by jpitney | Feb 4, 2025 | Congress, Elections, Transparency, Violence
Andrew Solender at Axios: Threats against members of Congress skyrocketed in 2024, marking a return to levels not seen since the year after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, according to new Capitol Police data. Why it matters: The data suggests that the...
by jpitney | Feb 3, 2025 | Economic Policy, Trade
Lindsay Wise at WSJ: The precise impact will depend on how long the tariffs stay in place and if other countries retaliate. The Tax Policy Center, a think tank, estimates the average household’s after-tax income will fall 1%, or $930, in 2026 because of the...
by jpitney | Feb 2, 2025 | Economic Policy, Trade
Wall Street Journal: The U.S. doesn’t produce enough lumber to meet domestic demand and thus imports about a third of the softwood used in home construction, mostly from Canada. Environmental policies restrict logging on public land in the American Northwest. Timber...
by jpitney | Feb 1, 2025 | Bipartisanship, Economic Policy, Photojournalism, Trade, Uncategorized
Phil Gramm and Larry Summers: In an extraordinary act of unity, 1,028 American professional economists in the spring of 1930 signed a letter urging Congress to reject and President Herbert Hoover to veto the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Yet that June, Congress passed it...
by jpitney | Jan 31, 2025 | Congress, Elections, House of Representatives, Transparency, Volunteering
Don Wolfensberger at The Hill: The House seems to have a special penchant for birthing select committees to complement the work of its 20-plus standing committees. In the last Congress, for instance, it created select committees or subcommittees on the strategic...
by jpitney | Jan 30, 2025 | Congress, Dreier, Elections, House of Representatives, Transparency, Volunteering
At Roll Call, Jackie Wang interviews Rep.Vince Fong: Q: How has Congress changed since you were first a staffer? A: The people make this place go, and if you look at who was there at the time, it was members like Jim McCrery, Wally Herger, David Dreier, Dan...
by jpitney | Jan 30, 2025 | Trade
Scott Lincicome at Cato: As I wrote late last year, the US automotive industry is a great example of the complexities of 21st-century manufacturing and the benefits of globalization: [I]t’s widely acknowledged by automotive industry experts that freer trade and...
by jpitney | Jan 28, 2025 | China, Foreign Policy, Trade
Karlyn Bowman at AEI: There is longstanding concern in public opinion about China’s unfair trade practices as well as sustained support for protecting workers’ jobs and American manufacturing. Fifty-two percent of registered voters in the new Harvard CAPS/Harris...
by jpitney | Jan 27, 2025 | Congress, Elections, House of Representatives, Technology, Transparency, Volunteering
Lorelei Kelly at The Conversation: Congressional staff serve in thousands of district offices across the nation, and their communications technology doesn’t match that of most businesses and even many homes. Members’ district offices only got connected...
by jpitney | Jan 24, 2025 | 2776, California Politics, Electoral College, Environment, History, Immigration, Jobs, Lincoln, Mass Media, Race, Redistricting, Trade, Vaccine
Connor Sheets at LAT: Los Angeles County officials missed dozens of opportunities for water infrastructure improvements that experts say probably would have enabled firefighters to save more homes during the Palisades fire, public records show. As crews battled...
