Essays
Judgment / September 26, 2026
Most coverage of the Progressive Caucus misses the real story. The argument is usually about policy-Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, student debt...
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Every few months Washington performs the same tired ritual. A congressional ethics investigation becomes the story. The press covers it like a criminal...
We love to mock the congressional calendar. Long weekends spent somewhere other than Washington. Month-long recesses stretched across the calendar like...
When the Government Accountability Office released its accounting of the 2018-2019 partial government shutdown, official Washington treated the document as...
The United States Senate was never meant to be efficient. The Founders built it as the republic's cooling saucer, a place where the hot passions of the...
Most Senate jargon is deliberately dull, and that dullness is not an accident. It lets the real work happen while the rest of the country is looking...
The most important vote in the United States Senate is not on the bill. It is on whether the Senate will allow itself to talk about the bill at all. Ask...
Most budget coverage is aimed at the wrong target. It follows the trillion-dollar top line, the reconciliation instructions, the floor speeches, and the...
Most people hear the phrase "motion to table" and assume the Senate has decided to set a bill or amendment aside for later consideration. That assumption is...
Everyone argues about what the Congressional Black Caucus demands. Almost no one asks the prior question. Why does the people's House of a constitutional...