Steven M Palazzo

While answering phones in the Mississippi congressional office where he worked, Ty James was called the n-word by someone on the other end of the line. It was 2017 and marked the second time he had been called that.

Those kinds of experiences have helped convince James, a native Mississippian and African American who is press secretary for Rep. Bennie Thompson, that the two statues representing the state in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection shouldn’t be devoted to men who were Confederates and white supremacists.

House and Senate negotiators were planning to work through the weekend to reach a border security deal that would clear the way for a final fiscal 2019 spending package.

A House-Senate conference committee on a Homeland Security bill had been hoping to reach an agreement by Friday. But members said they would probably use the weekend to resolve all remaining concerns, with the goal of producing legislative text on Monday.

With the government on the brink of a shutdown due to a demand by the White House for $5 billion in taxpayer funds to lengthen the barrier along the Mexican border, a Mississippi congressman has introduced legislation to fund an expansion of the wall through savings bonds.

Republican Rep. Steven Palazzo proposed leveraging special U.S. Treasuries called “border bonds” to finance an expansion of the Southern border wall on Monday, the Sun Herald reported.

Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., is taking his town hall on the road today.

He will use his “Commuter Town Hall” on the PACE bus in his suburban Chicago district to meet constituents during their work commutes.

Welcome back from the long weekend and happy recess.

How has the 115th Congress affected you so far? We found out in a survey that staffers are sleepier than the were in the last one, and now we want to hear anecdotes about how 2017 is treating you.