Sender Profile

Sean Casten

Sean Casten represents Illinois’ 6th Congressional District, located in Chicago’s western suburbs. He is serving as a freshman in the 116th Congress, and is the first Democrat to represent the 6th District in nearly 50 years.

50+ Messages / Page

  Sean Casten · [email protected]
July 23, 2026 at 4:30 PM

Over and over and over again. ☀️

Folks, before I say anything else: you’d better be wearing sunscreen this summer! I'm serious. I'm a scientist. I know exactly what UV radiation does to skin cells: the DNA damage, the cumulative effect, the way it compounds over years of unprotected exposure until one day it's not just a sunburn…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
July 21, 2026 at 3:15 PM

My Roman Empire

[link removed] [[link removed]] On July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon. The Apollo program—400,000 scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and visionaries—accomplished something most people only dreamed of. With committed public investment, brilliant minds, and…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
July 18, 2026 at 8:36 PM

My summer reading pile (send help)

[link removed] [[link removed]] Folks, it's a scorcher out there in Chicagoland, and I've got the perfect prescription: air conditioning, a cold drink, and a good book. Somewhere between votes, hearings, and pretending the Capitol's AC is doing its job, here are some page turners I’ve been squee…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
July 16, 2026 at 9:16 PM

Let's Flip the House

I've been watching a lot of home renovation shows lately. It’s a nice palate cleanser after the evening news. Here's what I've learned: Every flipper follows the same plan. 1. Assess the damage. 2. Make a plan. 3. Put in the work. 4. Flip it. So let's see if that process could apply …
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
July 15, 2026 at 8:16 PM

🌶️ From mild to HOT: our July meter

Folks, it's officially hot sauce season in the Casten household. If you've been on this team a while, you might know that I make my own fermented hot sauce every year. It's a whole process that takes patience, attention to detail, and a lot of faith that fermentation is actually working even when…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
July 12, 2026 at 9:15 PM

3 hot messes 🌡️

Last week, Chicago hit 95 degrees. The heat index pushed 108. Across the Midwest and East, over 165 million Americans were under heat alerts. Parades got canceled, Amtrak slowed down its trains so the tracks wouldn't buckle, and at least 25 heat-related fatalities. Friend, I've been writing about…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
July 10, 2026 at 10:05 PM

Thanks, neighbor

[link removed] [[link removed]] Friend, before I'm your Congressman, I'm your neighbor. And today, I just want to say thank you. I live here. I shop here. I get my pizza here (and yes, I have opinions about which place is best, but I'll keep those to myself to keep the peace). But I’ve been ar…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
July 8, 2026 at 10:45 PM

meet the three horsemen of the anti-democracy apocalypse

Folks, every time I hold a town hall here in IL-06, someone asks me a version of the same question: Why can't Congress just pass the things most Americans actually want? Universal background checks. Abortion rights. Closing corporate tax loopholes. Paid family leave. These poll well above 60-7…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
July 6, 2026 at 10:10 PM

What's on the grill? 🔥

I hope your Fourth of July was a good one. Mine involved a cooler full of leftovers I'll probably still be eating by Wednesday. While I was on grill duty, I kept thinking about something. Grilling takes a little finesse. You've got to manage the heat. Too low and nothing cooks. Too high and you'v…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
July 4, 2026 at 4:30 PM

250 candles. 🕯️

250 years ago today, 56 people signed their names to a document that changed the world. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the radical idea that all people are created equal. Then they went home, and we spent the next two and a half centuries figuring out what tha…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
June 30, 2026 at 9:55 PM

The Supreme Coup strikes again

Surprise, surprise. The Supreme Coup of the United States — sorry, I mean the Supreme Court — just struck down the cap on coordinated spending between political parties and candidates. 6-3. Another day, another ruling that hands more power to whoever already has the most of it. I'm not going to p…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
June 29, 2026 at 11:18 PM

🚨 24 hours

My team asked me to send you a dramatic 24-hour countdown email. I told them I'd write you an honest one instead. So here it is. Our End-of-Quarter FEC deadline is tomorrow at midnight. Those numbers, whatever they end up being, get filed on the permanent record and tell the story of where thi…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
June 27, 2026 at 2:45 PM

💧 one drop ($1)

I'm asking you for $1. I recognize how that sounds. I'm going to be totally transparent with you, because this team has always appreciated my candor. Given everything we're up against right now, one donation to my campaign is a drop in the bucket.💧 [[link removed]] Now, that might sound lik…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
June 26, 2026 at 8:58 PM

Billions spent to restore the status quo.

