Congress

The Hill - Congressional retirements are on track to hit their highest level in a decade this election cycle, fueled in part by Republicans increasingly looking to exit the halls of Congress with the midterms fast approaching.

Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) late last week became the latest lawmaker and 30th House Republican to announce he doesn't intend to run for reelection. Along with nearly two dozen House Democrats who have also said they don’t plan to seek another term this November, the number of retirements in the chamber stands at 51.

That’s a higher number in the House than in any election cycle of the past decade except for 2018, which saw 52 retirements, according to data kept by Ballotpedia and The Associated Press.

Meanwhile in the Senate, nine incumbents are retiring either to end their political careers or seek another office outside Congress — already the highest number of any cycle in the past decade.

Roll Call - With days left to pass a Homeland Security spending bill, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate dismissed a White House counteroffer to their own, calling it “insufficient.”

Hours after the White House shared a counterproposal to one offered this weekend by Senate Democrats, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer released a terse statement dismissing the proposal.

“Republicans shared an outline of a counterproposal, which included neither details nor legislative text,” the two New York Democrats said. “The initial GOP response is both incomplete and insufficient in terms of addressing the concerns Americans have about ICE’s lawless conduct. Democrats await additional detail and text.”

The dismissal comes as lawmakers face a four-day deadline to reach an agreement on funding for the Department of Homeland Security amid harsh Democratic criticism of the Trump administration’s approach to immigration enforcement and less than a month after federal immigration officials shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis within a span of weeks. 

NPR -  If a deal is not reached, Congress will need to pass another stopgap bill to fund DHS, NPR’s Barbara Sprunt tells Up First. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he will start prepping a short-term funding bill as a backup option. Democrats face an uphill battle with their demands for officers to display identifying information like their last name and a ban on face masks. Many Republicans view these requests as nonstarters. Sprunt says she is watching how GOP lawmakers question top immigration officials today. While they largely back President Trump’s enforcement actions, Republicans have to navigate new polling that shows a majority of Americans believe those same tactics have gone too far.