Fact-Checking Lateefah Simon's Claims and Billboard: Did She Deliver $833 Million?

Prepared by Jamie Joyce, Lateefah Simon's challenger and a professional researcher. A review of the public record behind a taxpayer-funded billboard, checked through October 8, 2026.

Fact-checking Lateefah Simon's claims and billboard

In short: the public record does not show that Lateefah Simon delivered $833 million in federal funding to the East Bay. It shows her delivering $11.2 million.

"I've delivered $833 million in federal funding to the East Bay"

Clear Channel billboard, downtown Oakland. "Paid for by official funds authorized by the House of Representatives." Date posted: not established.

Rep. Lateefah Simon's office has stated a running total of federal money it has "secured," "delivered" or "brought home" to California's 12th District at every recorded town hall since May 29, 2025, in a series of press releases, on the office website and on a billboard. This page sets out what we collected, how we tried to match her figures to federal award records, what each dollar we could trace turned out to be, and where the public record runs out. It is a review of public records, not an audit: only her office, which has never published an award list, or the agencies, can settle what the $833 million consists of. Sources are linked where they are used, and every one is listed at the bottom of the page.

Summary: the record does not show Lateefah Simon delivered $833 million

Our finding

The public record does not show that Rep. Simon delivered $833 million. It shows her delivering $11.2M, which is 1.3% of the billboard figure: fifteen local projects she chose, written into law with her name on them.

The billboard is not the end of it. Since she first gave the $833 million figure at a town hall on July 28, 2026, her office's website now says "$1.15B+ announced in grants for the district." Nothing on the site itemizes that number, and it is about $630 million more than everything her office has ever itemized in writing. Every finding below concerns the $833 million; the larger figure rests on even less.

That leaves $821.8M, 98.7% of the billboard figure, that the record does not show her delivering. Of that, $639.6M could be plausibly identified by matching government records with her claims in press releases and at town halls. It is real federal money that came to the district, or to the state and regional agencies that serve it. We are more confident of some of these matches than others: for $219.2M of it her office named the program and the recipient; for $150.2M it named the agency and the amount and we found the records; for $258.9M it gave only a category total and we inferred which records it must mean; and $11.3M is an award her office never stated at all, counted because it went to an organization she did name (the Method section shows which is which). But all of it looks like it came through programs that pay a fixed amount to the same recipients whoever holds the seat, or through competitions the recipients entered and won on their own. Her office announced this money; the agencies decided it. We found no record of her office causing any of it. In two categories the records that fit her description add up to more than the figure she gave; the "Not itemized by her office" section explains this and gives the more conservative count.

The remaining $182.2M was never itemized: for most of it, nothing her office has said in any release or at any town hall describes it by program, recipient or amount, so there is nothing to match a government record to; for the rest (a year-end research total and a few small lines), her words were not specific enough to identify an award. We looked and could not find what it is. We have some ideas, set out under "Not itemized by her office" below, and we have asked her for an audit of every number.

To get this far we worked through 1,121 source documents and records, listed at the bottom of this page: 19 of her office's press releases and 11 town hall recordings, quoted verbatim; 845 federal award pages; the enacted appropriations tables; her bills, amendments and roll-call votes; the court orders behind every restoration; and the news, agency and local-government documents that bear on each claim. On top of those listed sources we pulled, as bulk data, every grant and direct payment the government records as performed in the district from January 2025 to October 2026 (7,359 transactions on 2,981 awards, $2.59 billion), every SBIR and STTR research contract and grant to district firms over the same period (134 transactions), and the full export of the Grant Witness tracker, which lists the 108 district grants frozen, cut or suspended in 2025 and 2026.

We cannot be certain of any of this without that audit. Jamie Joyce has asked Rep. Simon multiple times, including at a 2026 Emeryville town hall's question-and-answer session, to provide an audit of the $833 million. She has agreed on video more than once and has not delivered one. Until she does, these figures are what the public record supports as of October 8, 2026, and every line on this page can be re-checked the day her office publishes its list.

How federal money reaches a district, in plain terms

Most people assume that when a member of Congress announces federal money, the member brought it. Usually that is not how it works. Federal money reaches a district in five main ways, and only one of them involves the member choosing where it goes.

How the money arrives	Who decides the amount	Example from her totals	Could she have changed it?
Formula money	A formula in a law, applied by the agency: population, ridership, number of vouchers	BART's transit grants, Oakland's housing vouchers, the city block grants	It doesn't look like it. The same amount goes to the same recipient whoever holds the seat. Members vote on the overall bill, often among hundreds of items
Disaster relief and entitlement	A disaster declaration, or airport passenger counts	The $88.89 million in storm repairs; the Oakland airport grants	It doesn't look like it
Renewals	The agency, as the annual payment on a grant the recipient won years earlier	The health centers' annual Health Center Program payments (awards made in 2018), BART's 2020 grant agreement	It doesn't look like it. The competition was decided before she took office
Competitive grants	The agency scores applications on merit and picks winners	The Port of Oakland's $35.5 million port grant, UC Berkeley's research awards	Not directly. A member may write a support letter. None from her office is on record, and no program we checked gives points for one. For research grants in particular, a letter from a representative outside the scientific field should not affect a merit review and is not meant to; it is a gesture
Community Project Funding (earmarks)	The member requests a named project and amount; Congress writes it into the law	Her fifteen FY2026 projects, $11,216,000	Yes. This is the one place her name appears in the law

She does not sit on the House Appropriations Committee, which writes the spending bills; her committees are Small Business and Oversight. At an August 20, 2026 town hall she said she was "fighting extremely hard to get on the appropriations committee."

$833M

On the billboard. $1.15B+ on the website. $870M at the last recorded town hall.

$11.2M

Delivered by her: 1.3% of the figure

$639.6M

Real money that came to the district through formulas, declarations, renewals or competitions. Not delivered by her office on any record we found

$182.2M

Never identified by her office. Unknown

What this does not mean

The money is not fake. It was just "delivered" by someone else: a formula in a law, a disaster declaration, an agency renewing a grant it had already made, or an agency scoring a competition the recipient entered. She may have done something, some form of advocacy, and what the record shows of that is listed below. But it would be overstating it to say that a letter of recommendation, a lab visit, or a vague claim that she "fought for" something means she delivered it. "I've delivered" describes 1.3% of the billboard figure.

Two labels are used for her statements on this page. "Shown by the record" means a government document or her office's own published words confirm the statement. "Not shown by the record" means we searched everything listed under All sources and found nothing that confirms it. The second label does not mean we proved the statement false; it means the proof, if it exists, is not public.

The claim, and how it grew

Every figure in this section is her office's own, quoted verbatim, or is derived from two of its figures and marked as such, and each is a claim to have secured, delivered or brought the money home; releases that only announce an award are not listed here. The office keeps one running tally and restates it. The 2025 figures are cumulative "since January" snapshots of that tally, so they must not be added together: $344 million at year end subsumes the $91 million, $150 million and $240 million before it. In 2026 the office restarted the count ("since the start of this year"), so the cumulative points for 2026 below are her 2025 total plus her stated 2026 year-to-date figure, and are marked derived.

Each point is her own stated figure. Pink: press releases. Dark: spoken at a town hall. Hollow: derived from two of her figures. The billboard and the website figure are marked. Hover or tap a point for the quote.

Every running total in a press release, largest first5 points

Date	Figure	Her words	Source
2026-06-18	$520M derived	Congresswoman Lateefah Simon (D-CA-12) has brought over $176 million in federal funding home to the East Bay since the start of 2026. Headline: "Congresswoman Simon Brings Over $176 Million Home to the East Bay for Local Health Centers, Biomedical Research, Arts, and Public Safety". The release claims she secured, delivered or brought the money home. $344M (2025 total) + $176M (2026 year-to-date, Jun 18, 2026)	release
2026-05-12	$486M derived	Congresswoman Lateefah Simon (D-CA-12) has brought over $142 million in federal funding home to the East Bay since the start of this year. Headline: "Congresswoman Simon Brings Over $142 Million Home to the East Bay for Affordable Housing, Scientific Research, Arts, and Public Safety". The release claims she secured, delivered or brought the money home. $344M (2025 total, Dec 19, 2025) + $142M (2026 year-to-date, May 12, 2026)	release
2025-12-19	$344M	Since being sworn-in in January 2025, Congresswoman Lateefah Simon (D-CA-12) has secured over $344 million in federal funding for California's 12th Congressional District. Headline: "Congresswoman Lateefah Simon Brings over $344 Million Home to the East Bay in First Year Representing California's 12th District". The release claims she secured, delivered or brought the money home.	release
2025-09-09	$240M	Since coming to Congress in January, I have secured over $240 million in federal funding for our district. Headline: "Congresswoman Simon Brings Over $91 Million Home to the East Bay for Violence Prevention Initiatives, Affordable Housing, HeadStart Programs, Scientific Research, and Infrastructure Upgrades". The release claims she secured, delivered or brought the money home.	release
2025-08-08	$150M	Since coming to Congress in January, I have secured and delivered back over $150 million in federal funding for our district. Headline: "Congresswoman Simon Brings Over $45 Million Home to the East Bay for Affordable Housing, Education, Public Health Initiatives, the Arts, and Scientific Research". The release claims she secured, delivered or brought the money home.	release

Every running total spoken at a town hall, largest first7 of 11 recorded town halls

Date	Figure	Transcript (auto-captions)	Source
2026-08-20	"almost $900M"	We brought home almost $900 million back to this district. A large portion of that has been to research.	recording
2026-08-26	$870M	So, we've brought back and literally have clawed back $870 million in the last year and a half to California's 12 district.	recording
2026-07-28	$833M	To date, since I've come into office, we have brought back $833 million to California's 12th district in federal grants.	recording
2026-07-07	$776M	we listened and we brought home $776 million back to [applause]	recording
2026-05-27	$491M	We have brought back $491 million in grants alone in the first year and a half.	recording
2026-02-19	$383M	The work is our crew, our humble 13 members of our small staff bringing back $383 million back to the district.	recording
2025-05-29	$10M	And we have brought home in five short months despite despite again the the horrific grant cuts we brought home $10 million. There's more to come.	recording

A word on verbs. Announcing a federal grant to a local recipient is an ordinary part of a congressional office's work, and nothing on this page faults it. The claims under review are the ones in which the office says it "secured," "delivered" or "brought home" the money, and the billboard. Two releases that only announce or welcome an award (April 3 and June 4, 2025) are not listed on this page; they appear in the source list at the bottom.

The billboard itself is paid for from the Members' Representational Allowance, the public appropriation that funds each House office (2 U.S.C. 5341), which is why it carries the line "Paid for by official funds authorized by the House of Representatives." House rules place official mass communications under the House Communications Standards Commission, a panel of House members. Whether and how this billboard was reviewed is not public, and nothing on this page assumes it was or was not.

Her figures are not always consistent with each other. At the Oakland town hall of February 19, 2026 she gave $383 million for the running total and, later the same evening (53:12), said that "last year we brought back... almost over a quarter of a billion dollars," against her office's $344 million for 2025. At the first four recorded town halls (March 21, April 24, April 25 and May 27, 2025) no running total is stated. The running total falls once: $870 million on August 26, 2026, six days after "almost $900 million." The website's "$1.15B+ announced in grants" exceeds everything the office has itemized ($520 million: $344 million for 2025 and $176 million for 2026 through June 18) by about $630 million, and no page on the site itemizes it.

What we collected

Three kinds of material: what she and her office said, the government's own records of money, and what others reported. The counts below are of distinct documents and records, not pages read.

1,121 distinct URLs, in seven groups. The master index logs 320 sources that were opened and relied on, in 17 sections, plus 211 that surfaced in searches and were not relied on.

