MORE THAN TWO WEEKS AFTER Adelita Grijalva won a special election to succeed her late father by nearly 40 points, the Arizona Democrat is still waiting to be sworn in. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has yet to schedule her oath of office, even as he swore in three other special-election winners—two Republicans and a Democrat—within 24 hours of their victories earlier this year.

The delay has become more than a procedural nuisance for Democrats. It captures what they see as Johnson’s muddled leadership amid a government shutdown now stretching into its second week—and to some, a convenient stalling tactic as he fends off suspicion about a bipartisan push by members to force a vote on releasing the full Epstein files, which Grijalva’s addition would allow.

Johnson has consistently swatted away claims that the files are a variable in his decision to dillydally on Grijalva’s swearing in, instead pointing to the reality that the House is in recess after he canceled votes for the second consecutive week. But on Tuesday afternoon, a breakthrough seemed at hand as Johnson told reporters that he would schedule the ceremony as soon as Grijalva wants—never mind that she’s been in town since her election demanding it. Hours later, a senior GOP leadership aide suggested otherwise, blaming Senate Democrats for keeping the House out of session and delaying Grijalva’s swearing-in.

The episode captures the essence of Johnson’s speakership at this stage of the shutdown: a leader increasingly cornered by the politics of his own making, according to conversations with a half dozen Democratic members, aides and operatives who were granted anonymity to provide their candid assessments of the current state of play. They argue that Johnson’s decisions—from advising President Donald Trump not to meet with Democratic leaders before the shutdown to canceling House votes to struggling to keep his members on message over healthcare—reflect a speakership losing both coherence and control.

“Mike Johnson’s been able to mask over his deficient leadership with a few back-pats from Donald Trump. Now the cracks are showing because he’s got to ask his members to defend insurance premiums doubling,” a Democratic strategist said. “We don’t need a history book to know what happens when there is a vacuum of leadership in their conference.”

PARTY UNITY IS A VITAL component to political success in shutdown fights. Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) have projected a singular message since the federal government’s lights went out last week: The first order of legislative business is to send a short-term measure to fund federal agencies and departments through mid-December to President Trump’s desk and then we can discuss a path forward on addressing the health care policy priorities that are central to Democrats’ demands to end the shutdown.

But cracks in this strategy have emerged this week. On Tuesday, standing side by side at the Senate Republicans’ weekly leadership press conference, Thune contradicted Johnson’s suggestion that the House might reconvene to pass a standalone bill paying U.S. troops and air traffic controllers during the shutdown. Moments earlier, Johnson expressed openness to the idea, emphasizing that it wasn’t without precedent in previous shutdowns to ensure paychecks wouldn’t lapse.

Thune quickly cut in. “Honestly, you don’t need that,” he said flatly, arguing that the simplest way to end the impasse was to reopen the government. The striking moment was a rare instance of the top Republican in each chamber parting in public over substance and strategy.

Of course, the scene spoke volumes for Democrats.

There Johnson was seemingly improvising under pressure, while Thune wanted no part of it, and both undercutting their own argument that Republicans were unified in pursuit of a responsible resolution. Even some GOP aides privately admitted the optics were rough, not least because troop pay is among the few shutdown flashpoints that reliably unite voters across party lines.

IF THE GOP PRESS-CONFERENCE MOMENT exposed cracks in strategy, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s comments blew a hole in message discipline after the Georgia Republican publicly rebuked her party’s leadership for ignoring the cost of health care as the core issue driving voter frustration.

Greene accused GOP leaders of having “no plan” to address the affordability crisis, saying they’d spent more time arguing over process than helping families struggling to pay premiums. She warned her party has “to get real and actually come up with a solution,” adding that her own adult children’s insurance costs were set to double. She described hearing the same story from constituents back home.

While reaffirming her long-standing opposition to the Affordable Care Act, which she called a “scam” that raised prices for her family when it passed, Greene nonetheless endorsed Democrats’ demand to extend the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credits through the end of the year. She framed the stance as part of an “America-only” approach. She said she was willing to work with anyone “who’s serious about lowering costs,” even if it meant defying her party during the shutdown debate.

Democrats seized on Greene’s position. Jeffries was flanked by a chart of MTG’s tweet at his daily shutdown press conference, while Schumer mentioned her comments in a Senate floor speech. House Democrats’ campaign arm even got in on the action.

But Johnson brushed off the criticism, noting that Greene holds no seat on the committees of jurisdiction over health care policy and suggesting she was ill-informed of the issues. Her comments ricocheted through the Hill nonetheless, giving Democrats unexpected validation for their core argument that Republicans had ceded the political high ground on health care and reinforcing their case that the GOP’s shutdown strategy is backfiring on multiple fronts.

ACCORDING TO SOURCES in both parties, Johnson’s missteps began well before the government shutdown. For example, Johnson privately advised President Trump to cancel a White House meeting with Democratic leaders that had already been agreed upon due to fears that Trump might strike a health care deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) that GOP leadership couldn’t control. Days later, Trump’s team quietly rescheduled the meeting, only for Democrats to emerge calling Johnson an impediment to compromise. Since then, he has refused to meet directly with Democratic leaders to negotiate a path forward, even as the House-passed stopgap bill and Democrats’ counterproposal are on track to fail in the Senate this morning for the sixth time in 19 days.

Johnson’s decision to cancel votes again this week has only deepened those concerns. Democrats have seized on his absences—and the empty chamber—to argue that Republicans are responsible for prolonging the shutdown since the party controls the federal government. Whatever legitimate critiques exist of the enhanced ACA tax credits have been drowned out by the optics of a silent majority: House Republicans back home on their own and instructed to claim Democrats want to fund health care for undocumented immigrants, while Democrats fill the vacuum in Washington with programming on the calamitous impact the expired credits would have on everyday Americans.

“He’s losing his conference,” a House Democrat said.

A senior Democratic aide was equally frank: “He’s been outflanked, outstretched and outperformed.”

Even Johnson’s messaging has shifted uncomfortably. After weeks of insisting the conversation around the ACA subsidies would happen at the end of the year, he claimed on Tuesday that Republicans always intended to discuss them this month— a reversal that drew an incredulous grin from Jeffries when I asked him about it later that morning.

“Really, this is what we’re doing right now? This is an acknowledgement that the Democratic position is the American position, which is that this healthcare crisis has to be addressed right now,” the top House Democrat told me. “But they still have to actually sit down at the negotiating table so we can resolve the issue consistent with what Marjorie Taylor Greene has said needs to be done: Address the cost-of-living crisis that Republicans have made worse in the United States of America.”

Then there’s his subsequent decision to endorse an Office of Management and Budget memo interpreting a 2019 law guaranteeing back pay for furloughed workers as subject to presidential discretion only reinforced Democrats’ broader argument that Trump is using the shutdown to inflict political pain, with congressional Republicans providing cover.

Spokespeople for Johnson and Thune did not respond to a request for comment, but Johnson did receive a vote of confidence from the White House.

“President Trump, Speaker Johnson, Leader Thune and congressional Republicans are in complete lockstep and have been consistent: We are happy to have a policy conversation once the government is reopened,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “Democrats have chosen to shut down the government because they want to give free health care to illegal aliens. The administration will not negotiate while the American people are being held hostage by Democrats.”

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STILL, IT REMAINS to be seen if Johnson’s stumbles amount to a personal political crisis. Several sources across both parties and chambers acknowledged that the speaker’s political survival—and the ultimate resolution to the shutdown—have always rested in President Trump’s hands. From that perspective, Johnson’s role isn’t to broker a compromise so much as to execute one once Trump decides the politics favor it.

“Johnson isn’t in control. Neither is Thune. They both report to Donald Trump and that’s why there’s no end in sight for this shutdown,” a second Democratic strategist told me. “Johnson is a failed leader, there’s no question about that. His party controls the House, Senate and White House, and he still can’t deliver a budget. But we’d be deluding ourselves if we think Johnson is in control here.”

But after months of relegation to the political wilderness following the 2024 election and the turmoil of the first nine months of Trump 2.0, most sources told me it would be foolish to allow Johnson’s perceived blunders to distract them from what they believe to be a winning message on health care.

“They should double down on their current strategy,” the second Democratic strategist said of their party’s congressional leadership. “Keep their foot on their necks—daily press conferences, interviewing on every channel, all over social. They have to win the narrative. They win the narrative, they win the war. They can’t allow public sentiment to switch now.”

House Democrats are spoiling for a fight as government funding talks drag on. In an at-times tense caucus meeting this week, rank-and-file members pressed for substantial concessions and urged their leaders to prove to the Democratic base they’re willing to go to the mat against President Donald Trump.

But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) seem to have a narrower objective.

Both leaders are steering the confrontation toward healthcare with a warning that millions of Americans will see their costs soar if Republicans refuse to extend Affordable Care Act premium tax credits and reverse cuts from the reconciliation bill the GOP passed this summer.

It’s a message aimed less at checking every member’s wish lists than at unifying Democrats around an issue with broad public resonance and making Republicans own the consequences if they refuse.

“This would be a nightmare scenario for the American people: On October 1st, getting notice that your healthcare costs will go up 18 percent,” Schumer said on the Senate floor this morning. “Especially for the millions who are on ACA at a time of rising costs, as you are seeing, and at a time of a weakening job market.”

Jeffries also focused much of his attention at his weekly press conference this morning on health care and the looming cliff created by expiring ACA premium subsidies and Medicaid cuts.

“Republicans have broken our healthcare system and unleashed the unfortunate and painful reality that millions of Americans are about to experience dramatic increases in their healthcare premiums, co-pays and deductibles,” he said. “We will not support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to rip away healthcare from the American people.”

Schumer and Jeffries, alongside their leadership team and top appropriators, will meet this afternoon to discuss the path forward.

“I expect that coming out of the meeting, you’ll continue to see a strong and unified position,” Jeffries said, while declining to comment on whether he would meet with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). “I look forward to continuing to advance the ball where possible, but we have made clear we’re ready to support a bill that is bipartisan in nature.”

He did not commit to a meeting with President Trump.

“That remains to be seen.”

A source in the House Democrats’ caucus meeting described the irritation some members expressed as directed at leadership rather than member-on-member friction. According to the source, the issue is about having a clear message and being direct with Schumer that they want clear, concrete demands they can point to in negotiations.

“The people don’t care about process. They care about Democrats fighting. Members want to be able to say they want X and it is or is not in the package,” the source said. “X needs to be specific and understandable. Americans want a president who will not take any more money through clawbacks and rescissions. Will they agree? Will they obey? That is a specific.”

The source familiar with Jeffries’ thinking acknowledged that Jeffries is attuned to the sentiment among House Democrats that he must “fight” the Trump administration and congressional Republicans in the negotiations. At the same time, they noted the inherent challenge: With 209 caucus members, excluding his top deputies, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), there are just as many opinions about what fighting should look like, complicating efforts to present a unified front.

I asked Jeffries how he is navigating the array of demands within his caucus—from members pushing for anti-impoundment language or a ban on rescissions, to those saying health care alone should be the red line, to others simply wanting a clean short-term funding extension—and he said that healthcare is a unifying issue.

“I believe that all of us are ready to continue the fight and health care being right at the top of that list. But the fight, of course, is about all of the things, all of the extremism, the parade of horribles that Donald Trump has unleashed on the American people and their failed promises to make life more affordable.”

The Affordable Care Act’s premium tax credits are designed to make health care insurance purchased on the marketplace more affordable for low- and middle-income Americans. They work by capping the percentage of income households are expected to contribute toward premiums, with the federal government covering the rest.

