Darline Graham

Motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the CLARITY Act, a 635-page crypto market structure bill giving the Commodity Futures Trading Commission primary jurisdiction over digital commodities, exempting assets on blockchains the bill deems mature from SEC registration in defined circumstances, amending the Federal Reserve Act to bar Federal Reserve banks from offering products or services directly to individuals, and prohibiting the use of a central bank digital currency for monetary policy. Rejected 49-50, well short of the 60 votes required. Every Democrat present voted nay, 44 of them, joined by Sens. King (I-ME) and Sanders (I-VT) and by Republicans Collins (ME), Hawley (MO), Moran (KS), and Tillis (NC). Sen. Coons (D-DE) was absent. Sen. Tillis, who negotiated the bill's ethics title with Sen. Gallego, voted nay and immediately entered a motion to reconsider, the step that preserves a future cloture vote. Lead author Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) said Democrats had secured 126 concessions and written more than half the text over a year of daily negotiation, and that the President had twice accepted new ethics restrictions covering himself, the Vice President, federal officeholders, judges, and their spouses. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) led the opposition and said the ethics language, released the Sunday night before the vote after negotiation with the White House, was written so that only the Attorney General could enforce it against the President, with an Office of Government Ethics legal opinion able to waive it entirely, while leaving World Liberty Financial and the Trump meme coin untouched and leaving the President free to create new ventures. Warren said Trump and his family took in $1.4 billion from crypto ventures in 2025, more than any publicly traded crypto company in America, while buyers of his meme coins lost close to $4 billion. She also argued the bill would let companies with nothing to do with crypto put assets on a blockchain to escape securities law, let banks deploy deposits into crypto lending and trading, and preempt state and tribal consumer protection enforcement, a provision the president of the Indian Gaming Association called the greatest threat to tribal sovereignty in a generation, and that labor unions opposed it over pension risk. Project 2029 position is nay: crypto markets do need statutory rules, and Democrats have said so. But a framework whose only enforcement against the sitting President runs through his own former criminal defense lawyer, now Attorney General, and can be waived by an ethics office he controls, is a conflict of interest written into permanent law by the person who profits from it.

Confirmation of Todd Blanche, Trump's lead criminal defense lawyer in the Manhattan hush money trial and the federal cases, as Attorney General. Confirmed 50-49 at 4:17 a.m. on August 8 in an overnight session before the recess. The post opened when Trump fired Pam Bondi on April 2, reportedly frustrated that prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James had collapsed and by her handling of the Epstein files; Blanche, then Deputy Attorney General, became acting AG. Sens. Collins and Murkowski were the only Republican nays. Collins said the Department 'has become increasingly political' and that Blanche 'has taken several actions that have further eroded the Department's independence'; Murkowski said the country needs an Attorney General 'who will check the worst impulses of this administration' and 'I simply do not have confidence that will be the case.' Sen. Cassidy supplied the deciding vote after Blanche rescinded a $1.8 billion 'Anti-Weaponization Fund' that would have paid January 6 defendants and Trump allies claiming persecution, and withdrew tax-audit immunity for Trump and his family. Sen. Durbin: 'If there is ever a moment in history when we need an Attorney General above reproach... it's right now.' Project 2029 position is nay: Chapters 17 and 28 exist because the Justice Department was turned into an instrument of the President's personal grievances. Confirming the President's own defense attorney to run it, after he signed off on a fund to compensate the President's allies, does not restore independence. It makes the capture permanent.

Senate cloture vote on the motion to proceed to S. 5271, a bill by Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) to amend the Help America Vote Act so that election officials could not hand an in-person federal ballot to any voter without a valid physical photo ID. Voters lacking ID could cast only a provisional ballot, and it would count only if they returned with photo ID within three days or signed an affidavit citing a religious objection to being photographed; mail voters would have to enclose a copy of their ID or their last four Social Security digits plus an affidavit. Introduced August 5 and forced to the floor three days later in a pre-dawn vote at the end of the marathon session before the August recess, it was a rerun of the March SAVE America Act cloture fight, engineered to put Democrats on record against voter ID before the midterms - and to give Husted, locked in a competitive race with Sherrod Brown, a campaign talking point. Cloture failed 52-46, short of the 60 votes needed: every Republican voted yea, every Democrat and Independent voted nay, with McConnell and Welch not voting. Project 2029 position is nay: a 2023 national survey by the Brennan Center, VoteRiders, and the University of Maryland found roughly 2.6 million adult citizens hold no government photo ID at all, while in-person impersonation fraud - the only thing a photo ID requirement can stop - occurs at rates between 0.0003 and 0.0025 percent. A federal photo ID mandate solves a problem that does not exist by shrinking the electorate among elderly, low-income, Black, Latino, and young voters.

