From Washington: The Consequences of Crossing Party Lines

0:00Saturday, September 5, 2026, I'm Jessica Rosenthal, Democratic Infiding, GOP Messaging. It was a bit of a chaotic week in Congress as members prepared a campaign for midterms. But if you were going to vote with the other side, you would inform the leadership. Well, Jared Golden and Marie Glusenkampares did not do that. And too much screen time. HHS says the dangers to your kids are real, but screen exposure is doing to developing minds. There's a window of opportunity to develop those social skills in young ages. And so what we are seeing from the research is that that has been thwarted. This is the Fox News rundown from Washington. This week, the House came back from a long break. Two Democrats voted for a Republican rule prompting the ire of party leaders.

1:01Republicans forced votes on condemning socialism with Speaker Mike Johnson promising from the outset a busy week of such messaging bills. Republicans are here to work. We have a lot more left to do. We're going to keep demonstrating the American people every day that their priorities are our priorities. We have very important legislation tomorrow. How light one of those. We are going to bring a constitutional amendment. It is a bill to amend the U.S. Constitution to ensure that the U.S. Supreme Court remains composed of only nine justices that amendment did not pass. Now though the House is out on another Labor Day break, likely back again, briefly mid-month then out again through the midterms. I think people in both parties want to be in their district's campaigning right now. Speaking of midterms, House Minority Leader Huckim Jeffries was asked if he becomes speaker soon, what are his legislative or investigative priorities? He would focus on winning the election and making the case to the American people in 63 days, I believe, that in order to move this country in a different direction, in order

2:03to actually focus on the issues that matter, in order to begin to end this national nightmare, we've got to fire the Republicans who are currently in charge. The House did manage to pass a continuing resolution funding the government through mid-December. The Senate had already voted to do that, so we are avoiding a government shutdown during an election. Remember you and I talked earlier this year and I was pretty insistent that there was going to be a government shutdown. Fox News Chief Congressional Correspondent Chad Program. I gave you a lot of facts and figures and reasons why there would be and then magically out of nowhere, the Senate put together a bill that simply just renewed all funding at current levels through December 11th and low and behold it passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority. This was in early August and the House took that up just a couple of days ago. So guess what? No government shutdown on the first of October at the end of the start of the government's fiscal year. So that's been put to bed. I think they want to see which party wins the midterms or wins the House and then they'll come back and fight about this then.

3:04In fact, I could see a scenario that they might even just do another CR to put it into the new Congress anyway. So maybe they continue the current rate of funding until, you know, early next year, Democrats would like that because then, you know, if they have either the House or Senator both, they probably have some sway and then can put, you know, put their mark on those bills and emphasize their spending priorities. And some conservatives probably like that because when you do a CR, a continuing resolution by definition, all that does is renew the current spending at the current levels. So what that means is that's kind of sort of a cut, you know, you're not actually, you know, put new money on. I think that that's why we might be in that posture come to Sumberges. And I was a little confused to speak about the House coming back at all this month or even before midterms because everyone's campaigning. I know the Senate's back. What the 14th does the House come back at all? Well, the House comes back. There's a little bit of a schedule here. I was told by someone very senior that they did not think and did not plan for the House to come back.

4:05Period. But if they put it out this week right now when the House was scheduled to come back on the 31st of August, which was a little strange prior to Labor Day, what we're watching for is what the Senate does. Now, there's a couple of things the Senate does or could do. One thing is a budget resolution, which the House has already passed. This is a framework and they would use this to fund the war in Iran. They would use this to restock the military, maybe do some other, you know, priorities on the Republican side of the aisle just before the midterms. That's probably unlikely. I think that there's pretty scant chance of that. But the other two things we're watching is that there is locked in on Tuesday, September 15th, a test vote on this bill to develop a framework to regulate cryptocurrency. That's a big deal. We don't know that they're there yet. It has the support of the president, but just the fact that that is locked in is significant. And later in the month, probably sometime before the end of the month, this is not as concrete, but it is the general plan is a vote on this college sports bill that has gotten even

5:08more attention in the past couple of days because they they're pretty close on that bill. They need to get 60 votes. The president is big time supporting this. He's conscripted Nick Sabin, the legendary Alabama coach to come in and push the Senate to pass this bill. And then what you've had is this ruling in Louisiana where you had players who actually suited up in the preseason for NFL teams. And they didn't make the team. They were cut. NFL contracts were terminated. These were, you know, unsigned free agents or low-around draft picks. These weren't superstars. And so they've decided to go back to college, not to learn math or Shakespeare, but to play football. And so there is Dequan Wright, who played at Ole Miss last year. Well, Lane Kiffin, who was the head coach at Ole Miss, he defected late in the season. This was extraordinary to LSU. And so the SEC said, if you're going to have this guy come and play, we're going to sue you. And so they sued and then the SEC lost in court.

