Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Former Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi is scheduled to be released from federal prison Saturday after serving a three-year sentence for corruption, money laundering and other convictions. Renzi was convicted in 2013 of conspiring to use his congressional post to make companies buy his ex-business associate's land so the associate could repay a debt to Renzi.
The American public remains deeply divided over Obamacare, but only 1 in 5 back a Republican plan first to repeal the law, then to come up with a replacement, according to a timely poll that says most people want Congress to have a firm alternative in hand before it pulls the plug on the existing system. The findings could boost President Obama and congressional Democrats, who have made defending the law their chief goal this year.
A few years ago President Barack Obama came under conservative fire for choosing, at times, to read his daily intelligence briefings, rather than receive them in-person. Republican Rep. Paul Ryan was among those piling on.
Senators at next week's confirmation hearing will confront competing versions of Jeff Sessions, the Alabama senator who is President-elect Donald Trump's pick for attorney general. His supporters will frame the 70-year-old Republican, who grew up in the segregated South before a career as a local GOP leader, prosecutor and elected official, as an unyielding but fair-minded conservative.
A low-key, behind-the-scenes, let's-get-a-deal-done type, the Springfield lawmaker is now the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, which means he will be one of the minority party's point people in critiquing Republican proposals and arguing for Democratic alternatives. As Republicans prepare to repeal Obamacare, Neal frames things this way: "The Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security are all linked," and all essential to the middle class.
The top U.S. intelligence official said yesterday he was "even more resolute" in his belief that Russia staged cyber attacks on Democrats during the 2016 election campaign, rebuking persistent skepticism from Republican President-elect Donald Trump about whether Moscow was involved. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said he had a very high level of confidence that Russia hacked Democratic Party and campaign staff email, and disseminated propaganda and fake news aimed at the Nov. 8 election.
For the third year in a row, state Rep. Micah Gravley, R-Douglasville, is heading into the Georgia legislative session with plans to expand medical marijuana in the state.
On January 5, Representative Blake Farenthold introduced legislation that protects the gun rights of military families by allowing the spouses of deployed military personnel to buy guns "in the state where they live due to military orders." This legislation is needed in light of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which bars law-abiding citizens from purchasing handguns outside their state of residence.
US Republicans will seek to defund US women's health care provider Planned Parenthood through a bill that repeals President Barack Obama's landmark health care reform, the top Republican in Congress said Thursday. "Planned Parenthood legislation would be in our reconciliation bill," House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters when asked how his party would attempt to defund the organization now that the White House and both chambers of Congress will be in Republican hands when Donald Trump is inaugurated president on January 20. Reconciliation is a special congressional procedure by which legislation can bypass Senate blocking tactics and need only a simply majority to pass, rather than a 60-vote supermajority in the 100-member chamber.
Anti-abortion activists hold a rally opposing federal funding for Planned Parenthood in front of the U.S. Capitol July 28, 2015 in Washington, DC. In a one-two punch, House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Thursday that Republicans plan to defund Planned Parenthood when they try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper listens at left as National Security Agency and Cyber Command chief Adm. Michael Rogers testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing: "Foreign Cyber Threats to the United States."
Rep. Keith Ellison attends a news conference with the Congressional Progressive Caucus about the nominations for President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet in Washington on Dec. 8, 2016. U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison , who had not commented on a controversial United Nations resolution that called Israel's settlements in disputed territories "illegal," voted Thursday night against a GOP resolution that condemned it.
The House of Representatives on Thursday voted to condemn a United Nations resolution critical of Israeli settlements as anti-Israel and one-sided, in a rebuke of the Obama administration's decision to allow the resolution to pass. The U.N. resolution, which passed in late December 14 to 0 with an abstention from the United States, declares Israeli settlements a "flagrant violation under international law" and describes east Jerusalem and the Western Wall as "occupied Palestinian territory."
The second-ranking House Democrat, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, would support an effort to challenge certification of the votes that will formally put Trump in the White House on Friday, he told ABC News Political Director Rick Klein on the Powerhouse Politics podcast. Congress is slated to count the Electoral College ballots to officially elect Donald Trump as President on Friday, but a few House Democrats, led by Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Colorado, are weighing options to protest the Electoral College votes.
President-elect Donald Trump is shifting the name-calling that helped drive his campaign victories over "lyin,'" "low energy" and "crooked" opponents to the legislative arena, where he's now mocking Democrats as "clowns" trying to escape blame for the nation's troubled health care law. "The Democrats, led by head clown Chuck Schumer, know how bad Obamacare is and what a mess they are in," Trump tweeted Thursday.
Time Warner Inc. because he believes it would concentrate too much power in the media industry, according to people close to the president-elect, who has been publicly silent about the transaction for months. Trump told a friend in the last few weeks that he still considers the merger to be a bad deal, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the conversation was private.
The nation's top intelligence official said Thursday that Russia undoubtedly interfered in America's 2016 presidential election but stopped short of using the explosive description "an act of war," telling lawmakers such a call isn't within the purview of the U.S. intelligence community.