Press releases from simon.house.gov in which the headline or the text says she secured, delivered or brought home federal money, each fetched and quoted verbatim

Town hall recordings, transcribed from YouTube auto-captions and searched for every money figure

845

Federal award records opened on USASpending.gov, NSF, NIH RePORTER, HUD and FTA tables

7,359

Transactions on 2,981 awards, $2.59 billion: every grant and direct payment the government records as performed in CA-12, January 2025 to October 2026, pulled in full to test our matches against

1,473

Of those awards, the ones of $100,000 or more, kept as the working file for the line-by-line uniqueness test, together with the 2,752 transactions of $50,000 or more

134

SBIR and STTR research contract and grant transactions to district firms over the same period, pulled separately because contracts sit outside the grant records

108

District grants in the Grant Witness disruption tracker (NIH, NSF, EPA, CDC, SAMHSA and AHRQ; the tracker also covers NOAA, with no district entries), full export of October 5, 2026

Her press releases that claim she secured, delivered or brought money home19 releases

Town hall recordings transcribed11 recordings

Event	Link
2025-03-21 Oakland	recording
2025-04-24 San Leandro	recording
2025-04-25 Alameda	recording
2025-05-27 Berkeley	recording
2025-05-29 Emeryville	recording
2026-02-19 Oakland	recording
2026-05-27 Berkeley	recording
2026-07-07 Albany	recording
2026-07-28 San Leandro	recording
2026-08-20 Alameda	recording
2026-08-26 Piedmont	recording

The index sections count every page opened, including a few that are not funding releases or town hall recordings, so their totals run above the 19 releases and 11 recordings above.

Master source index by section320 sources

Section	Sources
1. Her claims: the billboard, the website and the running totals	8
2. Her press releases (simon.house.gov)	24
3. Town hall recordings (YouTube, transcribed from auto-captions)	12
4. Federal award records matched to her releases (USASpending.gov, 74 records)	74
5. Government allocation tables and program records used in place of a single award page	30
5b. The $88.89 million storm repair line (June 4, 2025 release)	7
6. How the money moves: program rules and reference material	7
7. Her recorded House votes on the bills that carried the money	4
8. The $180 million West Oakland project: Mandela Station Affordable	22
8b. Scoring rules for every program that funded Mandela Station (can a member's letter earn points?)	13
9. Candidates for the unidentified "campus" affordable housing project	4
10. The BART Core Capacity grant ($39.8 million record) and her role on the BART board	12
11. Her sponsored legislation, 119th Congress (none became law; the one that passed the House authorizes no money)	36
11b. Her amendments, 119th Congress (House Rules Committee records; none made in order)	10
11c. The five bills she says she passed: her words, and the bill records	39
12. Research funding cuts thread (CRISPR lab, Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley grants)	16
13. Background on Rep. Simon	2

Government records used

USASpending.gov award and transaction records (award type, program, amount, date signed, period of performance, place of performance, and for HHS awards the outlays by fiscal year); the House Appropriations Committee's enacted FY2026 Community Project Funding tables; HUD's FY2026 CDBG, HOME, ESG and HOPWA allocation table; FTA apportionment notices; the Clerk of the House's roll-call votes; GovInfo bill status and bill text; the House Rules Committee's amendment tables; Congress.gov's sponsored and cosponsored legislation API; court dockets in Massachusetts v. NIH, Thakur v. Trump, California v. DOT and the four-state CDC case; the Grant Witness tracker's full data export; the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee's staff reports; BART board minutes; and the Berkeley Housing Authority and City of Oakland meeting records.

What we asked for and did not receive

Freedom of Information Act requests were sent to the awarding agencies asking for any letter of support or other correspondence from her office in the files of specific grants, to establish whether her office had any involvement in them. The requested records had not yet been received when this page was published. Whether specific health-center and Head Start payments were held in early 2025 is a separate question that only the recipients or HHS can answer, and it was not part of those requests. Her office was not interviewed. Two items on this page come from Jamie Joyce's own material rather than a published document, and are marked as such where they appear: a phone inquiry to UC Berkeley about the $40 million figure, and clips of her remarks at a 2026 Emeryville town hall's question-and-answer session, in reply to Jamie Joyce's request for an audit of the $833 million.

How we matched her figures to the record

Fix her words. Every funding sentence in a release or transcript was copied verbatim with its date and URL. Verbs were logged separately ("announced," "welcomed," "secured," "delivered," "brought home"), because announcing a grant and delivering one are different claims.
Find the record. For each line, search USASpending.gov by recipient, program and date window; where no single award page exists (block-grant allocations, FTA apportionments, enacted earmark tables), use the agency's published table. Record the award ID, amount, date signed, period of performance and place of performance as the API returned them.
Count one amount per line. The amount counted is the obligation in the claim window (the annual installment for a continuation award, not the multi-year total), so that nothing is counted twice across her cumulative figures.
Classify by mechanism, using the government's own label. USASpending's assistance type (formula grant, project grant, direct payment, cooperative agreement), the program's statute, and the award's first date decide the category. A continuation on an award first competed in 2018 is a renewal, not a win.
Test against the full district universe. Pull every award and transaction with a CA-12 place of performance for the period and ask, for each of her lines, whether a different record fits as well or better. Where more than one fits, say so.
Check for disruption. Cross every matched award, and every district award, against the Grant Witness tracker, agency cancellation lists, court dockets and obligation timing, to see whether anything she counted was frozen, cut or restored, and by whom.
Re-verify live on a stated date, and grade confidence. Figures were re-checked against their primary records on September 14 and October 7, 2026.

Confidence grades

High: directly supported by a primary government record or her office's own words, re-checked live. Medium-High: a primary record checked once that could not be re-fetched on the second date, or a record plus one inference the text states. Medium: supported but resting on an inference or a single source. Low: not supported, or supported only by the absence of evidence. The Limits section lists the items rated below High on source grounds; the match-confidence tiers below cover the inference risk.

Uniqueness grades

A match is Unique when her line names an amount and recipient that one record, or one obvious pair of records, fits. It is Either/or, clarification requested when more than one record, or more than one set of records, fits her words, and the release gives no list to settle it. In every either/or case on this page, whichever record is meant, the money is formula, renewal, entitlement or competitive, never money she designated, so the conclusion is the same; what differs is which award page to cite. Unmatched lines have no record we could find. Her figure, taken as stated marks the one amount we could not test against a record at all. Included by us, not stated by her marks an award counted under one of her year-end totals that no release or transcript names; the one such case is flagged so it can be moved to the remainder if her office says it was not counted.

How sure we are of each match

Every record on this page is tied to something her office said, but the words vary a great deal in how specific they are, and the tables say so in a "Basis of match" column. Named by her office (42 items, $230.4M): a release or town hall names the program and the recipient, and usually the amount; these are matches to her words. Agency and amount named; record inferred (19 items, $150.2M): her office named the agency, the purpose and the size ("over $110 million from HUD" for affordable housing; "$22.7 million" in SBIR awards) and we identified the records of that kind in the district; the match is reasonable but her office has not confirmed it. Category total only; record inferred (10 items, $258.9M): her December 19, 2025 release says "Infrastructure projects in CA-12, including at the Oakland International Airport, have received over $193 million," names nothing else, and the airport grants are $44.3 million; the BART, Caltrans and port records in the tables are the infrastructure money of that size in the district, and we inferred that they are what the figure refers to. Included by us (1 item, $11.3M): the Swords to Plowshares SSVF award, where her office named the organization but a different, smaller award. If any inferred record is not what her office counted, the money moves from "came to the district on its own terms" to "never identified." It does not move to "delivered by her." This range of confidence is one reason we have asked her office for an audit.

