“As much good as we’ve done together, there’s a time and season for everything, and this season is coming to a close,” Arrington said. “That’s why today I am announcing I will not be seeking reelection.

“Instead, I’ll be looking for the next challenge, I’ll be spending quality time with my family and I will be passing the torch to the next West Texan.”

Arrington has been the budget committee chairman since 2023. He was also a member of the committee at the start of his first congressional term in 2017. The congressman said in his video it’s time to live under the laws he helped pass.

“It has been the most profound privilege and the honor of a lifetime to be your voice and champion in our nation’s capital,” Arrington, whose district includes parts of northwest Texas, said.

Kyle Rable, a Democratic Army Reserve officer running for Arrington’s seat, has expressed concern over the Republican’s record. Rable suggested in social media posts that Arrington has fought for special interests and wealthy donors, and has sided with authoritarians.

Arrington said in his video his “north star” has always been the Constitution and making the country better for his children, however.

“I ran for Congress because I felt God calling me to it, because I have a passion for public service and to fight, work and serve for a better, brighter future for the next generation of West Texans,” he said.

He added that working at the Capitol hasn’t always been easy, but it has always been gratifying.

“Real leadership, as defined by West Texans, isn’t just giving some inspiring speech. It’s working with others to solve a problem and deliver results, and that’s exactly what we’ve done for almost 10 years now,” Arrington said.

Rable wrote in an X post last month that Arrington was nowhere to be found while they were struggling during the government shutdown, after Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on a government funding bill. He said he would help instead of pretending to care and expressed support for food drive hosted by a union of federal government employees.

“If the current representative won’t stand up for West Texans, I will. Leadership means showing up,” Rable said.

Arrington’s district, which includes Lubbock, leans heavily Republican. It will be an uphill battle for a Democrat to flip it. It is uncertain who the Republican candidates will be.

“Did I make my share of mistakes? You bet. Did I learn along the way? You bet I did,” Arrington told Fox News Digital. “But we left [the country] better than we found it, and it gives me great satisfaction.”

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Justices listened to representatives of Damon Landor, a prisoner who gave religious reasons for refusing to cut his hair, and the Louisiana corrections department discuss rights allowed by the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.

Landor, whose faith aligns with Rastafari — a religious and political movement with Christian elements — said in his petition for the Supreme Court last year that officials at a Louisiana prison cut dreadlocks he had been growing for decades. The officials also threw away a copy of an appeals court’s decision Landor held that explained how RLUIPA allowed him to keep his hair, he said.

“This Court emphasized that RFRA’s text was ‘clear,’ that Congress ‘made clear’ that individual-capacity damages ‘must’ be available, and are often the ‘only’ relief for violations of RFRA’s protections for religious exercise,” Landor noted. “This case presents the question of whether the same vital remedy is available against state officials under RFRA’s ‘sister statute’ … The language of these statutes is ‘in haec verba,’” or similar.

The Louisiana corrections department rejected Landor’s claims in a written argument last month. RLUIPA doesn’t allow someone to sue officials in their personal capacity because the Constitution’s government spending clause doesn’t allow it, according to the state. Congress hasn’t allowed people to use the law to sue officials in their private capacity either, the corrections department said. And even if RLUIPA did allow the lawsuits, its language allegedly poses issues.

“Petitioner’s only serious argument otherwise is that this Court’s decision in Tanzin v. Tanvir … — which recognized individual-capacity claims for damages against federal officials under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) — changes everything,” the corrections department wrote. “By his telling, the Court need only copy-and-paste Tanzin to reach the same conclusion as to State officials under RLUIPA.”

“He is mistaken, not least because his attempt to “[c]asually graft[]” Tanzin (which had nothing to do with the Spending Clause) onto RLUIPA (which is Spending Clause legislation) is fundamentally misguided,” the state continued.

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“I’m seriously weighing it to the extent that I’m about to spend a lot of money to get data,” Crockett told host Dasha Burns of Politico’s “The Conversation.” “So I’m a data-driven person. I will tell you that I personally believe that Texas needs to do something different if they wanted different results. That’s just the bottom line.”