Folks — What has tens of billions in taxpayer dollars, soaring gas prices, a depleted arsenal, and the alienation of our closest allies actually bought us? Nothing. We're right back where we started. Just significantly poorer, significantly more isolated, and with a far more volatile relations…
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  Chef Sean Casten · [email protected]
June 23, 2026 at 10:58 PM

Can you handle the heat? 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Hey team, it's Sean Casten AKA Chef Sean. It's not officially summer in my house until I've started my annual batch of homegrown, hand-fermented hot sauce. (Don't knock it 'til you've tried it. This stuff has a cult following at this point.) Exhibit A: jars of peppers, fermenting away on my co…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
June 21, 2026 at 2:55 PM

my least favorite part of this job

Folks, I'll admit it. Fundraising is not my favorite part of this job. Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine a world where defending democracy doesn't require competing dollar-for-dollar with the MAGA-Industrial Complex and the billionaires bankrolling it. But that's not the world we live in. We l…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
June 19, 2026 at 5:00 PM

Got a spare $6?

Friend, I'm going to keep this one simple. Will you chip in just $6 today to help me defend this district? [[link removed]] I know $6 doesn't sound like much in a political climate where billionaires are writing seven-figure checks to prop up MAGA candidates. But campaigns that are worth somet…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
June 17, 2026 at 11:26 PM

Trump spent $60 million on a gladiator fight 🩸

Folks, here's the math on Donald Trump's UFC fight at the White House: $60 million in taxpayer money, 7 federal agencies mobilized, all so the self-appointed Caesar of America could watch grown men bleed on his lawn. Prices are up. Job growth is flat. Pedophiles aren't being prosecuted. Meanwhile…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
June 16, 2026 at 2:18 PM

hello, neighbor 👋

[link removed] [[link removed]] Friend, before I'm your Congressman, I'm your neighbor. I live here. I shop here. I get my coffee here (and yes, I have opinions about which place is best, but I'll keep those to myself to keep the peace). IL-06 has the kindest people, the best food, and the mos…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
June 15, 2026 at 10:18 PM

heads up.

Hey, quick heads up from your friendly neighborhood Congressman. We've officially hit the midpoint of June, which means the end of the quarter and the Federal Election Committee’s deadline is barreling toward us. You might be wondering why you should care about an accounting deadline and why so m…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
June 11, 2026 at 11:04 PM

enough

I'll keep this short, because frankly, we're all exhausted. I've had enough. You've had enough. Enough of the chaos, the corruption, the rising costs, and a president who governs like the whole country is his personal piggy bank. But being tired is not the same as being beaten. The only way out o…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
June 9, 2026 at 11:15 PM

1,790 votes

[link removed] [[link removed]] I won my very first Congressional primary by just 1,790 votes. For reference, that's about 4% of the seats at Wrigley Field. A close shave by any measure and a lesson I've never forgotten: don't get comfortable, and never take a single vote for granted. I thi…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
June 7, 2026 at 3:03 PM

the numbers don't lie (Trump does)

I'm a numbers guy. I always have been. So when I see a chart like this, I don't see politics. I see receipts. [link removed] [[link removed]] Take a good look: Donald Trump has presided over the weakest GDP growth of any American president since Herbert Hoover. Hoover . As in, the guy whose na…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
June 5, 2026 at 7:40 PM

End of School Year Report Card

It's that time of year. Kids are finishing exams, teachers are finally exhaling, and parents everywhere are bracing for the report card. Well, I've got mine, and I wanted to share it with you. Thanks to this team, we crossed the fundraising finish line in May, hitting our goal with folks like …
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
June 2, 2026 at 10:16 PM

