Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Proxy voting in House will likely be extended until the end of the year

Nancy Pelosi

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to again extend this use of proxy voting, possibly until the end of the year.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the House of Representatives adopted a new rule allowing members, for the first time, to cast votes remotely via a proxy.

Now, with the Delta variant on the rise, Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to extend the use of proxy voting through the fall, and possibly until the end of the year, Axios first reported.

Although not without its criticisms, this procedural change has kept congressional operations afloat at a time when it's been unsafe for members to convene in person.


During the public health emergency, proxy voting allows House members who are unable to vote in person to designate a colleague to record an in-person vote for them, under strict instructions. A member may vote on behalf of up to 10 of their colleagues. The procedural change also allows hearings to be conducted virtually.

This emergency measure was first enacted in May 2020 and has been extended every few months since as the pandemic has persisted. The latest extension is set to expire Aug. 17. Currently, 126 House members have active proxy orders in place.

When proxy voting was first adopted, however, GOP House members sharply criticized its use, filing a federal lawsuit that claimed the voting method was unconstitutional. The suit was ultimately dismissed in August 2020.

More recently, however, proxy voting has become a tool of convenience for both Republicans and Democrats. With most members of Congress vaccinated, lawmakers are now using remote voting to spend more time in their districts, attending campaign events and avoiding a long commute to Washington.

To prevent proxy voting from being misused in this way, Marci Harris, CEO of the nonpartisan civic engagement platform Popvox, said clear guidelines need to be set around how members should use remote voting.

"That abuse — and the failure of the House to hold members who violate the rules to account — dilutes the important continuity function that proxy voting (or other forms of remote voting) serves," Harris said.

Proxy voting has been an important tool for Congress during the pandemic, and it should continue to be considered for future emergency situations, Harris added. Last year, in the early days of the pandemic, her organization participated in mock remote hearing exercises to test the viability of virtual congressional proceedings during the pandemic. The exercises were successful and overwhelmingly supported by the former members of Congress, from both parties, who participated.

Moving forward, expansions to proxy voting should be considered, said Daniel Schuman, policy director at Demand Progress, another organization that participated in the exercises. For instance, he would also like to see the Senate adopt some form of remote voting.

But at the very least, Schuman said, while there is still a public health crisis, the current system should remain in place so that members who are immunocompromised or have young children can continue to safely vote on legislation.

"Proxy voting has allowed the Congress to stay open in a circumstance where they wouldn't have necessarily been able to do as much otherwise," Schuman said. "Every single American deserves to have representation in Congress, and this is a mechanism to ensure that everybody's representative who is mentally capable of participating is able to do so themselves."

Read More

Ingrassia Exit Highlights Rare GOP Pushback to Trump’s Personnel Picks

President Donald Trump speaks at a White House press briefing on Jan. 30, 2025.

Credit: Jonah Elkowitz/Medill News Service

Ingrassia Exit Highlights Rare GOP Pushback to Trump’s Personnel Picks

WASHINGTON — Paul Ingrassia withdrew his nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel on Tuesday night after facing Republican pushback over past controversial statements.

While Ingrassia joins a growing list of President Donald Trump’s nominees who have withdrawn from consideration, many who have aired controversial beliefs or lack requisite qualifications have still been appointed or are still in the nomination process.

Keep ReadingShow less
A Revolution in Congressional Decision-Making
low light photography of armchairs in front of desk

A Revolution in Congressional Decision-Making

The dysfunction of today’s federal government is not simply the product of political division or individual leaders; it is rooted in the internal rules of Congress itself. The Founders, in one of their few major oversights, granted Congress the authority to make its own procedural rules (Article I, Section 5) without establishing any framework for how it should operate. Over time, this blank check has produced a legislative process built to serve partisan power, not public representation.

The result is a Congress that often rewards obstruction and gridlock over compromise and action. The Founders imagined representatives closely tied to their constituents—one member for every 30,000 to 50,000 citizens. Today, that ratio has ballooned to one for every 765,000 in the House, and in the Senate, each member can represent tens of millions (e.g., California). As the population has grown, representation has become distant and impersonal, while procedural rules have tightened the grip of party leadership. Major issues can no longer reach the floor unless the majority party permits it. The link between citizens and decisions has nearly vanished.

Keep ReadingShow less
Lasting peace requires accepting Israel’s right to exist

US President Donald Trump hailed a "tremendous day for the Middle East" as he and regional leaders signed a declaration on Oct. 13, 2025, meant to cement a ceasefire in Gaza, hours after Israel and Hamas exchanged hostages and prisoners. (TNS)

Lasting peace requires accepting Israel’s right to exist

President Trump took a rhetorical victory lap in front of the Israeli parliament Monday. Ignoring his patented departures from the teleprompter, which violated all sorts of valuable norms, it was a speech Trump deserved to give. The ending of the war — even if it’s just a ceasefire — and the release of Israel’s last living hostages is, by itself, a monumental diplomatic accomplishment, and Trump deserves to take a bow.

Much of Trump’s prepared text was forward-looking, calling for a new “golden age” for the Middle East to mirror the one allegedly unfolding here in America. I’m generally skeptical about “golden ages,” here or abroad, and especially leery about any talk about “everlasting peace” in a region that has known “peace” for only a handful of years since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Keep ReadingShow less
A child looks into an empty fridge-freezer in a domestic kitchen.

The Trump administration’s suspension of the USDA’s Household Food Security Report halts decades of hunger data tracking.

Getty Images, Catherine Falls Commercial

Trump Gives Up the Fight Against Hunger

A Vanishing Measure of Hunger

Consider a hunger policy director at a state Department of Social Services studying food insecurity data across the state. For years, she has relied on the USDA’s annual Household Food Security Report to identify where hunger is rising, how many families are skipping meals, and how many children go to bed hungry. Those numbers help her target resources and advocate for stronger programs.

Now there is no new data. The survey has been “suspended for review,” officially to allow for a “methodological reassessment” and cost analysis. Critics say the timing and language suggest political motives. It is one of many federal data programs quietly dropped under a Trump executive order on so-called “nonessential statistics,” a phrase that almost parodies itself. Labeling hunger data “nonessential” is like turning off a fire alarm because it makes too much noise; it implies that acknowledging food insecurity is optional and reveals more about the administration’s priorities than reality.

Keep ReadingShow less