Two moderate Republican senators criticized the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in a leaked draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito on Tuesday.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said that if the draft opinion was accurate, “it rocks my confidence in the court right now,” Politico’s Burgess Everett reported. Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the accuracy of the leak in a statement Tuesday.
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For the first time since then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell lowered the threshold to confirm a Supreme Court nominee from 60 votes to a simple majority, Democrats have a Senate majority.
Despite Democrats’ advantage being as slim as it can be in the 50-50 split chamber, their majority means that there is little Republicans can do to block anybody whom President Joe Biden nominates, assuming his party votes unanimously to confirm. Biden has also vowed to nominate a black woman, meaning his pick will likely be the first to ever serve on the Supreme Court.
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A federal judge blocked a massive Alaskan oil drilling project Wednesday after ruling that the Interior Department inadequately measured its environmental impact.
Judge Sharon Gleason of the U.S. District Court of the District of Alaska wrote in her opinion that the Bureau of Land Management’s assessment of the ConocoPhillips’ Willow project was “arbitrary and capricious,” noting that it did not even include the likely level of greenhouse gas emissions in its environmental impact report.
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A group of ten Republican senators outlined a less expensive coronavirus relief compromise bill and said much of the past stimulus passed during the pandemic hasn’t been spent yet.
The proposed stimulus framework builds on prior legislation that passed with bipartisan support, the 10 senators wrote in the letter Sunday. The group, which included Sens. Mitt Romney, Thom Tillis, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, also requested a meeting with President Joe Biden to discuss the bill.
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by Tim Pearce A federal judge vacated a land swap agreement Friday between an Alaskan village and the Department of the Interior because the federal government violated procedural law when making the deal. U.S. District Court of Alaska Judge Sharon Gleason nullified a January 2018 deal that traded roughly 500 acres of federally protected wilderness to the community of King Cove, Alaska, in exchange for one acre to the Interior Department. At the time, Alaskan lawmakers and King Cove residents celebrated the agreement as the end of a four-decade battle. “This is a disappointing case and a disappointing ruling,” GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said in a statement. Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed off on the agreement, trading away some the 315,000-acre Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in order for King Cove to finish construction on a road between the community and Cold Bay, roughly 30 miles away by land. Gleason sided with several environmental groups that sued the federal government over the deal, alleging Zinke “not only failed to provide the required level of detailed justification for reversing decades of prior findings, he provided no justification at all,” according to the judge’s decision, reported by the Anchorage Daily News. Gleason agreed with the environmentalists,…
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