A conservative shouting match erupted on CNN Monday morning as panelists argued about a confusing comment from Donald Trump's running mate Sen. J.D.
Vance and one Republican's controversial take. Matt Gorman, former advisor to Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), started screaming when David Frum, onetime speechwriter for former President George W.
Bush, suggested there was a dark motive behind Vance's attacks on Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN). "It's not nice, it's not true," Frum said.
"But what he's trying to suggest is that Tim Walz is a sexual deviant." "What are you talking about?" Gorman roared. "That's ridiculous!" Vance made a comment that spurred this exchange during a CNN interview with anchor Dana Bash over the weekend which she found unconvincing.
The Ohio senator pointed to a moment when Walz, on stage for the announcement he would be Vice Kamala Harris ' running mate, turned with his hand extended and found himself facing his wife. "When I had just been announced as the V.P.
nominee, I gave my big speech and I saw my wife and I gave her a big hug and a kiss because I love my wife and I think that's what a normal person does," Vance told Bash. "Walz gave his wife a nice firm midwestern handshake and then tried to sort of awkwardly correct for it." Bash shook her head as she recounted the comment Monday morning and said, "I can't believe we're having this conversation.
" She then argued Walz, who famously dubbed the MAGA right "weird," had simply not realized his wife was standing next to him and Vance was unsure how to respond to a significant change in Democrats' campaign tactics. "Democrats for so long have brought a sort of a knife to a gunfight when it comes to the rhetoric of Donald Trump ," Bash said. "They're trying to be more in that space.
" Frum sought to explain Vance's underlying meaning and, in doing so, triggered Gorman's rage. "The man spends way too much time online," said Frum. "A lot of what he says is going to be incomprehensible to you unless you participate in or have some acquaintance with this strange underworld.
" ALSO READ: Trump's insatiable ego is destroying the former president Frum points to Trump's son Donald Jr. and the messaging he sends on Twitter, arguing it appealed to "the lava coming up from the ugliest parts of American life." Vance recently attacked Walz on the same site, writing , "He and Kamala Harris want to take children away from their parents if the parents don't like sex changes.
" On Truth Social, the social media site owned and dominated by Trump, MAGA supporters such as conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and he fake news site Gateway Pundit share false claims that Walz passed legislation protecting pedophiles and call him "Tampon Tim." Frum urged Vance to step away from the screen, arguing the Ohio Republican was above such social media spaces. "Everything is couched as a personal attack of the most viscous kind," said Frum.
"That's why people think he's weird; he's so brilliant, he's so capable, so why is he so filled with rage and contempt?" Watch the video below or click here. WASHINGTON — Republicans continue lambasting Democrats for wanting to “ pack ” the Supreme Court with additional justices. But GOP rhetoric is distorting reality.
Most vulnerable Senate Democrats are actually running away from progressive calls to expand the court beyond its current nine justices. Even President Joe Biden , who last month unveiled a Supreme Court reform proposal, excluded the addition of additional justices. “Curious your thoughts on expanding the size of the Supreme Court?” Raw Story asked Sen.
Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). “We’re commencing on an important discussion, and of course we've heard the president's proposal,” Baldwin — who’s facing Republican businessman Eric Hovde this fall — told Raw Story. “There's often been discussion about what you're asking about.
I'm at the very early stages of evaluation.” ALSO READ: 21 worthless knick-knacks Donald Trump will give you for your cash “Yeah?” Raw Story pushed. “But you’re supportive of ethics reform?” “Ethics for sure,” Baldwin said after casting one of her last votes before the Senate broke for its August recess last week.
Baldwin is with most every other Senate Democrat, as they unite around an ethics reform proposal for the Supreme Court. Reform within the high court has been of particular Democratic interest since ProPublica first broke the news of Justice Clarence Thomas living a lavish lifestyle — one filled with free private jets, exclusive resorts and luxury yachts — on billionaire donor Harlan Crow’s dime. But most Democrats in power have also stopped short of outrightly calling for expanding the court to, say, 12 or 13 or 15 justices — a move that would ostensibly give a Democratic president the power to fundamentally alter the court’s ideological balance of power.