The American Rescue Plan in 2021 and later the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 temporarily expanded these credits, both by increasing the size of the subsidies and by eliminating the so-called “subsidy cliff” that cut off assistance for people earning just above 400 percent of the federal poverty level. Those enhanced subsidies led to record marketplace enrollment and helped keep premiums stable for millions of people.

Unless Congress acts, however, the expansions are set to expire at the end of 2025, which would raise costs for many enrollees and potentially cause some to drop coverage altogether. Democrats have increasingly framed extending the enhanced credits as both a health care affordability measure and a political imperative heading into the 2026 midterms, while Republicans have generally opposed making the temporary provisions permanent due to their cost and the broader fight over federal health care spending.

Then there’s the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the sweeping reconciliation package passed earlier this year by congressional Republicans and signed by President Trump, which included significant cuts to Medicaid that Democrats have since made a central flashpoint.

The legislation reduced federal Medicaid funding by tightening eligibility rules, phasing out enhanced coverage options adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and imposing new work requirements for certain adults. It also rolled back incentives for states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA, effectively penalizing those that chose to broaden coverage.

Republicans framed the changes as necessary to rein in federal spending and encourage workforce participation, but Democrats warn they will translate into millions of Americans losing health coverage, especially in vulnerable communities, and put additional strain on hospitals and state budgets.

The cuts have become a rallying cry for rank-and-file Democrats, many of whom argue that reversing them should be a top demand in the current government funding negotiations.

Democrats have also pointed to the 2026 Republican funding bill for federal health care programs and agencies as evidence of a continued GOP assault.

The legislation eliminates funding for maternal health services and contraception, while adding divisive riders related to abortion. Democrats characterize these as poison pills that politicize access to reproductive health care.

The bill imposes steep cuts to biomedical and public health institutions, slashing support for the National Institutes of Health as well as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Funding is reduced for the CDC, HIV/AIDS initiatives and mental health programs, which opponents warn will weaken national preparedness for future health crises.

“I believe that all of us are ready to continue the fight and health care being right at the top of that list,” Jeffries said. “But the fight, of course, is about all of the things, all of the extremism, the parade of horribles that Donald Trump has unleashed on the American people and their failed promises to make life more affordable.”

Health care was the dominant issue of the 2018 midterms, when Democrats flipped the House by hammering Republicans over their repeated attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and weaken protections for people with preexisting conditions.

Polling at the time consistently showed health care as voters’ top concern, and Democrats leaned into personal stories of constituents who relied on the ACA’s coverage. The strategy paid off in suburban swing districts and helped build the party’s largest House majority in a decade.

The political environment today has striking similarities. Republicans once again control both chambers of Congress and the White House, and Democrats are in the minority pressing to protect health care gains. Party strategists are increasingly bullish that health care could once again be a defining wedge in the midterms.

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Open enrollment for ACA coverage begins November 1, meaning insurers will start notifying families within weeks if subsidies aren’t extended. Those notices would land just as the government funding fight peaks and likely create panic over rising premiums months before the official December 31 expiration. Leaders argue that acting now is the only way to prevent a sudden spike in costs from becoming a political and human crisis.

“This is one of many issues that should be addressed urgently by the United States Congress in terms of making sure we stop the effort to continue to rip healthcare away from the American people and lean into an effort to actually protect the healthcare of the American people,” Jeffries said. “And that includes, but is not limited to, addressing the tax subsidy issue with respect to the Affordable Care Act.“

The House on Wednesday blocked a Republican effort to censure Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) and strip her of her seat on the Homeland Security Committee, with a handful of GOP lawmakers joining Democrats in a 215–207–2 vote that amounted to a surprising bipartisan defense of the chamber’s oversight role.

Five Republicans—Reps. Don Bacon (Neb.), Mike Flood

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Senators stayed late and worked through Saturday night but still secured their full August recess.

But they left town without a deal to fast-track a slate of Trump administration nominees despite pressure from President Donald Trump and accusations from Senate Republicans that Democrats are engaged in unprecedented obstruction.

The irony is that it was Trump’s demand to confirm the nominees that kept the Senate in session in the first place, only for a presidential Truth Social tirade to blow up negotiations just as a breakthrough seemed within reach.

“So let’s be clear about what happened. Donald Trump attempted to steamroll the Senate to put in place his historically unqualified nominees, but Senate Democrats wouldn't let him,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters on Saturday night. “He bullied us. He cajoled us. He called us names. And he went home with nothing.”

At the heart of the negotiations was a potential trade: Democrats wanted the Trump administration to release previously approved funding for the National Institutes of Health and foreign aid, and commit not to submit another request to claw back congressionally appropriated dollars as it did earlier this summer. In exchange, they offered unanimous consent to confirm a group of noncontroversial nominees stuck in the Senate backlog.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) called Democrats’ refusal to confirm the nominees a subversion of the will of the voters who elected Trump and said that many of the president’s picks weren’t problematic.

“A lot of the nominees on the current backlog are nominees who have bipartisan support. In some cases, broad bipartisan support, multiple Democrats voting for these nominees coming out of the committee,” he said in a floor speech on Saturday morning. “We’re just simply saying, treat this president, at least on some level, in the way that previous presidents, both Democrats and Republican presidents, have been treated in the past by both Republican and Democrat Senates.”

Schumer unsurprisingly saw it differently.

“Historically bad nominees deserve historic levels of scrutiny,” Schumer said during a speech after Thune’s. “We have never seen nominees as flawed, as compromised, as unqualified as we have right now. And the Republican senators know that.”

The White House ultimately dismissed the Democrats’ offer. Administration officials were reluctant to unfreeze the funds and pushed to include several of Trump’s more contentious nominees in the deal. Depending on whom you asked, a breakthrough was either within reach or a long shot.

But after Trump took to his social media app to lash out at Schumer for engaging in “political extortion” while publicly rejecting any compromise, the path forward evaporated.

Without a deal, the Senate proceeded to a final 13-vote series to confirm a group of seven nominees, including former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Thune’s son-in-law Luke Lindberg to be Under Secretary of Agriculture for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs in the USDA and former Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.) to lead the Federal Transit Administration. (In a sign of senators smelling jet fumes, the procedural votes for each nominee after Lindberg were withdrawn to speed up the series.)

When Senate Republicans return from August recess, they’re expected to either vote to shorten the debate time on the remaining nominees or allow groups of nominees to be advanced out of committee and confirmed on the floor.

Without Democratic support, Republicans would have to adopt this change with a simple majority, a process known as “going nuclear” that erodes minority protections, invites retaliation, and turns the Senate into a bare-majority body where today’s win becomes tomorrow’s vulnerability.

“It would be a huge mistake for them to do it,” Schumer said of a possible rules change. “Because when they go at it alone, they screw up for the American people and for themselves.”

What won’t occur in August are recess appointments, another proposal from some GOP senators and Trump administration officials that would have allowed the president to temporarily fill his vacancies without Senate confirmation while the Senate is in recess. This would have required the House to return from its recess to formally adjourn, which would have been a logistical nightmare. It’s all a moot point since the Senate will hold pro-forma sessions every three days with no business conducted to prevent the chamber from going into recess.

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In addition to potential rules changes, the Senate will have a full legislative calendar upon its return to Washington after Labor Day. The first vote senators will take will be a procedural motion on the annual defense policy bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act.

The Senate will also need to reach an agreement with the House and Trump administration on government funding before the new fiscal year starts on Oct. 1. The Senate made progress this week in passing three of the dozen annual funding bills for military construction and veterans affairs, the Agriculture Department and FDA, and Senate operations with overwhelming bipartisan margins. (The House has passed two funding bills—MilCon-VA and Defense—but is advancing bills out of committee on party-line votes that fund the government at levels far below the Senate.)

Schumer told reporters that he and Thune have talked vaguely about broad issues related to government funding.

“The bottom line is what we ought to be doing in September is making sure we do the appropriations bills in a bipartisan way,” he said. “We ought to be making sure that we protect the American people from the hard-right craziness that just hurts them all the time, and the only way to do that is bipartisanship.”

As Texas Republicans move to finalize a Trump-backed congressional map under a rare mid-decade redistricting process, the political arm of the Congressional Black Caucus issued a show of solidarity with Texas Democrats and grassroots organizers fighting what critics call an effort to suppress Black and Latino political power.

The statement comes as the final public hearing is underway in Austin and applauds those opposing the proposed map and frames the redistricting push as part of a broader attempt by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to avoid electoral accountability.

“This unprecedented, mid-decade redistricting sham lays bare a simple truth: Donald Trump and Washington Republicans fear being held accountable at the ballot box in the upcoming midterm elections,” the Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee said in a statement first obtained by Once Upon a Hill. “These maps—as proposed—would dismantle communities of interest and dilute the political power of Black and Latino voters.”

The map—first released earlier this week—attempts to entrench GOP power by splitting Democratic strongholds in urban centers like Dallas, Houston and Austin. Civil rights advocates argue it violates the Voting Rights Act and represents one of the most aggressive mid-cycle gerrymanders in recent history.

Several CBC members could see their districts radically changed or weakened if the map becomes law, including Reps. Marc Veasey, Al Green, Jasmine Crockett and the winner of the special election this November to succeed the late Sylvester Turner. While the CBC statement doesn’t reference specific districts or strategies, it promises to support Texas Democrats “in this struggle for just and fair elections” and says the caucus will “exercise our rights to stop this attack on our democracy—in the courts and by galvanizing the mighty energy of We the People.”

Redistricting traditionally occurs once per decade, but Trump has pushed GOP-led states to revisit their maps mid-cycle, arguing political shifts and favorable state courts justify new lines. Texas Republicans have seized that opening and Democrats are now weighing how far to go in response. While the CBC is not publicly calling for any specific tactic, its show of support arrives at a pivotal moment for Texas Democrats inside the Capitol and for organizers rallying outside it.

The possibility of a quorum break carries recent precedent.

In 2021, more than 50 Texas House Democrats—including Crockett, who then served in the state legislature—fled the state to block a Republican voting restrictions bill during a special session. The lawmakers chartered private planes to Washington, D.C., where they urged Congress to pass federal voting rights legislation while halting business in the Texas House for over a month.

Their absence denied Republicans the quorum needed to proceed, prompting Governor Greg Abbott to call successive special sessions and issue arrest warrants in an attempt to compel their return. Although the walkout ultimately ended without stopping the bill, it underscored the lengths Texas Democrats have gone to in resisting GOP efforts to restrict access to the ballot box and previewed tactics they may consider again.

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The Texas special session has become a flashpoint in the national fight over redistricting and representation, with national Democrats increasingly alarmed by what they view as a deliberate effort to dilute the political power of communities of color. Called just weeks after catastrophic floods devastated parts of Central Texas, the session prioritized redrawing the state’s congressional map alongside disaster relief and conservative culture-war legislation. But Democrats argue the real agenda is electoral self-preservation. For House leaders and the CBC, the implications extend beyond Texas, raising broader concerns about the erosion of voting rights and the manipulation of democratic systems for partisan gain.

The CBCPAC’s statement follows a two-day visit from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries this week to Austin to organize a response to the map with legislators and community leaders.

“Our message to the people of Texas and to the people of this great country is simple: You deserve better,” Jeffries said during a press conference following a meeting with Texas House members and members of the Texas congressional delegation. “But that’s not what is being delivered right now by the Texas state government under Republican leadership.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday afternoon demanded that President Donald Trump fulfill his pledge to release the Epstein files by invoking an obscure but powerful oversight statute to force the release of…

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A member of Congressional Black Caucus leadership has called for President Donald Trump’s top intelligence officer to resign following public claims that the Obama administration manufactured and politicized evidence against Trump regarding Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

In a letter circulated for signatures exclusively among caucus members, Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.), who serves as the CBC’s whip, rejected Gabbard’s assertion and argued that she has politicized her role, undermined public trust and promoted a conspiracy theory previously debunked by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, then led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The members also criticize her for deflecting attention from the Trump administration’s refusal to release records related to Jeffrey Epstein. The letter concludes that Gabbard’s continued leadership threatens the credibility of the Intelligence Community and calls for her immediate resignation.

