Donald Shaw

President Joe Biden yesterday nominated a slate of judges, including a controversial selection in Jennifer Rearden, who was first nominated for the federal bench by former President Donald Trump.  Rearden, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP with the firm’s litigation and crisis management practices group, was nominated by Biden to serve as a […]

Dozens of members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have signed onto bills that would ban members of Congress from trading stocks, something that more than two-thirds of Americans want, according to a bipartisan poll recently conducted by the Campaign Legal Center. But most of those lawmakers have gotten behind a bill that would keep […]

Biden’s pick for leading the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Saule Omarova, withdrew from the nominating process this week. Omarova, who was raised in the Soviet Union, was repeatedly attacked by Banking Committee Republicans as a communist, but that’s not why she was forced to withdraw.  Omarova had to withdraw because several bank-funded […]

SCOTUS judges get to decide their own recusals.

In many states, new congressional maps are being drawn up to help the political parties that control the legislatures win more federal seats by packing people who vote for the opposing party into a single district or splitting them up widely to dilute their power. But in a state like Massachusetts, where the vast majority […]

Have you found solicitations in your inbox from scammy-seeming political groups that you never signed up for? There are many ways these groups may have gotten your email—campaign finance data shows dozens of obscure data brokerage companies like Fluent LLC and Preferred Communications that get paid millions to rent lists to political campaigns and PACs. […]

Republican Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel posted a tweet over the weekend engaging in the identity politics around values like self-reliance and family.  We’ll have to take his word on his meat, gun, and baby, but we can check his financial holdings, and according to his candidate financial disclosure filed with the Senate on August […]

How did Democrats in the House of Representatives decide that the top House recipient of corporate PAC money should run the tax code-writing committee, or that the top recipient of defense industry cash in their caucus should be in charge of Armed Services? There’s no way to know, because House Democrats have not made public […]

Virginia Democrat Rep. Elaine Luria, who early this year was elevated within the House Armed Services Committee, wants Congress to pre-authorize President Biden to take military action to defend Taiwan against China.  “The president has no legal authority to react in the time necessary to repel a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and deter an all-out […]

While he’s been demanding large cuts to the Democratic reconciliation package, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) has consistently urged the House to take up and pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill that the Senate passed in August.  Many of the business lobbying groups that fund Manchin’s campaigns back the infrastructure  bill, but there may be another incentive […]

Oil and gas lobbying groups are reaching new highs in their Facebook ad spending as they organize people across the country to lobby their senators and representatives against climate and tax provisions in the Democrats’ reconciliation bill.  Since August 11, when the Senate passed a resolution authorizing itself to fast-track a reconciliation bill, the American […]

In 2007, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) was an original cosponsor of a bill that would have closed a tax loophole that lets investment fund managers pay the lower capital gains tax rates on the income they earn from the fees they charge their clients. The capital gains tax rates […]

This week, a Texas bill took effect that bans physicians from performing or inducing an abortion if a fetal heartbeat can be detected, something that typically occurs about six weeks after conception. There is an exception for medical emergencies, but no exceptions for women who have been raped or are victims of incest.  Most women […]