No Democrat has won a Senate election in Texas since 1988. Republican Sen. John Cornyn is running for reelection next year to serve a fifth term. Crockett said her decision on a campaign will be last-minute, saying the candidate who wins the Democratic primary election will also need to be successful in the general election.

“I’m going to be flat-out with you and tell you that I don’t think that there’s a Democrat that can take out Cornyn,” she said.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee agrees and is spending a lot of money on Cornyn’s primary campaign to make sure he wins, Crockett says. That could not be confirmed, though, and the NRSC didn’t respond to a question about its spending.

Texas has historically had much better Democratic Senate candidates than Republican ones, but Democrats often lose, Crockett said. She said a lack of voter participation has contributed to the Democrats’ performance and that future candidates need to shift strategy to achieve better results.

“I don’t think that we have the luxury, especially with us having such an early primary, of actually doing what we normally do, which, we spend about $100 million to get someone’s name ID up, but the way that I look at elections is that that’s just first base,” Crockett said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, great. We know your name.’ ”

It’s unclear how much voter participation and name recognition have affected Democrats’ performances. Crockett said she already has high name recognition, though, and is mentioned in Senate polls among other Democrats who have previously campaigned statewide, like former Reps. Beto O’Rourke and Colin Allred.

“Beto had two state runs, and then we also know that Colin Allred just ran statewide. I’ve only represented, at most, 1/38th of the state,” Crockett said. “So to have my name ID right up under them without ever having run statewide, in addition to the fact that the vast majority of these polls have me either being in first or [close to first].”

In mid-September, Crockett made headlines when she said she was disappointed in her white Democrat House colleagues who voted in favor of a resolution “honoring the life and legacy” of Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated on Sept. 10.

The measure passed by a vote of 310-58, receiving the support of 95 Democratic lawmakers, including top leaders in the party.

“For the most part, the only people that voted no were people of color because the rhetoric that Charlie Kirk’s continuously put out there was rhetoric that specifically targeted people of color,” Crockett said. She was one of the 58 no votes.

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Comey said in an October 2016 message to Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman, who was at one point an adviser to the director, that “president elect Clinton” would be thankful for something Comey did, according to the exchange.

Richman had allegedly told the director he would write an opinion article for The New York Times about a letter Comey sent to Congress a few days earlier. Comey told multiple committees in his letter about emails the FBI found in its investigation of Clinton’s private email server, which she used as state secretary.

Richman said he would write about how Comey owed Congress “absolute candor” and how the director’s credibility with lawmakers would be “particularly important” in potential congressional investigations, according to the exchange obtained by prosecutors.

“No need. At this point it would shouting into the wind. Some day they will figure it out,” Comey allegedly replied. “And as Jack and Ben point out, my decision will be one a president-elect Clinton will be very grateful for (although that wasn’t why I did it).”

It’s unclear who Jack and Ben are. Prosecutors said Comey “reconsidered” his stance shortly after his response. Comey allegedly said in a Nov. 1 email to Richman that a reporter with The New York Times, “Mike S,” didn’t understand the significance of the director’s public comments on the Clinton investigation, adding that perhaps the professor could “make [the reporter] smarter.”

“Why is this so hard for them to grasp? All the stuff about how we were allegedly careful not to take actions on cases involving other allegations about which we have never spoken is irrelevant, I love our practice of being inactive near elections,” Comey reportedly said. “But inactivity was not an option here. The choices were act to reveal or act to conceal.”

Comey’s emails were included in a response by prosecutors to his motion to dismiss the case. A grand jury indicted the director for allegedly lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding.

Comey told Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in September 2020 that he hadn’t authorized anybody to disclose information to the press about the Clinton probe or an investigation into President Donald Trump. The jury found that Comey did allow someone, likely former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, to be an anonymous source, though. Comey has denied the charges against him.

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Attorneys for Learning Resources, an educational toy company, is challenging Trump for using a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, to impose import taxes on items from nearly every nation.

