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Political Theater

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has largely stuck to his plan to consistently confirm executive nominees and has plans to take the lead on the budget process if the House cannot forge a path.

Having a plan beats not having a plan

By Jason Dick and Jessica Wehrman
Posted February 6, 2025 at 3:14pm
A helicopter flies near the crash site of the American Airlines plane on the Potomac River after the plane crashed on approach to Reagan National Airport on Wednesday evening.

Instability as norm. Or test

By Jason Dick and Nathan L. Gonzales
Posted January 30, 2025 at 4:59pm
Security barricades the House chamber as rioters disrupt the joint session of Congress to certify the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, 2021. Reps. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, blue shirt, and Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., right, are also pictured. President Donald Trump issued pardons to all those involved in the attack.

Pardon me? Tales of presidential pardons

By Jason Dick and Todd Ruger
Posted January 22, 2025 at 2:57pm
Two appointed senators, Roger Wicker, R-Miss., left, and Roland Burris, D-Ill., walk through Statuary Hall before President Barack Obama's address to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 24, 2009. Burris did not seek election following his appointment. Wicker won election and has continued to climb the ranks in the chamber.

Appointed senators: The winners, seat-warmers, losers and weirdos

By Jason Dick and Nathan L. Gonzales
Posted January 15, 2025 at 8:29pm
Sen. Max Baucus is questioned by reporters outside the Senate Foreign Relations room in the Capitol, where members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, also know as the “super committee,” were holding a meeting on Nov. 17, 2011.

So you want to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget

By Jason Dick, Peter Cohn and David Lerman
Posted January 8, 2025 at 4:11pm
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has a thin margin of error now and in the coming 119th Congress.

The top political stories, of next year

By Jason Dick and Nathan L. Gonzales
Posted December 19, 2024 at 10:58am
Andy Kim, D-N.J., takes in John Trumbull’s “Declaration of Independence” painting in the Capitol Rotunda before being sworn in to the Senate on Monday.

Revenge of the Senate

By Jason Dick
Posted December 11, 2024 at 6:57pm
One of the first votes the newly elected freshman members of Congress will take after being sworn in is on a rules package for the House chamber. Some very simple proposals that could be written into the rules could make the chamber function better, Molly Reynolds of The Brookings Institution argues.

Home improvements for the House

By Jason Dick
Posted December 4, 2024 at 2:58pm
Few senators have shaped the judicial confirmation process as much as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

A very judgy lame duck

By Jason Dick and Todd Ruger
Posted November 21, 2024 at 12:36pm
Ranking member Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., left, and Chairman Richard Durbin, D-Ill., arrive for a Senate Judiciary Committee markup on Thursday. Prior to the markup, they spoke to reporters about the nomination of former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to be attorney general.

Who are these guys? The Congress-Cabinet-West Wing revue

By Jason Dick and John T. Bennett
Posted November 14, 2024 at 6:19pm