Congress

Blast radius of Senate GOP’s latest ‘nuclear’ move could be limited

Published

10 months ago

September 9, 2025

Republicans are preparing to again “go nuclear” on the Senate’s rules. The fallout this time could be limited.

Majority Leader John Thune filed a list of more than 40 nominees Monday night on the Senate floor, the first step toward a vote to change the chamber’s rules later this week that would allow group confirmations for most executive branch picks.

It’s the latest chapter in a long-running partisan fight over the chamber’s norms, which has seen senators slowly whittle away at rules that once demanded bipartisan support for confirmation of presidential nominees.

While Democrats are warning that the decision to speed up approval of most of President Donald Trump’s nominees will come back to bite Republicans, the Senate does not appear headed toward the kind of bitter showdown that marked some of the previous nomination battles.

“I say to my Republican colleagues, think carefully before taking this step. If you go nuclear, it’s going to be a decision you will come to regret,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday.

The New York Democrat predicted Trump would push political boundaries even further with his nominees now that they will no longer be voted on individually. But his comments also served as a reminder that turnabout will be fair play under a Democratic president with a Democratic Senate majority.

Even as Schumer issued that warning, however, he reiterated Democrats are open to a bipartisan deal with Republicans on the biggest challenge Congress faces this month: funding the government. Lawmakers have until the end of the month to avoid a shutdown, and they are likely to pass a short-term spending patch to avoid a lapse in spending.

They’re juggling the nominations fight with other political fires, too. Democrats are trying to get a deal to extend federal health insurance subsidies that will expire at the end of the year. Schumer, in his floor speech Monday, also talked about Trump’s judicial nominees, which are not included in the rules change, as well as the economy, saying that the “S.S. Trump is sinking before our eyes” and that Republican lawmakers are still on the ship.

Asked Monday if Republicans would face repercussions for their power move on confirmations, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said that they would — but added it was an issue for “tomorrow.”

Democrats are effectively powerless to prevent Republicans from changing the rules so long as 50 GOP senators plus Vice President JD Vance can stick together. But they also view Republicans’ desire to return to an earlier era, when nominees were confirmed with little fanfare, as a fever dream out of touch with the Senate’s political reality.

“We’re living now under the shadow of the JD Vance rule,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), referring to the now-vice president’s opposition to former President Joe Biden’s U.S. attorney nominees when Vance served as an Ohio senator.

That opposition, Durbin said, prevented Biden “from filling vacancies and many Democrats still remember it. If we’re going to come up with rules, they’ve got to apply to Democrats and Republicans as well.”

Republicans retort that the current Democratic blockade goes well beyond a small subset of Trump nominees — they have withheld unanimous consent for virtually all of the president’s picks, leaving a backlog of roughly 150 nominees waiting to get a floor vote. Leadership got close to notching a confirmations deal earlier this summer, but it unraveled after the White House balked at Democrats’ asking price: unfreezing some agency funding.

The list Thune moved forward with Monday included 48 appointees that received at least some Democratic support in committee. They are mostly low- and mid-level nominees to executive agencies and departments, as well as some ambassadorships — including the nominations of Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s ex-girlfriend, and Callista Gingrich, former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s wife, as envoys to Greece and Switzerland, respectively.

The move toward group confirmations is only the latest tit-for-tat in a nearly two-decade escalation over presidential personnel. Democrats, under Harry Reid, got rid of the 60-vote threshold for most nominees under President Barack Obama. Republicans under Mitch McConnell followed suit for Supreme Court picks. And Republicans subsequently changed the rules to make it faster to confirm most lower- and mid-level picks — steps Democrats used to their own advantage during Biden’s presidency.

Even with the nomination fight heating up again, there have been limits. Cabinet nominees and federal judges are not included in the new group-nominations precedent Republicans want to set, and Durbin said late last week that he was talking with Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) about trying to find a more “rational and sensible way” to deal with some of that panel’s nominees. Durbin, the top Democrat on Judiciary, declined to provide further details.

That doesn’t mean there haven’t been any consequences for Republicans’ latest nuclear strike.

Grassley tried to clear a tranche of nominees Monday for a second time but was blocked by Democrats. Schumer blamed Trump for the impasse and offered to reopen negotiations if Republicans would drop their plans to change Senate rules.

“If Republicans are dead-set on going nuclear, we will not grant consent today,” Schumer said.

