Dan McCue

WASHINGTON - The Interior Department announced Friday that it has decided to move the headquarters for the Bureau of Land Management back to Washington, D.C., while continuing to maintain its Colorado office as a “Western headquarters.” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced the decision during a meeting... Read More

Early in-person voting in Virginia’s general election began Friday morning, the start of a 45-day period in which those registered to do so can cast ballots for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, the House of Delegates and in local races. Those wishing to vote early can... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Empty streets, a large police presence and a smattering of tourists taking photographs of the newly installed security fence lent a somber air to Capitol Hill Friday as preparations continued for Saturday’s J6 rally. It was a reminder, despite the remaining summer foliage, of... Read More

WASHINGTON - A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted unanimously Friday to recommend emergency use authorization of a booster dose of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine six months after full vaccination in people 65 and older and those at high risk of severe Covid-19. But the same... Read More

A pair of petitions seeking a determination that gray wolves are a threatened or endangered species in the western U.S. have convinced federal officials of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to take a closer look at the situation. “The service finds that the petitions [for... Read More

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - A single line in Netflix sensation “The Queen’s Gambit,” which is expected to rake in the statues at this weekend’s 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards, could wind up costing the streaming giant a cool $5 million thanks to a defamation lawsuit filed Thursday... Read More

WASHINGTON - The historic BBC microphone that Edward R. Murrow used during his CBS radio broadcasts from London during World War II has found a permanent home at the National Press Club. The announcement came as the surprise climax of a reception Tuesday night honoring Murrow’s... Read More

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- After months of campaigning in a crowded field, two finalists emerged Tuesday night as the voters’ potential choice to become Cleveland's next mayor.  Justin Bibb, chief strategy officer with technology firm Urbanova, garnered 27.1% of the mayoral primary vote, while Cleveland City Council... Read More

BOSTON, Mass. -- Michelle Wu, an Asian American progressive and Annissa Essaibi George, a moderate, appear to be the last candidates left standing after Tuesday’s preliminary mayoral election in Boston, and will now face each other in November when the city definitively chooses its next mayor.... Read More

A group of moderate Democrats led by Rep. Scott Peters sought on Tuesday to change the House debate on how prescription drug prices are set in the U.S., arguing sweeping proposals put forward by progressives could threaten passage of the $3.5 trillion budget bill. The push... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats introduced a pared down version of the House voting rights bill Tuesday, and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer indicated he likely will bring it to a vote in the chamber as early next week. After introducing the bill, Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.,... Read More

BOSTON, Mass. -- Voters in Boston are casting their ballots for mayor on Tuesday, choosing from the most diverse mayoral slate in the city’s fabled history. The Sept. 14 vote, of course, is just the city’s preliminary mayoral election, intended to pare the field down from... Read More

The head of the U.S. Capitol Police confirmed on Monday that fencing surrounding the U.S. Capitol in the wake of the Jan. 6 siege on the building will return ahead of a follow up rally by Trump supporters on Sept. 18. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger... Read More

WASHINGTON -- A 44-year-old California man was arrested early Monday morning near the Democratic National Committee headquarters after U.S. Capitol Police discovered he had multiple knives and a machete in his truck. “This is good police work plain and simple,” said U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom... Read More

SALEM, Ore. - Gov. Kate Brown is calling the Oregon legislature into special session to adopt new congressional and legislative district maps. In April, citing the delay in the release of crucial census data, the Oregon Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision giving the legislature... Read More

BATON ROUGE, La. - Gov. John Bel Edwards signed an executive order on Thursday delaying the state’s fall elections from Oct. 9 to Nov. 13 in response to damage caused by Hurricane Ida.  Nov. 13 was the date originally scheduled for any runoff elections. Under the... Read More

WASHINGTON - Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., said Thursday that she plans to vote against the spending and tax measures currently before the House Ways and Means Committee, chiding party leaders in the process for failing to give members adequate time to assess what's being included in... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday sued the state of Texas over a newly enacted law that prohibits nearly all abortions in the state. The move came just days after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the legislation, which bans all abortions after... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The Biden administration on Thursday offered the first detailed look at actions the White House may take in conjunction with congressional action to lower prescription drug prices. The 29-page plan, released through the Department of Health and Human Services, backs the intention of many... Read More

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has filed an appeal of the Biden administration’s withdrawal of the state Medicaid work requirement previously approved by the Trump White House. “Removing a provision that says a healthy, able-bodied individual should be working, looking for work, participating... Read More

AUSTIN, Texas -- It has been an unexpectedly busy summer for the Texas legislature, and now Gov. Greg Abbott is calling lawmakers back for its third special session in two months to begin the bound-to-be-controversial task of redrawing legislative and Congressional districts, among other items. The... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The nation’s capital would need to plant 626,557 trees annually to be a carbon neutral city, a new study finds. The analysis, by comparethemarket.com, pegs Washington, D.C.’s annual carbon emissions at 3,132,786 pounds. It then calculated the number of trees needed every year to... Read More

WICHITA, Kan. -- Gov. Laura Kelly visited McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita on Wednesday to celebrate the latest development in the city’s historic and still rapidly growing aviation sector. Hours earlier, Wichita State University’s National Institute for Aviation Research took possession of its first Boeing... Read More

The temptation is to liken them to the undeterable posse that pursed Robert Redford and Paul Newman to the end of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” “Who are those guys?” Butch asks so often toward the closing credits of the 1969 film that it becomes... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is warning Congress that she will run out of maneuvering room to prevent the U.S. from broaching the government’s borrowing limit in October. In a letter to congressional leaders on Wednesday, Yellen said that she could not provide a specific... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Just days after their remains were returned home to their families for burial, the 13 U.S. service members killed during a deadly attack at the Kabul airport last month appear likely to receive Congress’s highest honor. Reps. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., and Lisa McClain, R-Mich.,... Read More

AUSTIN, Texas -- Gov. Gregg Abbott had barely finished signing his name to a sweeping overhaul of his state’s election rules Tuesday, when a Democratic election lawyer announced he’d filed a lawsuit to prevent the new procedures from taking effect. Marc Elias is suing the state... Read More

MADISON, Wis. — Gov. Tony Evers granted 71 pardons Tuesday, putting him on pace to pardon more people in his first term than any governor in contemporary history. In all, Evers has pardoned 263 former inmates, since his pardon advisory board was announced in 2019.  The... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The Library of Congress’s National Book Festival is back and will roll out over 10 days beginning Sept. 17, However, just like last year, its programs will be largely virtual due to the coronavirus pandemic. Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, author of “Remains of the... Read More

WASHINGTON -- District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton were among the dignitaries who joined descendants of civil rights icon Frederick Douglass for the opening of the new bridge named in his honor. A two-day celebration of... Read More

 ATLANTA, Georgia -- Former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s new Greater Georgia organization is seeking to register 100,000 conservative voters in the northern exurbs of Atlanta ahead of the 2022 election. The group describes its “Red Belt Blitz” as a six-figure outreach and mobilization effort to register... Read More

Vice President Kamala Harris will visit California's Bay Area on Wednesday to campaign with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who faces possible removal from office in a Sept. 14 recall election. Symone Sanders, Harris' chief spokesperson, tweeted Saturday that the vice president will be in the Bay Area... Read More

President Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden will commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11 next Saturday by traveling to the three sites of the terrorist attacks. In a brief announcement released Saturday, the White House said the president and first lady “will honor and memorialize the... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Two moderate House Democrats are pressing Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a transparent process in the drafting of the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, saying in a letter on Friday that her promises in this regard will determine whether they ultimately support the bill or not.... Read More

JERSEY CITY, New Jersey -- Mayor Steven Fulop appears to be cruising to inclusion on the ballot of November’s gubernatorial election.Fulop, a moderate seeking his third term as mayor, submitted more than 6,000 nominating petitions last week, far more than the minimum of 1,650 signatures he... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Regulations governing the ownership of broadcast radio and television stations harms broadcasters’ ability to compete in the marketplace, stymies service to local communities and fails to promote diversity in ownership, the National Association of Broadcasters said in a lengthy filing delivered to the Federal... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden directed the Justice Department and other federal agencies on Friday to immediately begin a review of documents related to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks so that Attorney General Merrick Garland can release any deemed declassified over the next six months.... Read More

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A federal Judge in West Virginia has refused to throw out a defamation lawsuit filed by one-time coal magnate Don Blankenship against Donald Trump Jr. The lawsuit stems from comments Trump Jr., son of former President Donald Trump, made about Blankenship during the... Read More

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- The Arizona man who wore a fur hat with horns and decorative body paint as he joined the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 pleaded guilty Friday to a felony charge and could serve up to 51 months in prison.... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell last week to a pandemic low 340,000, a sign the economy continues to improve, the Labor Department said Thursday. The number of claims declined by 14,000, as vaccinations for COVID-19 have encouraged businesses to reopen or... Read More

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has directed the state’s 88 county boards of election to begin a four-year process to identify any registrations that have been inactive for at least two years or appear on the national change of address database. If... Read More

Nielsen, which for decades has been providing television ratings for everything from presidential debates and political conventions to nightly newscasts, was reeling Wednesday after a key industry organization pulled its support of the company’s services. The Media Rating Council is a United States-based nonprofit organization that... Read More

WINTER PARK, Fla. -- The Florida Democratic Party has named Rep. Stephanie Murphy chair of its Democracy and Voter Protection Program. In her new role, the Winter Park Democrat will work with the program’s staff, party leaders and other elected officials to combat voter suppression and... Read More

TOPEKA, Kan. - A drug most commonly given to horses and cows as an anti-parasite medicine should not be taken by humans to treat or prevent COVID-19, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment said in a Wednesday advisory. Ivermectin was introduced as a veterinary drug... Read More

DENVER, Colo. -- Invenergy, a privately held developer of sustainable energy solutions, has begun work on a 127 megawatt project in Colorado that will generate enough electricity to power 25,000 homes while paying about $250,000 annually in local property taxes. Dubbed the Boutique Solar project, the... Read More

AUSTIN, Texas — For the Democrats who fought bitterly to prevent it, it's all over but the playing of a sad song on a honky tonk juke box. On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature sent a major overhaul of the state’s elections laws to Gov. Greg... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The House Rules committee will host a roundtable discussion examining food as medicine on Wednesday, Sept. 1 at 2 p.m. The event, announced by Committee Chairman James McGovern, D-Mass., is the seventh in a series of committee events highlighting the reality of food insecurity... Read More

WASHINGTON - In a world where the cost of almost everything seems to go up for everybody, broadcasters got something of a treat last week. When the FCC officially set its Fiscal Year 2021 regulatory fees last week, commissioners did away with rate hikes that could... Read More

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has opened investigations in five states to determine whether statewide prohibitions on the universal indoor wearing of face masks discriminates against students with disabilities. The five states that were notified of the investigations in writing... Read More

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Internet payment giant, PayPal, is reportedly exploring ways to allow its millions of customers to trade individual stocks. The market move was first reported by CNBC, and appears to be confirmed by the recently updated LinkedIn profile of Richard Hagen Jr., co-founder... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking information from the public and industry professionals on the digital engagement practices of investment advisors and brokers. These tools include behavioral prompts, differential marketing, game-like features (also known as gamification) and other design elements used to engage... Read More

CLEVELAND -- Early voting is now underway in Cleveland, where an unexpectedly robust race for mayor is headed into its final weeks before a Sept. 14, 2021 primary election. A total of seven candidates are vying to replace Frank Jackson, Cleveland’s longest-serving chief, who announced in... Read More

WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden formally unveiled plans on Friday to give civilian employees of the federal government a pay raise, effective Jan. 1, 2022. In a letter to House and Senate leadership, Biden said the across-the-board base pay increase will be 2.2% and locality pay... Read More

WASHINGTON -- More than five million households have enrolled in the emergency broadband benefit program since its launch in mid-May, the Federal Communications Commission said Friday. Coinciding with this milestone, the agency also began releasing more granular enrollment data to inform its evolving awareness efforts, increase... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Seven Capitol Police Officers filed a federal lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, Roger Stone, and members of two right-wing extremist groups on Thursday over their role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. The 71-page complaint accuses Trump of acting in... Read More

RICHMOND, Va. - The Port of Virginia says it will lease a portion of its Portsmouth Marine Terminal to Dominion Energy in a bid to accelerate construction of the largest commercial offshore wind farm in the United States, and ensure the commonwealth benefits from the resulting... Read More

ATLANTA, Ga. -- Herschel Walker has filed paperwork to enter the U.S. Senate race in Georgia, the Heisman Trophy winner joins other Republicans seeking to unseat Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in 2022. Walker, who came to national prominence in the early 1980s as a University of... Read More

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Ken Welch, a longtime county commissioner in Pinellas County, Florida, will face Robert Blackmon, a St. Petersburg City councilman, in a November runoff that will determine which of the two men is the city’s next mayor. That’s because neither broke the magic... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday evening refused to block a court ruling ordering the Biden administration to reinstate a Trump-era policy that forces people to wait in Mexico while seeking asylum in the U.S. With the court’s three liberal justices in dissent, the unsigned... Read More

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Birmingham, Alabama Mayor Randall Woodfin cruised to an easy reelection win Tuesday night by garnering 64% of the vote and leaving no doubt that a runoff election will be unnecessary this year. In declaring victory at about 10 p.m. local time, Woodfin attributed... Read More

Voters in Florida’s 7th Congressional District, a district that tends to vote Republican in local races, but has strongly supported Democrats for president and the House since 2012, are emphatically in favor of bipartisanship and a steady, prudent hand when it comes to spending their tax... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The House will reconvene at noon Tuesday to take a second stab at ending a stalemate with 10 centrist members over a $3.5 trillion budget framework.  Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and the other holdouts don’t necessarily oppose the budget package, but want to vote... Read More

Voters in New Jersey’s 5th Congressional District, a traditional swing or battleground district nestled against the southeast portion of New York State, are united in many key respects when it comes to spending and health care reforms, a recent survey found. Strong majorities want to see... Read More

NEW YORK -- New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is expected to announce new guidelines for the reopening of city schools that will require every Department of Education employee to have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine by Sept. 27. The new,... Read More

SALEM, Ore. -- Oregon’s legislature has until September 27 to craft new legislative and congressional districts based on 2020 census data, but Secretary of State Shemia Fagan isn’t waiting for the deadline to pass to prepare for an entirely different redistricting scenario. This week she invited... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Floyd Ray Roseberry, the North Carolina man who engaged in an hours-long standoff with police in front of the Library of Congress Thursday afternoon, is now facing a federal weapons of mass destruction charge. Roseberry learned of the charges against him during a brief... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Nine moderate House Democrats on Friday reinforced their call for an immediate vote on the Senate-passed Bipartisan Infrastructure bill, putting them on a collision course with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the chamber prepares to return to Capitol Hill next week. Last week, the... Read More

They were the strange spectacle after the big show. In the weeks and months following the 2020 election, dedicated conspiracy theorists and “Stop the Steal” activists descended on Arizona to “audit” the state’s presidential election results.  Critics of the effort called it a “fraudit,” but Republicans... Read More

CHICAGO -- A long running effort by local environmentalists to block construction of the proposed Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s Jackson Park ended on Friday when Justice Amy Coney Barrett declined to intervene in the case. The environmentalists, who collectively call themselves “Protect Our Parks,” don’t... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The National Corn Growers Association, Renewable Fuels Association, and Growth Energy asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its decision to disallow year-round sales of a 15% ethanol fuel blend. In a petition filed with the court on Thursday, the plaintiffs asked... Read More

