Capitol Hill is a ghost town until November
The Hill · C · trust 27/100
Comments: by Claire Leibowitz and Abigail Walker - 10/01/26 12:36 PM ET Comments: Link copied by Claire Leibowitz and Abigail Walker - 10/01/26 12:36 PM ET Comments: Link copied NOW PLAYING Close Thank you for signing up!
It’s Thursday, and National Pumpkin Spice Day. This is maybe the fifth time we’ve written about pumpkin spice, but we thought you should know.
Programming note : We’re Claire Leibowitz and Abigail Walker, filling in for Cate today. Please send your tips, comments and story ideas to cleibowitz@thehill.com or awalker@thehill.com .
The Senate adjourned Wednesday night until the week of Nov. 9, after the midterm elections. Vulnerable Republicans are returning home to campaign as fears over losing their majority arise, The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports .
Senators adjourned after confirming President Trump’s Labor secretary pick, Keith Sonderling.
What’s left for the lame – duck session ?: The annual defense authorization bill, the extension of expired surveillance authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and other high-profile items have been left behind.
There are also 12 appropriations bills at stake, and the government’s funding plan ends on Dec. 11.
Senators speak up: Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said the adjournment “breaks my heart.”
“It’s bad planning. We should have started after we passed One Big Beautiful Bill [in July 2025], planning what we wanted to do and how we were going to get it done,” he added.
But vulnerable GOP senators, including Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Roger Marshall (Kan.), Pete Ricketts (Neb.) and Susan Collins (Maine) are excited to return to the campaign trail.
“I think everybody’s nervous about their races,” Kennedy said. “It’s a weird year. I don’t know how these things are going to turn out.”
“I’ve done polling in my own state, and it’s a pretty red state, but people all across the political spectrum are very unsettled,” he added.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) predicted that Senate Republican losses will be “manageable” if “we let candidates execute down the stretch,” and that being in Washington can hurt their races.
“Every time you’re here, it’s a fundraiser you can’t host or it’s a town hall you can’t speak at. We need to get them back in the state. Invariably, the people who want to stick here, they all have one thing in common: They’re not up [for reelection] this cycle,” he said.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said the lame-duck session will be a “golden era” for Republicans.
When the Senate returns, they will have only eight legislative days in November and 14 days in December to square away its agenda. And that includes Fridays, which aren’t typically workdays.
Trump on Thursday said he regrets nominating Justices Neil Gorsuch , Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
“They voted against me too often,” the president told Time magazine . “I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often. They vote for me too.”
He also commented that the Democratic justices “stick like glue” when they vote.
Sore spots: Trump criticized the high court for striking down his tariffs in February in a 6-3 decision.
Justices also ruled against his birthright citizenship order in June in a 6-3 decision.
And most recently, the court blocked his mail-in voting overhaul that focused on the U.S. Postal Service’s inability to implement his desired changes ahead of November’s elections.
“These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves,” Trump wrote a couple of weeks ago on Truth Social.
Quite the Time (interview) : The president also discussed that he has not ruled out invoking the Insurrection Act or declaring a national emergency ahead of midterms.
“I’m not committing to anything,” Trump said in the interview when asked about the limits of his presidential power. “We’re going to see how it plays out in court.”
This isn’t his first time at the rodeo. He threatened to deploy troops to Minneapolis after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good in January.
In June 2025, he said he would “certainly” invoke the act in response to anti-ICE demonstrations in the streets of Los Angeles, and again about similar protests in Portland, Ore., in October.
Trump also considered sending troops to Minneapolis after George Floyd was killed by police in 2020.
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) leader Brendan Carr dismissed concerns about new taxpayer-funded Trump ads.
“There’s nothing in there that strikes me as out of the ordinary or that would merit any sort of FCC review,” Carr said. “There are groups on the left that have long worked and pushed to weaponize the FCC’s license renewal process.”
The head of the FCC also described the ads as “normal PSAs that don’t raise any red flags.”
The political ads, which first aired Sunday during two NFL games, feature the president condemning “communism, socialism and Marxism in America.”
Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Tuesday demanded that the ads be removed and requested a precise breakdown of how taxpayer money was used to fund them.
“These ads need to immediately come off the air, taxpayers need to be paid back for this theft, and everyone responsible needs to be held accountable for this corrupt and illegal propaganda,” the pair wrote in their letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin .
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) paused the use of capital…
Read the original at The Hill →
Open in TruthVane →