U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the northern Wisconsin Republican running for governor in the Nov. 3 election, has rarely diverged from supporting President Donald Trump since Trump began his second term in January 2025.
UCLA/Voteview found Tiffany’s support for Trump at 93% in 2025 House of Representatives votes.
The methodologies varied on the number of votes reviewed.
In 2026, Tiffany’s votes supporting Trump included opposing a measure that would have blocked Trump from ordering more strikes on Iran. Tiffany also backed Trump in voting against a bill to provide aid to Ukraine and sanction Russia.
On statements, Tiffany diverged from Trump in August. Tiffany said he opposed moves to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America” and import cheaper ground beef.
In September, he supported Trump’s proposed $5,000 “dividend.”
This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
We’ve partnered with Open Campus, a nationwide nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education, to organize an event on how credentials impact Wisconsin’s workforce.
And we’d love for you to join us on Oct. 6.
I enjoy editing the “pathways to success” beat because it’s where K-12, higher ed and workforce training stories intersect. I spent years covering K-12 and higher ed, and the stories I most loved reporting focused on how students took the skills they learned in the classroom into their careers.
Credentials have expanded in recent years, and it feels like the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been for students, educators and employers.
So we want to know:
What credentials are employers actually hiring against?
Which community colleges are leading the shift — and which are stalling?
Where are students getting left behind by a system still designed around the four-year degree?
The event will feature a panel discussion moderated by Wisconsin Watch and Open Campus reporter Natalie Yahr. The panelists include:
Becky Kikkert, director of development, Workforce Development Board of South Central Wisconsin
Layla Merrifield, president, Wisconsin Technical College System
Nathan Roberts, owner, G.D. Roberts
Then, we’ll hear how Wisconsin fits into the national landscape during a conversation between Wisconsin Watch and Open Campus reporter Miranda Dunlap and Kermit Kaleba, strategy director for credentials of value for the Lumina Foundation.
The event is free to attend. Here are the details:
When is it? 8-10:45 a.m. Oct. 6
Where is it? TruStage, 5910 Mineral Point Road, Madison
Will there be food? Yes, we’ll serve a complimentary continental breakfast.
What else is there to know? Registration is required. Attendees will be required to show a photo ID when they arrive at TruStage.Register here.
We hope to see you there!
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
With deer hunting season getting underway, northern elk zone biologist Joshua Spiegel points to differences in size, range and markings that can help hunters distinguish the species before taking aim.
In 1927, Lester Maitland of Milwaukee became the first person to fly from the continental U.S. to Hawaii, at the time landing on par with famous pilot Charles Lindbergh. But his story is largely unknown. Now author Liam Callanan uncovers Maitland’s story.
Members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court seemed open to redrawing the state's U.S. House districts during oral arguments for two lawsuits claiming the current congressional map is gerrymandered.
Maria Dueñas so reveres 20th-century violin virtuoso Jascha Heifetz’s RCA Victor recording that she completely duplicates it in this project, featuring the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela and conductor Gustavo Dudamel.
Sultan Ahmed is the chef and owner of the small plates restaurant “Sultan” in Madison. His debut cookbook “Zameen: Pakistani Roots, Wisconsin Soil” reinvents dishes from Pakistan and India with ingredients in Wisconsin.
A campsite is seen in Anchorage, Alaska, last year. The Trump administration has proposed a major shift in homelessness grants. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
In its latest effort to overhaul federal homelessness funding, the Trump administration is proposing to provide more money to localities that prioritize treatment-first policies such as sober living, more cooperation with law enforcement and more temporary and transitional housing.
It’s a reversal from a decade-long federal approach known as Housing First that sought to permanently house people experiencing homelessness without requiring sobriety or participation in treatment programs as a condition.
TheTrump administration has been attempting to overhaul federal funding for homelessness programs in this direction over the past two years but had suffered defeats in court that stalled its efforts to do so in 2025 and 2026.
In a notice posted in the Federal Register on Sept. 11, the Department of Housing and Urban Development argued that current policies aren’t working and said some states and localities have already shifted toward a treatment-based approach to homelessness. The agency will take public comments through Oct. 13.
Under the proposal, the department would change the bonuses it gives to state and local areas that participate in the Continuum of Care program, a federal grant initiative to fight homelessness. The department would incentivize efforts to provide transitional housing with services “concentrating on improving employment income and meeting behavioral healthcare needs.” It would also incentivize addiction treatment and recovery services, sober housing and partnerships with law enforcement.
