Save for laterPolls now show a majority of Americans favor impeaching President Donald Trump and removing him from office. Democratic pollster Brad Bannon explains how people should read the rush of new surveys coming in. We also remember Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the Maryland Democrat who passed away this week, by reprising his 2017 interview with CQ Roll Call.
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CQ on Congress, Ep. 172
A memorial for the late House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., is seen in the committee’s Rayburn Building hearing room on. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)
‘If every woman gave a $1, we’d have this built in no time,’ Carolyn Maloney says
Members of the American Equal Rights Association pose for a photograph at their executive committee meeting. Advocates for a national women’s history museum see 2020 — the 100th anniversary of the the ratification of the 19th Amendment — as a rallying point for its creation. (Courtesy Library of Congress)
For 20 years, proponents in and out of Congress have sought the creation of a national museum devoted to women’s history, and a new bipartisan push will likely get the matter a vote in the House this fall.
Last month, a bill to establish such a museum crossed the 290 co-sponsorship threshold that allows for fast-track floor consideration under what is known as the consensus calendar. The measure could be scheduled for a vote by November.
Docket ‘almost guarantees’ court shifting further and faster to the right, expert says
Activists hold up signs at an abortion-rights rally at Supreme Court in Washington to protest new state bans on abortion services on Tuesday May 21, 2019. (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call file photo)
The Supreme Court will confront ideological issues such as immigration and LGBT rights that have sharply divided Congress and the nation in a new term starting Monday that will bring more scrutiny to the justices during a heated presidential campaign season.
In many ways, the nine justices are still settling into a new internal dynamic with two President Donald Trump appointees in as many years. The court had few high-profile cases last term, amid the drama of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation that gripped the nation and solidified the court’s conservative ideological tilt.
The week of Sept. 27 as captured by Roll Call’s photojournalists
A coalition of progressive activist groups, including MoveOn.org, hold a rally at the Capitol on Thursday, calling on Congress to impeach President Donald Trump. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
Effort to provide D.C. residents with full congressional representation gains steam in House
From left, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, Mayor Muriel Bowser veteran Kerwin E. Miller, and Dr. Roger Pilon, attend the House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing titled “H.R. 51: Making D.C. the 51st State,” in Rayburn Building on Thursday, September 19, 2019. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)
The first House hearing on D.C. statehood in nearly 26 years revealed old battle lines over giving the District of Columbia’s 702,000 residents full representation in Congress. House Oversight Committee Democrats applauded statehood as a long-overdue correction of an anomaly, while Republicans said corruption made D.C. unfit for full voting rights and claimed the whole thing was unconstitutional anyway.
Thursday’s hearing grappled with HR 51, a bill that would admit the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, into the Union as the country’s 51st state, and provide it one House representative and two senators in Congress. The District is currently represented by a nonvoting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who introduced the bill.
Buildings with outstanding repair needs include the Castle and the National Air and Space Museum
Cathy L. Helm, inspector general of the Smithsonian Institute, testifies before the House Administration Committee on Oversight of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington on Wednesday. (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call)
The Smithsonian Institution has almost $1 billion in outstanding maintenance needs across the more than 600 facilities it oversees, an issue that concerned lawmakers at Wednesday’s House Administration Committee hearing and one that the recently appointed head of the museum complex pledged to address.
Prominent Smithsonian buildings in need of deferred maintenance — maintenance and repairs that were not performed when they should have been — include the Smithsonian Institution Building, known as the Castle, the Arts and Industries Building and the National Air and Space Museum. The $937 million backlog for fiscal 2017 is an assessment of every building it oversees, according to to Cathy Helm, inspector general for the Smithsonian Institution.
‘We’re coming for what is due us,’ mayor proclaims
Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser rides a bus with 51 military veterans to a Monday rally on Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest ahead of this week’s House Oversight and Reform hearing on a bill that would make the District the 51st state. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)
Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton evoked the Founding Fathers to plead their case for district statehood while riding in a statehood parade to the Capitol on Monday.
The two D.C. political leaders were joined in front of the John A. Wilson Building, the seat of the District government, by high-spirited U.S. veterans from D.C. waving American flags with 51 stars and chanting “Fif-ty-one! Fif-ty-one!” The delegation then climbed onto a double-decker statehood bus for an 11-block trek that included a stop in front of Trump International Hotel.
What to do in D.C. the week of Sept. 16-23
The H Street Festival, spanning 10 blocks of H Street Northeast, returns on Saturday. (Kate Patterson/Getty Images file photo)
One of D.C.’s favorite all-day block parties, the H Street Festival, returns on Saturday, Sept. 21. This year’s festivities will feature music of different genres, dance, an interactive children’s program, fashion and more. You can start making your merries at noon.
Planning a wedding? If so,“tie up loose ends before you tie the knot.” The Liaison Capitol Hill Hotel, located at 415 New Jersey Ave. NW, is hosting a wedding planning party on Monday from 4 to 8 p.m. There will be makeovers, fashion, and our personal favorite: cake and cocktails.
‘I’m a resilient guy and I’m not dying,’ New York Republican says of current battle
New York Rep. John E. Sweeney talks to reporters at a news conference on Capitol Hill in 2001. The former congressman is battling cancer. (Jeff Wolfram/CQ Roll Call file photo)
Former New York Rep. John E. Sweeney has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
“I’m optimistic,” he told the (Albany) Times Union. “I have faced challenges in the past.”
Report outlines car driving onto tracks, doors propped open, security guards not checking permits
Union Station has grave security vulnerabilities, according to a report by Amtrak’s inspector general. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)
Security shortcomings at Amtrak’s second busiest station, Washington Union Station, have allowed an unauthorized car to drive onto the tracks and continue to leave the transportation hub and its patrons at risk, according to a report by Amtrak’s inspector general.
The report found that an entrance to Union Station is vulnerable to trespassers; interior doors are not secure; video surveillance cameras are not operational; and the company’s incident reporting process and radio limitations hamper the Amtrak police force’s response to security incidents at the station that served more than 5 million riders in the 2018 fiscal year.
