It’s no secret that the House has had a tough two years.

One speaker, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), got ousted mid-term, and his successor, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), survived a coup attempt only because Democrats spared him. The most basic procedural votes have become herculean tasks. Legislative output has cratered.

Now, with Election Day nearing and the Democrats within a few seats of the majority, some see a chance to try to fix what’s broken by taking up a reform push they started after winning the majority six years ago — but clearly never finished.

Moments when power changes hand offer the best chance at reshaping how Congress acts, and that is doubly so when a new leader takes charge.

In 2018 a small group of moderate Democrats used the opportunity to create a temporary House committee tasked with modernizing the chamber. The committee lasted four years, received plaudits for some important-but-modest changes and has since had its work folded into a subcommittee.

But for House Democrats, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) as speaker could mark a sea change, especially compared with six years ago, when Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) returned to power.

Pelosi had already served four years as speaker (2007-2010) and had been leading Democrats for 16 years, with a very experienced leadership team that was more bound by tradition. Just 12 years into office, Jeffries, 54, could be more open to trying out new ideas, according to several former aides and retiring lawmakers.

Jeffries would have his work cut out for him. Even Democrats acknowledge that, in their previous four years of holding the majority, the institution wasn’t exactly performing up to par. Rank-and-file lawmakers have an endless list of complaints, from scheduling conflicts, to committee chairs disregarding junior members, to leadership ignoring the work of those legislative committees.

“While tremendous progress has been made, there is still much more work to be done,” a group of 10 think tanks and congressional experts, dubbing themselves the “Fix Congress Cohort,” wrote in a recent letter to congressional leadership.

There is no shortage of proposals. The Washington Post’s editorial board this week highlighted a working group of former members of Congress, run through the University of Pennsylvania, that is circulating ideas about how to change the cultural norms.

“Partisan conflict explains a lot of the Hill’s dysfunction, but so do relatively fixable internal rules, written and unwritten,” The Post’s editorial board wrote.

Just as some of the most interesting ideas for overhauling the Senate came from former senior GOP staff, a similar survey of former House Democratic aides offered up some interesting and surprising ideas.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid any blowback from current or former employers, these ex-aides generally diagnose the same problem: The average lawmaker feels removed from the process, and even when they can come up with bipartisan ideas that have support, their bills languish.

These half-dozen former aides served in high leadership posts, ran legislative committees or worked as chief of staff for rank-and-file Democrats, each with more than a decade of experience. Their ideas covered many aspects of how lawmakers exist, from what committees they serve on to how much they travel and to how often they are fed during meetings.

One former aide noted the dilemma of many junior lawmakers receiving two and sometimes three committee assignments. This can lead to lawmakers having legislative hearings at the same time, forcing them to either skip one or race around the office buildings trying to attend part of each hearing. And because so many lawmakers receive so many assignments, these committees are larger than ever and hearings take too long because every member is allowed to ask at least five minutes of questions.

If lawmakers received fewer committee assignments, their daily lives would be easier to manage and they could drill down on fewer issues to develop real expertise, according to the former aide, who served as chief of staff to two rank-and-file Democrats.

In addition to an avalanche of committee work, lawmakers have created an endless list of “congressional member organizations,” groups that serve as caucuses supportive of issues and causes.

These are well meaning but also serve as passing attempts at checking political boxes rather than actual policymaking. Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), a freshman, serves on 21 of these caucuses, while another freshman, Rep. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.), serves on almost 60.

Two former Democratic chiefs of staff suggested tightening the reins on these ad hoc groups — ranging from the Wine Caucus to the left-flank Progressive Caucus — by cutting back on their funding, as they eat away a member’s time and also sometimes drive ideological division within internal party ranks.

Another common complaint is how hard it is for legislation, despite bipartisan support, to get to the full House for a vote.

Data shows the shrinking ambition in the House. Back in 2016 — the last year when Republicans ran the House against a Democratic president — the chamber approved 659 bills and resolutions. Through the first eight months of 2024, the House had approved just 353 measures.

