Will 2025 be a year of bipartisanship?
I found a group of lawmakers who think so.
Good morning, everyone! In today’s newsletter, I’ll share my regular Friday update on the bipartisan pieces of legislation that moved through Congress this week — but first, a related piece of reporting: my dispatch from a room of lawmakers very optimistic about next year’s prospects for cooperation…
No Labels has moved on from its failed presidential bid. Mostly.
The centrist group, founded in 2010, suffered a setback this year after its months of planning for a unity presidential ticket — one Democrat, one Republican — ended with no takers and an outpouring of criticism.
But at its annual conference on Thursday, held at the swanky Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., No Labels tried to cast its gaze forward to how it can promote its message of bipartisanship next year. Except, that is, when it was looking backwards.
“I would have rather been here about a month from now having an inauguration party for the unity ticket,” retired Navy Adm. Dennis Blair admitted.
Dan Webb, a former U.S. attorney, railed against the “conspiratorial plan to destroy No Labels” by Democrats who sought to deny the group ballot access. “No Labels has gotten a lot of awareness pretty quick this last year,” former Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings joked.
The organization is now trying to channel that attention into a return to its roots: until the presidential misadventure, No Labels had mostly focused on Congress, working with lawmakers to find “bipartisan solutions to the country’s big problems,” as Blair put it. The group helped found the House Problem Solvers Caucus in 2017; many of the caucus’ top members — and other prominent congressional centrists — spoke at the Thursday confab, outlining their plans for the future.
In their telling, 2025 is poised to be a banner year for bipartisanship.
A lot of issues were thrown out as potential areas for cooperation: Affordable housing, said Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-CA). A national debt commission, offered Rep. Ed Case (D-HI). “Permitting reform, permitting reform, permitting reform,” said Sen.-elect John Curtis (R-UT), naming a frequent topic of discussion at the summit.
It was genuinely refreshing to see lawmakers from across party lines joking with each other, praising each other, brainstorming ideas, and practicing a bit of introspection (the reason Democrats struggled in 2024 was “not white supremacy, not misogyny. It was incompetence,” Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, said.)
“We’re not that far apart on issues. We’re just not,” Curtis, a current House member, said. “My chief [of staff] tells me all the time, ‘You know what, you take two Republicans, two Democrats: you put them in a room, you let them solve immigration, and if you let all the members vote on it without disclosing their vote, you’ll solve it in an afternoon.’”
“Do that!” an audience member yelled out, a rare bit of heckling in an otherwise polite crowd.
What’s standing in the way? A number of speakers offered culprits, from primary elections elevating more extreme members to a raw lack of political courage. Lawmakers appeared split on whether the Trump administration will help or hurt; many speakers (mostly Republicans) mentioned Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” as potentially fertile bipartisan ground — although “I can never remember how it’s pronounced,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) admitted.
On a more dour note, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) pointed to the Trump team’s stance on Cabinet confirmations: “Everybody toe the line. Everybody line up. We got you here, and if you want to survive, you better be good. Don’t get on Santa’s naughty list here, because we will primary you.”
Asked if she was worried about similar MAGA pressure campaigns tanking bipartisan legislation, Murkowski told me she was still in wait-and-see mode, although she did note that a Trump-led effort had sunk the bipartisan border bill this year, an outcome she called “very unfortunate.”
At least among the party’s more centrist members, there was a clear sense from Democrats that their party would have to approach 2025 with a different mindset than it did 2017. “I think the big difference now is he had the popular vote, and I think that Democrats should recognize that,” Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV) told me. “I’d like to see less of this attitude of resistance to everything. Obviously, there are many things that I do not agree with, and that I will agree with, but [Democrats shouldn’t] have that knee-jerk reaction to every single thing.”
Republicans had also seemed to learn from their first Trump tango. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), for example, knew exactly how to frame his bipartisan proposal to shore up Social Security, which he is set to re-launch soon with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Tim Kaine (D-VA), and Angus King (I-ME). It could be the “epitaph” of Trump’s presidential legacy, Cassidy promised: “FDR founded it. Reagan propped it up. And Trump fixed it.”
Personally, I was listening closely for whether any of the speakers mentioned ideas for institutional reform: clearly, the sort of easy fixes that Curtis mentioned haven’t been materializing — does that call for changes (however small) to Congress’ elections, or operating style, that might spark more productive legislating?