GOP senators are aware their actions could be used against them in the future, but they say the slow-walking happening right now leaves them little choice.

“You always think about when the shoe is on the other foot, and that is ultimately going to happen at some point,” Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the Republican whip, told reporters last week. “But we’re trying to get back to the way this has been previously.”

Congress

Congressional Black Caucus blasts Slotkin over her calls for new leadership in the House

Published

10 hours ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Congressional Black Caucus is emphatically declaring its support for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — and denouncing Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s call for new leadership in Congress.

In a statement posted to social media on Friday, the entirely Democratic CBC declared that it stands united behind the nation’s first Black minority leader of the House. The caucus accused the Michigan senator of “posturing for higher office in 2028” and called attention to her votes to approve multiple members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.

“House Democrats don’t need a lesson on reading the political moment from someone who handed Donald Trump one of the most corrupt Cabinets in American history,” the CBC said. “Voting to confirm Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and five other Trump Cabinet secretaries is not the posture of someone who understood the moment’ after 2024.”

The CBC closed its defense of Jeffries with a sharp parting shot of remaining focused on providing for Americans rather than “engaging in distractions that only serve to divide Democrats at a moment when unity and resolve are essential.”

A spokesperson for Slotkin, who has repeatedly called for a new generation of leadership in Congress, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Congress

Key Democrats urge House to reject kids’ safety proposal

Published

13 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Commerce Committee’s top Democrat Maria Cantwell (Wash.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) warned House lawmakers against advancing their chamber’s version of the Kids Online Safety Act, arguing it would face intense lobbying from tech companies in the Senate and risk unraveling years of bipartisan work.

“If it is passed by the House it will come to the Senate,” Blumenthal, the bill’s Senate cosponsor, told reporters at a Friday press briefing. The Connecticut Democrat said he is concerned senators will be influenced by the tech industry’s “armies of lawyers and lobbyists” who may “confuse and exploit” misunderstandings about a House bill with the same name as a Senate version but excludes key provisions, such as the “duty of care.” (This concept requires online companies to design social media platforms with an eye for children’s safety.)

“We’re not going to let bad legislation with a good title just get across and think somebody’s done something,” Cantwell said.

The House version of KOSA — which is included in the KIDS Act, a revised bipartisan package that the Energy and Commerce Committee advanced along party lines in March — is scheduled to be considered on the House floor next week under suspension of the rules.

“We need to stop this bill in the House, and we need to prevent the White House from forming an alliance with Big Tech on this issue,” said Blumenthal, who characterized the version of KOSA that House leadership is pushing as a “sham.”

Both Democratic lawmakers also expressed concern that Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) could adopt the House version of KOSA in a kids’ safety package he has yet to publicly release but has pledged to markup by August recess. Cruz said “negotiations are ongoing” earlier this week when asked by Blue Light News whether he would be open to incorporating such changes put forward in the House.

Cruz’s package is expected to include KOSA as well legislation barring companies from using minors’ personal data for targeted advertising, banning kids under age 13 from social media, and providing greater oversight for how children interact with AI chatbots.

Although Blumenthal remains hopeful that Cruz will “stay true to his first vote in favor of KOSA,” which overwhelmingly passed in the Senate last Congress, the Connecticut Democrat said Friday he’s worried Cruz and others may be tempted to “take the bait” and abandon the bill’s basic principles.

Congress

Moderates beware: Mamdani coalition portends a dramatically different Democratic Party in NYC

Published

17 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — A coalition powered by Mayor Zohran Mamdani expanded the left’s reach Tuesday, winning younger voters across racial and ethnic lines and once again upending conventional wisdom about elections in New York City.

A series of hotly contested congressional and state elections pit a slate of Mamdani-backed democratic socialists and progressives against establishment candidates who, in several cases, differed little on policy aside from U.S.-Israel relations.

The results were staggering.

Midterm election cycles in deep-blue New York City tend to be sleepy affairs. Both this year and in 2022, just over 500,000 people cast ballots, less than 20 percent of eligible voters. But turnout within a congressional district spanning Upper Manhattan and the Bronx increased by roughly 50 percent between 2022 and Tuesday, with more than 66,000 voters heading to the polls.

In another seat covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens, turnout more than doubled from 2022, though state and federal elections were held on different days that year and the seat was not competitive, which would have reduced the number of voters going to the polls.

