THE TOP LINE

The Senate is out for Memorial Day recess; the House will be in for votes tomorrow and Thursday. (Yes, today is Tuesday. Welcome back.)

Speaker Pelosi triggered a 45-day emergency period for remote committee and floor deliberations on May 20th; we calculate the end-date as July 4th, unless it is extended. Members can opt to vote by proxy or in person; proxy designations are here. Hopefully the House will quickly move to remote floor voting; we’re tracking everything here. Cheers to retiring Rep. Rooney for endorsing remote deliberations.

The House will vote on the domestic-surveillance bill known as the USA Freedom Reauthorization Act, with leadership reportedly agreeing late on Friday to allow consideration of an amendment to require the FBI obtain a warrant prior to searching an American’s Internet search and browser histories. This is an interesting instance where rank-and-file pressure re-opened a bill that leadership had previously jammed through without a markup or amendments.

Senator McConnell is attacking the House for proxy voting, suggesting (at least in POLITICO’s summary) that he wouldn’t take up House bills enacted this way. Given that the Senate wasn’t taking up House bills anyway; that the Senate is in recess while the House is at work; that some senators stand accused of violating the STOCK Act; that appropriations bills originate in the House; and the pace of Senate public-facing activity has slowed to a crawl; this seems more like an effort at distraction than a serious charge; perhaps he should focus on the Senate.

House Dems intro’d a bill to protect Inspectors General from arbitrary removal, with some prominent Democratic sponsors. The Project on Government Oversight’s Executive Dir. explained why protecting IGs is important (and what else should be done) in this op-ed. WaPo takes a look at Sen. Grassley, who historically has defended IGs, and POLITICO describes how unitary executive theory — the extreme political view that the president controls everyone in the executive branch — is being used to undermine IG independence.

We’ve added new international resources to our twitterbot @OpenAtAGlance, which tweets primary sources on legislative operations + actions.

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Continue reading “Forecast for May 26, 2020” →

What a week. On Friday, the House adopted a remote voting resolution (H. Res. 965) that provides for proxy voting on the floor, remote committee hearings, and creates a pathway for remote voting on the floor and remote mark-ups in committees. In other words, the House can function for the foreseeable future despite the COVID-19 pandemic, creating the possibility of a legislative check on the executive branch. The Senate, meanwhile, continues to play Russian roulette with its members, staff, and the ability of that chamber to function.

Just a few months ago, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader McConnell spoke out in opposition to remote deliberations, and Minority Leader McCarthy denounced it from the House floor. It is unusual, to say the least, for a rules change to pass over the opposition of the leaders of both parties in the House, but intense political pressure and the political reality prompted Speaker Pelosi to do a 180, and she put her own stamp on the rule to protect (and possibly aggrandize) her power vis-a-vis the rank-and-file. (Full disclosure: we support remote voting.) The final vote was partisan, but I suspect many House Republicans welcome the move to keep the House functioning even if they wish it had come about differently.

When the House comes back on May 27th, it will vote on a surveillance reauthorization bill, which will be the first major legislation voted by proxy in the House. What’s notable about the Orwellian-named “USA Freedom Reauthorization Act” is (1) the underlying law stayed lapsed in part because of no remote deliberations; (2) the bill was recently amended in the Senate to allow outside experts to weigh in on FBI surveillance requests, and (3) that an amendment failed 59-37 to prohibit the government from warrantlessly-surveilling your website browsing information and search history, but two of the absent Senators would have voted for it had, say, remote voting been in place. Will Speaker Pelosi — who is a hard-liner for national security issues trumping civil liberties — allow the House to consider a pro civil-liberties amendment that has 60+ votes in the Senate? If she does not, what mechanisms are available to House members in a proxy-voting environment to force a vote on that amendment? How do the new processes affect their leverage?

Continue reading “Forecast for May 18, 2020” →

Will the House come back this week? Will Congress turn on remote deliberations? Is it really 142 days from the end of the fiscal year? There are lots of good questions (et tu, Senate) that we address this week. If we’ve missed something, ask us on Wednesday at 5pm at this virtual panel discussion on Continuity of Congress.

Continue reading “Forecast for May 11, 2020” →

You may have noticed that you didn’t receive this week’s First Branch Forecast on Monday. This newsletter takes a team to write, and with so much happening last week and over the weekend, I ran out of time to finalize it on Sunday. Here is an abbreviated version.

COMING UP THIS WEEK

Wednesday at 2 join our roundtable on Lessons learned from Remote Committee Proceedings. Speakers include the congressional staff who held the committee roundtables, former members of congress, and experts from civil society and academia. Also, we spoke to Civic Hall last week on continuity of Congress.

Congress needs tech help fast; think you’re up to the challenge? TechCongress launched a Congressional Digital Service fellowship to help get Congress functioning amid pandemic; the deadline to apply is Sunday.

We’re keeping an eye on the Senate Rules Committee, which is meeting on Thursday. Maybe they’ll say something about moving the Senate towards working remotely? (Maybe they should call the Supreme Court, who actually broadcast audio of oral arguments yesterday.)