WASHINGTON -- An employee of the Architect of the Capitol’s office who took a job working with Amazon while on administrative leave during the pandemic may have to repay the office $20,197, the AOC Office of the Inspector General said Thursday. Neither the employee nor their... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., is the lead sponsor of the Native American Voting Rights Act of 2021, landmark legislation intended to ensure equal access to the electoral process for Native Americans, Alaska Natives and voters living on tribal lands. Companion legislation has been... Read More

Republicans in the Illinois General Assembly say newly released census numbers reveal the legislative maps that Democrats pushed to complete in the spring are unconstitutional. The Census Bureau released the data Thursday, Aug. 12, months later than usual, due to delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic... Read More

WASHINGTON -- A man who claimed to have a bomb in a pickup truck outside the Library of Congress surrendered to the police Thursday afternoon, after hours of negotiations and evacuations of several government buildings in the area. The man, identified as Floyd Ray Roseberry, 49,... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Three former Netflix software engineers and two close associates have been charged with generating over $3 million in profits by trading on confidential information about Netflix's subscriber growth, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced Wednesday. According to a complaint filed in federal court in... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Education will invoke its civil rights enforcement authority to prevent states from imposing universal bans on wearing face masks in classrooms, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said on Wednesday. The decision represents a dramatic escalation of the battle between the White House... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Americans who got the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccines will be able to obtain booster shots eight months after the date of their second doses, the Biden administration announced Wednesday. Because of the timing element, those who were first in line for the vaccines... Read More

MADISON, Wis. -- Congressional and legislative district maps that have been used in electoral contests for the past decade should not be used as the starting point for drawing new boundaries using 2020 census data, Wisconsin Democrats say in a federal lawsuit. The complaint was filed... Read More

Seven diversity organizations have joined the call for Congress to revive a tax certificate program intended to encourage minority and women ownership of broadcast stations. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., and Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., introduced the bill to reestablish the Minority Tax Certificate Program at the... Read More

Federal regulators on Monday declared the first-ever water shortage at Lake Mead, a reservoir that feeds into the Colorado River and serves approximately 40 million people in the West. The declaration, issued as part of an outlook for the river for the next 24 months, triggers... Read More

WASHINGTON  — President Joe Biden said Monday that he stands “squarely behind” his decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan and that the government's collapse was quicker than anticipated. Speaking about the chaotic situation in Afghanistan, Biden said that he faced a choice between an agreement... Read More

President Joe Biden cut short what was to have been a five-day stay at Camp David Monday and is slated to address the nation this afternoon on the stunning and still unfolding events in Afghanistan. Biden is scheduled to speak in the East Room of the... Read More

Rep. Cheri Bustos, the Illinois Democrat who led her party’s House campaign arm in the 2020 cycle, has some advice for swing-district Democrats on how they can win in communities that tilted for former President Donald Trump the last two elections. Spread over 67 pages, “How... Read More

As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the Department of Veterans Affairs and many of the Iraq and Afghanistan-era war veterans they serve are bracing for a surge in the need for mental health and post-traumatic stress care. In response, the VA is notching up its... Read More

Data released by the U.S. Census Bureau to jump start the redistricting process across the country reveal an America that’s grown more diverse over the past decade. The largest demographic increases came in the number of people who identified themselves as Hispanic, Asian or a blend... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Nine moderate House Democrats delivered a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi Friday, saying they will not vote for a budget resolution intended to advance a sweeping, $3.5 trillion climate and social policy package this year unless a separate infrastructure bill is approved first. The... Read More

WASHINGTON -- In a move she says is intended to attract the “best talent in America” to Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Thursday raised the salary cap for House staffers to $199,300, up from the maximum $173,900 some are currently earning. Staff salaries... Read More

RICHMOND, Va. -- Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam signed an emergency order last Thursday requiring that face masks be worn in all indoor settings in the state's K-12 schools. The move comes after a handful of school districts in recent days decided to buck the governor’s interpretation... Read More

CHICAGO -- To anyone still waiting for a sign that it’s safe to attend concerts and other large outdoors events, the weekly update from Chicago’s top medical official on Thursday was good news indeed -- the four-day Lollapalooza festival was no super-spreader event. Dr. Allison Arwady... Read More

Four years after a White supremacist rally left three people dead in the home city of Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam says there’s “still much work to do” when it comes to healing, fairness and justice in America.... Read More

The Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday announced that it will require more than 25,000 members of its health care workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The new mandate applies to staff at the Indian Health Service and National Institutes of Health who serve... Read More

The coronavirus pandemic reversed three years of dramatic growth in clean energy jobs in the Midwest, but the sector is now rebounding faster than the overall regional workforce, a new report says. According to Clean Jobs Midwest, released by the nonpartisan business group E2 and the... Read More

A year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, travel bans meant to stem the crisis are taking a significant toll on global growth and trade, according to a new report from The Conference Board, the nonprofit business and research group. According to Trade Risks: Travel... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Ron Kind, who took office in 1997 and is easily Wisconsin's longest-serving member of Congress, stunned reporters Tuesday by announcing he won't seek reelection in 2022. “The truth is, I’ve run out of gas,” the Democrat said. Kind’s departure from the scene has... Read More

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser on Tuesday gave all government employees whose agencies report to her office until Sept. 19 to be fully vaccinated, calling it a “job requirement.” According to the mayor’s office, roughly 36,700 people are employed by the D.C. Government, including employees... Read More

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned Tuesday after an investigation led by state Attorney General Letitia James found he sexually harassed 11 women, and violated state and federal laws. Cuomo opened his remarks at a brief press conference announcing his decision by emphatically denying he intentionally... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The Senate passed the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal on Tuesday, handing President Joe Biden a significant win for his top legislative priority.  “This is what it looks like when elected leaders take a step toward healing our country’s divisions rather than feeding those... Read More

Dominion Voting Systems has filed a series of defamation lawsuits against One America News Network, Newsmax and Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com, over their roles in advancing conspiracy theories that Dominion rigged the results of the 2020 presidential election. The lawsuits against Herring Networks,... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department on Monday committed to conducting a fresh review of documents related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks the government had previously deemed privileged and unreleasable to the public. The decision was announced just days after the families of hundreds of 9/11... Read More

The Defense Department will require members of the U.S. military to get the COVID-19 vaccine by Sept. 15, though the deadline could be pushed up if infection rates continue to rise. The decision was revealed in a memo to troops  initially acquired by the Associated Press.... Read More

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Education published a notice in the Federal Register Monday establishing a negotiated rulemaking committee that will meet virtually beginning in October to rewrite regulations for Public Service Loan forgiveness, income-contingent repayment plans, and borrower defense to repayment, among other issues. ... Read More

The state of Arkansas cannot enforce a planned ban on face masks pending further court action, a county circuit judge has ruled. Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed the law in April banning government entities from imposing mask requirements. The ban was challenged by two lawsuits, including one... Read More

Not only does discrimination in voting still exist, but it has grown steadily worse in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which voided many protections provided by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a House panel said Friday.... Read More

WASHINGTON- Education Secretary Miguel Cardono warned Thursday, Americans should not allow adult politics -- particularly the politicizing of the wearing of face masks -- to prevent students from returning to school safely and without future disruptions.  “You know what I’m worried about?” Cardona asked at a... Read More

The gold medals are provided to individuals or institutions as Congress’ “highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions,” according to the website of the House historian.  Four medals will be displayed: one in the Capitol Police headquarters, one in Metropolitan Police Department headquarters,... Read More

Richard Trumka, the powerful president of the AFL-CIO who rose from the coal mines of Pennsylvania to preside over one of the largest labor organizations in the world, died Thursday. He was 72. In a note to staff, Liz Shuler, secretary treasurer for the 12.5 million-member... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The bipartisan infrastructure package set to be voted on in the U.S. Senate, perhaps as early as Saturday, would add $256 billion to the federal deficit, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Thursday The budget office estimated that enacting Senate Amendment 2137 to H.R.... Read More

President Joe Biden is expected to announce Thursday that his administration is setting a new national goal for the sale of electric vehicles -- wanting half of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. by 2030 to be powered by electricity. The executive order Biden will... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Nearly a dozen U.S. Senators -- all of them Democrats -- made the short walk from the Capitol to the green near the Robert Taft Memorial on Tuesday to join scores of state legislators in calling for passage of the For the People Act,... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The Blue Dog Coalition of House Democrats is throwing its considerable influence behind a bill that aims to help unemployed Americans return to work by ensuring they do not lose income when they take a new job. The Strengthening Unemployment Programs to Provide Opportunities... Read More

In Seattle, where votes are still being counted, former City Council member Bruce Harrell leads a total of 15 candidates with 38% of the vote, while City Council President M. Lorena González has 28% and Colleen Echohawk and Jessyn Farrell both finished with 8% of the... Read More

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan handily won Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary election in the city, and will square off against second place finisher, Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams in the November general election. With 100% of precincts reporting, Duggan received 72.5% of the vote, while Adams, his nearest opponent... Read More

Centrist Shontel Brown, the chair of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party in Ohio, defeated progressive favorite Nina Turner for her party’s nomination Tuesday in the special election for the state’s 11th Congressional District. With 100% of precincts in the district reporting Brown garnered 50.2% of the... Read More

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a new eviction moratorium that would last until Oct. 3, as the Biden administration sought to quell intensifying criticism from progressives that it was allowing vulnerable renters to lose their homes during a pandemic. The ban announced Tuesday... Read More

A police officer died after being stabbed Tuesday during an incident at a transit station outside the Pentagon. The suspect in the stabbing was shot by law enforcement and died at the scene, officials said. The building was temporarily placed on lockdown after gunshots were fired... Read More

President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and New York Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, are calling on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign after a bombshell report from independent investigators appointed by the state attorney general said he sexually harassed multiple women and... Read More

NEW YORK -- New York City will require proof of vaccination for people going to indoor activities like restaurants, gyms and performances, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday. The program, one of the first of its kind in the United States, will launch Aug. 16 and... Read More

RICHMOND -- The state of Virginia will erect five new state historical highway markers honoring Asian American Pacific Islander history in the Commonwealth, Gov. Ralph Northam announced Tuesday. The markers were submitted by Virginia students through the inaugural AAPI Heritage Month Historical Marker Contest.  The five... Read More

WASHINGTON -- A bicameral bill with bipartisan sponsors would provide $500 million for competitive grants for states to purchase, customize and repair vehicles that provide meals to food insecure senior citizens. Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. and Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Reps. Filemon Vela, D-Texas and John... Read More

Retaining staff on Capitol Hill has never been easy, but it’s likely never been harder than it is today against a backdrop of often divisive and toxic politics, the spiralling costs of living in the region, and in the wake of the worst siege of the... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Legislators from across the country began arriving in Washington, D.C., on Monday in a bid to pressure the U.S. Senate to pass sweeping voting rights legislation known as the For The People Act. The House passed the bill in March by a 220-210 vote... Read More

Over two-thirds of supervisors who participated in a new poll said they consider employees who work remotely “more easily replaceable,” than onsite workers at their organization. In addition, the survey found that 62% believe full-time remote work is detrimental to employees’ career objectives and 72% say... Read More

Seattle and Detroit, the nation’s 18th and 21st largest cities, respectively, according to Politifact, are both holding nonpartisan primaries for mayor on Aug. 3. In Detroit, 10 candidates are running, including incumbent Mike Duggan, who currently is expected to breeze through the primary to the November... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The Treasury Department must provide the House Ways and Means Committee with former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, the Justice Department said in a legal opinion released Friday. In the opinion, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said the committee chairman “has invoked... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Members of the House and Senate gathered outside the Capitol Friday to celebrate this week’s progress on the largest infrastructure bill in U.S. history, and to remind everyone that the legislation still has a ways to go before the $1.2 trillion proposal becomes a... Read More

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday tossed a legal challenge that claimed Connecticut violated citizens’ 2nd Amendment right when it curtailed fingerprinting services during the pandemic. The Connecticut Citizens’ Defense League and six state residents sued Gov. Ned Lamont and the commissioner of... Read More

It may not be special elections galore, but voters in two congressional districts in Ohio are about to decide who will compete in November for two high profile Capitol Hill vacancies. On Aug. 3, 10 Republicans and two Democrats will be squaring off in their respective... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a $2.1 billion emergency spending bill that includes funding for the Capitol Police, a move that solved a potential budget shortfall that could have led to furloughs in August. The bill, H.R. 3237, the Emergency Security Supplemental to... Read More

WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden told federal employees and onsite contractors Thursday that they need to get fully vaccinated or face regular testing and be required to wear masks at all times while on the job. Speaking in the East Room of the White House, Biden... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Kamala Harris said Thursday that efforts to address root causes of migration from three Central American countries won't produce immediate results as she unveiled a broad strategy that expands on principles the Biden administration previously outlined. The plan, which the administration calls... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The White House called on Congress Thursday to pass an emergency extension of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eviction ban, three days before it is set to expire. Without immediate action, the Biden administration said it will allow a nationwide ban on... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate on Wednesday evening voted to advance bipartisan infrastructure legislation, despite the lack of actual bill text to consider and a looming battle in the House over the measure. By a 67-32 vote, the Senate moved to invoke cloture on a motion... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department released two guidance documents Wednesday intended to ensure states fully comply with federal election laws, specifically those statutes pertaining to methods of voting and constraints on post-election audits. “The right of all eligible citizens to vote is the central pillar of... Read More

WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan group of senators who have been negotiating for weeks on an infrastructure bill since forging an alliance with the White House say they’ve reached a deal on the “major issues” and can now move forward. “I think we’re good to go,” Sen.... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The Census Bureau will release redistricting data to the states in two formats beginning on Aug. 16. The first release will be geared for what the agency calls “experienced data users,” with a second, easier to use release of the same data planned for... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Attorneys general from 45 states, the District of Columbia and Guam served notice on Wednesday that they are appealing a federal judge’s decision to throw out their antitrust lawsuit against Facebook. “We filed this notice of appeal because we disagree with the court’s decision... Read More

WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden announced a new proposed rule Wednesday morning that’s intended to strengthen domestic supply chains and bolster the nation’s manufacturing sector by establishing a higher threshold for products to qualify as made in the United States. The announcement comes ahead of Biden’s... Read More

First-term Texas State Rep. Jake Ellzey defeated fellow Republican Susan Wright in a special runoff  election in Texas’s 6th Congressional District Tuesday night, dealing former President Donald Trump a defeat in terms of the enduring power of his endorsement. Ellzey received 53.3% of the vote to... Read More

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday afternoon said fully vaccinated people should now wear face masks if they live or work in a location experiencing a surge in delta variant cases. The new guidance effectively reverses a recommendation from May, when the CDC... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The White House on Tuesday released a 21-point plan aimed at processing asylum claims quickly and deporting those who do not qualify. “Asylum and other legal migration pathways should remain available to those seeking protection. Those not seeking protection or who don’t qualify will... Read More

The U.S. combat mission in Iraq will conclude by the end of the year, President Joe Biden announced Monday. However the president would not say whether he planned to reduce the number of troops in Iraq, which now number about 2,500. The announcement came during an... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. is keeping existing COVID-19 restrictions on international travel in place due to concerns about the surging delta variant of the virus among the unvaccinated. “Given where we are today [with] the more transmissible Delta variant … spreading both here and around the... Read More

WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden celebrated the 31st anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act Monday and announced new guidance suggesting long-term COVID-19 could be considered a disability in some cases under federal civil rights laws.  “For our nation, the ADA is more than a law... Read More

