- PRESIDENT TRUMP’S HOUSING ANNOUNCEMENT: President Donald Trump’s announcement of a pending ban on “institutional ownership” of single family homes made a splash on the Hill and on Wall Street. The two biggest firms impacted by the move, Invitation Homes and Blackstone, saw a decline in their stock price. Congress responded quickly, with Rep. Steven Horsford (D., Nev.), calling to pass his Housing Oversight and Mitigation Exploitation (HOME) Act. Reps. Erin Houchin (R., Ind.) and Mike Flood (R., Neb.) have legislation, the Affordable Housing Opportunities Made Easier through Simplification (Affordable HOMES) Act that will hit the floor this week.
- TO INFINITY, AND BEYOND: 2025 was a huge year for NASA, and Bethany Stevens, its press secretary, laid out some of the agency’s major wins to the Washington Reporter. “In 2025, we kept the space economy booming, advanced science from the Sun to distant stars — and much more,” she said. “We rounded out the year with President Trump’s nominee for NASA Administrator, Jared Isaacman’s, confirmation. This year, under his leadership, our Artemis II astronauts will fly around the Moon, preparing for lunar landings and paving the way to Mars.”
- HISTORY MADE AT DHS: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is celebrating its wins from 2025. Harry Fones, DHS’s Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, laid them out to the Washington Reporter. “2025 was a historic year for the Department of Homeland Security,” Fones said. “Thanks to the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Noem we had the most secure border in American history, record shattering recruitment across multiple agencies including a 120% manpower increase at ICE, got the worst of the worst out of American communities, and we saved the taxpayer over $13 billion in waste. We are only going to continue to ramp up our work and successes in 2026.”
- CHEERS! Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, exposed how the Biden administration worked with anti-alcohol activists to subvert the Dietary Guidelines process when it comes to alcoholic beverages. “The Committee’s investigation uncovered evidence that the Biden Administration’s [Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking Alcohol Intake & Health Study] study was conducted in a manner inconsistent with federal law and was wastefully duplicative, raising outcome bias concerns. Comer’s report also found that Biden-era “HHS documents provided to the Committee show that the ICCPUD AIH study was deliberately biased by 1) recruiting anti-alcohol advocates who wanted to promote that no amount of alcohol consumption is safe by building upon previous research in their 2023 ‘Canadian model’ study and 2) hiding relevant AIH study information from FOIA requestors and Congress.”
- MAJOR QUARTER: Joe Mitchell, a former state legislator running to succeed Rep. Ashley Hinson (R., Iowa) in a tossup district, raised almost $700,000 in 2025, his campaign told the Washington Reporter. Mitchell heads into the election year with almost $600,000 cash on hand in the red-leaning district.
- HILL TAKEOVER: Consumers Research plastered the Hill with fliers for a new site it is backing that targets the insurance company Chubb, which it calls the “wokest insurance company.” The campaign, which is complemented by a mobile billboard driving around D.C., is targeting Chubb in part due to Chubb being “at the tip of the spear in the fight to eliminate litigation finance, which is one of the few tools that lets everyday Americans and small businesses stand up to woke corporate giants,” Consumers Research’s Will Hild said to the Washington Reporter. “By attacking litigation finance, Chubb is openly siding with entrenched corporate power over consumer protection and working to rig the legal system in its own favor,” Hild added. “At the same time, Greenberg has cultivated cozy relationships with Communist China, publicly arguing for a softer line on Beijing while Chubb has invested billions linked to the Chinese market and treated Xi Jinping as a partner rather than an adversary.” Robert O’Brien, a China hawk who served as National Security Advisor during President Donald Trump’s first term, pushed back on the criticisms of Chubb’s ties to China, saying that he’s “worked with Evan Greenberg for several years now on American relations with China. In my dealings with Evan, he has been a proponent of U.S. interests in the region. Through its operations in China, his company has contributed to shrinking the U.S. trade deficit.”
- MAHA BACKUP: The Trump administration’s rollout of a new food pyramid won quick praise from experts in the industry, with one industry CEO calling the reforms a “significant step toward recognizing that healthy, nutrient-dense foods are key to addressing our nation’s epidemic of diet-related chronic disease and obesity.” Lauren Driscoll, the founder and CEO of NourishedRx, said that her “team is grateful to President Trump, HHS Secretary RFK Jr., Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, CMS Administrator Dr. Oz, and Special Advisor Calley Means for their leadership and commitment to use healthy food and nutrition to make America healthy again…The Trump Administration’s new dietary guidelines reinforce what we know to be true: when people have access to nutritious food, clear information, and the right tools, meaningful and lasting improvements in health are possible.”
- SETTING THE MAP: The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), led by Sen. Tim Scott (R., S.C.), scored a series of recruitment coups as the GOP looks to expand its majority in 2026. Top recruits include Mike Rogers in Michigan, John Sununu in New Hampshire, Ashley Hinson in Iowa, and Michael Whatley in North Carolina. The GOP is also eager to watch messy Democratic primaries play out in states like Michigan, Maine, Minnesota, Texas, and Iowa. The committee also raised $80 million, which is almost $12 million more than it raised in the same period during the 2024 cycle — 99 percent of its donations are less than $200.