In the News
The House Democratic whip said Thursday that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is free to invite the Israeli prime minister to address Congress, but argued the greater show of support for Israel would be to vote on a foreign-aid package awaiting action in the House.
“There is one group in Congress that is holding up that national security supplement that is needed, desperately, by the people of Ukraine and so many of our other allies. And that is the House GOP,” Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.) told reporters in the Capitol.
Speaker Mike Johnson got Democratic help to pass a $78 billion tax bill. He did the same on a bill that could ban TikTok. He did it on three stopgap government spending bills. And he’s about to do it again on his second federal funding deal in one month.
President Joe Biden will call on Congress to allow Medicare to increase its ability to negotiate drug prices and to expand caps on consumer prescription drug costs during his State of the Union address Thursday.
Democrats plan to put reproductive freedom front and center at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address Thursday night.
Democrats want to remind voters of their efforts to protect access to abortion and most recently have seized on the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos are children.
They are looking to hold Republicans’ feet to the fire and force them to answer uncomfortable questions about the full impact of fetal personhood.
Democratic House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, U.S. representative from Massachusetts, and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12) met with YMCA providers, the New Jersey Department of Human Services (NJDHS), local families and officials on the need for federal funding to support child care providers and programs.
Congress’s biggest mission this week, as it has been several times over the last few months, was to keep the lights on, and it did. Phew.
In addition to passing a stopgap funding bill, New Jersey’s congressional representatives proposed new steps to protect IVF, hosted top House Democratic leaders in their districts, issued calls to save the whales, and more. Here’s some of what New Jersey’s 14 members of Congress did this week.
They’re funding the government in weeklong increments now
On the sixth anniversary of the Parkland shooting, Florida Democrats in Congress are asking credit companies to flag suspicious gun purchases.
U.S. Reps. Jared Moskowitz and Maxwell Frost filed legislation clearing the way for merchant codes to allow for that. The Identify Gun Stores Act would override laws in several states, including one signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year.
Two Florida Democrats introduced legislation to track suspicious gun and ammunition purchases on Wednesday, the sixth anniversary of the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., that left 14 students and three staff members dead.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), who represents Parkland, unveiled the legislation along with Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), who represents Orlando, where the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting happened. Other lawmakers joined the two at a press conference to honor the victims of the 2018 shooting.
The nation's top education official last month toured the abandoned school building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to survey lessons and assess the complicated legacy of the horrific mass shooting six years ago this Wednesday, Feb. 14.
U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, the highest-ranking federal official to survey the scene of the carnage, said he was moved by what he saw, and by what he heard from surviving parents and spouses of the 17 students and staff members that he met with during the somber visit.