The U.S. and Mexico failed to resolve a dispute over trade rules for cars during a meeting last week, a development - or lack of one - that appears capable of severely straining relations between the two countries a year after the new USMCA trade pact... Read More

WASHINGTON - A federal judge on Friday gave the U.S. Federal Trade Commission until Aug. 19 to file an amended complaint in its antitrust lawsuit against Facebook. In a filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the agency asked for a three-week... Read More

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber has released the final list of 46 candidates who qualified for the upcoming gubernatorial recall election.  The recall election seeking to remove Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom will take place on Sept. 14, 2021.  Among the candidates that qualified were nine... Read More

New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner has asked Democrats and Republicans to reconvene the state’s redistricting commission and come up with a consensus candidate to act as the tiebreaker in upcoming districting decisions. Rabner first made his desire for a consensus candidate known in... Read More

Voters in Texas’ 6th Congressional District will decide which Republican candidate will fill the vacancy left by Rep. Ronald Wright, R-Texas, who died of COVID-19 related complications on Feb. 7. On the ballot Tuesday are Susan Wright, the representative’s widow and a longtime player in GOP... Read More

WASHINGTON - As a select committee prepares to open its investigation Tuesday into the events leading up to and during the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, a trio of House Republicans wonder what might have been. Everyone expected some controversy when House Minority Leader Kevin... Read More

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Veterans Affairs is offering a new COVID-19 Refund Modification option to assist Veterans who require a significant reduction in their monthly mortgage payments because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In some cases, veterans can receive a 20% payment reduction — in others,... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Democrats are urging President Joe Biden to permanently close the nation’s digital divide by targeting federal investments in broadband to the hardest to reach areas, while also providing a permanent, federally-funded broadband benefit program to financially vulnerable families. The effort is being spearheaded... Read More

Comcast Oregon/SW Washington has embarked on a $15 million project to extend its broadband products and services, both residential and business, to the communities of Hubbard and Woodburn, Oregon.  Construction has already begun on the project, with fiber backbone to these communities now in place.  Hubbard... Read More

U.S. life expectancy fell by a year and a half in 2020, the largest overall decline since World War II, the Centers for Disease Control reported Wednesday. The decline to 77.3 years was driven by the coronavirus pandemic, the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics said.... Read More

WASHINGTON  - A Republican-led challenge to a House resolution allowing members to vote remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic ended abruptly Tuesday after the D.C. Circuit held it had no authority to review a “core” legislative act of Congress. House Resolution 965 was adopted in May 2020... Read More

Election officials from across the country ran through dozens of worst-case scenarios last week, including potential ransomware attacks, during an exercise staged by the the Department of Homeland Security. This is the fourth year the department has asked state and local election officials to participate in... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden on Tuesday nominated Jonathan Kanter to serve as assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice. Kanter is a distinguished antitrust lawyer with over 20 years of experience, the White House said in a written statement. He... Read More

The United States, NATO and several allies collectively called out China on Monday for a series of malicious cyber- and ransomware attacks, including a March attack that exploited a flaw in Microsoft's Exchange Server. Monday’s announcement, which followed a conference call with White House reporters Sunday... Read More

WASHINGTON - The chants, loud and impassioned, could be heard every time someone opened the White House press room door. With a balmy, near tropical heat, settled over the nation’s capital, the sprinklers outside seemed to spray with added urgency to keep the lawn green outside... Read More

President Barack Obama exceeded his authority when he created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, by executive order in 2012, a federal judge ruled Friday. But U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, presiding in the federal court in Houston, stopped short of immediately vacating the program. Instead... Read More

RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced Friday that the commonwealth will invest $700 million of federal funds to provide universal broadband to its residents by 2024. “It’s time to close the digital divide in our Commonwealth and treat Internet service like the 21st century... Read More

Rep. Robin Kelly can remain chairwoman of the Illinois Democratic Party, but must insulate herself from all fundraising for non federal candidates in the state, the Federal Election Commission ruled Thursday. Kelly, a member of Congress since 2013, is also prohibited from using her name and... Read More

New York State’s Independent Redistricting Commission will begin a series of virtual hearings on Tuesday, hoping to get a jump on the map-making process before the release of final 2020 Census data in August. In announcing the hearing dates, the commission also unveiled a new website... Read More

WASHINGTON - The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC on Thursday accusing 18 super PACs of illegally pouring $200 million into competitive elections between 2017 and 2020 while allegedly concealing their ties to congressional leaders. In a 50-page complaint, the Washington, D.C.-based... Read More

WASHINGTON - In the wake of a federal appeals court ruling striking restrictions on the summertime sale of ethanol blended fuel, a bipartisan trio of senators is seeking to ensure that low-carbon, 15% ethanol fuel blends are available for purchase in all U.S. markets, year-round. The... Read More

Boston, Massachusetts and Raleigh, North Carolina could become the nation’s next designated innovation zones and test beds for advanced wireless technologies, under a proposal put forward Wednesday by the Federal Communications Commission. The designations, if advanced, would help spur the development and integration of 5G network... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden will welcome German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the White House this afternoon for what is likely to be her last official visit. During the visit, the veteran German leader is expected to discuss a full range of issues with the president,... Read More

The Blue Dog Coalition of House Democrats is calling on House and Senate leaders to establish a bipartisan commission to assess the United States preparation and response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the origins of the virus. The letter, which was signed by every member of... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden traveled to Capitol Hill on Monday for a working lunch with Senate Democrats, a day after party leaders announced a compromise, $3.5 trillion budget deal that pours federal dollars into a slew of climate change and social programs. “It’s great to... Read More

WASHINGTON. –  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. announced Wednesday he would join Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.Y. and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in bringing forward legislation to end the federal prohibition on cannabis. The trio of senators was set to unveil their “discussion draft” of the Cannabis... Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union on Monday sued the state of Texas to block “radical” new abortion restrictions currently set to take effect on Sept. 1. The ACLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of Texas abortion providers -- led by Whole Woman’s Health -- doctors, health... Read More

Former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican who backed President Joe Biden over his own party’s nominee, President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, is now Biden’s nominee to be the United States’ next ambassador to Turkey. Flake is the second of Biden’s Republican endorsers to... Read More

President Joe Biden traveled to Philadelphia, the birthplace of the nation, on Tuesday to declare that preserving voting rights for all is the “test of our time.” Speaking at the National Constitution Center, Biden called the efforts to curtail voting accessibility "un-American" and "un-democratic" and offered... Read More

WASHINGTON - The House Rules Committee will hold a roundtable examining local innovations in combating hunger on Thursday, at 3:30 p.m. The event is the fifth in a series of committee events highlighting the reality of food insecurity in America and examining the steps Congress and... Read More

WASHINGTON - At least 51 of 67 members of the Texas House fled their state on Monday, determined to stay on the lam in the nation’s capital to thwart a vote on new voting restrictions in the Lone Star state. After arriving at Dulles Airport Monday... Read More

The headliners included everyone from Vice President Kamala Harris to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigeig to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but have no doubt, the focus of the National Association of Counties annual conference was on renewal and a bipartisan way forward. In a way, it couldn’t... Read More

While states across the country have been grappling with a delay in the reporting of U.S. Census Bureau data as they contemplate drawing new election district maps, the pandemic-caused slowing of the information could impact Virginia House of Delegates races for years to come. In a... Read More

WASHINGTON - Business groups are pushing back this weekend against a sweeping executive order signed by President Joe Biden on Friday intended to curb anti-competitive practice in tech, telecom and other business sectors. Executive Order 14036, also known by its stated objective, “Promoting Competition in the... Read More

WASHINGTON - A trio of House Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, accused the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies on Thursday of being more concerned with “self enrichment” than in the well-being... Read More

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has been selected as the new chair of the National Governors Association. Hutchinson, the third Arkansas governor to be elected chair of the group, will serve in the position for 2021-2022. The Republican had served the past year as vice chair. “This... Read More

U.S. health regulators on Thursday approved new prescribing instructions that are likely to limit use of a controversial new Alzheimer’s drug. The announcement came through Biogen Inc., the maker of Aduhelm, which stated the update is intended to “clarify” the patients studied in the company trials... Read More

WASHINGTON - Nine in 10 registered voters want federal infrastructure plans to be paid for with offsets, including clearly identified spending cuts or revenue raisers, a new Peterson Foundation poll found. And the result holds true for 86% of Democrats, 87% of Independents, and 95% of... Read More

WASHINGTON - Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and John Yarmuth, D-Ky., are stepping up to protect journalists from being compelled to reveal confidential sources and to prevent federal law enforcement from abusing subpoena power. On Wednesday, the three House Democrats introduced the Protect Reporters... Read More

WASHINGTON - The National Association of Broadcasters is urging federal regulators to reject a request for a new class of low-power FM radio stations. The Federal Communications Commission established low-power FM radio in 2000 to create opportunities for more voices to be heard on the medium.... Read More

BEDMINSTER, N.J. - Former President Donald Trump filed a class action lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter and Google, and their CEOs on Wednesday, alleging the companies violated his 1st Amendment rights when they banned him and suspended his accounts. “Our case will prove this censorship is unlawful,... Read More

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who ran a centrist campaign at a time when progressives were seen as the potential future in city politics, has won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. The Associated Press called the race shortly before 9 p.m. Tuesday. Adams,... Read More

WASHINGTON - The White House on Tuesday rolled out a new plan to get more people vaccinated against COVID-19 as the delta variant spreads among those who continue to go unvaccinated. President Joe Biden had hoped that at least 70% of the eligible population would have... Read More

About 13,511 people, 146 farms and 72 businesses are about to see their daily activities transformed due to a $21 million investment from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The money will be used to provide broadband internet service to Madison County, New York, a largely rural... Read More

WASHINGTON -- As a deadline approaches for federal departments and agencies to solidify their post-COVID re-entry programs, a group of Justice Department employees is encouraging its bosses to keep at least some telework and other flexibility measures in place permanently. The Biden administration has given the... Read More

Spouses of military reservists feel they are healthy and financially comfortable, but more of them complained of stress and loneliness in a survey released Tuesday by the Department of Defense. The survey of Reserve Component Spouses is conducted every two years, and along with the Survey... Read More

Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., is leading a bipartisan effort to preserve and showcase important Revolutionary War sites in both North and South Carolina and create a new trail linking them. The bill, H.R. 1286, otherwise known as the Southern Campaign of the Revolution National Heritage Corridor... Read More

Movie theaters are seeing a slow uptick in their business as summer and reopenings continue, but the box office take for 2021 to date is still 81% below where it was pre-pandemic, according to analysis by Variety magazine. Though the traditional start of the summer movie... Read More

An industry group representing Google, Facebook and other Internet companies warned Hong Kong’s government that changes to the city’s data-protection laws could dramatically curb the companies’ ability to provide services to it. The problem, the letter says, is vaguely worded rules that the Singapore-based Asia Internet... Read More

WASHINGTON - A bipartisan bill aimed at increasing oversight for paid tax return preparers has garnered the support of the American Institute of CPAs. The bill, the Taxpayer Protection and Preparer Proficiency Act, was introduced last month by Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif., and Tom Rice, R-S.C.... Read More

WASHINGTON - On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi created quite the splash by appointing Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming to the new select committee that will soon begin a new investigation into the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. But the hoopla surrounding... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a California law that required nonprofits to disclose lists of their biggest donors, holding the requirement burdened donors’ First Amendment rights and was not narrowly tailored to an important government interest. In a 6-3 ruling authored by... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Thursday to uphold two provisions of Arizona’s election law that critics argued unfairly impinged on the rights of Black, Hispanic and Native Americans voters. By a 6-3 margin, the justices held that a 2016 law that limits who can return... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Legislation intended to prevent China from threatening U.S. telecom networks was front and center Wednesday during a meeting of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. Introduced by House Republican Whip Steve Scalise, R-La. and Rep. Anna G. Eshoo, D-Calif., the... Read More

As social justice incidents and general discord and divisiveness across society have increased, a growing number of companies are feeling pressure both from their employees and their customers to take a stand and provide leadership. It’s not enough to issue a statement and be on one’s... Read More

Donald Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary who ran the Pentagon when the U.S. launched wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, has died at the age of 88, his family announced Wednesday. The cause was multiple myeloma, said Keith Urbahn, a spokesman for the family. "It is with... Read More

NEW YORK - The ongoing vote count for the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City descended into chaos Tuesday night after election officials retracted their latest count due to it being “corrupted” by test data that was never cleared from a computer system. The... Read More

The Library of Congress will reopen the doors of the Thomas Jefferson Building to the public with timed entry passes beginning on July 15, the library announced Thursday. The free passes will be available three days a week, and will only be good for a limited... Read More

BATON ROUGE, La. - A firm specializing in the development of clean fuels hopes to invest $70 million in southern Louisiana to build a plant that can source waste from four nearby sugar mills and turn it into biofuel. Though the plan is still in the... Read More

For the eighth year in a row, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is the champion of bipartisanship in the Senate, while in the House, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., is tops among the 437 House members scored in the latest analysis by the Lugar Center and the McCourt... Read More

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday a company building a natural gas pipeline in New Jersey can continue to rely on eminent domain to claim state land in its path. The 5-4 ruling by the court included both liberal and conservative members of the court... Read More

Programs that teach employees a new skill - whether it's something additional to better perform a current role, or a new set of capabilities to prepare someone for a different role, will be a key component in competing for the best talent as companies adapt to... Read More

WASHINGTON - Former President Donald Trump on Saturday rolled out his new social media presence, inviting recipients of emails to his Save America PAC to subscribe to his page on rumble.com. The invite was sent out just hours before the return of his political rallies, with... Read More

The Federal Election Commission fined the Senate campaign of Jeff Sessions $15,000 for failing to properly disclose a last-minute, $150,000 loan from the candidate prior to the July 2020 Republican primary. The agency revealed the fine and its payment on Friday. Campaigns are required to notify... Read More

SAVANNAH -- Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp wasted no time on Friday responding to word the Justice Department is suing the state over a newly implemented voting law that critics believe restricts Black voter access to the polls. At a hastily called press conference during a visit... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Friday that millions of dollars in COVID-19 relief aid tied up in court for months, rightfully should be given to Alaska Natives rather than tribes in other parts of the country. The case cast a spotlight on a little known... Read More

MINNEAPOLIS - Former Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison on Friday for the widely publicized murder of George Floyd outside a Minneapolis bodega. The sentence, delivered by Judge Peter Cahill of the Hennepin County District Court, came... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Friday restored an exemption for small refineries from a federal law requiring them to blend increasing levels of ethanol and other renewable fuels into their products. The 6-3 ruling is a setback for biofuels producers and overturned a lower court... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department sued the state of Georgia on Friday over a controversial new law that imposes multiple restrictions on voting. During a late morning press conference on Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the complaint alleges “recent changes to Georgia’s election laws were... Read More

WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden on Thursday announced he’s struck an infrastructure deal with a bipartisan group of senators that will provide about $579 billion in new investments in broadband internet, roads, bridges and the electric grid. The deal’s overall price tag -- $973 billion over... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she is appointing a new select committee to investigate “the many questions” that still surround events leading up to the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol and the federal response that day. In May, Senate Republicans filibustered legislation... Read More