This isn’t something they’re particularly keen on advertising, however, as they tip-toe around the topic so as not to alienate the progressive — and energized — wing of the Democratic Party, which would love to see Biden, or Kamala Harris were she to win the White House , nominate a slate of new liberal justices. Democratic divisions Biden’s package of potential Supreme Court reforms includes capping justices’ careers on the court at 18 years and the installation of an enforceable code of ethics. While you wouldn’t know it based on Republican rhetoric — from former President Donald Trump on down to the conservative pundit class — Biden has squarely rejected calls to expand the Supreme Court.
So unenthused are most congressional Democrats about expanding the court that one congressional proposal to expand the size of the Supreme Court to 12 justices — the Judiciary Act of 2023 from Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) — has sat collecting dust for months, not even gaining a single new supporter in the past year. Besides Markey, it’s supported by Sens.
Tina Smith (D-MN) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), but that’s it at present. If Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) wins his race to replace the late Dianne Feinstein in the Senate, the measure to expand the court could gain a new sponsor.
U.S. Sen.
Tina Smith (D-MN) arrives for a vote at the Capitol on July 8, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images) “Right now, people recognize that we've got to do something, and so there's a lot of negotiation about what's the right way to reform the Supreme Court,” Warren told Raw Story as she was walking to her car outside the U.
S. Capitol. “But on our side, we recognize that we're not going to save our Constitution and our nation if the United States Supreme Court is going to make declarations that presidents get to be kings and Congress can't do their business.
” Added Warren: “We're still talking.” If they’re talking, it’s not to their vulnerable colleagues, such as Baldwin. ‘Have not even looked at it’ Before Congress kicked off its August recess, Raw Story interviewed 12 Senate Democrats — including the chair of the Judiciary Committee, three of the Senate’s most embattled incumbents and, arguably, the chamber’s fiercest proponents of ethics reform — about so-called court packing proposals for the Supreme Court.
All told, they reveal the vacuousness of the right’s Supreme Court-packing rhetoric, such as in July, when a Trump campaign statement — reacting to Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 election — declared: “It’s all part of Kamala’s scheme to pack the Supreme Court with far-left radical judges who will render decisions based on politics, not the law.” ALSO READ: Tim Walz's personal finances are extraordinarily boring — and that may help Harris But that’s far from reality. Democrats aren’t just divided over the topic of court packing — many run away from it altogether.
Inside the Democratic Caucus, most senators aren’t interested in discussing it or plead ignorance about it. “Have you looked at Markey's measure to expand the size of the Supreme Court?” Raw Story asked. “I haven’t,” Sen.
Jon Tester (D-MT) — who’s facing former Navy Seal Tim Sheehy in November — told Raw Story. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) listens during a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs committee hearing on January 11, 2024, in Washington, D.
C. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images) “Haven’t even looked at it?” “I have not even looked at it,” Tester said of the decades-old debate that stretches back to the days of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“The question I have is, where’s it stop? Look, accountability is really important, I don't care what branch of the government you're in, and I'm all about accountability transparency.” Raw Story asked Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA): “Are the calls in your party to expand the size of the court – like Ed Markey’s bill — are those unhelpful? Because when you watch Fox or Newsmax, the whole party gets pegged as ‘progressive’ on the issue.
” “Look, the president made a really thoughtful proposal on a range of issues,” said Casey — who’s running against Republican businessman Dave McCormick this cycle. “The question of the makeup of the court, that's a question that I've got to take a closer look at. I just haven't spent the time to examine that.
” Casey has company. “No I have not looked at it,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) — who squeaked out her reelection victory by some 8,000 votes in 2022 — told Raw Story.
“It really doesn't take the politics out of it.” Before coming to Congress, Cortez Masto served as Nevada’s attorney general. She says that these days, she’s hearing about the judiciary from more than angry base voters, including from many bewildered lawyers.
“Because they've also seen under a Trump administration the caliber of the [judges] from the Ninth Circuit, which is outrageous. And so they're having to deal with it, so there's a lot at stake,” Cortez Masto said. Cortez Masto was especially enraged when the John Roberts-led Supreme Court did away with “Chevron deference” — a decades-old Supreme Court ruling that enabled Congress to pass broad bills before experts in federal agencies wrote out the rules and regulations needed to implement those statutes.
