As state election workers prepare to tally selections for each party’s preferred presidential candidate today, here are four key things to watch.
Joe Biden
The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted to overturn the Biden administration’s one-time student debt relief plan that is on hold due to a pending Supreme Court decision.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday called on President Biden to make birth control available over the counter without a prescription
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration is working to “cut red tape,” increase imports of formula and broaden what types of formula are available to participants in the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program.
Democrats blamed the oil industry, Republicans blamed President Joe Biden and oil executives blamed global market forces at a U.S. House hearing Wednesday on how to reverse a dramatic increase in gas prices.
A Republican candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives announced that, if elected, he would introduce legislation modeled on a Florida measure known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill
President Joe Biden is planning to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, according to multiple media reports.
The voicemail came after U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) called the 13 Republican House members who voted for the infrastructure bill “traitors” and “American job and energy killers” in a tweet. In another tweet, Greene posted the phone numbers of the 13 Republicans who voted in favor of the legislation.
The U.S. House Natural Resources Committee late Thursday approved its first piece of Democrats’ sweeping $3.5 trillion spending blueprint on a party-line 24-13 vote. Here are four pieces of the Natural Resources Committee’s bill that could have a major climate impact if they’re passed into law.
The most ambitious part of the pandemic stimulus package signed by President Joe Biden earlier this year is about to hit the bank accounts of millions of U.S. parents. Starting this week and ending in December, the vast majority of U.S. households with children will begin receiving monthly payments as a result of changes in that law expanding and reworking the federal child tax credit. Here’s how it will work.
The Senate passed three bills Wednesday that would make it more difficult for voters to vote absentee and at the ballot box if they aren’t able to present a state-issued photo ID, despite fierce objections from Democrats that the new rules would be especially harmful to vulnerable voters and communities of color.
U.S. House Democrats’ highway funding bill is poised to include roughly three out of five transportation projects submitted by members, as legislators vie for their share of federal dollars through the resurrected congressional earmarks process. Michigan is poised to receive $210 million spread over 68 projects throughout the state.
Basic needs at the largest U.S. national parks top the Biden administration’s first proposed lists of projects to receive funding through public lands trust funds, showing how much maintenance is needed even as parks brace for record numbers of visitors this summer. The projects likely wouldn’t be visible to the usual tourist, but they are essential to keep national parks functioning after a pandemic year in which many Americans rediscovered their love of the outdoors.
Police would be required to intervene if they see that excessive force is about to be used and schools would be prohibited from including the “1619 Project” in their curriculum under bills recently introduced in the Michigan Legislature. Those are just two of the bills members of the House and Senate introduced in May on topics ranging from police reforms to schools to guns.
A year after George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer, his family returned Tuesday to Washington, D.C., where lawmakers have been attempting to craft a bipartisan bill to overhaul the nation’s policing laws. Congress failed to act by the anniversary of Floyd’s death — the deadline that President Joe Biden had urged lawmakers to meet. Instead of signing legislation named for Floyd into law on Tuesday, the president met with Floyd’s family members in a private gathering at the White House.
States will see another increase in the COVID-19 vaccine doses they receive, with the Biden administration announcing Tuesday that the federal government will distribute 11 million doses next week.
During an appearance on The Michigan Left with Andrew George last week Dr. Abdul El-Sayed said Americans could see a return to normalcy from the pandemic as early as this summer. With that said, Sayed believes “normal” is too small a bar to hurdle, and shouldn’t be part of the United States’ endgame.
“[…] Can rural economies be saved? We’re living in an increasingly urban world where talent and wealth are concentrating in large metropolitan areas. Rural America is growing older and getter poorer. Various policy efforts on the state and federal levels over the past several decades have not lifted that trend line.”