That wasn’t such a hard question, right? See, you probably know more than you thought you did.

During the State of the Union (pictured above), it’s the main event for all three branches to get together where the President (Executive Branch) gives a speech to Congress (Legislative Branch) and the Judicial Branch.

Congress claps along to what they support or boos along to what they oppose. It acts like a nice pop-survey.

The Supreme Court just sits quietly.

Pictured is former Rep. Shimkus (Republican and also Lithuanian-American). Seems like a party going on here!

The Democratic Party has a website where you can see what they generally fight for.

Party Platform

The Republican Party describe themselves this way: “The Grand Old Party was founded by abolitionists in 1854 to fight for the freedom and equal opportunity of every individual. Today, we draw inspiration from our Party’s history and believe that individuals, rather than the government, are best equipped to run their own lives. Our Party works to give Americans more choices – in health care, education, energy, and the economy – and to free individuals and families from the intrusive overreach of federal bureaucrats. We promise to fight for a freer, safer, and more prosperous America.”

Learn more: https://www.gop.com/issue/gop/

Check it out – we’re bipartisan! Pictured above is from the First Baltic Advocacy Day in DC. Here, you’ll see plenty of Republicans, Democrats, and friends who don’t see themselves as either.

In fact, every bill we push for the Baltics is always bipartisan. How neat is that!

Fun fact that’s important today. When there’s a tie in the Senate, the Vice President (pictures left) acts as the tie-breaker. Since the Senate is currently split 50-50, since Vice President Harris is a Democrat, then the Democratic Party controls the Senate, even though it’s technically a tie.

The Speaker of the House (pictured right) is the one who gets to call which bills receive votes in the House.

Yep. The Democratic Party holds something called a trifecta. This means they control the House, the Senate, and the White House.

Parties that hold trifectas wield a ton of power since that means they don’t have to negotiate with the other party as much.

Pictured above are some members of the Congressional Black Caucus – one of the most powerful caucuses in Congress. Another famous caucus is the House Freedom Caucus (aligned with the Tea Party).

We have a caucus in both the House and Senate! They’re active too, and these are our biggest allies in Congress. In a meeting with Lithuanian-American youth and Rep. Shimkus (founder of the House Baltic Caucus), he said one of the most important things we can do is to ask our Representative to join the House Baltic Caucus.

The House Baltic Caucus is co-chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Los Angeles) and Rep. Don Bacon (R-Omaha).

The Senate Baltic Freedom Caucus is co-chaired by Senator Dick Durbin (R-IL) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

Pictured above is our chair Senator Chuck Grassley congratulating the Baltics for 30 years of independence on the floor of the Senate.

Every bill must be considered in a committee before it gets considered by the full House or Senate.

The Power Map shows the committees that are most important for Baltic issues. It’s pivotal to convince committees to be our allies, because then our bills can actually move.

“To Appropriate” is a fancy way of saying “to give money to.” So the appropriations committee will consider a series of ideas of who to give money to.

For the Baltics, we ask the Appropriations Committee to give more military funding, funding for infrastructure projects, etc.

Other key committees we care about are concerned foreign relations and military matters.

Pictured above are heroic Baltic-Americans during Baltic Advocacy Day advocating for their members of Congress to co-sponsor bills that are important for the Baltics.

Each state gets 2 Senators –  each having to run for re-election every 6 years. The point of having 6-year terms is to have a group that can think more long-term instead of being subject to the whims of the daily news cycle.

The person who decides what bills get voted on is called the Senate President. That used to be Leader Mitch McConnell, but now that the Democrats took control of the Senate in 2020, the new Senate President is Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.

Fun fact – Leader Chuck Schumer is cousins with comedian Amy Schumer! I’m not kidding!

Each of the 435 voting members of the House has to get re-elected every 2 years. This means that Representatives tend to be more populist than Senators because they have to always be fighting for voters.

1/3 of the our Representatives are from either California, Texas, New York, or Florida.

Please take a moment and read this about our important friends from JBANC.

JBANC has been actively lobbying for the Baltic-American communities since 1961. They’ve been instrumental in getting Congress’s support for Baltic independence and in getting the Baltics to join NATO – among a ton of other accomplishments.

Karl (pictured), has been the lobbyist for JBANC since, well, at least 2000. In the last few years, he’s been joined by another full-time advocate for Baltic freedom – Karin Schuey of the Estonian American National Council (EANC). Together, with a few volunteers and interns, they are the group that’s been fighting to advocate Congress.

They’ve been doing a wonderful job, but it’s also a big job.

So this is where you come in. JBANC and the EANC can’t fight for the Baltics alone, so they can use our help. Baltivist.com and our friends from the Baltic Call to Action Unit were born in close friendship with Karl and Karin. In fact, all the issues and information on Baltivist.com are borrowed from Karl and Karin.

We hope that Baltivist.com will continue growing as a formidable community fighting for the Baltic nations. We also hope that this will also provide an additional funding stream to continue supporting JBANC. We are still a young site with minimal funds, so for now we ask you to consider giving to JBANC and EANC to support Baltic advocacy efforts.

Then get your friends to join the Baltivist community!

Thank you for everything.