#congressional-politics

#congressional-politics

Well first of all, Maria, we're $38 trillion in debt, he replied. We've averaged $1.89 trillion deficits over the last five years. In the next 10 years, the projection's about $26 trillion from accumulated deficits. We have to address the deficit problem. We are on borrowed time here. So many people are whistling by the graveyard. If we're bringing in revenue through the tariffs, that oughta be applied to reduce the deficit, not just making a cash payment to Americans.

In her first year in Congress, Delaware Rep. Sarah McBride says she's tried to do something that feels almost impossible in American politics: lower the temperature in a political environment built to reward outrage. As one of the most visible transgender people in the country, and the first out trans member of the U.S. House (and Congress as a whole), McBride has become a test case for a political strategy grounded in persuasion, restraint, and expansion rather than confrontation.

It is official conventional wisdom. Trump is retreating on Jeffrey Epstein. Or rather, Democrats led by Ro Khanna, survivors, and a handful of Republicans who could not give a fuck, starting with Tom Massie, forced Trump to retreat. Retreat. RETREAT!! Bill Kristol wrote. And they're laughing at the position it puts Mike Johnson in. (Well, not CNN. CNN pretends Johnson had a "strategy" on Epstein.)

The space agency's decision to reopen the contract for the Artemis mission moon lander renews competition between SpaceX, which had previously won the award, and Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos's space startup. But it also sets off a competition between Texas and Washington, the two companies' respective home states. Politicians have long fought over American space spending, as Fast Company has previously explained. But it's not clear where they stand, at least for now.

Democrats believe health care is an issue that resonates with a majority of Americans as they demand an extension of subsidies in exchange for their votes to reopen the shuttered U.S. government. But it is also one of the most intractable issues in Congress - and a real compromise amid the government shutdown will not likely be easy, or quick.