The National Guard is asking Congress to reimburse $521 million it says it spent in responding to the Jan. 6 siege on Capitol Hill and the extended protection it provided in the months that followed. Gen. Daniel Hohanson said during a Pentagon press conference on Wednesday... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Blue Dog Coalition of House Democrats is calling on its congressional colleagues to approve the Biden administration’s $753 billion defense spending request for Fiscal Year 2022, saying the proposed $12.3 billion increase over last year will better enable the U.S. to counter the... Read More

WASHINGTON - The New Democrat Coalition on Wednesday  endorsed its first slate of bills in the 117th Congress to confront the existential threat of climate change, building on the Coalition’s work to advance an ambitious and actionable policy agenda to attain net-zero emissions by 2050.  As... Read More

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a Pennsylvania school district violated the First Amendment by punishing a student over a vulgar social-media rant sent away from school grounds. The vote was 8 to 1, with Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting. The underlying case was filed on... Read More

Eric Adams, the centerist Brooklyn Borough President who ran for mayor of New York City with public safety as his top issue, emerged on Tuesday with a substantial lead in the Democratic primary, but fell well short of outright victory in a race that will now... Read More

WASHIINGTON - Senate Republicans filibustered their Democraticcolleague's signature voting rights bill Tuesday night, denying it the 60 votes needed to advance the bill and start debate. Thought the outcome was a foregone conclusion, it was nevertheless a blow to Democrats' hopes of countered a wave of... Read More

WASHINGTON - Despite being in the early phases of an investigation into PFAS contamination at nearly 700 U.S. military installations, the Department of Defense says the future environment clean-up of these facilities will cost at least $2.1 billion and likely much more. That number has not... Read More

If the White House and Congress are serious about making clean energy a meaningful part of the still-to-finalized infrastructure package, they need to enact a 10-year extension of an investment tax credit that has buoyed the industry in recent years. At least that’s the position of... Read More

In a unanimous decision Monday, the justices held the NCAA can’t enforce rules limiting education-related benefits — like computers and paid internships — that colleges offer to student athletes. The case doesn’t decide whether students can be paid salaries. Instead, the ruling will help determine whether... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Congress erred when it set up a board to oversee patent disputes by failing to make the judges properly accountable to the president. As a result, it said, more than 200 administrative judges who preside over patent... Read More

WASHINGTON - Of all the uncertainties growing from the prolonged negotiations over President Joe Biden’s American Families plan, the most potentially vexing for the American businesses and the economy are several proposed changes to the U.S. tax code. Though much rests on how big an infrastructure... Read More

As companies large and small grapple with what the future of their workplaces will look like as the COVID-19 pandemic slowly recedes into the past, an employee management expert is advising employers to be flexible and “intentional” as they make their future of work decisions. Writing... Read More

Will it be one of the moderates or the progressives, and just what will New Yorkers make of their first-ever encounter with ranked-choice voting in a mayoral contest? Those are some of the questions that could be answered Tuesday as voters in the nation’s largest city... Read More

President Joe Biden signed legislation Thursday establishing a new federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery, saying he believes it will go down as one of the greatest honors he has as president. The holiday commemorates African Americans’ freedom from slavery, and has long been observed... Read More

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a challenge to the Affordable Care Act, preserving insurance coverage for millions of Americans. By a 7-2 vote, the justices left the entire law intact and ruled that Texas and other Republican-led states (as well as two individual plaintiffs) have... Read More

WASHINGTON - The U.S. solar energy market has surpassed 100 gigawatts of installed electric generating capacity, doubling the size of the industry over the last three-and-a-half years, according to a new report from the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie. The market insight report covering... Read More

President Joe Biden on Tuesday moved to end a 17-year dispute with the European Union over how big a government subsidy each can provide to its major aircraft manufacturer. That’s Boeing in the case of the U.S.; Airbus in the case of the European Union. The... Read More

As technology goes, it hasn’t reached the level of maturity of other methods to address climate change -- like wind- or solar-energy -- but carbon capture and storage has certainly caught the attention of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Among the bills on everybody’s radar, perhaps the... Read More

The League of Women Voters of Michigan filed an amicus brief with the state's Supreme Court this week in support of the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission's proposed extended timeline for adopting final redistricting plans. The commission was formed after a 2018 public referendum in which... Read More

House lawmakers on Friday introduced sweeping antitrust legislation aimed at restraining the power of large tech companies and preventing corporate consolidation across the economy. Introduced by Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline, D-R.I., and Antitrust Subcommittee Ranking Member Ken Buck, R-Colo., the five bills are directed squarely... Read More

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department may seek authorization to carry out airstrikes if the capital of Kabul or any other major city in Afghanistan is in danger of falling to the Taliban after the U.S. completes the withdrawal of its troops from the country in early... Read More

WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm would like to see more public-private cooperation on cyber defenses and said U.S. adversaries already are capable of using cyber intrusions to shut down the U.S. power grid. "I think that there are very malignant actors who are trying," she... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Problem Solvers Caucus released a new, $1.2 trillion infrastructure proposal Wednesday, aiming to break the partisan gridlock that has so far stymied any kind of deal between the White House and Capitol Hill. The plan put forward by the bipartisan caucus was crafted... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden walked away from negotiations over an infrastructure bill with a group of Republicans led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R- W. Va., and now hopes to strike a deal with a separate, bipartisan group of senators. The president and Capito have... Read More

WASHINGTON - Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., made it official this morning, formally launching her Senate campaign to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. “Unlike some in Washington, I never tire of standing up for what I believe is right, because no one is above the law,”... Read More

MONTPELIER, Vt. - Vermont Gov. Phil Scott signed into law Monday a bill  making universally mailed ballots a permanent feature of the state’s general election.  But Scott went a step further, calling on the General Assembly to extend the policy when it returns in January to... Read More

WASHINGTON - A federal court in Washington struck down a provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act last week, declaring it unconstitutional after Sen. Ted Cruz complained it barred him from repaying the $260,000 he lent himself during his 2018 campaign. The ruling is a victory... Read More

A quartet of researchers in the United Kingdom say while the COVID-19 pandemic forced employers and employees alike into a “mass experiment” of workplace adjustments, the real work on what the future of work will look like is only just beginning. The researchers are Oliver Mallett,... Read More

The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday affirmed the independence of the state’s redistricting commissions, holding that an effort by the General Assembly to change the process violated the state constitution. The ruling came as a result of an interrogatory lawsuit filed after the General Assembly began... Read More

Donald Trump’s accounts on two of the world’s biggest social media platforms will be suspended for at least two years and will only be reinstated “if” conditions permit. The announcement from Facebook, which also applies to Instagram, comes just weeks after the independent Facebook Oversight Board... Read More

After two days of public hearings, Illinois Democrats quickly approved new boundaries for state House and Senate district that will ensure their control of the legislature for the next decade, And they’ve since sent their proposed maps to Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who has walked back... Read More

A federal judge in South Dakota sided with the Biden administration on Wednesday, upholding its decision to block Fourth of July fireworks at Mount Rushmore. The decision by Chief U.S. District Judge Roberto Lange temporarily ends a contentious legal battle that has been going on between... Read More

Democrat Melanie Stansbury claimed a decisive victory Tuesday night in a contested special election for Congress in New Mexico, easing fears in some corners of her party that a close result could have been a sign of disaster to come in next year's midterm elections. As... Read More

TULSA, Okla. - President Joe Biden on Tuesday put Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of his administration's efforts to protect voting rights. Biden made the announcement during a speech in Tulsa, Okla., where he marked the 100th anniversary of a massacre in which a White... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Department of the Interior on Tuesday canceled all oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge pending a new environmental review. The sale of the leases was one of the final acts of the Trump administration, occurring on the same day... Read More

WASHINGTON - In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court tossed a pair of decisions from the 9th U.S. Circuit, holding the appellate court went too far in assuming that an immigrant's testimony was credible unless an immigrant judge said otherwise. Tuesday’s ruling involved a pair of... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that tribal police officers can stop and search non-Native Americans on tribal lands for potential violations of state or federal law. The justices unanimously reversed an appellate ruling in favor of a non-Native motorist who was charged with drug-related... Read More

ARLINGTON, Va. - Venture Global LNG unveiled plans last week to capture and sequester carbon at two of its liquid natural gas facilities in Louisiana. Having concluded a comprehensive engineering and geotechnical analysis at the sites in Calcasieu Pass and Plaquemines, La., the company says it... Read More

Voters in New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District will go to the polls on Tuesday to choose a replacement for Deb Haaland, the former Democratic representative for the district who left Congress to become President Joe Biden’s secretary of the Interior. And like other special elections this... Read More

WASHINGTON - The dance, as they say, was on Thursday as the White House signaled its interest in a new, $928 billion infrastructure proposal outlined by Senate Republicans. The counteroffer to President Joe Biden’s more sweeping, $1.7 trillion plan, is more generous than the Republicans’ last... Read More

Wildlife advocates pressed the Biden administration on Wednesday to revive federal protections for gray wolves across the Northern Rockies after Republican lawmakers in Idaho and Montana made it much easier to kill the predators. The Center for Biological Diversity, Humane Society and Sierra Club filed a... Read More

WASHINGTON - The United States has requested the first ever dispute panel to settle a trade conflict under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced Tuesday. The United States is challenging Canada’s allocation of dairy tariff-rate quotas, specifically the set-aside of a percentage... Read More

The Biden administration is opening up the northern and central coasts of California to the first commercial scale offshore wind farm projects in the region. The first location, called the Morro Bay 399 Area, is roughly 400 square miles off California’s central coast region, and the... Read More

WASHINGTON- Five months after being deployed to the U.S. Capitol to help fend off rioters during the Jan. 6 siege by violent supporters of former President Donald Trump, National Guard troops have packed up and are heading home. The guard's mission formally ended Sunday, and nearly... Read More

PALM BEACH, Fla. - It’s not a good time to be a state or federal official with oversight over South Florida’s long abused plumbing system. In just the past several days, a coalition of environmental groups has called on Gov. Ron DeSantis to declare a state... Read More

A majority of voters in five rural Oregon counties on Tuesday said they’d rather leave their state than continue to be a Republican minority in a decidedly blue place. Instead, residents of Sherman, Lake, Grant, Baker, and Malheur counties endorsed non-binding ballot measures that would have... Read More

North Texas’s 6th Congressional District will be the next battleground in which Republicans are asked to choose between the party’s traditions and a more Trumpian future. The state has scheduled a special runoff election on July 27, between Susan Wright and state Rep. Jake Ellzey, the... Read More

WASHINGTON - White House officials trying to strike a bipartisan deal on the President Biden's massive infrastructure plan made a counteroffer on Friday to Republican senators that trimmed the cost of the package by about $600 billion. The latest offer would cost $1.7 trillion over a... Read More

WASHINGTON - The New Democrat Coalition laid out their infrastructure priorities this week, declaring themselves “very focused on getting things done and figuring out a path to get to yes,” in the words of their chair, Rep. Suzan DelBene, of Washington. President Joe Biden has reportedly... Read More

WASHINGTON - The House on Thursday narrowly approved spending $1.9 billion to fortify the U.S. Capitol in the wake of Jan. 6 siege by violent supporters of former President Donald Trump. Among other things the measure, which passed 213-212, will fund the construction of a retractable... Read More

WASHINGTON - The House voted 252-175 Wednesday, with 35 Republicans voting with Democrats, to create an independent commission to look into events surrounding the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Throughout the afternoon on Wednesday, Democrats argued the independent investigation is necessary to truly get... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Campaign Legal Center had neither standing nor a claim when it accused the Federal Elections Commission of failing to act on a claim a federal contractor violated campaign finance laws. The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center and Catherine Hinckley Kelley, a senior director, filed... Read More

Voters in Pennsylvania appear to have handed the state’s Republicans a significant victory on Tuesday, approving two constitutional amendments that would give the legislature more power to block emergency declarations by the governor. Though votes will likely continue to be counted for much of Wednesday, the... Read More

It was a scene that repeated itself at intersection after intersection in the District and surrounding communities in Virginia and Maryland this past weekend. Desperate-faced drivers, their knuckles taut against their steering wheels, slowly moving past lonely gas pumps and peering into the gas station’s store... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden on Friday suspended Trump-era proclamation that barred the entry of immigrants who would "financially burden the U.S. health care system." Former President Donald Trump had asserted his intent in signing the proclamation on Oct. 4, 2019, was to "protect the availability... Read More

JACKSON, Miss. - The Mississippi Supreme Court on Friday overturned a voter-approved ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana, holding that the election law governing ballot referendums is out of date. The decision, which could halt other citizen-led efforts to amend the state constitution, struck down a... Read More

HARRISBURG — Mark Nordenberg, a former University of Pittsburgh chancellor, will chair the committee in charge of drawing Pennsylvania’s legislative districts, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court announced this week. The appointment means Nordenberg, a former dean of Pitt’s law school, will hold the potentially tie-breaking vote on... Read More

WASHINGTON - Republican House members handily elected Rep. Elise Stefanik, of New York, to the number three post in their conference leadership Friday, hoping her elevation will end an intra-party feud between allies of former President Donald Trump and his GOP detractors. With little suspense, Stefanik... Read More

WASHINGTON - A House panel reached a bipartisan agreement Friday on legislation that will establish a 9/11-style commission to review events surrounding the Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol. The deal reached by the House Homeland Security Committee means a vote on the Jan. 6... Read More

(This is the fourth and final part of a four-part series. The first three parts can be read here, here and here.) The First Amendment Prevails The Supreme Court’s decision in the Pentagon Papers case, officially, New York Times Co. v. United States, affirmed historical precedents... Read More

(This is the third part of a four-part series. The first and second installments can be read here and here.) White House Makes Its Move  Ultimately, the decision to seek prior restraint -- an injunction prohibiting The Times from publishing future articles -- was made by... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Biden administration gave its final approval Tuesday to the construction and operation of the Vineyard Wind project -- the first large-scale, offshore wind project in the United States. The decision was announced by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. The... Read More

(This is the second part of a four-part series. The first installment can be read here.) To Publish or Not to Publish Upon his return to Washington, Sheehan and an editor booked a room at the Jefferson Hotel, where they spent weeks reading and summarizing the... Read More

WASHINGTON - Former Republican Congressional candidate Anna Paulina Luna, who ran unsuccessfully to unseat Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Fla., last year, is suing the Federal Elections Commission saying it failed to address her concerns over her treatment by Twitter. Luna, a former airfield manager in the U.S.... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Blue Dog Coalition has hired Andy LaVigne to serve as its executive director. LaVigne previously served as the political director for the International Association of Fire Fighters. He will work alongside Brooke Lillard, who has served as the Coalition’s communications director over the... Read More

The battle was joined on a Monday night. It was shortly after 7 p.m. on June 14, 1971, when a seething President Richard Nixon telephoned his attorney general, John Mitchell, and told him it was time to make the administration’s position clear to The New York... Read More

Republicans will gather at 39 sites around Virginia Saturday to choose a slate of statewide candidates, with no choice, of course, being more important than that of governor. In a year in which the battle for the future of the GOP has mostly been waged in... Read More

WASHINGTON - The FEC has formally dropped a case looking into whether former President Donald Trump violated election law when he directed his personal lawyer to pay women, including a pornographic film actress, to buy their silence about alleged affairs with candidate, shortly before the 2016... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will support efforts to waive intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines in an effort to speed the end of the pandemic. United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced the government’s position in written statement, amid World Trade... Read More

Facebook’s Oversight Board has upheld the social media platform’s suspension of former President Donald Trump’s Facebook account, but in doing so, it said the company failed to impose the penalty properly. “It is not permissible for Facebook to keep a user off the platform for an... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Biden administration wants COVID-19 shots to go where the demand is, and will begin moving doses from states with lower demand to those where the interest in getting the vaccines is stronger -- all with an eye toward having 70% of Americans receiving... Read More

