The Investigative Journal’s weekly tracker of bills, scores, and rulemakings that move money and power in Washington. All claims below are sourced to public records; status descriptions reflect filings as of publication on September 3, 2026.
Congress did something this week it almost never does: it finished its September funding work before September had barely begun. On Tuesday the House voted 370-48 to clear a stopgap spending bill keeping federal agencies open through December 11, and the White House announced the president signed H.R. 6500, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027, into law on Wednesday, according to a White House statement. With the September 30 fiscal cliff defused four weeks early, the fall agenda now turns on a December funding fight, a stalled sanctions package, and a Congressional Budget Office paper trail that keeps repricing the government’s tariff and shipbuilding ambitions. Here is where the week’s most consequential legislation stands.
1. Stopgap signed: government funded through December 11
Status: Became law September 2. The Senate passed the continuing resolution 90-6 in early August, and the House cleared it Tuesday under suspension of the rules on a 370-48 vote — Republicans 193-19 in favor, Democrats 176-29 — in what Roll Call described as the earliest completion of a CR in recent memory. After two shutdowns earlier this year, both parties showed little appetite for a funding standoff two months before the midterm elections.
The measure is more than a date change. According to Roll Call’s account of the bill, it carries funding “anomalies” for the WIC nutrition program, disaster relief, wildland fire accounts, housing assistance and 2028 Olympics preparations; extends surface transportation programs through December 11; renews trade arrangements with sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti for two years; and blocks a $1 billion administration request to begin a new battleship program while accelerating other Navy shipbuilding funds. It also delays a proposed Office of Management and Budget rule that would give political appointees a larger role in federal grant approvals — language that county governments had tracked closely — and, per senior appropriator Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, restricts further funding transfers to the Border Patrol absent new constraints.
Passage was not frictionless. House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris objected to bringing the bill up under suspension, and Rep. Chip Roy argued in a letter to committee chairs that the CR keeps funding the FDA’s current framework for mifepristone and omits a lapsed prohibition on Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood. Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole pushed back, noting the Hyde Amendment remains in force. Every one of these disputes now has a new expiration date: December 11.
2. CBO’s $0.9 trillion tariff reset
Status: CBO analysis published August 20. In an updated projection, CBO Director Phillip Swagel wrote that trade policy changes through July 31 leave projected deficits $0.9 trillion larger over 2027–2036 than in the agency’s February baseline — $0.7 trillion in larger primary deficits plus $0.2 trillion in debt service. The driver: the Supreme Court’s February 20 ruling that tariffs could not be imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Refunds began in May, and CBO expects most of the $166 billion collected under IEEPA to be returned within fiscal 2026, cutting projected net customs revenue this year by roughly $250 billion.
The replacement architecture raises less money. A temporary 10 percent global tariff imposed under Section 122 of the Trade Act expired July 24, the same day the U.S. Trade Representative imposed Section 301 tariffs of 10 to 12.5 percent on goods from more than 80 countries. CBO now puts the effective tariff rate at 10 percent, down from 15 percent last November. Paired with the agency’s Monthly Budget Review showing a $1.8 trillion deficit through the first ten months of fiscal 2026, the data reframes the December appropriations endgame: the revenue cushion lawmakers assumed in February is materially smaller.
3. The $275 billion battleship question
Status: CBO report published August 5; start-up funding blocked in the CR. CBO’s report on the Navy’s new battleship program estimates it would cost about $275 billion in 2026 dollars to build 15 of the planned nuclear-powered ships through 2056, with USNI News reporting the lead ship alone at roughly $23.4 billion and follow-on vessels averaging about $18 billion. The report examines what defense analysts describe as the most heavily armed surface combatant the Navy has ever proposed, and flags implications for a shipbuilding industrial base already under strain.
Congress’s first fiscal verdict arrived quickly: the enacted stopgap withholds the $1 billion the administration requested to begin the program, even as it speeds funding for other Navy shipbuilding accounts, according to Roll Call. That sets up a genuine FY2027 appropriations fight over whether the program enters the budget at all — one worth watching for how the authorizing committees treat it in defense policy legislation this fall.
4. Russia-Iran sanctions bill stuck between chambers
Status: Passed House April 27; passed Senate, amended, 86-11 on August 7; awaiting House action. The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act — renamed to honor the South Carolina senator who died in July — would penalize purchasers of Russian oil and targets both Moscow and Tehran. The Senate’s 86-11 vote, reported by NBC News, sent an amended text back to the House, where leadership has not scheduled a concurrence vote.
NOTUS reports the bill remains stalled despite public pressure, with one senior Democrat suggesting it may not reach the floor until after the November elections. Complicating the math: the president has said he wants the measure amended to add tariff authorities on Iran — a change that would bounce the bill back to the Senate and restart the clock. For a package that cleared both chambers by overwhelming margins in different forms, the remaining distance is procedural, but procedure is where sanctions bills often stall.
