Congress

43 days and counting: Why the House is working way less than the Senate

Published

4 weeks ago

June 3, 2026

Tuesday was supposed to be a voting day in the House, with members flying back to Washington to begin their workweek by passing a slate of bipartisan bills.

Instead the floor was largely deserted after Republican leaders pushed back the chamber’s first votes — further adding to a gaping divide between the House and Senate in how often lawmakers on each side of the Capitol are carrying out their most basic legislative duties.

According to a Blue Light News analysis of the Congressional Record, the House has gaveled in 241 days during the 119th Congress, compared to the Senate’s 284 session days. The analysis includes brief pro forma sessions, which both chambers conduct during extended recesses at roughly the same pace.

That 43-day gap is looming extra large as Hill Republicans face a massive time crunch ahead of the midterms, with hopes of passing several major pieces of legislation ranging from a GOP-only immigration enforcement funding package to bipartisan transportation and housing bills and key extension of government surveillance powers.

But even though the House has only 38 scheduled legislative days left before Election Day, GOP leaders have continued to cancel votes at times, prompting many lawmakers to stay home as Speaker Mike Johnson struggles to wrangle his tiny majority.

The ever-tightening calendar has further imperiled the GOP’s hopes of passing yet another longshot party-line bill focused on war funding and affordability issues before voters head to the polls — one that Johnson has said Republicans could advance by the end of July despite a lack of consensus on what exactly should go in it.

Johnson often argues the “sausage-making” of the legislative process isn’t always pretty, and he has managed to get out of many — though not all — of his tough spots.

“Despite a razor-thin House majority, and the resulting frequency of various attendance problems, and despite a string of record-setting government shutdowns forced by the Democrats, Speaker Johnson, his leadership team, and House Republicans have delivered countless positive legislative results for the American people,” said Taylor Haulsee, a spokesperson for the speaker, citing “lower taxes, secure borders, reduced crime, a return to American energy dominance, massive reductions in burdensome regulations, fraud, waste and abuse, and more.”

Furthermore, senior House Republicans and aides argue it’s often better to cancel votes or keep members home than risk bringing them back prematurely to a failed vote that would generate frustrations and risk a backlash against Johnson and his fellow leaders.

The biggest reason for the discrepancy between the House and Senate calendars was last fall’s record-setting government shutdown. Johnson kept his chamber out of session for nearly two months after House Republicans passed a funding package that languished in the Senate due to a Democratic filibuster.

Eventually, Democrats flinched and the government reopened, but the costs were significant: Committee work ground to a halt and the floor agenda piled up just as the GOP majority grew even more unmanageable.

Since then, Johnson and fellow leaders have pared back session days as they have faced dicey legislative fights and uncertain attendance.

Just ahead of the recent Memorial Day recess, Republicans’ hopes of quickly passing the immigration enforcement bill evaporated after President Donald Trump’s administration announced the creation of a controversial “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that could be used to hand large settlements to presidential allies.

Members headed home expecting to return for Tuesday’s votes, but Johnson & Co. instead opted to punt the week’s first roll call votes to Wednesday. That effectively gave the White House more time to wriggle out of the payout-fund mess and also possibly strike an Iran deal that would forestall an embarrassing loss on a bipartisan resolution to end the war in the Middle East.

Tuesday was also primary Election Day in several key states, meaning member attendance would be sketchier than usual — another consideration weighing on the GOP whip team.

“Even if one or two members are missing, it can derail a whole week of floor plans,” said one senior GOP aide who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about the challenges facing the House majority.

There’s also the long-term absence of Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-N.J.), who has been missing from Capitol Hill since March 5 with what his office says is a health matter.

Some committee business continued Tuesday — including an Appropriations subcommittee hearing where acting Attorney General Todd Blanche renounced the fund — but most rank-and-file members were not present on Capitol Hill.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries took advantage of the vacuum at a news conference, insisting that a string of legislative setbacks and floor defeats for Republicans has contributed to the House’s poor attendance.

“What exactly do Republicans have to show for being in complete control of Congress over the last 18 or so months? The answer would be nothing, nada, zero,” Jeffries told reporters.