Tough Conversations

I have a confession. I love the questions that make people squirm. Not because I enjoy watching folks squirm. But because the questions that make politicians hedge and suddenly need to "circle back with their team" are almost always the ones that matter most. Is climate change real, or just a …
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  Casten for Congress · [email protected]
May 31, 2026 at 2:35 PM

sorry, but it’s 🎶🎶 Closing Time 🎶🎶

Yeah, yeah, we know this is cheesy…but now it’s stuck in your head, so won’t you sing along? Closing time, it’s our May fundraising deadline , And we haven’t quite made our goal. Closing time, help Sean past the finish line So he can hit the ground running in June. Closing time, one last …
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
May 30, 2026 at 6:49 PM

my finance team made me do it

Look, I'll be straight with you, folks. This email wasn't on my agenda today. I had every intention of giving your inbox a much-needed rest this weekend. But my finance team flagged something I can't ignore: we've got a fundraising gap heading into our end-of-month deadline, and the clock is r…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
May 28, 2026 at 2:01 PM

The Second Law of MAGA Thermodynamics 🔬

Bear with me, friends. The engineer in me needs a moment. There's a principle in thermodynamics called entropy. In plain English: systems left to themselves tend toward disorder. Things fall apart. Without new energy coming in, the whole thing degrades. [link removed] [[link removed]] Sound…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
May 27, 2026 at 8:07 PM

angry men in robes

Friend, Make no mistake: the agenda of this Supreme Court and the agenda of the Ku Klux Klan are far too similar. Gutting the Voting Rights Act, blessing gerrymandered maps designed to silence minority voters, and declaring that we now live in a "color-blind society." These are the kinds of actio…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
May 23, 2026 at 4:46 PM

Look on my works, ye

A traveler from an antique land once described a shattered statue, half-buried in the sand. This was all that remained of a king who'd called himself the greatest of them all. I've been thinking of that story a lot lately. Percy Shelley wrote Ozymandias in 1818, but it’s never been more relevant.…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
May 21, 2026 at 9:30 PM

allow me to reintroduce myself

[link removed] [[link removed]] Hi! Sean Casten here. Congressman. Engineer. Dad. Amateur pianist. Certified '90s rap enthusiast. And yes, the guy who once recited Fergie lyrics on the House floor to get people to care about clean energy legislation. I also make my own fermented hot sauce from…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
May 20, 2026 at 9:31 PM

Look on my works, ye

A traveler from an antique land once described a shattered statue, half-buried in the sand. This was all that remained of a king who'd called himself the greatest of them all. I've been thinking of that story a lot lately. Percy Shelley wrote Ozymandias in 1818, but it’s never been more relevant.…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
May 19, 2026 at 5:16 PM

your electricity bill just went up. here’s why.

Since Trump took office, household energy prices are up 13% nationwide. Some of that is policy. Some of it is the fossil fuel industry doing what the fossil fuel industry does. And some of it is energy traders who manipulate markets for profit, knowing the penalties are light enough to ignore. …
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
May 15, 2026 at 8:41 PM

the House Rules 🃏

In a casino, the House always wins. In our House, the one at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the rules seem to change depending on who’s dealing. That's why the news that White House lawyers are preparing for a Democratic Congress caught my eye. Someone in that building finally did the math an…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
May 13, 2026 at 9:16 PM

the point of no return

Friend, last week, The Guardian published an article that stopped me cold. New Orleans is at the point of no return. Scientists say relocation must begin now. Even if we stopped climate change today, the city's fate is already sealed. You can't keep an island below sea level afloat. There's no am…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
May 12, 2026 at 10:20 PM

You’re my y-axis

I'm a science nerd. You know this. Half my floor speeches come with a graph. So let me put it in terms that make sense to me: Every graph needs two axes. On the x-axis, you've got time, races run, miles logged, fights picked on the House floor. On the y-axis, you've got value. The thing that goes…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
May 11, 2026 at 10:15 PM

$6 for IL-6?

