Roll Call

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, who voted to convict Donald Trump at his 2021 impeachment trial, lost his bid for reelection Saturday after failing to make a primary runoff in Louisiana. Cassidy, a physician turned politician, was trailing in third place with about 25 percent of the vote when The Associated Press called the race at 10:49 p.m. Eastern time. Rep. Julia Letlow, who had the president’s endorsement, was in first place in the GOP primary with around 45 percent while state Treasurer J

Welcome to a special edition of At the Races! Throughout the 2026 primary season, watch for these updates from the CQ Roll Call campaign team on what you need to know for election day. Know someone who’d like to get this newsletter? They can subscribe here. By Mary Ellen McIntire and Daniela Altimari When Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy voted to convict Donald Trump in a 2021 impeachment trial following the Jan. 6 insurrection, Trump had decamped from Washington with the future of t

The Senate Judiciary Committee has called on the executives of major social media companies to testify before the panel next month regarding child online safety. Chairman Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, sent letters to the heads of Meta, Google, Snap and TikTok earlier this month seeking attendance at a hearing on June 23 titled “Examining Tech Industry Practices and the Implications for Users and Families: Is This Social Media’s Big Tobacco Moment?” The letters went to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO o

The Supreme Court turned aside Friday an effort from Virginia Democrats to keep alive the commonwealth’s new congressional map, leaving in place the Virginia Supreme Court ruling holding the ballot measure process violated the Constitution. The one-line, unsigned, unexplained order from the justices declined to pause the state justices’ decision — effectively leaving in place the current Virginia congressional map, where Republicans currently hold five of the 11 House seats. The Democrats’

Lawmakers returned to Capitol Hill this week and got back to work on appropriations, which set up vitriolic clashes between some high-profile Trump administration officials and congressional Democrats. 

Hearings filled with heart-wrenching stories of children who died by suicide after their interactions with artificial intelligence chatbots have made it easy for those on both sides of the aisle to agree that something needs to be done to regulate the new technology. But as one bill has been voted out of committee and another heads toward a markup, observers say bipartisan support in the Senate for curtailing kids’ use of chatbots masks as-yet unanswered questions. Those center on which bots

Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen announced Friday that he wouldn’t seek reelection this year after Tennessee Republicans redrew the state’s House map, splitting his Memphis-based district between three deep-red seats.  Cohen, who had been facing a primary challenge from state Rep. Justin Pearson before the passage of the new lines, said the seat he could have sought reelection to was “nothing like the 9th District that I’ve represented.” “I considered running in one of these three district

When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the helm of the department in February 2025, he pledged to remove special interests from HHS and chart a new path focused on “gold-standard science.” He made his core policy interests clear in November 2024, even before he was President Donald Trump’s pick for the job, accusing the federal government of suppressing “psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds,

Republican leaders in Congress scored some victories this week in nominations and appropriations but struck out on easily advancing their partisan “reconciliation 2.0” proposal to fund immigration enforcement. The bill faces a hurdle in the form of the Senate Parliamentarian, who on Thursday evening advised that several provisions violate the Senate’s restrictive Byrd rule — and more could be coming.  This throws an obstacle in the way of the GOP’s efforts to provide some $72 billion

Louisiana is a step closer to a new congressional map after the state Senate approved a plan Thursday that would eliminate one of the state’s two majority-Black districts, both held by Democrats.  The new map comes after the Supreme Court invalidated Louisiana’s current House map last month in a ruling that found the state had illegally used race to draw a second majority-Black seat last cycle — the 6th District, represented by Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields. That ruling has set off a wave

A federal appeals court on Friday allowed members of Congress to continue to conduct oversight visits to immigration detention facilities without a seven-day notice, with one judge saying the Department of Homeland Security did not show the visits were anything more than an administrative inconvenience. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted unanimously to reject a request from the Trump administration to allow DHS to enforce the latest ver

Alabama officials asked the Supreme Court on Friday to quickly clear the way for the state to change its congressional map for the upcoming elections. The emergency applications to the justices came an hour after the state legislature passed a new congressional map that would reduce the Black-majority districts in the state from two to one. The Alabama officials point to the recent decision that invalidated Louisiana’s congressional map, which was drawn with a second Black opportunity dist

Senate Democrats are preparing to challenge on procedural grounds a $1 billion provision in a GOP reconciliation bill that is connected to plans for a White House ballroom. Democrats say the provision is a “glaring” violation of the Senate’s Byrd rule, which restricts the type of material that can be considered in a reconciliation bill, according to sources familiar with their conversations. The White House and Department of Homeland Security have come out in strong suppo

Virginia’s Supreme Court invalidated the state’s new congressional map Friday, overturning a ballot measure adopted by voters that would have targeted several Republican-held House seats. The majority opinion, written by Justice D. Arthur Kelsey, found that the legislative process to advance the ballot measure violated Virginia’s Constitution. “This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy,” the decision said. The ruling means

A federal court in New York on Thursday invalidated the international 10 percent tariffs President Donald Trump enacted after his previous tariffs were thrown out by the Supreme Court earlier this year. A 2-1 decision from the U.S. Court of International Trade found the administration couldn’t use complaints about international trade deficits and net investments in other countries to justify the tariffs of 10 percent under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. Trump in February enacted the

Tennessee state legislators on Thursday passed a congressional map that dismantles the state’s lone majority-Black district and gives Republicans the advantage in all nine of the state’s House seats.   The move comes a little over a week after the Supreme Court limited the use of race in drawing congressional districts, prompting several GOP-controlled Southern states to weigh redrawing their House maps ahead of the midterm elections.  Both chambers of the Tennessee General

Welcome to At the Races! Each week we bring you news and analysis from the CQ Roll Call campaign team. Know someone who’d like to get this newsletter? They can subscribe here. By Mary Ellen McIntire, Daniela Altimari and Niels Lesniewski We’ve entered a two-month stretch of primaries that will set key matchups for November and offer clues about where each party’s base is roughly six months until the midterm elections.   Pennsylvanians go to the polls in less than two

Support is growing for a rules change in the House that would bar members of Congress and their staff from trading on prediction markets.  Senators adopted their own resolution at the end of last month by unanimous consent, revising the standing rules of the Senate to ban buying and selling contracts tied to the outcomes of specific events.  Now, lawmakers in the House are looking to do the same on their side of the Capitol.  “I think this is something we should be doin

The Justice Department has agreed to return the cell phone of Rep. Andy Ogles, according to a law firm representing him, after a lengthy dispute in which the Tennessee Republican said he believed the FBI was investigating past campaign finance filings. The law firm Litson in a press release Tuesday, said the federal investigation “centered on a campaign finance reporting issue” and the Justice Department had also agreed to destroy all information it obtained from the lawmaker’s phone and Goog

The Supreme Court finished the last of its oral arguments for the term last week, and the justices now turn to the dozens of cases they are expected to decide by the conclusion of the term at the end of June. The court has already issued major decisions invalidating Louisiana’s congressional map and wiping out President Donald Trump’s worldwide emergency tariff scheme, but experts say plenty of potential blockbuster decisions remain in the nearly three dozen cases left. Those cases include