The polls have flipped in Alaska. Murkowski is leading, but Scott McAdams may be in the best position of all.

Appalachian residents witness to the atrocities of mountaintop removal as S. 696 hits the Senate.

Actress and environmental activist Ashley Judd has started reaching out to prospective supporters and fundraisers for a potential 2014 run.

After months of careful consideration, actress says her 'responsibilities and energy' need to be focused on family.

As the Senate votes to give the FDA more power, read what those in the know are saying about it.

Senate Subcommittee on Superfund, Toxics and Environmental Health will convene today to hear about the effects of everyday chemicals on the health of children.

The amendment, part of a pending transportation bill, marks the Gulf Coast's 'most important conservation victory in a decade,' advocates say.

Coal country Sen. Robert Byrd is crowing about $4 billion he steered towards the false hype that is "clean coal" in the Senate version of the economic stimulus

Political ideology doesn't matter in the Senate when it comes to ethanol subsidies. Unless your senator comes from a corn state, chances are he or she voted aga

Each time the EPA is attacked Democrats struggle more to defend it

Maryland Senator Ben Cardin Congratulates Precise CEO for Senate Small Business of the Week Award

Toolkit brings awareness to bone health strategies

John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Women in Government (WIG) Issue 2019 Award

U.S. Senate

Buckley

1. Senators Release Water Infrastructure Legislation

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Senator John Barrasso (R-Wy.) and Ranking Member Tom Carper (D-Del.), released two NECA-supported water infrastructure bills, the America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2020 (AWIA 2020) and Drinking Water Infrastructure Act of 2020.

NECA’s Look Ahead: These bipartisan bills address the critical need to secure water infrastructure. The are successor bills to the NECA-supported America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 that easily passed through Congress and was signed into law in 2018. NECA will continue to monitor this important legislation as it moves through Congress.

• Read the section-by-section of the draft AWIA 2020 here.
• Read the section-by-section of the Drinking Water Infrastructure Act here.

2. Senate Returns to Washington Next Week

The Senate is scheduled to return to D.C. on Monday, May 4, 2020, to begin filling judicial vacancies and continue work on new coronavirus legislation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), released the following statement on this decision. The House has decided to postpone returning until further notice. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is expected to release an anticipated return date soon.  

NECA’s Look Ahead: NECA looks forward to the Senate being in session to work on additional coronavirus legislation. The government affairs team continues to advocate on behalf of our contractors during this period.

3. Register Today for the Upcoming Government Affairs Webinar

On May 5, 2020 at 2 p.m. EDT, NECA’s Government Affairs team will brief participants on NECA’s requests for Congress in the Phase IV coronavirus response legislation. During this webinar, participants can take action and send a letter to their Member of Congress requesting help for the electrical construction industry to remain viable during this crisis. Participants will also hear messages from key Members of Congress on the current legislative response to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Register Today!

NECA’s Look Ahead: NECA is committed to ensuring the voices of our industry are heard during this time. We continue to advocate for the needs our contractors daily and remain devoted to keeping our members well informed on the policies impacting them.  

Missouri’s Republican-led Senate passed a bill to ban abortions at eight weeks of pregnancy.

ON INLANDER.COM NATION: As meatpacking plants nationwide shutdown due to COVID-19 outbreaks, certain meat products are becoming harder to find at grocery stores and fast-food drive-thrus.…

Copyright 2018 KERA. To see more, visit KERA . SCOTT SIMON, HOST: In Texas, a race that no one expected to be this competitive. The candidates for Texas Senate battled in a debate last night. KERA's Christopher Connelly reports from Dallas. CHRISTOPHER CONNELLY, BYLINE: It was a scene that feels kind of rare in American politics these days. Two guys with diametrically opposed opinions lobbing barbed policy prescriptions back-and-forth without any name calling. Senator Ted Cruz and Congressman Beto O'Rourke were forceful and civil - mostly. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) BETO O'ROURKE: You just said something that I did not say... TED CRUZ: What did you not say? O'ROURKE: ...And attributed it to me. CRUZ: What did you not say? O'ROURKE: I'm not going to repeat the slander and the mischaracterization. CRUZ: So what did you say? What did you say? O'ROURKE: I'm not going to repeat the slander and mischaracterization. CRUZ: You're not going to say what you did say? CONNELLY: Ted Cruz is

Secretary of the Senate Julie Adams has turned down presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s request to search for records of any complaint filed by his former staffer Tara Reade, citing legal advice that she has “no discretion” to release such materials, because they are confidential under current law.