ALSO READ: Supreme Court’s MAGA majority wants us to burn “It's a matter of getting it right, and watching what's coming out of the court now and watching not just rights being eroded, l also recognize that the executive branch agencies have a role to play in discretion in how they implement our programs is very important,” Cortez Masto said. “And for them to overturn Chevron is not just impacting at the federal level, but it is impacting at the state level.” She says the bubble the nation’s top justices inhabit is having real world consequences beyond Democrats’ fight to restore nationally recognized abortion rights, which seems to get the most attention since Roe v.
Wade was wiped away. Cortez Masto says the justices are daft when it comes to the art of legislating. “You're not going to get it right on the first try — any legislation.
You're hopeful, you bring all the stakeholders together, you're there, everybody solving the problem. Everybody has input, but sometimes it's so complex that it takes two or three times to get it,” Cortez Masto said. “That's why it is important that you have that flexibility with those agencies to hear what they're saying, to work with them to implement the ratio.
I just think we need to take them out of that process. And what the court has done is injected themselves into the process.” That’s why Cortez Masto and other Democrats are focusing on ethics reform and not even entertaining proposals to expand the court.
It’s not just vulnerable lawmakers. Even party leaders are staying away from the proposed “packing.” “I haven’t come out for it,” Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) acknowledged to Raw Story.
‘Term limits are where the mainstream is’ Some progressive Democrats still want to expand the court. But they largely acknowledge that they likely won’t get their way — at least not yet. “Term limits are where the mainstream is right now.
I think it's very clear that the court is out of control and operating in a totally partisan, in some cases unlawful, way,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) told Raw Story. “There's a recognition that there are three branches of government and these guys shouldn't be permitted to operate with total impunity.
” For many in Congress, it’s started to feel like this Supreme Court is slowly taking power away from the legislative branch, which Schatz bemoans. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) leaves a meeting with Senate Democrats at the U.
S. Capitol Building following passage in the House of a 45-day continuing resolution on Sept. 30, 2023, in Washington, D.
C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) “Doesn't mean we should interfere with their individual decisions, but the structure of the court, the ethical standards of the court, how many justices there are, how many circuits there are — all of those are subject to congressional action,” Schatz said. “These particular justices have decided that any exertions of article one power is some sort of obscene transgression and I think the public is wise to that.
” “But expanding the court just goes too far?” Raw Story pressed. “I don’t know if it goes too far. I just think we should start the conversation where everyone is,” Schatz said.
Biden’s court reform package is uniting the Democratic Party where Chief Justice John Roberts has failed to, because while Roberts convinced justices to adopt an ethics measure, there’s no current mechanism to enforce it. While Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have fought all year for ethics reform Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) — the author of the SCERT or Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act of 2023 — says it’s helpful to have the president on board, too.
“I'm very happy about it. I'm particularly happy with his recommendations aligned with my bill,” Whitehouse told Raw Story. As for expanding the court? “Investigation comes first,” Whitehouse said.
“I think the aperture for that is not there yet.” The clock’s ticking, so Dems say keep it bipartisan Another loud reform advocate agrees. Before Biden came out in favor of an 18-year term for justices, Sen.
Cory Booker (D-NJ) proposed as much with his TERM — Supreme Court Tenure Establishment and Retirement Modernization — Act. “So whatever tact we've taken, this is why I think the president's measures were so solid, it should be things that objectively are not partisan,” Booker told Raw Story. “And that really helped to restore the prestige and faith to the court.
” Booker says there’s little time to waste. “This is a real crisis for the Supreme Court right now that the legitimacy of the court is being called into question by people across the political spectrum. We have individuals who are receiving literally millions of dollars in gifts from people that have matters before the court order or fighting logical preferences of the court,” Booker said.
“This is very problematic.” As for calls by Markey and other progressives to expand the size of the court, Booker says it alienates the very Republicans they need to win over to pass any reform measures. “I haven't looked at the specifics of this proposal.
It's like, when does that stop when both sides are trying to do that for political advantage? I think it could be that they could fall into partisanship,” Booker said. “I'm not criticizing the measure. I just know that I have resisted calls to do things that don't have wide bipartisan support.
