Not to worry! Glad you liked it -- and thank you for sharing it with others.

I'm glad you like the article. Incidentally, my last name is spelled without the l. :)

As leadership loses control of the narrative and majority members become increasingly afraid of a wipe-out at the polls due to negative ratings and redistricting, the incentives of the rank-and-file will be to assert their independence.

firstbranchforecast.substack.com/p/a-fracturi...

In the background are efforts to help constituents better communicate with members, and for members to better use that information > including to press for committee action.

Also efforts to give members better access to necessary legislative information, drawing from international examples

Two key points of leverage are must-pass votes (like appropriations) and legislative information.

With approps expiring on January 30th, and a just-announced deal on subcommittee funding levels, members will have 9 bills on which to assert their preferences.

We covered her experiences transitioning the House of Representatives to remove work during the pandemic. How she developed AI policies for legislative use. The challenges of building new tools amid tight budgets. How the CAO fits within the legislative branch, and what the next CAO should know.

These efforts are incremental and often overlooked—but some are cutting edge & together they form the infrastructure that will shape how AI interfaces with Congress and the public. Chris Nehls and I dig into what’s happening, and why it matters, in this week’s First Branch Forecast:

None of this is new. Congress has been working on technology and data modernization for more than a decade—from the Congressional Data Task Force, House AI policies, and ongoing work by appropriators, leadership, and modernization advocates, informed by global best practices & domestic civic tech.

That announcement fits a broader pattern. Across the legislative branch, efforts are underway to improve data standards, expand public access to congressional information, map legislative-branch datasets, modernize constituent engagement tools, and clarify institutional boundaries around AI use.

At last week’s Congressional Data Task Force meeting, the Government Publishing Office previewed a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that allows AI tools to directly access official congressional publications. The goal: machine-to-machine access to authoritative, up-to-date public records.

Couldn't agree more.

slate.com/news-and-pol...

Members will be paid either way. It's a question of whether they will be paid on time or delayed. There are costs of administering, which is not insignificant. And then there's the policy consequences.

It wouldn't stop the threat of a (partial) government shutdown at all. A key problem is the appropriations process, but even more centrally, the incentives of the players in our political system. To the extent you do anything, you shift power to the president and the House.

On 2.... I can see pay being disbursed on a per diem basis. I can see it being disbursed on demand. But having it withheld (but not stopped) on an external factor (the passage of legislation) as a de facto pay freeze seems a lot like paying members to take a particular action.

There's a couple of implementation problems.

1 It's actually really hard to withhold pay for a period of time. The Senate financial system is old and creaky and it would cost a lot of money to fix.

2 It's unclear to me whether a resolution can condition the receipt of pay on a legislative action

There were lots of reasons advanced why a handful of centrist senators caved. The most plausible one is they had already achieved everything they thought they could get through this tactic. (They were wrong, but that's the best interpretation.)

Energy spent on punishing congress would be better directed to strengthening Congress's capacity to govern.

Look, I know people are really, really angry at Congress. But they should focus their anger on the source.

Would withholding an employees pay make them more or less likely to do a good job?

This is really a head-fake. Federal employees shouldn't have their pay withheld during a shutdown. If Sen. Kennedy cared about that, then he should tell Russ Vought to change the OMB memo on that topic -- or change the law. He's an appropriator after all.

Remember how Speaker Johnson kept the House out of business for more than 43 days by personal fiat? Well, should it happen again, it would encourage less wealthy senators to cave.

It also makes the senate even more of an oligarchy. Only the rich will be able to afford to serve.