5. College Israel-boycott bill reaches the floor
Status: Reported by committee 24-9; floor consideration expected this week. H.R. 4795, the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act, would make colleges that participate in “nonexpressive” commercial boycotts of Israel ineligible for Title IV federal student aid, including Pell Grants and federal loans. The Education and Workforce Committee reported it 24-9, and CBO has published a cost estimate for the measure. As of publication, no final roll call had been recorded.
Supporters frame the bill as extending existing anti-discrimination conditions on federal funds; opponents, including Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler in a floor statement, argue it conditions student aid on institutions’ commercial and political choices. Whichever way the vote falls, the bill is a template: tying Title IV eligibility to institutional conduct is a lever Congress is increasingly willing to test.
6. Highway cliff moves to December; the $580 billion rewrite waits
Status: Extension enacted; long-term bill awaiting floor time. Surface transportation authorities under the 2021 infrastructure law were set to lapse September 30 — a deadline county officials had warned about — before the stopgap extended the programs through December 11. The real prize is the BUILD America 250 Act, a five-year, $580 billion reauthorization the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved 62-2 in May.
A 62-2 committee vote is about as bipartisan as this Congress gets, but floor time before the midterms is scarce and the Senate has its own ideas about program structure. State transportation departments planning multi-year lettings now face a December decision point stacked against a crowded lame-duck calendar.
7. Farm bill enters the final month of its extension
Status: Current extension expires September 30. The 2018 farm bill’s programs run on an extension enacted in last November’s funding law, and that extension lapses at month’s end. A successor — the 2026 farm bill, H.R. 7567 — is pending, and a Congressional Research Service comparison details substantial differences between the House and Senate approaches on commodity supports, conservation and nutrition titles.
Public summaries of the new stopgap do not indicate a further farm bill extension, leaving open whether Congress reconciles the competing bills this fall or attaches another short-term patch to a year-end vehicle. Agricultural law analysts have noted that each extension has reduced urgency — a pattern that tends to end only when program authorities actually lapse.
8. Reconciliation 3.0 parked in the Senate
Status: Budget resolution adopted by House July 22; no Senate action scheduled. The House’s $95 billion reconciliation blueprint — roughly $60 billion for defense and $13 billion for intelligence operations tied to the Iran conflict, $12 billion in farm relief, and $10 billion to implement the SAVE Act’s election rules, per PBS NewsHour — remains where Roll Call left it in July: adopted in one chamber, resisted in the other. Majority Leader John Thune was blunt about the arithmetic, telling reporters, “you got to get to 50, and I can’t count to 50 right now.”
Senate leadership had held the framework in reserve as a shutdown fallback; with the CR enacted, that rationale is gone. The package’s components — particularly SAVE Act implementation money — are now candidates for the December negotiation rather than a standalone reconciliation push.
9. Energy and Commerce keeps the grid docket moving
Status: Full-committee markup held September 2. The congressional committee schedule for this week lists an Energy and Commerce full-committee markup covering ten bills, continuing a summer-long push on electricity demand. In July the panel advanced the Ratepayer Protection Act, narrowed by substitute amendment to ensure data-center developers — not household ratepayers — bear the full cost of grid connections, alongside measures on load forecasting and transmission technology.
The through-line is data centers: as AI-driven load growth collides with constrained grids, both parties are converging on legislation that allocates the buildout’s costs. Expect these bills to surface on the suspension calendar this fall, and expect the fights over who pays to migrate to state utility commissions regardless of what Congress passes.
10. In the states: the redistricting arms race hardens the 2026 map
Status: New maps adopted in multiple states; litigation ongoing. According to Ballotpedia’s tracker, California, Missouri, North Carolina and Texas have adopted new congressional maps, while Virginia, Florida, Maryland and Washington continue their own processes. Following the Supreme Court’s ruling narrowing the Voting Rights Act’s application to district lines, Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee have also moved on new boundaries. An NBC News analysis estimates the mid-decade redrawing has created roughly 14 additional House seats Republicans believe they can win against six for Democrats.
The national implication is direct: the fight for House control in November is being partially settled in state capitols before a single vote is cast, and the outcome will determine which party writes the next farm bill, highway bill and appropriations laws tracked in this column.
On TIJ’s beats: the accountability threads to pull
Three oversight questions flow from this week’s record. First, tariff refunds: CBO expects most of $166 billion in IEEPA collections to be returned this fiscal year — a refund operation of unusual scale whose administration, error rates and claimant universe deserve scrutiny. Second, the OMB grants rule: the CR only delays the proposal to expand political appointees’ role in grant decisions, teeing up a December rematch with billions in discretionary awards in the balance. Third, shipbuilding: Congress declined the battleship program’s first $1 billion while accelerating other Navy accounts, and the gap between CBO’s $275 billion estimate and the administration’s plans will test the rigor of the FY2027 defense bills. The next hard deadline for all of it is December 11.