Her lines against the record: uniqueness, line by line19 lines

Her release	Her line	Category either way	Grade and what fits	Records
May 12, 2026	Over $110 million from HUD for affordable housing	Formula and renewal	Either/or, clarification requested The HUD money reaching CA-12 housing authorities and cities in the window could be counted two ways. We matched the Oakland Housing Authority's voucher renewal signed December 23, 2025 for the renewal year beginning January 1, 2026 ($97,403,406, record CA003VOW179) plus the 2026 renewals, capital fund and block-grant allocations. The alternative is the HUD obligations dated January 1 to May 12, 2026, which total $101,428,003 across 22 transactions, led by voucher renewal CA003VOW180 ($69,073,006, March 26, 2026). Either set is formula and renewal money. Clarification requested from her office on which records the $110 million comprises.	VOW180 · VOW179 · release
Jun 18, 2026	$17 million+ for six local health centers (HHS)	Renewals and continuations	Either/or, clarification requested Six HRSA Health Center Program continuations were obligated on May 15 to 22, 2026: LifeLong Medical Care $4,717,765; La Clínica de la Raza $4,316,524; Asian Health Services $2,570,698; West Oakland Health Council $2,191,564; UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland (CHORI) $1,514,148; Davis Street Community Center $1,802,286. They sum to $17,112,985, which fits "$17 million+" for six centers. Our award table lists five of the six (it has no row for CHORI) and uses the January and February 2026 continuation actions for three of them instead (the same awards, earlier annual actions). Either way these are continuation payments on Health Center Program awards first made in 2018 or earlier. Clarification requested on which six centers and which actions her office counted.	CHORI H8000052 · release
Jun 18, 2026	About $4 million from DOJ for forensic labs and a prison sexual-assault resource center	Formula (the lab awards) and competition (the PREA award)	Either/or, clarification requested The only DOJ obligation with a CA-12 place of performance in January to June 2026 is a $1,400,000 Office of Justice Programs award to Impact Justice (Oakland) under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, dated May 29, 2026, which fits the resource-center part of her line. The Bureau of Justice Assistance DNA laboratory awards she describes returned no record under any identifier we could construct, so that part stays unmatched; where such awards appear elsewhere in her totals, USASpending labels them formula grants (programs 16.741 and 16.036), not competitions. Impact Justice is also the recipient whose reentry-housing grants DOJ terminated in April 2025; the PREA award is a separate, later award.	PREA award · release
Dec 19, 2025	$76.5 million for scientific research (UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Kaiser Foundation Research Institute)	Won in competition	Either/or, clarification requested A year-end category total with no list. UC Berkeley alone received well over this amount in competitive research obligations during 2025, so many sets of awards fit. The research awards in our table are the ones her earlier releases pointed to; the rest of this line is in the not-itemized remainder. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is funded through a Department of Energy operating contract, not grants. Competitive in every reading.	none found
Sep 9, 2025	$37.9 million in research funding to UC Berkeley (August 2025 batch)	Won in competition	Either/or, clarification requested Between July 15 and September 9, 2025, USASpending records 216 research obligations of $50,000 or more to the UC Regents with a Berkeley place of performance, totaling $118.5M, from NSF, NIH, DOE, DoD and NASA. The largest single item is NSF's Graduate Research Fellowship Program ($21,305,663, August 15, 2025). Many combinations reach $37.9 million; the release does not list awards, so no single set can be confirmed. Every candidate is a competitive research award. Most of this line sits in the not-itemized remainder.	GRFP record · release
Jun 18, 2026	$8 million+ to UC Berkeley for research (2026)	Won in competition	Either/or, clarification requested April 1 to June 18, 2026: 155 research obligations to the Regents at Berkeley, $64.6M in total, none above $1.9 million. Not uniquely matchable; competitive in every candidate.	none found
Aug 8, 2025	$11 million for AmeriCorps programs	Renewals and continuations	Either/or, clarification requested Her $11 million equals the full multi-year values of three AmeriCorps awards made in 2024, before she took office: Public Health Institute $7,500,000 (September 30, 2024), Breakthrough Collaborative $3,089,814 (September 1, 2024) and Oakland's Senior Companion Program $1,024,111 (July 1, 2024), together $11.6 million. The money that actually moved in 2025 was the annual continuation payment on each: $2,500,000, $1,031,750 and $340,537, together $3.9 million, which is what our table counts. Either the office counted the multi-year totals of awards decided in 2024, or it counted the 2025 payments and something else; the first fits the figure. Continuation money in either reading.	PHI award
Jun 4, 2025	$88.89 million in six DOT grants for storm damage	Disaster relief	Her figure, taken as stated Her office's own figure, taken as stated. Federal Highway Administration emergency relief flows to Caltrans by disaster declaration. The project-level FHWA data for Caltrans (2,388 transactions, January to July 2025) shows emergency-relief items in the East Bay under $2 million each and no set of six near $88.89 million, so the six grants cannot be individually identified from public data. Classified as disaster relief on the strength of her release's own description. The June 4 release only "welcomes" these funding notices; the figure enters this review because the office's August 8, 2025 total ("secured and delivered back over $150 million") appears to include it; only her office can confirm that. Clarification requested from Caltrans or her office.	release
Apr 3, 2025	$2.7 million in five NSF awards to UC Berkeley	Won in competition	Either/or, clarification requested The five awards listed in the release do not sum to any single record. NSF award 2503885 ($3,000,000 counted) and two smaller NSF awards are the closest matches. Competitive in every reading.	2503885
Dec 19, 2025	$193 million for infrastructure (airport, BART, transportation safety)	Formula, entitlement and renewal	Either/or, clarification requested Matched to BART's and Caltrans's 2025 FTA formula grants, four FAA airport entitlement grants, the MARAD port grant and BART's Core Capacity drawdown. The release gives a category total, not a list, so the set is ours. Every candidate is formula, entitlement, renewal or a competition the Port won.	release
Feb 10, 2026	$11.2 million for 15 community projects	Designated by her	Unique Unique. All fifteen items carry requestor "Simon" in the enacted FY2026 tables and total $11,216,000 exactly.	enacted tables
Sep 9, 2025	$18.7 million for gender-based violence and rape crisis services (Cal OES)	Formula	Unique Unique. Two DOJ Office on Violence Against Women formula grants to the California Office of Emergency Services, $16,675,442 and $2,099,047, together $18,774,489. Place of performance is Sacramento County; the money is passed through statewide.	STOP grant
Sep 9, 2025	$13 million for Oakland Head Start	Renewals and continuations	Unique Unique. The City of Oakland's Head Start award 09CH013397, $13,797,057, obligated August 25, 2025, year five of a 2021 award to a grantee since 1971.	record
Dec 19, 2025	"$500,000 through Swords to Plowshares, an organization in CA-12"	Won in competition	Unique Unique. VA Legal Services for Homeless Veterans award CA-626-LSV-669-26, $500,000, October 1, 2025.	record
Dec 19, 2025	Swords to Plowshares, VA Supportive Services for Veteran Families (not stated by her)	Won in competition	Included by us, not stated by her Included by us, not stated by her. Her release names only the $500,000 above. The SSVF award (18-CA-091-26: $9,271,944 plus a $2,000,000 supplement, obligated at the end of September 2025, $11,271,944 in all) is a 2025 VA award to the same district organization and was counted under her year-end total on that basis. If her office did not count it, $11.27 million moves from this category to the not-itemized remainder. Competitive in either case.	record
Mar 12, 2026	$8.8 million World Cup transit boost	Formula	Unique Unique. FTA's March 6, 2026 apportionment to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, $8,807,888, set by formula in the appropriations act.	release
Sep 9, 2025	$2.8 million from NSF for institutions "like the Kaiser Foundation"	Unmatched	Unmatched NSF's award search shows no NSF award to the Kaiser Foundation Research Institute since 2018; its federal research funding is from NIH and AHRQ. The attribution to NSF is not supported by any record we found.	NSF award search
Dec 19, 2025	$22.7 million in Small Business Innovation Research awards to East Bay firms	Won in competition	Either/or, clarification requested A pull of every SBIR and STTR contract and grant with a CA-12 place of performance (keyword search of award descriptions, all agencies) finds 52 awards to 33 district firms obligated between January 3 and December 19, 2025, totaling $24.2 million ($11.8 million in contracts from the Air Force, Navy, Army, DARPA, NASA and Education; $12.4 million in NIH, NSF, DOE and USDA grants). Her $22.7 million fits that universe closely, so we suspect the line is the sum of SBIR and STTR money to district firms for the year rather than a list of specific awards. That is a suspicion, not a finding: her office has not said. We matched three of these awards individually (Telemetrak, two Air Force contracts, and Perceptra, $3.8 million); the rest is not counted anywhere on this page and may be part of the not-itemized remainder. Every SBIR and STTR award is selected by the agency through competitive technical review under the Small Business Act, and the set-aside that funds the program is fixed by statute. Clarification requested on which awards her office counted.	USASpending search · SBIR program
May 12 and Jun 18, 2026	NeighborWorks community development ($700,000); $3 million for crime labs; Alameda Health System $2 million+; Kaiser $300,000; NEA $63,000	Unmatched	Unmatched No federal award record found. NeighborWorks America is a congressionally chartered nonprofit whose subgrants do not appear as federal awards. The crime-lab, Alameda Health System, Kaiser and NEA items returned no record under the descriptions given. These sit in the not-itemized remainder.	none found

The uniqueness test was run against 1,473 awards (of $100,000 or more) and 2,752 transactions (of $50,000 or more) with a CA-12 place of performance, January 3, 2025 to October 8, 2026, plus recipient-level pulls for the Port of Oakland, Swords to Plowshares, Alameda County, the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, the Oakland Housing Authority, Cal OES and Caltrans. 55 of the 72 matched items have a CA-12 place of performance; the other 17 ($352.5M) are recorded statewide, regionally, or in Sacramento or San Francisco (BART's and Caltrans's FTA grants, MTC's apportionment, the Cal OES grants, Swords to Plowshares and three small awards), or, for the storm-repair figure, have no single record; that is how the government records them, not a sign of a wrong match.

Where the $833 million sits

Each square below is one percent of the billboard figure. The one pink square is the money she delivered. The dark squares are money that came to the district on its own terms. The grey squares are money her office has never identified. Only the pink square is money Lateefah Simon can be shown to have secured.

100 squares. 1.3% delivered by her rounds to one square.

Delivered by her (Community Project Funding)$11.2M · 1.3%

Came to the district on its own terms: formula, disaster and airport, renewals, competitions$639.6M · 76.8%

Never identified by her office$182.2M · 21.9%

The $639.6M that came on its own terms, by type

Type	What it means	Items	Amount	Share of $833M
Formula grants	Amount set by a statutory formula. Nothing to win.	26	$357.0M	42.9%	details
Disaster relief and airport entitlement	Paid by disaster declaration or by passenger counts.	5	$133.2M	16.0%	details
Renewals and continuations	Annual payments on awards already held, some made before she took office.	12	$78.3M	9.4%	details
Won in competition by the recipient	The recipient applied and was scored. A member may write a support letter; none is on record.	14	$71.1M	8.5%	details
Designated by her in appropriations	Community Project Funding: the one mechanism where her name is in the law.	15	$11.2M	1.3%	details
Never identified by her office	No award list has been published; no record matches	0	$182.2M	21.9%	details

The two NSF awards to UC Berkeley signed in September 2024, before she took office, are excluded from the 72 items ($650.8M). Counting them gives $664.7M across 74 items; the shares move by less than two points and the designated share stays at 1.3% of the billboard.

Formula grants

$357.0M across 26 items, 42.9% of the billboard figure. Amount set by a statutory formula. Nothing to win. Nothing in the record shows Lateefah Simon secured or delivered this money; the amounts were set by formula.

What formula money is, and what these items are

These are FTA formula grants to BART and Caltrans, DOJ Violence Against Women formula grants to the state, HUD housing-voucher renewals and public-housing funds, HUD's FY2026 block-grant allocations to Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda County, and FTA's World Cup apportionment. USASpending's own label on each is "formula grant" or, for voucher renewals, "direct payment for specified use," with the renewal amount set by HUD under the annual appropriations act (PIH notices 2025-13 and 2026-12). A member of Congress does not set, apply for or win any of these. A member can vote for the appropriations act that carries them: see her votes in the Second-guessing section.

Three large formula items need a note. BART's and Caltrans's FTA grants are recorded with a statewide place of performance; they are in her totals because the projects are in the district. The Cal OES grants are statewide pass-through money recorded in Sacramento County. The HUD voucher renewals are the largest single source of dollars in her 2026 figures and are the clearest either/or case above.

All 26 items in this category (our best estimate until her office provides an audit)$357.0M

Recipient	Program	Amount counted	Basis and date	Place of performance	Federal record	Her release	Basis of match
Housing Authority of the City of Oakland	HUD Housing Choice Voucher renewal funding (14.871), direct payment	$97,403,406	2026 renewal (Jan 1, 2026)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred
San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART)	FTA Urbanized Area Formula (20.507)	$60,000,000	2025 award (Sep 10, 2025)	California (statewide record)	record	Dec 19	Category total only; record inferred
California Department of Transportation (Caltrans)	FTA formula grant, region-wide	$44,750,616	2025 award (Sep 2, 2025)	California (statewide record)	record	Dec 19	Category total only; record inferred
BART	FTA State of Good Repair formula (20.525)	$41,601,813	2025 award (Aug 20, 2025)	California (statewide record)	record	Dec 19	Category total only; record inferred
BART	FTA Urbanized Area Formula (20.507), preventive maintenance	$16,925,711	2025 award (Sep 3, 2025)	California (statewide record)	record	Dec 19	Category total only; record inferred
California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES)	DOJ Office on Violence Against Women, STOP formula (16.588)	$16,675,442	2025 award	Mather, Sacramento Co. (CA-06)	record	Sep 9	Named by her office: program and recipient
Berkeley Housing Authority	HUD Housing Choice Voucher renewal funding (14.871), direct payment	$9,725,766	2026 renewal (Jan 1, 2026)	Berkeley (CA-12)	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred
Metropolitan Transportation Commission	FTA formula apportionment (World Cup transit)	$8,807,888	Mar 6, 2026 apportionment	Bay Area region	record	Mar 12	Named by her office: program and recipient
Housing Authority of the City of Oakland	HUD Emergency Housing Vouchers renewal (14.871), direct payment	$8,577,948	2026 renewal (Jan 1, 2026)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred
City of Oakland	HUD Community Planning & Development, CDBG formula	$7,559,219	FY2026 formula allocation	CA-12	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred
BART	FTA Urbanized Area Formula (20.507), elevator renovation	$7,221,540	2025 award (Apr 16, 2025)	California (statewide record)	record	Dec 19	Category total only; record inferred
BART	FTA Urbanized Area Formula (20.507), elevator renovation	$6,078,460	2025 award (Jun 13, 2025)	California (statewide record)	record	Dec 19	Category total only; record inferred
BART	FTA Urbanized Area Formula (20.507), EV charging at stations	$5,900,000	2025 award (Apr 16, 2025)	California (statewide record)	record	Dec 19	Category total only; record inferred
Oakland Housing Authority	HUD Public Housing Capital Fund	$5,310,696	2026 award (Apr 2026)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred
City of Oakland	HUD Community Planning & Development, HOPWA formula	$4,024,520	FY2026 formula allocation	CA-12	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred
City of Berkeley	HUD Community Planning & Development, CDBG formula	$2,608,121	FY2026 formula allocation	CA-12	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred
Alameda County (Urban County)	HUD Community Planning & Development, HOME formula	$2,540,644	FY2026 formula allocation	CA-12	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred
City of Oakland	HUD Community Planning & Development, HOME formula	$2,439,574	FY2026 formula allocation	CA-12	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred
California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES)	DOJ OVW, Sexual Assault Services formula (16.017)	$2,099,047	2025 award	Mather, Sacramento Co. (CA-06)	record	Sep 9	Named by her office: program and recipient
Oakland Housing Authority	HUD Public Housing Operating Fund	$2,007,883	2026 award (signed Dec 23, 2025)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred
Alameda County (Urban County)	HUD Community Planning & Development, CDBG formula	$1,979,849	FY2026 formula allocation	CA-12	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred
BART	FTA Urbanized Area Formula (20.507), CMAQ funds via MTC	$1,147,000	2025 award (Jul 28, 2025)	California (statewide record)	record	Dec 19	Category total only; record inferred
City of Oakland	HUD Community Planning & Development, ESG formula	$651,486	FY2026 formula allocation	CA-12	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred
City of Berkeley	HUD Community Planning & Development, HOME formula	$571,566	FY2026 formula allocation	CA-12	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred
City of Berkeley	HUD Community Planning & Development, ESG formula	$227,900	FY2026 formula allocation	CA-12	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred
Alameda County (Urban County)	HUD Community Planning & Development, ESG formula	$175,655	FY2026 formula allocation	CA-12	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred

Disaster relief and airport entitlement

$133.2M across 5 items, 16.0% of the billboard figure. Paid by disaster declaration or by passenger counts.