Kamlager Dove Gabbard Letter

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Kamlager-Dove’s demand comes a day after Gabbard confirmed during Wednesday afternoon’s White House press briefing that she had referred former President Barack Obama and other Obama-era officials to the Justice Department and FBI for potential criminal prosecution. While supporters of Gabbard and President Trump have seized on this referral as a basis for legal action, critics argue the claims lack merit.

“Tulsi Gabbard is full of shit,” Kamlager-Dove told me in a brief interview on Wednesday. “I guess when the stakes are so high because your boss has been told that they’re in the files, you do a Hail Mary, and that is to concoct these cockamamie allegations about President Obama.”

She added she was intentional about circulating the letter among CBC members first because Obama was the nation’s first Black president and previously served in the Senate. He is also a former member of the CBC.

“He really showed people what an administration of integrity looks like,” Kamlager-Dove said. “And what bullies do is they go after the ones that no one else will go after. Bullies try to take down the big fish. So Obama is considered a big fish in the pantheon of Democratic presidents.”

Twenty-two members, including the CBC’s entire executive board, have signed on to the letter.

President Trump has long promoted the false claim that Obama and his administration weaponized intelligence to undermine his 2016 campaign by fabricating ties to Russia. The Senate Intel investigation confirmed that Russia interfered in the election to help Trump but found no evidence that votes were altered or that the intelligence community acted improperly.

Nearly a decade later, Gabbard is breathing new life into the conspiracy. In a document released on July 18, Gabbard alleged that the Obama administration manufactured and politicized evidence against Trump, language that mirrors Trump’s rhetoric and departs sharply from the nonpartisan role traditionally held by the nation’s top intelligence official. The release has reignited tensions within the intelligence community and drawn swift backlash from congressional Democrats, including House leadership.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) dismissed Gabbard’s actions on Wednesday morning as a political stunt designed to curry favor with Trump and deflect attention from GOP-led policy failures.

“Is this what we’re doing?” he said, pivoting quickly to criticize Republican efforts to slash funding for health care, nutrition assistance and veterans’ services under the recently passed reconciliation bill. “When you have nothing to present that’s affirmative to the American people, Republicans blame Barack Obama. It’s laughable.”

House Minority Whip Katherine Clark also accused Gabbard of prioritizing loyalty to Trump over the needs of struggling families.

“The American people are waving their arms and saying, ‘We aren’t making it in this country,and everything the GOP is doing is making it worse,’” Clark said. “They are the ones that pay the price for these lies and for this fidelity not to the people of the United States, but to one person.”

Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) linked Gabbard’s declassification to Trump’s continued efforts to evade scrutiny over his administration’s refusal to release Epstein-related records.

“As only a distraction to more Jeffrey Epstein questions, Tulsi Gabbard throws a bone to Donald Trump,” Aguilar said, adding that the gesture comes after she was sidelined from key national security briefings earlier in the year. “It’s been nine-and-a half-years since Barack Obama was in the White House. Every other effort is just a distraction by Donald Trump to blame someone else.”

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Even the office of the former president felt the need to respond.

In a statement this week, Obama spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush dismissed the allegations in a similar fashion to House Democratic leaders, calling them a baseless distraction. While the office typically refrains from commenting on “constant nonsense and misinformation,” Rodenbush said the claims were egregious enough to merit a public response.

“Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes.”

More than a year after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity, and nearly a decade into Donald Trump’s grip on American politics, Rep. Joe Morelle is making another push to claw back the balance of powers.

The New York Democrat and ranking member of the House Administration Committee reintroduced a constitutional amendment on Tuesday afternoon that would bar presidents from pardoning themselves and eliminate immunity protections for federal officials, including the president, for criminal acts committed in office.

The decision was handed down before Trump was reelected, before Republicans flipped the Senate and before GOP lawmakers started hugging the president as tightly as they are now, all of which makes progress on Morelle’s proposal improbable while Trump is in office.

However, Morelle says the amendment, which boasts more than 130 cosponsors, all of whom are Democrats, would also apply to Democratic presidents—a fact he hopes will encourage Republicans to take a long view toward democracy reform, even if few are listening at the moment.

“From this point forward, all presidents, whether Democrats or Republicans, will have the ability to act outside of the law and be free from accountability,” Morelle told me. “And so what I’m hopeful is they’ll take the longer view and they won’t be so concerned about always protecting President Trump, which it seems like they’re devoted and dedicated to doing so.”

Morelle added that he plans to write a letter to every House Republican, urging them to sign on and expressed optimism that the resolution will be introduced in the Senate.

Morelle was joined by fellow House Administration Democrats Terri Sewell of Alabama and Julie Johnson of Texas, who framed the amendment as part of a broader fight to protect democratic institutions in places where they say that fight is especially urgent.

“At the end of the day, we all know and have had our civics lesson that there are three co-equal branches of government, and that one of those branches cannot usurp the power of the other,“ Sewell said. “Now more than ever, we must take action to correct this injustice and restore the ideals upon which our founding fathers founded this nation.”

Johnson warned that if the president can violate their oath, target their enemies or trample the rights of the people with impunity, then the Constitution and its laws are meaningless.

“[The amendment] says that the Constitution that gives the president its power also holds them accountable when they abuse it,” she said. “We have a duty to defend his principle, and if we fail, we invite future presidents to test the limits of lawlessness. And if we stand firm, we protect the very soul of this republic.”

The Supreme Court’s July 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States marked a historic expansion of executive power, holding for the first time that a former president is immune from criminal prosecution for official acts taken while in office.

The 6–3 decision, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, drew a sharp distinction between official and unofficial conduct, shielding Trump from federal charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and narrowing the scope of accountability for future presidents.

The case stemmed from former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal indictment of Trump in 2023, which charged the former president with conspiring to obstruct the certification of the election results and defrauding the United States. Trump’s legal team argued that his actions fell within the core functions of the presidency and were therefore immune from prosecution. After lower courts rejected that argument, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, setting up a consequential showdown over the limits of presidential power.

By the time the Court ruled, Trump was already the presumptive Republican nominee and campaigning on promises of so-called retribution against political opponents and a sweeping overhaul of the federal government. The decision effectively short-circuited Smith’s prosecution, making it nearly impossible to bring Trump to trial before the November election. He went on to win a second term.

The ruling provoked fierce backlash from legal scholars, Justice Department officials, and Democratic lawmakers, who warned that it placed the president above the law and set a dangerous precedent for future abuses of power. While the majority emphasized that not every presidential act would be protected, the practical effect of the ruling was to grant broad immunity for any conduct deemed official, a category that remains largely undefined.

In the year since the landmark ruling, the legal and political consequences have been swift and far-reaching. With the threat of prosecution for official acts effectively off the table, Trump has returned to the presidency with fewer checks than any other modern occupant of the office. The ruling has granted him extraordinary leeway to test and often stretch the boundaries of executive power.

Within weeks of his second inauguration, Trump leaned into the ruling’s logic, asserting immunity in response to new legal challenges and framing his authority as near-absolute when acting in an official capacity. Senior administration officials and allies in Congress have echoed the decision’s language to defend aggressive uses of federal power, including politically motivated firings, controversial agency directives and sweeping policy rollbacks with little public process.

Some legal scholars and former officials argue that the ruling has begun to reshape the legal landscape in subtle but significant ways. Prosecutors may be more cautious when weighing investigations that could be construed as targeting a president’s official conduct. Congressional oversight efforts, already hamstrung by partisan gridlock, now face a more assertive use of executive privilege. And critics warn that the Court’s decision has edged the country toward a two-tiered system of justice with one in which presidents are shielded from the consequences of actions that would be unlawful for anyone else so long as they are cast as official.

Politically, the decision has further emboldened Trump’s claims that any effort to restrain him through courts, Congress, or the press is illegitimate. He has cast the ruling as a personal vindication and a license to implement his second-term agenda without compromise or fear of reprisal. And while many Democrats and some former Republican officials continue to raise alarms, the institutional tools to meaningfully challenge the president’s actions have grown weaker since the Court’s intervention.

Morelle’s proposed amendment contains three sections, each aimed at codifying presidential accountability into the Constitution and directly responding to the immunity ruling.

The first section makes clear that no federal official— including the president, vice president or members of Congress—can claim immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken in their official capacity. It carves out only one exception: the protections granted to legislators under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause.

The second section explicitly prohibits self-pardons, stating that the president does not have the power to pardon themselves for any offense against the United States. The Supreme Court left this question unanswered in its 2024 decision.

The third section affirms that the amendment would be self-executing upon ratification, while also authorizing Congress to pass any necessary legislation to enforce it.

Though symbolic in the current political climate, the amendment reflects a growing urgency among some Democrats to reinforce the principle that no one, including the president, is above the law.

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It’s intentionally difficult and exceedingly rare to amend the U.S. Constitution. A proposed amendment must first receive a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate to be adopted. From there, it must be ratified by three-fourths of state legislatures. Napkin math says that means at least 38 states must approve it.

Only 27 amendments have been ratified in American history, with the most recent—lowering the voting age to 18—adopted in 1971. Hundreds of amendments are introduced in Congress each session, but the vast majority never receive a hearing or vote.

Morelle’s proposal falls into a long tradition of amendments introduced to signal a broader set of principles or future ambitions, not for immediate passage. In that sense, its primary function may be to keep the question of presidential accountability alive—even if the constitutional pathway is blocked for now.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said the Trump administration should reverse its decision to lift a Biden-era pause on student loan interest payments set to expire at the end of the month.

The resumption of interest payments—particularly for borrowers enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan—could add another financial burden to many Americans already struggling with rising living costs, housing insecurity and economic uncertainty driven by President Donald Trump’s trade war.

Jeffries framed the move as part of a broader pattern of policy actions that have worsened the affordability crisis for everyday Americans.

“[This policy] represents an assault on students, just like we’ve seen the Trump administration assault veterans, assault homeowners, assault everyday Americans, assault small business owners and entrepreneurs and others,” he told Once Upon a Hill. “It’s just yet another example of the Trump administration not giving a damn about the high cost of living in the United States of America, and in fact, consistently doing the opposite as it relates to providing relief.”

Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.), who serves on the House Education and Workforce Committee, told me she agreed with Jeffries that the policy should be reversed and said that not doing so would lead to many people defaulting on their loans.

“The cost of everything is going up,” she added. “And now these payments are going back into effect when people are still not stabilized.”

The Education Department announced on July 9 that interest would begin accruing again next month for borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan, following a federal court ruling and in line with the Trump administration’s broader implementation of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Launched under the Biden administration after the Supreme Court struck down its original student debt cancellation plan, the SAVE plan became the most affordable income-driven repayment option. It capped monthly payments at 5% of discretionary income for many borrowers and included an interest subsidy that prevented balances from growing if borrowers made qualifying payments. Once interest resumes, this cushion will be gone and any shortfall in monthly payments will start compounding again, reversing years of progress for borrowers who were finally beginning to gain traction.

Estimates suggest that an average SAVE borrower could accrue $3,500 or more in additional annual interest without the subsidy. Many borrowers—especially Black, Latino and first-generation graduates—face renewed pressure to delay milestones such as buying a home, starting a family, or launching a business. The psychological weight of rising balances may also dampen political engagement or erode trust in institutions, especially if forgiveness options or safety nets continue to deteriorate.

