{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=51521964-76E5-4BD4-8142-B11BD89B203F", ": News August 15", "2013-08-15", "2013", "2013-08", "Independent", "House", "VT", "Bernard Sanders", "S000033", "sanders.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "News August 15\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tThursday, August 15, 2013\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\tSenator Sanders\r\nSocial Security Wednesday marked the 78th anniversary of the signing of the Social Security Act by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Since its inception, Social Security has changed society and drastically reduced senior poverty. Sen. Bernie Sanders has been \"reliably the staunchest defender of Social Security in Congress,\" according to The Huffington Post.\u00a0LINK\r\nPriority Mail\u00a0Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe announced Wednesday plans to revamp the United States Postal Service's priority mail in order to boost revenues, The Hill reported. A recent financial report said the agency had lost $3.9 billion so far this year. Sen. Sanders argued that the service would have posted a profit for the past three months without a requirement to deposit $5.5 billion a year into a retiree fund that already has more than enough to pay future health benefits.\u00a0LINK\r\nPrison Transfers on Hold\u00a0Federal officials temporarily suspended a plan to turn the Danbury women's prison into a facility for men, The Associated Press reported. The move came after 11 senators from the Northeast, including Sen. Sanders, wrote the Bureau of Prisons to say that the transfers would leave the region with no federal prison beds for women. The senators said the move would unnecessarily disrupt the lives of inmates and their family members.\u00a0LINK\r\nHomelessness With federal budget cuts, more than 2000 low-income Vermonters may be forced from their homes by the end of the year, according to Seven Days. Sen. Sanders' policy adviser David Weinstein called the sequestration cuts to Section 8 housing \"a real crisis that's not been visible.\"\u00a0LINK\r\nDomestic Surveillance\u00a0In the wake of Edward Snowden's National Security Agency leaks, lawmakers have proposed several bills aimed at curbing domestic surveillance programs, Truth-Out reported. One bill from Sen. Sanders would require the government to provide a special court \"specific and articulable facts\" supporting each surveillance order. The bill also would limit the purposes of surveillance to specific FBI investigations of international terrorism.\u00a0LINK\r\nThe Fed The White House is not happy with liberals\u2019 pre-emptive efforts to stop Larry Summers from becoming the Federal Reserve chairman. In a recent Huffington Post article, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Sanders laid out a set of criteria for the selection of a Fed chairman that seemed specifically to exclude Summers, according to The Washington Examiner. Sanders has recommended the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich as possibilities for Fed chairman.\u00a0LINK\r\nAmerican Progressives\u00a0Progressives ask for too little in the age of plutocratic rule, according to John Nichols and Robert McChesney who discussed their new book Dollarocracy with Truth-Out. Sen. Sanders said the authors \u201cinvite Americans to \u2026 to fully recognize the threat that the combination of big money and big media poses to the promise of self-government.\"\u00a0LINK\r\nWorld\r\nEgypt in Turmoil\u00a0Supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi called Thursday for protest marches after a violent government crackdown left more than 500 people dead. The Muslim Brotherhood, which backs Morsi, urged followers to demonstrate late Thursday in Cairo near a mosque that was the scene of some of the worst violence Wednesday. The Brotherhood issued the call in defiance of a state of emergency declared by the military-backed interim government, which took power following a July 3 coup that deposed the country\u2019s first democratically elected president, The Washington Post reported. LINK\r\nU.S. Condemns Egypt Crackdown\u00a0President Barack Obama's administration called for an immediate end to the Egyptian military crackdown on pro-Morsi protestors, The Wall Street Journal reported. \"Today's events are deplorable and they run counter to Egyptian aspirations for peace, inclusion and genuine democracy,\" Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday.\u00a0LINK\r\nNational\r\nWhite House \u2018Heartened\u2019 by Reid Remark on Fed Nominee Amid Democratic infighting over who should be nominated as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, the White House was \u201cheartened\u201d by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid\u2018s statement that he will support whomever President Barack Obama chooses, spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday, according to The Wall Street Journal. LINK\r\nJesse Jackson Jr. and Wife Sentenced to Prison The former Chicago congressman received 30 months in prison for spending $750,000 from his campaign on personal items, The New York Times reported. Jackson had admitted that he conspired with his then-Chicago alderman wife, Sandra, to use campaign credit cards to buy personal items like restaurant meals and airfare. Mrs. Jackson was sentenced to 12 months in prison for omitting $580,000 in income from the couple\u2019s tax returns. LINK\r\nTwo Charged in J.P. Morgan 'Whale' Trades\u00a0Federal prosecutors filed charges Wednesday against two former J.P. Morgan traders accused of hiding losses that cost the bank more than $6 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported. Prosecutors also reached an agreement with former J.P. Morgan trader Bruno Iksil, a Frenchman who executed the trades and who was known as the \"London whale,\" in which he would not be criminally prosecuted for his conduct.\u00a0LINK\r\nBradley Manning\u00a0Pfc. Bradley Manning apologized Wednesday for leaking hundreds of thousands of government files to the Wikileaks organization, The New York Times reported. Ahead of his sentencing, Manning told the judge he believed the leak \"was going to help people, not hurt people,\" but now realizes he was wrong. He faces up to 90 years in prison for the leak.\u00a0LINK\r\nPentagon Opens Benefits to Same-Sex Couples\u00a0On the heels of the Supreme Court's ruling that a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, the Pentagon announced Wednesday that it will extend spousal benefits to same-sex married couples starting in September, according to NBC News.\u00a0LINK\r\nVermont\r\nCourt Rules Against Vermont in Yankee Case\u00a0A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday against the state of Vermont in a case concerning efforts to shut down the Vermont Yankee power plant, the Free Press reported. The court held that state legislators undertook an illegal effort to shut down the plant based on safety issues, which are supposed to be regulated at the federal level.\u00a0LINK\r\nRevenue Forecast\u00a0Vermont's July general fund revenues were just about on target with their forecast, coming in less than a third of a million dollars shy of their target of $103.5 million, according to The Associated Press.\u00a0LINK\u00a0\r\nBurlington Trespass Law Challenged\u00a0A Burlington law that lets police remove drug offenders and other public nuisances from the Church Street Marketplace is being challenged in a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the Burlington Free Press reported. Sandy Baird, the complainant, claims the ordinance unfairly curtails legal activities in the downtown area.\u00a0LINK", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=51521964-76E5-4BD4-8142-B11BD89B203F"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9180840570479631, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}