A key Senate committee has scheduled a vote on the long-stalled nomination of Michael Pack, an ally of Stephen K. Bannon, to run the agency in charge of the Voice of America. Employees are worried.

The aviation safety regulator is being urged to relax maintenance requirements for Angel Flight and other charity flight services, after a Senate inquiry slammed an earlier ATSB report into the charity's fatal crash rate.

Tensions are rising within the Tasmanian Liberal party as some look to drop veteran Eric Abetz from the top spot on the Senate ticket in favour of his apprentice, Jonathon Duniam.

The Coalition's cashless welfare card is compared to the intervention and "mission" times by Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory

The Labor Senate Leader attacked Senator Mathias Cormann over a short speech regarding besieged Chisholm MP Gladys Liu.

Best known for his provocative signs, Father Rod Bower from the NSW Central Coast announces plans to run for the Senate as an independent candidate.

Powered in part by billionaire investors, business titans and a few famous musicians, John Hickenlooper dominated the U.S. Senate race’s fundraising battle in the first three months of 2020.

A Denver judge ordered that U.S. Senate candidate Michelle Ferrigno Warren must be placed on the June 30 primary ballot, despite falling well short of the Colorado Secretary of State's usual signature requirement.

U.S. Senate candidate Lorena Garcia must be placed on the June 30 primary ballot, a Denver District Court judge ruled Thursday.

The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday overturned a lower court decision to put Senate candidate Michelle Ferrigno Warren's name on the June 30 Democratic primary ballot, siding with the Secretary of State's Office.

The Colorado Supreme Court has all but cemented a two-way Democratic primary for Colorado’s U.S. Senate seat in June between John Hickenlooper and Andrew Romanoff after reversing another Denver District Court decision. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that Democratic candidate Lorena Garcia shouldn’t be placed on the primary ballot because she didn’t collect enough […]

Kelly Loeffler is, by far, the wealthiest elected official in Congress, with an estimated net worth of half a billion dollars (the second wealthiest is Montana Rep. Greg Gianforte (famous for his body slamming a journalist for asking him a question and then lying to the police about it)). Loeffler may be used to getting away with tearing up the red tape in her previous life, but in Congress, that often looks pretty corrupt. In just the last few months since she was appointed, there were concerns about her stock sales and stock purchases, which seemed oddly matched to information she was getting during briefings regarding the impact of COVID-19. She has since agreed to convert all her stock holdings to managed funds outside of her control (something every elected official should do, frankly).

Now, the NY Times is noting another form of what we've referred to as "soft corruption" -- moves that might technically be legal, but which sure look sketchy as hell to any regular non-multimillionaire elected official. In this case, Senator Loeffler received what was, in effect, a gift worth $9 million from her former employer, Intercontinental Exchange (the company that runs the NY Stock Exchange, and where her husband is the CEO).

The key issue was that since she was leaving the job to go join the Senate, she had a bunch of unvested stock. For normal people, if you leave a job before your stock vests, too bad. That's the deal. The vesting period is there for a reason. But for powerful, rich people, apparently the rules change. Intercontinental Exchange changed the rules to grant her the compensation that she wasn't supposed to get, because why not?

Ms. Loeffler, who was appointed to the Senate in December and is now in a competitive race to hold her seat, appears to have received stock and other awards worth more than $9 million from the company, Intercontinental Exchange, according to a review of securities filings by The New York Times, Ms. Loeffler’s financial disclosure form and interviews with compensation and accounting experts. That was on top of her 2019 salary and bonus of about $3.5 million.

