On Thursday, October 2, 2025, news began to spread that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), would be rolling out an operation targeting unaccompanied children ages 14 and older, though some sources said children as young as 10 years old might be included. Immigration advocacy organizations received warnings
At 12:01am on Wednesday, October 1, 2025, government funding ran out without Congress passing a bill to extend it, leading to a federal government shutdown. The last shutdown that resulted in furloughed federal staff was in 2019 and lasted thirty five days, making it the longest shutdown in history. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD)
On June 12, 2025, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Work and Welfare held a hearing, “Aging Out is Not a Plan: Reimagining Futures for Foster Youth,” which explored recommendations to reform and improve the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood (the Chafee program). The purpose of Chafee is
The Senate Committees began releasing their reconciliation bills over the past two weeks as Congress barrels toward the July 4th deadline that leadership has imposed upon itself. Below is an overview of changes and provisions in the Senate committee texts that CWLA is following; at the time of this writing, the Senate Finance Committee, which
Last week, three key House Committees were able to mark up and move forward their portions of the reconciliation bill. Each bill moved through the relevant committee on a party-line vote, with no amendments to the text; although many amendments were introduced by members of the minority party, each one was voted down. Ways and
Congress continues to move forward with the budget reconciliation process, with multiple House committees marking up their versions of the bill last week. As a reminder, both the House and the Senate have passed identical budget resolutions, but the instructions for the House and the Senate are very different, with the House receiving instructions to
On Friday, May 2, 2025, the President released what is known as the “skinny budget” – a high level overview of the FY 2026 Budget Request. The table included with the requests outlines top numbers for departments and groups together changes in funding and policy, with little detail available. It’s worth noting that the President
On April 16th, 2025, the press reported that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is planning to propose massive cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) budget in the President’s FY 2026 Budget Request, according to a leaked draft. The document, called a “passback,” has not been finalized and
Two weeks ago, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kennedy announced that HHS was being restructured, laying out a vague framework with little detail available. On Tuesday, April 1, 2025, the plan came into somewhat clearer focus as HHS began its reduction in force (RIF) procedure and started laying off nearly 10,000 HHS staff.
The House of Representatives passed their Continuing Resolution (CR) to the fund the government through September 30th on Tuesday, March 11, 2025, in a mostly party-line 217-213 vote. Representative Golden (D-ME) was the only House Democrat to vote for the bill and Representative Massie (R-KY) was the only House Republican to vote against it. Later
