In the News
A group of House Democrats penned a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday asking him to condemn far-right Brazilian presidential frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro.
The lawmakers, led by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), cited concerns for "rising threats to democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Brazil" in making their request.
"Given the regional repercussions of this sort of development, this is not a threat that our country can take lightly," they wrote.
More than a dozen House Democrats are urging Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to condemn Brazil's far-right presidential candidate for encouraging political violence, showing a lack of commitment to democracy and attacking minority communities.
The lawmakers, led by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and including Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and James McGovern (D-Mass.), in their letter dated Friday call Jair Bolsonaro a "far-right extremist" who has said he will not accept the election results if he loses.
The Federal Reserve has two jobs. Unfortunately, over the past few decades, it's been doing one of them quite poorly: Ensuring unemployment remains low and wage growth high.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) thinks this is an issue Democrats should take on. And this afternoon he's releasing a bill to get the ball rolling.
The "Coretta Scott King Full Employment Federal Reserve Act of 2018" — named after the African-American activist who made full employment a hallmark of her civil rights efforts — would amend the Federal Reserve's obligations in several ways.
Members of Congress are raising the alarm about the potential for a violent crackdown in Brazil, as the country hurtles toward the second round presidential vote on October 28. Far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who has recently threatened to jail political opponents and unleash a wave of extrajudicial executions of alleged criminals, appears all but assured to win the vote and take the presidency.
Often the most critical parts of major legislation are the most boring. For those of us working to bring government into the digital age, the bipartisan 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act, known as the 21st Century IDEA Act, is an incredibly important piece of legislation which gets the big things right. Its downside is that it's not boring enough.
It's no secret that the situation in Yemen is grim. The numbers are repeated in press reports and diplomatic statements ad nauseam: likely tens of thousands of civilian casualties; more than a million cases of cholera over the past year; 8 million people in danger of facing starvation, 5 million of them children; 22 million in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Civilians are getting blown up at weddings, at funerals, while fishing. They're selling organs to make ends meet and cooking tree leaves to survive. It's "the world's worst humanitarian crisis."
Google, Facebook Inc. and other online companies can expect greater scrutiny and possibly legislation from a Democratic-led Congress, a Silicon Valley lawmaker close to the party leadership said.
Representative Ro Khanna, whose California district is home to companies including Apple Inc. and Intel Corp., said in an interview that episodes like the leak of Facebook users' data to Cambridge Analytica and last year's breach of consumer information by Equifax Inc. had amounted to a "wake-up call" that rules are needed.
If Democrats win the House of Representatives in November, they'll be pushing for sweeping consumer privacy protections, including making it so you'd have to opt in to data collection and also ensuring net neutrality.
The so-called Internet Bill of Rights was drafted by Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat who represents Silicon Valley. Rather than a bill, for now it's simply a list of 10 principles that Khanna hopes will become part of a comprehensive legislative package that could be voted on next year.
With Democrats expecting to take back the House in November, party leadership has been quietly assembling a laundry list of policies they intend to highlight—and investigations they plan to launch—as soon as the speaker's gavel is handed back to Nancy Pelosi. Most seem designed to make Donald Trump's life hell, such as issuing subpoenas for his tax returns, or for records related to his botched hurricane response in Puerto Rico. But Democrats are also circling legislation that could help rebrand the party, and bolster their political position, ahead of the 2020 election.