Barbara Lee

Democrats expressed outrage at President Donald Trump on Tuesday and Wednesday as they reacted to a new Harvard study that estimates at least 4,645 people died in Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricane Maria.

That figure is 73 times greater than the government’s most recently reported death toll: 64.

For the third time in the Trump administration, Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley has moved forward with a confirmation hearing for an appeals court nominee over the objections of Democratic home-state senators.

The Iowa Republican set a Wednesday confirmation hearing on Ryan Bounds to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, even though Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have declined to give their consent through the committee’s traditional process.

The House Appropriations Committee advanced its $3.8 billion fiscal 2019 Legislative Branch spending bill to the floor Tuesday, after adopting an amendment to eliminate funding for a Capitol Hill office perk for former speakers.

The panel backed the bill, 47-0, after adopting by voice vote a manager’s amendment from Legislative Branch Subcommittee Chairman Kevin Yoder of Kansas, which would end taxpayer funding for an office for former House speakers, along with staff and other resources.

Republicans carried on with their annual retreat this week, after member-doctors sprung to action when the Amtrak locomotive pulling GOP lawmakers to their West Virginia destination collided with a garbage truck on Wednesday, killing one of its passengers.

The previous night, President Donald Trump stayed on track during his first State of the Union address in the House chamber. 

Before an audience of students at a vocational high school in an old Massachusetts manufacturing city, Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III offered the official Democratic response to the State of the Union.

But he had plenty of company in reacting to Trump on camera.

At least 11 Democratic lawmakers will skip President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address Tuesday.

Instead, at least two of those absentees plan to take part in a separate event in Washington, the “State of OUR Union,” put on by leading women activists to “offer an alternative view and vision for the country” from Trump’s.

Updated Jan. 30 2:10 p.m. | Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen on Tuesday was the 12th Democratic member of Congress to announce that he would boycott President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.

“I’ve spent 38 years in elected public office, helping make government work and speaking out against corruption because I believe, as President John F. Kennedy believed, that politics is an honorable profession,” Cohen said in a statement. “The current President is the antithesis of that sensibility: a man who appears determined to tear government down, harm the most vulnerable, benefit the rich and destroy foundational institutions such as the Department of Justice and the FBI.”

A playwright is bringing to the Capitol his message that the power of declaring war needs to remain in the hands of Congress.

“Republic For Which We Stand” by John B. Henry will be shown in the Congressional Auditorium Tuesday evening. Henry is one of the founders of the Committee for the Republic, a group of citizens which has been meeting to talk about war since George W. Bush sent troops into Iraq.

Is there another celebrity waiting in the wings to join those who have thrown their names in the ring to run for public office?

As if Congress wasn’t nerdy enough, J. R. R. Tolkien’s famous hobbit of the Shire, Samwise Gamgee, tweeted at a fan that being a member of Congress would be a “dream come true.”

Democratic lobbyist Anne MacMillan recalls sitting at small political fundraising dinners not long ago, with men filling all the chairs around her.

“Generally, the conversation would circle around hunting or fishing or golf, or something I couldn’t even participate in,” said MacMillan, a former aide to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.