Centrist Democrats, working with moderate Republicans, tried to create a fast-track calendar six years ago for bills with wide support, but that practice faded away quickly and instead the legislative calendar is dominated by the speaker and his leadership team.

The “suspension calendar,” as the current process is known for passing noncontroversial bills quickly with a two-thirds majority, needs to be updated so that more bills with broad support can get to the floor for full votes. Most rank-and-file lawmakers like to tout that their chamber approved one of their bills and, if it does not make it into law, they will try again next year to win Senate approval and a presidential signature.

Another idea to make legislative committees work together was a formal requirement that each panel’s full membership attend either a retreat outside of Washington or an official trip abroad to study an issue together.

These congressional delegation trips are known for creating lasting bonds among lawmakers, while also opening their eyes to how policy made in Washington impacts the real world.

Some former aides believe it’s time to come up with a better acknowledgment of remote work. At the height of the pandemic, the proxy voting system seemed appropriate to allow social distancing and prevent members from traveling and potentially spreading the coronavirus.

Lawmakers were supposed to certify they were unable to travel to Washington out of fear of attracting or spreading the virus, allowing a member in the Capitol to cast their vote for them. Over time it turned into an excuse to skip work, as some Republicans once trekked to the southwest border with ex-president Donald Trump and some Democrats flew on Air Force One with President Joe Biden to Michigan.

Republicans eliminated the practice altogether after winning the majority in 2022, but as one former Democratic aide argued, the current policy can be unnecessarily harsh. A woman who cannot travel because of pregnancy complications should be allowed to cast her vote, the former aide said. A bipartisan pair of House members have proposed proxy voting for up to six weeks after giving birth.

Just as some ex-GOP staff in the Senate want to curtail political showboating, one former House Democratic aide suggested that once a month, or every few months, one bill should come to the floor in a debate that would not be televised.

The visiting public and press would still be in the chamber to monitor the legislative debate and votes, but the TV cameras would be off to make lawmakers simply debate among themselves.

Finally, another former aide had a striking idea: Eliminate food at most meetings inside the Capitol complex. Food and beverage are standard at many meetings. A large portion of it goes to waste and, the aide argued, offering the food tends to make meetings go longer than necessary.

Most lawmakers and aides agree that Congress needs a more comprehensive overhaul than some of these modest proposals, but some small steps would help.

As the “Fix Congress” group noted in its memo, “Gradual progress is more likely than sudden and comprehensive approaches.”

LATROBE, Pa. — Seventeen days from the election, here in arguably the most decisive swing state, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump spent the first 10 minutes of his speech without mentioning politics.

Instead, he delivered a long tribute to Arnold Palmer, the late golfer who was born here and is the namesake of the airport where Trump was speaking. Trump’s soliloquy about Palmer included an account of how other athletes reacted to seeing him in the showers.

“Arnold Palmer was all man. And I say that in all due respect to women and I love women. But this guy, this guy, this is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And I refused to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God, that’s unbelievable,’” Trump said.

“I had to say it,” Trump continued.

At about 10 minutes, the digression about Palmer lasted roughly as long as Vice President Kamala Harris’s entire speech at a get-out-the-vote event earlier Saturday in Detroit. Trump’s speech was filled with asides, abrupt changes of subject and profane and personal attacks.

Trump has expressed frustration with his accelerated campaign schedule and shown impatience with his prepared scripts and advisers encouraging him to stick to issues such as the economy and immigration. Trump had other subjects in mind Saturday and spoke freely about a variety of disconnected themes.

He interrupted his own message about the border to praise Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) and discuss the color of billionaire donor and surrogate Elon Musk’s MAGA hat. He also gave a shout-out to legendary center fielder Willie Mays, who died in June, and railed against Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). He made up a story about an imaginary cartel leader named Jose Rodriguez using an imaginary phone app to call the U.S. government about smuggling people over the border.