The interest pause will occur weeks after Republicans pass their megabill. It makes sweeping changes to the federal higher education system that critics warn will drive up costs for current and future borrowers. The law eliminates key tax credits for students and families, imposes new borrowing caps for graduate and professional students and ends both Grad PLUS and Parent PLUS loans.

It also grants the Education Department broad authority to restructure income-driven repayment plans—potentially reducing forgiveness options—and makes it more difficult for borrowers who have been defrauded to obtain relief. Though the bill expands Pell Grants to include short-term workforce programs, the overall shift tilts away from affordability just as many borrowers are still regaining their financial footing after the pandemic.

The Education Department confirmed in a letter last week that it will move forward with key higher education provisions from megabill. While the department emphasized steps to avoid mid-year Pell Grant cuts and outlined upcoming eligibility changes for workforce training programs, the letter also signaled the administration’s intent to begin phasing out critical borrower protections, such as the gainful employment rule. For many, the message was clear: Even as inflation persists and economic volatility grows, the policy focus shifts away from affordability and toward cost containment, leaving borrowers to bear the brunt of the difference.

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Heading into the midterms, Jeffries said House Democrats’ focus would remain on building an affordable economy.

“Imagine an America where when you work hard and play by the rules, everyone can afford to live the good life. That’s the America that House Democrats are working hard to bring about: good-paying jobs, good housing, good health care, good education for your children and a good retirement,” he said. “But our system is broken, and Republicans are making it worse.”

A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

The House passed a landmark bill establishing the first federal rules for payment stablecoins on Thursday afternoon, sending the measure to President Donald Trump’s desk as the most significant piece of cryptocurrency legislation to clear both chambers of Congress.

Lawmakers also approved two other GOP-led digital asset bills—one to divide regulatory oversight between the SEC and CFTC and another to block the Federal Reserve from issuing a retail central bank digital currency. Together, the votes represent a pivotal moment in U.S. digital asset policy, with Congress advancing its first comprehensive crypto regulatory framework.

The votes exposed fault lines within the Democratic Caucus, with members divided over how to balance consumer protection, financial innovation and the growing influence of the crypto industry. Rather than take a unified stance, Democratic leaders allowed the caucus to splinter.

“The Democratic Caucus made the decision not to whip and allow each individual member to make an assessment based on what was in the best interest of the people that they represent,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told me after the votes. “And as a result, you saw people break in different directions.

One House Democrat framed the decision not to whip as a reflection of crypto’s rising political clout.

“Crypto is a big player in the game,” the member said. “It is a game changer for many communities and seen as an economic equalizer and that resonates.”

The member added that lawmakers were likely relieved that leadership didn’t put its thumb on the scale.

A senior Democratic aide, however, dismissed the idea that the industry’s influence shaped leadership strategy, responding with a firm “no” when asked.

The crosscurrents reveal a party still divided on crypto and a leadership team navigating that uncertainty with strategic distance.

A second House Democrat agreed, noting that some colleagues voted for the bills in part to avoid becoming targets of the crypto lobby.

“Leadership may not have whipped those bills, but Maxine Waters sure the hell did,” the second member added, underscoring that while party leaders stayed officially neutral, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee fought hard to rally opposition behind the scenes.

House conservatives on Wednesday briefly derailed their conference’s “Crypto Week” by tanking a procedural vote required to open debate on the bills.

The standoff was sparked by about a dozen hard‐right Republicans siding with Democrats, which froze the floor for nearly ten hours. The holdout members demanded that the measures be debated as a package or attached to must‑pass legislation, creating a deadlock that left the House paralyzed. At the same time, GOP leaders—including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.)—and the White House worked behind the scenes to break the impasse.

The marathon reached a breaking point after beating the previous record—set just two weeks ago while mired in internal gridlock over the reconciliation bill—for the longest-ever House floor vote. At its height, voting remained open into late evening, with as many as nine Republicans withholding their support until assurances, such as attaching one bill to the annual defense policy bill, were provided. As they’ve been known to do, the holdouts ultimately folded around 11 p.m.

The three-bill digital asset push reflects an aggressive effort by Republicans and some Democrats to establish a regulatory framework that accommodates crypto innovation while limiting federal power.

The GENIUS Act, which passed the House 308–122 and the Senate 68–30, establishes the first federal framework for payment stablecoins by limiting eligible issuers, requiring strict one-to-one reserves, banning interest payments, and establishing a dual federal–state oversight model.

The CLARITY Act, approved by the House 294–134, divides crypto oversight between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the American federal agency that regulates U.S. derivatives markets and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which enforces laws against market manipulation. The bill also establishes guardrails for token issuance and exchange registration, aiming to reduce regulatory uncertainty for developers and investors.

The Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, which passed the House 219–210 along party lines, would bar the Fed from issuing a central bank digital currency without congressional approval, a nod to GOP concerns over financial surveillance. While only one measure is heading to the White House, the House votes mark the most substantial congressional action yet on national crypto policy.

Waters counterprogrammed “Crypto Week” with “Anti-Crypto Corruption Week,” a coordinated messaging blitz against the GOP’s deregulatory crypto agenda that I previewed in Sunday’s Congress Nerd. In tandem with Digital Assets Subcommittee Ranking Member Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) and other House Financial Services Democrats, she sounded the alarm that Republican-led legislation would weaken oversight, invite fraud and cater to an industry increasingly intertwined with President Trump and his political allies.

Waters also warned that the bills planted the seeds for the next financial crisis, which is remarkable since many crypto early adopters say they support the industry because the 2008 crisis showed the limits of centralized, deregulated government.

“The premise of a lot of what people had in support of crypto was that it was going to be decentralized,” Lynch told me this week. “But when you look at the way the crypto industry is right now, it’s really controlled by a small cabal of people, so they haven’t accomplished the decentralization that they thought they were getting.”

Lynch added that many supporters also assumed there would be meaningful oversight from regulators like the SEC or CFTC to protect investors, but noted that this is simply not the case under the current framework.

Committee Democrat Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) said the pushback from Democrats isn’t about opposing crypto itself, but about resisting efforts to deregulate the industry at the expense of consumer protections.

“If you want to invest in crypto, that's great. That’s your choice. That's what a free market economy is all about. But we have regulations in place to make sure that bad actors don't take advantage of investors,” she told me. “And what these bills are designed to do is to take the sidebars off that would allow bad actors to take advantage.”

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Jeffries himself split his votes, supporting the GENIUS Act but opposing the other two measures.

“It was negotiated in a bipartisan way in the Senate with sufficient guardrails to allow the bill to move forward in a manner that can both benefit the American consumer but also allow the industry to thrive against international competition,” he said after the vote.

House Democrats launched an effort on Thursday to force a vote on a bill that would overturn an executive order President Donald Trump signed in March, which restricted collective bargaining rights for more than a million federal workers.

Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) joined union leaders and pro-labor lawmakers to rally support for the Protect America’s Workforce Act. The bill, which has drawn 222 cosponsors—including seven Republicans—would nullify President Trump’s executive order and preserve union protections for federal employees.

With Speaker Mike Johnson declining to bring the measure to the floor, Democrats are turning to a discharge petition, a rarely used procedural tactic that would bypass leadership and force a vote if a majority of members sign on.

Golden told Once Upon a Hill that he hadn’t spoken with Johnson about bringing the bill to the floor, but that the speaker would have done so if it were a top legislative priority.

“I’m trying to be a humble guy. I don’t know that the speaker regularly meets with rank-and-file members, and particularly not those from the other side,” Golden said. “But I’m confident that some of the Republicans like Fitzpatrick definitely had those conversations.”

Golden added that Republicans told him the recently passed GOP reconciliation bill was too heavy a lift to focus on strengthening workplace protections.

“I get that, but [the reconciliation bill is] clear through the House, and now it’s a good time to focus on other important bipartisan work and things that we’re going to get done,” he said. “I feel pretty hopeful that they’ll get there.”

Jeffries framed the legislation as a test of whether Speaker Johnson would stand by his own words about letting the House work its will. He argued that the American Dream—decent wages, affordable housing, healthcare, education and a secure retirement—is made possible because of organized labor. Passing this bill, he said, would honor that legacy. And if Republican leadership allowed a floor vote, it would pass.

“We agree. And the House working its will means that this legislation that protects the right to organize, the freedom to organize and collective bargaining should be fully aired in a debate on the floor of the House of Representatives,” Jeffries said. “Given the unwillingness of Republican leadership to allow the House to work its will, there is another way.”

Trump’s executive order dramatically expanded the number of federal employees excluded from collective bargaining rights, further undermining the role of unions in the federal workforce. The order directs agencies to reclassify certain broadly defined national security-related positions, exempting them from the labor-management framework that governs most civilian federal workers.

While these exclusions have long existed under the law, the Trump administration is now interpreting them more aggressively, echoing efforts from his first term to weaken public-sector unions and strip worker protections. Golden’s bill aims to safeguard the rights of federal workers to organize and collectively bargain, pushing back on what Democrats view as a broad and politically motivated effort to weaken public-sector unions under the guise of national security.

Collective bargaining has been a cornerstone of American labor rights since the New Deal era, when the 1935 National Labor Relations Act guaranteed private-sector workers the right to organize and negotiate with employers over wages, hours, and working conditions. While federal employees were excluded from that law, presidents beginning with John F. Kennedy extended similar rights through executive orders, culminating in a robust labor-management framework that allowed most civilian federal workers to engage in collective bargaining.

Over the decades, these protections have been periodically tested, most notably during the Reagan administration’s firing of striking air traffic controllers and more recently during efforts by Republican administrations to limit the power of public-sector unions. The current debate marks a new flashpoint in the long-running struggle over the role of organized labor in the federal workforce.

A discharge petition is a procedural tool that allows a majority of the House—at least 218 members—to force a bill out of committee and onto the floor for a vote, bypassing leadership and committee chairs who may be blocking it. While rarely successful because rank-and-file members are often reluctant to defy party leadership or break ranks publicly, discharge petitions are usually used as a pressure tactic to spotlight stalled legislation and force members to take a public stand.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Monday afternoon rejected a vow from Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to pursue additional reconciliation bills and steep funding cuts, calling the House GOP’s legislative approach an attack on the American people.

The pushback comes a day after Johnson previewed an aggressively partisan agenda that includes bypassing Democrats on major legislation, codifying more of President Donald Trump’s executive orders and enacting spending levels below those agreed to for the current fiscal deadline. With the funding deadline and annual defense policy bill on the horizon, the stakes of bipartisan cooperation are rising, even as Republican leaders show little interest in it.

“The Republican legislative agenda in the House continues to be to unleash chaos, cruelty and corruption on the American people,” Jeffries told Once Upon a Hill. “We will continue as Democrats to strongly oppose it.”

The top House Democrat later told reporters that Republicans appear intent on grinding the appropriations process to a halt and undermining its significance by clawing back previously approved federal dollars.

“The only way to avoid a government shutdown that Republicans are clearly trying to trigger is for there to be bipartisan discussions about reaching a spending agreement that meets the needs of the American people,” he said. “At this point, Mike Johnson continues to believe that they can operate in a partisan way, or potentially reach a bipartisan agreement and then break it immediately thereafter with this reckless rescissions approach.”

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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) joined Rep. Troy Carter (D-La.) and a sla…

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After days of uncertainty, Senate Republicans passed a sweeping tax, immigration, defense, and energy package on Tuesday afternoon, which stands as the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s second-term legislative agenda.

The final vote came after more than 24 hours of record-breaking amendment votes, late-night negotiations with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and a tie-breaking appearance by Vice President JD Vance, who cast the decisive vote after Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Thom Tillis (N.C.) and Susan Collins (Maine) joined all Democrats in opposition.

