Claudia Grisales

Updated at 3:18 p.m. ET

The Senate approved a bipartisan resolution to curb the president's war powers when it comes to Iran — a rare rebuke and effort to reassert Congress' authority,

The vote was 55-45 — with eight Republicans joining all Democrats to pass the measure. The tally fell far short of the two-thirds needed to override a presidential veto.

Updated Jan. 21 at 2:26 p.m. ET

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made last-minute, handwritten changes Tuesday to the parameters for how President Trump's impeachment trial process will play out. Departing from a draft resolution he released Monday night, the resolution now allows impeachment managers and the president's defense to have 24 hours to make arguments over three session days. The draft had stipulated 24 hours over two days. McConnell also altered the rules for admitting the House evidence into the record.

Updated 9:15 p.m. ET

The House of Representatives approved a resolution that would force President Trump to seek consent from Congress before taking new military action against Iran.

The move comes nearly a week after President Trump greenlighted a U.S. drone strike that killed a top Iranian general and led to increased tensions with Tehran.

Updated at 3:15 p.m.

President Trump, in his first public remarks in the wake of a U.S. strike that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, defended the action as necessary to protect national security.

"We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war," Trump said Friday afternoon from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski told a local television affiliate that she's "disturbed" by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's plans to use "total coordination" with the White House to set out President Trump's impeachment trial.

It wasn't that long ago that House Democrats didn't know who would lead them.

They were warring over the speaker's post just days after the 2018 midterm elections handed them back the majority.

But Nancy Pelosi was certain of her fate.

"I intend to win the speakership with Democratic votes," Pelosi told reporters soon after the November elections. "I happen to think at this point, I'm the best person for that."

Updated at on Dec. 17 at 2:30 p.m. ET

Congressional leaders unveiled two massive spending measures and touted key wins in the $1.3 trillion spending agreement to fund the government for the remainder of the 2020 fiscal year just days before a critical government shutdown deadline.

The House passed the spending bills with bipartisan support on Tuesday. The Senate is expected to approve both bills later this week and send them to the president for his signature.

Last month, Democratic freshman Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia took a giant, political risk.

The veteran Navy commander released a dramatic, 2-minute video declaring her support for the formal House impeachment inquiry.

The move expanded the Republican target on her back, as the GOP vies to take back the seat she flipped to Democrats last year.

Now, she has taken another risk, confirming she will vote yes to impeach President Trump next week.

Across from a Capitol Hill impeachment hearing that President Trump and his allies loudly rebuked, members of the White House legal team and its top legislative aide huddled Wednesday with Senate Republicans over lunch to plot out a potential trial in the upper chamber.

Updated at 4:15 p.m. ET

The House Judiciary Committee is set to take the baton in Democrats' impeachment inquiry next week at a public hearing scheduled for Dec. 4.

Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., announced the hearing on Tuesday and notified President Trump that he has a few days to respond as to whether the president or his team will participate in the new stage of the process.

As the House appears to wrap up the investigative phase of its impeachment inquiry, a group of Senate Republicans met Thursday with White House officials, including counsel Pat Cipollone, to map out how a potential trial on articles of impeachment of President Trump could play out in the upper chamber.

During an extended phone interview with Fox & Friends on Friday morning, the president said he would like Rep. Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, to be called as a witness.

"Frankly, I want a trial," he said.

Updated at 6:15 p.m. ET

President Trump has signed a temporary spending bill to fund federal agencies, averting a possible government shutdown, according to an administration official.

The Senate passed the bill earlier Thursday, hours ahead of the midnight shutdown.

Lawmakers voted 74-20 to approve the measure to fund the government through Dec. 20. The legislative measure, known as a continuing resolution, will extend current funding levels at government agencies.

House lawmakers have introduced a temporary funding measure to thwart another government shutdown, with hopes to move the legislation to the Senate and the president's desk before federal agencies run out of money at midnight on Thursday.

The legislative measure, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, will fund the government through Dec. 20. This would mark the second continuing resolution to take effect since the fiscal year began Oct. 1.

Updated at 11 a.m. ET

Investigators in the impeachment inquiry of President Trump hoped to talk to Charles Kupperman on Monday. But the former White House official failed to show up.

Rep. Susan Wild is a freshman Democrat. She represents a labor-heavy district in Pennsylvania, a state President Trump won by a razor-thin margin in 2016.

And now she's taking a political risk by declaring support for a House impeachment probe of Trump.

Still, she wants her constituents to know her time remains focused on committee work that has nothing to do with investigating the president.

