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The House and Senate are in session this week.
The House will consider eight bills under suspension of the rules, including the Emergency Wildfire Fighting Technology Act of 2025 (H.R. 836), which requires the Agriculture and Interior departments to conduct an evaluation of the container aerial firefighting system’s ability to mitigate and suppress wildfires. For the remainder of the week, the House will vote on the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of (HALT) Fentanyl Act (H.R. 27), which permanently classifies fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I drugs, subject to the most stringent federal controls under the Controlled Substances Act; and the Protecting American Energy Production Act (H.R. 26), which prohibits the president from declaring a national moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, without authorization from Congress.
The Senate will continue confirming more of President Trump’s Cabinet-level nominees this week, including Chris Wright to be Secretary of Energy; Pam Bondi to be Attorney General; Doug Collins to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs; Russell Vought to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget; and Scott Turner to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, among other nominees who have already been advanced out of Senate committees to-date such as Elise Stefanik to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the Senate Agriculture Committee, Senate Finance Committee, and Senate Commerce Committee are scheduled to vote on whether to approve and advance the nominations of Brooke Rollins, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Howard Lutnik to be Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Secretary of Commerce, respectively, in addition to the Senate Small Business Committee voting on Wednesday on the nomination of Kelly Loeffler to be Administrator of the Small Business Administration. The Senate Finance Committee is also holding a nomination hearing on Thursday for Jamieson Greer to be U.S. Trade Representative.
The House Budget Committee will not mark up its budget resolution this week, delaying the first step in the budget reconciliation process that House Republicans plan to use to enact President Donald Trump’s agenda. The Budget Committee had planned to use this week to advance its fiscal blueprint out of the panel, the opening step in moving President Trump’s agenda through the House and Senate. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) set the ambitious goal that he wanted the budget resolution to be adopted by the House and Senate by the end of February. The House GOP leadership continues to intend to pass Trump’s legislative agenda in one massive reconciliation package. The GOP leadership’s schedule to pass reconciliation is very aggressive. Speaker Johnson planned to have the budget reconciliation package on the House floor during the first two weeks of April. Recently, however, Johnson started saying that his actual deadline was in May.
House committee hearings of note this week include: an Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on “Rightsizing Government”; an Energy & Commerce Subcommittee hearing on “Powering America’s Future: Unleashing American Energy”; an Education & Workforce Committee hearing on “The State of American Education”; a Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on “California Fires and the Consequences of Overregulation”; and a Transportation & Infrastructure Subcommittee hearing on “Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems.” Senate committee hearings and markups of note include: a Judiciary Committee hearing on “The Poisoning of America: Fentanyl, its Analogues, and the Need for Permanent Class Scheduling”; a Commerce Committee markup of 17 bills, including the “Harmful Algal Blooms and Hypoxia Research and Control Act” (S. 93); an Environment and Public Works Committee markup of the “Brownfields Reauthorization Act of 2025” (S. 347) and the “STEWARD Act of 2025” (S. 351); and an Agriculture Committee hearing on “Perspectives from the Field: Farmer and Rancher Views on the Agricultural Economy, Part 1.”
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