The additional compensation came in the form of shares, stock options and other instruments that Ms. Loeffler had previously been granted but was poised to forfeit by leaving the company. Intercontinental Exchange altered the terms of the awards, allowing her to keep them. The largest component — which the company had previously valued at about $7.8 million — was a stake in an Intercontinental Exchange subsidiary that Ms. Loeffler had been running.

The entitlement factor oozes out of the statement put out from her office in response to this:

“Kelly left millions in equity compensation behind to serve in public office to protect freedom, conservative values and economic opportunity for all Georgians,” said Stephen Lawson, a spokesman for Ms. Loeffler. “The obsession of the liberal media and career politicians with her success shows their bias against private sector opportunity in favor of big government.”

No, Stephen, that's not the issue. The issue is that normal people who haven't vested yet, don't get to have the board change the vesting rules as you're leaving to go legislate in order to give you a $9 million windfall you didn't earn because it hadn't vested. If it had just been a question of compensation, no one would be complaining. If she had played by the rules that everyone else played by, lived up to her end of the contract and vested the equity, then no big deal. The problem is the last minute changing of the rules to get her a pretty massive payout (perhaps not by her standards, but by anyone else's).

Indeed, the details show that this wasn't just a timing thing, like a standard vesting deal, but that Loeffler was supposed to reach certain milestones to be able to get the equity. She didn't, but she still gets it. That's the part that has people concerned.

In February 2019, Intercontinental Exchange gave Ms. Loeffler a stake in a limited liability company that owned a stake in Bakkt, according to a March 2019 securities filing. The company at the time estimated the award was worth $15.6 million. But Ms. Loeffler would be able to cash in on the award only under certain circumstances, including if Bakkt’s value soared or if it became a publicly traded company.

When Ms. Loeffler stepped down from the company less than 10 months later, she was poised to forfeit much of that Bakkt stake. But Intercontinental Exchange sped up the vesting process so that she got half of it immediately.

The company, of course, puts a nice spin on it, saying "We admire Kelly’s decision to serve her country in the U.S. Senate and did not want to discourage that willingness to serve,” but what else are they going to say anyway?

Still waiting for that supposed swamp draining we keep hearing about.

Linda McMahon is running for the US Senate in Connecticut. For twenty (20) years, she ran World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) with her husband, Vince McMahon. A few years ago, a documentary film examined the WWE's celebration of violence against women. Her campaign doesn't want Connecticut voters to see that film. Watch these excerpts from the film to see why. Continue reading →

The Senate considered H.R. 1314, the legislative vehicle for trade promotion authority reauthorization.?It would give the president broad fast-track authority when negotiating trade agreements and require Congress to consider treaties without an amendment process. Senator Bernie Sanders speaks out against this bill before the Senate on May 12, 2015. Continue reading →

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IN THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT IN OUR HISTORY MUST MAKE A VERY FUNDAMENTAL DECISION, AND THAT DECISION IS DO WE CONTINUE THE STATUS QUO WHICH INCLUDES A 40-YEAR DECLINE OF OUR MIDDLE CLASS AND A HUGE AND GROWING GAP BETWEEN THE VERY, VERY RICH AND EVERYONE ELSE, OR DO WE FIGHT FOR A BOLD AND MEANINGFUL ECONOMIC AGENDA THAT CREATES JOBS, RAISES WAGES, PROTECTS OUR ENVIRONMENT AND PROVIDES HEALTH CARE FOR EVERY AMERICAN Continue reading →

On Tuesday, I cast a joyless vote for the very much politically doomed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Illinois primary, in an elementary school where hushed whispers and fearful glances had replaced the normal din of an election day. There was no one standing just outside the perimeter hustling me to vote for this […]

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calls the Senate back as Washington, D.C.'s coronavirus numbers rise.

Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) appears on track for confirmation as director of national intelligence after a Senate Intelligence Commitee hearing Tuesday.

Senate confidentiality requirements leave us with a 'he said, she said' standoff between Joe Biden and Tara Reade.

Watch Gary Varvel's time lapse video of how he draws the Indiana Senate race.

Braun and Donnelly tout their support for Trump's policies