Trump won’t be attending the hearing on Wednesday, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will.

“I’m actually going to go and sit the — hopefully in the front row and listen — have a ringside seat,” Bessent said Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime” show. “I am there to emphasize that this is an economic emergency.”

The White House said on April 2, which Trump called “Liberation Day,” the 1977 law allows the president to address an emergency caused by a “large and persistent” trade deficit driven by the “absence of reciprocity in our trade relationships.” “Harmful” policies of other countries, like “currency manipulation” and “exorbitant value-added taxes,” also led to an emergency, the White House said at the time.

The law allows the president to “deal with” any “unusual” or “extraordinary” foreign threat to the U.S.’s economy, foreign policy or national security if a national emergency is declared for it.

Learning Resources CEO Rick Woldernberg told the Associated Press that month that Trump’s April 2 and subsequent tariffs felt like the “end of days.”

“The products I make in China, about 60% of what I do, become economically unviable overnight,” he said. “In an instant, snap of a finger, they’re kaput.”

On April 22, Learning Resources sued for an injunction that a district court granted a little over a month later. Trump appealed, but a circuit court upheld the previous ruling. The president said in a social media post in August that the appellate court’s decision was wrong and that it could “literally destroy the United States of America.”

“Today a Highly Partisan Appeals Court incorrectly said that our Tariffs should be removed, but they know the United States of America will win in the end,” Trump wrote. “If these Tariffs ever went away, it would be a total disaster for the Country. It would make us financially weak, and we have to be strong.”

The Supreme Court agreed in early September to hear the case, allowing arguments for a total of one hour this month. Learning Resources called the court’s action a “major step forward.”

“We’re grateful that they’ve chosen to adjudicate a case with such significant economic implications … This fast-track review underscores the urgency and significance of the issues at stake,” the company said. “We’re proud to stand up for our customers, our employees, and the schools and communities we serve.”

The Supreme Court usually issues rulings in late June or early July, but the tariff case could be decided by the end of the year, according to experts.

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New Hampshire Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, along with Michigan Sens. Elissa Slotkin and Gary Peters, reportedly talked with Sens. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., in a Capitol “hideaway” on Thursday.

Sources familiar with their conversations said the lawmakers need “strong assurances” from Republicans before voting to fund the government and end the shutdown, The Hill said. The Democrats will need to feel comfortable with any deal Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., offers, and they may need to speak directly with President Donald Trump.

Ossoff told The Hill that bipartisan conversations, which he called a “good sign,” were taking place. He was asked how optimistic he was of the Senate reaching an agreement this week. The lawmaker reportedly replied, “We need a resolution that does right by our constituents.”

“My constituents don’t want their health insurance premiums to skyrocket. They want the government reopened,” he said, according to The Hill. “It’s good that bipartisan conversations are continuing.”

Most Democratic senators have rejected a bill supported by Republicans to fund the government because it doesn’t address healthcare concerns. Premiums for some insurance plans sold through the federal marketplace could increase after subsidies expire at the end of the year.

The Hill noted that sources familiar with the Democrats’ meeting said the lawmakers’ talks were very “sensitive” and that Thune would need to assure them that Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., would seriously consider any proposal to extend the subsidies.

Shaheen has said Congress can reopen the government while protecting against greater health insurance costs. She said in an interview on Saturday that Democrats were hoping to reach an agreement with Republicans.

“I continue to believe that we ought to be able to do both, to get government open, keep it open, and we also ought to be able to make sure that people can afford their health insurance,” she said.

Republicans have pledged to discuss Democrats’ healthcare concerns after the shutdown ends. Hassan said she believes lawmakers have to reopen the government while addressing a “healthcare calamity,” though.

Some Democratic senators have also said Trump, who has influence over their Republican colleagues, isn’t participating in negotiations. Peters wrote in a social media post last week the president and other GOP leaders should be working in “good faith,” a sentiment Slotkin shared on X last week.