“They made life worse for the American people, and so that’s one of the reasons why I’m convinced that Republicans continue to cancel votes and do everything they can every week to get out of town before sundown,” he added.

The two chambers were in roughly the same number of days to this point in the last Congress, — with the House meeting 257 days between January 2023 and June 2024 versus the Senate’s 260 days. There was a significant gap in the same window for the 117th Congress, when differing approaches to the Covid pandemic contributed to the House’s lighter, 237-day schedule versus the Senate’s 271 days in session.

The Senate has a natural advantage in managing its calendar. It has the unique role of approving presidential nominees, which means it can usually easily fill its agenda with confirmation votes even when legislative business stalls. Senate Majority Leader John Thune also has a slightly more comfortable majority, with 53 Republican senators, as well as Vice President JD Vance available to break ties.

In the House, on the other hand, Republicans have been working with a one-to-three-seat majority since the Congress began in January 2025 — a tiny margin in the much larger chamber.

On some recent voting days, Johnson did not appear to have a functioning majority. In the hours before lawmakers left for the Memorial Day recess, GOP leaders suffered an embarrassing defeat when a small group of Republicans joined with Democrats to vote down a bill that would have advanced plans for the Smithsonian National Women’s History Museum while barring exhibits on transgender women and giving Trump more control over its location.

Johnson then faced another GOP rebellion, this time on a vote forced by Democrats to effectively end hostilities with Iran. The measure was set to be approved thanks to Republican defections, and it would have delivered Trump a major rebuke. The speaker huddled with Majority Leader Steve Scalise and top GOP aides on the House floor and ultimately decided to postpone the vote until after the recess.As Johnson struggled to get through the vote series that last session day in May, the sentiment among Republicans on the House floor was clear.

“We just gotta get out of here,” one senior House Republican said.

Congress

House Ethics says it doesn’t have information to share on lawmaker sexual misconduct settlements

Published

15 minutes ago

July 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The House adopted a resolution Tuesday requiring the House Ethics Committee to release information on taxpayer funds used to pay out sexual misconduct settlements with lawmakers — but the committee now says it has no information it can share.

In a statement Thursday, the committee reiterated it does not manage sexual harassment lawsuits or their settlements; taxpayers have not footed the bill for those payments since 2018.

Since that time, according to the statement, “the Committee has not been notified of any awards or settlements relating to allegations of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, or other sexual misconduct by a Member.”

Instead, the bipartisan Ethics Committee said it was up to the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights to publicly release a list of each member who has received settlements for sexual misconduct allegations, as mandated by the resolution championed by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).

The committee, in the Thursday statement, said it “fully supports the release of information about sexual misconduct settlements and calls on OCWR to abide by [the resolution] and make publicly available information about Member sexual misconduct matters resulting in payment of taxpayer funds.”

Massie, in a text message Thursday, said “OCWR can release it.”

The OCWR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The bipartisan Ethics Committee has been under pressure in recent months to show it takes allegations of sexual misconduct against colleagues seriously. Two former House members — Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) — were forced to resign earlier this year amid serious accusations against them.

The renewed reckoning has prompted new questions about whether the House is up to the task of policing its own. The resolution earlier this week was adopted nearly unanimously, with just one member, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), voting “present.”

House Ethics Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) said in an interview earlier this week that while he would support Massie’s resolution, the relevant “information was already out in the public domain.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

Congress

AOC endorses El-Sayed in Michigan Senate race

Published

3 hours ago

July 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) endorsed Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign for Michigan’s open Senate seat on Thursday, a decision that comes as progressives look to capitalize off a series of recent high-profile primary victories in New York, Colorado and elsewhere.

Her endorsement could provide El-Sayed with a critical boost just over a month before the state’s Aug. 4 primary. The former public health official is locked in a heated contest against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow for the right to take on Republican Mike Rogers in the general election.

It also comes as El-Sayed has risen to the top of the pack in recent public polling.

Virtually any Democratic path to flipping the Senate in this year’s midterms would see the party hold the open Michigan Senate seat, with two-term Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) retiring at the end of his term.

