In the News
When people have a real chance to say what kind of world they want, they tend to tell similar stories: safety for themselves and their families, dignified work, health care. Viewed this way, there is something almost intuitive about many left ideas. Which means the real trouble with building support for them isn't so much the policies themselves—it's getting away from what we've been told is realistic or possible. When it comes to connecting what people say they want with the laws and policies that can actually do what they want, the gap is enormous.
The House voted on Thursday to approve a pair of measures intended to rein in President Donald Trump's ability to take military action against Iran, the latest effort by Democrats to reassert congressional authority amid simmering tensions with the country in the wake of a US strike that killed a top Iranian general.
The House on Thursday moved to block President Trump from taking military action against Iran without the approval of Congress, voting to repeal a 2002 war authorization and to bar him from using federal funds to mount an unauthorized strike against Tehran.
The assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani put the United States dangerously close to all-out war with Iran. The U.S. and Iran avoided this outcome, for now, due in part to anti-war activism within the United States — like the religious leaders who called on Americans to pray for peace. The week after the action, the House of Representatives approved a resolution restricting actions President Donald Trump could take against Iran.
House members introduced bipartisan legislation on Thursday to improve the procurement process for federally funded construction projects.
Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Mark Meadows, R-N.C., introduced the "Construction Consensus Procurement Improvement Act" (H.R. 5644). If passed, it would ban federal agencies from using reverse auctions to award design and construction contracts. This procurement method often favors businesses offering the lowest price, rather than those that are most qualified, they said. The Senate passed its version of the bill in late December.
A new legislative proposal, crafted amid a brutal housing crisis in the Bay Area and beyond, would help ward off sales and replacements of mobile home parks that are being eyed as redevelopment sites.
"Every day, manufactured housing and mobile home communities are threatened by redevelopment contractors, aggressive investors, and greedy landlords," said Rep. Ro Khanna, a Bay Area Democrat who is a primary author of the bill that was introduced Tuesday in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Congressional Democrats filed a bill on Tuesday to study the safety of sex workers — an attempt to figure out if Congress's own crackdown on sex trafficking websites has caused dangerous ramifications.
"As lawmakers, we are responsible for examining unintended consequences of all legislation," Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a sponsor of the bill, said in a statement on Tuesday.
To combat the ills of the internet, federal lawmakers have increasingly focused on a decades-old law that shields tech companies like Facebook and YouTube from liability for content posted by their users.
Last year, lawmakers approved chipping away at the law, voting overwhelmingly to hold tech platforms accountable when people use their sites for sex-trafficking schemes. They have since floated other changes as well, like making Facebook or other platforms liable when opioids are sold on their sites.
On Tuesday, lawmakers put out a new proposal that would require the federal government to study how a pair of laws that targeted online sex trafficking broadly kicked sex workers off the internet last year.
Congress rarely passes major legislation with a bipartisan vote, but last year both parties agreed that sex work should no longer be promoted online. Experts and sex workers themselves warned that punishing sites that host prostitution ads would force the industry into dangerous shadows, but Congress ignored them.