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Democrats are mulling an audacious plan to bottle up President Trump's nominee to head the State Department in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - even though Mike Pompeo likely has enough votes to win confirmation on the Senate floor. The plan under consideration would involve Democrats on the panel refusing to vote to discharge Pompeo from the committee with even an unfavorable recommendation. This would force Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to offer a motion to bring Pompeo's nomination to the Senate floor. Democratic senators and aides say that motion would be subject to a filibuster, allowing Democrats to...

Activists seeking to derail President Trump's nomination of Gina Haspel to lead the CIA are looking to Sen. John McCain to cast the deciding vote against her — assuming he is well enough to return to Washington. The 81-year-old Republican was diagnosed with brain cancer in July and last cast a vote in the Senate on early December before he returned home to Arizona for treatment. He underwent surgery in Phoenix for an intestinal infection on April 15. Haspel's critics are counting on McCain to speak out against her nomination, even if he can't cast a vote on the Senate...

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., isn't running for re-election but he had many words of praise Wednesday for the Democratic candidate who is trying to replace him. Phil Bredesen, the former Democratic governor, is running in a tight race against Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn for the open Tennessee senate seat. Corker has donated money to Blackburn but said he won't campaign against Bredesen. "I worked very closely with him for years, and he was a very good mayor, very good governor, very good businessperson and look, I'm not going to campaign against someone who, you know, I've been a...

Phil Bredesen, a Tennessee Democratic Senate candidate, echoed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's (D., Calif.) and Sen. Cory Booker's (D., N.J.) talking points during a recent interview by saying the Republican tax reform law is providing "crumbs" to the middle class.

From criticizing President Donald Trump for congratulating Vladimir Putin on his re-election in March, to saying earlier this month that Trump’s comments about withdrawing from Syria “emboldened” Bashar al-Assad, Arizona Senator John McCain in recent weeks has continued to uphold his reputation as one of the Republican Party’s most vocal critics of the president. But what was perhaps McCain’s most dramatic gesture of dissent against President Trump to date came at 1:30 a.m. on July 28, 2017. In the opening scene from the new FRONTLINE documentary McCain, which traces the Republican Party’s evolution across McCain’s political career, and how President...

U.S. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell warned on Tuesday against trying to rescind some spending from a $1.3 trillion appropriations bill passed into law in March, an idea that has been promoted by House of Representatives Republican leader Kevin McCarthy. “We had an agreement with the Democrats” on the spending bill, McConnell, a Republican, said in an interview with Fox News when asked about reports that President Donald Trump wanted to cut a major portion of the spending.

For the first time ever, US lawmakers are reportedly going to let a sitting senator bring a child onto the Senate floor while the chamber is in session. Senate leaders are expected to approve a resolution filed by Sen. Tammy Duckworth — the first senator to give birth while in office — that would allow her new baby girl to accompany her for the next few months, according to Politico. The request will ultimately let senators bring children under a year old onto the Senate floor. Duckworth (D-Ill.) told the website before her daughter was born that new mothers couldn’t...

(CNN) - Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, who has has been undergoing treatment for a brain cancer diagnosis in his home state since late last year, is hospitalized in stable condition after undergoing surgery for an intestinal infection, his office said Monday. In a statement, his office said, "On Sunday, Senator McCain was admitted to Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, and underwent surgery to treat an intestinal infection related to diverticulitis."

Sen McCain has been quick to jump on anything the President does, especially over the last few months. But can anyone state the last time we have seen him in public?

FULL TITLE: Senator Tim Scott Unloads on Facebook: “What Is Unsafe About Two Black Women Supporting the President?” Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) is a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. On Tuesday the committee met as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was meeting with senators on Capitol Hill. Tim Scott took time out of his committee to address Facebook and why the company believes two black women supporting Trump are “unsafe for the community?” In a bit of irony, I’m posting video from our HELP Committee hearing today. As I’m sure many of you know, Mark...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t break much news when he acknowledged that Republicans are facing the possibility of a major wave election threatening their congressional majorities. But his public statement was an unmistakable sign that he considers the GOP’s Senate majority, once seen as untouchable because of the historically favorable map, under serious threat as President Trump’s political troubles worsen. Leading GOP Senate strategists now worry that Democrats won’t necessarily need a perfect storm to net the two seats necessary to win back a majority—just enough lackluster GOP campaigns and a little bad luck along the way. And while...

