James B Renacci

The combined wealth of Congress is set to plummet next year after a deluge of departures and the results of the midterm elections. Some of the wealthiest lawmakers on Capitol Hill won’t be returning next year, and the body’s $2.43 billion of personal net worth will drop by $933 million. 

Of the top 10 richest members of Congress, four are packing their bags. Most are staying in the public sector. California Rep. Darrell Issa, net worth of $283 million and the perennially richest member of Congress, announced his retirement in January 2018. The inventor of the Viper car alarm was expected to leave public office but will move to the Trump administration, after being appointed to the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.

Picture this: a Republican president, just days before voters decide whether his party would lose one chamber of Congress, warning that Democrats had “weakened our nation and nearly brought our economy to its knees.”

Only it wasn’t Donald Trump at one of his recent homestretch midterm rallies. It was Ronald Reagan at an October 1986 campaign stop in Springfield, Missouri.

President Donald Trump will hit eight states with 11 campaign rallies in the final six days of the midterm election cycle with the House and Senate — and most of his domestic agenda — up for grabs.

Trump was in Washington on Monday and will remain there until Wednesday, when he will begin his final push to convince voters to keep both chambers in Republican hands. His tour will mostly focus on Midwestern and Mid-Southern battlegrounds.

Republicans have long been frustrated that a handful of candidates in tight races who could afford to loan their campaigns more of their own money had not done so.

A few of those GOP nominees changed that during the third quarter that ended Sept. 30, dipping into their personal resources to give their campaigns a cash infusion. Fundraising report filings were due Monday at midnight. 

One word stood out this week as President Donald Trump’s top trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, described an updated North American trade pact: “progressive.”

Also notable during a half-hour discussion about the agreement Lighthizer held with a group of reporters: He was complimentary of the Obama administration’s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact with Asian countries from which Trump withdrew. He even admitted the new North American agreement is “built on” many aspects of TPP.

Democrats continue to dominate the latest list of the most vulnerable Senate incumbents two months out from Election Day, with North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp moving into the top spot.

Heitkamp displaces Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, who nevertheless remains the most vulnerable incumbent on the Republican side and the only GOP senator running in a state Hillary Clinton won in 2016.

With control of the House up for grabs and the number of competitive seats growing to 86, many congressional hopefuls have two more months of grueling politicking to look forward to as they barrel toward Election Day.

But not all of them.

The Senate will question representatives of tech giants Twitter and Facebook on Wednesday. The chamber’s Intelligence Committee also invited Alphabet CEO Larry Page but rejected the company’s counteroffer to send Google’s chief legal officer.

Roll Call found 32 members of Congress have stock ownership in the three companies. These stocks are held in trust funds, IRAs and brokerage accounts for the members, their spouses or their dependent children. In total, members of Congress have invested more than $7,000,000 in the three tech companies subject to scrutiny in Wednesday’s hearings.

At least two Republican Senate candidates who kicked their own money into their campaigns issued misleading statements about their second quarter fundraising this month.

Press releases that paint a rosier picture of candidates’ fundraising than their official quarterly reports are a reminder of the anachronistic reporting standards to which only Senate hopefuls are held.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan was named in a new class-action lawsuit regarding allegations of sexual abuse at Ohio State University.

The Republican congressman, who was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State from 1986 to 1994, is one of three former school officials named in the lawsuit, Rolling Stone reported, including former team physician Richard Strauss, who has been accused of sexually abusing male athletes over two decades. He died in 2005.