The Senate on Wednesday passed a short-term funding bill just hours before the deadline to prevent a government shutdown.
Senators voted 84 to 10 to keep the government funded at current levels through Dec. 11, setting up another funding fight after the November elections and right before the holidays.
The funding bill, passed by the House earlier this month, now heads to President Trump’s desk, where he is expected to sign it before midnight to keep the government running. Continue reading.
Legislation introduced Monday by House Democrats to keep the federal government funded through Dec. 11 quickly ran into opposition from Senate Republicans, raising the odds of a shutdown at the end of the month, just weeks before the election.
Government funding is slated to run out on Sept. 30, leaving just nine days for both parties to avoid a damaging shutdown at a time when tensions are already spiking over Senate GOP plans to quickly fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and stalled negotiations over a coronavirus relief bill.
Democrats on Monday unveiled a stopgap measure, known as a continuing resolution (CR), that does not contain a provision requested by the White House to provide aid for farmers impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Continue reading.
Remarkably, Sen. Lisa Murkowski told Alaska Public Media on Friday afternoon that she would not confirm a new Supreme Court justice before next year’s inauguration. “Fair is fair,” she said speaking hypothetically before the announcement of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing.
She was talking, of course, about the precedent Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell set for confirming justices before a presidential election when he refused to even consider President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to replace Antonin Scalia. Scalia died a full nine months before that year’s election. McConnell, pulling a Senate procedure out of his ass, said that the Senate could not possibly confirm a nominee before an election, and that the voters should be allowed to have their say on the direction of the court. And clearly, with McConnell being the destroyer of everything good in this world, he will push a nominee—in a total reversal of his previous doctrine.
Saturday, Sep 19, 2020 · 9:33:43 AM PST · Joan McCarter
There were early rumors circulating that Romney was going to be honorable and oppose a vote on a nominee. His spokesman has just declared that “grossly false.” I’m not sure where the “grossly” is to be applied here. Continue reading.
Senate Democrats blocked a GOP coronavirus bill on Thursday amid a deep stalemate over the next relief package.
Senators voted 52-47 on the roughly $500 billion Republican bill, which marked the first coronavirus-related legislation the chamber has voted on since it passed a $484 billion package in April.
The vote handed a symbolic victory to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who spent weeks haggling with Republicans and the White House over the contours of the pared-down GOP bill as he sought to overcome deep divisions over the path forward. Continue reading.
Republicans are looking to their national convention to boost their most vulnerable Senate incumbents and help preserve their increasingly tenuous majority in the chamber.
With President Trump’s poll numbers sagging in recent months and the political fortunes of several GOP Senate incumbents largely following suit, Republicans believe that any post-convention bump for the president will also lift up their party’s senators as they head into the crucial final stretch of the 2020 election cycle.
“Obviously it’s a Trump-centric convention, but if the party puts forward something that can reframe the national conversation, yeah, the senators will get a bump,” said Scott Jennings, a Republican consultant and former campaign adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “It won’t just be for Trump. It’ll help all Republicans.” Continue reading.
Tensions flared on Friday as senators battled with Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, and each other, over reports of delayed mail and concerns about the looming November elections.
DeJoy testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the first of two likely contentious appearances he’ll make before Congress over the next few days.
Democrats have expressed fears that the reforms pushed by DeJoy were intended to slow mail-in ballots and help President Trump win reelection. Trump has repeatedly criticized voting by mail, suggesting that it leads to more fraud. Evidence does not support that assertion. Continue reading.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said on Thursday that he has tested positive for the coronavirus, becoming the second senator known to do so.
“I am strictly following the direction of our medical experts and strongly encourage others to do the same,” he said in a statement.
Cassidy got a coronavirus test on Thursday after being informed on Wednesday night that he had been exposed to an individual with COVID-19. His office said he was following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines including quarantining for 14 days and notifying individuals he has been in contact with. Continue reading.
Tensions are ramping up over a GOP probe into the Obama administration that focuses, in part, on Hunter Biden, the son of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Months into the controversial Senate Republican investigation, frustration appears to be boiling over as both sides step up their attacks in the growing shadow of the November elections.
Democrats, the Biden campaign and their outside group allies are increasingly going public with their concerns over the investigation, which they worry could spread Russian disinformation. They are targeting Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who has been spearheading the effort. Continue reading.
SAINT PAUL, MN — After the Star Tribune shared previously unreported comments made by Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Jason Lewis on farming — including that America has “glamorized” farming and saying that it was “naive” for members of Congress to run on “not one more farm going under” — Minnesota farmers and members of the agriculture community are rightfully outraged. Lewis suggested that we should let farms fail and that the government should not try to help them stay afloat during rough times.
Jason Lewis was part of a public access television show called Face-to-Face. On the show, Lewis also said that “it’s amazing how we hold these commodities up as though they’re gold or God,” and that “the government shouldn’t have anything to do with farming.”
