The Archive

IN THIS EDITION

Drinking from the Senate firehose

Culture wars hit Capitol Hill

The Gaetz storm comes — and goes — on Capitol Hill

Why I stay on the tech beat

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Drinking from the Senate firehose

Welcome to The Readback, our weekend digest featuring the best of Punchbowl News this week – a quick roundup of all our scoops, analysis and Capitol Hill insight you won’t find anywhere else. We’ve also included a few of our favorite outside reads from the week.

And, breathe.

Congress just completed a hectic two-week, post-Election Day sprint before Thanksgiving recess. I also began covering the Senate in earnest, beginning my transition from House reporter to “upper chamber” chronicler. What a time to do it.

Let’s recap all that’s gone down in Senate world since Election Day:

— Senate Republicans won the majority and quickly turned their focus to electing a new leader for the first time in nearly two decades. Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) allies mounted an unprecedented outside pressure campaign that backfired and got the Floridian eliminated on the first ballot. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) beat Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in a closely contested second ballot.

— Only hours after Thune’s victory, President-elect Donald Trump shocked the GOP conference by announcing he would be nominating Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) for attorney general. A week later, Gaetz withdrew his nomination after Republicans privately made clear there was strong opposition to the firebrand.

— Senate Republicans, eager to delay Democratic judicial confirmations, forced a series of late-night votes to temporarily elongate Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s judge push. No judges were blocked as a result, but senators grumbled at being forced to vote well past their normal working hours.

— There was internal GOP bickering over absences for key votes. On a number of occasions, Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) voted with Republicans on some judicial appointees. But since some Republicans weren’t present, the votes passed. Some pointed the finger at VP-elect JD Vance, who bristled at the right-wing insults and even called one critic a “mouth-breathing imbecile.” Vance later said he would take the unprecedented step of voting during the lame-duck period.

— More than a third of Senate Democrats supported Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) resolutions seeking to ban U.S. weapons sales to Israel. The votes set a new benchmark for shifting Democratic views on supporting Israel in wartime.

— And despite losing the majority, Democrats tried to spin that the election result was actually a positive one.

As we say in the business, it’s been like drinking from a firehose — and this list isn’t even exhaustive. There’s been no shortage of news, and while there will be a quick respite for Thanksgiving, the December sprint will be even wilder.

Everyone calls the House the more “exciting” chamber. I can’t disagree. But people are seriously underestimating the Senate’s capacity for chaos.

What I’m watching: I’m late to the game, but I just started the HBO series Industry. As a former London resident, the depiction of life in the city is fascinating. I’m not an investment banker, so it’s also a little alien to me. But that’s what makes great television!

– Max Cohen

Listen to The Readback Podcast! Enjoying a behind the scenes look at how the biggest stories of the week came to be? Punchbowl News’ Max Cohen unpacks a key story of the week with fellow reporters in our newest podcast: The Readback. Tune in today!

Culture wars hit Capitol Hill

Capitol Hill was dominated by culture wars this week thanks to a Republican-led push to bar an incoming transgender member from using the bathroom of their choice.

It all started when South Carolina GOP Rep. Nancy Mace sought to ban Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.) from using women’s restrooms at the Capitol. Her proposal was later supported by Speaker Mike Johnson who declared that transgender women will not be allowed to use women’s facilities on Capitol Hill.

A swarm of other House Republicans like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) joined in on the heckling of McBride. Greene went as far as to say she would start a fistfight with her if she saw her in a woman’s bathroom. I’ll note most lawmakers use their own private facilities in their offices anyway, for what it’s worth.

But McBride isn’t taking the GOP bait. And House Democrats are privately mulling how to address these kinds of attacks without giving it too much attention.

I spoke to McBride on Wednesday after everything went down. She doubled down on her desire to stay focused on the kitchen-table issues she ran on like the economy and health care.

“Sure, there’s going to be some members of Congress who want to use my service to distract from the fact that they have absolutely no policies to address the issues that matter to this country,” McBride told me. “These are people who don’t even work with Republicans, let alone Democrats.”

Other members also came to McBride’s defense. At an Equality PAC reception this week, McBride got a standing ovation from dozens of House Democrats.

Rep.-elect Emily Randall (D-Wash.), who is the first queer Latina elected to Congress, said her colleagues can’t give into culture wars.

“Republicans are trying to distract from kitchen table issues with homophobic policy and transphobic policy,” Randall told us. “We’re trying to recenter ourselves and tell our colleagues ‘no, we have to stay focused on the issues that matter to people.’”

Meanwhile, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) requested a meeting with Johnson to discuss his bathroom ban decision, as we first reported.

LGBTQ members are also discussing ways to best protect their members and how to make Capitol Hill a welcoming place for LGBTQ-identifying members and staff.