Several members (from both parties) mentioned campaign finance reform; the attendees were also treated to a presentation on the potential benefits of a National Primary Day, in order to increase turnout in congressional primaries and potentially yield primary electorates that included more moderate and independent voters.
Rep. Dan Meuser (R-PA) offered the most radical proposal: changing the Constitution to give House members four-year, instead of two-year, terms, so they could devote more time to legislating than campaigning.
As they left the Mayflower, I canvassed several lawmakers to see if they had other proposals — and plans to actually push for them.
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), for example, mentioned on stage that he believed gerrymandering needed to be reined in, something you don’t always hear from Republicans. (Then again, he happens to be a Republican hailing from a state where Democrats control redistricting.) “If more districts were actually competitive, then you wouldn’t have the level of partisanship that we have,” he said.
But when I asked him on the sidelines of the conference if that meant he had plans to introduce reforms to gerrymandering, Lawler was less certain: “We’ll look at it,” he told me.
Lee proposed an update to discharge petitions — which allow bills to reach the House floor if a majority of members sign on, even if the speaker doesn’t want to schedule a vote — so that nobody would see who has or hasn’t signed them. (This is how they worked until 1993.) “Leadership is watching,” she told me. “Because they are blocking the legislation from coming to the floor and by signing the petition, you’re bucking your leadership. Making it private would give people the space to be able to do what they should do, for those who don’t have the courage to buck their leaders when they need to.”
Murkowski expressed support for a version of discharge petitions in the Senate, allowing bills supported by three-fourths of the Senate to receive an “automatic process or an expedited process on the floor,” so that bipartisan bills approved by committees don’t “just kind of sit in this purgatory forever.”
Many lawmakers also pointed to changing the chemistry, not just the physics, in Congress. “When we get to Washington, you don’t have a ton of time to meet,” Lee said, calling for a change to the congressional calendar. “You land on Monday, you’re out Thursday. You got Tuesday and Wednesday nights [to socialize], primarily.”
(On stage, Collins also noted how important these nights in session were when crafting the bipartisan infrastructure package. “The secret when we came to an impasse — which we often did — was food and wine,” she said.)
Of course, there could be no bigger shock to the system than electing a third-party presidential candidate — although that too would likely require electoral reforms. Former Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC), the national director of No Labels, told me that their 2024 presidential efforts were a response to “once-in-a-lifetime” circumstances, not something that the group should try again.
Not everyone agreed. Asked if No Labels should considering mustering a White House run in 2028, Murkowski let out a grin. “I think that they should consider it every election year!” she told me.
This week in governing
The House passed bills increasing pay for service members, improving water infrastructure, addressing Chinese cyber threats, creating 31 new zip codes, boosting Amtrak transparency, and giving some disabled veterans TSA PreCheck for free.
The Senate passed bills combatting the spread of fentanyl and xylazine, scaling back use of automation in federal hiring, reauthorizing a program fighting child exploitation, modernizing the FDA, expanding veterinary services in rural communities, boosting veterans benefits, and promoting tribal ownership of buffalo.
Bills were sent to the president’s desk requiring colleges to improve reporting on hazing incidents, seeking to reduce duplicative federal reports, boosting federal building security, and establishing a grant program to ensure more schools have AEDs.
The president signed bills offering tax relief to survivors of wildfires and the East Palestine train derailment, reauthorizing the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer and programs addressing Alzheimer’s, adjusting the FAFSA deadline, making donations to more veterans organizations tax-deductible, and awarding Congressional Gold Medals to Shirley Chisholm and 60 diplomats who helped save Jews during the Holocaust.
Also: The House passed the JUDGES Act in a 236-173 vote, with all Republicans (except two) in support and all Democrats (except 29) opposed. As I wrote earlier this week, the measure — which would add 66 new district court judgeships over the next 11 years, in order to address worsening judicial backlogs — passed the Senate unanimously in August, but Democrats have turned against it in the aftermath of the election.
President Biden has signaled plans to veto the measure — although Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), the bill’s sponsor, held out hope that Biden would change his mind when I caught up with him at the No Labels conference. “I would plead with him on behalf of the judges and the litigants to reconsider his position,” Young told me.
The day ahead
President Biden will participate in a virtual Group of Seven (G7) meeting this morning.
Vice President Harris has nothing on her public schedule.
The House and Senate are off until Monday.
The Supreme Court will hold its weekly conference