HUD pointed to policies in Anchorage, Alaska; Houston; Portland, Oregon; and San Francisco as evidence that states and cities are already shifting their homelessness responses toward public camping restrictions with emphasis on treatment and recovery as a condition to housing support.
That shift was made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court’s City of Grants Pass v. Johnson decision in 2024, which allowed local governments to enforce public camping bans. Since then, more than 350 cities and 14 states have adopted laws or measures to crack down on street homelessness.
HUD had tried twice previously to change the application process for grants along similar lines, but a federal court ruled against the attempts, saying they violated required procedures.
One lawsuit against HUD’s efforts was brought by a coalition of 22 states and the District of Columbia, while another was filed by local governments and homelessness organizations, including the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
State officials joining the lawsuit were from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, plus the District of Columbia.
The Obama administration made Housing First initiatives the predominant federal homelessness policy. The Trump administration argues that it hasn’t worked and that chronic homelessness has increased since 2013.
But housing advocacy groups say that Housing First initiatives are a proven, bipartisan strategy that can lead to better outcomes and reduce taxpayer spending on emergency services and the criminal legal system.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition pointed to a 2020 review of 26 studies that found Housing First programs decreased homelessness by 88% and improved housing stability by 41% compared with Treatment First programs.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
A mother holds hands with her son on a swing set. At least seven states have passed laws making equally shared parenting time the legal default in child custody cases.
(Photo by Troy Bennett for Maine Morning Star)
A growing number of states are making an equal split between parents the default child custody option in divorce cases.
Louisiana and Mississippi this year joined at least five other states that have adopted the so-called 50-50 standard — four of them since 2021, as more legislators rework divorce-related laws that remained mostly unchanged for years.
The 50-50 custody issue does not break down cleanly along partisan lines: The Mississippi bill was sponsored by Republicans, the Louisiana legislation by Democrats. Both states’ laws explicitly codify a custody guideline that many courts in other states follow.
Supporters say a formal 50-50 custody standard makes divorce proceedings more equitable for fathers — who historically have been awarded less custody time than mothers — and encourages them to maintain an active role in their children’s lives.
And it can reduce friction between separating parents by signaling they’re both starting the custody process on an equal playing field, said Don Hubin, board chair of the National Parents Organization, an advocacy group that has pushed for more states to adopt legal presumptions of shared parenting.
Without that presumption, Hubin said, one or both parents may feel like they have to paint each other in a bad light in order to ‘win’ more time with their children.
“It’s not just about the practice of shared parenting, but about the law signaling to parents that this is going to be the outcome unless something special is going on in your case,” he said. “It reduces the anxiety of the parents, which reduces the conflict between the parents.”
But critics say the standard might harm vulnerable women and children by making it more likely that children must spend time with a parent who isn’t safe. They fear that for women in abusive marriages, the knowledge they would have to cede 50% of their child’s time to an unsafe parent could push them to remain in a marriage just to protect their children.
Kimberly Rummage, who lives in Kentucky, calls her state’s 50-50 custody standard “absolutely diabolical.” She’s had a lengthy battle in court with her ex-husband over custody of their child.
“I think that parents should have to prove why they get that 50-50,” she said. “You should have to show what you’ve done in that child’s life, what you know about that child, how you’ve participated and supported that child.”
Some critics also argue that the 50-50 standard doesn’t account for the needs of children at different ages. Mississippi state Rep. Dana McLean, a Republican, warned her colleagues the state’s new law could harm breastfeeding infants who need to spend most of their time with their mothers during their first months of life.
Mississippi’s new law requires family courts to use equally-shared parenting time as the default in custody cases. Parents seeking more time must present evidence showing why a 50-50 split isn’t in their child’s best interest. It also changes how child support is calculated: The new formula for 50-50 custody can lower child support payments for the parent with the lower income.
Louisiana’s new law says child custody “shall” be divided equally, rather than “should,” which was the language under the previous law.
In both states, as in others that have adopted the 50-50 standard, a judge can override the rule if the court finds credible evidence for awarding more time to one parent.
But in Mississippi, several judges spoke against the bill before it passed, saying the old system — in which custody was awarded on a case-by-case basis using a specific set of factors — was the most fair.
