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U.S. President Donald Trump signs a bipartisan bill to stop the flow of opioids into the United States in the Oval Office of the White House on January 10, 2018 in Washington, DC
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Two Bills to Become Law; Lots of Ongoing Work
Mar 25, 2026
Two Bills to Become Law
These two bills have passed both the Senate and the House and now go to the President for signing, or, if he remembers his empty threat from the week before last, go to the President to sit for 10 days excluding Sundays at which time they will become law anyway.
- S. 1884: Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2025, which will prohibit certain non-merits-based defenses against returning relevant artwork, passed the House by voice vote so no recorded vote exists.
- S. 3971: Small Business Innovation and Economic Security Act, which will extend some small business related programs, passed 345-41.
Recorded Votes
These bills have only passed the House, so they are not going to become law anytime soon.
- H.R. 4294: MAWS Act of 2026, which would direct the Secretary of Commerce to establish a pilot program with respect to the sale of blue catfish caught within the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, passed 320-66.
- H.R. 1958: Deporting Fraudsters Act of 2026, which would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to clarify that aliens who have been convicted of defrauding the United States Government or the unlawful receipt of public benefits are inadmissible and deportable even though existing law covers this category of crime in nearly every case, passed 231-186.
- H.R. 4638: Federal Working Animal Protection Act, which would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to provide that an alien who has been convicted of harming animals used in law enforcement is inadmissible and deportable even though existing law covers this issue, passed 228-190.
- H.R. 556: Protecting Access for Hunters and Anglers Act, which would prohibit the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture from prohibiting the use of lead ammunition or tackle on certain Federal land or water under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture, passed 215-202.
Legislative Appropriations Recap from the First Branch Forecast
Our colleagues at the First Branch Forecast have been tracking the legislative appropriations process so you don't have to: Recap.
The bottom line is that the legislative branch needs vastly more appropriations than it's likely to give itself and the damage to the functionality of legislative branch will continue to accrue, possibly to a breaking point.
Legislator Updates
- Wall Street Journal report on the record number of members leaving Congress.
- NOTUS report on an AI company co-owned by Rep. Swalwell (D-CA14).
- NOTUS report on Congressional wealth.
Continuing Business
- The House Oversight Committee has formally subpoenaed Attorney General Pam Bondi for a closed session on Jeffrey Epstein.
- The House received a classified briefing on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in advance of a vote next month to renew Section 702.
- DHS remains shut down as neither party has moved from its demands of the other.
Two Bills to Become Law; Lots of Ongoing Work was originally published by GovTrack and is republished with permission.
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A retired New York judge criticizes President Trump’s actions on tariffs, judicial defiance, alleged corruption, and executive overreach, warning of threats to constitutional order and the rule of law in the United States.
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A Pay‑to‑Play Presidency Testing the Limits of Our Institutions
Mar 24, 2026
Another day, another outrage, and another attack on the Constitution that this President has twice taken a vow to uphold. Instead of accepting the Supreme Court decision striking down his imposition of tariffs, the President is now imposing them by executive order and excoriating the Justices who ruled against him. His disrespect for the Constitution and the judiciary is boundless.
To this retired New York State judge, all hell seems to have broken loose in our federal government. Congress lies dormant when it is not enabling the chief executive’s misuse and personal acquisition of federal funds, and, notwithstanding its recent tariffs ruling, a majority of the Supreme Court generally rubber-stamps the administration’s actions through opaque “shadow docket” rulings. In doing so, SCOTUS abdicates its role as an independent check.
I bemoan the bygone days when Mr. Smith went to Washington to fight corruption. Oh wait, Mr. Jack Smith did go to Washington to fight corruption.
Outrage also bubbles up from recent reports that well-heeled donors are being given the lucrative opportunity of gaining access to the President for a minimum of $1 million in tax-deductible donations to Freedom250, a new limited liability company involved in planning the celebrations for the nation’s 250th birthday. Although Freedom250 is a nonprofit subsidiary of the National Park Foundation, it appears to be just another avenue for gaining favor with the President. Given the President’s track record, there are and will likely be many more such avenues.
And if that weren’t enough, in a remarkable manifestation of larcenous intent, President Trump has also filed a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department for their alleged failure to protect his tax records, which, if memory serves, should have been disclosed to the American public after he was first elected to the presidency. As Senators Wyden and Warren wrote in a letter asking whether the Attorney General and Treasury Secretary would defend the interests of the American taxpayers, the lawsuit hit a new low as a “shameless and transparent act of corruption.”
