Congress

The end of the Democrats’ government shutdown is at last in sight, and so too is the final act of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. On Sunday night, eight Senate Democrats finally broke with Schumer and voted in favor of a procedural step necessary to eventually pass a continuing resolution to end the more than monthlong standoff. “Democrats have been fighting for months to address America's healthcare crisis,” tweeted Schumer, who vowed that they would “keep fighting.” It was the kind of weak, empty gesture that has come to define Schumer’s tenure at the helm of his conference. Because regardless of what spin Schumer might like to put on this turn of events, the truth is that it represents yet another unambiguous failure on his part.

Call it a dilemma, quandary, or Catch-22 – just pray the aging Democratic party doesn’t pull a muscle trying to argue that it is in anything other than an unenviable position. Eighty-eight-year-old Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington, D.C.’s longtime representative in Congress, has repeatedly stated that she will seek yet another term in office. The only trouble is that every time she does, her staff scrambles to assure the world that isn’t actually the case. One must sympathize with their impulse. Norton has been absent from her day job even as the district dominates national headlines, and struggled through what few public appearances she’s made.

This month, Congress put school-choice funding on offer to the states as part of the Big Beautiful Bill. Progressives have bashed the provision for the harm they claim school choice will do to under-resourced school districts. But the program saps not a dollar from public schools, which shows the protest for what it is: elitist bluster. The same progressives who fumbled their schools’ Covid responses, instituted woke curriculum and pushed adolescent gender transitioning should not decree to parents which school is best for their children. Public schools have not earned Americans’ trust over these past few years; many private schools have. Under the new measure, families can receive a tax credit for donations to an approved scholarship-granting nonprofit organization.

Stacey Abrams resurfaced last week – not to deny another election she lost – but to declare that “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is in the DNA of the United States.” This is the bizarre and ahistorical premise on which her new non-profit, American Pride Rises, is founded. Its website claims that DEI is “a centuries-old movement dedicated to upholding American values,” complete with a timeline that casts everything from America’s Founding in 1776 to the 19th-century abolition movement to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as part of the “History of DEI” in America. That is complete and utter nonsense – it would be comical if it weren’t an insidious lie that attempts to rewrite American history.

When Joe Biden’s personal physician, Kevin O’Connor, pleaded the Fifth Amendment yesterday during the ongoing congressional hearings about Biden’s mental acuity while in office, it didn’t put suspicions to rest – it amplified them. Why would O’Connor refuse to testify if he had nothing to hide from Congress? He can claim doctor-patient confidentiality all he wants, but it’s not like Congress was asking to see X-rays or blood-test results. What didn’t Biden know and when didn’t he know it? This is about more than just setting straight the historical record. It’s political bloodsport, the Democrats know it, and the whole things smells like a coverup.

Washington, DC What’s the best way to celebrate America’s birthday? For President Trump, it was a swift round of golf at his course in Sterling, Virginia, followed by a victory lap to sign his “One Big, Beautiful Bill” on the South Lawn of the White House. Two B-2 bombers, flanked by F-22 Raptors flew over the White House as the US Marine band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Military men in short-sleeved shirts – their wives in flowery sundresses – were dotted on white chairs around gingham-clad tables. It was a quintessentially American affair. “That is some sight,” said Trump, of what he described as a “big, beautiful plane,” after he walked up to the shaded podium on the South Portico with his First Lady.

Forget Elon Musk. House Speaker Mike Johnson is President Trump’s new partner, delivering the victory that he needed to ensure the transformation of the 887-page mega-bill into mega-law, right on the cusp of July 4. The vote was close – 218-214 – but decisive. The internal opposition crumbled. The Democrats could only impede, not stymie, the passage of the bill.   When the Louisiana legislator replaced the luckless Kevin McCarthy as Speaker in October 2023, Republican diehards pledged that they would sink Johnson, too, should he deviate from conservative orthodoxy. But again and again, they have proven to be all hat and no cattle. Despite the bluster of the Ralph Normans and the Thomas Massies, the House has remained solidly behind Johnson and a fortiori Trump.

The electoral risk to politicians involved in passing a dog's breakfast of a "big, beautiful bill" – and there have been too many of this century to count – is often overstated. Once bills this large and unwieldy are passed there are a litany of problems that emerge as Americans, dulled into frustration by the same old swamp, discover only too late which specific policies negatively affect their lives and businesses. But then there are also things they like about it too, and even measures that are initially unpopular find purchase. And I do mean purchase in both senses, as in literally bribing voters with their own money, as Barack Obama's Medicaid expansion did.

The Elon-Trump bromance may have breathed its last today, with their relationship descending into a social-media flame war – on their respective apps, of course. The source of the discord is Musk's opposition to the "Big, Beautiful Bill" presently being debated in the Senate, which, among other things, does not codify the cuts his Department of Government Efficiency had made since Trump's inauguration. The bill also strips away Biden-era tax credits for consumers who purchase electric vehicles, which had been benefiting Musk's firm Tesla. Musk took his grievances to his over 200 million X followers and, let's face it, everyone else on the app too. On Tuesday Musk wrote, "I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore.