Proponents of 50-50 laws say one positive side effect is that they could save some marriages. In Kentucky, the state’s divorce rate dropped 25% between 2016 and 2023, compared with an 18% decline nationwide.
But Krista Westrick-Payne, one of the researchers who studied the rates, told Stateline it’s impossible to tie Kentucky’s drop directly to the state’s 2018 50-50 custody law because too many other factors in that timeframe influenced it.
“There’s no one cause, no one single driver for these rates,” said Westrick-Payne, who is the assistant director of the National Center for Family & Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University in Kentucky.
The data shows that factors like state laws or local economic conditions tend to have a minimal effect on whether a couple divorces, she said.
“The more significant things that affect whether or not a couple decides to divorce have much more to do with their relationship and their personal situation.”
Westrick-Payne said she believes divorce and custody-related law should be crafted with the effects on individuals and families in mind, rather than as a way to affect widescale, population-level changes.
“When it comes to something like divorce, something that’s so personal, I think the focus needs to be more on the individuals going through it,” she said, “as opposed to some big policy to affect just whether somebody divorces or not.”
A growing effort
Hubin expects to see more states moving to codify the equal custody presumption in their laws in the coming years, as parenting norms change and more households become dual income. Fathers have taken on more caregiving responsibilities than a generation ago, he said.
“Fathers who’ve been involved with their kids, they’re not happy with being consigned to an ‘every other weekend’ visitor in their kids’ lives,” he said.
Nationally, mothers of children under 6 spend about seven and a half hours a day with their children, compared to a little over five hours for fathers, according to the latest available data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The time gap shrinks as kids get older: Mothers spend 3.8 hours a day with their teens and fathers spend about 3 hours.
Earlier this year, a 50-50 custody bill in Oklahoma, sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats, sailed through the House but died on the Senate floor. Similar bills have been proposed in Alabama, Idaho, Indiana and North Carolina.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court chambers. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments in two cases challenging the constitutionality of the state’s congressional maps. One challenge is based on the claim that the maps unfairly benefit Republicans and the other is on the grounds that the maps are intentionally anti-competitive to protect incumbents.
Both cases were previously dismissed by panels of three circuit court judges. In both, the Court is not deciding the merits of the arguments but determining if the circuit panels were correct to dismiss the cases. If the Court determines that the dismissals were incorrect, the cases will be sent back to the circuit court level for discovery and trials on the merits of the argument.
Because of that process, neither case will change Wisconsin’s maps ahead of this year’s midterm elections, but could install new maps ahead of the 2028 elections.
Wisconsin’s congressional maps were instituted by the Court in 2022 after Gov. Tony Evers and the Republican-controlled Legislature were unable to reach a compromise on new maps. In that case, the Court installed a “least change” principle in which the newly proposed maps had to match as closely as possible to the maps instituted in 2011 — which were widely considered to be the most gerrymandered in the country.
The maps selected by the Court in 2022 were drawn by Evers, but followed the least change standard. Democrats and fair maps proponents have argued the least change standard poisoned the maps while Republicans have said the argument falls flat because a Democratic governor created them.
Wisconsin’s congressional maps have repeatedly been challenged since the initial 2011 gerrymander and since the 2022 update.
In the first part of the day, the Court heard the arguments of the partisan gerrymandering challenge, in which attorney Abha Khanna said that the Wisconsin Constitution’s equal protection clauses give voters in the state protection against maps designed to benefit one party.
“Was partisan vote dilution the predominant purpose? Was that in fact the effect of the map, and is there any legislative justification outside of sheer partisan dominance that would justify the configuration of these districts?” Khanna said.
A trio of attorneys argued in favor of the existing congressional maps, saying that the lawsuit was brought so late in the decade it can’t be litigated in the courts anymore, that if the Court wants to rule that partisan gerrymandering isn’t allowed then this case isn’t the right one and that the lawsuit doesn’t give a good enough standard for assessing what counts as an extreme partisan gerrymander.
During the first arguments, the two conservative justices on the panel expressed skepticism with the claim that the state Constitution protects against partisan gerrymandering.
“I actually don’t care what happens in other states. I don’t care at all. I care about our Constitution and our laws and what our law says,” Justice Brian Hagedorn said.
“I know that some states have explicit prohibitions against partisan gerrymandering, however that’s defined. I don’t know what that means,” he added. “But you’re asking for us to just invent a new right that has never been recognized, that even though our founders were well aware of it, as even your own brief recognizes, from the time of our founding, but have never addressed. And you’re appealing to just democratic self-governance, not our actual Constitution, your just sense of what democracy ought to protect.”