As if the blatant conflicts of interest implicit in the President’s conduct are not alarming enough, his transactional approach to the granting of pardons boggles the mind. It was noted by a Senior Fellow of The American Enterprise Institute that this “pardon-lobbying industry” was “profitable for Trump insiders, or those who can pose as Trump insiders. Having abandoned the prior process for considering pardons, the President apparently doles them out to those who flatter and/or enrich him, which includes criminals and fraudsters who donate millions of dollars to pro-Trump committees. Is it a coincidence that pardons are also granted to those involved in the crypto industry in which the President’s family is invested? This approach to governing defines Trump’s administration and is antithetical to the rule of law.
To add to the outrage, President Trump is reported to have previously tried and failed to persuade New York Senator Charles Schumer to assist in the renaming of Pennsylvania Station and Dulles International Airport after him in exchange for releasing the funds of the Gateway Tunnel Project. If that was a joke, it is not amusing. While the President’s attempt to condition the funding on his own personal desires failed, at least for now, I believe that many of my former judicial colleagues would take extremely seriously what may reasonably be characterized as an instance of attempted extortion. If a litigant had been brought before me for such flagrant violations, sanctions would have surely been imposed to the full extent of the law.
Unfortunately, we have become inured to this administration’s reliance on the “unitary executive theory” to permit the President to do just about anything he wants without any pushback. While Trump fatigue is real, we must continue to challenge every outrageous emanation coming from the White House. I applaud the many federal district court judges who continue to apply the rule of law and resist unconstitutional and unconscionable governmental conduct.
The responsibility lies, however, with all branches of government and the public they serve. The judiciary alone cannot preserve the rule of law.Hon. Barbara Jaffe is a retired Justice of the New York State Supreme Court and volunteer for Lawyers Defending Democracy.
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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (L) depart the White House on their way to Florida on March 20, 2026 in Washington, DC.
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President Trump Demonstrates Why Euphemisms Damage Democracy
Mar 24, 2026
In politics, words matter. In democratic politics, they matter even more.
Great political leaders have long recognized that fact.
Perhaps no modern American President understood that as much as John F. Kennedy. Speaking at Amherst College, one month before his assassination, Kennedy paid tribute to the power of words this way: “Poetry,” he said, is “the means of saving power from itself.”
“When power leads men towards arrogance,” Kennedy continued, “poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”
I cannot imagine President Trump ever thinking or saying anything like that. The president seems to have little feel for the English language.
He uses words as weapons, not to inspire or cleanse, but to demonize and trivialize. When he does not use them that way, he turns to euphemisms to distract citizens and hide what is really going on.
Trump’s assault on language is an assault on democracy itself. “Authoritarianism,” Mike Brock argues, “thrives in ambiguity. It requires linguistic fog to operate…. Every euphemism is a small surrender. Every hedge is a tiny collaboration. Every refusal to speak plainly is a gift to those who profit from confusion.”
The latest example of the president’s assault on language is seen in his insistence on calling the war in Iran an “excursion.” On March 11, he described the war this way: “We did an excursion. You know what an excursion is? We had to take a little trip to get rid of some evil, very evil people.”
A little trip? An excursion?
When we think of excursions, we think of vacations, the object of which is relaxation, exploration, or pleasure. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its earliest known use dates from 1537.
But from then until now, I dare say no one has used it to describe dropping bombs, devastating cities, killing civilians, and disrupting the global economy. Trump’s use of a euphemism to describe those things is cynical and dangerous.
Recall the words of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who warned of “the emergence of euphemisms that strive to put an imaginary distance between the American people and the terrorist enemy. Apparently, using the term ‘war’ where terrorists are concerned is starting to feel a bit dated. So, henceforth we’re advised by the administration to think of the fight against terrorists as ‘Overseas contingency operations.’”
He went on to say, “In the event of another terrorist attack on America, the Homeland Security Department assures us it will be ready for this, quote, ‘man-made disaster’ – never mind that the whole Department was created for the purpose of protecting Americans from terrorist attack.”
Of course, Cheney himself had euphemized torture as “enhanced interrogation.” But his warning is valuable, nonetheless.
Decades before Cheney’s admonition, the great writer George Orwell pointed out that when governments commit grave injustices or inflict pain and suffering on people, they often try to sanitize what they are doing by using euphemisms. Writing in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Orwell said, “All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.”
Seems like an apt description of the Trump era.
“Political speech and writing,” Orwell noted, “are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face….”
“Thus,” he observed, “political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”
Trump is not the first president, since Orwell wrote, to dangerously abuse language during wartime. Almost before the ink was dry on Orwell’s essay, President Harry Truman was calling the Korean War a “police action.”
