The Latest Breaking News from Nancy Pelosi

Speeches never matter much, except when they do. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries’ first big speech to Congress as Democratic minority leader, delivered in the wee hours of Saturday morning, went viral over the weekend. Put to hip-hop beats, it has been viewed millions of times.

Although the focus of most recent political news had been Kevin McCarthy’s increasingly desperate attempts to grovel his way to becoming America’s first invertebrate speaker of the House of Representatives, buried in the hoopla are genuine decisions to be made about how the nation’s democracy should function.

On the Friday in October when David DePape burst into the house where 82-year-old Paul Pelosi was sleeping and allegedly beat him with a hammer, fracturing his skull, most Americans were shocked, horrified and disgusted.

The concessions demanded of new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., by the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus may, as speculated, weaken his position as leader of the chamber. But it also produced some reforms that could actually make Congress more deliberative and responsive.

On Jan

Electing the House speaker may have been the easy part

House GOP is promising all kinds of unhinged investigations — but Senate Democrats have subpoena powers too

The memory of the speakership fights leading up to the Civil War remind us that the consequences of dysfunction in the national government affect us all.

WASHINGTON — It was a near-fist fight on the House floor. It was four days of name-calling, late-night huddles, rush deliveries of pizzas and burritos. It was cigar smoke wafting through the hallways, diaper changes and a dog on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.