TMZ is turning its celebrity lens on Congress, tracking lawmakers on recess as a nearly six-week Department of Homeland Security shutdown drags on.

Republicans have launched an unprecedented effort to hold the Senate floor and talk for days about a bill that they know won’t pass — an attempt to capture public attention on legislation requiring stricter voter registration rules as President Donald Trump pressures Congress to act before November’s midterm elections.

A Florida man has been executed for the murder of a young mother who called 911 seeking help while tied up in her attacker's car.

Senate Republicans plan to launch a full debate next week on legislation to impose strict new proof-of-citizenship requirements.

Majority Leader John Thune says that the Senate will consider a bill to impose strict new proof-of-citizenship requirements in elections.

Election-year legislation to impose strict new proof-of-citizenship requirements on voting appears stalled in the Senate, for now, despite President Donald Trump’s call in his State of the Union speech that Republicans in Congress pass the bill “before anything else.”.

House Republicans approved legislation that would impose strict new voter ID requirements ahead of the midterm elections.

President Donald Trump is now openly embracing the conservative blueprint he desperately tried to distance himself from during the 2024 campaign.

Turning Point USA’s college tour went to Utah for the first time since its founder was assassinated on a college campus in the state earlier this month.

An attorney for the 22-year-old man charged with killing Charlie Kirk has asked a judge for more time to review the large amount of evidence before deciding if the defense will seek a preliminary hearing.

The House declined late Wednesday to punish one of its own over commentary in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to rebrand the Department of Defense as the Department of War.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune says Republicans “got the job done” in passing President Donald Trump’s big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts.

The Senate’s long day of voting has churned into a long night as Republican leaders grasp for ways to shore up support for President Donald Trump’s big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts.

Debate has been underway late into the night in the Senate on President Donald Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts package.

A plan to sell more than 3,200 square miles of federal lands has been ruled out of Republicans’ big tax and spending cut bill after the Senate parliamentarian determined the proposal by Senate Energy Chairman Mike Lee would violate the chamber’s rules.

A Republican-sponsored proposal before Congress to mandate the sale of federal public lands is getting a mixed reception from the governors of Western states.

Sen. Mike Lee posts thousands of times, often late at night, about politics.

Threats to members of Congress are on the rise, security officials told senators at an emergency briefing in the wake of the killing of a Minnesota state lawmaker in her home over the weekend.

More than 2 million acres of federal lands would be sold to states or other entities under a budget proposal from Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee.

The Senate has set an ambitious timeline to pass President Donald Trump’s sweeping legislation to cut taxes and spending.

Chiseling away at President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk are showing no signs of reconciling on Friday, but Republicans are increasingly urging them to settle their dispute.

President Donald Trump’s nominee to oversee an agency that manages a quarter-billion acres of public land has withdrawn her nomination.

Key Republicans and Democrats have been stalwart supporters of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The timing of President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Republican Vivek Ramaswamy for Ohio governor has stunned and intrigued Ohio political observers.

During a time of pressure on public broadcasters, PBS says that it is shutting down its office of diversity, equity and inclusion and firing the two executives who staffed it.

The Senate has confirmed fossil fuel executive Chris Wright to serve as energy secretary, a key post to promote President Donald Trump’s efforts to achieve U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market.

Chris Wright, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for energy secretary, told senators during his confirmation hearing Wednesday that he would promote all sources of American energy, while also acknowledging the burning of fossil fuels causes climate change.

A suspect was arrested and charged with the fatal shooting of a Houston-area sheriff’s deputy while police were conducting a manhunt following an assault at a pizzeria, authorities said.

Authorities in Houston have set up SWAT teams to catch a suspect they say fatally shot a sheriff’s deputy in an apparent ambush.

A suspect has been charged with killing a Houston-area sheriff’s deputy and assaulting a pizzeria clerk.

The Utah Republican Party has selected Trent Staggs as its nominee to replace Mitt Romney in the U.S. Senate, hours after the local official received former President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

After months of negotiations and delays, the Senate has voted to move forward on legislation that would provide wartime aid to Ukraine and Israel.

