Censure city
The House’s first full week back was filled with partisan rebukes, Trump signs off on the release of the Epstein files, Indiana rejects Trump’s redistricting demands, and more.
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Now, on to the week that was.
10. The House passed a trio of disapproval resolutions under the Congressional Review Act that each move the Trump 2.0-era environmental policy further away from former President Joe Biden’s climate-first public lands policy by reinstating a development-first posture across federal land in the West and Arctic. The first resolution would overturn a Bureau of Land Management plan that reshapes how millions of acres in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin can be used. The second would roll back the Interior Department’s move to halt oil and gas leasing on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain. The final resolution targets a BLM rule that placed new conservation protections across large portions of the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska, limiting the footprint of new oil and gas projects—including around the area affected by ConocoPhillips’ Willow project. Read more…
9. The House passed two bills this week in the Republican Party’s broader fight over the District of Columbia’s home rule. The first would override D.C.’s local laws by requiring judges to impose cash bail in a wide range of criminal cases—a sharp departure from D.C.’s long-standing system that relies primarily on risk assessments and supervised release. The bill effectively replaces the District’s own criminal-justice judgment with Congress’s, despite D.C. voters and local leaders having no vote in the matter. Republicans argued the change is necessary to address rising crime, while Democrats countered that Congress is imposing a one-size-fits-all system that will jail more low-income residents pretrial without improving public safety.
The second bill would void D.C.’s clean-energy and climate standards, including programs designed to cut emissions, modernize buildings and shift the city toward renewable power. It directs federal agencies to disregard D.C.’s environmental rules and bars the District from enforcing them on federal property, which covers a large share of the city’s footprint. Supporters view the bill as a check on what they call burdensome regulations. D.C. leaders see it as Congress tearing up locally approved environmental policies that took years to develop. Read more…
8. The House this morning passed a symbolic resolution condemning socialism as a dangerous political and economic model, citing the historic failures of socialist governments around the world and the human suffering associated with them. The measure, which was approved by a 285-98–2 margin, doesn’t change the law or create new policy but fits into a broader pattern of Republican efforts this Congress to force high-profile votes on charged cultural or ideological questions.
It also comes as New York City elected self-styled democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as its mayor earlier this week and as the Democratic Socialists of America have intensified its efforts to recruit primary challengers to unseat establishment incumbents. (Related: Mamdani and Trump are scheduled to meet this afternoon in the Oval Office.)
House Democratic leadership did not whip—the formal process of influencing the outcome of a vote—the resolution but did note House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) opposed it as a blatant attempt to tie government programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other policies that increase affordability for the American people to the authoritarian regimes mentioned in the bill. Read more…
7. A new poll this week showed Democrats leading Republicans by 14 points on the 2026 generic congressional ballot. The 55–41 percent gap is the widest since the summer of 2022. Meanwhile, President Trump’s approval rating has dipped to 39 percent, with 56 percent disapproving and nearly half of Americans (48 percent) strongly disapproving of his performance. Read more…
6. Indiana state lawmakers rejected President Trump’s latest demand for them to redraw one or both Democratic congressional seats ahead of the 2026 midterms. The demand came on the same day a panel of federal judges blocked Texas from using the redrawn congressional maps that set off the redistricting wars Trump initiated to maintain Republican control of the House during the final two years of his second term. Read more…
5. President Trump on Wednesday signed a bill to require Attorney General Pam Bondi to release all documents in the Justice Department’s possession related to the late convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. The House approved the bill in a 427–1 vote the day before. Hours later, Chuck Schumer secured unanimous consent to pass it as soon as it reached the Senate. Read more…
4. The economy added 119,000 jobs and the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4 percent in September, which is a tick higher than a year ago. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that because the shutdown halted data collection for October and the missing survey responses cannot be reconstructed, it would not publish an October jobs report. Read more…
3. Senate Republicans objected to a unanimous consent request from Democrats to pass a bill the House unanimously approved to repeal a provision in the government funding bill that ended the shutdown that would allow eight senators to sue the Justice Department over the Arctic Frost subpoenas. House Republicans were eager to distance themselves from a provision that appeared to be self-dealing, while at least some Senate Republicans seem determined to preserve it. Read more…
2. Democrats slammed a proposal Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) introduced on Thursday that would keep the Affordable Care Act framework in place but would provide accounts that would receive federal subsidies directly instead of routing them to insurers. With millions of Americans already in open enrollment and facing sharp premium spikes if the ACA premium tax credits at the center of the recent shutdown showdown aren’t extended, Democrats argue it’s too late to introduce any new legislation aimed at repealing or replacing the ACA. In the meantime, House Democrats are a half dozen signatures away from forcing a vote on a bill that would extend the premium subsidies for three years. Read more…
Related: House Democratic health leaders introduced an updated prescription drug pricing bill on Thursday aimed at expanding Medicare’s negotiating power and shutting down loopholes created under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, President Trump’s signature second-term domestic achievement.
1. After spending more than 50 days effectively sidelined during the record shutdown, the House returned to Washington for its first full week of legislative action. It quickly plunged into a series of censure and disapproval fights that underscored how routine formal punishment has become in an era of hyperpartisanship. Censure was a tool that was once deployed only a few dozen times across nearly two centuries, but now is a recurring feature of floor action, reflecting the broader polarization of the institution and the country it represents—and highlighting how much time the chamber is devoting to symbolic discipline even as it struggles to move major legislation on everything from the economy to foreign crises.
Lawmakers first approved a rare disapproval resolution against Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.), formally reprimanding the retiring Illinois Democrat over the way he timed his retirement to benefit a preferred successor. They then turned to a Republican measure to censure Del. Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands for allegedly “colluding” with Jeffrey Epstein by exchanging texts during a 2019 hearing, a charge she has denied. The effort failed on the floor after Democrats stuck together and a handful of Republicans balked.
A separate push led by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) to censure Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.)—citing ethics complaints, past allegations of violence and questions about his record—was blocked when the House declined to allow an up-or-down vote and instead shunted related Mills resolutions to the Ethics Committee. At the same time, Florida Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick’s indictment on federal fraud charges has already drawn a threatened expulsion or censure drive from Republicans, signaling that the next round of disciplinary battles may not be far off. Read more…