The former congressman told a BBQ crowd Sunday that April McClain Delaney has betrayed Democratic voters. Four of his five central claims fall apart against the documentary record. Here is what the record actually shows.
Former U.S. Representative David Trone stood under a tent at Maryvale Park in Frederick on Sunday afternoon and made his case against April McClain Delaney.
The Frederick County Teachers Association hosted the event. He rambled on about April McClain Delaney for about 25 minutes.
“She has failed the Democratic voters of Maryland’s Sixth Congressional District, he told the crowd. She votes with Donald Trump. He claimed McClain Delaney endorsed ICE funding and that she falls short of Rep. Jamie Raskin’s record.
Trone made a handful of specific claims on Sunday: he was the one who passed term-limits legislation in Wisconsin; voters and analysts ranked him the most effective member of Congress by a factor of two. Nancy Pelosi and Jamie Raskin wrote the bill that funded ICE.
A Miner Detail obtained the full video of Trone’s Sunday-afternoon remarks. It tested every central claim against primary sources, including roll call votes from the Clerk of the House, Wisconsin legislative records, the Center for Effective Lawmaking, Washington County permit filings, and Rep. Jamie Raskin’s own published statements.
Four of the five major claims David Trone built his speech around fail that test. Read on to learn what Trone actually said.
1. The Jamie Raskin Test
What Trone said: Trone hammered McClain Delaney for her September 2025 vote on the House resolution honoring conservative activist Charlie Kirk. That vote apparently qualifies as a 22% voting alignment with Donald Trump, Trone argued, and that alignment disqualifies her.
Then he held up Jamie Raskin as the gold standard.
“What does anybody think Jamie Raskin voted Republican? What percent?” Trone asked the crowd. “1.8 percent.”
What the record shows: Jamie Raskin voted YES on the same Charlie Kirk resolution David Trone used to attack McClain Delaney. The House passed House Resolution 719 on September 19, 2025, by a vote of 310 to 58. McClain Delaney joined 94 other Democrats voting yes. Jamie Raskin joined them.
Raskin publicly pushed his fellow Democrats to vote with him.
In a statement his House office released that morning, Raskin called Republican efforts to use the resolution as a wedge “an obvious political trap” and told Democrats to “rise above it.” Raskin told reporters the resolution “repeatedly condemns all political violence, extremism and hatred in unequivocal terms” and that a no vote would be a mistake.
Trone’s attack on McClain Delaney requires Raskin to function as the gold-standard Democrat whose record exposes hers. On the specific vote Trone cites, the two of them cast identical ballots. Raskin arguably led the public argument that House Democrats should vote as McClain Delaney did.
When an audience member at Sunday’s BBQ asked the obvious question, “Why is Jamie Raskin supporting her?”, Trone deflected. “Members of Congress endorse each other as a matter of clubhouse loyalty, Trone said. “It’s a club, and it’s the right thing to do. I get it.”
Or because the entire Maryland delegation privately cannot stand David Trone, as they all quietly say he isn’t a team player and is the most transactional human being they’ve ever met. Ask them privately. Ask any member of Maryland’s current congressional delegation – in private – what they truly think of David Trone as a person. I’m seriouy. Ask them. Report back to me: Ryan@AMinerDetail.com.
Trone can’t make Jamie Raskin both the moral authority whose record condemns McClain Delaney and the clubby insider whose endorsement of her means nothing. He’s asking 6th District Democratic primary voters to take Raskin seriously on the first count and dismiss him on the second.
2. Trone’s “Voted Most Effective Member of Congress” Claim is Nonsense
What Trone said: “We were voted the most effective member of Congress by a factor of two. Most effective.”
What the record shows: The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a joint project of the University of Virginia’s Batten School and Vanderbilt University, publishes the standard academic ranking of legislator effectiveness for every Congress. The Center scores members on 15 metrics covering bills sponsored, progress through the legislative process, and the substance of the underlying policy.
For the 118th Congress, Trone’s last term, the Center named three House Democrats as the top performers:
- Joaquin Castro of Texas
- Joe Neguse of Colorado
- Dina Titus of Nevada
Castro and Neguse both issued press releases on their official House sites celebrating their rankings. David Trone did not – because David Trone did not make the list. He didn’t even top the House Democrats in the 118th Congress, nor did Trone in the 117th. And he didn’t top them in the 116th Congress.
The published rankings refute the claim that anyone voted David Trone the most effective member of Congress by any factor in any of his three terms. If Mr. Trone meant a narrower sub-ranking within a single issue area, such as health policy or substance use, he didn’t say so.
The unqualified version of the claim he gave the Frederick crowd is false.
3. The ICE Funding Defense
What Trone said: McClain Delaney’s campaign has hit Trone for his record of voting to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement during three terms on the House Appropriations Committee. He addressed the attack head-on on Sunday.