 Susan Wright, who is seeking the seat held since 2019 by her late husband, Republican Rep. Ron Wright, secured one of two slots in an as yet unscheduled runoff election. She was one of 23 candidates vying to replace her husband, who died in February after a... Read More

BATON ROUGE - When State Sen. Troy Carter won a special runoff election to represent Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District last Saturday, the moderate Democrat did more than give his party a little more breathing room in the narrowly controlled Congress. He also overcame a challenger backed... Read More

TALLAHASSEE -- The Republican-controlled Florida Legislature passed a sweeping election overhaul bill on Thursday that established a wide range of new voting restrictions in one of the nation’s key battleground states. The bill makes Florida the first major swing state won by former President Donald Trump... Read More

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The president of Harvard University is urging the White House to untangle barriers put in place by the Trump administration and make it easier for international students to engage in low residency or hybrid educational programs. In a letter to Tracy Renaud, acting... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Senate voted Wednesday to reinstate an Obama-era regulation intended to reduce methane gas leaks from oil and gas facilities. In September, former President Donald Trump rolled back the regulation, which required facility operators to regularly monitor their equipment and repair it or replace... Read More

Four Midwestern dairy groups who saw their revenues plummet as a result of the coronavirus pandemic have proposed a new pricing plan they hope will create greater long-term stability in fluid milk pricing and reduce the chance of similar income disruptions in the future. The proposal... Read More

WASHINGTON - People who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can safely go outside without a mask, though they should limit the number of people they congregate with, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers, announced the... Read More

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Former Rep. Joe Cunningham put an end to months of speculation Monday, formally announcing that he will challenge incumbent Republican Gov. Henry McMaster in this year’s gubernatorial race. Cunningham became a political sensation in the Palmetto State when he beat incredible odds and... Read More

Six states will see their congressional delegations grow in the next Congress, officials with the U.S. Census Bureau announced Monday. Dr. Ron S. Jarmin, the bureau’s acting director, said as of April 1, 2020, the number of people living in the United States was 331,449,281, a... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden entered the White House promising that by the time his first 100 days in office had elapsed, at least 100 million COVID-19 vaccines  would be administered. As of Sunday, four days shy of Biden’s 100-day landmark, 290,692,005 doses of the vaccine... Read More

OKLAHOMA CITY - The Oklahoma House and Senate unveiled new legislative district maps last week, revealing a plan in which no incumbents would be forced to run against each other. “These districts are based on unprecedented public input gathered through the most town halls ever held,... Read More

LANSING, Mich. - Michigan's first-ever, independent citizens redistricting commission got off to a rocky start earlier this month after its decision to hire an alleged Democratic activist as an advisor inspired a strong backlash from the state’s Republican party. The commission, which is responsible for redrawing... Read More

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been found guilty of all charges in the murder trial of George Floyd, whose death led to months of demonstrations against police brutality last summer. Chauvin was charged with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder; and second-degree manslaughter. The end... Read More

A dozen top megadonors — at least eight of whom are billionaires — have pumped a combined $3.4 billion dollars into federal elections since 2009, according to new research by Issue One, a nonpartisan group working to curtail the influence of money in politics. Based on... Read More

WASHINGTON - The White House on Tuesday formally threw its support behind the D.C. Statehood bill, saying it would provide the residents of the District with "long overdue full representation in Congress." "Establishing the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth as the 51st state will make our... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Democrats are expected to adopt a new rule Tuesday that will temporarily enable Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to speed votes on noncontroversial bills and bypass the partisan maneuvering that has repeatedly drawn out votes this Congress. In recent weeks, members of the House... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Tuesday that he was both “very disturbed” and “very disappointed” to learn of an effort by “a pretty significant number” of Republicans in the chamber to form a new caucus based “on Anglo Saxon values or principles.” The... Read More

WASHINGTON - Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who was injured while confronting rioters during the Jan. 6 insurrection, suffered a stroke and died from natural causes, the Washington, D.C., medical examiner's office ruled Monday. Investigators initially believed the 42-year-old officer was hit in the head with... Read More

WASHINGTON - A dozen members of Florida’s congressional delegation, Republicans and Democrats, are urging their colleagues to make Everglades restoration a priority as they consider infrastructure projects to fund this year. In a letter sent to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week, the members... Read More

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett joined hundreds of other capitalists and corporate titans in signing an open letter condeming “discrimnatory” legislation designed to curtail voting rights. The letter, which appeared under the headline “We Stand for Democracy,” appeared as a double-page, centerfold advertisement in Thursday’s editions of... Read More

The White House on Thursday unveiled sweeping sanctions on Russia in retaliation for cyberattacks, foreign influence operations and other behavior. The measures include the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats. The moves were announced Thursday morning in a lengthy statement from the Biden administration which for the... Read More

WASHINGTON - Citing ongoing concerns over the lingering coronavirus pandemic, the White House Correspondents' Association has decided to cancel its annual dinner this year. "We have worked through any number of scenarios over the last several months, but to put it plainly: while improving rapidly, the... Read More

WASHINGTON - Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the top Republican on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, announced Wednesday that he will not seek reelection next year after serving since 1997. "This term, my 13th, will be the last," Brady said during remarks before the Woodlands... Read More

WASHINGTON - U.S. military forces will leave Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Biden administration officials revealed Tuesday. President Joe Biden is expected to formally announce the plan, which is not conditions-based, unlike previous... Read More

CHARLESTON, S.C. - Charleston, S.C., is known for many things.  Southern charm.  Restaurants. Idyllic, Sun-soaked days. Being home to one of the nation’s busiest and most successful ports. But perhaps nothing brings more visitors to the city and the surrounding Lowcountry than the annual Spoleto Festival... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Federal Election Commission held this week that Pray.com, a free mobile application and website, won’t violate federal election laws if it invites members of Congress to produce five-minute statements on matters of faith. Pray.com, a for-profit corporation, asked for the advisory opinion from... Read More

WASHINGTON - The House Ethics Committee has opened an investigation into the recent flood of allegations against Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., including that he broke sex trafficking laws, shared graphic images of women with lawmakers on the House floor, and misused campaign funds. In a brief... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden unveiled a $1.5 trillion budget proposal for the 2022 fiscal year, that among other things, includes a 16% increase in non-defense spending. In his first budget proposal as president, Biden is asking Congress for $753 billion for the Defense Department and... Read More

Amazon appears to have enough votes to thwart an effort to unionize its warehouse in Bessemer, Ala.  By Friday afternoon, the company had crossed the threshold to secure a majority of votes, with 1,700 warehouse workers voting against the union and 700 voting in favor. A... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Biden will sign an executive order Friday that creates a bipartisan commission to study expanding the Supreme Court, as he promised throughout the 2020 election, the White House said. The commission will be chaired by former White House counsel Bob Bauer and Cristina... Read More

St. LOUIS - Tishaura Jones, running on a promise to reform and revitalize her city, has become the first Black woman elected mayor of St. Louis. As previously reported by The Well News, this year’s mayoral race featured a new, nonpartisan voting system that was approved... Read More

WASHINGTON - Human rights organizations around the world cheered President Joe Biden’s decision to cancel punitive sanctions against the International Criminal Court, but they also agree serious obstacles remain to achieving justice for some of the world’s worst crimes. The court was created in 2002 to... Read More

WASHINGTON - Rep. Alcee Hastings, the dean of Florida’s congressional delegation, died Tuesday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 84. Hastings announced his cancer diagnosis just over two years ago, but he continued to press on with his work until near the very end... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday sided with Google in a long running copyright dispute over the software used in Android, the mobile operating system. The court decision was 6-2, as Justice Amy Coney Barrett had not yet been confirmed by the Senate when the... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a case over former President Donald Trump’s efforts to prevent critics from posting to his personal Twitter page, but Justice Clarence Thomas said a high court reckoning with the power of social media is on the horizon. “As... Read More

WASHINGTON - A Capitol Police officer was killed and a second officer was injured after being rammed by a vehicle near the heavily guarded northern entrance to the Capitol complexon Friday. The suspect, identified as Noah Green, 25, of Indiana, was shot and killed at the... Read More

RALEIGH, N.C. - Democrats are used to long odds in the Republican controlled legislature, and perhaps that explains why 26 of them have decided to advance a plan to put control of the state’s upcoming redistricting effort in the hands of an independent commission. House Bill... Read More

WASHINGTON - A unanimous Supreme Court sided with Facebook on Thursday, ruling that a notification system the social media giant employs to alert users to suspicious logins does not run afoul of a federal law aimed at curbing robocalls and automated text messages. The case revolved... Read More

WASHINGTON - A cross-border battle over water rights extending back some 27 years came to an abrupt end on Thursday when the Supreme Court ruled Florida failed to show its once-thriving oyster region was destroyed by Georgia’s unrelenting thirst for water. Hostilities over what constitutes the... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a decision by the Federal Communication Commission to relax media ownership rules. The unanimous ruling, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, is a major win for broadcasters. The petitioners in the case, the Prometheus Radio Project, were seeking a... Read More

Democrat Rita Hart threw in the towel Wednesday afternoon, giving up her bid to represent Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, and effectively ending the 2020 election cycle. Hart, who had been challenging the outcome of the race before the Committee on House Administration, said in a brief... Read More

WASHINGTON — A majority of justices, representing both sides of the High Court’s ideological divide, appeared ready during oral arguments on Wednesday to allow college athletes to be compensated monetarily for their efforts. In doing so, they also signaled they didn’t buy the NCAA’s argument that... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Federal Election Commission on Wednesday announced the filing schedules for upcoming special elections to fill the seats of former Reps. Debra Haaland and Marcia Fudge, both of whom have taken positions in the Biden administration. Prior to becoming the nation’s new Interior secretary,... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden’s first slate of judicial nominees is a marked departure from the mostly white and mostly male picks of the Trump years. In all, Biden named 11 individuals he’d like to see on the bench, 10 to serve either as Federal  Circuit... Read More

Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor who served two stints in Congress and briefly ran against Donald Trump for the Republican nomination for president, is joining a lobbying firm. Shumaker Advisors, which announced Sanford’s hiring on Tuesday, said he is joining the firm as an... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Federal Election Commission granted a request from Republican lawmakers that they be allowed to use campaign funds to pay for personal security for themselves and their families. The National Republican Senate Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee requested an advisory opinion from... Read More

A Georgia lawmaker was arrested and forcibly removed from the state Capitol Thursday night as Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a sweeping overhaul of state election laws, including adding new restrictions on voting by mail. Georgia State Rep. Park Cannon, a Democrat, was arrested as she... Read More

Dominion Voting Systems on Friday filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, arguing the cable news company sought to boost faltering ratings by falsely claiming the voting machine company had rigged the 2020 election.  The company, which is headquartered in Toronto, Canada and Denver,... Read More

WASHINGTON - The National Weather Service has significantly upgraded its longstanding forecast model to better predict extreme weather events such as hurricanes, blizzards and downpours, as well as day-to-day weather across the U.S. While it is easy to get bogged down in the jargon of the... Read More

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider whether the Obama Administration overstepped its authority in designating nearly 5,000 undersea acres off the Massachusetts coast a national monument, but Chief Justice John Roberts suggested it may be high time for the court to... Read More

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider reinstating the death sentence for Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  As is their custom, the justices did not explain their rationale for taking up the appeal filed by the Trump administration, but the decision presents... Read More

WASHINGTON - Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., a centrist known for actively seeking to work across the aisle with his Democratic colleagues, announced he will not seek reelection next year after becoming the subject of a misconduct claim. Reed, who represents a district in western New York,... Read More

Saturday was special election day in Louisiana, where 15 candidates were in the running to represent the state's 5th Congressional District and 12 were vying for a seat in Congress in the state's 2nd Congressional District. The election in Louisiana's 5th Congressional District was called to... Read More

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Election systems in the Deep South in 2020 suffered from numerous shortcomings, making it harder for many voters -- particularly those from communities of color -- to safely cast their ballots, states a new analysis by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The report... Read More

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Friday nominated former Sen. Bill Nelson to be the next NASA administrator. The Florida Democrat served three terms in the Senate before losing his reelection bid to Republican Rick Scott in 2018. In 1986, while still a member of the... Read More

WASHINGTON – The House voted 246-175 Friday to waive mandatory, across-the-board budget cuts under the statutory PAYGO law when it comes implementing the $1.9 trillion COVID relief package signed into law last week. Budget Hawks have long pointed to PAYGO, which stands for “pay as you... Read More

"The Comey Rule" executive producers Billy Ray and Shane Salerno are developing an as-yet untitled limited run series on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Ray is slated to write and direct the seres, with Salerno serving as an executive producer. Josh McLaughlin, who... Read More

WASHINGTON — The House voted Thursday to open a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, migrant farm workers and other immigrants who've fled war or natural disasters in their home countries. On a near party-line 228-197 vote, lawmakers approved one bill offering legal status to around 2... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Republicans passed a resolution during their weekly conference meeting on Wednesday in support of restoring earmarks. The 102-84 vote comes as Democrats continue to prepare to revive the practice. Earmarks – funding for specific projects usually inserted into broad spending bills – were... Read More

For many people, the image of climate change is a coastal event. It’s the more frequent and larger hurricanes being followed by The Weather Channel. And whole tropical nations disappearing into the sea. But what of the plains, the vast expanse and source of so much... Read More

WASHINGTON – “It’s not supposed to be that way …” the chorus of an old Willie Nelson song begins. It is a melody a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill may be finding all too familiar. Five months removed from the party’s losing the White House,... Read More

WASHINGTON - House and Senate Democrats assembled at the U.S. Capitol Thursday to unveil a new $94 billion proposal to make broadband internet more accessible and affordable nationwide, striking a blow at the digital inequalities that have become all-too-apparent during the pandemic. The push for affordable... Read More

WASHINGTON - The House voted 220-211 on Wednesday to approve the Senate's revised version of President Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, sending the bill to the president's desk to be signed. The passage of Biden's "American Rescue Plan" is the first legislative victory of his... Read More

WASHINGTON – Is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell working behind the scenes with allies in the Kentucky legislature to assure he’s replaced by a Republican should he decide to retire?  That’s been the speculation since the filling of Senate Bill 228 on Feb. 10, during the... Read More

WASHINGTON – A task force examining security shortcomings on Capitol Hill after the Jan. 6 riot that left five people dead has concluded a myriad of fundamental changes are needed to ensure such an event never happens again. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré and... Read More

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a bid by former President Donald Trump to nullify his election loss in Wisconsin, rejecting the last remaining appeal seeking to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. In an unsigned order, the justices declined to take up Trump’s lawsuit... Read More

WASHINGTON – Federal agencies must take steps to expand access to voter registration and give their employees time off to vote or volunteer as nonpartisan poll workers, a new executive order from the White House says. President Joe Biden signed the order Sunday as part of... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Senate on Saturday afternoon narrowly passed the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package with a 50-49 vote down party lines, moving the rescue plan one step closer to President Joe Biden’s desk. The package, settled on after hours and hours of delays and Senate... Read More

WASHINGTON – A new study suggests the deeper a member of Congress’s local roots in their congressional district, the less likely they are to attract a primary challenger, and if they do, the more likely they are to win by a significant margin.  The study, published... Read More

