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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 […]

House progressives have again introduced amendments to significantly reduce the massive Pentagon budget of at least $768 billion.

The For the People Act passed by the U.S. House in March, filibustered in the Senate in June, contains over a hundred pages of ethics legislation, along with changes to campaign finance laws and election access. All of the government ethics provisions have now been stripped out of the Senate Democrats’ compromise version, the Freedom […]

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 […]

Texas Republican Michael McCaul owned up to $6 million in G.E. shares as he sits on the Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security Committees.

Earlier this year, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) became an original co-sponsor on a bill to declare that meat and poultry from all state-inspected slaughterhouses can be shipped throughout the country to be sold by grocery stores. Under current law, only meat and poultry from federally-inspected plants and facilities in a handful of states whose inspection […]

In December 2020, Ritu Khanna, the wife of Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), divested from several weapons companies after Sludge published an article revealing that her fortune included defense contractor stocks worth as much as $376,000. The stock sales were celebrated by the anti-war group Code Pink, which had run a campaign calling on Khanna to […]

It’s no shock that most members of Congress, over half of whom are millionaires, don’t want to stop themselves and their spouses from being allowed to trade corporate stocks and derivatives while they hold public office. Just 8 percent of the House and 3 percent of the Senate are co-sponsoring bills to ban congressional stock […]

Half of lower-income Americans face cost barriers to healthcare access, according to a new report.

Democratic establishment favorite Shontel Brown defeated progressive Nina Turner and several other candidates in a Democratic Ohio special election primary on Tuesday night, virtually guaranteeing her a seat in Congress. Brown received 37,666 votes, while 33,420 people cast their ballots for Turner.  Turner, a former delegate to presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, raised more than twice […]

Researchers studying congressional stock ownership have found that the practice has effects on lobbying activity and potentially on market movements.

As the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spends big on lobbying against the For the People Act, some member companies earned low grades on a new voting rights scorecard.

Days before the House of Representatives took its first votes on legislation to break up big technology companies, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi exercised a call option and bought 4,000 shares of stock in Google parent Alphabet, worth nearly $5 million.  The Alphabet investment was disclosed this morning in a periodic transaction report […]