The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a full committee markup Tuesday and voted, as amended, to advance a resolution recommending that the full House find Leon David Black in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas the committee had duly issued. It’s the kind of institutional friction that rarely makes it past the Beltway, and it belongs on the record here because contempt referrals are the closest thing Congress has to teeth when a subpoena gets ignored.
The same day, the House passed H. Con. Res. 93, directing President Trump, under the War Powers Resolution, to remove U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities with Iran, by a vote of 220 to 204. It is the kind of vote Congress rarely takes: a direct assertion of its own constitutional war power against a sitting president’s use of force abroad.
The House also voted to table H. Res. 1486, a resolution impeaching President Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors, 232 to 147, with 47 members answering “present” rather than yes or no, a break from the usual clean party-line arithmetic on an impeachment vote. Representative Thomas Massie separately announced his intent to offer a privileged resolution during the same day’s proceedings.
Elsewhere, the Senate Judiciary Committee concluded an oversight hearing examining the Federal Bureau of Investigation, hearing testimony from Director Kashyap Patel, a recurring fixture that rarely produces headlines but quietly shapes how much daylight gets let into an agency that prefers very little of it.
What Passed
The House cleared the Whistleblower Protection Act (H.R. 4646), clarifying that protections under 41 U.S.C. 4712 extend to any contract funded through the Department of Housing and Urban Development, by a vote of 424 to 0. It also passed a disapproval resolution (H.J. Res. 210) striking down an EPA rule on nonroad engine pollution standards for ocean-going vessels at berth in California, 216 to 11, and the Tax Relief for Fraud Victims Act (H.R. 9500), expanding deductions for theft losses tied to fraud, 408 to 17.
Roll Calls Worth the Ink
The Iran War Powers vote and the impeachment tabling are the two that matter. One is Congress asserting authority it rarely exercises. The other is a supposedly binary vote that forty-seven members refused to answer with a plain yes or no, which tells you more about the room than either column would alone.
What We’re Leaving Out, on Principle
No post office renamings in this issue, but two committees alone cleared twenty-four General Services Administration capital leasing resolutions in a single markup. Necessary paperwork. Not news.
Correction, September 17, 2026, 1:12 p.m. Eastern: This piece originally cited vote totals and legislation that do not appear in the official September 15, 2026 Congressional Record. It has been corrected to reflect the record as published by the U.S. Government Publishing Office.