What this money is, and what these items are

The $88.89 million is her June 4, 2025 release's own figure for "six separate Department of Transportation grants" repairing storm damage "in the East Bay and throughout Northern California." FHWA emergency relief is paid to the state by disaster declaration. We could not identify the six projects in FHWA's project-level data (see the uniqueness table), so the figure is carried as she stated it. The nearest federal action is FHWA's emergency relief allocation of May 27, 2025, eight days before her release, which gave California $171.9 million for highway damage from fifteen storm and disaster events dating from 2014 to 2024; most of those storms predate her term. The four FAA Airport Improvement Program grants to the Port of Oakland are entitlement money, set by passenger counts, with a discretionary share the FAA adds from the same program; no member of Congress sets either.

All 5 items in this category (our best estimate until her office provides an audit)$133.2M

Recipient	Program	Amount counted	Basis and date	Place of performance	Federal record	Her release	Basis of match
Caltrans	FHWA Emergency Relief, storm-damage repairs	$88,890,000	Her June 4, 2025 release figure; not a single USASpending record	"East Bay and throughout Northern California"	record	Jun 4	Named by her office: program and recipient
Port of Oakland, Oakland International Airport	FAA Airport Improvement Program	$18,000,000	2025 award (Jul 29, 2025)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Dec 19	Named by her office: program and recipient
Port of Oakland, Oakland International Airport	FAA Airport Improvement Program	$14,349,881	2025 award (Jul 29, 2025)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Dec 19	Named by her office: program and recipient
Port of Oakland, Oakland International Airport	FAA Airport Improvement Program	$6,000,000	2025 award (Sep 8, 2025)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Dec 19	Named by her office: program and recipient
Port of Oakland, Oakland International Airport	FAA Airport Improvement Program	$5,940,272	2025 award (Sep 18, 2025)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Dec 19	Named by her office: program and recipient

Renewals and continuations

$78.3M across 12 items, 9.4% of the billboard figure. Annual payments on awards already held, some made before she took office. The record does not show Lateefah Simon delivering these payments; they are renewals of awards the recipients already had.

What renewals are, and what these items are

The largest item is BART's $39.8 million 2025 drawdown on the Transbay Core Capacity Full Funding Grant Agreement, a competition decided in September 2020 and paid in installments since. The others are annual continuation payments on Health Center Program awards made in 2018, the City of Oakland's Head Start award of 2021, AmeriCorps awards of 2024 and a HUD Family Self-Sufficiency renewal. The money is real and the recipients depend on it; the amount each year is set by the agency on an award the recipient already holds.

All 12 items in this category (our best estimate until her office provides an audit)$78.3M

Recipient	Program	Amount counted	Basis and date	Place of performance	Federal record	Her release	Basis of match
BART	FTA Capital Investment Grants (Core Capacity)	$39,822,803	2025 obligation (May 5, 2025)	California (statewide record)	record	Dec 19	Category total only; record inferred
City of Oakland	HHS ACF, Head Start (93.600)	$13,797,057	2025 award, year 5 of FY2021 to 26 grant (signed Aug 25, 2025)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Sep 9	Named by her office: program and recipient
Asian Health Services	HRSA Health Center Program (93.224), 2025 continuation payments	$4,763,414	2025 continuation ($2,381,707 on Mar 6 and Jul 14, 2025)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Dec 19	Named by her office: program and recipient
LifeLong Medical Care	HRSA Health Center Program, 2026 continuation payment	$4,717,765	2026 continuation (May 21, 2026)	Berkeley (CA-12)	record	Jun 18	Named by her office: program and recipient
La Clínica de la Raza	HRSA Health Center Program, 2026 continuation payment	$4,249,525	2026 continuation (Feb 4, 2026)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Jun 18	Named by her office: program and recipient
Asian Health Services	HRSA Health Center Program, 2026 continuation payment	$2,503,698	2026 continuation (Jan 29, 2026)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Jun 18	Named by her office: program and recipient
Public Health Institute	AmeriCorps, 2025 to 26 program-year continuation	$2,500,000	2025 continuation (Jul 1, 2025)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Aug 8	Named by her office: program and recipient
West Oakland Health Council	HRSA Health Center Program, 2026 continuation payment	$2,124,564	2026 continuation (Jan 29, 2026)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Jun 18	Named by her office: program and recipient
Davis Street Community Center	HRSA Health Center Program, 2026 continuation payment	$1,802,286	2026 continuation (May 15, 2026)	San Leandro (CA-12)	record	Jun 18	Named by her office: program and recipient
Breakthrough Collaborative Inc.	AmeriCorps, 2025 to 26 program-year continuation	$1,031,750	2025 continuation (Jul 1, 2025)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Aug 8	Named by her office: program and recipient
Oakland Housing Authority	HUD Family Self-Sufficiency program	$641,176	2026 award (Jan 2026)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	May 12	Agency and amount named; record inferred
City of Oakland (Senior Companion Program)	AmeriCorps Seniors, 2025 to 26 program-year continuation	$340,537	2025 continuation (Jun 25, 2025)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Jun 25	Named by her office: program and recipient

Won in competition by the recipient

$71.1M across 14 items, 8.5% of the billboard figure. The recipient applied and was scored. A member may write a support letter; none is on record. Lateefah Simon did not win these awards; the recipients did.

What competitive grants are, and what these items are

The Port of Oakland's $35.5 million MARAD port infrastructure grant, Swords to Plowshares' veterans housing awards, NSF and DoD research awards to UC Berkeley and the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute, two Air Force SBIR contracts to Telemetrak, and small HRSA, DHS and NEA awards. Each recipient applied and was scored. SBIR and STTR awards deserve a specific note, because her "$22.7 million" line may be a sizable part of the money we could not itemize: they are small-business research contracts and grants that agencies select through competitive technical review under the Small Business Act, funded by a set-aside fixed by statute (a percentage of each agency's outside research budget). A member of Congress does not pick the firms. Where Congress matters is the program itself: its authorization lapsed at the end of September 2025, and she voted Yea on March 17, 2026 (roll call 89, 345 to 41) on the Senate bill that reauthorized it through 2031. That is a vote on whether the program exists, not on any award in her totals, all of which were made before the lapse. A member of Congress may write a letter of support; the Congressional Research Service describes such letters as one input an agency may consider, and no program's published rubric that we checked awards points for one. For scientific research awards, which make up most of the items below, a letter from a representative outside the field should not affect the merit review and is not designed to; it is a gesture, not a factor. No letter from her office is on record for any of these awards (we searched the award files available publicly, the recipients' announcements and her releases). If one exists, it would be in the agency's file: see the FOIA note under What we collected.

All 14 items in this category (our best estimate until her office provides an audit)$71.1M

Recipient	Program	Amount counted	Basis and date	Place of performance	Federal record	Her release	Basis of match
Port of Oakland	DOT Maritime Administration, Port Infrastructure Development Program	$35,467,875	2025 award (Oct 28, 2025)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Dec 19	Category total only; record inferred
Swords to Plowshares	VA Supportive Services for Veteran Families	$11,271,944	2025 award (end of September 2025)	San Francisco (CA-11)	record	Dec 19	Included by us; not stated by her
Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath)	NSF, "Opening Doors to Mathematics"	$10,040,000	2025 award (Aug 1, 2025)	Berkeley (CA-12)	record	Aug 8	Named by her office: program and recipient
UC Regents (Berkeley)	NSF research award	$3,000,000	2025 award (Aug 2025)	Berkeley (CA-12)	record	Apr 2025	Named by her office: program and recipient
UC Regents (Berkeley)	DoD Army, FY2025 MURI cooperative agreement	$2,147,798	2025 award (signed Sep 4, 2025; period Sep 15, 2025 - Sep 14, 2030); $2,147,798 obligated of ~$7.5M five-year value	Berkeley (CA-12)	record	Aug 8	Named by her office: program and recipient
UC Regents (Berkeley)	NSF research award	$1,999,999	2025 award (Sep 2025)	Berkeley (CA-12)	record	Apr 2025	Named by her office: program and recipient
Telemetrak, Inc.	DoD Air Force SBIR	$1,799,990	2025 award (Jul 1, 2025)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Dec 19	Agency and amount named; record inferred
Telemetrak, Inc.	DoD Air Force SBIR	$1,799,938	2025 award (Sep 17, 2025)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Dec 19	Agency and amount named; record inferred
UC Regents (Berkeley)	NSF research award	$1,130,000	2025 award (Aug 2025)	Berkeley (CA-12)	record	Apr 2025	Named by her office: program and recipient
Asian Health Services	HRSA dental workforce training (93.059)	$949,649	2025 award (Jul 1, 2025)	San Leandro (CA-12)	record	Dec 19	Named by her office: program and recipient
Alameda Health System	HRSA Addiction Medicine Fellowship (93.732)	$799,744	2025 award (Jul 1, 2025)	California (state-level record)	record	Dec 19	Named by her office: program and recipient
Swords to Plowshares	VA Legal Services for Homeless Veterans (64.056)	$500,000	2025 award (Oct 1, 2025)	San Francisco (CA-11)	record	Dec 19	Named by her office: program and recipient
Perceptra Technologies, Inc.	DHS SBIR	$168,908	2025 award (May 14, 2025)	Oakland (CA-12)	record	Dec 19	Agency and amount named; record inferred
Creative Growth Art Center	NEA Grants for Arts Projects	$30,000	FY2026 award	California	record	May 12	Named by her office: program and recipient

Designated by her in appropriations

$11.2M across 15 items, 1.3% of the billboard figure. Community Project Funding: the one mechanism where her name is in the law.

What Community Project Funding is, and the two details

Community Project Funding is the one way a House member writes a dollar amount for a named recipient into the text of a law. Her office requested fifteen projects for FY2026; all fifteen were funded, totaling $11,216,000, in the enacted tables of the House Appropriations Committee. This is the money "I've delivered" fits without qualification. It is 1.3% of the billboard figure.

Two details worth noting. One of the fifteen, the $250,000 Brooklyn Basin item for Oakland, lists Senators Padilla and Schiff as co-requestors alongside her. And her May 6, 2026 release describes "$500,000" for the East Bay Regional fire training facility, while the enacted tables show that project as $850,000 requested through Berkeley and $250,000 through Albany; the standalone $500,000 item in her list is Emeryville's 40th Street project. The total and the count match her office's figures; that one per-project description does not.

Nine of the fifteen (the Transportation-HUD items) were carried in H.R. 7148, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, on which she voted Nay on passage (January 22, 2026) and Nay on the motion to concur in the Senate amendments (February 3, 2026), the vote that sent the bill to the President; nearly all House Democrats voted no on February 3, citing the bill's immigration-enforcement provisions. The other six were in H.R. 6938, on which she voted Yea. The votes do not show opposition to the projects; they show the projects became law without her vote.