The bill includes the largest cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in American history and now heads back to the House for final consideration.

The vote completes a stunning turnaround for Murkowski, who was one of three Republican senators, alongside Collins and the late John McCain of Arizona, famously helped preserve the Affordable Care Act in 2017, casting a decisive vote against repeal that cemented her reputation as an independent-minded defender of health care access.

Eight years later, she became the final holdout to support a bill that would defund Planned Parenthood for a year and enact the deepest cuts to SNAP and Medicaid in U.S. history, policies that independent estimates suggest could strip health coverage from as many as 17 million Americans.

Murkowski’s evolution underscores both the political pressure that Republican moderates face under unified GOP control and the strategic concessions that party leaders are willing to make to secure critical votes.

She told reporters after the vote that she wants the House to return the bill to the Senate so Republicans can improve it, an unlikely scenario at this juncture.

“My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet,” Murkowski said, adding that she voted for it to keep from killing the bill altogether. “Kill it and it's gone. There is a tax impact coming forward. That's gonna hurt the people in my state.”

Collins, who voted on Saturday night to allow the bill to be debated, said she strongly supported tax relief for families and small businesses, but the cuts to the safety net were a bridge too far.

“My vote against this bill stems primarily from the harmful impact it will have on Medicaid, affecting low-income families and rural health care providers like our hospitals and nursing homes.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) blasted the Republican megabill just moments after its passage, describing a sense of gloom among GOP senators in the chamber.

“They knew deep in their hearts how bad this bill is for them, their states and the Republican Party,” he said. “When people start losing their Medicaid, when their electric bills go up, when kids and parents lose SNAP funding, the people of America will remember this vote.”

Schumer framed the debate as a moral and political battle that Democrats fought aggressively.

“We broke through with the American people, who by a two-to-one margin don’t like this bill,” he said. “We won a remarkable number of cases with the parliamentarian. And because of our relentless focus on a simple, unified message, it has sunk in with the American people and it will remain.”

He promised sustained campaigning against vulnerable Republicans.

“We’re going to be in their states in every way. You’re going to see a constant, constant battle in those states reminding people day in day out of what happened.”

As for whether the vote will help Democrats win back the Senate in 2026: “We didn’t do this for electoral purposes. We did this because we passionately believe how bad this is. But of course it’ll be an issue in the election.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told me that he and Schumer were in close contact over the last several days.

“[Schumer] and Senate Democrats fought hard to remove several extreme provisions from the GOP tax scam that will soften some of the blows that are being directed at the American people and every single one of them strongly opposed it, as will be the case with House Democrats.”

Final passage came more than 24 hours after the Senate began what’s known as vote-a-rama, a rapid-fire voting session when senators can offer an unlimited number of amendments.

But unlike most vote-a-ramas, where majority leaders aim to move swiftly toward a wraparound amendment and final passage, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) slowed the process to a crawl, allowing Republicans to lock down wavering votes—most notably those of Murkowski—amid internal tensions and unresolved demands.

Democrats argued the delay was proof the bill wasn’t ready for primetime and that Republicans lacked the votes for passage. Thune, however, defended the slow pace, arguing it reflected the complexity and high stakes of legislation often finalized in the eleventh hour. But the slowdown prolonged floor drama and spotlighted the fragile state of GOP unity.

Arriving at the Capitol as vote-a-rama dragged into its second day, Vance told reporters, “We’re gonna find out,” when asked this morning if Republicans had the votes to pass the megabill.

Before he arrived on Capitol Hill this morning, Vice President Vance posted on X that “everything else—the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions,” a statement Democrats seized on as evidence of how MAGA immigration politics have distorted Republican policymaking.

For Democrats, the comment encapsulates the party’s core critique that the megabill prioritizes punitive immigration enforcement over policies that will directly harm millions of Americans, including deep cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and tax credits for billionaires and big corporations. Vance’s framing reinforced the view that immigration is not just a policy area but the ideological engine driving the GOP’s legislative agenda.

In the end, this came down to a strategic bet: Republican leaders believed it was easier to negotiate with their own members on extreme, deeply polarizing policies against strict self-imposed deadlines than to strike bipartisan compromises with Democrats on more widely supported goals like cutting taxes, funding national defense, securing the border and promoting energy independence.

The result validated Thune’s methodical strategy through the vote-a-rama and confirmed that conservative policy groups, such as Heritage Action, which announced that the vote would count toward the public rating system the group uses to measure lawmakers’ adherence to its conservative priorities, still have influence.

The final bill reflects a key concession to Murkowski, the last Republican to join the effort. GOP leaders rewrote the SNAP cost-sharing rules to temporarily exempt states like Alaska, which have high payment error rates, giving them more time to comply. Democrats fumed that the change exempted some states from the requirements while still imposing burdensome ones on others.

Despite that deal, the bill still includes a one-year ban on federal Medicaid funding for providers that offer abortions, a move Democrats say will effectively defund Planned Parenthood clinics across the country. The provision only allows exceptions for rape, incest or if the patient’s life is in danger. It’s a major victory for anti-abortion groups and one of the most politically charged pieces of the package.

The bill also maintains deep cuts to Medicaid. Republicans are moving forward with plans to phase out extra federal funding for states that expanded Medicaid and to impose new work and cost-sharing requirements on low-income adults. Democrats warn these changes could leave millions without health coverage and have blasted the bill as the most aggressive attack on Medicaid in history.

One high-profile provision that didn’t survive: The proposed 10-year federal ban on state AI regulations. The idea was to prevent a patchwork of conflicting laws across the country, but a bipartisan group of senators successfully removed it. That means states are still free to regulate AI however they choose, even as Congress struggles to agree on a national standard.

Another notable change is a tweak to the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. Senate Republicans reached a deal with the White House to temporarily raise the cap from $10,000 to $40,000, at least through the end of the decade. It’s a win for Republicans in high-tax states who’ve pushed for relief ever since the 2017 tax law limited the deduction. But Democrats say their GOP counterparts shouldn’t receive credit for raising a cap that didn’t exist eight years ago.

The bill also locks in several extensions of President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which were set to expire after 2025.

These include lower income tax rates, a doubled child tax credit baseline, expanded standard deductions and a higher estate tax exemption. Republicans argue that these provisions will protect middle-class families from tax hikes, although Democrats contend that the benefits are skewed toward the wealthy.

In an effort to frame the bill as worker-friendly, Republicans added new tax deductions for overtime pay, tips and a portion of workers’ payroll taxes that go toward Social Security. While the provisions may result in modest savings for some workers, they fall short of Trump’s campaign promise to eliminate taxes on these income sources. And Democrats contend they pale in comparison to the bill’s larger tax breaks for corporations and the ultra-wealthy.

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Final passage in the House, while likely, is not a foregone conclusion.

The bill still falls short of the House Freedom Caucus’s demands for deeper spending cuts and more aggressive deficit reduction, while also drawing concern from so-called moderate Republicans who want a lighter touch on Medicaid and safety net programs. With just a narrow majority, House GOP leaders can’t afford many defections, especially as outside pressure campaigns intensify ahead of the vote.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his leadership team released a joint statement that said the House would work to send the bill to Trump’s desk by the president’s July 4th deadline.

“This bill is President Trump’s agenda and we are making it law,” they said. “House Republicans are ready to finish the job and put the One Big Beautiful Bill on President Trump’s desk in time for Independence Day.”

Thune acknowledged the uphill battle awaiting House Republicans but expressed confidence in the bill his chamber sent over.

“I appreciate the narrow margins they have over there and the challenge the speaker and his team have in front of them,” Thune told reporters after the vote. “But I think we gave them a really strong product.”

The House Rules Committee is currently meeting to prepare the bill for floor consideration as early as 9 a.m. on Wednesday morning. Jeffries will meet with his leadership this evening and House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) will convene a caucus meeting shortly after to discuss House Democrats’ opposition to the bill. House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) will hold a whip meeting in the morning to continue the conversation ahead of the first procedural vote.

Jeffries said he expects all Democrats will be present and all tools to delay final passage, including his floor privilege to speak as long as he wishes, are on the table.

“House Democrats are going to everything we can for the next few hours—today, tomorrow, for the balance of this week and beyond—to stop this bill from ever becoming law.”

Former President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance on this day one year ago triggered an unprecedented crisis within the Democratic Party. The crisis played out in real time over three fraught weeks of public second-guessing, behind-the-scenes maneuvering and mounting calls for him to step aside.

Struggling to deliver clear answers, repeatedly losing his train of thought and appearing physically fatigued, Biden failed to reassure voters—and many of his own allies—that he was up to defeating President Donald Trump a second time.

What followed was a full-blown political reckoning. Hill Democrats privately panicked and publicly deflected, major donors began withholding funds, and editorial boards and Democratic strategists urged him to bow out. A slow drip of statements from members of Congress—particularly from swing-district Democrats—evolved from supportive but concerned to openly urging Biden to pass the torch.

Throughout the ordeal, former Vice President Kamala Harris stayed on script as she projected loyalty while quietly shoring up support from key blocs to ease her ultimate transition from second-in-command to party standardbearer.

Once Biden formally withdrew from the race in late July and endorsed Harris as his successor, she swiftly consolidated Democratic power centers and emerged as the presumptive nominee. The episode marked the most consequential intraparty upheaval since 1968—and reshaped the general election overnight.

I covered the debate from a watch party in D.C.’s Chinatown neighborhood. The mood quickly turned from festive to somber, and the mostly millennial and Gen Z crowd was visibly distressed by President Biden’s halting delivery and verbal stumbles.

“Get it together, Joe,” one person said as others watched silently. “Come on now.”

The moment Biden declared, “We beat Medicare”—a likely flub meant to reference Medicare drug negotiations—was widely cited as emblematic of his incoherence that night and quickly went viral online.

Yet some attendees remained loyal.

“My granny mixes up me and my sister’s name all the time,” another party attendee told me. “But I know she knows who I am. All Trump does is lie! That’s what I care about.”

By the first commercial break, guests nervously reassured each other that there was still time to turn things around. But I knew from the texts I received from Democratic insiders, some of whom were already calling for Biden to step down, that the damage was done.

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The House on Wednesday afternoon passed a Republican-drafted proposal to fund military construction, veterans’ health care and housing for servicemembers in fiscal year 2026 that once again marked a dramatic departure from the broad bipartisan consensus that once defined it.

Once considered one of the most noncontroversial annual appropriations measures, MilCon-VA has become a platform for partisan policy fights, especially over abortion access, transgender health care and DEI programs at VA facilities and military installations. That shift was reflected in the near-party-line vote, with all but two Democrats—Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.) and Jared Golden (Maine)—voting no.

The final tally was 218-206.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) accused Republicans of using the bill to advance the Trump agenda at the expense of veterans.

“They are trying to rip away resources from the Veterans Administration, and at the same time, thousands of veterans have been fired unceremoniously from their employment with the federal government. It’s a complete and total disgrace,” Jeffries told me ahead of the vote. “The appropriations bill should be used to stand up for the veterans of this country. Yet, Republicans have chosen to continue their assault and that is why you will see strong Democratic opposition.”

The bill provides $147.5 billion in discretionary funding, including more than $14 billion for military construction projects across the armed services and reserve components:

• $2.1B for the Army, $4.1B for the Navy and Marine Corps, $3.2B for the Air Force, and $4.0B for Defense-Wide agencies

• $1.3B for the National Guard and Reserve

• $540M for unfunded priority projects identified by the military services for FY25 and FY26

It also includes nearly $1.2 billion for family housing, plus additional funds for child development centers ($75M), barracks planning ($75M), Department of Defense lab modernization ($105M), and demolition projects ($75M). The bill prohibits the closure or realignment of Guantánamo Bay and blocks new base construction—at home or abroad—without prior congressional approval.

