Senate Breaks for August After Nominations Stalemate

The House is out today, but both chambers will be in action this week. The Senate will reconvene this afternoon for a cloture vote on the nomination of Stuart Duncan to join the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Both chambers of Congress will be in session this week, although the House may break early with a scheduled three-day weekend starting on Friday. The lower chamber’s docket features three bills that will be considered pursuant to a rule, namely (1) a bill (H.R. 5192) that would provide fraud protection for vulnerable populations such as […]

It’s a snow day in Washington as the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has shuttered the federal government’s D.C. offices due to an ongoing snowstorm striking the area a day after the official start of spring. However, with lawmakers in town and a government funding deadline looming, it’s unclear how much of an effect the […]

Early policy headlines this week are focused on the fallout from the Administration’s decision to enact tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, which will reportedly be finalized this week. President Trump tweeted about the decision numerous times over the weekend and suggested in a message this morning that the tariffs are linked with the ongoing […]

With a quiet official schedule, lawmakers are using the public momentum for gun control to craft legislation that would make some limited changes to the nation’s background check system and gun purchasing policies. The starting place for those negotiations is a bill dubbed Fix NICS (National Instant Check System) that would push state and local […]

Both chambers will be back in session today after a week off for the Presidents’ Day holiday. The Mar. 23 deadline for an omnibus funding bill remains the biggest item on Congress’s to-do list, but those negotiations are only expected to continue behind the scenes this week. The House aims to pass a pair of […]

There will be little rest for the weary this week in Washington as lawmakers will follow last week’s hard-fought negotiations on a massive budget caps deal with an immigration debate in the Senate and the release of the White House’s 2019 fiscal year budget and long-awaited infrastructure plan.

The Senate is expected to vote early this afternoon on a massive bipartisan budget deal that would avert a government shutdown, suspend the debt ceiling, raise strict budget caps, and offer billions in funding for health care, disaster relief, infrastructure, child care, and education. The text of the deal hatched by Senate Majority Leader Mitch […]

Lawmakers returning from legislative retreats and Super Bowl parties will need to re-focus quickly with another government funding deadline looming on Thursday. A continuing resolution (CR) punting the deadline another few weeks is once again the expected solution, with the House currently planning to vote tomorrow on a stopgap patch that would keep the government […]

It’s State of the Union week in Washington as lawmakers await President Trump’s first installment of the annual address tomorrow night. The speech gives the White House a valuable opportunity to reset the legislative playbook after the past few weeks of government shutdown drama, although the underlying issues of a broad budget deal and a […]

It’s been a quiet week in Washington since Monday’s shutdown drama, but both sides are starting to set the parameters for the next round of fights on government funding and immigration. President Trump took a conciliatory tone in comments to reporters in Davos, Switzerland yesterday, saying that Dreamers could “morph into” citizens over a period […]

Despite fervent behind-the-scenes negotiations in Congress, the passage of another stopgap spending bill to keep the government funded past Jan. 19 is growing increasingly likely. This is primarily due to the contentious split on immigration and the deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) program as rank-and-file members in both parties appear to have drawn lines […]