The Court’s liberal majority appeared to give some deference to the argument that the lawsuit didn’t properly set up how to assess the extent of a partisan gerrymandering claim, but often got into extended back and forths over the harm that partisan gerrymandering represents.
Luke Berg, one of the attorneys arguing to protect the existing maps, said in an exchange with Justice Chris Taylor that partisan gerrymandering “doesn’t implicate the right to vote.”
“How can you say that there is no remedy if it’s demonstrated that partisanship has led to the dilution of the disfavored group’s vote?” Taylor said. “It makes no sense to me, if our whole government is derived from the people, and the power that they give is through the vote, that’s how the people give the power to the government. And so if their right to vote is diluted because of partisanship, I just don’t understand why you’re saying we have no ability as a state court to remedy that.”
Khanna said Republicans, including some of the attorneys arguing the case in Madison on Wednesday, have made the exact opposite arguments in other states and that they’ve argued map opponents aren’t following the proper process no matter which process is followed.
“What we’ve seen from just the last couple of years, and frankly, from this argument, where intervenors have said, ‘Oh no, you can’t do this. Oh, you can’t reopen Johnson. Oh wait, you can’t hear this original action. Oh wait, you can’t appoint a three-judge panel. And now that you have appointed a three-judge panel, you can’t hear this appeal,’” she said. “These are just part and parcel of their strategy, which has been to draw this out, and now they say, ‘you know what? The decade’s almost over. There’s really nothing more that this court can do.’”
In the second part of the day, attorney Nicholas Stephanopoulos argued that the congressional maps are illegally anti-competitive.
“Our position here is a straightforward one,” he said. “Wisconsin’s Constitution does not tolerate officeholders entrenching themselves in power and cutting out the people by suppressing electoral competition.”
But liberal and conservative members of the Court appeared confused by the distinction between a map that is anti-competitive and a map that is gerrymandered to benefit one party.
“Because it seems to me that what’s underlying that is that the district lines are drawn in such a way to have it be a foregone conclusion that a particular party will win that district, and so I don’t see a whole lot of airspace between this claim and the partisan gerrymandering claim,” Justice Susan Crawford said.
Stephanopoulos said the difference is that a map drawn to be anti-competitive isn’t concerned with which party wins.
“It’s relevant what the odds of re-election would be for a candidate, but the anti-competitive theory is uninterested in which party actually,” he said.
But opponents argued that designing maps to be as competitive as possible comes with trade-offs that might not be ideal.
“There is a fundamental tension when you maximize for competitiveness or you increase for competitiveness, you are taking away other legitimate values such as representation, such as incumbency protection, such as bipartisan agreement,” Misha Tseytlin, an attorney for Wisconsin’s Republican members of Congress, said. “If you make a map more competitive, then you make it less likely that their incumbents will retain their seats. You also make it more likely that a larger number of the constituents of a particular district are going to be unhappy with the result. There is a legitimate policy dispute as to whether more competitiveness or more representation, incumbency protection is better. Nothing in the Constitution’s text, history, or discourse precedent settles that question as a matter of text.”
Women take photos at a Women’s History Month event in the East Room of the White House in March 2025. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this month acknowledged a nationwide shortage of estrogen-based hormonal patches, which are prescribed for women experiencing symptoms related to menopause. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it’s helping manufacturers increase the supply of estrogen-based hormonal patches and acknowledged a current nationwide shortage as more women seek hormonal therapies for symptoms related to menopause.
In a release earlier this month, the FDA said it is expediting actions to increase supply, and said all six manufacturers are working to expand capacity and prioritize production of the patches.
“The FDA views increased interest in menopause treatment as an important development for women’s health and is working closely with manufacturers to help ensure that the supply of estradiol patches keeps pace with demand,” the release said.
Menopause typically occurs between the ages of 45 and 55, according to the National Institute on Aging, when a woman stops having menstrual periods. That hormonal change can cause symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats, bone density loss, insomnia and more. Estradiol transdermal patches worn on the skin can replace estrogen lost through menopause and reduce those symptoms for some women.