6:11And it's very possible that he's going to be on the roster at LSU. And I should note who are two of the biggest advocates for LSU in the Congress. The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson and Steve Scalise, the House Majority Leader. And in fact, when the House tried to do a more narrow bill that they had to pull off the floor last December, and then they tried again in February and had to pull that off the floor, I had talked to Hakim Jeffery as the Democratic leader. And he dismissed that bill. A lot of Democrats don't like this. And members of the Congressional Black Caucus don't like these bills anyway. But he described that piece of legislation back then as the Lane Kiffin Protection Act. So this whole issue runs right through the state of Louisiana and right through the Speaker's suite at the Capitol. Wait, but Chad, tell us a little bit more about this because we're seeing this argument or this debate over when you get cut from from pro football going back on the college roster. How will Congress in the sports legislation, will they touch that issue at all?

7:14Yes, absolutely. Now, some of this had changed because of COVID and how many years of eligibility you have. And that's why you've had 27 year old, 28 year old people playing in college right now that started some years ago because they got to set out a year, then they got another, it's very complicated. So this would give you five years of eligibility in a five year period, period and a story. That's it. There's no red shirt freshman anymore. The guy who's going to be the quarterback in about two or three years. So I think that's significant. But the bigger thing here is just the influx of money in college sports. And the biggest issue that they tried to work out was NIL, name, image and likeness. And so they finally put a cap on that. So there is an equal playing field around the country as to, you know, so every school has a cap that they can work with. Now, certainly you're going to have some schools who have, you know, more money than others. Ohio State LSU, a few others. And certainly a lot of that money is going to come from, you know, certainly football, a little bit of basketball, but they hope that that would preserve sports like volleyball

8:18or tracking field or lacrosse or what have you. The concern was if Congress does not act soon, some of those sports are going to go completely away. Women's sports especially, Olympic type sports. And at football level, because, you know, some of these other schools, even though they're division one, these mid majors, as they sometimes call them, or even small division one schools, they will completely evaporate. And you'll be down to about, you know, 50 football programs. You have remnants of the old PAC-12 that has a lot in the, in the big 10 now. You have the big 10. You have the SEC certainly. You have some in the ACC and you'll probably have the, you know, what is now the big 12 and a couple others. It's serious. And the fact that the NCAA has been unable to react to this and has failed to regulate is why they have asked for several years now, the Congress to intervene. Let's move on to this. Tell us about this fight between House Minority Leader Jeffries and really other Democratic leaders too. And those they say and did vote with Republicans, what for the rule that allow several bills to get to the floor.

9:22This was Jared Golden of Maine and a MGP, as she's called Marie. Yes Marie, who's in camp Perez from Washington State. That's right. So here's what happened. I'm going to take you down the rabbit hole and then I'm going to try to make this as simple as possible. Almost every piece of legislation that comes to the floor in the house needs what's called a rule. The rule is you agree upon the rules, how you're going to debate the bill, how many amendments, if any, are going to be in the bill, etc. If you don't approve the rule, you can't bring the bill to the floor. Now, on very, very, very rare occasions, does the minority party ever help the majority party? This is the responsibility of the minority party and you might remember of the majority party, I should say. And you might remember back to our conversation when we were talking about why I was so convinced that there was going to be a government shutdown. I cited the number of rule votes that have failed under the speakership of Mike Johnson, a stunning record. If you compare it, you know, he had lost 11 compared to nine in the past 30 years. It was just staggering, you know, since he's been speaker not even three years.