All 15 items in this category (our best estimate until her office provides an audit)$11.2M

Recipient	Program	Amount counted	Basis and date	Place of performance	Federal record	Her release	Basis of match
City of San Leandro, water infrastructure	Interior-Environment (EPA STAG), H.R. 6938	$1,092,000	Enacted FY2026 appropriations	CA-12	record	Feb 10	Named by her office: program and recipient
East Bay Regional Park District, MLK Jr. Regional Shoreline	Interior-Environment (EPA STAG), H.R. 6938	$1,092,000	Enacted FY2026 appropriations	CA-12	record	Feb 10	Named by her office: program and recipient
City of Oakland, Department of Violence Prevention (Operation Ceasefire)	Commerce-Justice-Science (Byrne), H.R. 6938	$1,039,000	Enacted FY2026 appropriations	CA-12	record	Feb 10	Named by her office: program and recipient
UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland, Pediatric Blood Disorder Research Center	Commerce-Justice-Science (NIST), H.R. 6938	$1,031,000	Enacted FY2026 appropriations	CA-12	record	Feb 10	Named by her office: program and recipient
Samuel Merritt University, research equipment	Commerce-Justice-Science (NIST), H.R. 6938	$1,031,000	Enacted FY2026 appropriations	CA-12	record	Feb 10	Named by her office: program and recipient
Northeastern University Oakland, public-safety security equipment	Commerce-Justice-Science (COPS), H.R. 6938	$1,031,000	Enacted FY2026 appropriations	CA-12	record	Feb 10	Named by her office: program and recipient
City of Alameda, Lincoln Ave/Marshall Way/Pacific Ave corridor	Transportation-HUD (Highway Infrastructure), H.R. 7148	$850,000	Enacted FY2026 appropriations	CA-12	record	Feb 10	Named by her office: program and recipient
BART, station LED lighting (nine stations)	Transportation-HUD (Transit Infrastructure), H.R. 7148	$850,000	Enacted FY2026 appropriations	CA-12	record	Feb 10	Named by her office: program and recipient
City of Berkeley, East Bay Regional Fire Training Facility	Transportation-HUD (EDI), H.R. 7148	$850,000	Enacted FY2026 appropriations	CA-12	record	Feb 10	Named by her office: program and recipient
City of Berkeley, Adeline Complete Street / Ashby BART plaza	Transportation-HUD (EDI), H.R. 7148	$850,000	Enacted FY2026 appropriations	CA-12	record	Feb 10	Named by her office: program and recipient
City of Emeryville, 40th Street multimodal	Transportation-HUD (EDI), H.R. 7148	$500,000	Enacted FY2026 appropriations	CA-12	record	Feb 10	Named by her office: program and recipient
City of Oakland, Brooklyn Basin blight removal	Transportation-HUD (EDI), H.R. 7148	$250,000	Enacted FY2026 appropriations	CA-12	record	Feb 10	Named by her office: program and recipient
City of Oakland, capital improvements for core service providers	Transportation-HUD (EDI), H.R. 7148	$250,000	Enacted FY2026 appropriations	CA-12	record	Feb 10	Named by her office: program and recipient
Peralta Community College District, FabLab	Transportation-HUD (EDI), H.R. 7148	$250,000	Enacted FY2026 appropriations	CA-12	record	Feb 10	Named by her office: program and recipient
City of Albany, East Bay Regional Fire Training Center	Transportation-HUD (EDI), H.R. 7148	$250,000	Enacted FY2026 appropriations	CA-12	record	Feb 10	Named by her office: program and recipient

Not itemized by her office

$182.2M, 21.9% of the billboard figure, is the gap between $833 million and the $650.8M we could trace. We do not know what it is, and we do not claim it is nothing. No record shows Lateefah Simon secured any of it.

What we can say about it, what is probably in it, and what would resolve it

What "itemized" means on this page. Money counts as itemized when her office described it in a release or at a town hall by program and recipient, specifically enough to be matched to a government record. The $650.8M traced is all money of that kind; the $182.2M is money her office has either never described at all or described too loosely to identify an award. This is a different measure from the sum of her written running totals ($520 million: $344 million for 2025 and $176 million for 2026 through June 18), which is smaller than the traced amount. The two differ because the billboard's $833 million is a spoken total that grew well past the written ones with no release behind the growth, and because her category lines are open-ended: her December 19, 2025 release says "over $193 million" for infrastructure, and the BART, Caltrans, airport, port and Core Capacity records that fit it total about $303 million; her May 12, 2026 release says "over $110 million" from HUD, and the housing records that fit it total about $146 million. "Over" is not contradicted by more. We kept every fitting record in the tables so each candidate is visible. A reader who instead caps each category at the minimum her office stated would put the traced total near $500 million and the undescribed remainder near $330 million; the category of every traced dollar, and the conclusion, are the same either way.

What we can say about it. Her office's 2025 category totals (December 19, 2025 release) sum to about $333 million of the $344 million headline; her two 2026 releases itemize about $119 million of $142 million (May 12) and the health-center, DOJ, UC Berkeley, Alameda Health System, Kaiser and NEA lines of $176 million (June 18). The office has never published an award list. The spoken figures run ahead of everything itemized in writing by then ($520 million): by about $256 million on July 7, 2026 ($776 million) and about $313 million on July 28 ($833 million).

What is probably in it, based on the uniqueness test: the untraced part of the $37.9 million and $76.5 million research lines (UC Berkeley received $118.5M in competitive research obligations in the eight weeks before her September 2025 release alone, so almost any amount could be found there), the difference between multi-year award totals and the annual payments actually made (her AmeriCorps line, for example, matches the multi-year totals of three 2024 awards, not the 2025 payments), the SBIR and STTR awards beyond the three we found (suspected: $24.2 million was obligated to district firms in 2025 and her line says $22.7 million, but her office has not said which awards it counted), and the NeighborWorks, crime-lab and small health items that have no federal award record under the descriptions given. All of those, if confirmed, would be competitive or continuation money. Four earmarks requested by her predecessor, Rep. Barbara Lee, in FY2022 to FY2024 (HRSA and SAMHSA "congressional directives" to West Oakland Health Council and other district health providers, $3.57 million in all) were still paying out during her term and may also sit inside her totals; they are member-directed money, but not hers. Beyond those, we found no category of money in the district universe that would be member-directed and unaccounted for: the enacted FY2026 earmark tables are complete, and her fifteen items are all of hers.

What would resolve it: the audit her office has agreed to provide and has not. Until then the right label is unexplained, not false.

Second-guessing ourselves

Before concluding that she announced rather than delivered, we looked for the ways we could be wrong: money that was cut and came back through her office; money delayed and released; a vote, a bill or a letter that moved a dollar; a match we got wrong.

Did any of the money she counted get frozen, cut or restored?108 grants, 0 overlap

It doesn't look like it. The Grant Witness tracker (full export of October 5, 2026) lists 108 grants in CA-12 that were terminated, frozen or suspended in 2025 to 2026, with $483.8M obligated before disruption. 74 of the 108 were later restored. None of the 72 items matched to her releases appears in the tracker. Separately, every negative transaction in CA-12 on USASpending since January 20, 2025 was reviewed; the largest ($4.6 million) and the rest are routine closeouts of grants whose performance periods had ended, not terminations.

Obligated value of disrupted district grants by agency, with the number restored. EPA's Solar for All terminations dominate and remain in place.

Agency	Grants disrupted	Restored	Obligated before disruption	Unspent at disruption
EPA	13	5	$343.8M	$339.2M
SAMHSA	24	24	$36.5M	$16.3M
NSF	32	13	$36.1M	$21.5M
CDC	5	4	$32.5M	$23.7M
NIH	28	27	$28.5M	$9.9M
AHRQ	6	1	$6.4M	$2.6M

The large items, and who restored them

Grant	Amount	What happened	Who restored it	Her documented role
GRID Alternatives (Oakland), EPA Solar for All, two grants	$249.8M and $62.5M obligated	Terminated July 31, 2025 with the $7 billion national program. Still terminated.	No one yet; states sued EPA in October 2025	None found
GRID Alternatives, EPA Community Change Grant	$20.1M	Terminated March 25, 2025. Still terminated.	No one	None found
Alameda County, CDC Public Health Infrastructure Grant	$19.3M obligated, $18.4M unspent	Terminated January 23, 2026 in cuts aimed at four states. Reinstated February 13, 2026.	Federal court: TRO February 13, 2026, PI March 13, 2026, suit by four state attorneys general	A letter. Her February 23, 2026 release says she led colleagues urging HHS to restore the funding; it was sent after the court order
24 SAMHSA grants in the district	$36.5M obligated, $16.3M unspent	Terminated January 13 and 14, 2026. Reinstated January 14 and 15, 2026.	SAMHSA rescinded within two days; reporting credits national outcry	A statement. Her January 16, 2026 release says she joined a 100-member bipartisan letter; it cites 13 grants and $13.8M, the tracker shows 24
28 NIH grants, mostly UC Berkeley	$28.5M obligated, $9.9M unspent	Terminated or frozen March to July 2025. 27 reinstated June 2025 to July 2026; one still terminated.	A federal court in Massachusetts (APHA v. NIH, June 2025, in suits by researchers' associations and states) and later agency reinstatements. Thakur v. Trump, the UC researchers' case, covered EPA, NSF and NEH grants, not NIH	None found for any of these grants. Her February 2025 letters concerned the NIH overhead cap, a different action
13 NSF grants at UC Berkeley and SLMath (plus one smaller NSF grant not shown)	$14.4M obligated	Terminated April to June 2025. Reinstated June 30, 2025.	Federal court, Thakur v. Trump PI, June 23, 2025	None found
18 NSF grants at UC Berkeley	$21.0M obligated, $7.0M unspent	Suspended April 13, 2026 over alleged undisclosed foreign funding. Still suspended.	No one	None found. Her August 2026 statement called NSF's slow grantmaking "incredibly concerning"
AAPCHO (Oakland), two CDC grants	$5.2M	Terminated February 11, 2026. Reinstated February 13, 2026.	Same court order as Alameda County	Same letter
Kaiser and UC Berkeley, six AHRQ grants	$6.4M	Terminated August 2025 to March 2026. Five still terminated; one restored.	No one for the five	None found

Sources: Grant Witness; the CSV of all 108 district rows is published alongside this page. Her releases of January 16 and February 23, 2026.

Terminations outside the tracker: DOT, HUD, DOE, Education, DOJ, VA, AmeriCorps, NEA and the HHS offices it does not cover12 items

Checked against the DOE cancellation lists of May and October 2025, the House Appropriations Democrats' district list, DOJ's April 2025 terminations as reported, the Education Department's teacher-grant and Title VI terminations, the NEA and NEH lists compiled by KQED, AmeriCorps court filings, and USASpending deobligations. None of these touches an award she counted.

