Congress

Nancy Pelosi’s successor headlines the latest round of calls

Published

13 minutes ago

November 6, 2026

California state Sen. Scott Wiener has officially won his bid to replace former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Congress, The Associated Press projected Friday afternoon, as Republicans shored up their ranks with victories in three ruby red seats by smaller-than-expected margins.

Wiener bested San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan by 9 percentage points in an expensive, heated Democrat-on-Democrat race that pitted the city’s liberal factions against each other. Chan had the endorsement of Pelosi — as well as Saikat Chakrabarti, who finished third in the June primary. She occupied the more progressive lane.

But it wasn’t enough to compete with Wiener, who spent nearly a decade in the state Senate and raised millions of dollars to win a seat he long coveted. Chan has already conceded to Wiener on Wednesday.

Friday also brought welcome news for the GOP, which saw Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.) reelected to his House seat and Republicans Mark Lamb and Anthony Constantino elected in Arizona and New York, respectively.

Lamb and Constantino were almost felled by the blue wave that saw Democrats take over the House and Senate with massive majorities. Retiring Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) won Constantino’s seat by more than 24 percentage points in 2024.

Constantino — who has spent the time since Election Day publicly feuding with other Empire State Republicans on social media — defeated Democrat Blake Gendebien by fewer than 6,000 votes.

Congress

Maxine Waters officially launches bid to lead House Financial Services

Published

4 hours ago

November 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Maxine Waters on Friday launched her bid to again lead Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee, officially teeing up a clash for the role with at least one younger member.

The California lawmaker, who has led Democrats on the panel since 2013, wrote in a letter to colleagues obtained by POLITICO that she “will pursue a bold agenda focused on affordability, accountability, and accessibility.”

Waters, 88, is facing a challenge for the job from Illinois Rep. Sean Casten, 54, who launched a bid to topple her Thursday. Illinois Rep. Bill Foster, 71, is also considering running, though he is currently leaning against it.

Congress

Capitol agenda: Shutdown fight coming sooner than you think

Published

8 hours ago

November 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Democrats have a chance before they take power in January to undercut President Donald Trump’s Iran war checkbook. Not everyone is on board.

Lawmakers will have to pass another funding bill by mid-December to avoid a government shutdown. Though Republicans maintain their majorities until the end of the year, some Democrats — ready to flex their new influence after a midterm blowout — want any year-end spending measure to block cash for the military conflict.

But the move could spark a shutdown fight that extends into the next year and overshadows their new majority and other policy goals.

Democrats will have to weigh the pros and cons of instigating a confrontation they won’t necessarily win.

The top Democratic appropriators, at least, didn’t appear to rule out a fight.

“Democrats will absolutely not fund Trump’s war of choice with Iran that has increased costs on American families and made us less safe,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro said Thursday in a statement to Blue Light News.

Senate Appropriations Vice Chair Patty Murray, in a statement, also attributed Democrats’ midterm gains to the unpopularity of the Iran conflict: “The American people just voted overwhelmingly to put an end to this war, and we are going to look at every tool we have available to us to bring this disastrous war to an end.”

The top Democrats in both chambers — Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer — have yet to announce whether they will try to use the moment to limit resources for the war.

Jeffries said in a statement that Democrats will have “a leadership conversation” with DeLauro about the war, “but it is clear from this election that the American people are demanding accountability and an end to the war.”

Schumer said in an interview Thursday he’s working with Murray “to get something done” on government funding before the shutdown deadline, but didn’t forecast whether he’d demand a cutoff of dollars.

The party has been consistent for months in its opposition to the Iran conflict and has so far fought off Trump’s requests for a $1.5 trillion military budget and an emergency war funding package.

Still, triggering a shutdown isn’t a risk all Democrats want to take.

“I don’t know where our leadership is on this one, but I would say that definitely there’s got to be a way to wind this down instead of saying, ‘no funding,’” a House Democratic appropriator, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said in an interview.

What else we’re watching:

— BLACK DEMOCRATS WANT SOUTHERN INVESTMENT: Black lawmakers are urging national Democrats to invest in the South after a string of stunning wins were powered by a surge in Black voters. Many of these lawmakers, who have previously chided donors for not investing earlier in promising candidates, like Scott Colom in Mississippi and Angie Nixon in Florida, are actively seeking commitments for future cycles. “You cannot reap for which you don’t sow,” said Rep. Troy Carter, who is poised to chair the Congressional Black Caucus next year. Across House races Tuesday, turnout in counties that are at least 60% Black surged 21 points compared to the last midterm in 2022, according to a Blue Light News analysis of preliminary returns. That’s more than double the increase in votes cast nationally in counties where the population is less than 20% Black.

— JEFFRIES KNOCKS PERMITTING DEAL — Jeffries Thursday said the Senate permitting deal “falls short” and raised concerns about the bill’s proposed changes to bedrock environmental laws and protections for tribal sovereignty. “We must once again support the clean energy economy and combat the climate crisis with the fierce urgency of now,” a spokesperson for Jeffries told Blue Light News exclusively. “However, the current Senate bill under consideration falls short in several areas, including the manner in which [National Environmental Policy Act] reform is undertaken and the failure to adequately protect tribal sovereignty.” Jeffries’ criticism complicates the bill’s path to passage during the lame-duck session, with a Senate procedural vote on the package scheduled for Monday.

Jennifer Scholtes, Riley Rogerson and Nico Portuondo contributed to this report.

Congress

Democrats’ biggest legal battle against Trump has already started

Published

8 hours ago

November 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The day after a federal judge ordered the Kennedy Center board to remove President Donald Trump’s name from the building, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s phone started blowing up.

