Football and basketball coaches are experts in clock management.

So are lawmakers.

Coaches are adept at either burning or saving just enough time on the clock to execute a play – or prevent the other team from doing so.

Congressional clock management is very different.

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Whatever lawmakers say they will do – it will always take them a profoundly longer period of time in which to do it.

That’s why the temporal politics of passing President Donald Trump’s "big, beautiful bill" overwhelmed everyone who works on Capitol Hill over the past few weeks.

That ranges from the lawmakers themselves to the aides, journalists, Capitol custodians and U.S. Capitol Police officers.

To wit:

Congressional Republicans have churned through variations of frameworks and iterations of the big, beautiful bill since February. But things finally got serious when the House adopted its formal version of the package on May 22, beating the Memorial Day goal by four days.

There was chatter that the Senate would tackle the House’s package the week of June 9. Then that fell to the week of June 15. The idea was that the Senate would process its version of the bill that week and then allow the House to sync up during the week of June 22.

Then those hopes were dashed.

That’s to say nothing of the Senate at least voting to proceed to even start debate at the very end of the week of June 15.

Here’s what really happened. And it underscores just how protracted the process can be on Capitol Hill, especially with a very complicated and controversial piece of legislation.

On Monday, June 23, Republican senators talked about taking a procedural vote to launch debate on the big, beautiful bill as early as Wednesday or Thursday, June 25 or 26. Such a vote would require just 51 yeas. But the bill wasn’t ready. Republicans were still crafting and drafting the bill to comport with Senate budget rules. The GOP also aimed to write the legislation in a fashion to court 51 yeas to crack the procedural hurdle and formally start debate. 

Midweek came and the Senate never took a procedural vote. Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., opposed starting debate on a bill that was not complete.

So midweek morphed into the weekend, and when the Senate convened on Saturday, June 28, Fox News was told the chamber would take a procedural vote to begin debate around 4 p.m. ET.

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Well, you guessed it.

The Senate did not trigger that vote until 7:31 p.m. Saturday. And the 15-minute vote turned into a three-hour and 38-minute affair. The Senate closed the vote at 11:09 p.m.

Saturday – with Vice President JD Vance nearby in case his services were necessary to break a tie.

They were not.

At least not on the dais.

But Vance played a pivotal role in negotiating with Johnson, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and others to greenlight the Senate starting on the bill.

However, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., then compelled Senate clerks to read the entire 940-page bill out loud from the dais. That enterprise consumed just under 16 hours of floor time. The clerks – their voices cracking and hoarse – concluded a few minutes after 3 p.m. on Sunday. This marked the first time a senator required the clerks to verbally read a bill before the Senate since 2021.

So, once the clerks concluded their oratory, it was believed that the Senate might go all night with its marathon voting session – known as a "vote-a-rama" – and try to finish the bill sometime by dawn Monday.

But this is Congress time.

Senators didn’t even begin the vote-a-rama until 9:40 am Monday. Twelve hours later, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., suggested it was time to "start figuring out" a final group of amendments that were necessary to conclude the bill. 

Some groaned at that notion. One senator told Fox News that 12 hours later was a little late in the game to "start figuring out" something of that magnitude.

The Senate then toiled throughout the night Monday and into Tuesday. Thune and the GOP leadership finally cut a deal with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, on rural hospitals to marshal her vote. The Senate approved the bill late Tuesday morning after an all-night session. Vance was back to break the tie in what is called a "Van Halen" vote. The tally was 50-50 since three GOP senators defected. But Vance’s vote in favor made the roll call "51-50." 

For those who are uninitiated in the Van Halen discography, "5150" was Van Halen’s first album with new lead singer Sammy Hagar, supplanting David Lee Roth. It went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts. 

Then, it was on to the House.

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The House Rules Committee serves as a gateway for legislation to head to the floor. It convened a meeting early Tuesday afternoon. The Senate would soon send its revamped version of the big, beautiful bill across the Capitol Dome for the House to align. The Rules Committee then proceeded to meet until around 1 a.m. Wednesday, prepping the bill for the floor.

That meant the House could vote by late Wednesday afternoon.