House Republicans say the measure fulfills Congress’s duty to support servicemembers and veterans while curbing wasteful spending. They point to provisions that bolster U.S. posture in the Indo-Pacific, support veteran mental health and invest in President Donald Trump’s Bridging Rental Assistance for Veteran Empowerment (BRAVE) program to combat homelessness.

But the bill also cements key elements of the GOP’s culture war agenda. It reinforces Trump-era executive orders targeting DEI initiatives, restricts gender-affirming care at the VA, expands Hyde-like abortion restrictions and blocks the VA from reporting certain veterans to the FBI’s background check system—a change Republicans frame as protecting Second Amendment rights.

Authored by Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), the bill has become a vehicle for what Democratic leaders call a broader realignment of military and veterans policy toward Trump-era ideology.

Democrats formally whipped against the bill, warning that it underfunds military construction by more than $900 million, undermines readiness, and diverts billions from the VA to private providers—accelerating the push to privatize veterans’ health care, which they say would mean longer wait times, higher costs and lower quality of care.

They also objected to the bill’s lack of dedicated funding to address climate threats at military installations and its inclusion of riders that restrict abortion access and weaken federal gun safety enforcement.

During committee markup, Republicans rejected every Democratic amendment—including proposals to reverse the closure of a VA housing program shuttered under Trump, protect veterans from tariff-related price hikes, block mass firings at the VA, assess how the GOP reconciliation bill would affect veterans and establish cleanup standards for PFAS contamination at Defense Department sites.

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MilCon-VA is one of 12 annual appropriations bills Congress must pass to keep the government funded. It also sets the tone for how both parties approach national security, the care’ care and the infrastructure that supports military readiness. Because major portions of VA benefits and health care are funded through advance appropriations, the bill also has long-term implications for the federal budget.

House GOP leaders are expected to schedule floor votes next on the FY26 funding bills for Agriculture–FDA and Defense, which advanced through subcommittee earlier this month. The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet released or voted on any of its twelve bills.

It only took House Democrats one ballot to elect Robert Garcia as the next ranking member of the House Oversight Committee and the institutional face of the Trump 2.0 resistance.

Garcia won a competitive four-way race on Tuesday morning with an impressive inside game that saw him quietly locking down support across the caucus in the weeks leading up to the vote. He spoke with nearly every member one-on-one and made a case for his leadership style and vision while signaling a willingness to unify the panel in a sharply divided political climate.

Key power brokers backed his bid behind the scenes, which helped build momentum and demonstrate broad confidence in his ability to go toe-to-toe with the GOP. And while Garcia is a proud progressive, his candidacy also resonated with moderates, giving him a coalition that cut across the caucus’s ideological lines.

The final tally was 150-63.

“I am incredibly honored,” Garcia told reporters after his victory. “The committee is made up of incredible members and so I’m very grateful to the caucus for this support. We’re going to immediately get to work. There is a big agenda in front of us.”

Before arriving on Capitol Hill, Garcia served as mayor of Long Beach from 2014 to 2022, making history as the city’s youngest and first openly LGBTQ+ mayor and the first Latino to hold the office. He previously served on the Long Beach City Council and was vice mayor for two years.

Garcia became the first Peruvian American elected to Congress in 2022 and has served on the Oversight Committee since he was sworn in and holds broad jurisdiction over the executive branch. It is the primary investigative body in the House, responsible for rooting out waste, fraud and abuse while advancing legislative reforms to improve how the federal government functions.

Just weeks into his assignment in early 2023, Garcia told me Oversight was his first-choice committee and intended to use his seat to challenge House conservatives, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, both of whom also sit on the panel.

“It’s going to be a lot of work,” Garcia said at the time. “But I’m excited to do it.”

The recent vacancy for the position was created from the death of former Ranking Member Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) from esophageal cancer.

Three other committee members entered the race with Garcia to succeed the beloved Connolly: Acting Ranking Member Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) and Reps. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) and Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas).

And each brought distinct strengths to the race.

Lynch, 70, cited his working-class roots, union leadership background, and more than two decades on the committee, including stints chairing and serving as ranking member on multiple subcommittees. He positioned himself as best equipped to lead Democrats in confronting attacks on the civil service, exposing high-level national security breaches and defending the rights of working families.

Mfume, 76, leaned on a lifetime of public service—from civil rights activism to chairing the CBC and leading the NAACP—and framed his candidacy as an extension of the oversight legacies of both Connolly and the late Elijah Cummings, the former Oversight chair he succeeded upon returning to Congress.

Crockett, 44, argued that Democrats needed a ranking member who could work behind the scenes and win the public argument in real time. With a background in civil rights law and state politics, she said she would bring lived experience that is critical to fighting GOP overreach on issues like voting rights, abortion and economic justice.

Meanwhile, the 47-year-old Garcia presented himself in private conversations and candidate forums as a unifier who would forcefully counter disinformation while working to restore the Oversight Committee’s core mission—moving it away from partisan spectacle and back toward meaningful accountability.

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During the campaign, one member described Garcia as a “dark horse” candidate, citing his ties to the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus—an overlapping coalition with the potential to tip the race. (The 42-member CHC formally endorsed him, while the Congressional Black Caucus and its record 62 members remained neutral between Crockett and Mfume.)

Garcia also hails from California, home to the largest Democratic delegation in the House, led by dean and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. While Pelosi didn’t make a public endorsement, several members said her subtle cues and behind-the-scenes conversations helped shape how others framed the election.

“Let’s see the lasting and enduring strength of the great Speaker Emerita Pelosi,” one source familiar with the race said earlier this month.

Garcia gained further momentum Monday night when the leadership-aligned House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee recommended him for the position. He secured 33 votes on the first ballot, compared to 15 for Lynch, eight for Mfume and six for Crockett.

“There’s still an election tomorrow and there’s still obviously an important case to be made in the morning,” Garcia told reporters after the Steering vote. “And that’s a case I’m planning on making. So we’re going to run through the tape.”

After finishing last in the Steering vote, Crockett withdrew from the race ahead of the full caucus meeting on Tuesday.

“It was clear by the numbers that my style of leadership is not exactly what they were looking for,” she told reporters. “And so I didn’t think that it was fair for me to then push forward and try to rebuke that. Because at the end of the day, what I care about is winning.”

Mfume also exited before the caucus vote.

“The preservation of the institution and the success of the Democratic Caucus are paramount to me,” he said in a statement. “With an insurmountable task ahead and for the unity of our party, I will not seek the position of Ranking Member on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.”

Reps. Norma Torres (D-Calif.), Morgan McGarvey (D-Ky.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.) gave nominating speeches on Garcia’s behalf ahead of the final vote.

Pelosi, reflecting on the race afterward, praised the entire field.

“All four candidates were excellent,” she said. “Then it came down to two candidates—both excellent.”

She disclosed her support for Garcia, adding: “I’m partial to the mayors. My father being mayor, my brother being mayor—[Garcia] was mayor for eight years in a significant city in California. So he knows management and he knows messaging.”

Democrats have reckoned with the age of their national elected officials since former President Joe Biden’s poor debate performance a year ago, which led him to withdraw his candidacy for reelection.

As I reported earlier this month, Connolly’s death—and the Oversight vacancy it left behind—reignited uncomfortable conversations about how power works in Congress, particularly around age and seniority within the Democratic Party. (At 75, Connolly was the third House Democrat to pass away this year.)

Garcia told reporters he respected seniority and the caucus’s senior members, from whom he had much of their support.

“I think at the end of the day, we need to focus on how are we going to hold corruption accountable? How are we going to protect the American public and actually make government work for the people?” he said. “In this case, I think our party is looking at expanding who’s at the leadership table. And I think this was a sign of support of that. And so I’m very grateful.”

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Garcia joins House Small Business Committee Ranking Member Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) as the second Latino House Democrat to lead a committee.

“It’s just wonderful to have diversity and inclusion, right?” Velázquez told me. “It will be a great day for America in terms of having someone at the table where decisions are made—public policy decisions that are important and that will impact the lives of so many.”

And with the election now behind him, Garcia said his first priority is to meet with committee staff to provide stability after three different ranking members in as many years. (Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Connolly immediately preceded Garcia.)

“We’re going to uplift their work and do everything we can to hold this administration accountable and focus on the corruption of Donald Trump,” he added. “I think efficiency is not DOGE [the Department of Government Efficiency]. Efficiency is actually making government work better for our constituents across the country—and that’s what we’re going to focus on.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) pushed back on Republican claims that the Trump administration was justified in keeping Congress in the dark about the U.S. airstrikes on three Irani…

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○ ● ●

Shontel Brown can’t stand cold cuts.

The Ohio Democrat isn’t a fan of pancakes for dinner either.

And the mere sight of a sandwich made with government cheese still takes the 49-year-old back to nights when her family had to stretch every dollar and relied on food stamps while managing her childhood epilepsy.

These revelations came earlier this month during a House Agriculture Committee marathon markup of the GOP’s sweeping reconciliation bill—a proposal to cut trillions from social safety net programs to extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts and increase funding for border enforcement and military operations. (Brown is the committee’s second-ranking Democrat.)

Her testimony was among several appearances over the past few weeks that many of the nearly two dozen Democratic members, aides and operatives interviewed for this story pointed to as evidence of what they described as a breakout moment. That stretch culminated in a chaotic legislative week that included multiple all-nighters and an early-morning vote last Thursday to pass the bill along party lines and send it to the Senate. Democrats are expected to oppose it unanimously, as they did in the House.

As Democrats pushed back on the bill’s proposed historic cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—the nation’s largest federal anti-hunger program—Brown became one of several members who took a lead role in the party’s response. She tied her opposition to personal experience, which many sources said helped distinguish her voice during committee hearings, floor debate and media events focused on the bill.

Sources praised her steady approach and grasp of the policy details during a high-stakes legislative push. They also emphasized that the proposed SNAP cuts come at a time when groceries remain a significant household expense for many families, even as food inflation has slowed.

“People need to know that they have representatives who share their experiences,” Brown said in an interview last week, one of several since Republicans released their budget proposal in February. “Some people get the impression that we’re all Ivy Leaguers and we all come from rich families. I want people to know I am not that. I grew up in the hood. I have real-life struggles that some of my constituents are still dealing with today.”

Brown acknowledged that while she feels blessed to be in her position, she wants people to know that their experience isn’t lost on her.

“I come to the table with that experience because for far too long in this institution, people who are making decisions about folks have not had that experience.”

In separate remarks during the markup, Brown cited several Bible verses in response to Republican colleagues, including Chair GT Thompson (R-Pa.), who is known for opening committee hearings with a prayer.

“I think it’s important too for my colleagues to see that they have colleagues that depended on these services but were able to lift themselves up and become what some might describe as successful,” said Brown, who describes herself as a “Bible-believing Christian.” “These programs are a bridge to getting to that success.”

Thompson’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-Minn.) told me that beyond Brown’s willingness to share her personal story, the key to her growing influence is her ability to connect with people and quickly get up to speed on areas of the committee she hadn’t previously worked on.

Brown regularly joins the Democratic staff committee leadership meetings at Craig’s invitation. Craig said Brown’s contributions behind the scenes have been just as impressive as her public performance.

“She’s impressed the hell out of me,” Craig said. “I’m really, really, really developing a great relationship with her.”

Marcia Fudge is another influential Democrat with whom Brown shares a tight bond.

