Joe Wilson

Rep. Joe Wilson was the first member to take advantage of a new House rule designed to bring broadly supported bipartisan bills to the floor. The South Carolina Republican’s legislation to end the so-called widow’s tax received a vote Friday, but it was not the vote he envisioned.

Wilson’s bill, the Military Surviving Spouses Equity Act, would end a disparity between government payments made to surviving spouses of servicemembers who die on active duty. The “widow’s tax,” as the current complication in the law is known, requires the surviving spouses to forfeit much of their Department of Defense Survivor Benefit Plan annuity when they receive Dependency and Indemnity Compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs by deducting from the former the value of the latter.

Joint sessions. The birth of C-SPAN. Robert Byrd playing his fiddle during a filibuster. The awe they felt the first time they walked on the House floor. It all adds up to what alumni of the Capitol page program call a life-altering experience.

But many teenage political junkies won’t get that experience today, thanks to technological changes and sexual misconduct scandals. The House, which accounted for the largest share of pages, shuttered its program in August 2011.

If you see a bunch of grown-up former Capitol pages reliving their teenage glory days all over D.C. this weekend, don’t be alarmed. It’s just the class of ’79 celebrating its 40-year anniversary.

The former students have been sharing stories in a reunion Facebook group ahead of the meet-up. Some of their memories include sneaking off to New York City and bumping into Truman Capote at the legendary Studio 54 club in Manhattan.

Ernest Frederick “Fritz” Hollings, a longtime statesman with a rumbling baritone known for a quick wit and as a champion of environmental and social policy, has died at the age of 97.

The South Carolina Democrat, who ran for president in 1984 and served in the Senate for nearly 40 years — most of his tenure as the junior senator to Republican Strom Thurmond — died Saturday after a period of failing health, The (Charleston) Post and Courier reported. 

The floor belongs to Donald Trump for around an hour, maybe more, but the crowd can still speak volumes.

The lawmakers squeezed into the House chamber on Tuesday night probably won’t be yelling back as the president tells them that the state of the union is strong. (Joe Wilson, of “You lie” fame, already tried that with Barack Obama.)

Updated 10:02 p.m. | The House will vote Tuesday to disapprove of comments Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King made in a New York Times interview questioning how the terms “white supremacist” and “white nationalist” had become “offensive.”

The resolution of disapproval, introduced Monday by Majority Whip James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, actually only makes one specific reference to King.

Roughly half of the House’s 21 committees will have new Republican leadership next year, creating several competitive races among colleagues looking to move up the ranks.

The majority of the openings come from retiring GOP chairmen, most of whom have reached the six-year limit Republicans place on their committee leaders.

Rep. Lee Zeldin can thank his staff for preventing him from being the latest victim of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

The New York Republican’s office received a call from someone claiming to be from an Israeli television station requesting an interview with him, the New York Post reported.

Rep. Joe Wilson got the Sacha Baron Cohen treatment Sunday night in a segment on the British comedian’s new show where he tries to convince lawmakers to back a made-up lobbying effort to arm American toddlers.

During a sit-down interview with Baron Cohen, who is well-known for conducting interviews with unwitting suspects while he role-plays as foreign characters with controversial views on race, politics, and sexuality, the South Carolina Republican appeared to suggest he supported the lobbying effort to help “Kinderguardians” by arming preschoolers with guns.

Democratic women want President Donald Trump to see a sea of black when he looks at the crowd in the House chamber during his State of the Union  address on Tuesday.

“We were very concerned about what was going to happen in the Trump administration to women, and all our fears have come true, unfortunately,” Rep. Lois Frankel of Florida, chairwoman of the Democratic Women’s Working Group. “There’s a lot of anxiety, as you can expect, among the Democrats — actually, among the country — about what’s been going on.”