Statelinereported in May that more awareness of menopause and its effects was leading to more states introducing legislation around the topic to mandate more insurance coverage for treatment and to create more workplace accommodations. At that time, the FDA did not list the patches in its list of shortages — this month marks the first time the agency has acknowledged a shortage. The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists first noted a shortagein January, two months after the FDA removed the treatment from its longtime “black box” warning status.
As of May, the National Menopause Foundation said more than 60 pieces of legislation related to menopause had been introduced nationwide this year. Twenty-six, and 26 states have enacted menopause-related laws since 2019, and more bills are expected to be introduced in the upcoming 2027 legislative sessions.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Kevin Warsh, now chair of the Federal Reserve, testifies during his Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs confirmation hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on April 21, 2026 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve raised interest rates Wednesday for the first time in three years as inflation continues to dog the economy, largely driven by soaring gas and fuel oil prices while the war in Iran drags on.
The central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee voted 12-0 to increase its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point, reaching the new range from 3.75% to 4% and making the cost of borrowing more expensive for Americans.
The committee released an upbeat statement touting economic growth at “a solid pace.”
“While uncertainty remains elevated owing, in part, to geopolitical developments, domestic spending has been resilient. Productivity growth is strong, and capital investment is robust. Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little,” according to the statement released Wednesday afternoon.
“Inflation remains elevated. Today’s policy action will support a timelier return to the Committee’s 2 percent goal. The Committee will deliver price stability,” the statement continued.
Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, four months into his tenure, described Wednesday’s unanimous decision to raise rates as “sober.”
“The plain fact is that inflation is too high, and has been for too long,” Warsh said during a press conference following the Fed’s meeting.
“This summer’s inflation readings do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved. … Too many categories are still posting increases above 3 percent on both a six and 12-month basis,” Warsh said.
Trump campaign for lower rates
President Donald Trump publicly pressured and name-called Warsh’s predecessor Jerome Powell for months for not lowering interest rates.
The public attacks escalated into a federal probe of Powell and the Fed for costly renovations at the Fed’s headquarters in Washington. The administration eventually dropped the investigation.
Trump criticized the rate increase on his Truth Social platform Wednesday afternoon, saying the U.S. rates “should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR.”
“Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment! If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year. The word “Deficit” is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS. We are “carrying” almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!,” he wrote.
Warsh declined to answer questions from reporters about Trump’s previous calls for lower interest rates.
“Part of the independence of the Federal Reserve is we stay in our lane,” Warsh said.
The interest hike comes less than a week after the government’s latest consumer price index revealed the cost of food, energy, housing and other goods and services rose 0.4% from July to August. The cost of all items over the past year has risen 3.4%.
Rep. Jason Smith, the Republican chair of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, criticized the decision, saying in a statement that “interest rates should be coming down, not going up.”
The Missouri Republican praised the Trump-led “big beautiful bill” tax law passed last summer for delivering “larger paychecks” to Americans, and he blamed former President Joe Biden for past higher inflation.
“After years of elevated borrowing costs, a rate increase is the opposite of the relief families and small businesses need. As President Trump works to restore stability in the Middle East and bring down energy prices, the Fed should recognize the progress,” Smith said in a written statement Wednesday afternoon.
Soaring gas prices
Spiking energy prices caused by the war in Iran were the main driver behind higher costs. Gasoline alone rose 3.9% over the month of August.
As of Wednesday, Americans were paying an average of nearly $4.37 a gallon at the pump, according to AAA. Diesel prices reached a record high of $6.31.
The price of a barrel of oil surged above $100 in recent days, including Wednesday afternoon, when it reached $105, as fighting flared in the Middle East.
The United States and Iran continue launching rockets in the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world’s petroleum traveled prior to the war. U.S. Central Command claimed Sept. 8 that it “destroyed” five Iranian crude oil carriers as part of its naval blockade aimed at damaging Iran’s economy.
The conflict spilled over in July into another key waterway for Saudi Arabian oil exports. Iran-backed Houthi rebels restarted an assault on commercial vessels in the Red Sea for the first time since 2024, and are fighting for control of the Bab al-Mandab strait. The group also directly struck targets in Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, beginning in July, and is threatening more strikes, according to Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree. The United Nations Security Council is warning of the likelihood of a humanitarian crisis.
When asked by a reporter at Wednesday’s press conference how incremental rate hikes will help when geopolitical events do not show signs of improvement, Warsh said the Fed “cannot affect any individual price, whether it be oil prices, whether it be foodstuffs at the grocery store.”