” In spite of all the accusations that Democrats want to pack the court, most Democrats, including Georgetown educated lawyer Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), have rejected those calls from the party’s leftward flank. “We should start with the fact that they should have a code of ethics.
It’s nuts that you can have a Supreme Court justice or justices accepting millions of dollars in entertainment. Like, what the heck is that?” Hirono told Raw Story. “None of us get to do it, and thank goodness not!” Charlie Sykes offered a sinister explanation for Donald Trump's social media posts suggesting that Kamala Harris was sharing fake photos of her crowds.
The former president claimed his Democratic rival had used artificial intelligence to make it appear thousands of supporters had greeted her at a Michigan airport, and the conservative commentator told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Trump was setting the stage for another attempt to overturn an election loss. "As we're watching this, you know, decomposition meltdown by Donald Trump, notice that not a single prominent Republican is looking at this and saying, 'Hey, you know, let's get off this train, this is deeply wrong, let's go in a different direction or change my vote,'" Sykes said. "They're completely locked in.
I also agree with you, that what's really rattling Donald Trump is that this has become a cultural phenomenon, not simply a political phenomenon." "Yes, it is sad and we can make fun of it, it is alarming, but it is also profoundly dangerous, what is going on," Sykes added, "because you look at that insane tweet, and it's not just that he's going down this rabbit hole of deep swamp conspiracy theories. He's using this as, you know, a way of saying that the Democrats are cheating, that Kamala Harris should be disqualified.
" The Republican nominee seems to be trying to question the legitimacy of the election three months before it takes place, Sykes said, after previously trying to overturn his loss four years ago. ALSO READ: Trump’s smear job climaxed prematurely — and now he’s stuck "This is pre-election denialism by Donald Trump," Sykes said. "It's no mystery, Donald Trump is never going to graciously concede defeat in this election.
He's already laying the groundwork for what's going to happen after November. I think this is going to be an extraordinarily dangerous period. He has election deniers in key states, his base is psychologically not prepared for him to lose.
" "This is a desperate man," Sykes added. "Donald Trump will not simply lose the election. Donald Trump knows if he is not elected president, he may be going to jail.
He will do and say anything. You see in that tweet, not merely the fact that he is rattled and losing it, but that he is already coming up with his lines for why he can deny the results of the election, how Kamala Harris' nomination is unconstitutional, how this is being stolen – all of that in advance. "No one should be surprised or think that this fever is going to break on Nov.
5. Whatever happens, we are about to head into a very dangerous period in American politics, led by Donald Trump, obviously assisted by Republicans who simply have decided that they're not going to draw the line." Watch the video below or at this link.
- YouTube youtu.be WASHINGTON — Congress plans to spend just 35 days between now and the end of the year in the nation’s capital, a fitting end to one of the least productive sessions in decades. The deeply divided 118th Congress so far has placed just 78 public laws on the books, a fraction of the hundreds enacted during prior sessions, regardless of whether one party held control or voters elected a divided government.
While there’s time left to enact a handful of laws, the number is nearly certain to remain low. Over the past several decades, lawmakers have become accustomed to bundling several bills together into sweeping legislative packages instead of voting on them individually, but that doesn’t entirely account for how unproductive this Congress has been. Members have sought to approve bipartisan legislation on immigration policy and border security, railway safety, the farm bill, tax law and children’s online safety at various points during the last 19 months — but all those major initiatives failed to make it across the finish line.
ALSO READ: Harris has figured out Trump’s greatest liability Lawmakers have been able to reach consensus on must-pass items like the annual government funding bills, but did so six months behind schedule. They are on track to miss their deadline again this year, which will mean yet another stopgap spending bill. While election-year politics and a truncated amount of time on Capitol Hill hampered lawmakers’ productivity, there are numerous other factors dragging down this Congress.
Molly Reynolds, senior fellow in governance studies at the nonprofit Brookings Institution, said Democrats are working to flip control of the House away from Republicans’ narrow majority, while at the same time the GOP is projecting it will push Democrats out of power in the Senate. Those ambitions add “an additional structural layer” to the typical disagreements within Congress, she said. Infighting within each of the political parties, as well as Democrats and Republicans moving further away from each other on policy goals, has contributed to the intransigence, she said.
