House clashes over Epstein files ahead of month-long break
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USA Today
7 minutes ago
- USA Today
An unusual six months in Congress of long days and short fuses
Just over six months in, this Congress has witnessed all-nighters, extra-long votes and flaring personalities. 'I will say again - I am tired of making history. I just want (a) normal Congress,' House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, said. His comments to reporters in early July came as the House concluded a more than seven-hour vote, then the longest in the chamber's history (a milestone hit after the chamber had already broken the record a week earlier). Of course, the increasingly partisan, combative, and at times, chaotic atmosphere had infiltrated the modern Congress before Johnson or his Senate counterpart, Majority Leader John Thune, took the gavel. But more than six months in, the 119th Congress has seen its share of unusual or unprecedented moments, from extraordinarily long votes to all-nighter sessions. Here's a look at some of the notable moments of the not "normal" kickoff for the 119th. 'All by myself' House lawmakers this year first surpassed the record for the longest House vote while deliberating President Donald Trump's so-called 'big, beautiful bill' on July 2. The vote was held open for seven hours and 23 minutes. Members of Congress filtered in and out of the chamber, mostly congregating off the floor for deals and debates. But someone, by rule, had to supervise the chamber. More: Which way will Senate swing in 2026? Here are 11 pivotal races that will decide. That lucky representative was Arkansas' Steve Womack. Womack, a Republican, had the task of presiding over the floor starting at 11:45 a.m. and staying at the dais well into the evening. 'I'm told he is very very bored,' NBC's Melanie Zanona posted at the time, 'and singing the Eric Carmen song 'ALL BY MYSELF' to himself.' Meanwhile, House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole, R-Oklahoma, had his own way of killing time. 'Five,' Cole said, when a reporter asked him, around 5 p.m., how many cigars he had so far that day. 'Is that a lot or a little?' one reporter followed up. 'Certainly not a lot,' Cole replied. Senate burns the midnight oil. A lot. Senators also have plenty of time-consuming accomplishments to boast about, were such efforts to be lauded. The upper chamber kicked off July by barely topping a record set in 2008 for the longest 'vote-a-rama' – Washington parlance for a marathon series of votes on amendments to budget bills. Earlier this summer, Democrats were responsible for the bulk of the 45 proposals to revise Trump's sweeping tax, spending and policy bill. It was one more amendment than what senators almost two decades ago had spent hours voting on. The chamber has had three cases of a 'vote-a-rama' so far this year. Often, they mean overnight sessions that stretch more than a dozen hours. The series in early July was an unusual daylight occurrence, though, beginning a little after 9 a.m. on a Monday and lasting past noon the next day. Long days, short fuses After being elected majority leader by his colleagues, Thune promised more working days for a body of government that many Americans accuse of being allergic to work. That mostly meant adding Fridays to the work calendar (though the chamber has been about 50-50 on coming in those Fridays). More recently, there was talk of scrapping senators' typical summer break and instead staying in town to plow through a backlogged agenda. Some congressional correspondents who'd worked through the session thus far weren't so sure about the idea. More: All work and no play: House heads out while Senate eyes skipping summer break 'The Senate really, really needs a recess,' senior HuffPost Igor Bobic wrote online. But after a Saturday slog Aug. 2, lawmakers finally called it and fled the capital for their home states. The House and Senate are both set to return to town Sept. 2. And with a deadline to keep the government funded looming at the end of the month, a broiling debate over Jeffrey Epstein's case files ongoing, and overall tensions still simmering, Speaker Johnson and the rest of the legislative branch are not likely to see a 'normal Congress' anytime soon.
Fox News
8 minutes ago
- Fox News
DHS official calls out NJ gov over sanctuary city policies: 'He must answer for this'
DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin sounds off over sanctuary city policies and reacts to the Los Angeles mayor lauding a ruling restricting ICE.
