How does congressional time work?
On Neptune, one day lasts 16 hours. On Jupiter, it’s 10 hours. And in Congress, a single “day” can last 30 seconds or stretch beyond over 24 hours. How does that work? We combed through more than a decade of official records to understand the quirks of congressional time.
- Being “in session” means Congress is meeting in Washington, DC, to conduct official business on the House or Senate floor such as debating bills and holding votes. In 2025, nearly one in five Senate sessions and one in three House sessions lasted less than five minutes.
- Why so short? Since both the House and Senate approve legislation before it becomes law, the Constitution says that neither chamber can go more than three days without formally meeting unless the other chamber agrees. This is to prevent the legislative process from stalling. These quick sessions reset the three-day clock. (They also prevent recess appointments, which the president can make if the Senate is officially in recess.)
- In the House, a typical session lasts about four hours. A typical Senate session runs closer to six, and about one in four lasts eight hours or more.
- The Senate’s rules allow for extended debate and make it harder to limit speaking time, leading to occasional all-nighters. There have been 52 overnight sessions in the past 110 years, and six of them were in 2025 alone. Even though the 2020s are only halfway through, the Senate has already recorded more overnight sessions in this decade than in any previous one.
- Other sessions involve measures that members use to delay action or highlight policy disputes, including filibusters, or prolonged floor speeches. For example, on March 31, 2025, Senator Cory Booker held the floor for more than 25 hours in protest of Trump administration policies, setting a modern record for the longest continuous Senate speech.
Check Congress’s time card back to 2016.
Mental illness in the US: How common is it?
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) defines mental illness as a range of mild to severe disorders, affecting a person’s thinking, mood, or behavior. And in 2024, about 61.5 million US adults had a mental illness — or 23.4%. Annual survey data shows how these rates differ by age group, income, where people live, and more.
- Young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 had the highest rate of mental illness: 33.2%, 9.8 percentage points higher than the 23.4% average for all adults. In comparison, in 2015, this age group’s rate was 3.8 percentage points higher than the average.
- People living below the poverty line had the highest rate of mental illness: 29.0%, which was 5.6 percentage points greater than the national rate.
- When it comes to racial demographics, multiracial people had the highest rate of mental illness at 35.5%, which was 12.1 percentage points higher than the national rate. People who identified as Asian had the lowest rate: 17%.
- In 2023 and 2024, Oregon’s residents had a mental illness rate of 31.6%, the highest nationwide. New Jersey residents’ rate was 18.1%, the lowest.
See more about mental healthnationwide and in your state.
Advocating for better federal data
USAFacts and the Partnership for Public Service created the Federal Data Excellence Program to recognize and advocate for transparent, publicly accessible federal data. We recently recognized data products that made it possible to track wildfire damage, banking health, how Americans pay for medical care last year. Want to know what good government data looks like? See the winners here.
Data behind the news
The inflation rate rose to 3.3% in March compared with the same time last year, just shy of one percentage point higher than February’s annual rate.
Americans are feeling “moon joy” with the historic Artemis II mission and its splashdown back to Earth on Friday. Read more about NASA’s budget.
President Trump met with Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, last Wednesday. What is NATOand what countries are members?
As you file your taxes, you might notice that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act came with some big tax changes.
Exercise your brain with the weekly fact quiz.
One last fact
In fiscal year 2024, the IRS’s operating costs were $18.2 billion, of which 65.3% went to salaries and benefits for the agency’s staff. The IRS spent $0.36 to collect every $100 in tax dollars, down from the 21st century peak of $0.53 in 2010.