Recipient	Program	Amount	Date	Restored?	Her documented role
ARCHES hydrogen hub (AC Transit's $144M bus and fueling package sits inside it)	DOE hydrogen hub	up to $1.2B	Oct 1, 2025	No; ARCHES shelved the hub	Signed the Oct 15, 2025 California delegation letter; joined the Oct 29 letter and release ("over $200 million" cancelled in CA-12)
Brimstone (Oakland HQ, plant in Nevada)	DOE industrial demonstration, low-carbon cement	$189M	May 30, 2025	No	None specific; about 95% of the "$200 million" in her Oct 29 release
VA Alameda Point clinic and columbarium	VA construction (not a grant)	about $395M appropriated	Notified to her office Aug 28, 2025	No	Co-signed Dec 12, 2025 letter to the VA Secretary; report language in the FY27 House bill, May 2026. Project remains cancelled
Impact Justice (Oakland)	DOJ reentry housing and PREA grants	about $8.5M	Apr 2025	No; class action dismissed July 2025	None found
Molten Industries (Oakland)	DOE	$5.39M	Oct 1, 2025	No record	None found
UC Regents, three DOE awards	DOE	$4.67M	Oct 1, 2025	No record	None found
Reach University (Oakland)	Education teacher-preparation grants	$3.7M obligated	Feb 2025	No; a Sept 2026 ruling found the terminations unlawful but restored no money	None found
UC Berkeley	Education Title VI and FLAS	about $3.5M	Sept 2025	No; appeal denied Oct 2025	None found
Youth ALIVE! (Oakland)	DOJ Caught in the Crossfire	about $2M	Apr 2025	No	None found
C-Crete Technologies (San Leandro)	DOE	$2.0M	Oct 1, 2025	No record	None found
BOSS (Oakland)	DOJ trauma recovery center	$641,050	Apr 2025	Unknown	None found
Oakland Theater Project, Omnira Institute, Berkeley Rep	NEA and NEH	under $100K combined	May 2025	No record	None found

Freezes and delays, as opposed to terminations7 threads

A termination leaves a record. A freeze or a late payment usually does not: payments stop inside the HHS Payment Management System or HUD's LOCCS and nothing changes in public data. We used four signals: agency and congressional lists; obligation timing (the date of each year's award compared with every prior year); recipients' own board packets and finance memos; and her own statements. Payments themselves can be checked only coarsely, through USASpending's outlays by fiscal year, which show whether a year's money was eventually drawn, not whether a payment was held for weeks.

Recipient	What the record shows	Resolved by	Her documented role
EBALDC, $2M DOT Reconnecting Communities grant	Jan 28 to 29, 2025: could not access the award after the OMB payment pause. No source reports when or whether it was released.	Unknown	Jan 29 to 30 press event: "Give us a few days, that money is yours." No source credits her with a release
City of Oakland Head Start, $13.8M	Obligated Aug 25, 2025 for a budget year that began July 1; prior years were issued June 20 to 28. About nine weeks late, matching nationwide Head Start delays after HHS closed its San Francisco regional office on April 1, 2025. Outlay reports show $7.9M of $13.8M drawn by August 2026, against $10.2M to $12.3M per year on the prior grant; HHS outlay reporting lags, so this is a flag to ask the City about, not a finding.	HHS issued it; no court involved	Signed the May 22, 2025 California delegation letter on Head Start. Her Sept 9, 2025 release then announced the $13 million as money she brought home
Spanish Speaking Unity Council Head Start	One-day payment-system outage Jan 28, 2025, "did not impact programs" per NBC Bay Area.	Same day	None found
East Bay health centers, HRSA continuations	First-half 2025 obligations came March 6, 2025, about six weeks later than January 2024 but comparable to February 2023. Within normal range; a mild delay is possible.	Not applicable	See the March 2025 town hall claims below
BART FTA formula grants, FY2026	No large FTA grant to BART appears on USASpending between Oct 2025 and Oct 2026 (in FY2025 BART had seven FTA formula grants and the Core Capacity drawdown on USASpending, about $179M in all). FTA money flowed to AC Transit, Caltrans, MTC and LA Metro in the same months, so this is not a system-wide freeze. Possibly BART's timing or a reporting lag.	Unknown	None found
HUD housing authorities, cities, county	New grant conditions, program-wide, enjoined for plaintiffs. No East Bay recipient is a plaintiff. No late payment reported; Berkeley Housing Authority's Oct 2025 finance memo shows none.	Courts, for plaintiffs	Signed the Nov 24, 2025 Continuum of Care letter (33 signers)
DOT immigration condition on BART, Port, Caltrans grants	Program-wide, enjoined June 19, 2025, vacated Nov 4, 2025.	Federal court, Rhode Island	None found

Her March 21, 2025 town hall claims about frozen money

"Their funding was frozen... we helped to push to get some of that liquidated."Oakland town hall, March 21, 2025, 38:40 to 40:10

Not shown by the record for any named East Bay clinic. Health centers in other states reported lockouts in late January 2025; no source names a California center, and her role is uncorroborated.

BayWell (West Oakland Health Council): "their grant, even though we were able to help push it through, it was cut in half."Same town hall, as auto-captioned, punctuation added

Not shown by the award record; the payment record is less clear. HRSA obligated the grant in two halves, as it did for every center in 2024 and 2025: $2,029,773 on March 6, 2025 and $2,354,772 on July 16, 2025, a total of $4.38 million against $4.06 million in each of 2023 and 2024. On March 21 only the first half had been issued. HHS outlay reports show the clinic drew $3.27 million in FY2025 against $4.89 million in FY2024, with cumulative draws since FY2022 trailing cumulative obligations by about $0.8 million, which is a normal lag. Why FY2025 draws were lower cannot be told from public data; only the clinic or HRSA can say.

"The $2 million that we fought to get released for Asian Health Services has been released."Same town hall

Shown by the record in part. The award is real: HRSA obligated a $2,381,707 continuation to Asian Health Services on March 6, 2025, the first half of its year. Outlays show the clinic drew $4.74 million in FY2025, in line with prior years, so the year's money arrived. Whether a payment was held in February or March, and whether her office did anything, is undocumented. Her March 14, 2025 release calls it an award, not a release.

Records: USASpending awards H8000347, H8000773, 09CH013397, 09CH012060; NBC Bay Area, Feb 5, 2025; The American Prospect, May 7, 2025; her Mar 21, 2025 town hall; Berkeley Housing Authority finance report, Oct 16, 2025.

The CRISPR lab and the $37 million and $40 millionshown for the campus, not for the lab

"When they lost that $40 million, we stood shoulder to shoulder with them to make sure that money came back and we could keep that lab open."Rep. Simon, Emeryville town hall, 2026 (not among the eleven recordings listed under What we collected), question-and-answer session, in reply to Jamie Joyce's request for an audit of the $833 million; Jamie Joyce has the clip

Two figures circulate. $37 million is UC Berkeley's February 2025 projection of what the NIH indirect-cost cap would cost the campus each year; the cap was blocked by a court before it took effect. $40 million is the amount UC Berkeley's spokesperson told the Daily Californian in August 2026 had been left unspent across about 60 terminated or suspended awards campus-wide. Her first "$40 million" statement on record (an Oaklandside interview in March 2026) predates that report by five months, and UC Berkeley, asked by phone by Jamie Joyce in October 2026 which figure is current, said the total is always changing. So her figure could match the campus-wide loss as Berkeley has described it; it does not match any documented loss at the Innovative Genomics Institute, which reports no lost, frozen or restored federal award in its 2025 year in review and whose one large new award (ARPA-H, up to $27.7 million, July 2026) was a competition. The money that verifiably came back to UC researchers in 2025 came back by court order (the NSF grants under Thakur v. Trump, brought by six researchers; the NIH grants under a separate Massachusetts case) and by agency reinstatement; none of the orders names a member of Congress. One IGI-linked NIH award (U19NS132303, somatic cell genome editing) was never terminated; its year-three payment of $4.37 million arrived on June 16, 2025, about a month later than in the two prior years.

Date	Event	Source
Jan 27, 2025	OMB memo M-25-13 orders a pause on federal financial assistance; OMB withdraws the memo Jan 29; a federal court blocks the pause Jan 31	OMB; D.D.C. and D.R.I. courts
Feb 7 to 10, 2025	NIH announces a 15% cap on indirect costs; UC Berkeley projects a loss of about $37 million a year; Massachusetts v. NIH TRO blocks the cap Feb 10 (permanent Apr 4, 2025; affirmed Jan 5, 2026)	NIH; D. Mass.; UC Berkeley
Feb 21 to 24, 2025	She tours the Innovative Genomics Institute with Rep. Lieu; her office announces two co-signed letters opposing the cap	Her office; IGI year in review
Mar to Jul 2025	NIH and NSF terminate or freeze grants at UC Berkeley (28 NIH grants and 14 NSF grants in the district tracker were disrupted in 2025; 18 more NSF grants were suspended in April 2026)	Grant Witness; agencies
Jun 23, 2025	Thakur v. Trump preliminary injunction orders terminated EPA, NSF and NEH grants to UC researchers reinstated; a suit by six UC researchers; no member of Congress is named in the orders. NIH terminations were addressed in a separate Massachusetts case (APHA v. NIH, June 2025) and by agency reinstatements	N.D. Cal.; 9th Cir. May 26, 2026
Feb 19, 2026	"We were able to get back tens of millions of dollars to the [CRISPR] lab" (Oakland town hall, 16:07, as auto-captioned)	Transcript
Mar 2026	"$40 million back to the CRISPR lab": her first statement of the $40 million figure on record, in an Oaklandside interview (published March 18, 2026)	Oaklandside
Jul 7 and 28, 2026	"The [CRISPR] Lab lost millions and millions of dollars. We pushed back" (Albany, 8:22); "We got the $40 million back" (San Leandro, 32:50), as auto-captioned	Transcripts
Jul 9 and 27, 2026	ARPA-H awards IGI up to $27.7 million (THRIVE), a competitive program announced without reference to any member of Congress	ARPA-H; IGI
Aug 5, 2026	The Daily Californian reports UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof saying about $40 million was left unspent across roughly 60 terminated or suspended awards	Daily Californian
Oct 2026	UC Berkeley, asked by phone which figure is current, says the total is always changing	Phone inquiry by Jamie Joyce; not a published document

A filterable timeline of every statement about the two figures is published separately: The $37M and $40M Timeline. Sources for the events above are listed in the timeline page and in the All sources section (UC Berkeley News, The Daily Californian of August 5, 2026, the IGI 2025 year in review, ARPA-H's July 9, 2026 announcement, the NOTUS article of March 12, 2025 reposted on her site, the Thakur v. Trump preliminary injunction order and Ninth Circuit opinion, N.D. Cal. 3:25-cv-04737, and her town hall transcripts linked above).

Did she pass a bill, an amendment or a vote that carried any of this money?none carried money

Sponsored legislation. Twelve measures in the 119th Congress, each checked against its GovInfo bill status and full text on October 7, 2026. None became law. One (H.R. 8880) passed the House, and its text states "No such funds are authorized to be appropriated to carry out this Act." None names Oakland, Berkeley, California or the district, and none funds a local project.

Amendments. Congress.gov lists no amendment of hers with an H.Amdt. number, which in the House means none has been made in order. In the Rules Committee's amendment tables we could read, each amendment she sponsored or cosponsored is marked "Submitted" or "Revised."

"Five bills." At town halls she says she has passed five bills through the House. The count matches: five House-passed bills carry her name: one as sponsor, three as an original cosponsor of a Small Business Committee bill by a Republican sponsor, and one as the sole cosponsor, added the day the bill passed. None has become law; none contains a dollar figure; two state that no funds are authorized.

Votes on the bills that carried the money. She voted Yea on H.R. 6938 (the FY2026 Commerce-Justice-Science, Energy-Water and Interior-Environment act, which carries six of her fifteen projects) and Nay twice on H.R. 7148 (the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, which carries the other nine of her projects, the HUD, FTA and HHS formula money in her 2026 totals, and the NIH provisions she has spoken about: it set NIH at $47.22 billion and barred the 15% indirect-cost cap). The formula money in her 2025 totals flowed under the FY2025 full-year continuing resolution (H.R. 1968), on which she voted Nay (March 11, 2025).

Sources: GovInfo bill status and engrossed text for H.R. 825, 1634, 5763, 6329, 8880 and her twelve sponsored measures; her Congress.gov member page; Clerk of the House roll calls: 2025 roll call 70 (H.R. 1968), 2026 roll call 7 (H.R. 6938), 2026 roll call 45 (H.R. 7148 passage), 2026 roll call 53 (H.R. 7148 concurrence).

