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'Mad House' exposes Congressional disfunction, from petty feuds to physical threats

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'Mad House' exposes Congressional disfunction, from petty feuds to physical threats

The 118th body of Congress was elected in 2022 and served from 2023 until 2025.

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It’s no secret that Capitol Hill is often mired in partisan politics and infighting, but a new book highlights additional chaos that public doesn’t see. In Mad House, Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater — both veteran reporters for The New York Times — chronicle the 118th body of Congress, which was elected in 2022 and served from January 2023 until January 2025.

Karni and Broadwater describe the 118th House as the first MAGA-controlled Congress, one that fully adopted the extremism and stagecraft of Trumpism. During its two-year session, the House passed only 27 bills that became law — the lowest number since the Great Depression.

Mad House chronicles how Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was elected speaker of the House after 15 rounds of voting — only to be ousted 10 months later. It also revisits the infamous spat in which Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) traded personal barbs during at a House committee oversight meeting. That particular meeting was held in the evening, which, Karni says, can be a particularly fraught time for legislative events.

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Karni and Broadwater write that Republicans had a very narrow majority in the 118th Congress — with a handful of party members who often refused to do what the leadership wanted.

“When you have a tiny majority, any member can throw themselves in the mix and make themselves the deciding vote,” Karni explains. “And in the last Congress, it gave this group of 20 … far-right members outsized power. … And that’s who really kind of decided how the House functioned last year — or, more likely, did not function.”

Broadwater says current House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) owes his position to the endorsement President Trump. “And you’re seeing that play out right now with how the House has chosen not to assert itself as a co-equal branch of government to Donald Trump, not to conduct oversight of the administration, and to essentially make itself a subservient branch,” Broadwater adds.

Looking ahead, Broadwater predicts we’ll see more Congressional disfunction, rather than less — especially since “it seems that voters actually like the fisticuffs.”

“A successful way to win primaries on the Right is to be the loudest, the fighter, the most extreme,” Broadwater explains. “So what we’re seeing now in the Democratic party is I think there’s a desire among the populace for the Democrats to become more of the party of fighting and not the party that plays by Robert’s Rules and keeps things super professional.”

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Karni agrees: “Looking back on it now, I feel like if you want to understand the moment we’re in, it’s really brought to you by these characters from the 118th Congress.”

Interview highlights

Mad House

Mad House

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On members of Congress sometimes sleeping in their offices instead of renting an apartment in Washington, D.C.

Karni: A lot of people can’t have two residences, and the office sleeping is a long-time thing. It kind of got less popular during COVID and after the MeToo movement because it’s an awkward thing to be living in your office and having staffers walk in in the morning and you’re, like, brushing your teeth. But people still do it to save money.

Broadwater: It’s extremely expensive to live in DC, and then you have a family back home and probably a house or a mortgage or at least an apartment back home. And so you have two residences and it becomes kind of untenable for them to deal on one salary unless you’re independently wealthy, which a lot of the members of Congress and a lot of the senators are extremely wealthy. But if you’re somebody like AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] or somebody else who comes from smaller means, it does become quite difficult.

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On burnout among members of Congress

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Karni: For these House members, it’s a slog. First of all, there’s the travel. I mean, you are back and forth every week. Like, if you live across the country, the jet lag and the travel is just crushing. Then there is not seeing your family. … That takes a toll. … The physical violence and the threats [have] become huge. I mean, these members are under constant threats of violence, and they don’t have protection. If they want protection, they have to pay for it themselves from their campaign. Not to mention, then, you’re doing all of this traveling and not having a regular family life and being threatened. And then you look at it and you’re like, “For what? When we’re here, the House floor is frozen. We’re not actually voting. … It took a week to elect a speaker. For what?” So a lot of people just made the calculation it’s just not worth it anymore.

On the Left criticizing Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for his response to the current Trump administration

Karni: I think right now what’s happening is Chuck Schumer has become the boogeyman of the Democratic Party among rank-and-file House Democrats and among voters, for just emotion and frustration at just wanting to do more, wanting to fight back. And this is because last week he voted with Republicans to stave off a government shutdown. If Democrats had not joined Republicans in the Senate, we would be in a government shutdown right now. And Chuck Schumer has been defending this decision for the past week, saying that would have been much, much worse. Elon Musk and Donald Trump wanted a shutdown. It would have allowed them to decide which programs are essential and not essential, and therefore never bring them back. His example that he’s been talking a lot about is SNAP, food stamps. They could just say during a shutdown, “This is not essential.” And during a shutdown, there’s no court check. So that could just go away.

On the relationship between Republicans in the current Congress and Elon Musk’s DOGE task force

Broadwater: It looks to me like they are embracing Elon Musk and his mission very much so. Each chamber has set up its own DOGE caucus, and they are trying to implement his cuts into their various spending plans. When he comes to Capitol Hill, he gave out his private cell phone number to members. He has tried to court people individually. And he’s posing for pictures. But Elon Musk, his polling is much lower than Donald Trump’s. The public at large does not feel the same way they feel about Trump as they do with Elon Musk. And Democrats, I believe, are focusing in on him as perhaps their best target. He wasn’t elected. He’s extremely rich. They know that there’s a lot of populist anger against the wealthy. And so, if the richest man in the world, who has all these contracts with the federal government, is coming in slashing the jobs of regular workers — and there are federal workers not just in DC, but all over the country — you can see how that could be a potent political weapon for Democrats to wield.

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Sam Briger and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.

One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.

The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.

All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.

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Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.

One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”

The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.

Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.

If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

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The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.

Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.

Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.

The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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