Fudge represented Ohio’s 11th from 2008 until former President Joe Biden tapped her to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2021. (Before Fudge, the district was held by the late Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who in 1998 became the first Black woman elected to Congress from Ohio.)

Fudge told me she wouldn’t have supported Brown’s candidacy if she didn’t believe she was ready to carry the torch she inherited from Tubbs Jones, a trailblazing public servant who championed health care, education and voting rights for more than nine years until she died in 2008.

“She’s smart, she works hard, she studies, and most importantly, she understands her district, and she fights for it every day,” Fudge said.

Fudge added that much of Brown’s strength comes from the nature of the district—anchored in Cleveland and its surrounding suburbs, and home to a mix of urban, suburban, and industrial communities along Lake Erie.

“A lot of people are in districts where they feel challenged by the people they represent, in terms of not being so vocal on this issue or that issue,” she said. “But Shontel is in a district that supports her, that understands why she’s there and so she has a voice that can be used when sometimes other people can’t speak.”

Roughly one in five residents in Brown’s district live below the poverty line, well above the national average of 12.5 percent and Ohio’s statewide average of 13.3 percent.

“Many people in this district are on food stamps or receive Medicaid and all of the other things that [Republicans] are trying to strip away,” Fudge said. “And she's out there fighting the good fight and I believe that her voice just gets stronger and stronger, because she fights for what is right. It's never about herself. It is about what is right for the people.”

Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the Agriculture Committee’s nutrition subcommittee, counts Brown as both a colleague and a friend. Their relationship grew through committee work, and it’s now rare to see one without the other en route to votes, hearings or weekly Congressional Black Caucus meetings.

“She’s a real friend. She takes relationships seriously,” Hayes told me. “We just care deeply about [SNAP] and know how it affects our constituents. And we’ve both personally been affected, so we’ve been on the receiving end of this, and literally understand how sometimes people just need someone to stand in the gap.”

The House-passed bill calls for a $290 billion cut from SNAP over 10 years, exceeding the Agriculture Committee’s reconciliation target. It would require states to begin covering a share of SNAP benefits starting in 2028, beginning at five percent and rising to as much as 25 percent for states with higher error rates, shifting significant costs to state budgets. The legislation also increases documentation requirements, which analysts warn could depress participation in the program.

More than 50,000 people in Brown’s district are at risk of losing some or all of their SNAP benefits, according to an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Statewide, more than 450,000 Ohioans could be affected. Nationwide, the number climbs to 11 million.

While the measure also includes agricultural support enhancements, crop insurance reforms, conservation program adjustments and funding for organic and specialty agriculture, it’s the stricter work requirements—particularly a new mandate for parents with children as young as seven to work or volunteer at least 20 hours per week to retain benefits—that drew Brown’s sharpest rebuke.

“Since when is a first grader not a dependent child? That is what we’re debating here,” Brown said during House Rules Committee debate over an amendment she offered to strike the provision. “This isn’t about waste, fraud or abuse, and we all know it. So I’d like to invite the Republicans on this panel to explain to me, to my colleagues and to the American people, how exactly does taking food away from struggling families with young children make this country safer, stronger, more secure, healthier or even great again?” (Brown offered the same amendment during the Agriculture Committee markup, but Republicans voted it down.)

Brown and her Democratic colleagues have argued that many SNAP recipients are already working—often in low-wage or unstable jobs—and rely on the program to supplement their income and ensure food security.

In 2018, more than three-quarters of families receiving SNAP benefits had at least one employed adult, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About one-third included two or more workers. And among households with children and a working-age, non-disabled adult, 89 percent had earnings in the year they received SNAP, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“[My mom] didn’t wake up wanting to be on food stamps. She didn’t wake up wanting to have a daughter who had unpredictable medical conditions that prevented her from keeping a regular job,” Brown said. “But thank God for those food stamps. Thank God for those pancakes for dinner. Thank God for those syrup sandwiches. Thank God for those toasted cheese sandwiches.”

She added that the GOP megabill punishes poverty rather than addressing the systemic disadvantages that make assistance necessary in the first place.

“And now you want to take things like that away from people who need them, who depend on them, who are just trying to get by because of systemic, structural, institutional barriers that have put many people in impoverished conditions that they did not decide to be a part of, but because of the systems that we are still utilizing to oppress people are in place when we could be giving them a helping hand?”

Brown didn’t confine her objections to the committee room. In a fiery speech on the House floor ahead of final passage, she called out Republicans for shifting SNAP costs to state budgets while extending tax cuts for the wealthy.

“Let’s be clear, Republicans are paying for massive tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires by cutting $300 billion from SNAP,” Brown said. “But instead of owning those cuts, Republicans are punting their problems to the states, forcing governors and legislators to do the dirty work of denying food assistance. That’s not fiscal responsibility. That’s political cowardice.”

She pointed to projected cost burdens in red and blue states—up to $15 billion in Florida, $7.5 billion in Ohio, $4.5 billion in Louisiana. If states can’t pick up the tab, she warned, they’ll either have to slash benefits or kick people off the program altogether.

“This plan will take away food from kids, working families, veterans, seniors and the disabled,” she said. “Even Republicans know how damaging this is. That’s why they delayed implementation—until after the next election.”

Rep. Greg Landsman, a fellow Democratic colleague from Ohio, offered Brown’s committee and floor speeches rave reviews.

“This fight is in her core. Shontel’s energy and just how compelling she’s been in this moment comes, in large part, from her lived experience,” he said in a statement. “She knows this pain. All I know is that I was out of my seat, on my feet and moved by every word of that floor speech Wednesday night.”

Brown also gave a special-order speech days earlier, sharing the story of a constituent from Cleveland Heights to illustrate the bill’s real-world stakes.

“Cheryl is a retired small business owner who ran an advertising company with her husband for 25 years,” Brown said. “She lives with chronic respiratory issues and arthritis. Her husband is disabled. She also takes care of her 90-year-old father, who is disabled too. None of them can work, and they depend on SNAP and Medicaid to survive. If Congress guts these programs, it would gut a lifeline for Cheryl and her family.”

Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-Va.) told me Brown’s performance during the SNAP fight didn’t go unnoticed.

“She was tenacious fighting back against the SNAP cuts in Ag and in the floor,” McClellan said. “She was one of the most effective voices talking about the impact of those cuts on people and families.”

House Republicans have defended the proposed changes as both fiscally responsible and morally grounded. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said the work requirements carry a “moral component,” intended to restore the “dignity of work,” particularly among young men. GOP leaders insist the reforms apply only to non-disabled adults without dependents and reflect the values of many working-class Americans who view safety nets as temporary, not permanent.

Republicans have also dismissed Democratic criticism of the bill as fear-mongering. While none of the 10 Republican members of Ohio’s congressional delegation responded to requests for comment—including three who serve on committees with Brown—their party’s messaging suggests they see the legislation not as a gutting of nutritional aid, but a course correction. Democrats like Brown, they argue, are exaggerating the bill’s consequences for political gain.

Brown’s rise is also a reflection of Hakeem Jeffries’s leadership style. The House Minority Leader encourages feedback and fosters member ownership—a notable departure from the more centralized, top-down approach that defined former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s two decades atop the House Democratic Caucus.

“Shontel Brown has helped lead the battle to protect the American people from devastating Republican cuts to nutritional assistance for children, seniors and veterans. Her strong advocacy, drawing on her experience as a SNAP beneficiary during childhood, has made a big difference in our effort to oppose the GOP Tax Scam,” the Brooklyn Democrat told me in a statement. “Rep. Brown stands on the shoulders of a long line of incredible leaders who have served Ohio’s 11th Congressional District, like Lou Stokes, Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Marcia Fudge, who helped mentor me during my early days in Congress. I am grateful that Shontel has picked up the baton to serve in Congress with intellect, dedication and passion on behalf of the people she is privileged to represent.”

● ○ ●

Brown got her start in elected office on the Warrensville Heights City Council in 2012 and joined the Cuyahoga County Council two years later, where she established a reputation as a consensus-oriented leader focused on jobs, health care and education. Before entering politics, she worked in marketing and ran a small business that provided tech solutions to regional clients.

“She was killing it before she came to Congress. Her word is her bond. She’s not looking for accolades. It’s almost like you don’t even realize it just happened,” Hayes told me of Brown’s impact. “People are like, whenever she speaks, ‘Oh my goodness’ and I’m like, ‘Welcome, you’re just now seeing this?’ She does the work, makes the connections and can move in any room.”

The Democratic primary in the 2021 special election to replace Fudge became a national proxy battle over the party’s direction. Brown, then a county council member and chair of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, represented the centrist wing and secured endorsements from national figures like Hillary Clinton and then–House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the highest-ranking Black member of Congress at the time and long regarded as a Democratic kingmaker.

Her main opponent, Nina Turner, a former state senator and prominent progressive, had the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other national progressive leaders. Despite Turner’s early edge in polling and fundraising, Brown’s message of pragmatic governance and party unity resonated with voters. She won the August primary and defeated the Republican nominee in the November general election with nearly 79 percent of the vote.

Once sworn in, Brown got to work on constituent engagement and youth empowerment. She established a youth advisory council to give high school students firsthand exposure to public service and the legislative process, culminating in a capstone project where participants presented policy proposals on health inequities and education reform.

Beyond youth initiatives, her office held satellite office hours and launched a small business advisory council to support local enterprises—while overseeing the everyday demands of congressional casework, including federal agency assistance, grant support and community recognition.

Brown secured her first full term in Congress the following year by decisively defeating Turner in a high-profile rematch. With backing from former President Biden and significant outside spending from groups like the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, Brown expanded her margin of victory in the primary. Her campaign emphasized pragmatic governance and party unity.

Turner, by contrast, struggled to regain early momentum amid waning progressive support and internal divisions within the Congressional Progressive Caucus over endorsements. Brown went on to win the general election with 77 percent of the vote in the heavily Democratic district. (Turner did not respond to an interview request for this story.)

In 2023 and 2024, Brown scaled up her early efforts, focusing on constituent services, community investment, and legislative follow-through. Her office closed more than 1,650 constituent cases, returning over $4 million to residents and helping secure more than $1.5 billion in federal grants and contracts for local projects, including $94 million for clean energy infrastructure at the Port of Cleveland and $59 million for the North Coast Connector lakefront project.

She introduced or co-sponsored legislation to expand SNAP access, fund uterine fibroid research, safeguard reproductive rights and strengthen Social Security. She also maintained an active public presence in the district, hosting housing and small business expos, health care and internet access events and public forums featuring cabinet secretaries and community stakeholders.

Now in her second full term, Brown serves on the powerful House Oversight Committee—a panel freshly in the spotlight as Democrats prepare to select a ranking member next month to replace the late Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who led the committee this Congress until his death last week following a battle with esophageal cancer. On Oversight, Brown focuses on economic growth and regulatory policy. She also sits on the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, more commonly known as the China Select Committee.

Brown remains deeply involved in agricultural policy, where, in addition to her vice-ranking duties on the full committee, she serves as the top Democrat on the General Farm Commodities, Risk Management, and Credit Subcommittee—a key perch as Democrats navigate negotiations over the next farm bill. She also sits on the subcommittees overseeing nutrition and foreign agriculture.

Fudge, who served on the Agriculture Committee during her time in the House, said Brown has become an important voice for preserving SNAP and other anti-hunger programs as some Republicans push to split them off from the farm-focused portions of the bill.

“If you do that, so many of our children will starve,” Fudge told me.

Brown’s caucus affiliations reflect the ideological breadth of the modern Democratic coalition. She is a member of both the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the New Democrat Coalition, as well as the Congressional Black Caucus, Democratic Women’s Caucus, Reproductive Freedom Caucus and numerous regional and issue-based task forces—including those focused on gun violence prevention and the Great Lakes.

