Blaine Luetkemeyer

EMERALD ISLE, N.C. — The Republican candidate who has the best chance of adding to the party’s dwindling ranks of women in the House insists she’s running on her own merits, not her gender.

But in the GOP primary runoff for the special election in North Carolina’s 3rd District, pediatrician Joan Perry subtly argues that her gender is an important part of why she’s the real outsider candidate running for Congress. 

After holding an anti-money laundering bill for a month in the hopes of winning over the committee’s top ranking Republican, the House Financial Services Committee advanced it without him on Wednesday, in a move that could ultimately undermine the odds of passing it through the Senate.

The legislation would require corporations and limited liability companies to report who actually owns them to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, in the hopes of curbing the use of anonymous shell companies for hiding illicit assets from criminal investigators and tax officials.

After bouncing around Congress for over a decade, a bill to crack down on anonymous shell companies used in money laundering and tax evasion may advance this year, having attracted support from some strange bedfellows, including banks, unions, the national security community, human rights advocates, environmentalists, multinational corporations, law enforcement and the Trump administration.

Democratic Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney is expected to introduce the bill with her fellow New Yorker, Republican Rep. Peter T. King, as Congress returns from recess, and it could go to markup as soon as May 8.

A bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers introduced a bill Thursday to clear away some of the weedier legal issues between federal marijuana law and states that have legalized cannabis.

The bill, co-sponsored in the Senate by Colorado Republican Cory Gardner and Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren and in the House by Oregon Democrat Earl Blumenauer and Ohio Repbublican David Joyce, would amend the federal drug law so its marijuana provisions no longer apply to individuals acting in compliance with state or tribal laws.

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.

Activity on the Hill has ground to a halt ahead of the Memorial Day recess while campaign season is in full swing in the Golden State. In addition to our usual coverage of Capitol Hill and its players, Roll Call is on the road in California ahead of the state’s June 5 primary.

Here’s the entire week in photos:

We’re all over Capitol Hill and its surrounding haunts looking for good stories. Some of the best are ones we come across while reporting the big stories.

There is life beyond legislating and this is the place for those stories. We look for them, but we don’t find them all. We want to know what you see, too.

Lawmakers, motivated by revelations of Facebook Inc.’s handling of users’ data, may take a look at proposals for new data safeguards — but it’s far from clear that Congress has a clear path from lawmakers’ anger over Facebook to legislative action.

Disclosures about Facebook’s relationship with Cambridge Analytica, and the latter’s behavior in the 2016 elections, may have given legislation greater urgency than was the case after companies such as Equifax Inc. lost the data of about 145 million consumers. But legislation doesn’t seem imminent and, to the extent it’s about data protection, may miss the mark.

Mick Mulvaney and I served on the House Financial Services Committee together for nearly four years before President Donald Trump selected him to run the Office of Management and Budget. In that time, we worked together to ensure transparency and accountability across the financial sector.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created by the Obama administration and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., with the promise of being a “strong, independent agency that levels the playing field and protects American families, seniors, students and veterans.” But in practice, the CFPB has been an unaccountable, unconstitutional, politically driven agency that has punished consumers and pushed them to riskier, unregulated financial products.

President Donald Trump will “be a part of pushing this process forward” when he heads to St. Charles, Missouri, Wednesday to tout the tax overhaul package, two senior administration officials said Tuesday.

The officials told reporters on a conference call to expect a message similar to Trump’s August speech in Springfield, Missouri.