When he finally focused on his opponent in the presidential race, Trump turned vulgar.

“You’re a shit vice president,” he said to cheers. Some in the crowd shouted out, echoing the profanity.

Moments later, Trump asked the crowd about his plane: “How did the flyover look? Good?”

As Trump called Harris a “radical left Marxist,” a woman in the crowd yelled: “She’s a f—ing liar!”

Trump acknowledged the indiscretion while explaining he had received a letter from evangelical leader Franklin Graham encouraging him to refrain from swearing.

“You can’t put the same emphasis,” he said. “So tonight I broke my rule.”

At another point, as Trump criticized the Biden administration, he said: “Everything they touch turns to —”

“S—!” the crowd responded.

Trump frequently meandered during his hour-plus speech. As he railed about Harris replacing President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket, he paused and commented on his hair, as he looked at the screen displaying his live speech. “Excuse me, I’m going to recomb my hair, do you mind?” he said. “I’m going to recomb my hair, Mr. Future Senator,” he added, a reference to U.S. Senate candidate David McCormick of Pennsylvania.

Trump started the week spending 39 minutes of a town hall playing music instead of speaking. He has jumped abruptly between topics in recent appearances and on social media. In Latrobe, he compared his proposed tax exemptions to the invention of the paper clip.

Harris on Saturday questioned Trump’s coherence.

“Have you noticed he tends to go off script and ramble?” she said in Georgia. “And generally for the life of him cannot finish a thought. And he has called it ‘the weave.’ But I think we here will call it nonsense.”

The rally also touched on familiar themes for Trump, including his vow to impose “massive tariffs” and his vilification of undocumented immigrants, falsely portraying them as mostly criminals from “insane asylums and mental institutions.”

He disparaged foreigners in inflammatory terms, comparing immigration with an “invasion” and saying he would “liberate” the country. He misrepresented Immigration and Customs Enforcement statistics to falsely claim thousands are “on the loose,” and he repeated his pledge to launch a mass, militarized deportation operation modeled on a 1950s program.

Trump at one point returned to the topic of Palmer when favorably remarking on the appearance of his expanded security detail.

“Look, people as far as you can see. They give you a little extra security nowadays. I got more machine guns than I’ve ever seen. Look at these guys,” he remarked.

The crowd began to cheer, “USA!”

“They look like Arnold Palmer. They look like Arnold. Can’t look better than Arnold,” he said.

Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.

ATLANTA — Vice President Kamala Harris criticized former president Donald Trump over the issue of abortion access at a rally in Atlanta on Saturday, pointing out that the family of Amber Thurman — a Georgia woman who died in 2022 after she did not receive proper medical care because of abortion restrictions — was in the audience.

In the waning weeks of the presidential campaign, Harris used her time in Atlanta to emphasize the Republican nominee’s role in appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion. The comments came the week after the Georgia Supreme Court moved to restore a six-week abortion ban.

Democrats see abortion access as a driver for voter turnout this election cycle. Harris told the Atlanta audience that Trump “still refuses to take accountability for the pain and the suffering he has caused,” and has failed to acknowledge “the pain and suffering” that has ensued as a result of abortion restrictions around the country.

Harris played a clip of Trump at an all-women Fox News town hall, in which the moderator said Thurman’s family had just participated in a call hosted by the vice president’s campaign.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Trump said in the clip. “We’ll get better ratings, I promise.”

Harris said Trump had “mocked” Thurman’s family in the clip and later asked, “Where is the compassion?”

“What we see continually from Donald Trump is exactly what that clip shows,” Harris told the audience. “He belittles their sorrow, making it about himself and his television ratings. It is cruel. And listen, I promised Amber’s mother that we will always remember her story and speak her name.”

The crowd then began to chant alongside Harris: “Amber Nicole Thurman.”

Harris also repeated her assertion that Trump is exhausted from campaigning after several canceled appearances, and called into question Trump’s coherence.