10:24And so on, on rare occasions, does the minority help the other side, unless it's something like, yeah, we really need to pass this and we're going to help. Well, certainly what you do at the very least, and this is kind of the wink and not appear on Capitol Hill, is that if you were going to vote with the other side, you would inform the leadership. Well, Jared Golden and Marie Glouzen camp Perez did not do that. In fact, you had Democrats who were seething because it unlocked the floor for Republicans to pass, you know, items on their agenda. In fact, they wouldn't have been able to pass the rule were it not for those two Democrats who defected. In fact, Marie Glouzen camp Perez was testifying a couple of days later at the Rules Committee, which is where rules come from for the House floor. And Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, who is the top Democrat on the committee, actually turned around in his chair and sat with his back to her while she spoke. So, I saw him. King Jeffries, yeah, has intervened. He did send out a pretty harsh statement saying that he called this a significant breach of trust. I asked him, you know, if this is, you know, just the fact that he had to send out a statement, does that say something about his leadership?

11:27And he said, well, my statement speaks for itself. He didn't speak in English. He's spoken Latin, by the way, when he responded to me. But let me compare this to Nancy Pelosi when she was the Democratic leader or better yet speaker of the House. No letter, no statement, whatever, have to be sent under Nancy Pelosi. Right. Her power was implied. And so some people are wondering here with how came Jeffries admittedly this is tough. But if he is going to be potentially the speaker, if they win the majority, what happens? You know, is he, is he trying to flex his muscles now and get everybody in line? Okay. Is it just the fact that he needs to flex his muscles? Is that a problem? Or now he might have backed himself into a corner because he had a brief conversation with Golden. He had a conversation with the Gluzincamp Perez, a longer conversation. Thanks. They're on the same page now. But the fact that maybe there's been no discipline needed out, that could be a problem. Here's the other problem. Democrats, if they're going to win the House, they need to have Marie Gluzincamp Perez.

12:28She is one of the most conservative Democrats in the House. She is one not once, but twice now, Jessica, a Ruby Red district in Washington state, that I think if it was any of the Democrat running, they couldn't win. And the idea that she's able to defy political gravity in that district is significant. And so if you tick her off too much, well, you know, you need her in the Democratic fold. Jeffries needs her vote to become speaker. But guess what? And I don't think that this is as Machiavellian as I might suggest here, but just you know, some food for thought. Her fighting with the leadership on this is actually good for her. Back home. Tell us about some of these messaging bills that did come to the floor because of them. Condemn, socialism, I know separately we had this vote on capping the Supreme Court at nine justices. There were quite a few, I guess they call them messaging bills. Was this Republicans trying to get people on the record? You know, oh, yes, the Democratic Socialist stated agenda. Oh, yes. You know, you know, trying to get moderate Democrats to say,

13:29oh, you voted for that. Oh, how dare you, you know, and then they turned that around in an ad that they run this fall somewhere. Yes, that's exactly what that was about. Do you support socialism? They also made it very hard for some Democrats to vote for that because they wanted to get them on the record, even they didn't believe that because in the bill was guess what, the Save America Act, which is the bill that would help or mandate that you prove that you're a citizen in order to vote. And that's the the touchstone of the Republican agenda that they can't get through the Senate. And so that was trying to make things pretty difficult for people about how to vote. And maybe it was a good vote politically for losing camp Perez and Golden. You know, there was a bill, let's get specific here away from some of the messaging. So there was a bill that dealt with the lobster industry, which is critical to Golden's district and Maine. And he spoke about that on the floor. And that was unlocked because of that vote. And so I think that's significant there. Now he's retiring. That's a district that's in play this fall. We'll see if the Democrats were able to hold it. But just the fact that, you know, he was he was

14:29probably on more firm footing because he could say this is something that is important to my district. It deals with the lobster industry. X number of people have lobster licenses in the state of Maine. I got to be for this and said as much on the floor. It sounds like what Lindsey Graham had been pushing for the Russia sanctions package. What's happening with that? It doesn't look good. Well, nothing yet. I mean, the House was here for a week. And the problem is on the Democratic side of the aisle. You know, it used to be kind of reversed here that, you know, Democrats, they were the best friends with Vladimir Zelensky, the leader in Ukraine. And he came and actually sat in the Senate chamber some weeks ago when they passed that bill in the Senate. I thought that was significant. And they got it through. I think the fact that Lindsey Graham passed away had secured this deal just before his death. A lot of members on both sides. They thought it was the right thing to do. But said we want to do this in honor. Lindsey Graham. And this is something that President Trump came around to at that point. But then here's what happened in the House. The House Democrats are so infuriated by the president and the tariffs, specifically now with Canada. You have Greg Meeks,