Senate Republicans, frustrated by delaying tactics imposed by Democrats on President Trump’s judicial and executive branch nominees, are on the verge of altering the Senate rules in order to speed up the process. GOP lawmakers told the Washington Examiner Tuesday that momentum is building for a change in the Senate rules that would shorten the time frame allowed for lawmakers to debate each nominee. One proposal by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., would reinstate a temporary rules change made by Democrats in 2013 that reduced debate time from 30 hours to eight hours for most executive branch nominations and from 30...

Under fire for the worst privacy debacle in his company’s history, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg batted away often-aggressive questioning Tuesday from lawmakers who accused him of failing to protect the personal information of millions of Americans from Russians intent on upsetting the U.S. election. During some five hours of Senate questioning, Zuckerberg apologized several times for Facebook failures, disclosed that his company was “working with” special counsel Robert Mueller in the federal probe of Russian election interference and said it was working hard to change its own operations after the harvesting of users’ private data by a data-mining company affiliated...

<p>Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has made it pretty clear that he's no fan of President Trump; he delivered a whole speech that attacked Trump's worldview and seemed to knock Trump for receiving Vietnam deferments for bone spurs. But McCain's comments about Trump on Sunday might be his most severe to date.</p>

The Democrat's rival this time around is the state's attorney general — a young, polished, Stanford-and-Yale-educated former clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts. Sen. Claire McCaskill needs another miracle. The Missouri Democrat swept into office with a little less than 50 percent of the vote in the 2006 Democratic wave. Six years later, she provided an assist to a Republican rival during the primary and then defeated him in the general election after he said women's bodies have a way to "shut the whole thing down" if pregnancies are the result of "legitimate rape." Now, in a year in which...

Rick Scott, Florida’s popular governor, has a good chance of ousting a Democratic senator this fall. . . snip Conservatives feel good about Scott taking his record to the voters this November. Ron DeSantis, a Republican congressman who is running to succeed Scott as governor, told me this weekend that Scott will also be able to pummel Nelson, the Democratic incumbent senator, for his votes against Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch and against the Trump tax cut. Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, says Scott can use the state’s prosperity to appeal to many voters who wouldn’t...

Washington (CNN) - Republican Sen. John McCain said Sunday that President Donald Trump's comments that the US military would leave Syria "very soon" had emboldened Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, resulting in the reported chemical weapons attack Saturday that killed dozens of the country's civilians. "President Trump last week signaled to the world that the United States would prematurely withdraw from Syria," the Arizona senator said in a statement. "Bashar Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers have heard him, and emboldened by American inaction, Assad has reportedly launched another chemical attack against innocent men, women and children, this time in...

Failed presidential candidate Senator John McCain advised President Donald Trump to rejoin the Trans-Pacific partnership trade deal. “It’s easy to punish China. It’s a lot harder to hold it truly accountable and change its behavior,” the senator wrote on Twitter. “That requires a real strategy and positive trade agenda, which is why the US should rejoin the #TPP11.” TPP-11 is the new version of the free trade partnership in Asia after Trump withdrew from the deal because it wasn’t fair to the United States. McCain criticized Trump for withdrawing from the TPP trade deal, during a May speech in Australia...

Former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, is leading Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn by double digits going into the Senate race to replace retiring Sen. Bob Corker, according to a poll released Thursday. The poll, conducted by Middle Tennessee State University, shows 45% of registered voters favor Bredesen, while just 35% would back Blackburn. In addition, 17% are undecided. For registered independents, preference for Bredesen over Blackburn increases to 12 points. A fifth of Republican respondents would cross the aisle and vote for Bredesen, compared to just five percent of Democrats who would do so for Blackburn. Blackburn's poor performance...

To the extent that the world’s once most deliberative institution performs its duty at all, the US Senate is reactive rather than deliberative. It reacts to crises of the moment such as school/church shootings and short-term continuing spending resolutions. Unless your Congressman or senator is Ryan, Pelosi, McConnell or Schumer, it’s unlikely your representative or senator had a say in one of Congress' most important duties: appropriations. The bill was presented to the rank and file Congress on a Wednesday, which gave them scant time to read the ginormous thing before voting on Friday. This insult to the sovereign people...