual commitment to transparency: he used his Twitter and Facebook pages to report every floor vote and explain his reasoning, and he maintained a government transparency page on his website that allowed the public to view the members and salaries of his staff. This practice of publicly explaining each vote became a hallmark of his political career.

On February 9, 2010, Amash announced that he would seek the Republican nomination for Michigan’s 3rd congressional district. The following day, incumbent Representative Vern Ehlers announced that he would not seek reelection, opening the seat. During the primary campaign, Amash was endorsed by Betsy and Dick DeVos, the Club for Growth, Representative Ron Paul, and the FreedomWorks PAC. He defeated four other candidates in the Republican primary and, shortly before the general election, was named one of Time magazine’s “40 under 40 – Rising Stars of U.S. Politics.” Running on a platform aligned with the Tea Party movement and emphasizing limited government and fiscal restraint, he defeated Democratic nominee Patrick Miles Jr. in the 2010 general election and took office in January 2011. From 2011 to 2019, he missed only one of 5,374 roll call votes, underscoring his reputation for diligence and engagement in the legislative process.

During his decade in Congress, Amash served on several key committees. In the 112th Congress he sat on the Committee on the Budget and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, including its Subcommittee on Government Organization, Efficiency and Financial Management and the Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts of Public and Private Programs; he also served on the Joint Economic Committee. He continued on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Joint Economic Committee in the 113th Congress, working on the Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Subcommittee on National Security. In the 114th Congress he again served on Oversight and Government Reform, including the Subcommittee on National Security, and remained on the Joint Economic Committee. In the 115th Congress he continued on Oversight and Government Reform, serving on the Subcommittee on Information Technology and the Subcommittee on National Security. In the 116th Congress, from January 3, 2019, to July 8, 2019, he served on the Committee on Oversight and Reform, including the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Subcommittee on National Security. After July 8, 2019, and through the end of the 116th Congress on January 3, 2021, he held no committee assignments.

Amash quickly became known in the House as one of its most libertarian members, often dissenting from both Republican and Democratic leadership. He received high scores from fiscally conservative and limited-government organizations such as the Club for Growth, Heritage Action, and Americans for Prosperity, and he drew praise from libertarian think tanks and advocacy groups. He was a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative Republicans, though he left the caucus in June 2019. His independent voting record and willingness to challenge party leadership sometimes brought him into conflict with Republican leaders and members of the Michigan delegation. In December 2012, the House Republican Steering Committee removed him from the House Budget Committee as part of a broader leadership reshuffle; along with Representatives Tim Huelskamp and David Schweikert, he wrote to Speaker John Boehner demanding an explanation. A spokesperson for Representative Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia said the three had been removed for “their inability to work with other members,” and Politico noted that they were the first members in nearly two decades to be pulled off committees as punishment for political or personality reasons.

Amash’s electoral career in Congress included several high-profile contests. Following the retirement of Senator Carl Levin, there was speculation that Amash would run in Michigan’s 2014 U.S. Senate election, and Senator Mike Lee encouraged him to do so, but Amash chose instead to seek reelection to the House. In 2014 he faced a well-funded Republican primary challenge from former East Grand Rapids School Trustee Brian Ellis, who was endorsed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and spent more than $1 million of his own money. Amash was backed by the Club for Growth PAC, which spent over $500,000 on his behalf. He defeated Ellis with 57 percent of the vote to Ellis’s 43 percent and then won the general election against Democratic nominee Bob Goodrich. After the primary, Amash sharply criticized Ellis and former Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who had supported Ellis, calling Hoekstra “a disgrace” and saying he was glad to hand him “one more loss before [he faded] into total obscurity and irrelevance.” Amash objected particularly to an Ellis television advertisement quoting Representative Devin Nunes’s characterization of him as “Al Qaeda’s best friend in Congress,” which he denounced as a “disgusting, despicable smear campaign.” Throughout his congressional tenure, Amash was repeatedly reelected until he chose not to seek another term in 2020.

Ideologically, Amash has described himself as a “Hayekian libertarian,” citing economists F. A. Hayek and Frédéric Bastiat as his “biggest heroes” and political inspirations. He has explained that he bases his votes on a consistent set of principles—limited government, economic freedom, individual liberty, and fidelity to the Constitution—and he became known for publishing detailed explanations of each vote on social media. Before leaving the GOP, he was often viewed as a gadfly within the Republican Conference, and he was outspoken in his criticism of the American two-party system. In a 2020 interview, he argued that national politicians were increasingly focused on media perception of their parties while “the actual process of legislating is all but forgotten.” He endorsed Representative Ron Paul’s campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Senator Rand Paul’s campaign in 2015, and later Senator Ted Cruz after Rand Paul withdrew from the race.

