It has been an interesting week for U.S. democracy. In the last fourteen days, U.S. lawmakers have averted a government shutdown. Currently, the Biden administration is discussing how it wants to address a surprise attack in Israel from the terrorist organization Hamas.  

All of this, and the U.S. House of Representatives does not have a Speaker to assist. A Speaker of the House has not been ousted in America’s history. So, what happened? 

Budgeting 101

In order to answer this, we must examine the U.S. budget, which is passed by the Congress every year. Congress must pass all federal funding budgets, which are typically valid for a certain length of time. This process is often done yearly. Congress can also pass short-term funding bills, typically called continuing resolutions or CR, which will fund the government for anywhere between a week and a couple months. If a funding bill expires and a new one is not put in place, the government is not being funded. This means the government cannot pay its employees or maintain any federally-controlled lands, although essential employees can continue to work; such a time is often referred to as a government shutdown. 

On Sept. 29, the House of Representatives passed a CR with broad bipartisan support. However, some Republicans, among them Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), had promised to introduce a motion to vacate the office of now-former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) if a CR passed.  

Removal of the Speaker 

On Oct. 2, Gaetz filed his promised motion to vacate. When the motion came to a vote, all Democrats joined eight Republicans in voting to remove McCarthy. Those eight Republicans were Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Ken Buck (Colo.), Tim Burchett (Tenn.), Elijah Crane (Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Bob Good (Va.), Nancy Mace (S.C.) and Matthew M. Rosendale (Mont.). 

After the motion to vacate succeeded, Gaetz claimed, “Kevin McCarthy is a creature of the swamp. He has risen to power by collecting special interest money and redistributing that money in exchange for favors. We are breaking the fever now.” 

The successful vote means that the House is currently lacking an elected speaker. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) has been named interim speaker while the search takes place. 

Implications 

This leaves the Republican party with a leadership crisis. The Republican margin in the House is currently five votes, which means that five Republicans can defeat any measure if all Democrats oppose it. As such, this leaves radical Republicans with an outsized influence.  

Many Republicans are furious with Gaetz, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called for Gaetz’s removal from the Republican conference. Joseph Postell, professor of political science at Hillsdale College, said that these legislators sought to gain outside media influence. Postell told the Washington Post that “[House Republicans] are no longer incentivized to bargain with one another. They are incentivized to remain in conflict.” 

What will become of the Republican Party in 2024 and beyond is yet to be seen. But this episode will give us a picture of how Republicans choose to address a leadership crisis, and may show us how they will choose to handle Donald Trump. House Republicans are trying to show America that they can effectively govern in the leadup to the 2024 election; in the days to come, we will see Republicans try to govern their own.

On April 14, Congressional Democrats proposed legislation that would expand the Supreme Court to 13 justices, as opposed to nine – the longstanding standard since 1869. This proposal is the first significant effort to overhaul the Supreme Court since President Roosevelt attempted to expand it in his second term. 

The number of justices on the Supreme Court is established through a Federal Statute, not within the Constitution. According to the House of Representatives Judiciary members, the legislation is an attempt to rectify the actions of judicial appointments made by former President Donald Trump.

“As our country has grown, so should the Supreme Court,” Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), chair of the judiciary committee, stated. “13 justices for 13 circuits is a logical progression.” 

The proposal follows a recent executive order by President Joe Biden that calls for a bipartisan commission to study the Supreme Court and its history, which will include the legality of any proposed changes. The commission will focus on reviewing the current lifetime tenure of Justices and the number of judges allowed to serve. The commission has yet to report its findings. 

As top Congressional leaders in both political parties criticize the proposed legislation, the bill will be facing an uphill battle before it is even considered for a vote.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said she supported Biden’s effort to study the history of the Supreme Court but stopped short of supporting the legislation that would expand it. Pelosi told reporters that she had no intention of bringing it to the House floor to be voted on. In October, President Biden was asked about the issue of expanding the Supreme Court and said that he was “not a fan of court-packing.”

Along with criticism within the Democratic Party, the proposal has been universally dismissed by Republicans. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) described the attempt to expand the Supreme Court as a “terrible idea.”

“The stability is what I worry about,” Graham stated. “If they try to expand the court to dilute a conservative majority, the next time Republicans are in power – will we change the number? And you make the Supreme Court basically a political football – it loses its independence, its consistency.”

Graham’s sentiment is not only shared by the Republican party but by some Supreme Court Justices as well.

“It is wrong to think of the Court as another political institution,” Justice Stephen Breyer said during a speech at Harvard Law. “And it is doubly wrong to think of its members as junior league politicians. Structural alteration motivated by the perception of political influence can only feed that perception, further eroding that trust.” 

After the announcement of the proposed legislation, Rasmussen – a self-described nonpartisan, independent electronic data company – conducted an independent survey on one thousand voters, finding that 55% of likely voters opposed the expansion of the Supreme Court. Rasmussen conducted a similar survey last fall and found mirrored results: 53% of likely voters opposed the expansion of the Supreme Court.

However, creating term limits for justices appears to be a more popular proposal for any changes to the Supreme Court. In Rasmussen’s fall survey, they found that 52% of likely voters supported term limits for Supreme Court Justices. Similarly, a Reuters poll found that 63% of likely voters from their surveyed population wanted lifetime appointments to end.

The next step in the process depends on if the proposed legislation is accepted to be heard on the House floor. If the measure is not heard, the next step will undoubtedly depend on the recommendation from the bipartisan commission.

Student loan debt in the United States has swelled to over $1.5 trillion collectively held by over 42 million borrowers. The massive size of this debt and the scale of the borrowers affected have prompted contentious conversations regarding what to do about it, including potential options for relief. 