“He is only focused on himself, and now he’s ducking debates. And canceling interviews because of exhaustion. And when he does answer a question or speak at a rally, have you noticed he tends to go off script and ramble? And generally, for the life of him, cannot finish a thought,” she said.

Harris told reporters earlier Saturday that she was responding to Trump’s comments at her rallies more frequently because “he’s becoming increasingly unstable and unhinged, and it requires a response.”

“I think the American people are seeing it, witnessing it in real time. And we must take note of the fact that this is an individual who wants to be president of the United States,” Harris said. “And I think the American people deserve better than someone who actually seems to be unstable.”

At a smaller campaign event earlier Saturday in Detroit, Harris said that voters need to “just watch” Trump’s rallies if they remain undecided.

“We stand for the idea that the true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you bring down, it’s on who you lift up,” Harris said, adding that at rallies, Trump “spends full time talking about himself and mythical characters, not talking about the working people, not talking about you, not talking about lifting you up.”

Harris’s events in both Detroit and Atlanta included celebrity cameos.

The recording artist Lizzo, speaking in Detroit, pointed to her roots and pushed back on Trump’s recent comments insulting Detroit.

“They say that if Kamala wins, the whole country will be like Detroit,” Lizzo said during the event. “Proud like Detroit. Resilient like Detroit. We’re talking about the same Detroit that innovated the auto industry and the music industry, so put some respect on Detroit’s name.”

Harris later took the stage at the event wearing a T-shirt that said “Detroit -VS- Everybody.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement after the Detroit rally that Harris “needs Lizzo on the campaign trail to hide the fact that Michiganders were feeling good under President Trump.”

In Atlanta, R&B singer Usher rallied for Harris.

“Let me make certain that I’m talking to all my ATLiens out there,” he said, energizing the thousands of rallygoers. “We need everyone to get out there and support this campaign.”

“We love you, Usher!” one attendee yelled out.

“I love you more, but I love Kamala Harris even more,” Usher said. “I want her to be our next president of the United States.”

Vazquez reported from Washington and Wells from Detroit.

NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Standing in a high school gymnasium 10 miles from America’s gambling capital, former president Barack Obama implored any undecided or hesitant voters to place a figurative bet on Kamala Harris.

“Sometimes I talk to folks who don’t think it’s going to make a difference whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins,” Obama said in front of a rowdy crowd of thousands on the first day of early voting in Nevada. To them, he said: “Do not sit back and hope for the best. Get off your couch and vote.”

The rally in North Las Vegas was the second stop in a busy stretch of battleground state travel for the former president, who remains one of the nation’s most popular Democrats. Harris’s campaign is increasingly deploying Obama as its not-so-secret weapon in the race’s waning weeks, leaning on him to whip up enthusiasm in what could be a historically close contest.

In his 40-minute speech, Obama sought to underline the ways politics can have a tangible impact — and how an election “can make your life better or it can make it worse.” The coronavirus pandemic was the ultimate example, Obama argued, accusing his successor of mishandling the crisis and causing hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths.

“People’s grandmothers, people’s fathers, people’s moms who would have been alive if Donald Trump had just paid attention and tried to follow the plan that we gave him,” Obama said.

Sure, he added, a president won’t fix the country’s most intractable problems overnight, but Obama said that Harris would be a leader who “cares about you, who listens to ordinary people, who listens to people who are experts in these areas.”

Harris’s campaign has also looked to Obama to help juice her support among men, especially young men of color who appear to be more open to Trump’s messaging than that of past Republican nominees.

So far, Obama has employed a multipronged approach. He bluntly admonished men who may have voted for him in 2008 and 2012 but who might be reticent about casting their ballot for a woman — “speaking some truths,” he called it at a stop in Pittsburgh, where his frank reproach made headlines.

In North Las Vegas, he upbraided “some men who seem to think Trump’s behavior of bullying people or putting them down is somehow macho or a sign of strength.”