WASHINGTON – The White House on Thursday agreed to suspend millions of dollars worth of tariffs on U.K. exports, including Scotch whisky, as part of an effort to resolve a long-running trans-Atlantic trade dispute over aerospace subsidies. In a joint statement, the White House and London... Read More

WASHINGTON – Justice Amy Coney Barrett released the first majority opinion of her Supreme Court career Thursday, ruling against an environmental group that had sought access to government records. The decision prompted a dissent from two liberal justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, which was something... Read More

AUSTIN, Texas – It was a dire situation that Lloyd Armbrust can almost laugh about now.  A global pandemic had swept across the United States, a baby was on the way, and Armbrust, hard as he tried, could not find a supply of a critical element... Read More

WASHINGTON – All six conservative justices on the Supreme Court appeared inclined Tuesday to support voting restrictions imposed in Arizona that critics say discriminate against racial minorities.  The case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (Consolidated), is one of the most watched of the current Supreme Court... Read More

ST. LOUIS – The city of St. Louis, Mo., will hold its mayoral primary Tuesday with a new electoral process approved by voters in November.  Under the so-called “approval voting” regime, candidates of all political affiliations will appear on the ballot without partisan labels. The measure... Read More

WASHINGTON – The House passed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package in the wee hours of Saturday morning, helping President Joe Biden clear the first hurdle in passing an economic stimulus bill that includes $1,400 in direct payments to U.S. households, an extension of federal supplements... Read More

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday imposed sanctions on Saudi Arabia’s former deputy head of Intelligence and the nation’s “Rapid Intervention Force” for their roles in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.  The move came just hours after the Biden Administration released... Read More

BOISE, Idaho – To the outsider, it seems like a movie that has a bizarre twist just as the heroine should be taking her victory lap.  Lauren Stein McLean, an entrepreneur who had served on Boise, Idaho’s city council for nearly a decade, and served as... Read More

WASHINGTON - Two former chairs of the Federal Elections Commission -- one a Democrat, the other a Republican -- have thrown their support behind the election reform provisions of the For the People Act. In a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate, Trevor... Read More

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an effort by former President Donald Trump to shield his income tax records from N.Y. prosecutors. The court’s action is the apparent culmination of a lengthy legal battle that had already reached the high court once before.... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden told reporters waiting for him at Joint Base Andrews Friday evening he has no intention of withdrawing the nomination of Neera Tanden to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget. A short time later, in a statement from the... Read More

Simon Winchester has spent a lot of time thinking about land. As a student in his native Great Britain, he read geology at St. Catherine's College and, having become involved in the University Exploration Club, soon found himself a member of a six-man sledding expedition onto... Read More

DENVER, Colo. - Sens. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., on Wednesday reintroduced their Medicare-X Choice Act by urging their colleagues to embrace it as a way of expanding both the Affordable Care Act and Medicare.  During a late morning call with reporters, the senators... Read More

WASHINGTON - There's no question that the once-every-10-year process of redistricting is off to a slow start.  Though the U.S. Census Bureau ended its collection of data for the 2020 census on Oct. 15, 2020, it missed the December statutory deadline for the delivery of apportionment... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the next COVID-19 relief bill is on pace to reach the House floor the week of Feb. 22. "We hope to have this all done by the end of February, certainly on the president's desk in time... Read More

WASHINGTON - The White House on Wednesday informed the Supreme Court it believes the Affordable Care Act should be upheld, reversing the position taken by the Trump Administration. The justices heard oral arguments in November in multiple cases involving a group of Republican-led states attempting to... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he is imposing sanctions on military leaders in Myanmar who directed the coup that deposed and detained its elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint, and several other individuals. Speaking to reporters in the South Court... Read More

WASHINGTON - The House Ways and Means Committee is meeting Wednesday to mark up sweeping COVID-19 legislation that the panel's chairman, Rep. Richard Neal, of Massachusetts, says will enable Americans from all walks of life to better confront the lingering health and economic challenges posed by... Read More

Former Rep. Anthony Brindisi, D-N.Y., a star among moderates in his party, has conceded to Republican challenger and former Rep. Claudia Tenney, at long last ending the 2020 election cycle. Brindisi had been expected to appeal a New York State Supreme Court order that all eight... Read More

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Less than two months after the fatal shooting of an unarmed Black man by a Columbus police officer, the City Council last week passed a comprehensive police reform policy it hopes will reduce the number of police-involved shootings in the city and lessen... Read More

WASHINGTON - Senate Leaders Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced Monday they have reached a deal on the framework for former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial, which will start today. “For the information of the Senate, the Republican leader and I, in consultation with... Read More

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Justice Department on Monday withdrew its 2018 legal challenge to the state of California’s net neutrality law after the Trump administration had asked a court to block it. Under then-President Donald Trump, the Justice Department argued that federal law preempts the state... Read More

WASHINGTON - A new lobbying firm in town hopes to seize what its principals call a "unique opportunity" to advance moderate-driven, bipartisan policy solutions on Capitol Hill and beyond. Called the SMART Policy Group, the firm brings together more than 75 years of combined government relations... Read More

Republican Claudia Tenney will be certified as the winner of New York’s 22nd Congressional District race, a judge ruled Friday, ending a three-month ordeal in the only undecided House race in the country. Despite the ruling, the legal saga is not over yet. Rep. Anthony Brindisi,... Read More

RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced Friday that he wants Virginia school systems to begin offering options for in-person learning by March 15. “Children learn better in classrooms. And that’s where they need to be,” he said during a news conference, adding that he... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Trump will not voluntarily testify at his impeachment trial next week, rejecting a request for his presence from House impeachment managers. In a letter e-mailed to the former president Thursday morning, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said Trump's legal brief answering that the House... Read More

WASHINGTON - Even a month removed from the event, Rep. Andy Kim, D-N.J., still talks of the foreboding surrounding Jan. 6 with a sense of urgency. "You knew something was going to happen," he told The Well News recently. "I told my staff not to show... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., announced Wednesday evening that he will take no disciplinary actions against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.,  even as House Democrats prepared for a Thursday vote to strip her of her committee assignments. In a statement, McCarthy condemned Greene... Read More

WASHINGTON - Donald Trump endangered the life of every member of Congress on Jan. 6 when he "summoned a mob to Washington, exhorted them to a frenzy, and aimed them like a loaded cannon" at the U.S. Capitol, House Democrats said in a brief filed Tuesday... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer filed a joint budget resolution Monday, paving the way to enabling Democrats to pass President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID Relief Package without a single Republican vote. The move by Pelosi and Schumer came... Read More

One could almost hear incumbent Rep. Anthony Brindisi sigh as he typed a tweet early last week. "Unfortunately, this is a long process," he said of the legal battle and ongoing ballot count that will ultimately decide the outcome of one of the 2020 election cycle's... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Republican fundraising arms for the House and Senate have asked the Federal Elections Commission whether members of Congress can use campaign funds to pay for personal security personnel for themselves or their families. In a letter dated Jan. 26 but released by the... Read More

WASHINGTON - Investigators now believe that pipe bombs left at the offices of the Republican and Democratic national committees earlier this month were actually placed at both locations the night before thousands of Pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol. According to a tweet posted by the... Read More

A federal judge in Texas has temporarily blocked a Biden administration plan to impose a 100-day moratorium on deportations. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, a Trump appointee, granted a temporary restraining order sought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The court order will... Read More

WASHINGTON - Reps. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., and David McKinley, R-W.Va., are urging the Department of Health and Human Services to place community pharmacists at the lead in the nation's COVID-19 vaccines distribution strategy. In a letter to HHS Acting Secretary Norris Cochran, Spanberger and McKinley pointed... Read More

WASHINGTON - A bipartisan effort in the Senate Tuesday narrowly killed a Republican push to dismiss the impeachment charge against former President Donald Trump as unconstitutional. The staunch opposition of all but a handful of Republicans in the 55-45 vote, underscored Trump's apparent continued strength in... Read More

WASHINGTON - It's the buzzword of everyone wanting to bypass GOP resistance and pass President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, and it could upend decades of precedent when it comes to the federal budget process. The word is "reconciliation," and according to the Congressional... Read More

WASHINGTON - Antony Blinken, confirmed as America's top diplomat by the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, now faces a myriad of problems both within the agency he will now lead and abroad. Confirmed by a 78-22 vote Tuesday afternoon, Blinken is now the nation's 71st secretary of... Read More

WASHINGTON - Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell dropped his demand that Democrats maintain the Senate filibuster — ending an early stalemate in the Senate that prevented party leaders from negotiating a power-sharing agreement. McConnell announced Monday night that he was ready to proceed with power-sharing talks... Read More

WASHINGTON - Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who has been trying to walk a political tightrope since the House impeached former President Donald Trump last week, revealed Monday morning that he will not seek re-election to a third term in 2022. In a statement released ahead of... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a pair of emoluments lawsuits against former President Donald Trump, ruling the cases are moot now that he's left office. The lawsuits were filed by the attorneys general for Maryland and Washington, D.C., and the government watchdog, Citizens... Read More

WASHINGTON - Reps. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., and John Katko, R-N.Y., are urging their House colleagues to support bipartisan legislation aimed at protecting the U.S. from foreign-based disinformation campaigns. According to the lawmakers, foreign governments took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election to carry... Read More

WASHINGTON - New Census Bureau estimates show 16 states saw population declines last year as the nation experienced its slowest overall growth since the Great Depression, a new Pew Charitable Trusts analysis shows. According to the analysis, which first appeared on the Trusts' Stateline Daily, the... Read More

WASHINGTON - More than 136 million ballots passed through U.S. Postal Service facilities and were delivered to state election officials during the 2020 election cycle, a new report from the USPS says. The data includes mail-in ballots sent in by voters in the Georgia Senate Run-off... Read More

WASHINGTON - Rita Hart is vowing to continue her fight to have every vote counted in the nail-biter of a race in Iowa's 2nd District in which she trails by just six votes. On Thursday, Hart's opponent, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, asked Congress to dismiss a... Read More

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Capitol Police on Friday pushed back at multiple media reports that the agency had banished National Guard troops to nearby parking garages following the Biden inauguration. According to Politico, thousands of National Guardsmen were allowed back into the Capitol Thursday night, hours... Read More

WASHINGTON - The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have increased the reward for information that could help identify a suspect who placed pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican National Committee offices Jan. 6. The reward has been increased... Read More

WASHINGTON — The number of unemployment claims filed last week fell to 900,000, a number that remains historically high and suggests the economy still has a long way to go before it fully recovers from the coronavirus pandemic. The Labor Department also reported that 5.1 million... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden has ended construction of the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, calling former President Donald Trump's signature infrastructure project "a waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security." On Wednesday evening, Biden signed an executive... Read More

WASHINGTON - Restaurants in the District of Columbia will be able to resume indoor dining at 25% capacity beginning early Friday morning, the chief of staff for Mayor Muriel Bowser said. In a post to his Twitter account, John Falcicchio, who serves as both chief of... Read More

WASHINGTON - Just hours after the President Joe Biden was sworn into office, White House officials announced the acting agency leadership that will assist the new administration in the next phase of the transition of government. These individuals, nearly all of whom are career civil servants,... Read More

WASHINGTON - The National Archives and Records Administration launched the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library website on Wednesday in an effort to provide the public with information on archived White House websites and social media accounts, as well as information on access to the records of... Read More

WASHINGTON - The swearing in of President Joe Biden went off without incident Wednesday, despite fears that false claims of election fraud by President Donald Trump and others would cause armed demonstrations to erupt across the country. In the end, massive deployments of National Guard troops... Read More

WASHINGTON - Joe Biden Jr. became the nation's 46th president shortly before noon on Wednesday, completing a transfer of power fraught with false claims of election fraud and a riot by a mob of his predecessor's supporters who laid siege to the U.S. Capitol exactly two... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Twelve U.S. Army National Guard members have reportedly been removed from the force providing presidential inauguration security after they were found to have ties with right-wing militia groups or posted extremist views online. Officials have yet to provide any details on the removals, which... Read More

WASHINGTON — Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., opened the Senate on Tuesday with a sharp rebuke for President Donald Trump, saying the outgoing chief executive "fed lies" to protestors who carried out a deadly siege at the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6. McConnell's remarks, his strongest... Read More

Pennsylvania voters who received a postcard encouraging them to vote by mail in the state's June 2 primary were more likely to request a ballot and successfully cast it than voters who did not receive the reminder, a University of Pennsylvania study found. Pennsylvania was one... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Trump administration "rested critically on a mistaken reading of the Clean Air Act" when it sought to roll back Obama-era greenhouse gas emission standards for existing power plants, the D.C. Circuit ruled Tuesday. The ruling on President Donald Trump's last day in office,... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Federal Elections Commission has ruled that U.S. citizens living abroad can purchase political advertisements pertaining to elections in the United States. The agency handed down the ruling in the case of Jean-Marc Bertrand, who seeks to encourage voters to support third party presidential... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump is planning to depart Washington, D.C., next Wednesday morning, rejecting a last-minute push by White House advisers for him to host incoming President Joe Biden before the inauguration. Trump had previously announced he did not plan to attend Biden's inauguration, but... Read More

WASHINGTON - Russel Honoré, a retired lieutenant general best known for commanding the military relief effort in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, will lead an in-depth review of security at the U.S. Capitol Complex, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Friday. “Last week, we suffered a devastating... Read More

WILMINGTON, Del. - President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday evening named Jaime Harrison, a former South Carolina Democratic Party chair and 2020 Senate candidate, as his pick for the next chair of the Democratic National Committee. Harrison, a one time aide and protégé of House Democratic Whip... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History has begun collecting items left behind by the protestors who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The riot, stoked by President Donald Trump, left five people dead. It was the first time since the War... Read More

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Capitol Police have significantly ratcheted up security throughout the Capitol Complex ahead of next week's presidential inaugural ceremony. Measures include installing unscalable eight-foot tall fencing and the closing of several area roads. The department is also coordinating protection and response capabilities with... Read More

WILMINGTON, Del. - President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday night unveiled a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan intended to aid struggling Americans and businesses, bolster state and local governments, and dramatically ramp up the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine with a goal of reaching 100 million doses... Read More

WASHINGTON - The boxes were recognizable to anyone who has spent a little time on Capitol Hill. Even from a distance, the white circle and black star emblazoned on the box inspired mouth-watering visions of sauce and melted cheese to those in the know. And to... Read More

WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives on Wednesday afternoon impeached President Donald Trump for his role in last week's deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. With the vote, Trump, who was last impeached by the House 13 months ago, becomes the first president in history to... Read More

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court lifted a nationwide injunction Tuesday that had prevented the federal government from enforcing a rule that required women to see a health care professional in person before she'd be given access to a so-called abortion pill. The Food and Drug... Read More

Rep. John Katko, of New York, and House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney, of Wyoming on Tuesday evening became the first House Republicans to announce they will vote to impeach President Donald Trump for inciting a riot last week at the U.S. Capitol. Katko, a former federal... Read More

WASHINGTON - Katherine Tai, President-elect Joe Biden's designee to be the next U.S. trade representative, told a virtual gathering of trade professionals Tuesday that if the U.S. is going to successfully compete against China on the world stage, it's going to take a renewed sense of... Read More

WASHINGTON - Reps. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., and Anthony Brown, D-Md., are tired of colleagues who refuse to wear a face mask to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Now, they are urging the House to impose a $1,000 a day fine on any member of Congress... Read More

WASHINGTON - The top federal prosecutor in Washington said Tuesday investigators are aware of multiple reports of reporters being assaulted and otherwise abused during last Wednesday's siege at the U.S. Capitol and vowed to bring the guilty parties to justice. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker said... Read More