Republican Utah House Speaker Brad Wilson has formally announced that he's running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Mitt Romney.

The director of the federal Bureau of Prisons was scolded Wednesday by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who say her lack of transparency is hampering their ability to help fix the agency, which has long been plagued by staffing shortages, chronic violence and other problems.

A biotech entrepreneur and Republican presidential hopeful says he'd consider Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah among several possible conservative candidates should he get to nominate someone to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Senate has passed legislation to reauthorize federal grants for local fire departments.

When President Joe Biden suggested that Republicans want to slash Medicare and Social Security it brought howls of protests from the GOP side of the aisle during the State of the Union address.

The Senate has passed a $1.7 trillion bill to finance federal agencies through September, aid Ukraine and provide assistance to communities recovering from hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters.

U.S. senators from both parties have expressed skepticism that a proposed merger between grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons will lower prices for consumers.

Since Utah Republican Mike Lee won his race comfortably against independent Evan McMullin, a debate has emerged over the Democrats’ strategy to back an independent rather than run their own candidate.

Tech leaders and Democratic Party-aligned groups are among those funneling millions into Utah to support independent Evan McMullin’s bid to unseat Republican Sen. Mike Lee.

Republican U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina is getting a reelection boost from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Democrats running for office this year in Republican-leaning areas or swing states are grappling with how much they should talk about the Jan. 6 insurrection, if at all.

President Joe Biden has signed an international agreement that compels the United States and other countries to limit use of hydrofluorocarbons, highly potent greenhouse gases commonly used in refrigeration and air conditioning that are far more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Just weeks before the Nov. 8 election, Utah’s senior senator, Republican Mike Lee, is now acknowledging a real political threat from Evan McMullin.

U.S. Senator Mike Lee has used a debate with his challenger Monday evening to try to draw a distinction between his record and former President Donald Trump's.

The House has approved antitrust legislation targeting the dominance of Big Tech companies by giving states greater power in competition cases and increasing money for federal regulators.

Utah's Evan McMullin is emerging as the nation’s most competitive independent candidate running for U.S. Senate in the 2022 midterm elections.

A special House panel looking into the government's coronavirus response says the Trump White House tried to pressure U.S. health experts into reauthorizing the drug hydroxychloroquine that had been discredited as a COVID-19 treatment.

Major League Baseball told a Senate committee that the sport’s antitrust exemption prevents teams from moving without approval and allows the sport to maintain the minor leagues at a wide level.

A bill to boost semiconductor production in the United States has managed to do nearly the unthinkable — unite Sen. Bernie Sanders and the tea party.

Leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee have asked baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred to explain the impact of potential legislation stripping the sport’s antitrust exemption from covering the sport’s relationship with minor league players.

President Joe Biden hosted hundreds of lawmakers, their families and aides for the first congressional picnic at the White House in three years.

The executive director of the nonprofit Advocates for Minor Leaguers has recommended Congress enact legislation nullifying Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption as it applies to minor league players.

The chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to an advocacy group for minor leaguers asking questions about baseball’s antitrust exemption.

Colorado Republicans have rejected two prominent election deniers in primaries Tuesday night.

Sen. Mike Lee has won Utah’s Republican primary by brushing off attacks from two challengers who didn’t vote for former President Donald Trump in 2020.

Seven states are set to host primary elections Tuesday as the nation comes to terms with last week’s stunning Supreme Court ruling eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion.

Mitt Romney isn’t up for reelection this year, but his name is surfacing in Republican primaries throughout the nation.

Members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection are holding their first prime-time hearing to share what they have uncovered about then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

A former lawmaker in Oregon is aiming to shake up state politics by running as an unaffiliated candidate for governor.

Less than a day after a gunman massacred 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Texas, a Wednesday Senate hearing for President Joe Biden’s pick to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reflected the deep political divisions over guns.

Red state officials are coming out swinging against growing Wall Street efforts to consider environmental risk in investment decisions.