Senate vote on the motion to proceed to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse's Congressional Review Act resolution overturning an EPA rule that delayed, for the third time, the start of PFAS reporting under Section 8(a)(7) of the Toxic Substances Control Act. The underlying 2023 rule, mandated by Congress in the FY2020 defense authorization, requires every company that has manufactured or imported PFAS 'forever chemicals' since 2011 to tell EPA what they made, how much, how it was used and disposed of, and what they know about exposures and hazards - the first comprehensive national inventory of roughly 1,000 PFAS compounds linked to cancers, kidney and liver disease, hormone disruption, and developmental harm. The reporting window was originally to open in November 2024. Trump's EPA published the latest delay on April 13, 2026, the very day the window was finally scheduled to open, pushing the start to January 31, 2027 or 60 days after EPA finalizes a separate rule narrowing what must be reported, whichever comes first. The motion failed 48-50: all 45 Democrats and both Independents voted to restore the deadline, joined by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) as the lone Republican; 50 Republicans voted to preserve the delay, with Blackburn and McConnell not voting. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposed the resolution and the White House threatened a veto. Project 2029 position is yea: communities cannot clean up contamination they are not allowed to know about. Delaying disclosure while simultaneously rewriting the rule to add exemptions is the chemical industry's preferred outcome delivered by administrative slow-walk rather than by any vote of Congress.

Confirmation of Dr. Erica Schwartz, a retired Public Health Service rear admiral and deputy surgeon general in the first Trump administration, as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Confirmed 51-44. The CDC had gone nearly a year without a confirmed director after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired Susan Monarez in August 2025, 29 days into the job, when she refused to pre-approve his vaccine policy changes. Schwartz told the HELP Committee 'I believe in vaccines,' called mRNA technology safe and effective, and pledged 'I will never betray the science,' but did not commit to independence from Kennedy and said she was unaware of some of his changes to the childhood schedule. Chairman Cassidy said the agency needs a director 'that will actually stand up to crazy, stupid things.' The American Public Health Association backed her; the National Public Health Coalition of former CDC employees said her commitments were 'incomplete, vague, or missing.' Sen. Kaine (D-VA) was the lone Democratic yea, saying he regretted his vote against Monarez. Project 2029 position is nay: Chapter 14 is built on restoring a CDC whose guidance is set by evidence rather than the Secretary's beliefs. The last director who tried was fired within a month, and a nominee who would not say she would resist the same pressure offers no assurance the next one will fare differently.

Senate vote on the motion to proceed to Sen. Patty Murray's Congressional Review Act resolution overturning the Trump HHS rule 'Restoring Flexibility in the Child Care and Development Fund,' finalized in May 2026. The rule rescinds the 2024 CCDF rule's core protections for the roughly one million low-income families who receive federal child care subsidies: the cap limiting family copayments to 7 percent of household income, the requirement that states pay providers prospectively and by enrollment rather than by attendance so that providers can keep their doors open, and the requirement that states use grants and contracts to build supply for infants and toddlers, children with disabilities, and underserved areas. The Center for American Progress estimated that families in states without their own copay caps could pay from $450 to more than $15,000 a year more. The White House called the 2024 protections 'dangerous Biden-era mandates' and threatened a veto. The motion failed 47-52 on a straight party-line vote: all 45 Democrats and both Independents voted to overturn the rule, all 52 voting Republicans voted to keep it, with McConnell not voting. Murray's framing on the floor: 'You are either voting to lower child care costs or to increase them.' Project 2029 position is yea: at a moment when child care averages more than $13,000 a year per child, stripping the copay cap and the enrollment-based payment rule is a direct transfer of costs onto working parents and a destabilizer for the providers who serve them, dressed up as 'state flexibility.'

