Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
New Legislative Session Brings $500 Million Deficit, Uncertainty With one eye on a $500 million state budget gap and the other on Washington, Gov. John Hickenlooper and a split Colorado Legislature enter the 2017 lawmaking session with little expectation of fiscal reform and plenty of uncertainty over transportation, the state's Medicaid bills, affordable housing and illegal pot sales. Jury Convicts Man Accused Of Concealing Victim In A Barrel A Nebraska man accused of killing another man and hiding his body in a barrel has been found guilty of first-degree murder.
While Republicans are working to repeal Obamacare, there will still be a stable transition period so "no one has the rug pulled out from underneath them" Rep. Diane Black said in Saturday's GOP address . "Our goal is a system that lowers costs, and spurs free market competition, and ultimately empowers you, not bureaucrats in Washington," the Tennessee Republican said in the weekly statement, decrying Democrats in Washington using "all kinds of scare tactics" in order to keep the healthcare law.
In this May 12, 2016, file photo Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., looks from behind a poster of then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, while he speaks with reporters about Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington. In the weeks after November's election, President-elect Trump and incoming Senate Democratic Leader Schumer sounded like potential allies.
Republicans are increasingly jittery over rushing to demolish much of President Barack Obama's health care law without having a GOP alternative that's ready to go. While nothing about revamping the nation's $3 trillion-a-year health care system will be easy, Republican leaders want congressional committees to have legislation dismantling much of Obama's overhaul ready by late January.
A Chicago judge refused to allow four black people caught on cellphone footage taunting and beating a mentally disabled white man to post bail and leave jail, saying they are accused of such "terrible actions" that they are a danger to society. "Where was your sense of decency?" Cook County Circuit Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil asked them on Friday during their first court appearance, sounding baffled that the suspects could be charged with such cruelty toward the 18-year-old victim.
State House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh is seriously considering joining the race to succeed term-limited Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam in 2018. The Ripley Democrat told reporters this week that he would have appeal for voters from both urban and rural areas of the state.
President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency received positive marks from West Virginia senators this week, with one inviting him to the state to discuss issues related to Wood County communities. In a release from Trump's transition team, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said he believes Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has the right experience to be the next EPA administrator.
Four people were charged with hate crimes Thursday in connection with a Facebook live video showing a man being beaten and taunted, threatened with a knife and forced to drink from a toilet. The horrific beating of a mentally disabled white man in Chicago by four black assailants broadcast on social media is highlighting anti-white hate crimes at a time of increased racial strife in the United States.
North Carolina's new Democratic governor has formally started his effort to expand Medicaid to more of the working poor in the state, even as Republicans in Washington bear down on repealing the federal health care law that offers this increased coverage. Cooper's office said he sent a letter to federal regulators Friday.
Former U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi of Arizona left federal prison Friday after serving three years for corruption, money laundering and other charges. He was set free just ahead of his scheduled Saturday release date.
President Obama vowed to publicly support congressional Republicans' plan to repeal his signature health care law if they put forward an alternative proposal that can prove it covers as many people for less money. "I am saying to every Republican right now, if you in fact can put a plan together that is demonstrably better than what Obamacare is doing, I will publicly support repealing Obamacare and replacing it with your plan," Obama said in an interview with Vox .
President Barack Obama derided as "reckless" on Friday a Republican plan to repeal his health care law now and replace it later, predicting that the replacement may never come. In an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine, Obama sought to dispel the notion that Republicans could fulfill their campaign promises to gut the Affordable Care Act immediately without risking devastating consequences for consumers.
Three weeks before President Barack Obama leaves office, a federal judge dealt yet another blow to the president's signature policy, siding with religiously affiliated health care providers over the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor on Dec. 31 blocked the Affordable Care Act's so-called transgender mandate, which sought to end discrimination on the basis of gender identity within the health care system.
On January 4, 2016, the White House announced the release of the 2017 Update to the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology . The Update to the Coordinated Framework provides a comprehensive summary of the roles and responsibilities of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency , the U.S. Food and Drug Administration , and the U.S. Department of Agriculture with respect to regulating biotechnology products.
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.
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.
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.
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.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a crime becomes a hate crime when there's an added element of bias. For example, a murder is labeled a hate crime if the victim was killed because he was gay.