Terry Gerton It actually is recess time on the hills, but there’s still stuff happening. Let’s talk maybe about combination of things, what they’re doing in the districts and what’s on the agenda ahead. So let’s start at the big picture. I know there are still conversations happening. What are you hearing most maybe about where we are on the continuing resolution for 2027?

Loren Duggan Well, it’s amazing that we’re talking about the continuing resolution in August rather than in the depths of September with a shutdown looming right in front of us. But before they left town, the Senate sent the House, by a 90 to 6 with one present vote, a continuing resolution that would keep the government open until December 11th, well past the election, give them time to come back from the midterms and figure out what to do beyond that. So what we’re hearing, one of the House members that was around this week, Virginia Foxx (R-NC), I think she was the pro forma person on Thursday, told one of our reporters that she thinks they can do that pretty quickly and on a bipartisan basis when they get back, whether that’s that one week they’re here in early September or after Labor Day, there’s certainly a path you could see to that. Despite some people having issues with some of the language in there, it seems like overall that measure looks likely to proceed when they come back.

Terry Gerton Well, that might be a sigh of relief for most people in the federal government, given last year’s memories. Are there any concerns about getting to agreement on the terms?

Loren Duggan Well, I think if they had to go through the rules committee, which Virginia Foxx chairs, they might have the issue they’ve run into all these times where those tend to be party line votes and you need the Republicans on board. And if enough Republicans have enough issue with some language in there that could watered-down support. Democrats at the moment seem on board, enough Republicans would seem on board. You could probably get that two-thirds support and get it over. Things that have caused some concern, there’s language in there around the products under a hemp definition, which has brought in a lot of discussion about THC drinks, THC products. There’s some people who don’t want that extended the way the CR does. There is also language in their around OMB grant-making authority. It’s delaying a rule that they had put out, but even some conservatives in the Senate had said, it’s only a month. It’s not that big of a deal. We can come back to it. So people could find fault, but at the moment, I don’t know that those faults are lining up to be enough to tank it.

Terry Gerton We’ll keep our fingers crossed for that optimistic take. And when we are thinking about other sorts of resourcing bills, Reconciliation 3.0 is still in the conversation. What’s the latest there?

Loren Duggan It is. The Senate had talked about doing that before where they left with Ron Johnson, the Senate budget chair, wanting to push forward with that. They talked well into Friday night becoming Saturday morning and decided to hit the pause button, come back and do it then they had told the president there just wasn’t the right alignment of things there. One of the reasons they’re pushing this is the save America Act, which is what the president wants to see on voter ID and proof of citizenship to register to vote, which there is support for in Capitol Hill. He also wants mail in ballot restrictions that haven’t gotten wind yet. But their hope is to use that budget reconciliation process to move things that comply with budget rules. So money, grants to states, things like that. But they couldn’t get the first part of that, the budget resolution over the line before they left. So they would have to come back to that. And then write and pass the actual bill that would provide that funding for that and for DoD and for other things. So you can see a lot of obstacles to getting that done. It was a tall lift to do it if they had gotten done before recess. And the later it goes into the year, the closer you get to midterms, it might become difficult for them to do that. But they’re still discussing it at the very least.

Terry Gerton One of the things we’re hearing from members who are back in their districts is a lot of conversation still back on Reconciliation 1.0, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. If they’re still having trouble at this point selling the benefits of that, does that cause people maybe to put a little bit of a hold button on 3.0?

Loren Duggan Perhaps. I mean, the reason you use this process is so you can get a party line vote, which is what unites 1, 2 and 3 under this process too, by the way, was the funding for ICE and CBP to get that Homeland Security funding through. Republicans usually talk about the Working Families tax cuts rather than the One Big, Beautiful Bill. When they talk about that bill, you’ve seen events, including with the president over no tax on tips, the language that was in there to prevent taxation on some tips, there was over the overtime provisions, social security provisions. So, I think we’ll see a lot of discussion about that and perhaps using Democratic positions as a counter to what they did there. Of course, Democrats are going to run too on the cuts that they see to spending on Medicaid and the changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that that was a fight in light of the farm bill when they were debating that before they left. So people are going run on that bill on one way or another, but the process is not what’s standing out on that front. It really is some of the policy decisions that they either want to promote or use as a cudgel against Republicans in some cases.

