Congress
The midterms are months away. Members are already jockeying for seats on this powerful panel.
Lawmakers can spend years trying to land seats on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. Several could finally get their chance in the next Congress.
The panel with vast jurisdiction over health care, artificial intelligence, energy and telecommunications will have at least eight empty slots in the next Congress — four on each side of the aisle — thanks to a combination of planned retirements, attempts to climb to higher office and primary election defeats.
Democrats are losing Reps. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, Marc Veasey of Texas, Robin Kelly of Illinois and Diana DeGette of Colorado. Republican departures include Reps. Buddy Carter of Georgia, Neal Dunn of Florida, Dan Crenshaw of Texas and John James of Michigan. Some of these members also lead influential subcommittees, opening coveted spots that will need to be filled next year.
The intense interest in Energy and Commerce is leading to a high level of public campaigning, particularly among Democrats who believe they stand a chance of winning the majority in the midterms and are eager to influence major policy debates.
“Since I first arrived at Congress in 2021, Energy and Commerce has always been my number one committee that I’ve sought to serve on,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, a progressive Democrat who is making a particularly concerted push, said in an interview.
The Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, made up of leadership and lawmakers from regions across the country, will make selections based on a variety of factors including years of tenure and geographical representation. But the current intraparty jockeying could also set the stage for a proxy battle pitting progressives against moderates, mirroring the ideological clash Democrats are watching play out on the campaign trail.
Democrats famously tied themselves in knots over this dynamic in 2020, when members of the Steering and Policy Committee were torn between progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and then-Rep. Kathleen Rice, a fellow New York Democrat and a centrist.
The panel ultimately gave the open seat to Rice, who in the closed-door meeting was perceived as likely to be more cooperative in advancing the party’s key legislative priorities. She ended up being among a trio of moderates who thwarted then-Chair Frank Pallone’s health care agenda by opposing a drug pricing provision, punting the issue to another committee of jurisdiction.
Four years later, Ocasio-Cortez finally made it onto the committee.
“The argument that some individuals in the caucus had made against my appointment in a previous term was this idea about being a team player,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a recent interview. “But ironically … not only did they deny me the seat on those grounds, but they appointed someone who actually voted with Republicans.”
“So when we talk about who’s going to be a team player,” she continued, “I think that especially if we are working with thin margins, it’s very important that on an issue as important as health care, energy, et cetera, and confronting a Trump White House … we need to have very strong Democrats on the committee that are going to fight forcefully for the caucus’s priorities.”
Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat who is in line to continue leading Energy and Commerce Democrats, has hinted he plans to pursue progressive policies — such as a crackdown on data centers that could involve a nationwide moratorium — should his party prevail in November. He’ll need buy-in on such plans from the left wing of his caucus, but he was not eager in July to discuss the committee assignment process.
“Let’s get elected in the majority first,” Pallone said in an interview. “I’m not going to deal with that until later.”
For now, Democrats now vying to be on Energy and Commerce are leaning less into their ideological leanings and more the policy expertise they would bring to the table — and the value their appointments would bring to constituents.
Stansbury, for example, called the committee a critical platform for tackling climate and energy policy, adding it was “very important to my district to address the rural health care crisis and the behavioral health crisis.”
Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), a first-term lawmaker, is also making her case to get onto the committee, pointing to her experience as a critical care physician and pulmonologist.
“I’ve seen firsthand the enormous burdens patients, families, and healthcare providers face every day,” she said in a statement. “It’s part of the reason I ran for office — because so many of the problems I encountered couldn’t be solved in the exam room.”
Historically, members interested in joining Energy and Commerce tend to bide their time on the House Natural Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over public lands, energy development, fisheries and Native American issues. Ocasio-Cortez made the leap, and Stansbury and Dexter are hoping to follow.
Rep. Jill Tokuda of Hawaii, who serves on the Agriculture and Armed Services committees, is also looking to be seated on Energy and Commerce. An aide said in a statement that she would be “first congressional delegation member from Hawaiʻi to join the committee” as well as only the second Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander.
An aide for Rep. Eric Sorensen of Illinois, who currently sits with Tokuda on Agriculture and Armed Services, said he is interested in joining Energy and Commerce next year, too. So is Rep. Luz Rivas of California, an engineer who appeared at the committee’s “Member Day” forum to speak about her STEM background and interest working on AI issues.
Republicans looking to get on the panel will be picked after the elections by the GOP Steering Committee, and Rep. Bob Onder of Missouri is making an especially forceful push. He said in an interview last week his more than 30 years as a physician would be an asset for the committee, which has traditionally had a handful of lawmakers with medical backgrounds and is set to lose two: Carter, a pharmacist, and Dunn, a urologist.
