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.

The federal government's new Repayment Assistance Plan went live July 1. Here's what the payment formulas actually mean for three different borrowers' monthly budgets.

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 pocket rescission works by running out a clock. Here's the clock itself, and why the Supreme Court's answer on the shortcut is still incomplete.

A pocket veto sounds like a president's ultimate weapon, but Congress figured out how to close the loophole decades ago -- and the housing bill saga just proved it.

It's one of the oldest tricks in a legislature's toolbox: attach something so toxic to a bill that its own supporters end up voting it down.

An unwritten rule that lets a Speaker block bills his own party doesn't fully back is the reason this Congress has set a modern record for forcing floor votes without him.

One senator's private objection can freeze a Senate nomination indefinitely. Thom Tillis is using that leverage in the open against Todd Blanche, which is the unusual part.

One Senate procedure lets any senator force a vote on almost anything, as long as they're willing to stay past 3 a.m.

One procedural rule, named for a West Virginia senator, decides which provisions survive a reconciliation bill — and it shaped how the 2025 tax law was written.

The House minority's last-ditch procedural motion used to force real amendment votes. A 2021 rules change quietly stripped that power.

No member of Congress has ever been prosecuted for insider trading under the STOCK Act. A bill to close the gap has 93 co-sponsors and no floor vote.

A discharge petition lets a House majority bypass its own leadership and force a floor vote, but it takes 218 signatures to even try. The tool sat mostly unused for two decades until 2025.