Top lawmakers, including Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had for months been asking the Justice Department to provide access to the documents — or at least an assessment of what was in them — so that Congress could gauge the potential national security harm.

In a presidential proclamation on Thursday and a subsequent statement on Friday, Biden acknowledged “a wave of discriminatory state laws” aimed at trans Americans, squarely blaming “MAGA extremists” for “advancing hundreds of hateful and extreme state laws that target transgender kids and their families.”

The deficit reduction goal is significantly higher than the $2 trillion that Biden had promised in his State of the Union address last month. It also is a sharp contrast with House Republicans, who have called for a path to a balanced budget but have yet to offer a blueprint.

“Ever since my final falling-out with the GOP, on the day of the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol by Donald Trump’s followers, I have wanted to tell the inside story of how my party and also my faith have been hijacked by extremists who represent a real danger to our democracy,” Kinzinger said in a statement.

President Joe Biden checked those boxes, and a few more, during his speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night. In part, he seemed to be laying the foundation to run for a second term. “We’ve been sent here to finish the job,” he said.

His speech before a politically divided Congress comes as the nation struggles to make sense of confounding cross-currents at home and abroad — economic uncertainty, a wearying war in Ukraine, growing tensions with China among them — and warily sizes up Biden’s fitness for a likely reelection bid.

The Treasury Department said in a letter to congressional leaders it has started taking “extraordinary measures” as the government has run up against its legal borrowing capacity of $31.381 trillion. An artificially imposed cap, the debt ceiling has been increased roughly 80 times since the 1960s.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen formally put Congress on notice last week that the agency will have to start taking "extraordinary measures" after the US reaches its $31.4 trillion debt limit on Thursday.

Lawmakers no longer have to walk through metal detectors before gaining access to the House floor. And any time they do vote, they will have to do so in person — no more voting by proxy from home. Those are just some of the changes.

Eager to confront President Joe Biden and the Democrats, Kevin McCarthy promised subpoenas and investigations. “Now the hard work begins," the California Republican declared.

More than 930 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the siege on Jan. 6, 2021, and the tally increases by the week. Hundreds more people remain at large on the second anniversary of the unprecedented assault that was fueled by lies that the 2020 election was stolen.

Pressure was building as GOP party leader Kevin McCarthy lost a seventh, eighth and historic ninth round of voting, tying the number it took the last time this happened, 100 years ago, in a prolonged fight to choose a speaker in a disputed election.

For a fourth, fifth and sixth time, Republicans tried to vote McCarthy into the top job as the House plunged deeper into disarray.

As constant and controversial as conversations around immigration in Washington have become, many lawmakers weighing in don’t have direct personal connections to the issues they’re debating. Delia Ramirez, 39, has lived them her entire life.

Democrats in Congress released six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns on Friday, the culmination of a yearslong effort to learn about the finances of a onetime business mogul who broke decades of political precedent when he refused to voluntarily release the information as he sought the White House.

U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Chicago, is co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus and was appointed to the escort committee for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s joint address to Congress.