On Friday the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, committed the grave sin of accepting reality, and his party is now furious.

Democrats were outmaneuvered by House Republicans on a measure to fund the government, and the only options for Democrats by late last week were to fold and vote for it or plunge into a government shutdown for which they were likely to pay a heavy political price.

Ten Senate Democrats voted Friday to help Republicans break a 60-vote filibuster and advance a Trump-backed government funding bill that paves the way for Congress to avoid a midnight shutdown deadline.

The Senate passed a House-approved government funding bill that averts a government shutdown that was set to be triggered at the end of the day Friday.

The Senate voted 54 to 46 to pass the bill. The approval of the bill follows several Democrats voting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to keep the funding bill moving forward despite blowback from other members of their party.

Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen voted in favor of the bill. All other Democrats voted against it...

Senators voted Friday to pass legislation to prevent cuts to the District of Columbia’s local budget after city officials warned the District faced a $1 billion hit under a stopgap government funding bill approved by the Senate moments earlier.

The bill, which allows D.C. to continue operating at its adopted fiscal 2025 budget, passed by voice vote.

In a welcome sign of initiative and agency from the legislative branch, some Senate Republicans want spending cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to be part of a rescission package to be approved by Congress. It’s a great idea, and it represents the resurrection of a power Congress should be using more often.

A second federal judge on Thursday extended a block barring the Trump administration from freezing grants and loans potentially totaling trillions of dollars.

U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island granted the preliminary injunction in the lawsuit filed by nearly two dozen Democratic states after a Trump administration plan for a sweeping pause on federal spending stirred up a wave of confusion and anxiety across the United States.

President Donald Trump urged lawmakers Tuesday night during his first joint address to Congress of his second term to repeal the CHIPS and Science Act.

The $280 billion bill, passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by former President Joe Biden in 2022, provided $52 billion for U.S. companies to produce computer chips that were in critical demand, as well as tens of billions more to boost semiconductor manufacturing, advance scientific research, and combat China by strengthening U.S. competitiveness.

For a few years, Democrats were so regimented that one could almost forget Will Rogers’s well-worn quip that he was not a member of any organized political party but rather a Democrat. After Hillary Clinton’s ignominious loss in 2016, the congressional team of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer quickly took charge. They were mostly able to keep a fractious coalition together through Donald Trump’s tumultuous first term. Democrats won the House in 2018 and the White House and Senate in 2020.

President Donald Trump steamrolled Democrats in his first speech to a joint session of Congress since returning to the White House, leaving the minority party looking disorganized, impotent and frankly pathetic.

I’m not one to cry easily. Yet, I found myself wiping away a few tears Tuesday night during President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress. 

There were several touching moments, but it’s hard to beat Trump's recognition of 13-year-old brain cancer survivor Devarjaye “DJ” Daniel. DJ has dreams of becoming a police officer, and the president made him an honorary member of the Secret Service as millions of Americans and his proud father watched.