Congress

Dead lawmakers tweet from beyond the grave

Published

1 year ago

June 28, 2025

After Zohran Mamdani’s apparent victory in the New York Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday, former Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) liked an Instagram post congratulating him on his win.

The only problem — Jackson Lee died last July.

From ghost-likes and new profile pictures to a posthumous endorsement, accounts for dead lawmakers have seemingly resurrected on social media in an unsettling trend of beyond-the-grave engagement.

“Dear White Staffers,” an anonymous account dedicated to highlighting experiences and perspectives of non-white congressional staffers, on Wednesday posted a screenshot of a notification that the late Texas representative’s account had liked the congratulatory post for Mamdani, captioning the screengrab with a quizzical emoji.

But Jackson Lee isn’t the only deceased lawmaker whose presence continues to be felt online.

Rep. Sylvester Turner, a Democrat who filled Lee’s Texas seat for a brief two months before his own passing in March 2025, appeared to change his profile picture on X three weeks after he died.

“Happy #OpeningDay!” Turner’s personal account posted on MLB Opening Day, adding the hashtag “NewProfilePic” along with a photo of the late lawmaker holding a baseball. A community guidelines note affixed by X to the post noted that “Sylvester Turner died on March 5, 2025.”

The post appeared to shock many X users, who commented on how uncanny it was to see the deceased lawmaker active on their feeds. “Grim,” one user wrote, while another asked: “So no one on his team thinks this is weird?”

Former Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat who died in May, has also continued to make waves from beyond the grave, as his political social media accounts chugged back to life to notify followers that early voting had begun in the race to fill his vacant seat. Before his passing, Connolly had endorsed his former chief of staff, James Walkinshaw, to replace him, having announced that he planned to step away from Congress after his esophageal cancer returned in April.

People on Connolly’s mailing list have also reportedly continued receiving emails from the late representative’s campaign encouraging Virginians to vote for Walkinshaw in Saturday’s special election, the newsletter Chaotic Era highlighted — and directing donations to Walkinshaw’s campaign.

But after Connolly’s posthumous post came under scrutiny this week, it disappeared from the late Virginian’s page on Thursday.

Brian Garcia, communications director for Walkinshaw’s campaign, emphasized that the campaign does not direct the content posted from Connolly’s accounts. “Supervisor Walkinshaw is proud to have earned the support of Congressman Connolly before he passed away and to now have the support of the Connolly family,” he said.

The bio for Connolly’s page notes that the lawmaker died in May, and says that posts on the page are made with Connolly’s family’s consent. Turner’s account also appears to be run by his family, with the account recently posting a video featuring his daughter promoting a Houston parade he championed.

But the case of posthumous tweeting fingers isn’t a new phenomenon.

An account for political activist, brief 2012 GOP presidential primary leader and staunch Trump supporter Herman Cain resurfaced two weeks after he died in July 2020 from a weekslong battle with Covid-19. The account posted attacks at then-presidential candidate Joe Biden and pro-Trump content — as well as conspiracy theories about the virus that had taken Cain’s own life.

The posts initially appeared under Cain’s original account, bearing his name and profile picture. But his daughter shortly thereafter explained in a blog post that members of his family had taken over his social media presence and would continue posting under the new name “Cain Gang.”

The account remained active until March 2021, when it released its final post, saying “It’s time.”

How to handle the social media presence of politicians when they die is a fairly new phenomenon. If a member of the House dies, for example, their office often remains open to fulfill constituent services — and sometimes continues posting to social media, albeit not typically under the lawmaker’s name. And there’s even less clarity around lawmakers’ social media accounts that they use for campaigning, as opposed to official work.

Zack Brown, who was the communications director for Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) when he died in office in March 2022, said there is no official process for handing off control of lawmakers’ social media accounts if they die while still serving. That leaves communications staff in an awkward bind on how to proceed with languishing accounts, he said.

Although there were content rules on what staff members were allowed to post to Young’s accounts — political, policy-related and ideological posts were off-limits — there was no guidance on what to do with the accounts themselves.

“When a member of Congress dies, nobody seems to care about getting the log-ins from you, or assuming control of the Facebook page,” Brown said. “I still, if I wanted to, could go post to Facebook as Congressman Young — I could still tweet today as Congressman Young. And nobody from archives or records or from House administration, or anybody, seems to give a shit.”

Brown continued serving in the Alaskan’s office for four months after his death, administering the affairs of the office and helping wind down its operations to prepare for Young’s replacement after the special election.

While the process of physically closing down Young’s office was “meticulous,” with individual files and knickknacks from the lawmaker’s office requiring logging, the “digital aspect of it was completely ignored,” Brown said.

Brown noted that failing to properly administer a lawmaker’s social media presence is also a constituent services issue, as many people reach out to their representative’s offices via direct message for assistance.

But most of all, Brown cautioned, a lack of procedure for how to handle dead lawmaker’s’ socials poses a host of security risks that would normally be unthinkable for physical record-keeping.

“I can’t walk into the National Archives right now and just go behind closed doors and take whatever files from Congressman Young that I want,” Brown said. “Why does somebody who had social media access have that power to do that with tweets?”

Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate confirms Blanche as attorney general

Published

2 days ago

August 8, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate Saturday confirmed Todd Blanche to be attorney general, following a weeks-long struggle with a handful of wary Republicans.

The Senate voted 50-49 to approve him, with GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joining with Democrats in opposition.

Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, has been serving as acting attorney general since Pam Bondi’s ouster in April. Questions about Blanche’s potential conflicts of interest from representing Trump, as well as his role in the creation of a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” as part of Trump’s settlement this spring with the IRS, created headwinds to his confirmation among a key group of Senate Republicans.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who lost re-election after Trump endorsed a primary challenger, helped Blanche clinch his 50th vote Friday. He said Blanche wasn’t perfect but that he wasn’t sure Trump would pick someone better to lead the Justice Department.

