Congress

The Senate hopes for a weekend shutdown miracle

Published

8 months ago

November 8, 2025

After 38 days of stalemate, the Senate is finally turning to its tactic of last resort to solve the government shutdown: a working weekend.

For the first time since the start of the nearly six-week shutdown, Majority Leader John Thune is keeping the chamber in session past Friday in a bid to keep the pressure on Democrats — at the urging of President Donald Trump and some fellow Republicans who want senators to stay in D.C. until there’s an agreement.

But with party leaders shadow boxing over competing funding and health care proposals, and bipartisan rank-and-talks moving slowly, there’s plenty of skepticism anything can get done until at least early next week.

“What we have here is an intergalactic freak show,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said after a closed-door GOP conference meeting.

Asked what senators could get done in the rare weekend session, Kennedy predicted, “Nothing. … We’re going to be here for a long time.”

The Senate will come into session on Saturday at noon but has no votes scheduled for the time being. GOP leaders aren’t yet holding another vote on the House-passed stopgap bill that Democrats have already rejected 14 times, in hopes that bipartisan talks among rank-and-file senators can build enough support to reopen the government.

“We’re here, and we’ll see if something comes together we can vote on,” Thune said Friday night, adding it “remains to be seen.”

With senators essentially left to wait and see, some are expected to leave town for home-state engagements. But many said they were happy to stay given their growing frustration with how the shutdown has dragged on — and how the real-world consequences continue to pile up.

“My adage is, put them in a barn and don’t let them out until they come up with a solution,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) said Friday.

Members of the bipartisan group at the center of the government funding talks are expected to stay in Washington through the weekend to keep negotiating. One person granted anonymity to disclose private discussions said that as of Friday night the bipartisan talks had picked back up. Thune said he is also speaking to Democrats “regularly” about the path forward.

On a separate track, the top members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees are trying to finalize a three-bill package that would provide full-year funding for food aid, veterans programs and other agencies and programs.

But even as the bipartisan conversations continue, there are doubts they will produce a deal that could eventually get the necessary eight Democrats to break ranks. Trump, for one, continues to press Republicans to ditch the 60-vote filibuster rule and reopen the government on party lines.

The bipartisan Senate group is talking about attaching the three full-year bills to stopgap funding legislation for the rest of the government. They’re also discussing possibly rehiring federal workers who were laid off during the shutdown, as well as reining in the president’s ability to unilaterally claw back some congressionally approved funding. Neither of the latter two is settled or even guaranteed to make it into legislative text.

Senators appear nowhere close to resolving Democrats’ key concern: guaranteeing an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at the end of the year. Republicans are offering a Senate vote on the matter after the government reopens, but with no guarantee of House or presidential action.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said it was “insane” that top congressional leaders and Trump have refused to speak directly for weeks to make a deal.

“I appreciate when our colleagues get together and talk. I’ve been part of a lot of rank and file negotiations. But that doesn’t seem to be a path right now,” he said.

“They refuse to engage,” Murphy added later. “It’s killing the country.”

Murphy is part of a group of Senate progressives rankling Democratic negotiators, who view him and other senators as privately pushing for the caucus to dig in on health care without a realistic path toward a deal.

But the desire for health care concessions among Democrats runs deep, even as Republicans insist the government has to be reopened before any negotiations on the issue take place.

“I need something on health care,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said leaving the Capitol Friday evening.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer offered what he cast as a compromise proposal Friday, saying Democrats would provide the votes to reopen the government if Republicans agreed to attach a one-year extension of the ACA subsidies. Thune quickly dismissed it as a “nonstarter,” as did virtually his entire conference.

Republicans have held private discussions about the ACA subsidies, both with Democrats and with each other. Emerging from a closed-door conference meeting Friday, several GOP senators vowed the party would produce its own health care proposal once the government reopens. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), however, said it would take a while because they still need to get Senate Republicans, House Republicans and the ultimate wild card, Trump, on the same page.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) took to the Senate floor Friday evening to float a new proposal to address the expiring subsidies — creating new savings accounts to help people buy insurance. Cassidy has been involved behind the scenes in bipartisan discussions on health care, but those talks were put on ice weeks ago as it became clear Republicans would not cut a deal with the government closed.

Some Republicans, and even some Democrats, ended the day hoping that Schumer’s offer — and its quick rejection — could herald a thaw in the frozen talks. On-the-fence Democrats, the thinking goes, will now realize that bringing the long-running rank-and-file negotiations to fruition is the only path out of the morass.

“I think the Republicans made it very clear today that they were not going to support Senator Schumer’s offer,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said Friday night. “We need to find another path forward.”

Congress

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

Published

6 hours 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

9 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

10 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.