The idea of federal student loan forgiveness gained traction during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. In her campaign, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposed to cancel federal student loan debt up to $50,000 for most Americans, citing the overall negative effects that she believed the debt had on the economy writ large because of its depressing effect on consumer spending. Warren estimated that such a plan would cost approximately $650 billion.

Later, after Warren bowed out of the primary, Biden signaled receptivity to her plans regarding student loan debt, overall backing another of Warren’s proposals that had called for student loan debt to be eligible for relief in bankruptcy proceedings. As well, Biden called for forgiveness of $10,000 per borrower in light of the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic during his campaign. 

Since taking office, Biden has issued an executive order extending a pause on federal student loan payments through September but has so far declined to move forward with executive authority on forgiveness. At a CNN town hall Feb. 16, Biden signaled reluctance to act without Congress on student loan forgiveness. 

One of the central debates facing Democrats in this conversation is what Biden can do through executive action. Progressives have insisted that the Higher Education Act gives Biden and the Secretary of Education broad authority to cancel federal student loan debt. 

The Biden Administration has urged Congress to pass $10,000 student loan forgiveness. Though a step down from progressives’ ambitions, this plan has broad popular support as a Morning Consult poll found that 56 percent of all Americans support the plan, which is consistent with Biden’s remarks on the campaign trail.

That plan, however, might face roadblocks in securing passage through Congress. Despite the issue gaining significant support among Democratic lawmakers, Republicans have broadly resisted calls for extensive  forgiveness, making passage unlikely in the equally-divided Senate. 

Critics have alleged that the plan does not take into account borrowers that recently have paid off their loans. Moreover, they note that doing so would also be only a temporary fix to the soaring cost of higher education, arguing that soon a new generation of borrowers will find themselves in the same debt trap.

Relief has not yet been included in the stimulus package being negotiated by the White House and Congress.

Progressive activists, lawmakers and their allies have continued to put pressure on the Biden Administration, citing both the economic consequences of huge federal student loan debt and framing the issue as a one of racial justice.

In the process, progressives have attracted a number of significant allies. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote an Op-Ed with Warren calling for Biden to cancel the debt using the existing executive authority. Democratic senators led by Schumer and Warren introduced a non-binding resolution in the Senate calling on Biden to act unilaterally to cancel up to $50,000 per borrower. 

Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA-07), Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05), Alma Adams (D-NC-12), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY-16), Mondaire Jones (D-NY-17) Maxine Waters, (D-CA-43) and Ritchie Torres (D-NY-15) are spearheading a similar effort in the House. 

With negotiations over the final form of Biden’s American Rescue Plan taking center-stage, the debate over student-loan forgiveness is likely to be temporarily set aside. However, given the number of prominent Democrats now backing the issue, debate may reignite later in the year when Biden’s temporary suspension of loan payments runs out.

The United States Senate is in a state of crisis. Many serving senators of both parties have lamented that the Senate is a broken institution. Seventy former senators have decried the way the chamber acts or, rather, fails to act.  

Though blame for this crisis has been attributed to a multitude of causes, many have laid it at the foot of the filibuster.

An arcane parliamentary procedure, the filibuster allows one senator to stall passage of any legislation. Unless 60 senators vote to override the filibustering senator in a motion called cloture, the legislation cannot pass.

Unified Democratic control of Washington, albeit with razor-thin majorities, has thrust the filibuster back into the spotlight as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and his caucus debate abolishing the filibuster. 

Democratic senators are entertaining this discussion because the once rare filibuster is being used regularly now, imposing a 60-vote supermajority requirement to pass most forms of legislation. Pointedly, Schumer refused to agree to protect the filibuster when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sought such a reassurance in the formal Senate organization resolution. 

Before proceeding, it is useful to dispel two common misconceptions about the filibuster and the Senate.

The filibuster is not part of the Framers’ intent. The historical record is clear: the filibuster was an unintended consequence of Aaron Burr’s initiative to clean up Senate rules in 1805-1806. Furthermore, the Senate didn’t even realize that they had made it impossible to cut off debate in the Senate, as demonstrated by the fact that the first filibuster would not occur for over three decades after the rule change. 

No, abolishing the filibuster will not enable Democrats to pass President Biden’s agenda unimpeded. The Democrats have no margin in the Senate. A single defection would doom any Democratic effort in a filibuster-less Senate unless it could attract Republican co-sponsors. 

Nor is the Democratic Senate Caucus unified internally. The caucus is an ideologically diverse group ranging from the conservative Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

Less than two months into the new Congress, Manchin has already gone on the record, breaking with progressive priorities, such as restructuring the Supreme Court and the $15 federal minimum wage. 

Therein lies the crux of the issue. Right now, the Senate filibuster discussion remains just a discussion. Two of Schumer’s caucus members, Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Manchin, have been emphatic that they will not vote to abolish the filibuster. Unless and until they change their minds, any discussion of the Democratic Party abolishing the Senate filibuster in this Congress is merely an academic exercise. 

That does not mean Democrats should ignore the issue. Schumer was right to not let McConnell dictate the rules of the Senate. If Republicans return to the obstructionist tactics they engaged in when President Obama was in office, Schumer would be right to explore avenues to weaken the filibuster that might win support from Sinema and Manchin. It does mean that Democrats should be careful not to raise expectations among their votes that they cannot fulfill.

Whether the Senate filibuster is abolished or not, the Senate will remain a minoritarian institution (the 50 Democratic senators in the Senate represent more than 40 million more Americans than the 50 Republican senators) and the Senate will remain a significant challenge for much of Biden’s ambitious, progressive platform.