Mace, meanwhile, hasn’t relented on her taking credit for the bathroom ban. She’s been fundraising off her push and has tweeted about the effort more than 200 times this week.

I have a feeling that this fight may not be going away any time soon. But we’ll see!

What I’m watching: I’ve been watching a lot of reruns this week, so sadly nothing super interesting to report. I’m rewatching Gossip Girl and watched a couple of episodes of Glee. The latter aged… interestingly.

– Mica Soellner

The Gaetz storm comes — and goes — on Capitol Hill

Matt Gaetz may no longer be a member of Congress, but the Florida Republican and notorious chaos agent still managed to wreak havoc on the institution.

Our coverage this week was largely dominated by Gaetz’s doomed nomination for attorney general and a looming House Ethics Committee report. The panel had been investigating Gaetz over allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. However, after he abruptly resigned from Congress last week, it became a game of “will they or won’t they” release the report.

Wednesday really encapsulated the split screen on Capitol Hill. On one side of the building, Gaetz and Vice President-elect JD Vance were making the rounds with senators and trying — but struggling — to lock down support for his nomination. On the other end of the Capitol, the House Ethics panel was meeting to determine the fate of its long-awaited report.

Both events quickly became a media circus, with massive scrums of reporters, myself included, anxiously hunting for answers. It was a mob scene outside the House Ethics Committee meeting room in the Longworth House Office Building. At one point, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), whose office is nearby, started doling out water bottles to reporters and camera crews as the meeting dragged on.

At another point, Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.) walked through the packed, narrow hallway and started chanting “Free Garbarino!” — a reference to his fellow New York Republican, Rep. Andrew Garbarino, who serves on the Ethics panel.

The meeting finally wrapped after two hours. We quickly learned that Republicans on the committee voted to block the release of the report since it’s not in its final form yet. Members agreed to finish the report and meet again next month.

But there were clear signs of tensions on the normally secretive and bipartisan panel. Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), the ranking member, decided to make some rare on-camera remarks accusing Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) of “mischaracterizing” what happened in the room.

Then it was time for House votes. Not one, but two, House Democrats decided to file privileged resolutions that would force a vote compelling the Ethics panel to release the report. And adding to the chaos, disgraced former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) — himself the subject of a damning Ethics report that led to his expulsion — made a guest appearance on the Capitol steps.

In the end, the drama may have all been for naught. Gaetz withdrew his name for attorney general consideration on Thursday. And that makes it all the more likely that the Ethics report will remain under wraps.

What I’m watching: I’m gearing up to see “Wicked” with my family over Thanksgiving. And yes, we will be wearing coordinated pink-and-green outfits to the theater.

– Melanie Zanona

Why I stay on the tech beat

There’s a joke in tech policy that goes like this: “I think Congress will finally do privacy this year.”

Yes, that’s the whole joke. No, it’s not very funny. It just reflects that nothing ever seems to happen on the Hill on data protection or other tech policy issues no matter how much or for how long people want it.

Next year will mark the 25th anniversary of the oldest online privacy bill I know of. And it’s not just privacy. I’ve covered this beat on and off since 2017. I’ve focused on privacy, antitrust, artificial intelligence, controversial content, net neutrality and more.

In all that time, I’ve covered one bill that was signed into law.

On Thursday, my colleague Samantha and I wrote about the latest effort to fall short: an update to kids online privacy laws designed to cover most teens. Its lead House sponsor, Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), admitted it had likely run out of time this year.

The bill was widely viewed as urgent and palatable to most stakeholders. The list of cosponsors was long, bipartisan and bicameral.

None of the advantages the bill had seemed to be enough to get it across the finish line, at least not in 2024.

Why do tech bills collapse? Blame the corporate lobbyists. Blame lawmakers’ ignorance of tech. Blame partisanship or infighting. Blame the fact that regulating something as important to our economy as tech should be serious business but so many proposals are openly clownish.

So will the next Congress be different? A lot of what stops tech bills will still be true, but the Republican trifecta could cut down some partisan roadblocks. The GOP may want to strike while it has to make a minimum of compromises.

I also think journalists get it wrong when we assume nothing ever gets done in Congress. Maybe it won’t be privacy, but there were bills I didn’t cover that sneaked across. There were issues I never thought about that suddenly took center stage.

And honestly, slowly but surely, lawmakers are getting (a bit) less silly. Bills are sharper than when I joined the beat, the coalitions more robust.

That’s why I love covering tech policy: At the beginning of every Congress I’ve covered, I’ve found the old joke can seem just a bit like a real prediction.

What I’m reading: I had finally opened up Don DeLillo’s “White Noise” but put it down during a crazy autumn. Now I’m diving back in, determined to get this hilarious and erudite meditation on words and death under my belt before I turn back to vacation reading at the end of the year.

– Ben Brody