: [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION November 9, 2026: A previous version of this story incorrectly said John Thune is from North Dakota. He is from South Dakota.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
There's a new Congress coming in. The current crop of lawmakers still has work to do, funding the military and, well, the rest of the government, too. NPR congressional reporter Eric McDaniel joins us in our studios. Eric, good to welcome you back.
ERIC MCDANIEL, BYLINE: And here I thought I could take the next two months off. But...
SIMON: (Laughter) Well, change your plans. Republicans control Congress for the next couple of weeks. Are they in the driver's seat?
MCDANIEL: Well, let's go ahead and mix some metaphors here, Scott. They're in the driver's seat, but the shot clock is running. Imagine you've been told you've been laid off, but you still have to come in and work your hardest for the next couple of weeks. Republicans have, in theory, a one- or two-vote majority in the House of Representatives, but something tells me they could have attendance problems, and that's going to make passing legislation even more difficult than it has been for the last two years. And like you said, at the top, they have a lot they have to get done, including the National Defense Authorization Act to fund the military and a government funding bill.
SIMON: And how long do they have?
MCDANIEL: Well, the big one, government funding, that runs out of money in December 11, so just about a month away. They're also not going to negotiate the full suite of 12 annual spending bills, so they'll do some kind of kick-the-can extension, and Democrats will have to deal with it in the new Congress. Still, it's going to be messy. I should also say that it's almost certain we'll see a vote this week to impeach the Secretary of Defense, who's upset even enough Republican lawmakers over his lack of transparency about the war in Iran to make that vote pretty interesting to watch. This is an effort that was first brought by Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
SIMON: And there were some big bipartisan bills that had been working their way through Congress before the election, including reform to college sports and energy permitting. What's likely to happen?
MCDANIEL: Well, sorry to all of the college sports fans and, I guess, energy permitting fans. I don't think those are going anywhere. There's just not enough bandwidth, right? The same goes for things like AI regulation, cryptocurrency rules and the like. There would just have to be serious bipartisan negotiations at a time that Democrats have very little incentive to come to the table, when they can pass their own versions in just a few months.
SIMON: Democrats in the new Congress will still have to work with Republicans to get laws passed. But in the Senate, will they be able to stop confirmation, say, for judges in the president's Cabinet?
MCDANIEL: Right. I mean, I think it could mean that the Senate does spend a lot of floor time getting as many judges through now as they can because it's the last time they'll be able to do that during Trump's term in office. This has been a big area of success for the president and Senate Republicans historically, who don't always work so well together. Over the last two terms, he's gotten just hundreds and hundreds of federal judges confirmed to the bench and reshaped the federal courts for a generation. But still, during the lame duck, Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune will have to balance that with the floor time they need to pass the must-pass stuff we talked about above.
SIMON: Yeah. Could we see another Supreme Court nomination in this lame duck session?
MCDANIEL: Oh, boy. I mean, the idea here - right? - is that a conservative justice would step down while there's still a Republican Senate majority over the next two months to confirm their successor. But the older conservative justices, Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas - they're 76 and 78, respectively - they haven't signaled they're ready to start retirement. The other thing to remember here is a new justice would need 50 Republican votes to get confirmed.
Republicans do have a 53-seat majority for now, but Trump has forced at least that three Republican-majority-maker number out of the chamber, and he has other skeptics in the party, too, like Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. So it just isn't clear to me that he could get the kind of justice through that Alito or Thomas would be happy with as a successor. I guess anything could happen, but I don't particularly see a Supreme Court nomination fight as likely right now.
SIMON: NPR's Eric McDaniel. Thanks so much for being with us.
MCDANIEL: Always happy to be here. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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