We are very much looking forward to welcoming two Former Members of the U.S. Congress to NRW. One year after the momentous 2024 elections, we will host the Honorable Mike Capuano, Democrat from Massachusetts, and the Honorable Fred Upton, Republican from Michigan. We cordially invite you to join the conversation with our two distinguished guests:

 Rep. Mike Capuano (D-MA, 1999-2019) and Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI, 1987-2023) 

The speed and scope of changes wrought by the Trump Administration, with support from Republican majorities in Congress, since the 2024 elections have been immense. Hear from a bipartisan duo of longtime Members of Congress how they evaluate major developments in U.S. domestic politics and which path forward they see for the transatlantic relationship. 

Congressman Mike Capuano is an attorney who served in the U.S. Congress from 1999 to 2019, representing first the 8th and later the 7th District of Massachusetts. He served on the Financial Services Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and chaired several subcommittees. In 2007, Mike authored the bill that created the Office of Congressional Ethics. He founded the Congressional Caucus on Sudan and South Sudan and the Community Health Center Caucus. Prior to Congress, Mike served nine years as the mayor of his hometown, Somerville, MA, where he enacted environmental reforms, reduced crime, lowered class sizes, instituted an affirmative action plan, and appointed women to lead more than half the city’s departments. Mike currently works at the law firm Venable LLP. He is also a Presidential appointee to the Public Buildings Reform Board. Mike graduated from Dartmouth College and Boston College Law School. He met his wife, Barbara, at Somerville High. They have two adult sons.

Congressman Fred Upton was proud to represent the common-sense values of Southwest Michigan’s 6th Congressional District for 36 years. From 2010 to 2016, he was selected by his House colleagues to serve as Chairman of the pivotal Committee on Energy and Commerce. Fred strongly supports an ‘All-of-the-Above’ energy strategy that focuses on American energy development, emerging clean energy technologies, and traditional energy. He has long been an advocate for a greater emphasis on biomedical research to improve public health and, in 2014, launched the bipartisan 21st Century Cures initiative. As an active member of the Great Lakes Task Force, Fred has an extensive, bipartisan record working to protect the Great Lakes, which has earned him a local and national reputation. Prior to his election to Congress, he worked for President Ronald Reagan in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Fred holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan. He and his wife, Amey, have two adult children.

Kerstin Kohlenberg was born in Koblenz, Germany. After spending a year as an au pair in Paris, she studied sociology in Marburg, Berlin, and New York. She worked for ZDF-Television in New York and Berlin and completed a traineeship at the daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel in Berlin. In 2004, Kerstin Kohlenberg joined the weekly DIE ZEIT, where she first served as deputy head of the feature section „Dossier“ and later co-founded the investigative department. From 2014 to 2021, she headed DIE ZEIT’s Washington bureau. Since returning to Berlin, she has been working as an international reporter, primarily writing about the United States. She was an Arthur F. Burns Fellow in the United States. In 2023, she was invited as a speaker to the German-American Conference at Harvard University. Kerstin Kohlenberg has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Herbert Riehl-Heyse Prize, the Theodor Wolff Prize, the German Journalism Prize, and the Reporter Prize. For DIE ZEIT, she produced the successful seven-part America podcast “Die Patrioten” in 2022. In June 2024, her book about the USA, “Ein amerikanisches Versprechen,” was published by Klett-Cotta Tropen Verlag.

 PLEASE REGISTER HERE

This event will be held in English. Tickets are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. We kindly ask you to only reserve the number of tickets that you will definitely use.

We cordially thank our partners for their cooperation: The City of Düsseldorf, Europe Direct Düsseldorf and and the U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress.

This event is kindly supported by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.