The $180 million West Oakland housing project she said “just got a yes”no federal appropriation

The remark was made at the 2026 Emeryville town hall's question-and-answer session, the same exchange as the CRISPR quotation above (Jamie Joyce has the clip). The project was identified from the funding record, not from the audio: Mandela Station Affordable, 240 units at the West Oakland BART station, total development cost $178,470,528. The most recent approval on the record is the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee's vote of December 10, 2025, a five-member committee of state officials with no federal seat. The permanent financing is federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit equity allocated by the state under a per-capita formula ($56.9 million), state housing programs ($38.1 million), the City of Oakland's Measure U bond ($33.0 million), a private loan ($24.5 million), the Oakland Housing Authority ($18.7 million) and the developer ($7.3 million). No congressional appropriation is in the stack. The staff report names no elected official; the project's and the City's announcements credit no member of Congress. Every public program in the stack was checked for whether a letter from an elected official earns points: none of the published rubrics awards any (for one $3 million regional program, REAP Priority Sites, staff presentations mention "local support" as a feature of top proposals without defining or scoring it, so an informal influence on that one line cannot be ruled out from the documents), and Oakland's NOFA awards no points for letters from individual elected officials. She does have one documented connection: as BART board president in June 2020, five years before the award, she moved and voted for the board's approval of the development agreement and land use. That vote carried 6 to 2, so it would have carried without her, and it concerned BART's land, not any of the money above. A vote on land use is not earning the financing.

Sources: CTCAC staff report CA-25-712; CTCAC roster; BART board minutes, June 11, 2020; Oakland NOFA.

BART's $39.8 million Core Capacity drawdown and her years on the BART boarddecided 2020

The $39.8 million counted in her 2025 total is a May 2025 installment on the Transbay Corridor Core Capacity Full Funding Grant Agreement, signed September 14, 2020, a $1.169 billion federal share of a $2.7 billion program that entered FTA project development in August 2015. She joined the BART board in January 2017, after the board had adopted the project (November 2016), and presided in 2020. The minutes record her absent for the December 2017 roll call adopting the 2018 federal advocacy program, the one that names the Core Capacity agreement as a goal, and absent again for the December 2018 roll call; seconding the 2020 program; and presiding over the unanimous train-control contract award in January 2020. BART's and FTA's announcements of the agreement thank the Transportation Secretary, FTA, Speaker Pelosi, Senators Harris and Feinstein, Rep. Lee, the delegation and MTC; neither names her. One document does: a September 2020 San Francisco County Transportation Authority report thanks "Chair Lateefah Simon and Director Bevan Dufty for their advocacy." The grant was decided four years before she took office; the 2025 installment is a renewal payment.

Sources: FTA, Sept 14, 2020; BART, Sept 14, 2020; SFCTA report, Sept 22, 2020; BART board minutes Dec 7, 2017; Dec 6, 2018; Dec 5, 2019; Jan 9, 2020; Sep 10, 2020.

Could a different record in the district fit her lines better than the one we matched?1,473 awards tested

Of course it could. That is why we have asked her office for an accounting. What follows is what we did to make our matches as likely as possible to be right, short of that.

We pulled every grant and direct payment the government records as performed in CA-12 from January 3, 2025 to October 8, 2026 (7,359 transactions on 2,981 awards, $2.59 billion; the 1,473 awards of $100,000 or more are the working file, with every transaction of $50,000 or more) and asked, for each of her lines, whether another record fits as well as or better than the one in our tables. Where one did, the Method section says so and lists the alternatives. Grants and direct payments are the kinds of money her totals describe; the one contract category in them, SBIR and STTR awards, was pulled separately by keyword across all contract and grant records in the district (134 transactions, $43.6 million). Composition of the district universe:

Assistance to CA-12 by USASpending type, January 2025 to October 2026. Direct payments are mostly housing vouchers and student aid; formula grants are a small share because FTA's and Cal OES's formula money is recorded statewide.

Because some of the money she counts is recorded by the government at the state or regional level rather than in the district (BART's and Caltrans's transit grants, the Cal OES grants, the storm-repair money), we also pulled by recipient: the Port of Oakland (22 transactions, $137.2M), Swords to Plowshares, Alameda County (88 transactions, $87.4M), the City of Berkeley, the City of Oakland and its housing authority (180 transactions, $874.7M), Cal OES and Caltrans (2,388 FHWA transactions, $2.66B, January to July 2025). Those pulls confirmed the airport, Head Start and $500,000 veterans matches and produced the either/or notes in the Method section. One award stood out for its absence: the largest recent grant to a district recipient, the Port of Oakland's $322 million EPA Clean Ports award, selected in October 2024 before her term began, appears in none of her statements.

Her documented actions

Advocacy does not entitle someone to say "I delivered it."

Nothing in this record shows that Lateefah Simon secured or delivered the $833 million on her billboard. What it shows is listed below.

What the record shows her office doing about federal money in the district, in date order. Every entry rests on a document. Letters, lab tours, statements and speeches are advocacy. Advocacy is something, and it is listed here as such, but it is not delivering money: none of the entries below, apart from the Community Project Funding request, set an amount, selected a recipient or caused a payment, and in every case where money was restored the restoring act on record was a court order, an agency reversal or a vote of Congress as a whole. The one action in this table that put a dollar figure into a law is the Community Project Funding request.

Date	Action	Source	What followed
Jan 29 to 30, 2025	Press event in Oakland after the OMB payment pause, about EBALDC's $2M grant: "Give us a few days, that money is yours."	Mercury News, Jan 30, 2025 (reposted on her site)	No source reports when or whether the $2M was released
Feb 2025	Toured the Innovative Genomics Institute with Rep. Ted Lieu	IGI 2025 year in review, Dec 29, 2025	IGI's year in review mentions her once, for the visit; it reports no lost, frozen or restored award
Feb 24, 2025	Announced joining two letters opposing NIH's proposed 15% indirect-cost cap	Her release, Feb 24, 2025	A court had blocked the cap on Feb 10, 2025
Mar 21, 2025	Told an Oakland town hall her office tracks a list of "federal grants that you are already due" and fought to get a health-center payment released	Transcript	Not shown by the record for any named clinic; see above
May 22, 2025	Signed the California delegation letter on Head Start delays	Delegation letter, May 22, 2025 (padilla.senate.gov)	Program-wide; Oakland's award arrived nine weeks late in August
Jun 2025 to Aug 2026	Funding releases announcing agency awards to district recipients (listed under The claim)	simon.house.gov press releases	None gives an award number or a link to a government record
Oct 15 and 29, 2025	Signed the delegation letter on the ARCHES hydrogen hub cancellation; joined a release	Delegation letter, Oct 15, 2025; her release, Oct 29, 2025	Hub shelved; no restoration
Nov 20, 2025	Co-led an oversight letter asking HHS and NIH for data on research grant terminations and shutdown effects	Her release, Nov 2025	A request for information
Nov 24, 2025	Signed the Continuum of Care letter (33 signers) on HUD grant conditions	Continuum of Care letter, Nov 24, 2025	Conditions enjoined by courts for plaintiffs; no East Bay recipient was a plaintiff
Dec 12, 2025	Co-signed a letter to the VA Secretary on the cancelled Alameda Point clinic	Rep. Mullin's release	Project remains cancelled; report language in the FY27 House bill, May 2026
Jan 16, 2026	Statement on SAMHSA terminations; joined a 100-member letter	Her release	SAMHSA had already rescinded the terminations on Jan 14 and 15
Jan 22 and Feb 3, 2026	Voted Nay on H.R. 7148, the act carrying nine of her fifteen projects and the 2026 formula money	Clerk of the House	Enacted without her vote
Feb 10, 2026	Announced all fifteen FY2026 Community Project Funding requests enacted, $11,216,000	Her release; enacted tables	Her name is in the law for these
Feb 23, 2026	Led a letter urging HHS to restore the Alameda County CDC grant	Her release	Sent after the Feb 13 court order reinstated it
Mar 17, 2026	Voted Yea on S. 3971, reauthorizing the SBIR and STTR small-business research programs through 2031 after their authorization lapsed in September 2025 (roll call 89, 345 to 41)	Clerk of the House, roll call 89	A vote on the program as a whole; the SBIR awards in her totals were made before the lapse
Aug 2026	Statement calling NSF's slow grantmaking "incredibly concerning"	Her statement, Aug 2026	18 UC Berkeley NSF grants remain suspended

Sources for this table: the Mercury News article, IGI review, delegation letters and her releases are linked in the All sources section under her releases and under news. Not found in any source: a letter of support from her office in any award file; a referral of attorneys to the UC researchers who sued; any document from an agency, a court or a recipient crediting her office with a restoration or a release of funds. The agencies' own files could contain a letter that is not public; the Freedom of Information Act requests described above would show it.

Conclusions: Lateefah Simon's claim to have delivered $833 million is not supported by the public record

Everything below is what the public record supports as of October 8, 2026. None of it is certain without an audit. Jamie Joyce has asked Rep. Simon multiple times for an audit of the $833 million; she has agreed on video more than once and has not delivered one. That accounting would let every line be re-checked; the agencies' answers to the Freedom of Information Act requests would settle whether her office wrote in support of the awards asked about.

Not shown by the record

"I've delivered $833 million in federal funding to the East Bay." The record shows her delivering $11.2M, the fifteen projects she chose. The other 98.7% of the figure is either money that arrived through formulas, declarations, renewals or competitions she had no documented hand in ($639.6M), or money her office has never identified ($182.2M).

Shown by the record

Fifteen projects requested, fifteen funded, $11.2 million. The total and the count match the enacted tables (one per-project figure differs; see Her appropriations). This is the part of her record that "delivered" describes. So is her statement at the Albany town hall (July 7, 2026, 19:14) that the Children's Hospital sickle cell lab got "a million dollars" through her: we read that as her $1,031,000 FY2026 project for the Pediatric Blood Disorder Research Center at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland.

Not shown by the record

"We got the $40 million back"; "we stood shoulder to shoulder... to keep that lab open." UC Berkeley did report losing about $40 million across campus (August 2026), and much of the terminated research money came back. It came back by court order and agency reinstatement, in a case brought by six researchers. The lab she names reports no lost or restored award. Her documented contact with it is a visit and two letters about a different action. The record shows advocacy; it does not show her office getting any dollar back.

Not shown by the record

"Their funding was frozen... we helped to push to get some of that liquidated"; "their grant... was cut in half." No record of a freeze at a named East Bay clinic, no record of a halved grant, no record of her office's involvement. A payment hold inside the government's payment system would not show in public data, so the proof could exist and not be public.

Not shown by the record

"Clawed back $870 million." Nothing in the record shows $870 million, or any amount near it, clawed back from anyone. The sum of her itemized figures is money agencies awarded in the ordinary course. The money that was restored after terminations in the district (about $110 million across 74 grants) was restored by courts and agencies, and none of it is in her itemized totals.

What would change these conclusions

An itemized list from her office, above all. An award file showing a letter of support from her office on a competitive award, which would move that award from "announced" to "advocated for" (though not to "delivered," since no program we checked scores such letters). A court filing, an agency record or a recipient statement crediting her office with any restoration. Each of these would be reported here as it arrives, with the conclusion revised to match.

If her office provides the audit: what to look out for

Rep. Simon has agreed, more than once and on video, to provide an accounting of the $833 million. If one arrives, it should be read against the same standard this page uses. A dollar was delivered by her when a document shows her office choosing the amount or the recipient, or taking an action that a government record says decided the award. Everything else is something short of that. These are the ways an accounting can look like proof without being proof.

