This week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., suggested that he alone has the power to select the measures on which his colleagues vote. When McConnell was asked why the… Read More
Senate Republicans are not yet convinced that they can amend a resolution to terminate a presidential declaration of a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act. While the… Read More
Do you ever get the feeling that your friends and coworkers are talking about an obscure federal statute that you have never heard of before? Have you recently been unable… Read More
Nearly ten years ago, I set out to tell a story about the Senate that was not being told. I wanted to understand better how the Senate actually worked at… Read More
Back when he was the Senate’s minority leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, disagreed profoundly with how Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., managed the institution. McConnell even accused Reid of doing “tremendous damage… Read More
In January 2014, then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., made the case that Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was running the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” into the… Read More
The Senate’s rules of procedure are comprised of five parts: the Constitution; Standing Rules; statutory rules; standing orders; and precedents. The interaction of these component parts creates the procedural architecture… Read More
A top spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., summed up the legislative achievements of the Republican-controlled 115th Congress as such: “The most accomplished Congress in decades.” McConnell … Read More
Senate Republicans are threatening to go nuclear if Democrats do not support a deal to lower the maximum amount of debate time that presidential nominations can receive after cloture is… Read More
Speaking at the annual meeting of Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa society in 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson maintained that it was the scholar’s duty to show people “facts amidst appearances.”… Read More
