In the News
Back in early December, Rep. Luis Gutiérrez of Illinois' 5th Congressional District was the first Democrat to announce he would not be attending the inauguration of Donald Trump January 20 because the pr*sident-elect is a fountain of "hatred, bigotry and prejudice." He told CNN on December 2:
Whatever happened at the end of a classified briefing Friday morning has rattled Democratic members of Congress, leaving the American public to wonder what exactly is going on in the upper echelons of the U.S. government.
The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform has called for more scrutiny of the Office of Government Ethics for its critical stance on President-elect Donald Trump's potential conflicts of interest prior to taking office.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and other members of Congress sat for an intelligence briefing on Friday to review the classified information regarding claims by Russia of having "compromising financial and personal information" about President-elect Trump. A declassified report was released to the public earlier this week.
A Massachusetts judge has ordered Exxon Mobil to submit 40 years of documents regarding the company's studies of the impact of fossil fuels on climate change.
Superior Court Judge Heidi E. Brieger said state law supports arguments by Massachusetts' attorney general that the government agency has the authority to pursue questions about whether Exxon Mobil misled the public about the role fossil fuels play in climate change.
On Tuesday, while much of Washington, DC's political class was consumed by President-elect Donald Trump's first press conference, the only Democrat with a computer science degree was named to the House Judiciary Committee. The House of Representatives has three other members who hold computer science degrees (all Republicans), but none of them sit on the Judiciary Committee.
South Bay Rep. Ted Lieu was named assistant whip Tuesday for the House Democratic caucus, an organizational role aimed at helping mobilize the minority party.
Lieu, president of the freshman Democratic class in the last Congress, will assist Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, who has served in the post since 2002.
It's a scene that continues to unfold in Washington state: A helicopter hovers low over the trees, deep inside a park in the Cascade Mountains; a SWAT team dressed in Kevlar rappels from the chopper to the ground; other officers, federal agents and state environmental officials move toward the site on foot, alert for armed guards, booby traps and razor fencing.
The targets of these taxpayer-funded efforts aren't terrorism suspects or dangerous fugitives — they are marijuana plants.
California has a long-standing legal medical marijuana industry with a legal recreational industry on the way. It's therefore understandable that members of our state's congressional delegation have been asking tough questions about why the federal Drug Enforcement Administration devotes millions of dollars a year to uprooting cannabis plants in California.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump's pick for attorney general, has called for an end to climate investigations of Exxon.
Over the past year, the battle lines formed along partisan lines on the question of whether the Justice Department should launch a probe into ExxonMobil's stance on climate change.