“But what we can do and will do is ensure that any change in relative prices don’t broaden out, don’t have second and third order effects on the economy. That’s what we’re tasked to do, and that’s what we will do,” Warsh said.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks at a campaign event for U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggans in Virginia Beach, Virginia, on Aug. 17, 2026. (Photo by Charlotte Rene Woods/Virginia Mercury)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House departed Wednesday for a seven-week campaign break after spending less than two weeks in session during August and September.
The extended “district work period” is intended to give incumbents from both political parties time to meet with constituents and fundraise back home before voting in this year’s midterm elections ends on Nov. 3.
House Republican leaders hope that more time campaigning will help some of their most vulnerable members secure reelection, allowing the party to hold onto its majority for another two years.
Less time on Capitol Hill also means less time voting on potentially divisive issues. Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, for example, would have been able to force a vote to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday had leaders not sent lawmakers home a day early.
Despite the somewhat limited time in session, Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he believes Republicans have accomplished much during their nearly two years with unified control of government. But he brushed aside requests to keep the chamber in town to address warnings from several executives about artificial intelligence.
The Louisiana Republican pointed to a bipartisan task force that issued a 273-page report in December 2024, saying those recommendations meant lawmakers would not be “caught flat-footed here.”
“We’ve been working on this for years and we’re right there where we need to be,” Johnson said.
Moments later, however, he added Congress cannot apply those recommendations to draft legislation to regulate AI because “nobody in the room knows yet what that should look like.”
“Why? Because we don’t have the latest information,” Johnson said. “We are not in the … frontier labs who have taken this technology many steps further than even when our own report was published.”
He argued that instead of Congress debating legislation, the executives of AI companies should instead “self-police” and “self-regulate.”
“They don’t need the government to tell them to slow it down,” Johnson said. “If they want to slow it down, they should.”
‘Nothing’ done, Dem leader says
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries sharply disagreed with Johnson and Republicans’ approach, saying Wednesday that there was considerable work left to do, despite the planned recess.
“They have decided to cancel votes and run out of town without providing any relief to hard-working American taxpayers,” he said.
“Republicans have done nothing to lower the high cost of groceries,” he continued. “Nothing to make healthcare more affordable, nothing to end the reckless war of choice in Iran, nothing to lower gas prices, nothing to stop the violent mass deportation machine, nothing to hold the Trump administration accountable for the unprecedented corruption unleashed on the American people.”
Jeffries questioned why Republicans haven’t been able to improve the economy and lower prices for everyday Americans, despite having made it a central campaign promise during the last election cycle.
“For two years, Americans have been wondering — were MAGA Republicans lying, indifferent, or are they just incompetent?” he said. “We now have an answer: It’s all of the above.”
Long lame duck
The House will return after the election for two weeks in November and three weeks in December. That will give lawmakers a total of 27 weeks in session this year, though those are rarely the type of five-day weeks most Americans are used to.
House lawmakers often take their first vote of the week on Monday evenings around 6:30 p.m. and their last vote of the week on Thursday morning, before many walk down the steps of the Capitol to cars waiting to take them to the airport.
Some weeks are shorter, giving House lawmakers a total of 72 days in session so far with 20 more days of voting on Capitol Hill scheduled before the end of the year.
An American with four weeks of time off a year spends about 48 weeks or 240 days at work, significantly more than the United States House of Representatives dedicated to debating and voting.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that Americans in the private sector with more than 20 years of experience get, on average, four weeks of paid vacation a year.
A poll by a nonpartisan foundation found voters favor candidates with a plan for Social Security. (Photo illustration by iStock/Getty Images Plus)
WASHINGTON — Voters are much more likely to support U.S. Senate candidates in the November midterm elections if they have a plan to avoid an automatic cut to Social Security benefits in 2032, according to a poll released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
“Senators elected this fall will be in office in 2032 when Social Security recipients will face immediate 22% cuts, so all candidates should be putting forth solutions in this campaign to prevent this catastrophic result,” said Michael A. Peterson, CEO of the Peterson Foundation. “The good news indicated by this survey is that voters want this problem addressed, and there is strong bipartisan support for many available solutions that would sustain this essential program.”
Ninety-one percent of those surveyed said they support changes to Social Security “to prevent automatic benefit cuts,” while 85% said “it is more important than ever for lawmakers to fix” the program, given the sharp increase in the cost of living.
