The House and Senate funded the government a month early this year, but the fix was the same one Congress has used 141 times since 1998: a continuing resolution, not a budget.

Virginia, New Jersey, Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi elect governors on a calendar built, in part, to keep the electorate smaller. It still does.

No seniority, no vote, just a numbered chip pulled from a wooden box. That's how the House has decided which freshmen get a good office since 1908, and this November's class draws again.

The Federal Reserve Act lets a president remove a governor only "for cause." That standard, paired with 14-year staggered terms, is why Trump's second attempt to oust Lisa Cook faces the same wall as his first.

A federal regulator capped USPS to one mail price increase a year through 2030, reversing a five-year run of twice-yearly hikes that still left the agency $9 billion short.

The Department of Homeland Security has scrapped the rule that limited how immigration officers weigh public-benefit use in green-card decisions — and wider discretion returns Sept. 18.

When trade wars escalate, the retaliation list is never random — it's aimed at specific industries and the politicians who represent them.

A federal surveillance law expired in June 2026 and the surveillance kept running anyway. Here's how sunset clauses actually end, or don't end, a law.

The House has impeached only 15 federal judges since 1803, all for crimes like bribery or perjury. A 2025 wave of impeachment threats over rulings broke that pattern.

Congress made your mailbox federal territory in 1934, and the law criminalizing unstamped flyers is now central to the fight over privatizing the Postal Service. Here's what 18 U.S.C. 1725 actually says.

Mid-decade redistricting used to happen about twice a generation. In the last year alone, five states did it. Here's the mechanism behind the current fight for the House.

A stopgap isn't a budget. Here's the mechanical difference between the funding patch the Senate just passed and the appropriations fight still unresolved behind it.

A 155-year-old law, not politics, is what actually forces agencies to furlough workers the moment government funding lapses.

A senator gavels the Senate in, says nothing, gavels out — and that ritual is enough to strip a president of the power to fill vacancies without Senate consent.

The House and Senate each passed their own plan to avoid a fall shutdown -- but the bills set different deadlines and disagree on Border Patrol funding.

Seven discharge petitions have hit the 218-signature threshold since 2023, as many as the previous four decades combined. Here's how the maneuver works.

A once-obscure 1996 statute lets Congress kill a federal rule in an afternoon, bypassing the filibuster entirely. Only 20 of 461 attempts have become law since it took effect.

A 110-year-old Senate custom gives home-state senators a quiet veto over judicial nominees, and in 2026 both parties are testing how far it bends.

Republicans are weighing reconciliation to pass a voter ID bill without 60 votes, but the Senate's Byrd rule requires real budgetary impact, and precedent isn't on their side.

A motion to recommit is the House minority's final, guaranteed chance to force a vote before a bill passes. On July 16, 2026, one came within a single vote of working.