The race has emerged as perhaps the largest battleground over the ideological future of the party. El-Sayed, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2018, has collected endorsements from progressives, while Stevens has the tacit backing of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, with AIPAC also boosting her candidacy.

El-Sayed, Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview with The New York Times, is her party’s best chance.

“Despite our ideological differences and whatever disagreements there are in the party, every single one of us sees this moment as existential,” she said. “And I think many people are willing to put aside differences in order to give us the best chance at winning. And I think that Abdul gives us that right now.”

Congress

Capitol agenda: The GOP confronts its lost summer

Published

4 hours ago

July 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Congress is settling in for a do-nothing summer.

House leaders lost control of their chamber with just eight legislative days before a planned five-week summer recess. And President Donald Trump’s demands for action on a stalled elections bill — along with his series of mercurial power moves — have left Senate Republicans frustrated and morose as major legislation piles up.

Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune are confronting the reality that ticking items off their pre-midterm to-do list is looking increasingly unattainable.

Wednesday’s events only made that clearer:

— RECON 3.0: Key rank-and-file House members and chairs huddled in Johnson’s office Wednesday to plot a path forward on a long shot policy bill under the party-line reconciliation process.

Those who attended — including Rep. August Pfluger, an avowed cheerleader for the bill — acknowledged hope is fading fast. Members are mired in fights over how to pay for the package, and their goal of advancing a budget blueprint for the bill this week is dashed.

“After this recess, if it doesn’t happen in the first couple of days, then I think it’s in real trouble,” Pfluger, chair of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said in an interview.

— EMERGENCY IRAN FUNDING: Trump has asked Congress to direct billions of dollars to cover the war with Iran — but support for the emergency funding is in serious doubt.

Key Republicans left a classified briefing from senior Pentagon officials Wednesday frustrated by unanswered questions. They want to know how the requested $67 billion would be spent — and whether servicemember paychecks and munitions stockpiles might be at imminent risk.

“We need more information,” said Rep. Ken Calvert, the top House Republican responsible for shepherding the supplemental bill, which also includes farm assistance, disaster and Ebola aid.

— IMMIGRATION: As hard-liners continue to gum up the GOP agenda over the SAVE America Act, some are similarly incensed over Johnson’s failure to act on an immigration measure he promised weeks ago to take up.

Johnson held a call Wednesday with Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan and other members to try to find a path forward but didn’t make much progress, according to five people granted anonymity to discuss the details.

Some centrist Republicans don’t want to vote on it before the midterms, they said, and farm-state members are demanding GOP leaders add guestworker visa provisions — something immigration hard-liners sharply oppose.

And while only a handful of potential developments appear capable of pulling the GOP majorities out of their summer torpor, the contemporary Congress tends to act only when deadlines force it to. That has made the early part of this summer especially languid on Capitol Hill.

It didn’t help, some members noted this week, that lawmakers were sent home early rather than hash out their differences in person.

“We shouldn’t be leaving town,” Rep. Ralph Norman said. “We ought to be working, and we’re not doing it.”

What else we’re watching:

— THE GOP’S DIRTY LITTLE SAVE AMERICA SECRET: House conservatives bristled this week over the Senate’s refusal to pass the SAVE America Act, shutting down the floor in protest. But their outrage has obscured an inconvenient truth for the Republicans locking arms with the president to push for his election security bill: It can’t even pass the House — at least not the version Trump wants. Johnson acknowledged as much this week, appearing to concede he does not have the votes to move forward with a drastic crackdown on mailed ballots that Trump has repeatedly demanded be added to the legislation.

— TRUMP’S CLAYTON REVIVAL: Trump threw Senate Republicans a rare bone Wednesday — telling reporters that Jay Clayton would have a hearing for his director of national intelligence nomination in two weeks. The president’s remarks were welcome (but in several corners, surprising) news for GOP leaders, who had watched in frustration as Trump scuttled both Clayton’s nomination hearing and passage of a key surveillance tool renewal last month.

Meredith Lee Hill, Mia McCarthy, John Sakellariadis and Jordain Carney contributed to this report.