15:32who's the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee from New York City, who is adamantly opposed to this because they think that, you know, the president is already doing a lot of things with tariffs, specifically with Canada, a friend and ally that they really don't like. And they're like, what possible things could he do now if we give him carte blanche to continue with tariffs? And so that is not worked out in the House. And that is very doubtful that that comes back up, as I say, even if the House is able to consider some stuff later this month. And just really quick, before I let you go, Chad, is Senator McConnell expected back in the coming this month? I have a crystal ball, but you know, I just crystal ball has been in the shop. It's got a bad fuse. They can't get the pardon probably because of tariffs, frankly. And so when you ask me this question, I don't know. That is a good question. And everybody on Monday, the 14th will be waiting to see if Mitch McConnell returns to the Senate. I know. Oversight Committee Chairman James Koma was asked about that. And he said he was expecting to see him, I believe. So I guess we will. We don't know.

16:37Nobody really knows. You're right. Chad, program. Thank you. Thank you. It seems like there's no escaping them. Screens are a part of our daily lives. But what is it doing to our kids? Excessive screen time is now at the center of a brand new advisory from the Health and Human Services Agency. They warn that screen overuse could be a major driver of a national youth health crisis. And the Office of the Surgeon General is also sounding the alarm, warning that some apps, video games, AI chat bots and algorithms that are built for engagement could foster addiction-like behaviors in kids. So the question this leaves us is where should parents draw the line? We released the advisory in May. And it has gotten a lot of coverage because I think it touched the heart of so many people. Dr. Stephanie Howard-Opolis is the Director of the National Health Communications and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS. She spoke to Aisha Hasney earlier this week on the Fox News rundown.

17:39We describe the domains over four areas. Physical, harm, cognitive, emotional behavior, and academic. And so the last Surgeon General talked about social media and mental health. But we said, you know, we need to pull it out. We know a lot more of the past few years research, well-sided advisory that you can find on SurgeonGeneral.gov. So let's talk about the harms because, you know, we remember what happened during COVID and we know how COVID harmed our kids. They were so isolated. We see the way that, you know, certain a generation lacks social skills. What kind of- what is the evidence pointed towards in terms of actual harm to kids? What kind of harm are you seeing? There's a window of opportunity to develop those social skills in young ages. And so what we are seeing from the research is that that has been thwarted because kids are either not interacting because they are so much online.

18:45And then they don't have the social skills so they don't feel comfortable with interpersonal relationships and then start looking for that connection with perhaps maybe even AI, a chatbot. So not sure which way was the causation of it, but, you know, that causes major mental health issues that we're seeing, depression, anxiety, and possible suicide. Plus what are they being exposed to online is really the big concern that we brought up in this advisory. I think that was kind of part of the meta lawsuit, right? The meta just settled and is going to make some changes, going to pay up a lot of money. Not everybody is a fan staff because the changes, like the daily limits that they're going to put in place now for younger people, only last a number of years. What's HHS's take on the meta settlement? You know, we had this symposium at HHS. We had three round tables. We had researchers,

19:51some policymakers, some physicians, as well as advocates and educators. But we also had some tech companies that came and talked, meta was one of them. And they talked about what they plan to do in the future. And, you know, I think it's a great step in the right direction. I'm happy that they have settled with the 52 attorney generals in the United States that had the class action lawsuit. You know, that hopefully that money will be used wisely by the states to help children wear their hat with mental health. I know that they're still figuring that out. Whatever restrictions, listen, parents need the help to empower them with it should be on the onus of the tech companies to do the right thing on the front end. So parents can have that more control. You know, your mom, although your kids are a little bit older, but I am not a mom yet. And I am

20:57really worried and frightened, I think, to have kids now in this world because it is so hard. They want to be connected. Everybody has a cell phone or a tablet or a device of some sort. I see it with my nephews and my niece. You know, sometimes they're on it for hours. Maybe they shouldn't be. But you said, you know, parents had been told to monitor the screens, the screen usage, the put in limits. And that's really great advice, but it's incomplete. You said, so what tools would you give parents? And if you had, you know, younger kids today, how would you be letting them use screen time and how would you be kind of watching over that? Well, first of all, we put the five Ds into the certain general doc of where you can find the website. The five Ds, the toolkit for parents is discussing media plan, right? So everyone's on the same page. This is for obviously