Watch for

Vague verbs

"Fought for," "pushed for," "stood shoulder to shoulder with," "worked to bring home." None of these names an action. Each one should be followed by the question: what did the office do, on what date, and where is the document? If the answer is a letter, it is a letter. If there is no answer, the verb is doing the work the evidence should be doing.

Watch for

Anecdotes in place of an accounting

A few examples of things the office really did (a lab visit, a letter about a cancelled hub, the fifteen designated projects) can be offered as if they stood for the whole. They do not. The fifteen projects are 1.3% of the figure. An accounting has to cover the other 98.7%, dollar for dollar, or say plainly that it cannot.

Watch for

A list of grants

A list of awards that happens to total $833 million proves that $833 million reached the district. That was never in dispute. It says nothing about what her office did to bring any of it. Formula money, renewals and competitions the recipients won would all appear on such a list, and all of them would have arrived with another name on the office door.

Watch for

Motion mistaken for action

Sending a letter is not delivering the money. Visiting a lab is not delivering the money. Co-signing a statement after a court has already restored a grant is not delivering the money. Voting for a bill with hundreds of items in it, or against one and then announcing the projects it carried, is not delivering the money. These are the ordinary motions of a congressional office. They may be worth something; they are not the thing the billboard claims.

Watch for

Partial involvement counted as the whole

Being one of 33 signers on a letter, one of 100 members on a bipartisan statement, or one of many officials who attended an announcement is involvement. It is not grounds to say "I delivered it." The test is whether the money would have arrived without her, and for every traced dollar on this page outside the fifteen projects, the record says it would have.

Watch for

Appeal to authority

If she says a House ethics or communications committee approved the billboard, that means a panel of House members reviewed whether official funds could pay for it under the House's own rules. It does not mean the contents of the billboard are true. Nothing on the record shows that any committee of Congress checked whether she delivered $833 million; this page did, against the public record, and the record does not show it. Approval of the ad is not verification of the claim.

What a real accounting would contain

For each award

The federal award identifier; the program and how the amount was set; and, where the office claims a role, the specific action, its date, and the document that records it, with the date of the action falling before the agency's decision. An accounting in that form could be checked line by line against this page in a day, and this page would be updated to match it.

Limits

This is a review of public records, not an audit, and its figures are only as complete as the public record. Rep. Simon has agreed, more than once, to Jamie Joyce's requests for an audit of the $833 million and has not provided one. The Freedom of Information Act requests for any letters of support from her office in specific grant files have not yet produced the records requested. Her office was not interviewed, and no recipient was asked whether a payment was held or whether her office intervened. We had no access to the HHS Payment Management System or HUD's LOCCS, so payment holds can be seen only through obligation timing and fiscal-year outlays. USASpending lags: HHS outlays post monthly in batches, and FY2026 FTA grants to BART had not posted when this page was published. District totals undercount, because state-level awards and most individual benefits are recorded elsewhere. The town hall quotations are from YouTube's automatic captions, checked against the audio where the figure mattered. The billboard's posting date is not established; it was photographed in September 2026.

Items rated below High: HUD's FY2026 block-grant allocations (ten items, $22.8 million) were read from HUD's spreadsheet on September 8, 2026 and could not be re-parsed on September 14 (Medium-High). The individual 2025 to 2026 installments on continuation awards ($24.0 million) were read from USASpending's transaction history on September 8 (Medium-High for the amounts; High for the classification). The $88.89 million is her office's own figure (High that it is not member-directed; Medium on the program label). Four of the fifteen earmark line items were confirmed only from the September 8 extract of the enacted tables (Medium-High). NSF award 2503885's identity as the award behind the April 2025 "$2.7 million" line is Medium. The Congressional Research Service, DOJ OVW, Ballotpedia and Oakland Head Start pages could not be re-fetched on September 14; their quotations are as recorded on September 8. Six DOJ DNA laboratory awards announced in June 2026 returned no record. Claims logged and not yet checked: "top three of passing the most bills"; "the most productive freshman in the Democratic party"; that a demand on the VA about the Alameda Point clinic "is now in the law" (August 20, 2026); and that her office has "probably returned the most money of any freshman" in constituent casework. Her casework figures ($10.6 million "recovered for constituents" on the website) are a separate stream from grants and are not part of the $833 million; she has said so herself ("this is not the grants," August 26, 2026). One item is held open: whether her office had any role in the timing of Oakland's 2025 Head Start payment, which she has spoken about publicly; it stays classified as a continuation of a grant the City has held since 1971, with that question unresolved.

How to check this yourself

Open one of her funding releases, for example the December 19, 2025 release, and copy a line that names a recipient and an amount.
Go to USASpending.gov advanced search, set Recipient to that name, Time Period to the months around the release, and Award Type to grants and direct payments. Open the award. Read "Assistance Type" (formula grant, project grant, direct payment), "Start Date" (the award's first year) and "Place of Performance."
If the start date is before January 2025, the 2025 or 2026 money is a continuation on an award already held. If the type is formula or direct payment, the amount was set by statute or by HUD's renewal formula. If the type is a project grant that started in 2025 or 2026, the recipient competed for it.
For the fifteen projects she designated, open the enacted FY2026 Community Project Funding tables and search for "Simon" in the requestor column. Those are the only lines in any law that carry her name.
To see whether a grant was frozen or cut, search the recipient at Grant Witness and check the Current Status and Restoration columns; for who restored it, read the court docket named in the Detail column.
To see her votes on the bills that carried the money, open the Clerk's roll calls: H.R. 1968, March 11, 2025; H.R. 6938, January 8, 2026; H.R. 7148 passage, January 22, 2026; H.R. 7148 concurrence, February 3, 2026.
To hear a town hall figure in her words, open the recording at the timestamp in the tables above.

The data behind this page is published alongside it: the award audit (CSV, one row per matched item with its record link), the Grant Witness district export (CSV) and the master source index.

All sources

1,121 distinct URLs, grouped. The award records group lists every USASpending, NSF, NIH RePORTER, HUD and FTA record opened during the review, including the ones that turned out not to match.

Her Press Releases, Website and Town Halls47 URLs

Legislation, Amendments and Votes76 URLs

Federal Agencies, Laws and Appropriations61 URLs

State, Regional and Local Records38 URLs

News and Other Sources37 URLs

https://ballotpedia.org/Lateefah_Simon
https://cal.streetsblog.org/2025/01/09/new-federal-infrastructure-grants-awarded-many-in-california
https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2025/06/health-research-california/
https://ecbsf.com/projects/cca-oakland-campus-redevelopment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Boulevard_(Oakland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateefah_Simon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_neighborhoods_in_Oakland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott
https://grantwitness.org/nsf/updates/2026-05-27-new-nsf-terminations
https://innovativegenomics.org/news/2025-year-in-review/
https://innovativegenomics.org/news/arpa-h-thrive-gene-editing-therapies-immune-diseases-in-children/
https://jm-aq.com/congress-rejects-cuts-to-nih-increase-budget-for-fy26/
https://localnewsmatters.org/2025/05/07/millions-in-new-grant-funding-to-boost-west-oakland-jobs-schools-and-green-projects/
https://localnewsmatters.org/2026/04/15/alameda-oakland-i-880-access-project-breaks-ground/
https://mandelastation.com/news-and-media/
https://mdmunicipal.org/index.php?day=14&id=290%3Afhwa-opens-nearly-900m-funding-opportunity-for-protect-grants-due-2-24-25&month=01&option=com_dailyplanetblog&view=entry&year=2025
https://oaklandside.org/2026/03/05/measure-w-grants-oakland-affordable-housing-homelessness/
https://oaklandside.org/2026/03/18/oakland-lateefah-simon-congress-resisting-trump/
https://sf.urbanize.city/post/west-oakland-bart-parking-lot-closures-planned-tod-construction-nears
https://sfyimby.com/2026/02/initial-construction-on-west-oakland-transit-oriented-development-planned-to-start-later-this-year.html
https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/mediaroom/pressreleaselisting/nih-crispr-award
https://www.alamedawellnesscampus.org/
https://www.cu.edu/doc/fy26-cjs-energy-interior-minibus-overviewpdf
https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/berkeley-lab-to-begin-layoffs-due-to-federal-funding-cuts/article_065538d6-ac59-44d7-b102-9982c3445382.html
https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/research-and-ideas/berkeley-lab-layoffs-begin-amid-department-of-energy-funding-cuts/article_5def947d-e45f-4615-be7c-bf699691f920.html
https://www.devinegong.com/mandela-station
https://www.kqed.org/news/12087600/lawmakers-push-back-against-trump-coal-terminal-plans-in-west-oakland
https://www.ktvu.com/news/lateefah-simon-elected-to-one-year-term-as-bart-board-president
https://www.landusedevelopments.com/2018/10/new-law-provides-land-use-authority-to-bart-to-create-transit-oriented-development-near-stations/
https://www.losaltosonline.com/news/local-agencies-seek-a-slice-of-8-8-million-in-world-cup-transit-funding/article_aeaba73e-0582-4ffe-8225-fb70ac8fef40.html
https://www.miragenews.com/dod-grants-200m-for-university-research-projects-1502916/
https://www.nextgov.com/policy/2025/07/california-lawmakers-urge-trump-admin-halt-cuts-national-labs/407006/
https://www.opencampus.org/2026/05/08/trump-administration-again-suspends-uc-berkeley-research-grants/
https://www.postnewsgroup.com/groundbreaking-for-west-oakland-100-affordable-housing-complex/
https://www.postnewsgroup.com/oakland-housing-and-community-development-department-awards-80-5-million-to-affordable-housing-developments-2/
https://www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/article/home-housing-oakland-holy-names-21316822.php
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/first-phase-massive-housing-project-211228211.html

Federal Award Records845 URLs

Additional records and reports (district-wide award pulls, disruption tracker export, SBIR reauthorization, roll calls)17 URLs

https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/202689
https://fedscoop.com/house-passes-sbir-sttr-reauthorization-bill/
https://www.aip.org/fyi/congress-passes-small-business-research-reauthorization
https://www.aip.org/fyi/small-business-r-d-programs-lapse
https://democrats-science.house.gov/news/press-releases/house-small-business-and-science-committees-react-to-imminent-lapse-of-sbir/sttr-programs
https://www.sbir.gov/about
https://api.usaspending.gov/api/v2/search/spending_by_transaction/
https://data.grantwitness.org/nih/dl-table.csv
https://data.grantwitness.org/nsf/dl-table.csv
https://data.grantwitness.org/epa/dl-table.csv
https://data.grantwitness.org/cdc/dl-table.csv
https://data.grantwitness.org/samhsa/dl-table.csv
https://data.grantwitness.org/ahrq/dl-table.csv
https://data.grantwitness.org/noaa/dl-table.csv
https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_CA003VOW180_086
https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_H8000052_075
https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_15PBJA23GK02262PREA_015

Fact-checking Lateefah Simon's claims and billboard

Summary: the record does not show Lateefah Simon delivered $833 million

Our finding

How federal money reaches a district, in plain terms

What this does not mean

The claim, and how it grew

What we collected

Government records used

What we asked for and did not receive

How we matched her figures to the record

Confidence grades

Uniqueness grades

How sure we are of each match

Where the $833 million sits

The $639.6M that came on its own terms, by type

Formula grants

Disaster relief and airport entitlement

Renewals and continuations

Won in competition by the recipient

Designated by her in appropriations

Not itemized by her office

Second-guessing ourselves

The large items, and who restored them

Her March 21, 2025 town hall claims about frozen money

Her documented actions

Conclusions: Lateefah Simon's claim to have delivered $833 million is not supported by the public record

What would change these conclusions

If her office provides the audit: what to look out for

Vague verbs

Anecdotes in place of an accounting

A list of grants

Motion mistaken for action

Partial involvement counted as the whole

Appeal to authority

For each award

Limits

How to check this yourself

All sources

In the News

We can’t let a “blue wave” become “business as usual”