“Those divisions within the parties pale in comparison to the size of the difference between the parties,” Reynolds said. “And so, that does make it more challenging to find issues on which both sides are willing and interested to come to the table.” ALSO READ: Trump’s smear job climaxed prematurely — and now he’s stuck A bipartisan trio of senators spent months negotiating a deal on immigration just to have the agreement disintegrate when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump came out in opposition.
That disappointing outcome makes members of Congress reluctant to tackle tough issues, she said. “When members put in the hard work to try and reach a compromise and then don’t have the backing of their leadership, it doesn’t necessarily incentivize them to come back to the table and try to do that same thing again in the future,” Reynolds said. The 118th Congress included more than its fair share of drama and bickering.
The turmoil prevented the Republican House and Democratic Senate from agreeing on much of anything other than the bare minimum, with even must-pass legislation finalized months behind schedule. House Republicans set the tone for their razor-thin majority in January 2023 when they trudged through 15 rounds of voting over several days and nights before California Rep. Kevin McCarthy secured the speaker’s gavel.
McCarthy made several backroom deals during the stalemate and elicited anger from members of the party’s right flank, who nearly came to blows on the floor as he sought to lock in the necessary support. Less than nine months later, the House voted to oust McCarthy from the speaker’s office. The GOP then kept the chamber frozen for several weeks as members voted behind closed doors to put forward four nominees, before Louisiana’s Mike Johnson garnered the votes necessary on the floor to lead his party and the chamber.
McCarthy, who repeatedly swore he would never quit, then did just that in December. The Senate has spent much of its time confirming President Joe Biden’s nominees, occasionally breaking from that pattern to negotiate necessary items like the annual defense policy bill, government funding measures and legislation that avoided a default on the national debt. Senators appeared to be on the cusp of making bipartisan changes to the nation’s border security and immigration policy following painstaking negotiations between Oklahoma Republican Sen.
James Lankford, Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy and Arizona independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
It would have been the most sweeping immigration legislation in years. But that fell apart in February after Trump signaled he didn’t want to lose the border and immigration as an election issue or see Biden claim a victory. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, had said the deal was necessary to move an emergency spending bill for Israel , Ukraine and Taiwan through the chamber, though he later reversed course.
Congress finally approved $95 billion in military and humanitarian assistance in April after House Republicans added in a ban on the social media app TikTok that would kick in if ByteDance, the Chinese parent company, didn’t sell the platform — one of the most significant laws of the year as it turned out. Congress has also failed to negotiate a new version of the five-year farm bill, following months of delays and differences of opinion on how much nutrition assistance for low-income Americans should be in the package. The 78 laws enacted this Congress pale in comparison to earlier sessions.
During the 116th Congress, when the GOP controlled the Senate and Democrats held the House, lawmakers reached agreement on 344 measures that went on to become law. When Democrats held control of both chambers and the presidency during the 117th Congress, they approved more than 360 measures that would later become law, the vast majority of which required bipartisan support to move through the Senate. Lawmakers have consistently enacted more than 280 public laws during their two-year sessions, going back to at least the 82nd Congress, which began in 1951 and ended the following year.
During that seven-decade span, the number of laws enacted per Congress fluctuated, reaching a low of 283 during the 112th Congress, which lasted from January 2011 through January 2013, and a high of 1,028 during the 84th Congress, which took place in 1955 and 1956. The number of laws enacted was consistently in the 400s or 500s, if not higher, during those years. Reynolds pointed out that not all laws are created equal — some simply rename post offices or are confined to one issue, while others bundle several major pieces of legislation together in one package and have a much greater impact than other public laws.
Congress, she noted, used to pass the annual government spending bills individually, but over time has settled into a pattern of approving just one or two omnibus spending packages, which roll together some or all of the dozen budget bills. Other examples of this include the Democrats’ signature health care, tax and climate change package, approved in the summer of 2022, known as the Inflation Reduction Act. When the GOP had unified control of Congress during the first two years of the Trump administration, they passed an overhaul of the nation’s tax code in just one bill.