Right now, I’m: ⚡ [[link removed]] Fighting to lower your energy bills while MAGA hands out tax breaks to oil execs 🛡️ [[link removed]] Pushing back on national security threats while Trump's crew cozies up to foreign governments 📋 [[link removed]] Introducing legislation to protect your healthca…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
May 4, 2026 at 4:02 PM

he ran 26.2 miles faster than I run my mouth

[link removed] [[link removed]] Folks, Did you see what happened at the London Marathon last week? Sabastian Sawe just ran a marathon (all 26.2 miles of it) in under two hours. A new world record. By a lot. I've run 10 marathons. My personal best is not under two hours. It is not even cl…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
May 3, 2026 at 6:35 PM

6 Months.

As a scientist, I spent years studying systems that operate on timelines humans find uncomfortable. Climate change doesn't care about our attention spans. Neither do elections. Six months from today is Election Day. Will you chip in $6 right now — one dollar for every month until November — to…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
April 30, 2026 at 5:31 PM

You deserve the truth.

I’ll be blunt: April hasn’t been easy, and I don’t just mean this campaign. Every day in this political climate is a new fire to put out. We’re in the midst of chaos, cruelty, and creative accounting with the Constitution, and asking you for money in the middle of it all isn't something I take li…
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  Sean · [email protected]
April 29, 2026 at 4:31 PM

a fish, a felon, and an end-of-month deadline

In recent years, fighting for choice, science, democracy, and truth feels more and more like we’re swimming against the current. How can we tackle climate change or public health when half of Congress pretends it doesn’t exist? Or uphold the rule of law, when President Convicted Felon just par…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
April 28, 2026 at 8:50 PM

They're gaming the Court. I wrote the fix.

In 2016, Chief Justice John Roberts used a secretive procedural maneuver, with no oral arguments, no written reasoning, and no signatures, to kill Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan before a single lower court had even weighed in. It took five days. One paragraph. And it set a precedent that's been use…
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  Sean · [email protected]
April 27, 2026 at 9:01 PM

thinking of you

Thank you. I'm a scientist by training. I believe in data, evidence, and facts. But no spreadsheet or FEC report can fully capture what it actually means to have people in your corner when the fight gets hard. You are those people. When the news cycle feels like a fire hose aimed directly a…
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  Sean · [email protected]
April 24, 2026 at 7:01 PM

four quick things

This is my short list of reasons why your support matters in this race. Will you read on? (And if not, can I trouble you to make a quick $4 donation to my 2026 re-election campaign?) [[link removed]] 1. House Republicans voted 214-213 to let Trump keep waging war in Iran with no congressional auth…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
April 22, 2026 at 7:54 PM

I hate Earth Day.

I'm going to let you in on a dirty little secret. I kind of hate Earth Day. Now, before you close out of this email, let me explain. I hate Earth Day for the same reason an engineer hates a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a bridge that's still structurally unsound. Celebrate the progress? Sure.…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
April 20, 2026 at 8:29 PM

My 2026 campaign playlist 🎧

Friend, you know I'm a music guy. I love Springsteen and Bon Jovi and classic rock. But lately, the news cycle has me reaching for a wider range of influences. So I put together the official soundtrack to my 2026 campaign, an honest, slightly chaotic playlist that reflects where we've been and wh…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
April 17, 2026 at 10:19 PM

This email is only 8 sentences long.

I know your inbox has been a bit hectic lately. Mine too, honestly. Before you head out for the weekend, here's what I can tell you in plain English: Trump and his allies are coming for seats like mine in their quest to hold the House majority. They have deep pockets, and the only thing standing …
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  Sean · [email protected]
April 15, 2026 at 10:05 PM

relevant for today

Here's what Donald Trump bought with your tax dollars this year: A birthday parade. A ballroom. Hotel bills charged to the Secret Service. Settlements for people who lied to the FBI. Payouts for people who attacked my workplace. Ads with Kristi Noem on a horse. $700 million, give or take, with…
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  Sean Casten · [email protected]
April 12, 2026 at 7:08 PM

out with the old 🌱

Spring cleaning isn't just for your garage. Washington is overdue for a serious scrub-down too. And I mean seriously overdue. While Trump and his allies spend their days burying the truth in junk, gutting healthcare, and stacking the courts with corporate insiders, we're building something cle…
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  Team Casten · [email protected]
April 8, 2026 at 7:50 PM

$6 for IL-6

Right now, Sean is: ⚡ [[link removed]] Fighting to lower your energy bills while MAGA hands out tax breaks to oil execs 🛡️ [[link removed]] Pushing back on national security threats while Trump's crew cozies up to foreign governments 📋 [[link removed]] Introducing legislation to protect you…
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