21:59the adolescents and kids that the very young, I think that you need to delay any screen use for as long as possible because the interactive screens can affect the brain development with memory, attention, academics, the ability for literacy. So those have been shown some other way to keep them busy. Absolutely. We need to get your stuff down at home. Delay, they're quite. Yeah, they're in and from there's a national institute of health, uh, division called Shriver National Institute of Children's Health and Development. They have ongoing studies right now with their behavioral health analysis. And they say that if you, uh, the later you give a one-on-one tablet, the better you have less tantrums when you try to take it away. And if you give them a book, you're going to have less of a tantrum when you take away a book, for instance. So there's a lot

23:02of evidence that, you know, feel confident in your parenting, even if you've already given a tablet and you feel like you don't have the power to take away, you do. And it will take maybe a couple weeks of them having a little detox off of it. But then eventually if you divert them to fun things like arts and crafts or a sport or doing something fun outside or doing something together like learning how to cook a meal, those kids will be happy off of the screens eventually. It's just, I worry when I see people at restaurants and they just have with a two or three year old a tablet so close to their eyes and they're zoned out and they're not learning or listening to what we're saying. That's a problem and it can cause some myopia, which is near-sightedness because the screen is too close and you're not giving your eyes a break. So there are things you could do. Make sure that your children go outdoors one to two hours a day to get sunlight in their eyes

24:06that they are taking breaks from screens when it's later on if they're doing homework that they should look 20 feet away at least for 20 seconds every 20 minutes, the 2020, 2020 rule. And that's for adults too. Look everyone should be doing that. Go outside, touch grass, be in the real. Like most of the joy in my life doesn't come from swiping or liking or getting a notification. It's being in the moment with the human being in front of you and enjoying friends and family, dancing, exercising, being in the real life and nature outside. And I can't express that enough secretary Kennedy has talked about this relentlessly how he feels that we are missing out and screens are crowding out normal activities in our life. And I'm cracking up a little bit because number one, you nailed it. I mean adults are, you know, we're victims too. I so many times of the day, I'm caught, you know,

25:08doom scrolling. But I'm also laughing because, you know, my dad, so grandpa, to my nephews, you know, is always on them about, you know, you got to limit your screen time because he's worried they're going to get glasses or going to, you know, they're going to miss out on their childhood. And now I get to take a clip of this and show it to him because he's right. And he can show that to my nephews. I just could go on surgeon general.gov and read it. I know he has proof. Because the nephews didn't his grandkids and believe it. I think this is a conversation that's not going to go away for a very long time. You know, Congress has been very slow in dealing with the effects of social media. And it's nice to see an agency sort of giving some attention to this because everyone is dealing with this every single day, everywhere you look. Everybody is glued to a screen. And you know, a state's are leading on this right now with over 40 states that have some

26:09form of limiting access to cell phones during school or banning it all together. So this is just the beginning of the conversation. And there will be action items that come out of that. But one of the action items that we did announce was the magic tablet. And this is a children's book that us. Yes, that you can read to your kid. Get off screens, get on a buff. You can download it, though, officergen general.gov for the public. And we thought it was so fun because little Eleanor wanted to be a content creator, but her parents went and let her have a tablet. So she figured out that the magic light inside of her with creativity and all the adventures she had because she wasn't given her tablet with her and her little brother. And so it was just really neat. Sometimes the greatest adventures begin when you put this screen down, look up and live real life. And so I encourage everyone

27:10to read this to their children, the magic tablet. There's lessons for parents in there too. We have the magic school bus. And now they have the magic tablet. Thank you so much. It was so great to see you, Dr. Stephanie Ardoppelis. Appreciate it. Yeah. Oh, pleasure was online. That'll do it for this edition of the Fox News rundown from Washington. Tomorrow we speak with Josh Roltonberg about his book, Draw the Line in Ohio. How one states fight for Fair Maps explains jury rendering in America and how the redistricting fight is reshaping American politics. I'm Jessica Rosenthal. Thanks for listening to the Fox News rundown from Washington.