“If we look at the data on the number of public laws, and we look at the data on the number of pages of public laws, we do see that, on average, they have been getting longer,” Reynolds said. “Having said all of that, when we actually do dig into what the 118th Congress has been up to, it has not been an especially productive Congress.” Lawmakers are set to return from their summer recess for a three-week session in September, before breaking again until after Election Day.
Members are expected to draft and vote on a stopgap spending bill to avoid a partial government shutdown when the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. But not much else is likely to move through as attention turns even more toward Nov.
5. The House Appropriations Committee has approved all 12 of its spending bills for fiscal 2025 while the Senate committee has voted to send 11 to the floor. The two chambers, however, are working off very different spending levels and don’t seem inclined to conference their bills until after they learn who will control Congress next year.
The lame-duck session, which spans the time between the election and when the new Congress convenes, is scheduled to last five weeks spread through late November and December. During that time, GOP leaders in the House and Democratic leaders in the Senate may seek to pass their overdue government funding bills and the annual defense policy bill. There are several other bills that have passed one chamber or the other with bipartisan majorities or have strong bipartisan support through co-sponsors, which lawmakers could seek to move through to the president’s desk.
But much of that will be determined by the outcome of the elections as well as whether there is any violence or unrest connected with the results. Members of Congress had varying answers for what they tell constituents back home about this Congress’ accomplishments. Maryland Sen.
Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, said that he speaks with voters about the laws enacted during the previous Congress, when Democrats had unified control of government, as well as this Congress. “Well, first of all, I tend to talk about the sweep of accomplishments, right? Both this Congress but also the previous Congress where we were enormously productive, right?” Van Hollen said. “So usually I don’t limit it to that timeline.
” Van Hollen said he was optimistic that Congress would be able to complete its work on the dozen annual government funding bills later this year. “Obviously, we’ve been able to adequately fund government agencies,” Van Hollen said. “So that may be a low bar, but in this divided Congress, it is something that I point to, because we’ve worked on the Appropriations Committee, at least in the Senate, to have bipartisan products.
” Kansas GOP Sen. Jerry Moran said he predominantly talks with constituents about his work as ranking member on the Veterans Affairs Committee as well as the Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations subcommittee. “I talk about my own particular accomplishments as compared to bragging about Congress in general,” Moran said.
Much of the work that members do while in Washington, D.C., he said, doesn’t resonate with constituents who are focused on their own lives and families.
“No, I don’t think so,” Moran said. “Most people are paying specific attention to things that matter to them.” Pennsylvania Democratic Sen.
Bob Casey, who faces a challenging reelection bid this November, said he tends to put more emphasis on the accomplishments of the upper chamber when talking with constituents back home. “I think the Senate’s been a lot more productive than the House, but we’ll let voters sort that out,” Casey said. While the Senate holds the advice and consent power to confirm certain presidential nominees, legislation must pass through both chambers of Congress and avoid the president’s veto pen, if it’s to become law.
Casey said there are several occasions where the House and Senate agreed on major issues, listing off the appropriations bills for the last fiscal year, the emergency spending package for Ukraine and other U.S. allies, and a bill to address fentanyl abuse.
“I think it’s a pretty long list and there’s still more work to do in the fall,” Casey said. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, criticized the number of days the chamber spends in session every week, saying the calendar has shortened during his decades in the chamber.
“When I came to the Senate 44 years ago, we used to start at 10 a.m. on Monday and go to 4 or 5 on Friday,” Grassley said.
The Senate typically comes into session around 3 p.m. on Monday, with its first vote at 5:30 p.
m. The chamber usually holds its last vote of the week on Thursday around 1:45 p.m.
, with the vast majority of senators heading to cars to leave shortly afterward. The House keeps to a similar four-day schedule, though its “fly-in day” is sometimes on Tuesday, pushing its “fly-out day” to Friday. That chamber takes its first vote of the week around 6:30 p.
m. with its last vote before noon on the fourth day. “There’s enough work for individual senators to do seven days a week if you want to work,” Grassley said.
“But you can’t solve this country’s problems until you get 100 people together, and they’ve got to be together for more than two-and-a-half days a week.” ALSO READ: Trump's insatiable ego is destroying the former president Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence.
Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: [email protected] . Follow Maryland Matters on Facebook and X .
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