Democrats take control of the House amid government shutdown

National attention has focused on a handful of young, left-wing first-time members of Congress elected to safe seats. But realistically, the future of the House lies with a larger group of Democrats who eked out narrow wins in newly purple districts.

“Most of the freshmen come from swing districts,” said Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), who beat four-term incumbent Republican Leonard Lance by 5 points in 2018. “We come from places where voters want us to focus on getting things done that can actually be achieved.”

An estimated 800,000 federal workers will miss their second paycheck this week due to the government shutdown. 420,000 are working without pay, and 300,000 of them are furloughed (i.e., not working or being paid). Strapped for money, many are turning to the gig economy — driving for Uber or listing their homes on Airbnb — to make ends meet.

One of those employees is Cheryl Blum, a contract defense lawyer for Spanish-speaking clients in federal court in Tucson, Arizona. She has listed her room on Airbnb on and off for years, but now it is her sole source of income, she told me. And in an interview with the Associated Press last week, Blum said she was thinking about driving for Uber or Lyft for supplemental income, as well.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took square aim at the sweeping anti-corruption and voting rights bill House Democrats are pushing as their first of the year.

McConnell wrote a scathing op-ed in the Washington Post on Thursday, characterizing the bill as a Democratic attempt to “grow the federal government’s power over Americans’ political speech and elections.”

Today, the pain of a partial government shutdown will become all too real when an estimated 800,000 federal workers miss a paycheck.

“Once that first paycheck [doesn’t come], we’re no longer talking about the theoretical; we’re talking about tangible missing of paying electric bills, paying mortgage or rent — at which point, the narrative shifts,” says High Point University political science professor Brandon Lenoir.

It’s day 20 of a partial government shutdown, and, according to Democrats, the latest talks ended in a literal “temper tantrum.”

President Donald Trump met with Democratic congressional leaders on Wednesday as part of the latest in shutdown negotiation meetings, only to slam a table and storm out once House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she wouldn’t consider a wall, according to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. (House Republicans, meanwhile, characterized the meeting as a bit calmer.)

The partial government shutdown is dragging on over the $5 billion President Donald Trump wants for his wall along the US-Mexico border, a political crisis that may be weakening security at a much more common point of entry for immigrants: airports.

According to CNN, hundreds of Transportation Security Administration officers who were expected to work have called in sick. “This will definitely affect the flying public who we [are] sworn to protect,” president of the national TSA employee union Hydrick Thomas told CNN. Their absence will not only increase airport frustrations for travelers, but could also lead to skimping on safety precautions.

As the government’s partial shutdown drags on with no clear end in sight, millions of America’s most vulnerable citizens are in danger of being left to go hungry.

The Department of Agriculture, among the nine federal agencies that shut down on December 21, is now guaranteeing funding for the nation’s largest food aid program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), through February. After that, the agency doesn’t have a game plan to support the more than 38 million people on the program — but is looking into other options.

As the partial government shutdown stretches on and on, leaving piles of garbage in national parks to grow and scientific experiments in limbo, the Interior Department is deploying its staff to advance fossil fuel extraction on public lands.

The Bureau of Land Management, the office at Interior that handles permitting for oil and gas on 700 million acres of public lands, is closed for the shutdown. Yet it’s still continuing its work on permitting mining and drilling, as Elizabeth Harball at Alaska’s Energy Desk first reported Friday.

Even as President Donald Trump has continued his temper tantrum over the border wall — which will now include a primetime television statement on Tuesday, a border trip Thursday, and possibly a declaration of national emergency — his administration has actually extended an offer to Congress to end the government shutdown.

The question is how seriously anyone, including the administration itself, takes that offer.

It’s Day 17 of a partial government shutdown and still no deal ... or anywhere close to one.

Democratic and Republican congressional staffers met with White House representatives over the weekend in an attempt to kickstart negotiations, but the two sides left talks with little in the way of actual progress.

Strewn with garbage and overflowing toilets, national parks have taken an especially bad hit during the most recent government shutdown.

Although visitors centers are closed and staffing is low — some law enforcement and emergency personnel is on site — park gates remain open, free of charge, and people are flooding in largely unsupervised. This decision to keep parks open is part of a contingency plan set up last year allowing a small staff to remain on the payroll, but the limited staffing has proven to insufficient for how many people are visiting.

Thursday is a historic day for the federal government: As Democrats take over the House of Representatives amid a shutdown with no end in sight, the first two Native American women and the first two Muslim women will be sworn into a Congress with more women overall serving than ever before.

To mark the occasion, some first-term Congress members are standing out in more ways than one: During the swearing-in ceremony, instead of the typical congressional suit in a muted tone, Rashida Tlaib will wear a traditional Palestinian thobe. It’s a long tunic, often made of cotton and decorated with heavy embroidery, and worn for various occasions all over the Middle East. Tlaib’s is a deep burgundy with red embroidery.

House Democrats just approved two bills to reopen the government — putting more pressure on Republicans and President Donald Trump to provide some kind of counteroffer.

These bills aren’t expected to go anywhere since the Republican-controlled Senate has already indicated it is not interested in taking them up without the president’s support, but they do call on the GOP to outline its own response.

Thursday’s House speaker vote and opening of the 116th Congress set up a striking visual moment in the lower chamber: On Democrats’ side of the aisle, a historically diverse class of women and people of color were clad in bright outfits as they were sworn in, while on the Republican side, a relatively homogeneous group of mostly white men wore nearly identical dark suits.

The sharp contrast in the House served to underline the stark differences between how the respective parties have approached promoting women and candidates of color. While Democrats have made it their mission to diversify the kinds of candidates and leaders they elect, Republicans have historically shied away from doing so for fear of being associated with identity politics.

It’s official: A record-breaking number of women have been sworn into the 116th Congress, which also boasts one of the most diverse classes ever.

It’s a class filled with firsts — from the youngest women ever to serve in Congress to the first Muslim-American women to the first Native American women. Massachusetts and Connecticut have both elected their first African-American representatives. And states such as Tennessee and Arizona sent women to the Senate for the first time.

Democrat Nancy Pelosi won the vote for speaker of the House on Thursday, reclaiming the gavel for her second time.

Pelosi’s return to power is notable: She’s the second person in nearly 60 years to win back the position of House speaker after leading a party in the minority. Pelosi served as speaker from 2007 to 2011 then spent the past eight years as House minority leader.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell dashed any hopes of a tidy resolution to the partial government shutdown, telling reporters on Wednesday that the Senate would not consider any House bills aimed at reopening the government without Trump’s support.

Democrats, who retake House control on Thursday, announced that they intend to pass two measures that would end the shutdown, including a short-term spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security that would not fund Trump’s border wall.

House Democrats have released their new proposal to change rules for how the House of Representatives conducts its business for the next two years — and there’s a lot in it.

Democrats are doing a number of things to decentralize power from leadership and open up the process of legislating.