WASHINGTON - Eight Members have been appointed to the House Rules Committee for the 117th Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced. The Committee on Rules is among the oldest standing committees in the House, having been first formally constituted on April 2, 1789. An appointment to... Read More

WASHINGTON - The FBI has issued an internal bulletin warning of plans for armed protests by extremists in all 50 state capitals and in Washington in the days leading up to President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration. The bulletin, first reported by ABC News, and later confirmed by... Read More

WASHINGTON - The National Guard said Monday it will increase troops in DC to at least 10,000 by Saturday to boost security ahead of the upcoming inauguration, and an additional 5,0000 could be requested from other states. The announcement came amid growing signs Washington, D.C. is... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Democrats introduced a single article of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Monday, charging him with inciting thousands of his supporters to carry out a violent attack on the Capitol as lawmakers were certifying Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. As expected, the House... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Democrats will try to force Vice President Mike Pence's hand Monday to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove President Donald Trump from office, giving him a deadline of 24 hours to do so. If Pence doesn't act by Tuesday, the House will immediately... Read More

Twitter permanently banned President Donald Trump's account Friday night, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence.” Twitter initially suspended Trump's account for 12 hours after he posted a video that repeated false claims about election fraud and praised the rioters who stormed the Capitol. But... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Democrats are prepared to move to impeach President Donald Trump over his role in inciting a violent mob to attack the U.S. Capitol as early as Monday, according to staffers privy to talks Friday on Capitol Hill. “Today, the House Democratic Caucus had... Read More

WASHINGTON - The FBI's Washington field office is offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for placing suspected pipe bombs outside the RNC and DNC headquarters Wednesday afternoon. According to the FBI, multiple law enforcement... Read More

WASHINGTON - Flags will fly at half-staff at the U.S. Capitol to remember the officer who died after he was injured during this week's riot by Trump supporters, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Friday. Officer Brian D. Sicknick died at about 9:30 p.m. Thursday night, a... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump took to his favorite medium -- Twitter -- Friday morning to announce he won’t attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20. “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” Trump... Read More

WASHINGTON - U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund said Thursday evening that he will resign later this month after a riotous mob of President Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol and caused havoc once inside. Word of Sund’s resignation coincided with reports of the death of a... Read More

WASHINGTON - Vice President Mike Pence is opposed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Donald, with just days to go before the inauguration of Joe Biden as the next president, according to multiple reports Business Insider was the first publication to report on Pence's opposition... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office after she says he “incited an armed insurrection against America.” Speaking to reporters during her weekly press conference, Pelosi went on to... Read More

WASHINGTON - Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao on Thursday became the first Cabinet member to resign in the wake of yesterday's siege at the U.S. Capitol. In a letter posted to Twitter, Chao, who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said, "Yesterday, our country... Read More

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Capitol is once again secure, though remnants of the mayhem that transpired Wednesday afternoon and evening remain. Much of the trash left behind by marauding protestors had been swept into piles by Thursday morning, though shards of glass still lay at the... Read More

WASHINGTON - U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven A. Sund said Wednesday's attack on the U.S. Capitol was unlike anything he's experienced in his 30 years in law enforcement in Washington D.C. In a written statement, Sund went on to defend his department in the face of... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi nominated several new and returning Members to key committee posts Tuesday night. The assignments include seats on the House Committees on Armed Services, Education and Labor, Financial Services, Foreign Affairs, Homeland Security, Oversight and Reform, Science, Space and Technology, Small... Read More

HARRISBURG, Pa. - The opening of a new session of the Pennsylvania Senate is usually a fairly staid affair, marked by ceremony and at least a bit of bipartisanship. However, that wasn't the case Tuesday when the Republican majority refused to seat a Democratic Senator whose... Read More

WASHINGTON - When the House on Monday adopted its rules package for the 117th Congress with a 217-206, party-line vote, Democratic House leaders knew there would be lingering controversies. As they individually filed out of the Capitol, Republican members complained that changes imposed by the Democrats... Read More

WASHINGTON -  Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. announced Wednesday that he will object to certifying the Electoral College vote during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, becoming the first GOP senator to back the effort by House conservatives. Hawley's decision, announced via Twitter, virtually ensures... Read More

Louisiana Congressman-elect Luke Letlow, died Tuesday at Ochsner LSU Health in Shreveport, La., due to complications of COVID-19, just weeks after successfully competing in a runoff election for his seat. The 41-year-old Republican is survived by his wife, Julia Barnhill Letlow, and two young children —... Read More

WASHINGTON - The 117th Congress will convene at noon on Sunday for an opening session unlike any other thanks to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Following a Quorum Call, the House will begin the election of Speaker of the House, with members voting in alphabetical groups. After... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Two staffers in the office of every House and Senate member on Capitol Hill are now eligible to receive the coronavirus vaccine, the Office of the Attending Physician announced Monday night. In addition, attending physician Brian Monahan said the vaccine will be made available... Read More

WASHINGTON - The more-than-century-old tradition of feting the new president with a post-inauguration luncheon is the latest casualty of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, which has hosted the lunch, with limited exception, since 1953, said Tuesday that given uncertainties about... Read More

WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., blocked a bid by Democrats on Tuesday to hold a stand-alone vote on increasing the amount of recently agreed upon stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000. McConnell did not specifically explain why he objected to the proposed increase... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump made good on a threat Wednesday, vetoing the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act. Congress passed the fiscal year 2021 defense spending plan earlier this month with more than the two-thirds majority needed in both chambers to override a veto. If... Read More

WASHINGTON - The District of Columbia will ban indoor dining as of Wednesday night and is tightening other restrictions to tamp down on a surge of coronavirus cases. According to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, the tightened measures are needed due to an anticipated jump in cases... Read More

WASHINGTON - It began as a story no new parent wants to tell. "I always say that the day my daughter was born was the happiest day of my life, because that was the only day I didn't worry about her," the woman on the other... Read More

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday appointed his Secretary of State Alex Padilla to fill the Senate seat being vacated by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. The child of Mexican immigrants, Padilla will be California’s first Latino senator, giving a new level of representation... Read More

WASHINGTON - While most eyes on Capitol Hill this past week have been on developments related to the coronavirus relief package and the omnibus federal spending bill, there have been a number of other things going on. Among these were House Democrats announcing their nominated appointments... Read More

Continued delays in the review of ballots cast two months ago in one New York county could mean the state's 22nd Congressional District will go without representation at the start of 117th Congress in January. During a State Supreme Court hearing on Monday, officials from Oneida... Read More

WASHINGTON - Democrat Rita Hart filed a complaint with the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, challenging the election results in Iowa's 2nd Congressional District. Hart, who trails her Republican opponent, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, by only six votes, has gained votes every time a review of the... Read More

WASHINGTON - A select, bipartisan committee tasked during the 116th Congress with finding ways to make the body more effective, efficient and transparent, got a new lease on life Monday, ensuring its work will last at least two more years. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced not... Read More

WASHINGTON — House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., released the text of a $2.3 trillion omnibus spending bill Monday afternoon consisting of all 12 fiscal year 2021 appropriations bills, $900 billion coronavirus relief, and other authorizations. In addition to the COVID relief package, it includes... Read More

WASHINGTON - A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that has represented Virginia in the U.S. Capitol for 111 years was removed from the building Monday morning. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam had requested the removal and a state commission decided that Lee was not a... Read More

WASHINGTON - The House and Senate on Friday evening passed a two-day, stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown and provide negotiators additional time to resolve differences over a longer-term appropriations bill and COVID-19 relief package. The House passed the continuing resolution by a vote... Read More

WASHINGTON - Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., is urging House leadership to schedule a classified, bipartisan briefing for members of Congress regarding the recently revealed cyberattack on the networks of the federal government and major American companies. The attack is widely believed to have been the work... Read More

WASHINGTON - While there are few things in life that can easily be covered by sweeping generalities, one thing that can be said with some certainty is that thanks to the stubbornness of the coronavirus pandemic, a lot of people who normally vacate the D.C. metro... Read More

WASHINGTON - High-ranking government officials, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Vice President Mike Pence, began receiving their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine Friday, part of an effort to ensure the continuity of the government and reassure hesitant members of the public about the... Read More

WASHINGTON - The interior of the Washington Monument will be temporarily closed to visitors over exposure concerns from an earlier visit by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who tested positive this week for the coronavirus. The National Park Service initially said the closure, which began Friday, was... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a challenge to President Donald Trump's plan to exclude people living in the country illegally from the population count as premature. Trump's insistence that illegal immigrants be excluded from the count could profoundly impact the number of seats... Read More

WILMINGTON, Del. - President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Michael Regan, the top environmental regulator in North Carolina, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, according to multiple reports. If confirmed, Regan would be the first Black man to head the agency. Since becoming environmental chief in North... Read More

WASHINGTON - President-elect Joe Biden has asked Democratic Rep. Deb Haaland, of New Mexico, to serve as the first Native American interior secretary, a historic pick for a department that oversees the country’s vast natural resources and much of the government’s dealings with nearly 600 federally... Read More

WASHINGTON - The joint congressional committee overseeing preparations for the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden announced Wednesday that the event will be an almost semi-private affair with no tickets distributed to the general public. Traditionally, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies would distribute 200,000 tickets... Read More

WILMINGTON, Del. - President-elect Joe Biden has selected Pete Buttigieg, a former rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, to be the next Secretary of Transportation. Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who has never held federal office, and if confirmed, would be the first... Read More

WASHINGTON - President-elect Joe Biden's Inaugural Committee on Tuesday offered a first glimpse at detailed plans for a scaled down inauguration ceremony on Jan. 20 due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Its main advice to Americans who want to be a part of this historic moment:... Read More

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Kansas that sought to revive a law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared the law unconstitutional in April, prompting the appeal by Kansas Secretary of... Read More

WASHINGTON - A bicameral and bipartisan group of lawmakers unveiled a two-part version of their previously announced $908 billion coronavirus package, hoping the change in structure will help move it through Congress and on to the president by the end of the week. Progress was the... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Monday evening that the Select Committee on the Climate will return to work in the 117th Congress. Formed at the start of the outgoing 116th Congress, the committee effectively met its original charge this past summer, when it published... Read More

If anything positive can be said to have come out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it's that the months-long viral siege has shed new light on the need for innovation and creativity when it comes to business and workforce development. At least that was the consensus last... Read More

As America prepared for the first coronavirus vaccines to be given Monday morning, county officials were reminded of their vital role in ensuring the vaccine roll out is a success. “One thing you need to be doing now is engaging your communities in sustainable, equitable and... Read More

WASHINGTON - Under intense pressure from the White House, the Food and Drug Administration dramatically moved up its timeline, issuing an emergency authorization for Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine on Friday. The agency had initially planned to finalize its authorization on Saturday, but that pace infuriated President Donald... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Senate, as expected, overwhelming endorsed a $740 billion national defense policy bill Friday, sending the measure on to the White House where president Trump threatened to veto it. Ignoring those threats, the Senate voted 84-12 in favor of the National Defense Authorization Act,... Read More

WASHINGTON - The NewDEAL Forum's Renewing America Task Force on Friday released a list of recommendations intended to help state and local governments maximize COVID-relief aid for small businesses. Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in February, more than 97,900 small businesses across the nation... Read More

NEW YORK - Time magazine has named Joe Biden and Kamala Harris 2020's Person of the Year. The two made history on November 7 when they beat Donald Trump after an election marked by a surging public health crisis and an incumbent president who questioned the... Read More

WASHINGTON – Future Forum, a caucus of younger House Democrats, has elected its new leaders for the 117th Congress. The mission of the caucus, which was founded in 2015, is to address issues important to millennial and Generation Z Americans, such as college affordability, entrepreneurship, job... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer predicted Wednesday that the new rules package for the upcoming 117th Congress will be "pretty much" in line "with what has been," but he said Democrats are continuing to look at the fate of a key legislative weapon afforded... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America on Thursday cheered Senate passage of the Deborah Sampson Act, which directs the Department of Veterans Affairs to carry out the three-year pilot program to assess how best to provide assistance to women veterans. The pilot program,... Read More

WASHINGTON - Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, will be joining Georgetown Law beginning in January. The nation's very first "Second Gentleman"  and an entertainment lawyer by profession, will serve as a distinguished visitor from practice and teach a two-credit course in the spring... Read More

WASHINGTON - President-elect Joe Biden has asked Susan Rice to be the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, signaling the importance of domestic policy in his early agenda. The job is also something of a career change for Rice, a longtime Democratic foreign policy... Read More

WASHINGTON - The House has passed a week-long stopgap bill to keep the government open through Dec. 18 so lawmakers can continue to negotiate both a longer-term spending package and coronavirus relief. The bill passed 343-67. If the stopgap measure hadn't been adopted, funding for the... Read More

WASHINGTON - A bipartisan group of lawmakers from both the House and Senate circulated details of the $908 billion coronavirus relief proposal, though significant hurdles to its passage remain. Among them is the fate of proposed aid to state and local governments, as well as liability... Read More

RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia’s former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe made a widely anticipated move official Wednesday, announcing he's once again running to lead the Commonwealth. The governor's race in Virginia is expected to be one the marquee political contests of 2021, and will likely be interpreted... Read More

The Supreme Court on Tuesday evening rejected a last-gasp bid by the GOP to reverse Pennsylvania's certification of President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the electoral battleground. As is their custom, the justices did not explain the rationale for their decision. Instead, they offered just a single... Read More

Luke Letlow bested a field of fellow Republicans in the runoff election Saturday to represent Louisiana's 5th Congressional District representing the central and northeastern parts of the state. Letlow, who was chief of staff for the retiring incumbent, Rep. Ralph Abraham, defeated state Rep. Lance Harris... Read More

WASHINGTON - In what is probably one of her last acts as a member of Congress, retiring House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., introduced a continuing resolution to extend federal government funding through Dec. 18. Widely expected, the move is intended to keep the government... Read More

A New York State Supreme Court judge ordered election officials Tuesday to recount some of the approximately 60,000 absentee ballots cast in the still undecided House race between incumbent Rep. Anthony Brindisi and his Republican challenger, Claudia Tenney. The ruling by Justice Scott DelConte is a... Read More

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the presidential election results in four key battleground states citing "unconstitutional irregularities" he says helped Joe Biden prevail over President Donald Trump. In a 154-page complaint, Paxton argues that Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and... Read More

WASHINGTON - A decade after Republicans, then in the majority in the House, banned them in their conference rules, the practice of Congressionally-directed spending -- otherwise known as the use of earmarks -- is poised for an almost certain comeback. "I expect that the House will... Read More

BROOKLYN, N.Y. - The Trump administration must allow all eligible immigrants to file new applications for protection under the DACA program, and find a way to contact individuals who are eligible for the protection to notify them of the change, a federal judge ruled Friday evening.... Read More

WASHINGTON - The House passed legislation that would decriminalize cannabis at the federal level -- the first time either chamber of Congress has voted on such a measure. And significantly, the measure received bipartisan support. When the figurative smoke cleared, the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment & Expungement... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Democrats made history on Thursday when the caucus voted to make Reps. Gregory Meeks, of New York, and David Scott, of Georgia, the first African-Americans to chair, respectively, the chamber's Foreign Affairs and Agriculture Committees. Meeks, who was the third-ranking member of the... Read More

