Public Profile

The Congressional Federation Caucus is a bipartisan caucus of the United States House of Representatives, comprising thirty-one members as of June 2026, organized around what its founding statement describes as “the long-term alignment of American institutions with their aspirational character.” It is co-chaired by Curtis Vandermolen, Democrat of Michigan, and Sloane Merrick, Republican of Texas.

The caucus was registered with the Committee on House Administration in 2025. Its stated purpose, as filed, is “to study and, where appropriate, advance measures of national designation, nomenclature, and symbolic governance,” language that drew little attention at the time of filing and somewhat more in June 2026, when the caucus introduced H.R. 4127, the United Federation of Planets Designation Act, which would rename the United States of America the United Federation of Planets.

The caucus holds that the name “United States of America” is “descriptive but not aspirational,” and that the nation would be better served by a designation reflecting “what we have always been working toward.” Membership is drawn from both parties and from a range of committees, a breadth the caucus cites as evidence of broad support and which others have noted has so far complicated, rather than eased, the question of which committee should hold the first hearing.

The caucus maintains no permanent staff beyond a single shared legislative aide and meets, when it meets, in a reserved room in the Rayburn House Office Building.

Private Profile

Role in the universe: The Congressional Federation Caucus exists to lend the full procedural seriousness of the House of Representatives to an idea that should not survive contact with a committee, and to advance it through the ordinary, exhaustive machinery of legislation. It is useful for stories that require bipartisan institutional momentum behind a premise no one in the building seems willing to call absurd out loud.

Operating character: Earnest, procedural, and faintly bureaucratic. The caucus does not behave like a fan club that wandered into Congress; it behaves like a Congress that has, with total sincerity, taken up a fan club’s idea and begun marking it up. Its members speak in the language of designation, alignment, and phased implementation.

Sore points: Jurisdiction. The caucus’s signature bill has been claimed by four committees and scheduled for hearing by none. The question of how many planets the proposed federation would administer, which the caucus regards as “outside the scope of the present measure.”

Useful for: Stories involving congressional caucuses, naming and symbolic-governance legislation, committee jurisdiction disputes, and the conversion of an enthusiast premise into a serious legislative vehicle.

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