The traditionally insular Supreme Court is about to face the full force of public pressure and abortion politics.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee has avoided serious challenge in deeply conservative Utah in the dozen years since he came to power in a tea party wave.

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Utah Democrats pulling hard to defeat Republican Sen. Mike Lee took the unusual step Saturday of spurning a party hopeful to instead get behind an independent, former presidential candidate Evan McMullin.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee worked on early efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, helping push legally dubious schemes to keep then-President Donald Trump in power, before he shifted course and quickly backed away.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is endorsing former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel in the heated Republican primary for the open U.S. Senate seat in the Midwestern battleground.

Piecing together the activities of President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, is no easy task.

The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol has previewed some of its findings in a federal court filing.

The Senate has sent President Joe Biden a bill averting a weekend government shutdown.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee is facing backlash from Japanese Americans and conservation groups after blocking a proposal to create a national historic site at a former internment camp in rural Colorado.

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is sounding a skeptical note about the prospects of easing the Senate’s filibuster rules to advance stalled voting legislation.

The Senate has rejected a bid to stop a U.S. arms sale to Saudi Arabia.

For months, President Joe Biden has taken it on the chin from Republicans over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Senate has passed a stopgap spending bill that avoids a short-term shutdown and funds the federal government through Feb. 18 after leaders defused a partisan standoff over federal vaccine mandates.

President Joe Biden has signed into law the stopgap spending bill that will keep the federal government running through Feb. 18.

The federal government could be heading for a temporary shutdown.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he will not again help Democrats extend the government’s borrowing authority.

A significant majority of Americans doubt that the war in Afghanistan was worthwhile, even as they are more divided over President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and national security.

The senators who spent months stitching together a nearly $1 trillion infrastructure package are now trying to sell it to the American people.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had vowed to be “100% focused” on stopping President Joe Biden’s agenda.

The Biden administration is encouraging Senate lawmakers to finally repeal an Iraq war authorization crafted when Saddam Hussein was still alive.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is looking to speed up consideration of a nearly $1 trillion bipartisan national infrastructure package.

A U.S. Senate panel has deadlocked on President Joe Biden’s pick to oversee vast government-owned lands in the West amid bitter opposition from Republicans.

The hanging death of a 21-year-old Black man three years ago is still haunting a county in Mississippi.

A Houston area man whose family says had a history of mental illness was fatally shot by a deputy after authorities allege he threatened the officer with a knife.

Klobuchar, who heads the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on competition policy, has launched a broad examination by the panel of monopoly concerns. The current drift toward bigness began with a merger boom in the 1980s in corporate America that fattened profits for the dominant companies. But hold on, some are saying, let’s not punish bigness for its own sake; better to look at each case individually. They say big companies can bring efficiencies of scale, reduce prices and create jobs. He said as a candidate that breaking up Big Tech companies was something that should be considered.

(Senate Television via AP)WASHINGTON – The massive coronavirus relief plan making its way to President Joe Biden’s desk includes a plan to temporarily raise the child tax credit that could end up permanently changing the way the country deals with child poverty. The American Rescue Plan, expected to receive final approval this week, temporarily raises the child tax credit, now at a maximum of $2,000, to as much as $3,600 per child annually. Indeed, Biden himself told House Democrats during a private call last week that he supports legislation that would permanently increase the child tax credit to $3,000 per child. That's the case made by some Republican lawmakers in offering an alternative to the Biden proposal. Because the benefit currently expires after a year, the Biden plan essentially creates a potential fiscal cliff for child poverty.

(Senate Television via AP)WASHINGTON – The massive coronavirus relief plan making its way to President Joe Biden’s desk includes a plan to temporarily raise the child tax credit that could end up permanently changing the way the country deals with child poverty. The American Rescue Plan, expected to receive final approval this week, temporarily raises the child tax credit, now at a maximum of $2,000, to as much as $3,600 per child annually. Indeed, Biden himself told House Democrats during a private call last week that he supports legislation that would permanently increase the child tax credit to $3,000 per child. That's the case made by some Republican lawmakers in offering an alternative to the Biden proposal. Because the benefit currently expires after a year, the Biden plan essentially creates a potential fiscal cliff for child poverty.

