Ohio Sens. Brown, Portman still split on Kavanaugh nomination

Sen. Rob Portman voted Friday to clear the way for a floor vote Saturday on whether to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, while Sen. Sherrod Brown voted to block the nomination. By a vote of 51-to-49, the Senate agreed to a procedural motion to continue floor debate on Kavanaugh.

Congress OKs opioid legislation in show of bipartisanship

In this Aug. 25, 2018, file photo, Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., speaks at the Republican Party's Lincoln Dinner in Lexington, Ky. Republicans and Democrats in Congress have approved bipartisan legislation aimed at curbing the country's devastating opioid addiction.

GOP says time is running out for accuser to testify

Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh meets with Sen. Rob Portman at his office in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, July 11, 2018. [Photo/Agencies] WASHINGTONi1 4 US Republicans are warning that time is running out for Brett Kavanaugh's accuser to tell Congress about her claim he sexually assaulted her when both were teenagers, even as President Donald Trump called the woman's allegation hard to believe in one of the GOP's sharpest attacks on her credibility.

Federal agency loses track of 1,488 migrant children

In this June 20, 2018, file photo, immigrant children walk in a line outside the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children a former Job Corps site that now houses them in Homestead, Fla. Twice in less than a year, the federal government has lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children after placing them in the homes of sponsors across the country, federal officials have acknowledged.

U.S. says it lost track of 1,488 migrant children

Immigrant children walk in a line outside the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children on June 20 in Homestead, Fla. Associated Press files Twice in less than a year, the federal government has lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children after placing them in the homes of sponsors across the country, federal officials have acknowledged.

Kavanaugh’s support for surveilling Americans raises concern Source: AP

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has frequently supported giving the U.S. government wide latitude in the name of national security, including the secret collection of personal data from Americans. It's a subject Democrats plan to grill Kavanaugh about during his confirmation hearings scheduled to begin next Tuesday.

Wayne Forest neighbors are seeking rights

Private property owners in and around Wayne National Forest have taken their cause all the way to the nation's capital in an effort to protect their land and mineral leasing rights. Representatives from the National Association of Royalty Owners and the Landowners for Energy Access and Safe Exploration met in July with Ohio Senators Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman, Congressmen Bill Johnson and Bob Gibbs , the U.S. Department of the Interior Office of the Secretary, and the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and Energy and Mineral Resources, to discuss private property rights of land and mineral owners adjacent to Wayne National Forest parcels.

Kavanaugh reports relatively modest finances, debt repayment

WASHINGTON - The vetting of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is just beginning, but his public financial disclosures make one thing clear: He's not as wealthy as many already on the high court. Public disclosure forms for 2017 show that the federal judge would come to the nation's highest court with only two investments, including a bank account, together worth a maximum of $65,000, along with the balance on a loan of $15,000 or less.

Senate veteran returns to action as Supreme Court Sherpa

Jon Kyl trekked back to the Capitol with a name tag hanging around his neck, but he didn't need one. Kyl was a Republican senator from Arizona for three terms, which is why Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the White House wanted him to guide President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee through the confirmation process.

Editorial: Retirees counting on Congress to find solution to pensions crisis

Thousands of workers - most pensioners, others nearing the time they plan to collect their earned benefits - will gather at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus today for a rally designed to draw attention to a political meeting with serious national ramifications. Friday, a bipartisan joint congressional committee will hold a field hearing in Columbus to gather information from testimony to help federal lawmakers solve a looming crisis jeopardizing the pensions of about 60,000 Ohioans and 1.5 million Americans.

I’m more than an ex-coal lobbyist, new EPA chief from Ohio says

The country's new Environmental Protection Agency chief is an Ohio native who insists he's more than a former coal lobbyist. "One of my clients was a coal company," Andrew R. Wheeler said last month in an interview with the Hamilton News Journal.

From ketchup to toilet paper: Canada launching retaliatory tariff broadside

When Sen. Patrick Toomey looks at the future of the ketchup market in his home state of Pennsylvania, he sees real blood on the floor. On Sunday, Canada's $16.6-billion worth of retaliatory tariffs on dozens of U.S. products is set to kick in - the country's answer to the crushing steel and aluminum tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.

More than 1 million workers, retirees at risk of losing pensions,…

The pension crisis that threatens the retirement savings of 1.5 million Americans also poses the risk of driving the U.S. economy into a tailspin, a panel of witnesses told a congressional panel. Witnesses from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and businesses, including UPS, told the Joint Select Committee on the Solvency of Multi-employer Pension Plans that should the estimated 150 to 200 multi-employer pension plans that are in danger become insolvent, the companies that paid into those plans would be held liable.

Senators demand feds release Wright AFB groundwater toxicology study

U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, are among a bipartisan group of 10 senators who have demanded the Trump administration release a toxicology study that could recommend lower threshold advisories for exposure to chemicals found in groundwater at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and other installations across the country. The senators wrote in the June 8 letter they had "deep concerns" with media reports the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had blocked the results of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services chemical pollution study that reportedly showed lower thresholds of the contaminants could pose a hazard to human health.

APNewsBreak: Secret Obama-era license let Iran tap dollars

In this April 16, 2018, file photo, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, speaks during a news conference in Cincinnati. The Obama administration secretly sought to give Iran brief access to the U.S. financial system by sidestepping sanctions kept in place after the 2015 nuclear deal, despite repeatedly telling Congress and the public it had no plans to do so.

#WhereAreTheChildren: Here are the facts about the a losta minors who attempted to cross the border

The Trump administration is pushing back against reports that a government agency "lost" nearly 1,500 unaccompanied minors who attempted to cross the border into the United States. An official at the Department of Health and Human Services who oversees programs that place unaccompanied minors with families told a Senate committee last month that a department office "was unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,475 unaccompanied alien children."

Missing Children’s Day renews attention on 1,475 migrant children unaccounted for

A migrant child from Honduras looks across the US-Mexico Border from Tijuana, Mexico. Friday was National Missing Children's Day, which put renewed attention on revelations from last month that the government had lost track of almost 1,500 migrant children placed with sponsor caretakers.