The poll focused on voters in the swing states of Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas, elevating Social Security as a campaign issue with less than two months until voting ends on Nov. 3.
Seventy-two percent of those in the poll said they would support Congress instituting a 1% tax on income above $184,500 to bolster funding for Social Security. The law currently requires people to pay a 6.2% tax up to that annual income level but no Social Security taxes after.
About two-thirds said they would support lawmakers placing a $100,000 limit on annual Social Security benefits for a retired couple.
Gradually increasing the retirement age wasn’t nearly as popular, with 52% of those surveyed opposed to the possibility that lawmakers would “phase in a small gradual increase in the retirement age for younger Americans.”
Sixty-eight percent of those polled didn’t support the idea that Congress could borrow more to offset the upcoming benefit cut.
The online poll, conducted by Global Strategy Group and North Star Opinion Research, surveyed 2,500 registered voters between Aug. 20 and Aug. 27. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posed for photos at a Nunn campaign event held at JR’s Southpork Ranch at the Iowa State Fair Aug. 17, 2026. Nunn was one of three House Republicans who broke with the Trump administration's in a Sept. 15 vote to rein in the Iran war. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
WASHINGTON — As the November midterms approach, vulnerable U.S. House Republicans voted late Tuesday to require congressional approval for President Donald Trump to continue his war in Iran.
Seven Republicans broke ranks and joined all Democrats to pass a War Powers Resolution sponsored by Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat. Tuesday’s vote marked the third time since June that the House passed a measure to curb Trump’s military powers in Iran. The war has dragged on for over half a year.
The vote came as diesel prices reached a record high of $6.31 per gallon in the United States, and gas hovered at an average of nearly $4.37 a gallon Wednesday, according to AAA.
Global oil markets have been rocked since Iranian officials effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, a major petroleum trade route. The conflict has since expanded, and Iranian-backed Houthi rebels are slowing traffic through another major trade passage, the Bab-al Mandab Strait.
The resolution passed, 220-204, despite Republicans’ narrow majority in the chamber. GOP House members who voted for the Iran War Powers Resolution for the first time included Zach Nunn and Marianette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, and Nancy Mace of South Carolina.
Nunn and Miller-Meeks both face tough reelection bids in Iowa. The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter rates both races as “toss-ups.”
Mace lost her South Carolina gubernatorial primary bid in June and is not seeking reelection to the House.
‘Open-ended war’
Nunn posted on social media Tuesday that, as a U.S. Air Force veteran who flew missions in the Middle East, he could not support “another open-ended war,” though he still believes the Islamic Republic “must be held accountable for killing Americans, supporting terrorism, threatening the Strait of Hormuz, and pursuing nuclear weapons.”
Presidents have a 60-day period to pursue military action with congressional approval, but that window has passed, he added.
“Iowa has already paid a devastating price, including two service members killed by an Iranian drone in Kuwait,” Nunn wrote on X late Tuesday night. “Congress owes them, their families, and every American in uniform clear objectives and constitutional oversight. … We can defend Americans, pressure Iran, and pursue peace while ensuring Congress fulfills its constitutional responsibility.”
Miller-Meeks posted Wednesday morning that with her 24 years served in the Army, she remains skeptical of Trump’s actions in Iran.
“I said it in March: the mission had to stay focused and limited, because Americans do not want another forever war. I will not vote to keep our soldiers in an open-ended war, with Iowans paying too much at the pump,” Miller-Meeks wrote on X.
“The Iranian regime and its nuclear ambitions have been defanged,” she continued. “The President needs to present a plan to Congress and the American people for how this ends so we can focus on bringing our soldiers home and lowering prices.”
Third House vote
Nunn, Miller-Meeks and Mace joined House Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Tom Barrett of Michigan, Warren Davidson of Ohio, and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who have now each voted three times to rein in Trump’s actions in the Iran conflict. Massie voted yes an additional time in April, but the measure failed to pass the House then.
Massie on Tuesday introduced eight articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for his handling of the war in Iran.
The Trump administration maintains War Powers Resolutions are unconstitutional and has dismissed the measures passed in both chambers. Similar War Powers Resolutions to stop Trump’s hostilities in Iran cleared procedural votes in the Senate in May and June. The Senate has voted on such measures 13 times.
Congress overrode a veto from President Richard Nixon to enact the War Powers Resolution statute, at the time aimed at reining in Nixon’s actions in Vietnam.
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