Employees with the McKesson Corporation scan a box of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine while filling an order at their shipping facility in Shepherdsville, Ky., Monday, March 1, 2021. AdThe push to reopen comes as COVID-19 vaccine shipments to the states are ramping up. Johnson & Johnson shipped out nearly 4 million doses of its newly authorized, one-shot COVID-19 vaccine Sunday night to be delivered to states for use starting on Tuesday. The company will deliver about 16 million more doses by the end of March and a total of 100 million by the end of June. White House vaccination coordinator Jeff Zients also acknowledged that scheduling of vaccination appointments “ remains too difficult in too many places."

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., walks on Capitol Hill after the Senate acquitted former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial in the Senate at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Saturday, Feb. 13, 2021. Trump was accused of inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and the acquittal gives him a historic second victory in the court of impeachment. Investigations into the riot were already planned, with Senate hearings scheduled later this month in the Senate Rules Committee. We needed more senators with spines.”AdMcConnell told Republican senators shortly before the vote that he would vote to acquit Trump. Beutler's statement late Friday that Trump rebuffed a plea from House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy to call off the rioters was ultimately entered into the trial record.

Reporters vie for a response from Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, as Senators take a dinner break while arguments continue in former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021. Scott Applewhite)WASHINGTON – For 90 tense minutes, members of the Senate relived the horror. The rioters were “58 steps” from senators at one point, impeachment manager Eric Swalwell told them. Senators were silent afterward, some sitting quietly and alone, as if to process it all. He walked out of the room in the middle of the presentation, as impeachment manager Stacey Plaskett detailed the threats to Pence’s life.

(Senate Television via AP)WASHINGTON – The Latest on former President Donald Trump's second Senate impeachment trial (all times local):8:20 p.m.House Democrats have wrapped up their first full day of arguments at the historic second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. The impeachment trial is set to resume at noon Thursday. Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney say they are deeply disturbed by the evidence shown by Democrats against former President Donald Trump at his second impeachment trial. Prosecutors at Trump’s impeachment trial on Wednesday played security footage from inside the Capitol on Jan. 6. ___2:20 p.m.Democrats are arguing that former President Donald Trump “built” the mob that attacked the Capitol.

SALT LAKE CITY – Supporters of President Donald Trump heckled Republican U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah in an airport, illustrating divisions in the Republican Party between Trump loyalists and those ready to accept the results of the presidential election. Romney has been considered Trump’s sharpest GOP critic and is among a group of senators who called for an end to an effort to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s win. Video of the airport confrontation posted online Tuesday night came as Trump backers around the U.S. traveled to Washington, D.C., for demonstrations as Congress meets to accept the Electoral College vote. It's being contested by some GOP lawmakers, but the effort is all but certain to fail. His counterpart, Sen. Mike Lee, is a staunch Trump supporter but called for civility after the video made the rounds.

Eleven Republican senators saying they will not be voting Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, to confirm President-elect Joe Biden's victory include Wyoming's newly sworn in Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Cheyenne-area rancher and former congresswoman. It is unclear just what the Republican senators will do, but the process could drag into the night as the two chambers will have to consider each objection individually. And more than a dozen Republican senators have said they will not support the effort. Facing the criticism from many in his own party, Cruz has attempted to put a finer point on his challenge. The commission remains his focus, he has said, not to undo the election results, even though that would be the practical effect of a successful objection.

On Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2020, President Donald Trump pardoned 15 people, including Collins. Papadopoulos was the first Trump aide to plead guilty as part of Mueller’s investigation – pleading guilty to lying to the FBI – and served a nearly two-week sentence in federal prison. The White House said Stockman had contracted coronavirus while in federal prison and has served more than two years of his 10-year sentence. Esformes’ prison sentence was commuted by the president on Tuesday, but other aspects of his sentence, including supervised release and millions in restitution, remained intact. The White House said the commutation was supported by a number of former attorneys general and said Esformes is in declining health.