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‘Sitting on a time bomb’: Mobile home residents at risk in red-hot housing market
WASHINGTON — Jon Zang walks his dog several times a day in his mobile home community in West Goshen Township, Pennsylvania. It’s quiet, as most of his neighbors are at work. But he often wonders how many more walks he and his bulldog mix, Ladybug, will have down the streets of the place he’s called […]
More than 1,500 books have been banned in public schools, and a U.S. House panel asks why
WASHINGTON — A U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee panel on Thursday examined why thousands of books, predominantly written by marginalized authors, have been banned from public schools, and the impact of those actions on students and teachers. “Most books being targeted for censorship are books that introduce ideas about diversity or our common humanity, […]
U.S. House Democrats applaud end of Trump-era policy on migrants at the border
WASHINGTON — Democrats at a U.S. House Homeland Security panel hearing on Wednesday praised the end of a Trump-era policy that turned away migrants pleading for asylum at the border. The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that the so-called Title 42 policy, enacted on public health grounds at the beginning of […]
Pause on federal student loan repayments extended by Biden through Aug. 31
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration Wednesday announced its plans to extend the pause on federal student loan repayments until the end of August. “I recognized in recently extending the COVID-19 national emergency, we are still recovering from the pandemic and the unprecedented economic disruption it caused,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “If loan payments […]
Insulin price cap approved by U.S. House as Georgia’s Warnock pushes for Senate passage
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House on Thursday passed a bill on a bipartisan 232-193 vote that would limit the price of insulin, as congressional Democrats met throughout the day with health care advocates to make their case for the proposal. Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Patty Murray of Washington state held a virtual round […]
Biden signs law named for Emmett Till that makes lynching a federal hate crime
WASHINGTON — Nearly 70 years after 14-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped and murdered in Mississippi by two white men, President Joe Biden signed into law on Tuesday a bill to make lynching a federal hate crime. “Lynching was pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone belongs in America,” Biden said at the Rose […]
Biden lays out a ‘fund the police’ budget plan
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is requesting billions in its fiscal 2023 budget from Congress to fund police departments, despite progressive Democrats’ calls for some of that spending to be reallocated to social services. President Joe Biden’s budget request to Congress unveiled Monday asks for $30 billion for state and local governments to add more […]
GOP senators attack and interrupt in final day of questioning U.S. Supreme Court nominee
WASHINGTON — In the third day of hearings Wednesday on the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court, several Republicans on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee interrogated her about sentences she handed down for child pornography offenses, disagreeing vehemently with her judicial decisions. Republicans grilled her with questions she had already answered about […]
Most HBCU bomb threats may be coming from one juvenile, FBI official tells Congress
WASHINGTON — A top FBI official told members of a U.S. House panel on Thursday that the agency believes a single juvenile is behind most of the bomb threats made to more than 30 Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Ryan Young, executive assistant director of the Intelligence Branch at the FBI, said that the bomb […]
U.S. Senate backs shift to permanent daylight saving time
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate with little debate on Tuesday unanimously supported a permanent change to daylight saving time, several days after Americans once again went through the hated “spring forward” ritual of changing their clocks. If the bill, the Sunshine Protection Act, clears the House, it would mean most states would stay on daylight saving […]
Biden urges city leaders to take advantage of billions in federal relief funds
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Monday urged local and city governments to continue to use the $130 billion in funds allocated to them from the American Rescue Plan to help during the pandemic. The president of the National League of Cities, Union City Mayor Vince Williams, introduced the president to attendees of the organization’s […]
Congress hates changing the clocks just like everyone else
WASHINGTON — Republicans and Democrats in Congress can agree on sleep, or more precisely, the inconvenience of losing or gaining an hour of it each year thanks to going on and off daylight saving time. “I believe that any justifications for springing forward and falling back are either outdated or are outweighed by the serious […]