But there was a problem.

House GOP leaders discovered what they termed a "technical error" in the rule. The entire House must first approve the rule before debating legislation on the floor. So the House needed to vote on the fix first. That vote started early Wednesday afternoon – and continued for another seven hours and 31 minutes. That established a record for the longest roll call vote in House history, topping a vote of seven hours and 21 minutes in 2021.

Some Republicans weren’t at the Capitol. But they held the vote open to buy time to work on skeptical GOP members who may be holdouts.

And around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., decided to double-dog dare anyone who was against the bill to put their voting card where their mouth was. Republican leaders closed the "technical correction" vote and proceeded to a vote on the "rule." If the House adopted the rule, it could formally debate the bill. The House was stuck if its members failed to approve the rule.

The tally board behind the dais in the House chamber populated relatively quickly. All 216 Democrats said no There were also four GOP no votes – and several who refused to vote yes. Republicans could only lose three votes and still pass the rule. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., was a yes on the rule – even though he opposed the bill. He then switched to no as the vote dragged on. However, Massie ultimately supported the rule in the end.

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Reps. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., Keith Self, R-Texas, Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., were no votes throughout the vote. But around 1 a.m., there was movement. The holdouts and some of those who voted no met with Johnson and other GOP leaders. That seemed to pry loose the votes of the holdouts and opponents – except Fitzpatrick. 

But there was a problem.

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa. – who had not voted – drove home to Pennsylvania. So everyone at the Capitol patiently waited for Perry to return. He did around 3:30 a.m. Thursday. Everyone but Fitzpatrick voted as a bloc in favor of the rule. The House had the votes to begin debate on the rule.

It looked as though the House might vote around daybreak on the actual bill itself.

But the office of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., had told Fox News on Wednesday that Jeffries intended to speak for an hour or so at the end of debate. There’s a custom in the House where top leaders of both parties are yielded "a minute" to speak on the floor. But this is a "magic minute." As a courtesy to those leaders, they speak as long as they want.

Jeffries began speaking just before 5 a.m. Thursday – and finally concluded eight hours and 45 minutes later just after 1:30 p.m. ET Thursday. Jeffries shattered the mark of eight hours and 32 minutes established by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in 2021. McCarthy set the record as minority leader. 

So those House members hoping to hop an early morning flight and get home for July 4 would have to wait.

Mike Johnson didn’t speak nearly as long as Jeffries. But he did observe that the late President Ronald Reagan once said that no speech should run longer than 20 minutes.

Johnson spoke for 23 minutes.

And then the House voted, finally passing the bill 218-214 at 2:31 p.m. Thursday. Fitzpatrick and Massie were the only GOP noes.

It is said that we never have enough time in life. And if you work on Capitol Hill, you’ll probably have even less thanks to congressional clock management.

Former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Monika Burzynska said she was assigned the locker next to Lia Thomas when the transgender athlete joined the women's swim team in 2021. Burzynska previously knew the athlete as Will Thomas, a member of the men's swimming team at UPenn. 

"He wasn't very social," Burzynska told Fox News Digital, adding she had only ever had short, passing conversations with Thomas. 

She thought Thomas had already graduated when her team was dealt the news that the athlete would be transitioning to join the women's team starting in the 2021-22 season. 

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When that season eventually began, and Thomas became a fixture in the women's locker room, Burzynska often retreated to the corner of the room to change. Other times, Burzynska timed exactly when she changed to coincide with when Thomas showered. Eventually, Burzynska opted to only change in the stalls or in the family locker across the hall. 

"Around Lia, I wasn't going to risk anything," Burzynska said, regarding the possibility of the trans athlete seeing her undress.

Burzynska has never spoken out about her experience of being on a team with Thomas until now, amid the recent news that UPenn agreed to apologize to all the female swimmers, rescind Thomas' program records, and adopt a new policy that applies strict biological definitions for males and females.

She said the news gave her "a deep sense of peace and validation." 

"Not only for me, but for all the girls on the team, for all the girls in the swim world and in the sport world. And I think this decision, it brought back – at least for me – a sense of fairness that had been lost," Burzynska said. "Women's records belong to women and that protecting the integrity of women's sports still matters."

