The Senate after dark can be a weird and scary place.
For example, senators will spend all day and night working to pass legislation that would eliminate health insurance for millions of Americans, gut clean energy development and blow up the national debt, as Republicans managed to do after a marathon 26-hour session Tuesday.
I spent all night reporting on Republicans’ last-second scramble to patch this 900-page bill together — and I’ll spend the foreseeable future covering its assault on American life. Your support can help HuffPost continue our work. Would you consider making a contribution to help us report on this historic moment?
They did so after much drama on the Senate floor and intense lobbying of Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R), who ultimately cast the deciding vote for the bill.
But watching Trump’s Big Beautiful Mess slowly inch across the finish line from my perch in the reporters’ gallery above the Senate chamber, I initially had my doubts about whether she would do so.
At one point late in the night, when it dawned on Republicans that Murkowski might vote against the bill, the mood in the room shifted dramatically. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an author of the bill, looked furious as he paced the floor. One by one, Senate GOP leaders surrounded Murkowski, trying to change her mind to save it. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) spent hours in tense conversation with the Alaska senator. One of their painful-looking chats reminded me of a couple going through a bad breakup.
In the end, after hours of cajoling, Murkowski got to “yes” by securing several Alaska-specific wins, including by making the bill’s cuts to Medicaid and federal food assistance less severe in her state. She told reporters afterward that she hoped the House would fix the problems in the bill, but few people, including me, took that seriously.
There were moments of levity on the Senate floor, too. Sleep deprivation makes everyone a bit loopy.
Around midnight, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) did an uncanny impersonation of President Donald Trump for his colleagues on the Senate floor, reading a TruthSocial post the president fired off attacking Tesla CEO and his onetime ally Elon Musk, who had torched the GOP bill as an “abomination” that would explode the deficit and gut renewable energy.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) jokingly suggested including a provision in the bill renaming Alaska’s Mount McKinley — the tallest peak in North America — back to its original Native name of Denali as a way to win over Murkowski. Trump had changed the name earlier this year.
After Thune mixed some red Emergen-C powder into his water glass, Democrats cried foul, accusing the GOP leader of breaking the chamber’s silly rules on what senators are allowed to drink on the floor (water and, oddly, milk). Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) quipped that Thune’s new precedent allowed for a more useful late-night beverage: coffee.
Meanwhile, an internal Senate television feed run by Republicans ironically dubbed the all-night session of votes on the bill known as a “vote-a-rama” as “vote-a-trauma” instead.
Members on both sides of the aisle had trouble staying awake. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) was spotted napping in the Democratic cloakroom, while 91-year-old Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) at one point walked onto the Senate floor and told everyone to keep it down so he could get some sleep. He was then spotted sitting on the floor in the well of the chamber in an area typically occupied by teenage Senate pages. I was surprised he was awake at all.
The freezing temperature in the Senate chamber overnight was a source of complaints from just about everyone. The theory goes that it’s easier to stay awake if you’re cold. But many female senators draped blankets around themselves to keep warm. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) opted for hoodies.
The happiest guy in the room may have been Sen. Thom Tillis. The Republican North Carolina senator appeared — and I’m borrowing a meme about former Vice President Kamala Harris here — truly unburdened by what has been. After announcing his retirement over the weekend, Tillis was cracking jokes all night and roaming the floor like a man without a care in the world. He came out in opposition to the bill last week despite attacks from Trump because of how it would devastate his state’s Medicaid recipients, and unlike Murkowski, he didn’t look back.
At one point, Tillis was waving and blowing kisses into the C-SPAN cameras above the Senate floor, gestures he said were directed at his grandchildren watching back home who were sad he couldn’t join them.
“I said to them, we’ll play hide-and-seek, and I’ll run around in different places on the Senate floor,” he told reporters afterward. He added: “You have to remember, you volunteer for this job, and you can leave anytime you want.”
The 64-year-old GOP senator was in such a good mood he teased me online after I left the Senate around 10 in the morning to get some shuteye. In my defense, it was clear Senate Republicans had the votes to pass the bill by this point.
“Disappointed in you, Igor,” Tillis wrote.
Sorry, not sorry, senator!