Where Is Josh Riley? Not With Constituents Here In New York.

The August congressional recess is supposed to be a time for members of Congress to meet with constituents.

US Representative Josh Riley has zero events scheduled to meet with constituents in August 2025.

Where is Josh Riley?

In a familiar sense, we refer to Josh Riley as a “Congressman”. That’s not his official title, though. Officially he is U.S. Representative Josh Riley.

The House of Representatives is supposed to be in Washington D.C. to represent the people of their home districts. That’s why we call them “Representative”.

This summer, however, Representative Josh Riley is not representing. He’s off… doing something else.

The August recess is supposed to be a time for members of the U.S. House to work at being representative by meeting with constituents in their home districts. Josh Riley is supposed to represent New York’s 19th congressional district, which includes the cities of Ithaca, Binghamton, and Cortland, and stretches all the way across the Hudson River Valley to the border with Massachusetts.

So, to serve the duties of his office, Josh Riley should be touring the communities of New York’s 19th congressional district, meeting with constituents to hear what their needs are.

That’s not happening.

I was hoping to hear Josh Riley speak, or to talk with him or one of his aides, at a constituent event this August. So, I looked on the events page of Josh Riley’s official congressional web site. There are zero events scheduled on that calendar.

I was confused about this, and wondered if it might be just a glitch in the administration of Josh Riley’s congressional web site. Looking for answers, I called Josh Riley’s two congressional district offices, in Binghamton and Leeds. No one was there to answer the phone. So, I called Josh Riley’s Washington D.C. office, and a very nice aide told me that he did not know of any constituent events for the month of August. He suggested I look on the web site’s events page - where as I already knew, there were no scheduled events at which constituents could meet with Josh Riley or his staff.

It seems that Josh Riley has not scheduled any time for public meetings with constituents in New York’s 19th congressional district during the August recess.

Where is Josh Riley?

It’s not unreasonable for constituents to know what their U.S. Representative is doing on their behalf, and where they are doing it. When I asked where Josh Riley was, however, the aide in his Washington D.C. office refused to tell me. The location of Josh Riley cannot be shared with constituents, he said, because of security reasons.

I understand that every now and then, members of Congress have to do secret… congressional stuff. That’s what closed-door hearings are for. There aren’t any closed-door hearings in Congress scheduled in the House of Representatives this month, though.

Members of the US House are supposed to be in their home districts, meeting with constituents, but Josh Riley doesn’t have any events scheduled for meeting constituents, and I don’t see any information anywhere else about his activities during the month of August.

Here in Ithaca, the Tompkins County Democratic Committee is having a fundraising event four days from now, but Congressman Josh Riley is not scheduled to be there. The speaker is a professor from Cornell University.

So where is Josh Riley, if he’s not even meeting with Democratic Party activists in New York’s 19th congressional district?

Honestly, I don’t have a clue. If anyone out there has any information that could solve this mystery, please get in touch through my BlueSky account!