Forbes
8 minutes ago
- Forbes
The Revision Economy And The Retraction Life
Last Friday, we learned we are less employed than we thought we were. A quarter million jobs vanished, yet no one new was fired and no one new quit. Those jobs never existed in the first place. Only our estimate of the truth changed, not the truth itself. This was definitely a large revision. The two-month downward revision in jobs hadn't been this negative since Covid, and before that, the global financial crisis in October 2008. Before that, it hadn't happened in decades, with only a handful of occurrences in 1979, 1980, and 1982. In response, the US equity market fell between one and two percent and Treasury bond yields collapsed, especially in the front-end, as the market began pricing in a substantially higher expectation of Fed rate cuts. President Trump ordered the firing of the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), citing 'a lengthy history of inaccuracies and incompetence.' Should he have? Revision History Usually, revisions are frequent and fairly modest. The monthly nonfarm payroll report is always revised twice, so there are three numbers: the preliminary estimate, the first revision the following month, and the second revision in the month following that. There are also annual revisions. The average magnitude of the revisions since 1979 are between 40,000 and 60,000 jobs. Sometimes we find out we are more employed than we thought we were, and sometimes less. On Friday, the May 2025 seasonally adjusted estimate was revised down 120,000 jobs from its first estimate and the June 2025 estimate was revised down 133,000 jobs. Each of those was historically extreme, worse than 95% of relevant monthly revisions since 1979. The two-month combination was basically a once-in-a-decade event, as the chart above shows. Big numbers. But ultimately, they are just one source of data. Jobs numbers help us think about the economy, but they are just one piece of the puzzle. What makes job numbers particularly useful is they may be forward-looking: rather than estimating historical consumer purchases, job creation can presage future spending. That's why revisions could matter too. You drive differently if you think your exit is three miles away than if you think it's a quarter mile away. But we can't live our lives in the past, constantly revising what we used to think about ancient history. So, when should a revision of the past change your perspective of the future? Estimates vs. Reality Surely, it should have some effect. One famous quote attributed to John Maynard Keynes summarizes this view: 'When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?' Of course, not all facts matter the same amount or at the same time. Yesterday's future is tomorrow's past. Eventually, other data should matter more than the jobs numbers. If the BLS announced an inadvertent and unnoticed typo in a jobs number from eight years ago, that should presumably have almost no effect on your views today, since so much additional data has already come in, about spending, saving, production, consumption, inflation, and more. In other words, those quarter million jobs either existed or not. Estimates and revisions won't change what actually happened. Even knowing the exact true number is only a proxy for the actual information you would be interested in, and as time has gone on, other data has come out that can be more valuable and important than a more accurate but more historically distant estimate. There is a devastating counterpoint, however, as anyone who has ever been in any kind of personal or professional relationship would know. If a piece of information about the ancient past can change or color your perception of the entire relationship, then almost no amount of time can reduce that emotional impact. In any fight with a loved one, the biggest pain isn't whatever action they did or did not do, or your best estimate of their action, or even the revisions of your best estimates of their actions: it's the possibility that they never loved you at all. Was it all a lie? President Trump's firing of the BLS commissioner may be controversial. But both the administration and its critics worry about the same thing: data ought to be as accurate and objective as possible. This issue is a lot like reading the news. The loud front pages say one thing, usually preliminary news. Later retractions or corrections are quiet and unnoticed. As a society, we can begin to split and live in two different worlds: those that did not know the truth and did not see the retraction, and those that knew the truth or saw the retraction. Therefore, we no longer even have the same facts. Some of us begin to live in the hallucinated, unrevised, unretracted world, a world much like the Mandela effect, where we swear we remember things that in fact never happened. Trust is a fragile thing. A good-faith revision here or a revision there can be fine. But if you notice a consistent bias or pattern in the revisions and retractions, if the errors are rarely in your favor, you may stop subscribing to that source of news or data. If you are in a relationship, you may look to end or fix it. If you are the President of the United States, you may seek a new commissioner. The primary challenge in all these cases is then the same: restore the trust. In the revision economy and the retraction life, beliefs can bend, but faith can snap.