He also said he has made his interest known to Guthrie and that Reps. Greg Murphy of North Carolina and John Joyce of Pennsylvania — co-chairs of the GOP Doctor’s Caucus — wrote a letter last week to Speaker Mike Johnson on his behalf, saying that Onder’s “clinical experience, policy engagement, and demonstrated leadership make him exceptionally well qualified.”
Rep. Brad Knott (R-N.C.) is also making his interest known, saying he has “talked to a lot of folks” and is pursuing a “kind of whole committee wide approach” to convincing Steering members to put him on Energy and Commerce.
“North Carolina is one of the fastest-growing states,” Knott said in an interview. “Energy demand will at least double in the next 10 years. Got to get that policy right.”
Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) said in an interview in July “there’s a couple buzzing around” who want to join the panel but declined to elaborate.
“We have a lot of talented members, but I’ll let them say what they are interested in,” he said.
Sen. Ron Johnson is sending a letter Monday requesting a conference meeting to discuss the midterm results and a delay in the leadership election.
Johnson has gathered enough signatures to force the meeting under the Senate GOP’s rules and is proposing the gathering for 9 a.m. Tuesday.
“Tuesday’s result was a stunning defeat,” Johnson and his backers write in the letter to Conference Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO. “Holding leadership elections without engaging in a robust discussion and evaluation of how those running for leadership intend to lead would be political malpractice”
Republicans still expect their leadership election to be held Tuesday, where Majority Leader John Thune is so far unopposed to lead the party next year in the minority.
Sen. Chris Murphy announced Friday that he has been released from the hospital after suffering a stroke last week, but will miss “several weeks” of Senate votes while he continues to recover.
“The doctors are very encouraged by the progress I’ve made so far,” the Connecticut Democrat said in a statement. “In order to take my recovery seriously and get back to work on the quickest timeline possible, I will be spending several weeks at a rehabilitation center after being discharged from the hospital today.”
He added that he remains in touch remotely with his staff and colleagues.
Murphy, who was hospitalized last weekend, said Friday that he was “diagnosed with a small bleed in the thalamus region of my brain.” Jose Suarez, the Chief of Neurosciences Critical Care at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, said in a separate statement released by Murphy’s office that the senator “experienced a small hemorrhagic stroke.”
“He has shown tremendous progress, and at the current rate of improvement, we expect that he will make a full recovery following rehabilitation,” Suarez added.
Murphy is the latest senator to suffer a stroke in recent years. Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) were both hospitalized for strokes in 2022. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), at that time a Senate candidate, also had a stroke in 2022 that he later described as near fatal.
The head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said his group will still be power brokers in a massive Democratic majority in a strategy memo previewing plans for next term.
“While some in the press have speculated that a majority of this size undermines our influence within the caucus, they have it exactly backwards,” Rep. Greg Casar of Texas said in the Friday memo obtained by Blue Light News. “Big majorities are good for getting big things done. Our goal is not to win a battle against other Democratic caucuses. It is to pass longstanding progressive priorities that bring down costs, root out corruption, and boost wages.”
The CPC will have at least 105 members next term, according to the memo. If Democrats had a narrow majority, progressives — and any other faction in the caucus — could have used their votes as leverage. Now that presumptive speaker Hakeem Jeffries will have as many 30 votes to spare, Democrats broadly are recalibrating their approach next term.
Casar laid out a “three-pronged” strategy for the CPC to “wield our power” in the three-page memo — tackling legislation, oversight and “holding Donald Trump to his word on populist economic policies.”
“Small majorities give corporate special interest groups the ability to block popular populist policies by recruiting a small number of opponents; a big majority gives us the advantage,” he said.
Casar previewed how the CPC can engage with Trump, noting that “one of the few bright spots for bipartisan lawmaking” was a housing bill that banned private equity firms from buying homes. He noted the caucus should push Trump to cap credit card interest rates, lower credit card fees for small businesses and lower prescription drug costs.
“While we oppose [Trump] strongly on the vast majority of fronts, we should send bills to his desk that would lower prices and raise paychecks. If he signs them, good. If he vetoes those bills, that will propel us to a continued Democratic majority and a trifecta where a Democratic president can sign these proposals into law,” he said.
Casar also outlined oversight targets beyond the administration, urging Democrats to specifically investigate corporations that use customer data for “surveillance pricing,” health care companies that are “taking advantage of seniors” through the Medicare Advantage program and artificial intelligence labs who are “putting jobs and lives at risk.”
“By focusing not just on the Trump administration but also on big corporations and billionaires, we will show the American people we are not just anti-Trump but also pro-worker and pro-consumer,” he said.
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