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TPM VIDEO: Congress Is Leaving Town. What Do Lawmakers Have to Show for Themselves?

29 September 2026 at 17:00

The House has already left town. The Senate is heading home this week. With the midterms just around the corner, GOP lawmakers are giving up on doing any more legislating and skipping town to try to mobilize their demoralized voters.

TPM’s congressional reporter Emine YΓΌcel has chronicled all the drama for us. Emine joined publisher Joe Ragazzo on YouTube Live at 2 p.m. ET to talk through what Congress has actually doneΒ β€” and failed to do β€” this session.

Check it out:

Roger Marshall May Rue The Day: Arresting Pregnant Moms Edition

29 September 2026 at 01:37

I’m figuring this will end up as a big mistake. You probably know about the big NYT expose about Sen. Roger Marshall’s record as an OB/GYN suing hundreds of his patients over often very small delinquent bills and having a significant number of them arrested. Democrat Adam Hamilton is now running an ad on Youtube which describes one of those cases, a woman named Meischa Zimmerman who was arrested in 2011 and, according to her, handcuffed while eight months pregnant and in front of her two year old child. Marshall just sent Hamilton a cease-and-desist letter calling the ad false and defamatory and demanding it be taken down.

This seems like it will be a textbook case of what has come to be called the β€œStreisand Effect,” in which the effort to block some kind of publicity or attention simply has the effect of calling more attention to the original issue.

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