But Obama has also begun taking Trump on more directly than ever, mocking the Republican candidate’s bizarre behavior and mental fitness. He has alluded to the long-standing animosity between himself and Trump, who fueled his early political career by falsely questioning Obama’s birthplace.

“When it comes to health care, Donald Trump has got one answer,” Obama said. “He wants to end the Affordable Care Act. He doesn’t even really know what the Affordable Care Act is or how it works. He just knows I did it.”

But even as he needled Trump for “loony” behavior, Obama called for a return to character and values, drawing a stark contrast with the Republican nominee’s comments earlier in the day at a vulgar rally in Pennsylvania, where he referred to Harris as “a shit vice president.”

Attendees at Obama’s rally in North Las Vegas cheered his barbs at Trump, and some welcomed the tough love he directed at men who “just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president,” as he put it at a stop last week.

“I am very blunt, and I like that,” said Anita Freeman, a Las Vegas resident and high school teacher who said she attended the Saturday rally to “hear what the message is firsthand from the Democratic Party.”

She hasn’t made up her mind who she will vote for, she said, but she’s leaning toward Harris. And she has appreciated the messaging from Obama, who she voted for twice and said reminds her of her father. He’s been right to call out sexism in the race, she said.

“There are a lot of people who still hold onto old cultural beliefs that women should not have power,” said Freeman, who said that in the 1980s she was the first female firefighter in the New Jersey township where she grew up.

Michael Dakan, who traveled to Nevada from Los Angeles to canvas for Democrats, said he’s noticed how lately Obama is “less tempered about what he says.”

“But he’s still Obama, he’s still presidential, he’s measured, he’s what we hope to have in a president,” said Dakan, who was wearing a Deadhead shirt that read “Make America Grateful Again.” “When I listen to him speak, he just puts me at ease. He has a certain grace.”

The race between Harris and Trump in Nevada is among the tightest of any state in the country, according to The Washington Post’s polling average, which shows Harris clinging to a lead of less than a point.

The state is one of seven that likely will decide who winds up in the White House next year. Democrats have recently dominated here, winning the state’s electoral college votes in the last four presidential contests and in six of the last eight. But Trump appears to have gained ground as concerns over skyrocketing rents and home prices have some voters itching for a change.

Responding to this newly competitive environment, Democrats have been parading through the Silver State. Harris has ventured here multiple times recently, vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz stopped in earlier this month and former president Bill Clinton will rally voters here next week. Trump has likewise campaigned in Nevada and will return next week.

Voters here may also play a key role in determining which party controls the House. In the race for Senate, Democrats have a considerably larger advantage: Incumbent Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) is leading her Republican challenger, Sam Brown, who has struggled to gain traction and keep up in polls and fundraising.

As in several other states, abortion politics are playing a major role in Nevada. Voters will decide whether to amend the state’s constitution to ensure a right to the procedure. Democrats are hoping the issue will energize voters and spur increased turnout, benefiting them in other races.

Obama — who is set to travel to Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia in the coming days — noted the statewide vote Saturday night. He said that while “there are good people of conscience on both sides” of the abortion debate, “we should at least agree that such a deeply personal decision should be made by the woman whose body is involved and not by politicians.”

The former president’s soaring rhetoric seemed designed to conjure up memories of his eight years in office, a time many Democrats now remember fondly as an era of ascendant political optimism.

In doing so, Obama sought to draw a direct line from himself to Harris — a link he made explicitly at the Democratic National Convention, when he said that “the torch has been passed.”

While the Harris campaign — and Obama, too, in recent appearances — has made a mantra of the phrase “We’re not going back” in reference to Trump’s time in office, they are in fact pushing a different brand of longing for the recent past.

At his Friday stop in Tucson, Obama recalled fondly his opponent in the 2008 presidential election, the late-Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.): “He understood that some values transcend parties.”

And on Saturday, he mentioned the late Democratic senator from Nevada, Harry M. Reid, who he said “refused to see politics as just this battle between good and evil.”

The message appeared to be: Remember when times were tamer and politics somewhat more polite?