Haven't had time to send an update for a while. Here is what I’ve been following: FY 2019 Appropriations. All of the remaining seven government funding bills are basically ready to go, with the exception of the Homeland Security bill, which is where the money for the U.S./Mexico border wall would need to come from. The President is insisting on $5 billion to get the wall started, which is the level in the House version of the bill; the bipartisan Senate bill provides $1.6 billion. Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) reported that the President said he would veto any bill that provides only $1.6 billion, raising the possibility of a partial government shutdown on December 7 if they can’t work this out. Congressional Leadership Elections. The House Democratic caucus held it’s leadership elections yesterday. They selected a new Caucus chair, going with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York over Barbara Lee of CA, which is significant from our persecutive as Lee is a member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor-HHS-Education. The selection of Jeffries was expected, but Lee’s candidacy caught some momentum toward the end, and the vote was pretty close. Once the dust settled, the Jeffries selection ended up being the only significant Democratic leadership news: Nancy Pelosi overwhelmingly won the nomination to be Speaker, and they moved unanimously to bring back their other two top leaders without a vote — so that means Steny Hoyer will be back as majority leader and James Clyburn as majority whip. Pelosi had to do a lot of work to get the nomination. She took the unusual step of asking outside groups to publicly endorse her — including some education groups. She also had to make deals with groups on both the right and the left in Congress. She came to some kind of agreement with the Democrats on the “Problem Solvers Caucus” (which is a group of Democratic and Republican House members that portrays itself as angels of bipartisanship), but I haven’t had time to find out what this deal is exactly. I know what they wanted was to curtail to some extent the power of the majority to move legislation in a wholly partisan fashion. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, meanwhile, was offered a certain percentage of representation on key committees: Intelligence, Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, Financial Services, and (most relevant for us) Appropriations. The challenge for the CPC is going to be to convince their members to give up their current committee assignments to move to those committees and thus lose seniority. Even with all that work, 32 Democrats still wouldn’t support Pelosi, so it’s still not a 100% lock that she will become Speaker when the new Congress convenes in January. With Democrats in control (so far) of 234 seats in the next Congress, she can’t lose many Democrats in the Jan. 3 roll call vote for Speaker if all House members are present and voting. But it’s pretty close to a lock. The reason I’m giving you all this detail is to drive home three points: (1) While it remains to be seen how all the committee assignments shake out, no matter what, there will be new faces from both parties on key committees like Education and the Workforce, Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations come January that you will want to get to know. (2) There is a possibility that more CPC members may end up on Appropriations. This would have been even more interesting if Barbara Lee been elected head of the caucus. But still interesting. (3) If she becomes Speaker, Pelosi will need to be responsive to those people and groups both in and outside of Congress who supported her. (Pelosi becoming Speaker probably good for us — remember that Pelosi was supportive of the adult ed appropriations increase last year.) Agency Nominations. Republicans on the Senate HELP Committee today advanced the nomination of Robert King to be Assistant Secretary of Education for Postsecondary Education. King worked in higher ed in Kentucky and is the former head of the State University of New York system. Democrats opposed King's nomination — the vote was 12-11, along party lines. The Committee was also supposed to be voting on the nomination of John P. Pallasch to be Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training at the Department of Labor, which I assume also went through, but I haven’t checked. More information and a webcast of the hearing: https://www.help.senate.gov/hearings/s-2076-s3657-traumatic-brain-injury-program-reauthorization-act-of-2018-hr315-s3482-s3530-and-nominations <https://www.help.senate.gov/hearings/s-2076-s3657-traumatic-brain-injury-program-reauthorization-act-of-2018-hr315-s3482-s3530-and-nominations> That’s all for now… Jeff