Continue reading “Forecast for May 5, 2020.” →

TOP LINE

The House inches forward on remote deliberations. Speaker Pelosi belatedly flipped her position and now supports a very limited form of remote voting, although it remains to be seen whether she will support restarting the committees and allowing remote deliberations on the floor — and whether she needs to bring members back to change the rules. Her choice remains remote Congress or no Congress, but she could misuse this opportunity to further centralize power in leadership’s hands.

The Senate is nowhere on remote deliberations, at least with respect to the floor, although there are some rumblings about committees.

Make it work. CRS issued a report on the constitutionality of remote voting and an assortment of civil society and former members held a simulated hearing to show how remote committee deliberations could work.

With Congress defunct, the President made (another) grab for Legislative Branch powers.

Check out our newest resources, including a website of all things continuity of congress, a database of the Members of Congress who support remote voting, the results of the House study on pay and diversity as a downloadable dataset, and our investigation of trends in CRS work over the last 30 years.

We hate to ask, but have you subscribed to the First Branch Forecast? It’s free and comes out once a week. Continue reading “Forecast for April 20, 2020” →

TOP LINE

It’s been another never-ending week. We hope that you’re staying healthy and staying at home. This issue focuses on continuity of Congress, protecting whistleblowers, mass surveillance, and coronavirus “oversight.” 

(Hey, if you’re regularly reading our little newsletter, why not subscribe if you have not already? It’s free…)

Continue reading “Forecast for April 6, 2020.” →

TOP LINE

In case you need a reminder…it’s Monday again; we hope everyone is feeling well and hanging in there. This week’s First Branch Forecast focuses on continuity of Congress and the emergency Coronavirus bill, which are inextricably linked. We also have some important reads in our Oversight & Transparency + Odds & Ends sections as well as a discussion of presidential signing statements.

Continue reading “Forecast for March 30, 2020.” →

The Pope banned public masses, closed Holy Week services, and is encouraging “spiritual communion” when it is unsafe to receive it in person; the New York Stock Exchange has rushed a rule into effect to facilitate electronic auctions in light of the temporary closure of the trading floor; and yet the Speaker of the House and Majority Leader of the Senate are forestalling rules changes to allow the temporary invocation of remote deliberations in either chamber during the pandemic.

At the same time, we’re seeing legislatures disband, from every member of the Georgia legislature in self-quarantine to the Parliament in Victoria, Australia, and many regions in the US are going on lockdown. The trendline is clear.

Addendum: Late Sunday evening, Sen. Rand Paul tested positive for Coronavirus and a number of Republicans began a self-quarantine. This has dropped the operational Republican majority in the Senate to +1R (at the time of this writing). In addition, Donald Trump endorsed remote voting for Congress. This pandemic could shift power in both chambers, the threat of which may finally impel their respective leaders to take another look at remote voting.

Welcome to a very somber First Branch Forecast. We hope that you are staying home and staying safe.

Continue reading “Forecast for March 23, 2020” →

TOP LINE

Congress is open for business, but for how long? The Capitol Complex and Library of Congress are not allowing visitors through April 1st, although there are some loopholes for business visitors. The House put out telework guidance for offices — but no uniform telework requirement — and went into its district work period; the Senate cancelled its district work period to consider the emergency Coronavirus funding bill passed by the House, which it will take up only after a surveillance bill. Meanwhile, we urged both chambers to allow remote voting (editorial, letter); so did Norm Ornstein; so did Rep. Katie Porter; and we put out a statement on remote voting in federal and state legislatures.

The House passed a resolution implementing recommendations from the Fix Congress committee. This is the first time in recent history a modernization committee has issued recommendations at all, let alone had the bipartisan recommendations be adopted.

A warrantless surveillance program is on deck for Senate consideration, after being rammed through the House by leadership and circumventing the committee process. It’s fate (like its policies) are murky at best.

Continuity of Congress Briefing. We have tentatively scheduled an online briefing for tomorrow, Tuesday, March 17, at 11:30 AM ET on Continuity of Congress, which will focus on remote voting and the issues at play. RSVP here so we can send you a link to the online briefing.

Continue reading “Forecast for March 16, 2020.” →

The coronavirus poses a deadly threat to our democracy, so we have a special issue of the First Branch Forecast focused on what the House and Senate should do right now to maintain the continuity of Congress.

Read the letter below containing civil society recommendations that must be implemented before the start of the district work period. We published a popularization of our recommendations in the Fulcrum (with PopVox’s Marci Harris).

Please stay safe and keep healthy.

March 12, 2020

Dear [Members]:

As you work to respond to the coronavirus threat on Capitol Hill, we urge you to consider the following:

Prioritize the health and safety of the public, staff, press, and lawmakers: We recognize that there are contradictory pressures to project calm while also modeling appropriate responses, such as the “social distancing” recommended by the Centers for Disease Control. In this vein, we encourage Congress to adopt a “putting on your own mask before assisting others” approach, to take rational steps to limit exposure on the Capitol Campus and within district offices. By temporarily postponing school tours, industry fly-ins, and in-person advocacy meetings, Congress will wisely decrease the risk of contagion to the public and staff.

Continue reading “Special Thursday Forecast” →