Amash’s foreign policy and national security positions reflected his libertarian skepticism of expansive executive power and military intervention. He consistently supported decreasing U.S. military spending and argued that there was significant waste in the Department of Defense. He maintained that only Congress has the constitutional authority to declare war and criticized military actions undertaken by Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump without explicit congressional authorization. In July 2011, he sponsored an amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act that would have barred funding for operations against Muammar Gaddafi’s government in Libya, later calling Obama’s actions in the Libyan Civil War unconstitutional absent congressional approval. He similarly criticized U.S. intervention in Syria against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant for proceeding without a declaration of war. In 2011 he was one of only six members of the House to vote against House Resolution 268, which reaffirmed U.S. support for a negotiated settlement of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict through direct talks; in 2014 he was one of eight members to vote against a $225 million package to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. He has supported a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Amash was also a leading congressional critic of post‑9/11 national security legislation that he viewed as infringing civil liberties. He joined 104 Democrats and 16 Republicans in voting against the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, calling it “one of the most anti-liberty pieces of legislation of our lifetime,” and co-sponsored an amendment to bar indefinite military detention and military trials for terrorism suspects arrested in the United States, insisting they be tried in civilian courts. He opposed reauthorization of the Patriot Act, supported measures to repeal indefinite detention, and voted against reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act. In March 2016 he joined the unanimous House vote declaring that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was committing genocide against religious minorities in the Middle East, but he was one of three members—along with Representatives Tulsi Gabbard and Thomas Massie—to vote against a separate measure creating an international tribunal to try those accused of participating in the atrocities. In 2017 he criticized U.S. support for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, arguing that Al Qaeda in Yemen had become a “de facto ally” of the Saudi-led forces. In July 2017 he was one of only three House members to vote against the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which imposed new sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea. In January 2019 he voted against legislation that would have prevented the president from unilaterally withdrawing from or altering U.S. participation in NATO, though he later emphasized that he supported NATO membership and pointed to his 2017 vote affirming NATO’s Article 5. In 2019 he joined a bipartisan letter led by Representative Ro Khanna and Senator Rand Paul urging President Trump to rein in unauthorized uses of force and to seek political solutions, particularly in Afghanistan. In October 2019 he criticized Trump’s proposed withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, arguing that it had “green-lighted” Turkey’s offensive against Kurdish forces. In January 2020 he voted for the “No War Against Iran Act,” which sought to block funding for the use of U.S. military force in or against Iran without prior congressional authorization, and he supported repeal of the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Amash’s break with the Republican Party unfolded over the course of the Trump presidency. In May 2019 he became the first Republican member of Congress to publicly call for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, a position that drew national attention and that he maintained after leaving the party. On July 4, 2019, he published a Washington Post op‑ed announcing that he was leaving the Republican Party to become an independent, warning that Congress was becoming “little more than a formality to legitimize outcomes dictated by the president, the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader” and urging Americans to reject rigid partisan loyalties. On July 8, 2019, he formally notified Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney of his resignation from the party and, in the process, resigned his seat on the Committee on Oversight and Reform. He thus became the only independent in the House of Representatives and the first since Bernie Sanders left the House in 2007 to join the Senate, and one of three independents in the entire Congress, alongside Senators Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine. In April 2020 he announced that he had joined the Libertarian Party, making him the first and, to date, only Libertarian member of Congress.

During the 116th Congress, Amash’s evolving party affiliation intersected with the 2020 presidential election cycle. In April 2020 he formed an exploratory committee to seek the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination, raising the possibility of a high-profile third-party candidacy. In May 2020, however, he announced that he would not run for president. He also chose not to seek reelection to his House seat in 2020, ending his decade-long tenure in Congress when his term expired on January 3, 2021. While in Congress, he continued to vote in line with his libertarian principles, including a June 26, 2020 vote against H.R. 51, a bill to grant statehood to the District of Columbia. After leaving office, he remained identified with libertarian ideas and criticism of the two-party system, and in 2024 he returned to the Republican Party, underscoring the complex relationship between his ideological commitments and the institutional realities of American party politics.