“If the president wants this done, he can get it done in 72 hours. He’s the Art of the Deal guy,” Slotkin said, referring to Trump’s book.

The president has resisted negotiating with Democrats. He prefers they vote to fund the government before sitting down with them.

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There would be billions of dollars less in real gross domestic product, the inflation-adjusted value of goods and services, if the shutdown extended to Nov. 26, the agency, which provides budget information to Congress, said in a report released on Wednesday.

CBO outlined the shutdown’s potential effects on real GDP if it ended Wednesday, in two weeks and at the end of November. If the government reopened immediately, $7 billion would be lost while there would be $11 billion less in economic output if the shutdown ended on Nov. 12, the budget office said.

“Under all three shutdown scenarios, after 2026, the level of output would return to what it would have been had there been no lapse in discretionary appropriations, but the cumulative effect of the shutdown on real GDP — measured as the sum of the quarterly differences between each scenario’s estimate of real GDP and what real GDP would have been in the absence of a shutdown — would remain slightly negative,” the agency wrote in its report.

The losses would be the result of a reduction in hours worked by furloughed federal employees, the report said. Government workers across the Trump administration have been away from the office during the shutdown that started on Oct. 1.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has expressed concern over the effects of the government closure. He said in a CBS News interview on Sunday the shutdown was starting to affect the economy and criticized Democratic members of Congress for not agreeing to a bill to fund the government.

“It’s a global embarrassment what these Democratic senators are doing, keeping the government shut down,” Bessent said.

The senators have rejected measures supported by Republicans that would fund and reopen the government, saying they do not address healthcare concerns. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the floor on Tuesday that Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., needs to negotiate on the matter to address a developing crisis with rising insurance premiums.

“We want lower healthcare costs, now. We want to solve the [Affordable Care Act] premium crisis, now. Open enrollment is just days away. We want lower costs, better healthcare and to reopen the government,” Schumer said. “Let me repeat again what Democrats want so the leader can hear it loud and clear, the Republican leader can hear it: We want lower healthcare costs, fix the ACA premium crisis and reopen the government.”

Republican members have refused to negotiate on healthcare policy, suggesting talks on the matter take place after the shutdown ends.

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He wrote on his website, Gates Notes, that the belief “cataclysmic” climate change will “decimate civilization” is doomsday-ish.

“Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong. Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries — it will not lead to humanity’s demise,” Gates wrote in the blog posted on Monday. “People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”

Some leaders in addressing climate change have asserted it can threaten the lives of people across the world. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said during a session of the World Meteorological Congress last week that global warming is “pushing our planet to the brink” and that no country is safe from resulting extreme weather.

Gates addressed the premise of that belief in his blog post, writing that projections on greenhouse gas emissions have decreased. He said similar views are causing much of the “climate community” to focus too much on short-term emissions goals, and, as a result, resources are being diverted from effective strategies on improving life.

“Sometimes the world acts as if any effort to fight climate change is as worthwhile as any other,” wrote Gates, who has worked on addressing global warming. “As a result, less-effective projects are diverting money and attention from efforts that will have more impact on the human condition: namely, making it affordable to eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions and reducing extreme poverty with improvements in agriculture and health.”

Gates said climate change will not be the only threat to poor people. Their biggest problems are poverty and disease, he said. Understanding their issues will allow people trying to address global warming to focus their resources on initiatives that will have the greatest effect.

“This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives,” Gates wrote, adding that the upcoming United Nations climate change conference is an “excellent” place to start. “Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries.”

Guterres of the U.N. said a lot of work needs to be done to “preserve” lives, communities and economies in the most vulnerable areas of the world. The least developed countries and small island, developing states “pay the highest price.”

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Senior White House officials used the autopen to create Biden’s signature and abused a chain-of-command policy for executive actions, the Republican-controlled committee wrote in its report. Aides also tried to “prop up” Biden and mislead the country about his state, the report said.

“The Biden autopen presidency will go down as one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history,” Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said in a statement. “As Americans saw President Biden’s decline with their own eyes, Biden’s inner circle sought to deceive the public, cover-up his decline and took unauthorized executive actions with the autopen that are now invalid.”