Terry Gerton Loren Duggan is deputy news director for Bloomberg Government. Loren, even as we’re talking about all of these resourcing conversations coming up, elections keep happening, lots and lots of primary elections. And I thought maybe while things on the Hill are a little slower, we’d take the opportunity to get a quick sense of what all of the results in the primary so far mean. One of the trends has been youth versus incumbency and a lot of older incumbents losing in their primaries to younger challengers. What are you seeing and hearing about the impacts of that?

Loren Duggan I mean, change is often what pushes in elections. We’ve seen that a lot. One of the things we saw last week was John Larson (D-Ct.), 78 year old, been there for a long time, former member of leadership, lost his seat to a challenger I think 30 years his junior. And that one wasn’t much about the kind of democratic socialists versus establishment. That one really seemed to be more about positioning and age and things like that. So, We’ve seen that, we’ve seen other examples of it, we probably will hear more discussion of this too coming up in light of who’s running committees next year. That has been a theme in democratic politics of, you know, a lot of times you’ve got to be chairman by being around for a while, having seniority, safer seats. And some people want to shake that up and have younger members get the chance to wield gavels. And we’ve see some of that with, for example, Robert Garcia (D-Ca.), second term, fairly young, former mayor, who’s now the ranking Democrat on Oversight Committee. Next year could be the chief antagonist to the Trump administration on the Hill with that gavel. So that is a dynamic that we’ve seen play out.

Terry Gerton Certainly, not only the changes in incumbency, but a lot of incumbents not returning for re-election. So that really could shuffle the leadership deck, right?

Loren Duggan It really could. I mean, the leadership decks at the top of the parties may stay pretty stable. If the Republicans were to lose the majority, I think Mike Johnson (R-La.) would have some decisions to make around that. But, you know, some committee leaderships will shake out. A couple of members who lost had subcommittee chairs, john Larson was one, Diana DeGette (D-Co.), earlier this year who had a health [issue], ranking membership on the energy and commerce committee. So the losses now will create some openings and just other churn and change as people retire or move on to the other offices, that’s going to create opportunities too for people to move around.

Terry Gerton One of the other trends, and you mentioned democratic socialists, is the party edges against the party centers, and what are you seeing there? Is it more towards the radical wings of the parties, or are voters in the primaries moving back to the center?

Loren Duggan It seems like it depends on where you look. I mean, the case last week in Wisconsin, the governor’s race, which isn’t about Congress as much, but there you had a democratic socialist candidate, Francesca Hong, who seemed to have the early edge and then the current governor backed Crowley, who’s the Milwaukee County executive, and he surged to win that. He was way down in the polls and moved up to win that by just enough. I mean it was close, but plus one is what gets you there. So he won there. And then you look into the Michigan Senate race where Abdul El-Sayed beat Haley Stevens in that contest. He was more of the left-wing candidate. She was seen as more of an establishment and he edged her out in that race. And, you know, people were already looking at Fox News polls at the end of the week that had Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate up above him there, whereas some other polls have shown different results in other states. So we’ll have to see how those races play out and what that means going into December, we have seen Republicans talk a lot about socialism and they go and talk about communism as well, where I think some of these candidates would make distinctions there, but, you know, that’s going to be a big theme going into this election on the Republican side, talking about some of the things they’ve done and what they think Democrats might do as some of those socialist candidates do gain traction.

Terry Gerton Well, then thinking about the parties more generally, R’s and D’s, what are the trends starting to look like in terms of who might take control of either or both chambers in the midterms?

Loren Duggan The margins are tight in both chambers today. So, you know, it wouldn’t take a huge leap for the Democrats to win one or the other. The House, you have to, you now put an asterisk there because the map has changed in many states. The re-redistricting that happened in California and Texas had the most seats at play, but there’s also been moves to get one seat more for Republicans and places like Missouri, maybe one seat, more for the Democrats in Utah. So the map is different. You have to figure that out. You know, I don’t know, like Greg Girod, our elections expert, I don’t think that you’ll see the wave that you saw in past years where maybe 30 seats have changed hands, just because of some of the structural things and the fact that the Democrats are pretty close to Republicans now in the house. In the Senate side, you know, there’s some places Democrats really need to hold. Michigan is a key one, Georgia, where they seem good. Then they have to start winning seats in terrain that’s less favorable to them, whether it’s knocking off Susan Collins in Maine, picking up North Carolina looks pretty good. But then, you start talking about places like Texas, Ohio and where they haven’t had as much luck in recent years but they think they might have the candidates and the opportunity here to win. So I think it could be a nail biter on election night in the Senate for sure. Maybe even in the house, but it’ll be a lot to watch between now and then for sure