Capitol agenda: Democrats steer into a shutdown

Democrats are flirting with a shutdown. Their endgame is unclear. Democrats are rallying around a hard-line approach to try to bring Republicans to the table to strike a government funding deal but don’t have a clear view of what victory looks like. For now, it’s primarily about showing some fight. “We may not have the […]

Democrats’ shutdown endgame is sketchy as deadline looms

Democrats are gearing up to reject a GOP stopgap funding bill and potentially spark a government shutdown. What happens then, no one seems to know. Two weeks ahead of the key deadline, party leaders are staking out a rhetorical hard line demanding that their Republican counterparts come to the negotiating table to discuss concessions on […]

The impending retirement that could rock Capitol Hill

More than three dozen lawmakers are already planning to leave Congress next year. But there’s another impending legislative branch retirement that could have major implications in Washington. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who heads the Government Accountability Office, hits the end of his 15-year term Dec. 22 and will be forced to vacate the post that […]

Democrats unveil funding alternative to counter GOP in shutdown brawl

Congressional Democrats released bill text Wednesday night for their own stopgap spending proposal as they dig in against a House Republican-backed measure that would fund the government until late November. The new Democratic proposal links funding the government through Oct. 31 to two of the party’s other priorities: health care assistance and placing limits on […]

GOP defections sink effort to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar

Several Republicans joined all House Democrats in voting to sink a GOP-led measure to formally condemn Rep. Ilhan Omar and remove her from her committees. The 214-213 vote ended an effort by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) to censure Omar and strip her of all her committee assignments over her criticism of the late conservative political […]

House eyes Friday vote on stopgap as partisan tensions flare

Republican leaders vowed Wednesday to barrel forward with a stopgap funding bill in the coming days as Democrats threatened to oppose it in favor of their own alternative — raising the chances for an Oct. 1 government shutdown. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Wednesday morning that a vote on the GOP-written bill unveiled […]

Kash Patel says court orders bar him from releasing the Epstein files. Judges have said otherwise.

FBI Director Kash Patel claimed Wednesday that he is barred by recent court orders from releasing thousands of documents connected to disgraced sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. “I’m not going to break the law to satisfy your curiosity,” Patel said during the second day of Congressional oversight hearings after Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) challenged him on […]

Jim Jordan goes after Adam Schiff at FBI oversight hearing

House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan on Wednesday opened FBI Director Kash Patel’s second Congressional oversight hearing in two days by going after a former colleague, Sen. Adam Schiff. “Why would the head of the Intelligence Committee, the chair of that committee, who’s supposed to be guarding our secrets — why would he be encouraging the […]