Congressional candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America were able to replicate the mayor’s success by winning younger Latino voters in Brooklyn and a majority of Black voters in Harlem. Combined with the DSA’s base in relatively wealthy neighborhoods, the result charted the far left’s broadening appeal and a potential reorientation of the electorate that will influence races for years to come.

“This was a big wave for DSA and they did a good job capitalizing on it,” said Evan Roth Smith, a pollster with Slingshot Strategies. “The question now is: Was this a wave cycle that will abate, or is it the start of the takeover?”

Much of Mamdani’s base is concentrated in the so-called “commie-corridor,” a series of neighborhoods along the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront filled with young, educated and affluent voters who’ve propelled several DSA candidates into office. They went gaga over Mamdani’s candidacy and, as Tuesday’s results show, will turn out for candidates he supports.

The area was crucial to Assemblymember Claire Valdez’s crushing 56-38 defeat of Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.

“The factor that felt most significant to me were all of these New Yorkers who got activated and politicized in the mayor’s race last year who were looking for the next fight,” said Andrew Epstein, a political adviser to Mamdani who worked on Valdez’ campaign. “Those people didn’t go away. And they want to keep going.”

Valdez also won several heavily Latino areas that were expected to break for her opponent.

Reynoso was born in Brooklyn to Dominican parents and just a few years ago was a City Council member representing Bushwick, a long-gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood that’s home to Latino families and young hipsters. Valdez was born in Texas, moved to New York City in 2015 and served in the state Assembly for just one term before launching her Mamdani-backed bid for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat.

She ended up winning areas of Bushwick by even greater margins than the total results — in some election districts winning upwards of 80 percent of the vote.

“You don’t win the district by 35 points if you don’t have broad advantages across age and demographic groups,” said Michael Lange, an election analyst and Mamdani supporter who has tracked several contested races with extreme granularity. “Is she blowing him out of the water with Hispanic voters under 50? I see tons of evidence that the answer is yes.”

The age advantage was the common thread across several other races.

In Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, for example, younger Black voters in Harlem were key to Darializa Avila Chevalier’s win over Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who had built a small political empire in the district.

While gentrifying, the neighborhood remains a seat of Black political power and is home to younger households who tend to rent. That particular demographic is a strong indicator of why Mamdani won the area in 2025, even as he lost the Black vote overall to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose support was concentrated among older Black homeowners in Brooklyn and Queens.

While Espaillat never healed a rift with the Black community in upper Manhattan opened during his election in 2016, which contributed to his weak performance, Avila Chevalier demonstrated Tuesday that a significant share of voters there were not just supportive of Mamdani the person, but of the broader political movement he’s now leading.

Overall, she edged out Espaillat with Black voters 48-46, according to an analysis from The New York Times, which charted demographic breakdowns for several contested races.

Three winning congressional candidates endorsed by Mamdani — including former city Comptroller Brad Lander in Brooklyn, who unseated incumbent Dan Goldman — share several similarities. They won younger, college-educated and wealthier voters by huge margins, in several cases by 30 points or more, and lost lower-income voters to incumbents or candidates affiliated with incumbents — a sign that the movement seeking to boost struggling New Yorkers has not won them over.

While the DSA was able to win three state races without the support of Mamdani — a testament to the organizing prowess of the left that was essential to reactivating the mayor’s coalition — there were limits to the city’s leftward shift.

Rep. Grace Meng won her reelection race, though she only vanquished challenger Chuck Park by 14 points, an uncomfortable margin for an incumbent of her stature. Park, who ran to Meng’s left, was boosted by a huge turnout in Woodside, Queens, a multiethnic neighborhood that went heavily for Mamdani in last year’s mayoral race.

Elsewhere in the Bronx, however, incumbents remained strong. Rep. Ritchie Torres handily won reelection with 72 percent of the vote, though it was a low-turnout affair more consistent with an uncompetitive midterm. Nevertheless, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries touted the results — even as he watched a series of his endorsed candidates fall to the DSA in Brooklyn, his home borough, in a preview of the intraparty battles to come.

“In some higher-income districts, there was an outsized focus on the Middle East. In other districts, for instance, in the South Bronx, Ritchie Torres ran against somebody who was heavily critical of his position on Israel, and he won by fifty points,” Jeffries told MS NOW on Wednesday.