Comer also called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Biden’s executive actions “to ascertain whether they were duly authorized by the President of the United States.”

Democratic members of the committee dismissed the idea that Biden’s actions are invalid. The “scandal” Comer referenced is “nothing more than a feeble attempt to attack the legitimacy of President Biden’s policies,” they said.

A majority of the committee said Biden decided in a meeting to issue pardons on Jan. 19 for members of his family, members of the former House committee on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and former health director Anthony Fauci, among other people.

The committee said there was no “contemporaneous” documentation of the meeting, although an aide to then-Chief of Staff Jeff Zients communicated Biden’s decision to Zients. The chief of staff then authorized the use of an autopen to sign the pardons, according to the panel, which took issue with the alleged lack of documentation on the clemency decisions.

“The investigation revealed holes in the chain of custody of the president’s decision binder, which contained decision memos to be signed or initialed by President Biden when approving or disapproving executive actions, as well as numerous instances in which the president’s approval for an executive action or the chief of staff’s approval of signature by autopen was not memorialized,” the committee wrote. “Among the most flagrant of these instances are the clemency actions taken in the final days of the Biden presidency.”

Democrats on the panel said there is no credible evidence to support Comer’s claim, saying Republicans’ assertions are “as empty as their ‘evidence.’”

“The testimonies also make it clear the former president authorized every executive order, pardon, and use of the autopen,” Ranking Member Robert Garcia, D-Calif., said in a statement. “Oversight Democrats are committed to working toward a better future for the American people.”

Majority members of the committee said Biden’s staff also tried to mislead the public by hiding his condition with makeup and “addressing” the number of steps he would climb. The staff also allegedly limited his schedule, used teleprompters and elicited advice from “Hollywood.”

Democratic panel members called the investigation into Biden’s health “sinister.”

“After extensive witness interviews and numerous media appearances, the majority has produced no credible evidence to substantiate his assertions, demonstrating once again his preference for partisanship over genuine oversight,” the members said, referencing Comer.

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He told CNN host Jake Tapper during “State of the Union” show over the weekend that California is participating in a “war” over which state can “out-cheat” others.

“There’s this war going on all over the United States, who can out-cheat the other one. Texas started it, they did something terribly wrong, and then all of a sudden California says, ‘well then we have to do something terribly wrong,’ and then now other states are jumping in and now this is spreading like wildfire all over the country,” Schwarzenegger said.

Californians will vote next week on whether to redraw their congressional maps, an action usually done by an independent commission. California’s effort follows similar moves by Texas and other Republican-controlled states that would give the GOP a better chance at keeping a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Schwarzenegger expressed sadness over how California, which he described as a leader in fair districting, could sideline the commission. The panel was established under his tenure.

“It saddens me to see that we’re going in the opposite direction, rather than having an independent commission draw the district lines,” he said. “And so, Jake, I have to tell you that, you know, when you think about trying to out-cheat each other, rather than outperform each other, it’s all between Democrats and Republicans. And the ones that are getting left behind are the people.”

Current Gov. Gavin Newsom has supported the redistricting measure, called Proposition 50. He has spoken about the state’s efforts through various means, defending it as a necessary step in challenging national Republicans like President Donald Trump, who directed multiple redistricting attempts.

“Californians have been uniquely targeted by the Trump administration, and thanks to the hard work of the California legislature, they will have a choice to fight back — and bring much needed accountability to Trump’s efforts to undermine the democratic process,” Newsom said in a statement in August.

State Democratic leaders also backed Proposition 50, including Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Salinas. He said in a statement that California wouldn’t be a “bystander to Trump’s power grab.”

“We are acting to defend our state from his attacks, by taking it directly to the voters. Californians believe in democracy and freedom, and we will not stand by while the House is hijacked by authoritarianism,” Rivas said in August. “Today, we gave every Californian the opportunity to stop Trump by saying yes to our people, to our state, and to American democracy.”

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