“I’ve been attacked for writing $200 million from our Appropriations Committee to support ICE,” Trone said. “That bill was written by Nancy Pelosi, written by Jamie Raskin, and the Democrats. We wrote those bills. They were our bills.”
What the record shows: Jamie Raskin has never served on the House Appropriations Committee.
Mr. Raskin’s committee history, documented on his official House website and in the Congressional Record, places him on Judiciary, Oversight, and House Administration across the 115th through 119th Congresses. He currently serves as the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee. He has never drafted any ICE appropriations bill.
Trone’s deflection toward Pelosi as the author hits a similar wall.
The former House Speaker served as – wait for it – the Speaker of the House, not as a member of the Appropriations Committee that drafts Department of Homeland Security funding bills. Speakers set legislative priorities. They do not write individual appropriations line items.
The actual drafting of ICE appropriations during the years Trone references happens in the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. The Maryland State Archives entry for David Trone documents his committee assignments during his House tenure, including a seat on that subcommittee from 2023 through 2025.
The subcommittee that Mr. Trone attributes the ICE funding to Pelosi and Raskin for writing, which is the subcommittee that Trone himself sat on. He didn’t take marching orders from Democratic leadership as a passive voter.
David Trone drafted the bills.
4. The Wisconsin Term Limits Claim
What Trone said: Defending his bipartisan partnership with Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on congressional term limits, Trone told the crowd the term limits Article V resolution had passed in multiple states.
“Democrat states like Wisconsin,” he said. “I passed it there.”
What the record shows: Wisconsin Assembly Joint Resolution 135, the Article V application calling for a national convention on congressional term limits, entered the Wisconsin Legislature on February 16, 2022.
Republican State Representative Daniel Knodl of the 24th Assembly District authored the resolution; Republican State Senator Duey Stroebel of the 20th Senate District cosponsored it. Both testified in support of the resolution at a public hearing on February 21, 2022.
David Trone served as a Democratic United States Representative from Maryland in ’22. He held no Wisconsin legislative authority. He cast no vote in the Wisconsin Assembly or Senate. He appears nowhere in the Wisconsin legislative documents related to AJR 135 as a witness, sponsor, or party of record.
Trone may have advocated for the resolution as a national figure associated with the U.S. Term Limits campaign.
But he didn’t pass anything. Two Republican Wisconsin state legislators did.
The 2022 timeline also predates Trone’s October 2025 partnership with DeSantis, his bipartisan co-chairmanship of U.S. Term Limits, and his New York Times op-ed with DeSantis published October 22, 2025. The Wisconsin vote happened before any of that existed.
5. The Williamsport ICE Warehouse
What Trone said: Trone tied McClain Delaney’s vote for the Laken Riley Act to ICE’s expansion in Washington County. “
It [the Laken Riley act] enables ICE to build that warehouse in Williamsport,” he told his BBQ get-together.
What the record shows: ICE did not build the warehouse in Williamsport.
Penzance, a private real estate company headquartered in Washington, D.C., built it. The structure at 16220 Wright Road sits on a 53-acre site and totals 825,000 square feet of Class A industrial space. Penzance broke ground on September 9, 2021, more than three years before McClain Delaney took office.
In January 2026, the Department of Homeland Security purchased the existing warehouse for $102.4 million and announced plans to retrofit it as an ICE Baltimore Processing Facility.
McClain Delaney’s own January 27, 2026, statement on the acquisition describes “the facility ICE purchased in Washington County.” Her February 23, 2026, statement backing the Maryland Attorney General’s lawsuit against the planned facility describes DHS as having failed to consult Maryland or conduct an environmental review before converting the existing structure.
The warehouse existed before McClain Delaney cast a single vote in the 119th Congress. Penzance built the Hagerstown warehouse; ICE later purchased it. The Laken Riley Act did not produce the Hagerstown ICE building. The Biden-to-Trump transition didn’t produce the building.
Whatever connection one wants to draw between ICE detention expansion and federal immigration policy, David Trone’s specific claim that ICE built the warehouse fails the documentary record.
But Trone Does Tell The Truth About Some Things
Three claims from Trone’s speech do, however, hold up under scrutiny.
The AFL-CIO scorecard credits Trone with a 100% score for 2024 and a 100% lifetime score across his House tenure. His labor record claim survives.
The American Immigration Council’s 2025 New American Fortune 500 report documents that 231 of the 500 largest U.S. companies, or 46.2 percent, trace their origins to immigrant founders or the children of immigrants. His Fortune 500 claim survives.
Trone’s description of the United States’ fertility rate at 1.62 matches the 2023 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data on the total fertility rate, though he called it the “birth rate.” The 2.1 replacement rate he cited is the standard demographic benchmark. His fertility claim survives.
Maryland’s 2026 primary is set for June 23.