Updated at 7:20 p.m. ET

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, now the lead lawmaker in the impeachment inquiry of President Trump, says his panel will be working through the scheduled upcoming two-week congressional recess.

"I can tell you it's going to be a very busy couple of weeks ahead," Schiff told reporters. The chairman said the committee is scheduling hearings and witness interviews, as well as working on document requests and possible subpoenas.

Updated at 2:15 p.m. ET

House lawmakers Hakeem Jeffries and Doug Collins couldn't be more different.

Jeffries is a Democrat and an avid hip-hop devotee, while Collins is a Republican who favors country music. Jeffries hails from a largely urban New York district, and Collins represents a largely rural pocket much farther south in Georgia.

Yet, somehow this duo found common ground this past year to pass a major policy initiative. And now one of the oldest schools in the country will award them with its Prize for Civility in Public Life.

Updated at 5:30 p.m. ET

Signaling a widening gap between Democratic leadership and the House Judiciary Committee, the panel will vote this week on whether to install new procedures for its impeachment inquiry and illustrate its intensifying efforts in the probe.

Updated at 9:00 p.m. ET

The Pentagon revealed on Wednesday the full list of $3.6 billion in military construction projects that will get shelved to help build a wall along the U.S.- Mexico border, according to documents obtained by NPR.

Lawmakers from Virginia to Arizona learned their states will lose millions in military construction projects as part of the plan.

The Trump administration has started the arduous process of canceling $3.6 billion in military construction projects to fund its plans to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper began notifying lawmakers Tuesday which projects will be canceled in their districts. Top Democrats immediately blasted the plan.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was among the first lawmakers to say his district will be impacted by the funding cuts, for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

With a majority of House Democratic lawmakers now behind him, Rep. Al Green says he'll try for a fourth time to impeach President Trump after Congress returns next month.

Green first called for impeachment four months into Trump's presidency, in May 2017.

Now, more than 120 House Democrats have publicly said they support an impeachment inquiry, according to NPR's tracker.

After back-to-back mass shootings, residents in one Houston suburb are demanding members of Congress finally take action to stop a deadly trend in America.

Fort Bend County is home to Sugar Land and other cities where demographics and political stripes are dramatically changing. And voters in the 22nd congressional district who have elected Republicans opposed to major gun restrictions in recent years may be considering giving a Democrat the job in 2020.

It started as a joke.

Early last year, President Trump riffed on an idea he called "Space Force" before a crowd of Marines in San Diego.

It drew laughs, but the moment was a breakthrough for a plan that had languished for nearly 20 years.

"I said maybe we need a new force, we'll call it the Space Force," Trump said at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in March 2018. "And I was not really serious. Then I said, 'What a great idea, maybe we'll have to do that.'"

Updated at 3:07 p.m. ET

The Senate on Thursday approved a two-year budget deal that set new spending levels and boosted the nation's borrowing authority.

The bipartisan legislation, which was approved in a 67-28 vote, raises the debt ceiling past the 2020 elections and allows $1.3 trillion for defense and domestic programs over the next two years.

Updated at 6:12 p.m. ET

Homeland Security acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan says the U.S. has apprehended more than 800,000 migrants attempting to enter the country since last October, calling the numbers staggering and unprecedented, and that the influx has "challenged and overwhelmed every aspect of our border and immigration enforcement system."

Still, McAleenan said DHS "made significant strides in its effort to secure the border and help and protect migrants in our custody."

The Pentagon's comptroller said it cost an extra $1.2 million to put on its portion of President Trump's "Salute to America" program for an expanded Fourth of July celebration in Washington, D.C., last week.

Defense Department officials said on Tuesday spending for personnel involvement and demonstrations largely came from their training budgets.

President Trump announced he planned to repeat his 4th of July salute to the military next year as a trio of Senate Democrats called for an investigation into how much the Washington, D.C., event cost the taxpayers.

"It was a wonderful day for all Americans and based on its tremendous success, we're just making the decision and I think we can say we've made the decision to do it again next year, and maybe we can say, for the foreseeable future," Trump said at an event at the White House on Monday.

Updated at 5:20 p.m. ET

American taxpayers are looking at a bigger bill for this year's Independence Day party in the nation's capital.

For this Fourth of July, President Trump has added an address from the Lincoln Memorial, tanks stationed in the area, an extended fireworks display and military aircraft flyovers.

Democrats in Congress are complaining about the added expenses.

President Trump may not be seeing red, white and blue on a newly revamped Air Force One after all.

A House Democrat added a provision to the annual defense policy bill to put a stop to the president's patriotic design project. It will keep two new versions of the Boeing 747 aircraft within the projected spending target by banning certain paint jobs and other extras.