But avoiding the language of war is about more than simply getting around the Constitution’s allocation of the power to declare war to Congress. As the Atlantic’s Gal Beckerman observes, “Leaders are sidestepping the term not just to avoid liability, but because Americans clearly want nothing to do with what it signifies. For most people, after the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan, war is just another word for ‘quagmire.’”
When the president calls the Iran war an “excursion,” he trivializes the suffering that the war in Iran has brought there and around the world. Moreover, as Virginia Senator Tim Kaine observes, the president’s way of “characterizing this (the war) is deeply disrespectful” to those in the service and to their families
As the New York Times notes, “Bombs are exploding in Iran and the Middle East, but the fallout is rattling households and businesses in neighborhoods all over the globe. In Kansas, home buyers saw 30-year mortgage rates edge above 6 percent this week. In Western India, families mourning the death of a loved one discovered that gas-fired crematories had been temporarily closed.”
“The widening war,” the Times says, “…has delivered a stunning punch to a worldwide economy that has already been walloped by a breakdown of the international trading order, war in Ukraine, and President Trump’s chaotic policymaking.”
And beyond that, there is the untold environmental damage being done by billions of dollars' worth of bombs. A report in Forbes explains that “Explosions can release huge amounts of particles into the air…The environmental consequences of this process can last long after the fighting stops.”
But the damage does not stop there.
The president’s resort to euphemism does serious damage to the democratic process. Democracy can only thrive when leaders care about what they say and say what they mean.
Orwell gets it right when he observes, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” That is Trump’s project, to use language to corrupt thought.
It is odd but not surprising that a president who has made a career of using the most violent and inflammatory language to carry on his campaign of demonizing his opponents turns to euphemism to describe his campaign of violence in Iran.
In words that seem prescient, Orwell warned, “that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language.” Only by rescuing language can democracy be rescued as well.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.
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A 17-year-old changemaker from Ohio, Sahana Srikanth founded the Young Learners Foundation to tackle the literacy gap, donating over 18,000 books and empowering youth through mentorship, education, and community-driven impact.
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Expanding Access to Books and Literacy Opportunities for Underserved Youth
Mar 24, 2026
The Bridge Alliance Education Fund, the sponsor of The Fulcrum, has also recently launched the Democracy Architects Council. Through this fellowship, changemakers ages 18-28 across the country receive the skills, mentorship, and community needed to turn their ideas into real impact. The story below is one example of what's possible when young people are given the tools and support to lead.
Sahana Srikanth, Founder of Young Learners Foundation
State: Ohio
Age: 17
When Sahana began noticing how many children lacked access to books and literacy resources, she was struck by the scale of the gap. In the United States alone, 32 million children grow up without books in their homes, and many schools and organizations in low-income communities cannot afford to purchase them. Motivated by her lifelong love of reading and belief that literacy should be accessible to everyone, Sahana founded the Young Learners Foundation.
As Founder and Executive Director, Sahana launched a series of book drives to bridge the gap between book-rich and book-scarce communities. Through these efforts, she has organized the donation of more than 18,000 books to youth-serving organizations across 10 U.S. states and three countries, saving families, teachers, and students an estimated $153,000 in educational costs.
Beyond distributing books, Sahana works directly with young people to build confidence in reading and language skills. She has organized free literacy mentorship programs, spelling bees, and vocabulary workshops that have reached more than 150 students, ensuring that literacy development opportunities remain open and accessible to anyone interested.
Through Civics Unplugged, Sahana connected with peers working to address similar challenges in their communities and collaborated to expand opportunities for youth involvement. Because of the CU Fellowship, she joined another CU Fellow’s organization, EcoBrothers, as a Youth Council Member, where she created a guide to help others organize and run successful book drives.
To support this work, Sahana has received competitive grants from organizations including The Hershey Company, the Contribution Project, and the Matt Kurtz Foundation. Her initiatives have benefited schools and youth organizations ranging from local health center literacy programs to Boys & Girls Clubs and international partners such as the African Library Project.
Through the Young Learners Foundation, Sahana continues to channel her passion for reading into action—connecting thousands of young people with books, mentorship, and opportunities to discover the joy and power of reading.
Learn more at www.younglearnersfoundation.org
Civics Unplugged provides high school-aged innovators the skills, mentorship, and community needed to create impactful solutions to the problems that matter most. Since our founding in 2019, we’ve graduated more than 5,000 Fellows worldwide from our tuition-free programs and provided $1.5 million in direct funding to Fellows’ initiatives. To learn more about us, please visit civicsunplugged.org.
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Trump’s ‘Just for Fun’ War Talk Shows a Dangerous Trivialization