Brown is one of five Democrats in Ohio’s House delegation, alongside former CBC Chair Joyce Beatty; Landsman, who flipped a longtime red seat in 2022 by defeating a 13-term Republican incumbent; Emilia Sykes, a second-generation lawmaker whose family held an Akron-area statehouse seat for four decades; and Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in congressional history.

“We come from the heart of America. We are not people who don’t understand what everyday people deal with. We are from the Midwest,” Fudge, who also offered a nod to the Republican side of the delegation, said. (For example, Jim Jordan is the House Judiciary chair and was under consideration for speaker after Kevin McCarthy was ousted in 2023 and JD Vance represented the state in the Senate before becoming vice president.) “Ohio members are from rural communities and urban communities. But those of us from urban communities, we see it all.”

As for why Brown and her colleagues tend to fly under the national radar?

“It’s our Midwestern humility,” Sykes said with a smile earlier this month.

● ● ○

That may help explain why, based on my reporting, it doesn’t seem like Brown sought the spotlight that’s found her—and surely didn’t intend to become the subject of this profile.

But she is aware of the moment. Craig is retiring to run for the Senate, opening the top Democratic spot on the Agriculture Committee. It seems reasonable that Brown would consider a bid for the gavel next Congress.

She’s also deeply aware of the legacy she carries—invoking Fudge, Tubbs Jones, Shirley Chisholm and Sheila Jackson Lee as trailblazers during our most recent interview.

“Government doesn’t always move as fast as we want,” Brown told me. “It is not lost on me that I am one of probably less than 60 Black women who have represented in this space, and so I recognize the responsibility. But I didn’t get here by myself.” (60 Black women have served in Congress in U.S. history, including both voting and non-voting members.)

For now, Brown appears focused on the near-term fight to defeat the GOP’s reconciliation bill—and the longer-term goal of helping Democrats reclaim the House majority, two priorities that aren’t mutually exclusive.

Democrats view the proposed cuts to SNAP and Medicaid—up to $880 billion in the megabill—as the biggest threat to the social safety net since Republicans tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act during President Donald Trump’s first term.

But the fight isn’t just policy. It’s unfolding amid a broader identity crisis inside the party after losing the Senate and White House and failing to win back the House in 2024. Some Democrats are calling for generational change. Others are rethinking strategy altogether.

What remains true is that Black women continue to be the party’s most loyal coalition, even as they remain vastly underrepresented in positions of power. While 92 percent of Black women voters backed Vice President Kamala Harris, there are just two Black women CEOs among the Fortune 500 (0.4 percent), and only 29 Black women in the House, two of whom are non-voting delegates (6.6 percent). Two Black women serve in the Senate (two percent), despite Black women making up nearly eight percent of the U.S. population.

Few sources were willing to speculate on the record about Brown’s political ceiling. But many agreed that her role in the SNAP fight is emblematic of what Black women have always done: Spot a problem, step up and lead—often without fanfare and rarely with any guarantee of recognition.

“Black women in particular, and Shontel as well, have to have some courage to stand up. And most Black women have it,” Fudge said. “There are not a lot of things that we would shy away from or back away from if we think it is right.”

That courage matters in this moment—when diversity, equity and inclusion are under attack, when Harris’s failed campaign is being post-mortemed and when Democrats are again debating who they are. Brown and her lived experience are a proxy in that conversation.

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But as the 2024 election made clear, Democrats will need support from more than just Black women to reclaim power, including disillusioned voters across the ideological and demographic spectrum.

“Folks may not be into politics, but politics is into them every day—and that is the power of their vote,” Brown said. “Regardless of what party affiliation you ascribe to, whatever religion, whether you’re rich or Black, white, gay, straight, Democrat or Republican, you all get one vote. From GED to PhD, we all get one vote.”

Brown told me her message to her community now is that neglecting to have their voices heard doesn’t just harm their health, wealth, and well-being—it damages American democracy itself.

“I hope that beyond the people I represent, that they see that the system can work,” she said. “But we got to work it.”

Whatever comes next for Brown, Fudge is confident her village will be with her.

“One of the things as well that makes her strong is knowing that there’s so many behind her that have her back and that are cheering for her and rooting for her and wanting her to succeed,” Fudge said. “It is important to know that you have people that you can count on, and she is fortunate and blessed to have many people—her family, friends, constituents, people who have her back—and I’m one of them.”

It took a early-dawn vote, weeks of intraparty warfare, a couple of rounds of eleventh-hour arm-twisting from President Donald Trump and plenty of intestinal fortitude, but Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) finally muscled the GOP’s tax, energy and immigration megabill through the House just before 7 a.m. this morning.

The sweeping package, a cornerstone of Republicans’ legislative agenda under Trump 2.0, survived open revolt from hardline conservatives pushing for deeper safety net cuts and blue-state moderates fighting for a more generous state and local tax deduction cap. And it faced unified resistance from House Democrats, who channeled grassroots outrage to battle the bill through messaging wars and procedural delays until the final vote was cast.

The final vote tally was 215-214-1. Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) was the only Republican to reject the party line. Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) voted present.

Before the vote, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called today the day that Republicans may have lost their majority.

“The GOP Tax Scam rips healthcare and food assistance away from millions of people in order to provide tax cuts to the wealthy, the well-off and the well-connected,” Jeffries said in a joint statement with House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) after the vote. “This fight is just beginning and House Democrats will continue to use every tool at our disposal to ensure that the GOP Tax Scam is buried deep in the ground, never to rise again.”

Democrats fight the bill on substance and process

Democrats didn’t just oppose the bill’s substance, which slashes health insurance and nutrition assistance, unwinds major climate investments from the Inflation Reduction Act, and greenlights federal reimbursements to GOP-led states like Texas and Florida for past border operations.

They also bristled at the process, specifically, House Republicans’ decision to schedule committee markups for three of the most consequential sections of the bill during overnight sessions. Democrats say the late-night timing was no accident, but a deliberate attempt to ram through the bill’s most extreme provisions under the cover of darkness, with limited public scrutiny and little time for dissent.

“It’s telling that they’re ashamed of what’s in this bill. They know exactly what they’re doing—trying to pull one over on the American people by passing it in the middle of the night. They think we won’t show up, that we won’t fight back. But this debate is far too important,” Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.) told Once Upon a Hill between one of the overnight vote series. “The American people deserve to know not just what’s in the bill, which is disastrous for them, but also that Republicans know it too—and they’re doing it anyway.”

Johnson gambles big to deliver for Trump

Johnson entered the House chamber ahead of the vote with confidence in his whip count, even though it wasn’t clear the math was on his side.

“You never know till the final tally,” he told a group of reporters. “But I’m convinced we’re going to pass this bill tonight. May have one or two nos. You never can be certain.”

Perhaps his optimism stemmed from familiarity—he’d seen this movie twice before.

In February, he passed the initial version of the GOP megabill after a brief hardliner revolt fizzled, with every Not-Named-Massie rebel eventually folding. The same dynamic played out the following month, when the House approved the Senate’s compromise framework to unlock the filibuster-proof process known as budget reconciliation, again over the objections of his most fiscally rigid members. (For what it’s worth, Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) joined Massie against the compromise budget.)

But the stakes were higher this time. Johnson had set a self-imposed Memorial Day deadline to deliver on former President Trump’s legislative agenda and raise the debt limit, without swallowing the significant policy concessions Democrats would have demanded in exchange for votes on a bipartisan stand-alone bill.

The speaker scored his first procedural win of the week on Sunday night when the GOP-controlled House Budget Committee advanced the full text of the megabill, complete with portions from 11 committees of jurisdiction. It followed a major setback two days earlier when four House conservatives stalled the bill in committee because the social safety net disinvestments didn’t go far enough or kick in fast enough.

The megabill wasn’t finished, but the clock was ticking

When the bill advanced out of the Budget panel, it was still incomplete. Key provisions—like the scope and timeline of new Medicaid work requirements and changes to the state and local tax deduction cap—were left unresolved as negotiations continued between House leadership and the two factions most at odds over the bill: Freedom Caucus hardliners demanding stricter eligibility rules for safety net programs, and blue-state Republicans pushing for SALT relief. Both sides wanted more than leadership was willing to offer—because the more they gave to one group, the more they alienated the other.

President Trump made a rare visit to the Capitol on Tuesday to address House Republicans directly, stepping into their weekly closed-door conference meeting with a clear message to the holdouts: the negotiating phase was over. According to members in the room, the tone was far from celebratory—Trump was there to deliver marching orders, not to negotiate.

The contours of agreements with both factions began to emerge late Tuesday. Leadership got on board with moving up the start date for Medicaid work requirements and repealing virtually all of the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy tax credits. It also offered SALT Republicans a $40,000 deduction cap over the next four years, quadruple the current cap and $10,000 more than the number included in the megabill.

Democrats stage a marathon markup protest

But the final stretch of resistance came in the House Rules Committee, where Democrats mounted a marathon campaign to delay the bill’s path to the floor. The markup began at 1 a.m. Wednesday morning—an unusual move that drew sharp criticism from Democrats, who accused Republicans of hiding the bill’s most damaging provisions from public view.

Over the next 21 hours, Democrats offered 522 amendments and called 101 of their colleagues to testify, making it one of the longest and most combative Rules Committee hearings in recent memory. Republicans rejected every amendment on a party-line vote, including proposals to preserve Medicaid and SNAP funding, extend ACA premium subsidies, restore NIH cancer research dollars, protect access to Planned Parenthood, and expand the Child Tax Credit.

During the Rules markup, President Trump convened a high-stakes meeting at the White House with Speaker Johnson and members of the House Freedom Caucus, aiming to resolve internal GOP divisions threatening the passage of the megabill. Trump again urged unity, emphasizing the bill’s importance to his second-term agenda and cautioned that failure to pass the bill could be seen as a betrayal of the party’s commitments.

Upon his return to the Capitol, Johnson expressed optimism, stating that the meeting had been productive and that the House was moving closer to a consensus. However, some Freedom Caucus members remained skeptical, indicating that further concessions were necessary to secure their support.

The outcome of the meeting led to the introduction of a manager’s amendment later that day, incorporating changes such as accelerating the implementation of Medicaid work requirements and adjusting the SALT deduction cap to $40,000. These revisions aimed to bridge the gap between the party’s factions and facilitate the bill’s advancement to a full House vote.

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CBO backlash, Senate showdown and what’s next

Beyond process complaints, Democrats were incensed by Republicans’ attempts to discredit nonpartisan analyses from the Congressional Budget Office—especially after GOP leaders circulated talking points casting doubt on CBO’s data, despite estimates showing steep Medicaid and SNAP cuts, growing deficits and disproportionate harm to low-income households.

According to CBO, the GOP megabill would slash federal Medicaid spending by $698 billion and SNAP by $267 billion over the next decade—reductions that would shrink household resources by up to 4 percent for those in the lowest income bracket by 2033. Meanwhile, households in the top income decile would see their resources increase by a similar margin due to tax cuts.

Even if Johnson can exhale, the bill now heads across the Capitol, where the Senate is expected to work its will. That sets up a lose-lose scenario for the speaker: his frontliners just took a politically risky vote on a bill that may never become law while his hardliners are likely to revolt once the Senate sends back a version stripped of the very concessions they forced into it.

And Democrats like Scholten don’t see this morning’s vote as the end of the fight.

“I think there’s a number of other opportunities where people can make their voices heard,” she said. “Democracy does not run without the American people participating—and now is the time for people to be making their voices heard, because it’s working. That’s why Republicans are doing this in the dead of night. Because they’re afraid of the people who are going to be holding them accountable.”