Matt Floca, the center’s operator, sent 11 straight texts to Lutnick, Trump’s go-between on one of his second-term obsessions: a gilded redesign of the performing arts center. The conversation ballooned into a three-month-long, 180-message exchange between the two men that is now at the heart of a legal battle over the Kennedy Center’s future — and a prelude to what will likely be a defining legal and political fight over the next two years.

When preservation groups suing over the Kennedy Center demanded to see more details about what Lutnick and Floca had discussed, White House lawyers intervened, invoking executive privilege because the messages, they said, “reflect advice from the president” or the deliberations of his close advisers. Now a judge must decide whether to pierce Trump’s demand for secrecy in order to decide the Kennedy Center’s fate.

Trump has already tested the bounds of executive privilege, and is all but certain to push the envelope even further as he tries to fend off congressional Democrats’ aggressive oversight agenda for the next two years. How the courts resolve those disputes will shape the future of the Kennedy Center, the future of Trump’s second term and even the future of the presidency.

“They could really damage some of their institutional sort of positions that they might want to use against Congress if they try to litigate them,” said Jonathan Shaub, a member of the White House Counsel’s office under President Joe Biden and author of a forthcoming book on executive privilege. “They’ve got to do some real thinking. … It doesn’t seem like there has been that kind of larger strategic thinking yet.”

Executive privilege isn’t mentioned in the Constitution, but the Supreme Court has clearly established that presidents’ private discussions with advisers must be able to stay secret — unless other weighty interests justify overriding that confidentiality. It’s most commonly invoked in matters of national security or foreign affairs, where courts are especially reluctant to encroach on the president’s need for private discussions and advice.

But Trump’s decision to take a direct role in the redesign of the Kennedy Center, as well as a Washington, D.C. golf course, are stretching the boundaries of presidential secrecy in new ways. The Justice Department has floated the prospect of executive privilege assertions in cases challenging Trump’s effort to punish law firms, authorize military strikes on alleged drug boats and penalize the BBC for a piece about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He tried unsuccessfully to assert it while he was out of office, to ward off Congress’ Jan. 6 investigation.

And legal battles over executive privilege are poised to explode next year, when a Democratic Congress pursues investigations into Trump, along with his appointees, family members and allies. Democrats are mindful that Trump wielded privilege effectively in his first term, stymying their most far-reaching probes for years.

That history is coloring their thinking as they prepare an onslaught of subpoenas to unearth the details of Trump’s most controversial second-term decisions. House Democrats are already discussing an investigative battle plan that factors in Trump’s tendency to stonewall, according to one person with knowledge of the conversations, granted anonymity to share private discussions. Democrats will have to start the process quickly if they have any chance of winning a dragged-out privilege fight

“The House must have the ability to prevail when the law and facts are on its side and overcome what are likely to be extremely broad invocations of executive privilege,” said Thomas Spulak, who was a top lawyer for the House in the 1990s.

Trump’s proclivity to fight every battle on every front — and his time-honored tactic of running out the clock on his investigators — could force courts, including the Supreme Court, to develop new, permanent rules for executive privilege. And though prior administrations were concerned about protecting the institution of the presidency, Trump has made clear he is willing to push his battles to the limit, even if it results in legal precedents that hamstring his successors.

“If they’re really planning on taking the more extreme stance in litigation and pushing it to the appellate courts, I think there’s a very real chance that they get adverse appellate decisions,” said Shaub, now a law professor at the University of Kentucky.

Some legal experts say the new Democratic majority might be able to work around these protracted legal battles by targeting people and organizations outside the administration who have fewer claims to government secrecy.

“If they’re asking for documents or information from third parties who are private parties, even if the White House asserts executive privilege, I think that it’s going to be an uphill battle, to say the least, for the White House,” said Jessica Roth, a law professor at Yeshiva University.

But the Justice Department appears ready to fight on that front, too. It recently issued guidance suggesting that the president’s conversations with outside advisers are subject to executive privilege and it has asserted that protection in a suit over the president’s attempts to punish law firms that had worked for Democrats or employed lawyers he saw as his enemies.

On Wednesday — a day after Democrats dominated the midterms — four Justice Department attorneys told U.S. District Judge Amir Ali they plan to make broad claims of executive privilege to try to block access to White House records about negotiations with law firms. A longtime Trump confidant and legal adviser, Boris Epshteyn, shouldn’t have to give testimony in the case or even detail whether he has an attorney-client relationship with Trump or others in the administration, a DOJ attorney argued.

“We shouldn’t even be putting third parties in a position where they have to respond,” DOJ lawyer Michael Velchik said. “There are separation of powers concerns when plaintiff seeks to depose or see information from individuals that they allege are close advisers to the president.”

DOJ has also argued to Ali that under a 2004 Supreme Court precedent involving Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force, the records and testimony the American Bar Association is seeking in the suit should be sought first from the law firms who negotiated with the administration.

Democrats are openly telegraphing their targets for aggressive investigations next year that will seek to peer behind the Oval Office curtain. Lawmakers slated to lead those investigations have foreshadowed reviews of his controversial pardons, his family’s business ventures, his role in the Justice Department’s targeting of his political adversaries, his handling of the Epstein files and a slew of other targets.

The balance between the need for secrecy and the needs of investigators has remained ill-defined ever since the Nixon-era Supreme Court enshrined it as a concept. Congress and criminal investigators have tested it repeatedly, but those skirmishes have rarely resulted in the type of sweeping court rulings that set precedents for future disputes.