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Category: Legislation

ENDA debate reaffirms religious exemption

The fight over a broad religious exemption in the Employment Nondiscrimination Act is all but over. The question is whether the House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco will attempt to force the bill to a vote in the House this year. Pelosi has said all options are on the table. The Senate Wednesday approved 

Day 10: Lots of meetings, guide to debt limit problem

President Obama (and Vice President Biden) Thursday will meet with the Senate Democratic Caucus in the State Dining Room. After that, they will meet with House Republican leaders and certain House GOP committee chairs in the Roosevelt Room. Republicans have more or less dropped their Obamacare demands that shut down the government and have pivoted  

Politicssource 2013-09-25 16:51:31

The House and Senate farm bills for the first time would open a trickle of funding for a program that doubles food stamp benefits that are spent on fresh fruits and vegetables at farmers markets. The program is currently operating with private funds at 300 farmers markets across the nation, including seven in the California  

Nancy Pelosi floats new strategy to pressure GOP on immigration

With the fall window for enactment of a big immigration overhaul closing rapidly, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi has come up with a new strategy to force House Republicans to bring legislation to the floor. An aide familiar with the strategy said the Pelosi plan is to introduce a bipartisan bill nearly identical to the  

Senate committee passes ENDA with Republican votes

Rapid movement continued on the gay rights front Wednesday as three moderate Republicans joined Democrats in a historic vote to approve a long-languishing workplace non-discrimination bill out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, was first introduced in Congress in 1994. Three Republicans joined all Democrats on  

Rep. Jackie Speier outs obscene Marine Facebook page

Amid the sudden uproar over sexual assaults in the military following a Pentagon report Tuesday that 26,000 members of the military were assaulted last year, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, released portions of a Facebook page, “F’N Wook,” denigrating women in the Marine Corps. In a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Marine Corps Commandant  

The not-so-scary Sequester

Friday may not be doomsday after all. President Obama said as much in a press conference Friday, when he said the sequester is “not apocalypse” but “just dumb.” He said he could not do a “Jedi mind-meld” to convince Republican leaders to avoid it. So Obama is not a Jedi but perhaps the White House  

Cornyn, Cruz measured in their wording attacking weapons ban

Continued coverage of the Judiciary Committee’s hearing on Sen. Feinstein’s proposed assault weapons ban: Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, who have been conservative outliers on many issues in the opening days of this Congress, certainly voiced their opposition to an assault-weapons ban, but they showed the political acumen to be much more measured  

Obama embraces gay, lesbian bi-nationals on immigration

As expected, President Obama endorsed inclusion of bi-national same sex couples in his own immigration framework announced in Las Vegas Tuesday, in contrast to Monday’s bipartisan Senate framework which omitted mention of gays and lesbians. Obama did not mention bi-nationals in his Las Vegas speech but they were included in the written fact sheet, endorsing […]

New effort to increase visas for tech workers as high as 300,000

The tech industry, one of the most powerful players in the immigration debate, threw down its marker Tuesday with a bipartisan stand-alone bill to increase H-1B visas for skilled workers from 65,000 to 115,000 with an escalator that could bring total visas to 300,000 a year. Silicon Valley has been chafing under H-1B caps since […]