Congress

Capitol agenda: Lawmakers nearly at the funding finish line

Published

5 months ago

January 21, 2026

Congress is on track to avoid another shutdown, but it needs to clear several hurdles in a short amount of time in order to beat its month-end deadline.

The pressure is on the House to pass four of the most challenging spending bills Thursday — to fund the departments of Defense, HHS, Labor, HUD, Transportation, Education and Homeland Security — then bundle them up with the two-bill package the chamber previously passed to fund Financial Services and State-Foreign Operations.

Senators will then have one week to take a big swing at passing all six bills before sending them to President Donald Trump’s desk.

Passing all 12 annual appropriations bills would be a stunning feat for lawmakers and leadership — especially in such a bitterly divided Congress. Here’s what they’ll have to deal with first:

— Spotty attendance: Speaker Mike Johnson’s barely-there majority could pose a problem come Thursday, when the House is expected to vote along party lines to tee up the rule vote allowing the final package of spending bills to come to the floor.

This dynamic could be further complicated by the fact that House GOP leaders will allow a passage vote for the Homeland measure that’s separate from that of the other funding bills in recognition of its divisiveness.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the House’s top Democratic appropriator, said the legislation does not include some of the broader policy changes Democrats proposed, like preventing DHS from detaining and deporting U.S. citizens or from deploying personnel from other agencies to conduct immigration enforcement.

While Republican leaders expect the other bills to pass with broad bipartisan support, Homeland will likely be a tight vote. House Democrats plan to discuss their position on the DHS bill during their closed-door caucus meeting Wednesday morning.

— Any hard-liner opposition: House Freedom Caucus members told Blue Light News Tuesday night they are combing through all the earmarks included in this funding package after previously vowing to work vigilantly to block money for projects they don’t like.

“There’s always trepidation when it comes to earmarks,” Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) said Tuesday.

Conservatives are also digging through the details on the health care legislation that bipartisan, bicameral leadership hopes will sail through as part of this funding measure. Many Republicans who worked on the deal feel confident that the policies designed to crack down on pharmacy benefit managers, and the extension of several public health programs, will make it across the finish line. But don’t rule out complaints from fiscal hawks at the last minute.

“I’m fine largely,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told reporters Tuesday night. “But I don’t know, I got to look, see if there’s anything objectionable.”

— Time crunch in the Senate: The Senate is in recess this week, but it is due to return Monday — if travel back to Washington isn’t derailed by snow this weekend. At that point, there will be just five days until the Jan. 30 deadline, and leaders will need to get all 100 senators on board with fast-tracking passage of the final six-bill package. That’s assuming the House, which is scheduled to be in recess next week, passes it without incident.

Senate leaders may have to offer amendment votes to get holdouts on both sides of the aisle to come on board, which could quickly become a slippery political slope — or they risk dragging out procedural votes beyond the funding cliff.

What else we’re watching:

— Clinton contempt vote: The House Oversight Committee votes on two measures at 10 a.m. Wednesday over whether to recommend holding Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas to testify in the panel’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Keep an eye on Democrats, who will have to decide whether they will side with Republicans to advance the contempt resolutions to the chamber floor — where, if adopted by the full House, the consequences for the Clintons could be as dire as imprisonment by the Trump DOJ. One person granted anonymity to share internal party dynamics said it was looking like most Oversight Democrats will vote “yes.”

— House vote on mining CRA: The House will consider a resolution Wednesday afternoon that would overturn the Biden administration’s ban on new mining near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters under the Congressional Review Act. A House aide granted anonymity to discuss the dynamics said to expect a nail-biter.

— New crypto text landing: Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.) is preparing to release an updated draft of his panel’s portion of a major cryptocurrency bill Wednesday. It comes after the senator postponed a previously planned markup to allow bipartisan discussions to continue around the so-called market structure measure.

Katherine Tully-McManus, Benjamin Guggenheim, Jordain Carney, Josh Siegel, Hailey Fuchs, Meredith Lee Hill and Jasper Goodman contributed to this report.

Congress

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

Published

14 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

17 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

21 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.