“The choice is not between perfection and Mr. Blanche,” Cassidy said on the Senate floor. “It is between Mr. Blanche and another acting attorney general who may not run the department effectively under President Trump and who indeed may not be as good as Mr. Blanche.”

Cassidy’s support came after Blanche had already spent weeks negotiating with Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, who vetted his nomination as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Cornyn struck an agreement with Blanche Sunday for the DOJ to curtail the payout fund and rein in a deal to exempt Trump from IRS audits.

Cassidy’s support came hours after Murkowski announced that she would oppose Blanche’s nomination, putting it on the brink of potential failure. Between unified opposition from Democrats and Sen. Mitch McConnell’s absence for health reasons, Blanche could only lose two Republicans and still be confirmed.

Hours before Friday’s vote, Murkowski told reporters she spoke with Blanche multiple times but that she was “good with where I am.” She said there was no “one” thing that motivated her decision.

“If there was one thing, we might be able to go back to the White House and say ‘Hey, can we work on this one thing,’” she said. “But for me it was a compilation.”

She added that she believed the anti-weaponization fund is “pretty dead” but “what is not so clear” are the audit immunity provisions of Trump’s IRS agreement, “which I just think are viewed by so many in this country as kind of a special and sweet deal for the president and his family.”

Congress

Senate passes funding bill to avert October shutdown

Published

2 days ago

August 8, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate passed a bill Saturday to fund the government beyond the midterm elections, putting the onus back on the House to head off a shutdown looming Oct. 1.

The Senate approved the measure in a bipartisan 90-6 vote, with Sen. Darline Graham of South Carolina voting present. The bill would fund federal agencies through Dec. 11 at current levels, with some exceptions. Senate leaders sped up consideration of the legislation as part of an agreement reached Saturday morning to allow members to leave for August recess.

The House and Senate have now each passed different bills aimed at averting a shutdown at the end of the fiscal year. The House bill would fund the government through Dec. 4.

The Senate legislation sets up a year-end standoff over the Trump administration’s controversial plan to put political appointees in charge of approving federal grants. The bill would block the administration from finalizing that rule during the length of the stopgap — and lawmakers are already expecting a December brawl over the issue.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said this week that he’s going to “fight like hell” in December to ensure Congress doesn’t further obstruct the grant overhaul.

But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are resistant to the White House approach to grants. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she will “continue to oppose” the Trump administration plans “because I think they politicize the grants process, and I don’t want that to occur.” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on Senate Appropriations, said she too would “welcome the fight.”

The Senate rejected an amendment from Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) intended to ensure that a ban on intoxicating hemp products kicks in come November, after Senate leaders at the White House’s urging included language in the funding bill to delay it.

The Senate bill includes language Democrats sought to ensure Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol don’t get any new funding under the patch. Republicans enacted $70 billion for those agencies along party lines earlier this year.

That prohibition could be contentious in the House.

Rep. John Rutherford (R-Fla.) said in an interview that the provision “could be a dealbreaker” and that he’s “not a fan” of the Senate version. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) said Tuesday that he would say he’s undecided if GOP leadership whipped his vote on the Senate stopgap.

“I do not like the Senate language,” Van Drew said, noting the grant approval provision. “It’s one I would want to know what the president thinks.”

The White House issued a statement of administration policy in support of the Senate’s funding bill. No such memo was issued for the House bill, which did not include the funding increases and authorizations the White House requested.

“Every Member of Congress should support passage of this [continuing resolution] to keep the Government open as discussions on full year appropriations continue,” it reads.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democratic appropriator in the House, praised the Senate measure for including the grant and immigration enforcement language.

“This bill is a clear improvement over the House Republican continuing resolution, but we are still nearly two months away from the end of the fiscal year and should be working together to pass full-year funding bills,” she said in a statement.

Mia McCarthy and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate eyes the exit after GOP-Trump deal

Published

2 days ago

August 8, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate is aiming to leave Washington for a five-week recess early Saturday after Republicans cut a deal with President Donald Trump to punt some of their priorities, including a framework for a party-line spending plan.

The Senate is trying to lock in an agreement that would set up votes on a college sports bill, a stopgap government funding bill, Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination and GOP voter ID legislation, according to a copy of an internal notice reviewed by Blue Light News.

The Senate would then leave Washington until mid-September.

Any one senator could object to the tentative deal, forcing it to be altered or dragging the Senate deeper into the weekend. Senators believe there are still objections to advancing the college sports bill. Democrats are also waiting to see if one of their own will prevent speeding up Blanche’s confirmation.

The breakthrough is a U-turn from earlier Friday evening, when Republican senators emerged from a closed-door meeting predicting they would have to spend Saturday trying to break a stalemate within the party about how to wrap final votes before recess.

Shortly after that meeting, Trump spoke by phone with Senate Republicans including Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah about the path forward for the GOP’s lengthy to-do list.

During the call, according to Johnson, Trump agreed to punt a vote on a budget blueprint for a third party-line spending bill until later in the year. Lee, who has been pushing for action on the separate SAVE America Act, also agreed to drop his demand for a formal, roll call vote on adjourning given the understanding with the president.

“I think the conclusion of the conference – and we had a discussion with the president and he agrees – [is] don’t take the vote tonight,” Johnson said after the meeting in Thune’s office.

Republicans were in talks with the White House throughout Friday. A White House official granted anonymity said Friday evening that “we’re continuing to have productive conversations with senators to advance several legislative priorities.”