WASHINGTON - In the end, it wasn't even close. After a year of behind-the-scenes campaigning by a trio of candidates, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, of Connecticut, has been chosen to lead the House Appropriations Committee in the 117th Congress. Both Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of Florida, and... Read More

WASHINGTON - Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, of New York, won a close race to lead the House Democrats' campaign arm during the 117th Congress, narrowly defeating Rep. Tony Cárdenas, of California, 119-107 in a secret ballot. The outcome of the vote, which was conducted remotely during... Read More

WILMINGTON, Del. — Vice President-elect Kamala Harris named three individuals who'll be part of her senior staff in the White House, including veteran Democratic strategist Tina Flournoy, as her chief of staff. Flournoy's appointment as Harris' top staffer adds to a team of advisers led by... Read More

WASHINGTON - Thousands of federal employees can proceed with a class act in which they claim they were forced to work without pay during the 35-day partial government shutdown that extended from late 2018 to early 2019. “The claims brought by plaintiffs in this case are... Read More

WHEATLAND, Iowa - Democrat Rita Hart is challenging the vote totals in Iowa's 2nd Congressional District, two days after a state board certified Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks the winner in a contest that came down to just six votes. The race is the closest federal election in... Read More

WASHINGTON - The first session of the 117th Congress will convene at noon on a Sunday in January and have an extra-long August recess, according to the House calendar released by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Wednesday. And of course, the chamber will continue its current... Read More

WASHINGTON -- Reps. Stephanie Murphy, of Florida, and Jimmy Panetta, of California, have been named chief deputy whips for the 117th Congress, House Majority Whip James Clyburn announced Wednesday. In addition, Clyburn announced that Reps. G.K. Butterfield, of North Carolina, and Jan Schakowsky, of Illinois, have... Read More

WASHINGTON - Rep. Suzan DelBene, of Washington State, was unanimously elected Tuesday to serve as the next chair of the New Democrat Coalition. In addition, the coalition of moderate Democrats elected five individuals -- Reps. Ami Bera, of California, Sharice Davids, of Kansas, Annie Kuster, of... Read More

WASHINGTON - The committee raising money for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration is limiting individual contributions to no more than $500,000, and corporate contributions to no more that $1 million, according to an official involved in the planning of the event. The contribution limits were initially reported... Read More

WASHINGTON - Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday that the Justice Department has not uncovered voting fraud at a scale that could have affected the results of the presidential election. Barr's comments, made during an interview with the Associated Press, fly in the face of President... Read More

Now into their second week of freshman orientation, incoming members of Congress are beginning to pick up the pace of building their staff for the 117th Congress. Each member-elect can access funds to officially hire one staffer for the interim period, and most of the names... Read More

WASHINGTON - Republican and Democratic senators were joined by members of the House Problem Solvers conference Tuesday to endorse a $908 billion COVID economic relief bill they say should carry the nation into the early spring. The proposal, described by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., as a... Read More

WILMINGTON, Del. — President-elect Joe Biden on Monday announced his senior economic team, confirming after a week of speculation, that he would nominate Janet Yellen, the former Federal Reserve chair, to be the first woman to head the Treasury Department, In a statement, Biden said he... Read More

In the end, it came down to a razor thin margin of six votes out of 394,441 cast, but that was margin enough for the Iowa state canvassing board Monday to declare Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks winner of the state's hotly contested 2nd Congressional District race. On... Read More

WILMINGTON, Del. - President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris unveiled their Presidential Inaugural Committee on Monday, as preparations continue for their swearing in on Jan. 20. Although final plans for the inauguration are still somewhat up in the air due to the ever-changing circumstances... Read More

WASHINGTON - There has probably never been a comprehensive tome on the American presidency quite like this one. Entitled "Wine and the White House: A History" and coming in at 456 pages, this new, elegant offering from the White House Historical Association is a tour de... Read More

Throughout the 2020 election cycle a persistent narrative was just how divided the United States has become. But an as-yet uncalled House race in Iowa is taking the concept of a nation equally divided between Republicans and Democrats to a whole new level. Since Monday, the... Read More

HARRISBURG, Pa. - It wasn't the kind of breaking news one expected while scanning Pennsylvania's all news radio stations for word on the state certifying the 2020 election results. "Now back to our top story," one news anchor after another said over the course of the... Read More

WASHINGTON - Getting a formal concession, finally, might all come down to this. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of appeals on Monday granted a request from President Donald Trump's campaign to consider, on an expedited basis, an appeal of a mere facet of a federal judge's... Read More

BOULDER, Colo. - A giant sunspot is expected to traverse the Earth-facing side of the Sun by Thanksgiving, according to scientists at the National Science Foundation's National Solar Observatory. They based their prediction, first made on Nov. 18, on a special technique called helioseismology. It allows... Read More

HARRISBURG, Pa. – Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Bookvar certified the results of the 2020 presidential election Tuesday, after all 67 counties in the state certified their individual results late Monday night. A short time later, as required by federal law, Gov. Tom Wolf signed the... Read More

WASHINGTON - Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Monday she will step down as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee when the 117th Congress convenes in January, apparently bowing to critics who believe she wasn't aggressive enough in her handling of Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court... Read More

WILMINGTON, Del. - President-elect Joe Biden has selected top aides to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Senate Democratic Whip Richard Durbin to serve in key roles on his White House legislative affairs team. Shuwanza Goff, who has been serving as Majority Leader Hoyer's floor director... Read More

WILMINGTON, Del. - President-elect Joe Biden unveiled several of his top national security picks on Monday, his campaign revealing he will nominate Avril Haines to be his director of national intelligence and Alejandro Mayorkas, to be his secretary of Homeland Security. In both cases, the nominations... Read More

WASHINGTON - Bathed in chill sunlight and standing just yards from where work crews continue to build the platform for the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, the Capitol Christmas tree was already a destination in its own right Monday as a handful of families gravitated to... Read More

WASHINGTON - During a week when newly elected members of Congress were all over Capitol Hill for their formal orientation, Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., remembered how vastly different her experience was in 2012. Jay Inslee, the previous representative of Washington State's 1st Congressional District, had decided... Read More

TRENTON, N.J. - New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed an executive order Thursday night, extending the deadline by which counties must certify the results of the 2020 election. The immediate effect of the order relates to two counties, Ocean and Salem, whose boards of elections have... Read More

Ørsted, the Danish renewable energy group, and the North America's Building Trades Unions have entered into a pact to train an offshore wind construction workforce as the firm eyes construction of a series of wind farm projects up and down the East Coast. The deal comes... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Democrats completed their second of two days of leadership election by elevating Rep. Pete Aguilar of California to the position of caucus vice chair. The 148-82 vote, in which he prevailed over Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois, makes Aguilar the highest-ranking Latino on... Read More

WASHINGTON -- It is traditionally the largest travel holiday of the year, however, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are urging Americans not to travel during this Thanksgiving holiday and to skip gatherings with family members outside their households. Officials with the agency... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Smithsonian Institution will temporarily re-close all of its museums and the National Zoo due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the region and across the country. The closures, which will begin Monday, Nov. 23, will impact all eight Smithsonian facilities in... Read More

WASHINGTON - House Democrats nominated Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to lead the chamber for another two years on Wednesday in a virtual voice vote that reflected a triumphant rebound in her stature among members, two years after a rebellious faction tried to topple her. Though some... Read More

WASHINGTON - The abbreviated transition caused by the Trump administration's refusal to recognize President-elect Joe Biden's victory could impair the new president's ability to fill the more than 1,200 executive branch jobs requiring Senate confirmation, a new report says. The white paper prepared for the Center... Read More

It's the time of year when many of us start to think "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas," but for residents of an ever-growing number of states, this November is starting to look an awful lot like March all over again. That's because a... Read More

WASHINGTON - Rep. Gary Palmer has been elected chairman of the Republican Policy Committee for the 117th Congress. This is the Alabama Republican's second consecutive term as chairman, his having held the post in the 116th Congress. “I’m grateful to my colleagues for their support and... Read More

Richmond, Va. - Virginia could reap more than $300 million in tax revenue a year if lawmakers were to legalize recreational marijuana, according to the Commonwealth's legislative watchdog. In a new report, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission says it would take about five years... Read More

WASHINGTON - President-elect Joe Biden announced several appointments to his White House senior staff on Tuesday, assembling his administration even as President Donald Trump continues to refuse to acknowledge the Democrat's election victory. Mike Donilon, the chief strategist for Biden's campaign and a long-time adviser, will... Read More

WASHINGTON - It's the election insiders were talking about while most of America was still wondering what would happen on Election Day. Every two years, the election of a new Congress is followed closely by caucus leadership elections. On Tuesday, the House Republican caucus will hold... Read More

WASHINGTON - Despite known unknowns including when the 2020 presidential election will definitively end and what the status of the coronavirus pandemic will be at the time, preparations for the 59th inaugural ceremonies continues apace on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. Already, the spot... Read More

WASHINGTON - They came from Texas and Colorado and New York and New Mexico. Some came in family SUVs, others in taxi cabs. But what they had in common as they arrived at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill on a gray and rainy Thursday in Washington... Read More

WASHINGTON - Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., told the Federalist Society in a keynote address Thursday night the coronavirus pandemic has led to "previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty." "I am not diminishing the severity of the virus's threat to public health," Alito continued in a... Read More

WASHINGTON - Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., has been nominated to serve as co-chair of the Democratic caucus' Steering and Policy Committee, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Wednesday. Bustos will replace Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, who informed the speaker last month of her decision to run... Read More

ATLANTA - Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Wednesday that the state will conduct a hand recount of all ballots cast in last week's presidential contest. The announcement came during a news conference at which Raffensperger continued to deflect pressure from fellow Georgia Republicans who... Read More

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump may be refusing to concede the 2020 election, but that's not stopping the Biden transition team from moving forward with its preparations to assume office. On Tuesday it unveiled the agency review teams that will lay the groundwork within federal agencies... Read More

WASHINGTON - The House New Democrat Coalition is out with its assessment of the 2020 election and they believe voters clearly endorsed pragmatic Democrats and their espoused approach to controlling the pandemic, making a full economic recovery and moving the country forward. “Voters all across America... Read More

WASHINGTON - The head of the nation's largest advocacy group for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans predicted Tuesday that 2021 will be a very good year for those who have long sought comprehensive aid for soldiers harmed by burn pit and toxin exposure in those wars.... Read More

WASHINGTON -- So much for the new conservative majority of the Supreme Court dismantling the Affordable Care Act. On Tuesday, during oral arguments for California v. Texas, one of this term's most anticipated cases, two members of that majority, suggested they're not inclined to strike down... Read More

WASHINGTON - President-elect Joe Biden wasted no time in assembling the new coronavirus task force he unveiled Monday, but it will likely be early December before the majority of Americans learn who the new president has picked for his cabinet. The plan, according to people familiar... Read More

WASHINGTON - Speaking out on the presidential election for the first time since the race was called in Democrat Joe Biden's favor, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said President Donald Trump is "100% within his rights" to challenge the outcome. In remarks delivered on the... Read More

Stocks surged around the world Monday after Pfizer announced that early results from trials of its coronavirus vaccine suggest the shots may be 90% effective at preventing COVID-19. But President-elect Joe Biden quickly reminded Americans that the good news does not mean it's time to abandon... Read More

WASHINGTON -- House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is once again running for the Democrat-controlled House's second most powerful position. In a letter to fellow Democrats made public Saturday, Hoyer said he's proud of the unity and success the party has enjoyed since regaining the House majority... Read More

WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden announced the members of his new coronavirus task force Monday morning, putting the contentious 2020 presidential campaign behind him and moving definitively on to the transition. Biden said repeatedly during the campaign that "crushing" the pandemic once and for all would... Read More

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California Gov. Gavin Newsom has said he's been lobbied for months about who would fill Kamala Harris' Senate seat should she be elected vice president, and he admitted it hasn't been fun. "It's not something I'd wish on my worst enemy," he told... Read More

WASHINGTON— Former Vice President Joe Biden had the presidency within his reach Friday evening, as he continued to hold onto narrow but apparently solid leads over President Donald Trump in the critical battlegrounds of Georgia and Pennsylvania. Revised vote counts trickled in throughout the day, but... Read More

WASHINGTON - Employers added 638,000 jobs in the month of October, pushing the national unemployment rate down to 6.9%, the Labor Department reported Friday. But Congressional Democrats noted the pace of renewed hiring isn't nearly enough to quickly get the millions of Americans thrown out of... Read More

LANSING, Mich. -- The Trump campaign has filed a lawsuit in Michigan claiming its election observers have not been granted "meaningful" access to the counting process. As of about 3 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, former Vice President Joe Biden is leading President Donald Trump by about 1%... Read More

HARRISBURG, Pa. - As the nation anxiously awaited the outcome of the 2020 presidential election Wednesday, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar advised the general public and a phalanx of reporters gathered before her to be patient. “We are exactly where we said we would be,”... Read More

RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia Voters last night approved an amendment to the state constitution that will create a bipartisan redistricting commission, putting an end, once and for all, to years of court battles over partisan gerrymandering. With 98% of election precincts reporting as of Wednesday morning,... Read More

WASHINGTON - Federal officials monitoring voting and threats to the 2020 election said they've seen no major problems, but they continue to urge the public to be both watchful and patient as they head to the polls. All told, the U.S. Justice Department has deployed personnel... Read More

WASHINGTON - Though President Donald Trump doesn't technically have the power to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, he suggested during one his final campaign appearances Monday that supporters won't have long to wait for the ouster of the nation's top infectious disease expert. Trump has been continually... Read More

WASHINGTON — Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined her new colleagues on the Supreme Court Monday, participating in oral arguments for the first time. The cases on the docket Monday were no head-turners. The first, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service v. Sierra Club Inc., concerned public disclosure... Read More

WASHINGTON - It came as no surprise last week when the majority of questions posed to two members of Congress during a virtual town hall Friday focused on currently stalled negotiations over the next COVID-19 relief package. Despite being on opposite sides of the aisle, both... Read More

WASHINGTON - Over the course of the 2020 election cycle, the NewDem Action Fund has backed 31 congressional candidates by either adding them to its "watch list" or fully endorsing them. But on Friday night came word the fund, the political arm of the New Democrat... Read More

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has rejected a Republican candidate's attempt to delay the vote in a high-profile congressional race in Minnesota following the unexpected death of a third-party candidate. The date of the vote in Minnesota's Second Congressional District was thrown into question in September,... Read More

The last Marquette Law School poll to be released before Election Day finds former Vice President Joe Biden the choice of 48% of likely voters in Wisconsin, with President Donald Trump trailing with the support of just 43% of likely voters. The poll found 7% of... Read More

A federal judge has prohibited the rejection of absentee ballots in South Carolina on the basis of a perceived mismatch of the voter's signature and ordered a review of any ballots already set aside due to alleged signature discrepancies. In a ruling handed down Tuesday, U.S.... Read More

WASHINGTON - Former Vice President Joe Biden has about an 86% chance of winning next week's presidential election and could come away with 344-350 electoral college votes, according to Sabato's Crystal Ball, a publication of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. The forecast was developed... Read More

This is an installment of an ongoing series of political advertising fact checks during the 2020 campaign. If you would like to submit an advertisement for consideration, please email a link to [email protected] A pair of advertisements, one funded by a super PAC dedicated to securing... Read More

President Donald Trump was in his element. Standing before more than 1,000 supporters who had jammed a large hanger facility at Middle Georgia Regional Airport in Macon, Ga., he promised a "red wave" would crush Democrats in November. He had not a moment of doubt, he... Read More