Congress

The 8 Senate Democratic Caucus members who voted to end the shutdown

Published

8 months ago

November 10, 2025

Eight members of the Senate Democratic Caucus broke ranks Sunday and voted to advance a deal to reopen the federal government.

That’s fewer than the 10 Democrats who broke ranks in March to advance a previous GOP-led stopgap funding bill — a move that sparked a huge backlash against Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

There are few obvious threads connecting the group who broke the partisan impasse this time. Some of them helped broker the agreement with Republicans over the opposition of Schumer and most other Democrats, who wanted a guaranteed extension for expiring federal health insurance subsidies.

Most, but not all, previously held state-level office — including four former governors. Most, but not all, come from presidential swing states. Two have announced they are retiring from the Senate after their current terms end, and two are senior members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The vote remains open Sunday night as Senate leaders await the arrival of all 100 senators, but these eight members have already cast their votes, with most issuing statements explaining why:

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada

Cortez Masto has voted 15 times to end the federal government shutdown, even before Democrats had extracted the promise of a vote on the health care tax credits. She repeatedly stated she did not want to inflict sweeping pain on some Americans in order to extract a solution to “the impending health care crisis” of expiring tax credits.

She described “lines like I haven’t seen since the pandemic” for food banks in Nevada to reporters during the vote Sunday night and said that that opening the government “was key to stopping that pain.”

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois

Durbin is the Democratic whip and the only member of party leadership who voted with Republicans to advance the deal to end the shutdown. His likely successor as whip, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), voted against advancing the deal after sticking with Schumer and Durbin in March.

“This bill is not perfect, but it takes important steps to reduce their shutdown’s hurt,” Durbin said in a statement. “Now that Democrats secured these wins, it’s time for Leader Thune to keep his promise to schedule a vote on the ACA tax credits in December.” He is retiring next year after three decades in office.

Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania

Fetterman is the only Democrat who has voted each and every time to end the shutdown. He’s knocked his party for sparking the shutdown and blamed them for government workers missing paychecks and low income families losing federal food aid.

Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire

Hassan, who was one of the Democrats who negotiated the vote on the Affordable Care Act tax credits deal. A former New Hampshire governor, she is up for reelection in 2028.

“I’ve heard from Granite Staters who can’t afford a doubling of their health insurance costs. I’ve also heard from families about the deep pain that the government shutdown has caused,” Hassan told reporters Sunday, highlighting the dueling pressures Democrats were under to cut a deal.

Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia

Kaine represents about 150,000 federal workers affected by the shutdown and backed the deal that includes a key provision for his state: reinstatement of federal workers impacted by mass “reduction in force” firings during the shutdown.

“This legislation will protect federal workers from baseless firings, reinstate those who have been wrongfully terminated during the shutdown, and ensure federal workers receive back pay,” he said in a statement. Kaine admitted Sunday night that he was a latecomer to the group, saying, “I joined it 48 hours ago, not for lack of interest.”

Sen. Angus King of Maine

King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, was a key negotiator on the deal struck to guarantee a vote on Affordable Care Act tax credits once the government is open. He hosted multiple meetings in his Capitol hideaway in recent weeks as the compromise came together.

A former governor of Maine, King pointed to the pain the shutdown is causing with federal aid programs halted. “We are closer to the possibility of work on the ACA tax credits for the people of this country than we were yesterday, than we were a week ago, two weeks ago, or a month ago,” he said Sunday.

Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada

Rosen joined her fellow Nevadan Cortez Masto to vote to advance the deal, representing a state where 95,000 Nevadans utilize the ACA tax credits. Like King, she was just reelected in 2024.

“Trump and his Republican cronies on Capitol Hill do not give a damn about hurting working people, and their conduct over the last month has been nothing short of appalling, Rosen said in a statement. She called the ACA tax credit vote “the concession we’ve been able to extract.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire

Shaheen was an original sponsor of the legislation that created the enhanced Obamacare tax credits that have been central to the shutdown dispute and played a key role in negotiating the vote to extend them. Like Durbin, she is retiring from the Senate next year and has spent much of her Senate career on the Appropriations Committee. She was also part of shaping the new stopgap spending bill that, in tandem with the ACA vote promise, could open the government.

“This was the only deal on the table. It was our best chance to reopen the government and immediately begin negotiations to extend the ACA tax credits,” Shaheen said Sunday night.

Congress

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

Published

7 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.