Motion to discharge S.J.Res. 181, directing the removal of U.S. Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities against Iran. Introduced by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). Rejected 49-50 on July 30 - one vote short, with Sen. McConnell absent. Republicans Collins, Murkowski, and Paul voted yea; Sen. Cassidy voted nay again; Sen. Fetterman (D-PA) was once more the lone Democratic nay and the decisive vote. Two days earlier Iran had fired ballistic missiles at U.S. forces in the region, and Central Command answered with what it called a 'heavy wave of strikes.' Eighteen U.S. service members had been killed and more than 600 wounded since February. Collins said 'the President's authority as Commander-in-Chief is not without limits.' Gillibrand: 'Under the Constitution, we have the power to end this war today. Let's use it.' Project 2029 position is yea: for the second time this year the Senate fell exactly one vote short of a majority to end the war, and the same senator supplied the margin both times. Five months in, with the ceasefire gone and casualties mounting, every recorded nay is a vote to keep an unauthorized war going.

Confirmation of Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and Trump's first-term SEC chairman, as Director of National Intelligence. Confirmed 51-47 on a party-line vote. The post opened when Tulsi Gabbard resigned in May citing her husband's cancer diagnosis; Trump then installed Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, a loyalist with no intelligence experience, as acting DNI in June, and Pulte announced staff cuts of roughly 30 percent at the office. At his July 15 hearing Clayton refused to say Joe Biden won the 2020 election, offering only that Biden was 'certified,' and Intelligence Vice Chair Mark Warner came away with 'serious reservations about whether he would be willing to stand up to political pressure when it matters most.' Sen. Wyden pressed him on subpoenas his office issued to New York Times journalists over reporting on the Qatari-donated Air Force One and later alleged he gave false testimony about them. Section 702 surveillance authority remained lapsed through the confirmation. Project 2029 position is nay: Chapter 7 rests on an intelligence community that reports facts the President does not want to hear. A DNI who will not state a settled fact about an American election, taking over the intelligence community in the middle of an unauthorized war, is the wrong person to guarantee that.

Motion to discharge S.J.Res. 180, directing the removal of U.S. Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities against Iran. Introduced by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). Rejected 47-49 on July 23 - the first Senate war powers vote after the ceasefire collapsed and U.S. strikes resumed. That weekend three U.S. troops were killed in an Iranian attack on a base in Jordan and a fourth died in Iraq; oil passed $100 a barrel and gas hit $4. Sen. Collins was the only Republican yea. Sens. Paul and Murkowski, both prior supporters, were absent along with McConnell and Britt, and Sen. Cassidy voted nay, saying an 'immediate' withdrawal would not be 'reasonable.' Sen. Fetterman (D-PA) was again the lone Democratic nay. The House adopted a parallel nonbinding resolution (H.Con.Res. 89) 214-208 the same day. Van Hollen called the war 'a strategic blunder on a massive scale.' Project 2029 position is yea: Congress directed an end to this war in June, the President ignored it, and the fighting escalated. A binding joint resolution is the only instrument left, and a chamber that will not even discharge it from committee is choosing not to act.

Motion to proceed to a Congressional Review Act resolution overturning the CMS 'WISeR' model, which since January 2026 has piloted AI-driven prior authorization in traditional Medicare across six states (NJ, OH, OK, TX, AZ, WA). Led by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). Rejected 46-50 on a straight party-line vote - every Democrat and Independent for repeal, every Republican against - so the AI denial pilot continues. Project 2029 position is yea: traditional Medicare's core promise is that a doctor's judgment, not an insurance algorithm, decides care. Importing Medicare Advantage's worst feature - automated denial machinery - into original Medicare breaks that promise for the sickest patients.

Cloture on the motion to proceed to the FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act rejected 50-46 - every Democrat and both Independents voting no, threatening the NDAA's unbroken passage streak since 1961. Democrats blocked the roughly $1.5 trillion defense topline over the administration's refusal to seek authorization for the Iran war, demands by Sen. Duckworth for hearings on domestic military deployments to American cities, and a shut-down amendment process. Leader Thune voted nay only to preserve reconsideration. Project 2029 position is nay: Congress's power of the purse is its last effective check on an undeclared war. Refusing to authorize a record defense budget while the administration ignores a war powers directive from both chambers is that check being used.