Still, the memories of what Burzynska and others had to endure lingers. 

Burzynska identifies as someone with conservative values, but says she grew up feeling "compassion" for transgender people. Her views changed when she was placed next to Thomas in the locker room. 

"I thought it must be terrible to feel like you're trapped in the wrong body. Just be so out of touch with who you really are," Burzynska said. "You have these issues that are from afar and you never really quite think they're going to touch you personally until you're on a team with Lia Thomas and your locker is directly next to this biological male. And you would have never believed that you'd be facing this issue directly.

"And then when that happens, your views change where you still feel sorry for this person because they're clearly so deeply lost. But then it turns into more, ‘OK, this is not fair,’" Burzynska added. 

As a native of Colonia, New Jersey, Burzynska explained that she grew up in a liberal environment with prominent pro-LGBTQ sentiment. Those values followed her when she went to UPenn in the deep blue city of Philadelphia. 

"We have a very, very, how should I call it, like deep LGBTQ presence on campus where the campus buildings or the dormitories, rather than flying the U.S. flag, the trans flag, the LGBTQ flag [were flown]. Whenever I visit Penn, I see it's like this huge skyscraper dorm, and they have the biggest rainbow flag you could imagine," Burzynska said. 

"So I guess, in a sense, you could say it encourages it if a person is very confused about their identity, and then there's this group that seems so accepting, so loving, telling you could be whatever you want to be… that might kind of, yeah, encourage people to turn that way."

Burzynska, and the other female swimmers on the team at the time, were allegedly coerced into silence and submission by UPenn administrators. 

A lawsuit by three other former Thomas teammates, Grace, Estabrook, Margot Kaczorowski and Ellen Holmquist, alleged that university officials pressured them not to speak out about their thoughts on Thomas joining the team publicly. 

"The UPenn administrators went on to tell the women that if the women spoke publicly about their concerns about Thomas’ participation on the Women’s Team, the reputation of those complaining about Thomas being on the team would be tainted with transphobia for the rest of their lives and they would probably never be able to get a job,’" the lawsuit alleged.

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Burzynska, having grown up in a liberal New Jersey town, was already accustomed to the consequences of sharing conservative values in a liberal setting. 

Burzynska recalls, from a young age, often being criticized for having "conservative or Republican values." 

"I had been experiencing that forever. And even UPenn, I think it's every university at this point, but UPenn is very, very left-leaning. And so I was kind of ready to embrace that, that my views wouldn't be welcomed because, yeah, I've been conservative most of my life. My beliefs are grounded in faith." 

Burzynska recalls a futile conversation she had with her head coach, Mike Schnur, when she confronted him with concerns about being on a team with Thomas. 

"We had this long meeting, I don't know, almost two hours long. And he said, 'Listen, Monika, I understand all your concerns. They're all valid. I don't think any of them would deter you from continuing onto your senior year and having a successful senior year. I think the one thing that would deter you is that Lia is changing in your locker room and there's nothing you could do about it,'" Burzynska said. 

"I told him in that meeting, ‘What are you talking about? Like, how is this fair?’ And his response was, 'It's not fair, but if you have any issues with it, come to me… Don't talk about it with everyone else. Come to me. We'll talk through it'" 

Burzynska said she never took Schnur up on that offer, believing that he wouldn't do anything about it anyway. 

Still, she alleges she witnessed her teammates having those futile conversations with Schnur, from a distance.

Then came the administrators that allegedly pressured the women's swimmers who objected to Thomas to go to pro-LGBTQ counseling. Burzynska said she called the counseling session "brainwashing meetings." 

She never attended the sessions. 

Burzynska has since moved on from the situation and has embraced her life and career beyond it.

Still, she admits that parts of the situation instilled "trauma" in her, and she is grateful that President Donald Trump's administration made it a priority to instill consequences on UPenn. 

"Those [women's] rights at Penn were clearly compromised so it's amazing that they looked into it and Trump took it so seriously," Burzynska said. 

Fox News Digital has reached out to UPenn for a response to Burzynska's statements. 

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