For the most part, President Trump hasn’t had to worry too much about the loyalty of his fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill. Sure, he needed to make a trip to the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue to pressure a few Republican holdouts to support his “big, beautiful” package of tax cuts and spending cuts, but the rank-and-file has tended to blindly follow whatever the White House wants.  Yet over the last several days, a slight divide has emerged between Trump and Republicans – or more specifically, Trump and Senate Republicans – on Ukraine and Russia policy.

The reaction to President Trump’s meeting with GOP members on Capitol Hill today was decidedly mixed, especially for the so-called SALT Republicans, with leading voices like Representative Mike Lawler of New York saying, “I’m not going to budge” on the issue despite Trump’s demands. Used to the opposition from the chamber’s last remaining fiscal hawks, much of the focus to this point has been on the typical intransigent wing of the House Freedom Caucus, which still doesn’t like the overall fiscal impact and wanted more significant Medicaid reforms. For them, Trump’s message in the meeting was clear: “Don’t fuck around with Medicaid.

President Donald Trump is seeing a handful of House Republicans deal what he hopes is a temporary setback to his "Big, Beautiful Bill." Despite Trump’s repeated requests that House Republicans pass the gigantic reconciliation bill — which includes the codification of several of Trump’s executive orders, along with larger-than-expected spending cuts targeting across the board expenditures and a $4 trillion debt limit increase — several Republicans in the House tanked a critical vote in the Budget Committee, forcing Republicans to consider what comes next. While the specifics are uncertain, Republicans lack a plan B if they fail to pass some version of the bill. “It has to pass,” Congressman Glenn Grothman, a Budget Committee member, said.

There’s a nickname for House Speaker Mike Johnson shared among some Hill staffers and observers: “Deacon Mike,” a nod to his quiet Southern Baptist religious demeanor. But it also contains the idea that he is a man elevated beyond his expected station, charged with the monumental task of wrangling an extremely thin Republican House majority when he should rightly be in charge of keeping the worship center donuts fresh and the coffee hot.

In recent days, babies have taken center stage at the US Capitol, carried by their congresswoman mothers advocating for a rule change to allow proxy voting for new parents. Representatives Anna Paulina Luna, Republican from Florida, and Brittany Pettersen, Democrat from Colorado, crossed the aisle to propose that House members be allowed twelve weeks to delegate their votes after childbirth. This effort, while well-intentioned, ignores the historical and practical significance of in-person voting in Congress. Article I, Section 4, Clause 2 of the Constitution states: “The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year.

Congress has been mulling the future of publicly-funded television and radio. Here’s a spoiler alert: that funding is toast. There is no way a Republican-controlled House and Senate will keep pouring money into networks they believe hate them. They know that hatred is warmly reciprocated. The debate about partisan bias at PBS and NPR is important – the bias itself is obvious – but that’s not the most important point. What matters most is that democratic governments have no business funding or controlling news channels directed at their own citizens. Those channels should be privately owned and operated. Every single one.

Ex-Media Matters influencer Kat Abughazaleh announced a run for the US Congress today, telling Democrats, “It’s time to drop the excuses and grow a fucking spine.” Abughazaleh is fed up with the Democrats “cowering to Trump,” and says the party should be “standing up to authoritarians, not shrinking away when the fight gets tough.” So she decided to run herself. I'm Kat Abughazaleh and I'm running for Congress. pic.twitter.com/tEtaNcc5xL — Kat Abughazaleh (@abughazalehkat) March 24, 2025 The young graduate of George Washington University is bidding for the House seat of the 9th district of Illinois, where she will be facing off against 80-year-old incumbent Jan Schakowsky, who has now served the Prairie State for more years than Abughazaleh has been alive.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s failed fiscal gambit last week proved as obvious as it was predictable. Yet Schumer's flub has had an outsized impact in prompting open conversation among Democrats about whether they need to move on from the New York Senator. The leftist activist group Indivisible called for Schumer to step down, saying he needs to be replaced with “a Minority Leader who’s up for the fight this moment demands.” Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania went on Bill Maher Friday to criticize Schumer’s misuse of legislative leverage. And prominent party voice MSNBC host Symone Sanders-Townsend announced she was quitting the Democratic Party live on air.

Call it the ultimate example of budgetary FAFO — or "F- around and find out": Republicans are practically daring Democrats in the Senate to follow through on Chuck Schumer’s threat to vote against the six-month continuing resolution passed by the House Tuesday night on a near-party-line vote. With Senator Rand Paul joining his fellow libertarian-minded Kentuckyian Representative Thomas Massie in opposing the measure, Republicans likely need eight Democrats to cross over. And despite Schumer’s claim yesterday that Republicans won’t get those votes, everyone in the know in Washington believes the old man’s threat is fist-shaking at clouds.