url,title,date,year,month,party,chamber,state,member_name,bioguide_id,domain,scraper,source,date_source,text,has_text,collected_at,updated_at https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-votes-override-trump-veto-defense-bill,Langevin Votes to Override Trump Veto of Defense Bill,2020-12-29,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WARWICK, R.I. Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and a member of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, today voted to override President Trump's veto of the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The measure passed the House by a vote of 322-87. The following statement may be attributed to Congressman Langevin: For sixty consecutive years, members of Congress have reached across the aisle to pass a bipartisan defense bill to ensure our country is protected against threats and that our service members and their families are adequately supported. This year's national defense authorization bill contains critical provisions to provide well-deserved pay raises for troops, support programs vital to national security like the Virginia-class submarines built in Rhode Island, and promoteinclusiveness and diversity among our armed forces. In the wake of what could be one of the most consequential cyber intrusions in our nation's history, this bill also contains several provisions I authored to better defend Americans and our systems against evolving cyber threats. Most notably, this bill will establish a National Cyber Director to ensure there is someone leading cyber policy andstrategy development and coordinating incident response in the Executive Office of the President. Having someone in charge of cybersecurity at the highest levels of government is critical to help prevent an incident of significant consequence that could impact our economy and our way of life. Unfortunately, despite these important victories, the President chose to veto this bill. By vetoing the National Defense Authorization Act, the President offered a parting gift to our adversaries. Tonight, Congress has voted to override the President's veto because we won't allow him to undermine our nation's readiness and because we refuse to turn our backs on our troops who sacrifice so much. I'm glad that the House could once again put politics aside and prioritize the common defense.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-votes-cash-act-provide-2000-relief-payments-americans,"Langevin Votes for CASH Act to Provide $2,000 Relief Payments to Americans",2020-12-28,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WARWICK, R.I. Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI), today voted for the Caring for Americans with Supplemental Help (CASH) Act of 2020, a billto increase the amount of money struggling Americans receive in a second round of direct payments from $600 to $2,000. The following statement may be attributed to Congressman Langevin. Democrats have been fighting to provide struggling Americans with another round of direct cash assistance since May. People are hurting, and families are being forced to make impossible choices. That is why both in May and in October, the House passed bipartisan legislation that would provide substantial relief payments. Yet, in both instances, we were stonewalled by Senate Republicans. During this trying time, as people wonder how they will put food on the table and keep roofs over their heads, providing help to those struggling should not be divisive. Although President Trump could certainly have spoken up earlier about his desire to increase the amount for relief payments, the fact remains that Americans need help now. As public servants, we must answer their calls for help. I'm proud to have supported the CASH Act to increase payments to $2,000, but we will need to provide more aid to struggling small businesses and Rhode Islanders out of work, and I will reach across the aisle to ensure we do. I urge my colleagues in the Senate to take up this measure immediately and help us provide desperately needed relief to Americans who find themselves in limbo. TheCASH Act: Increases economic impact payments (EIPs) provided in the end-of-year COVID relief package so that each eligible family member receives $2,000, up from $600. Allows mixed-status families where one spouse has a Social Security Number (SSN) to claim EIP. As specified in the latest COVID relief legislation, these families are eligible for the EIP amount for each family member with an SSN and can claim the corresponding amount for the first round of economic impact payments when they file their 2020 taxes. Ensures dependents over age 16, such as disabled adults and college students are eligible for relief payments. Text of the legislation.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/senators-weigh-in-on-major-scotus-climate-case,Senators Weigh in on Major SCOTUS Climate Case,2020-12-24,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.24.20 Senators Weigh in on Major SCOTUS Climate Case Whitehouse, Cardin, Van Hollen, Blumenthal, Warren, and Markey: fossil fuel giants want to establish the standard of too big to adjudicate Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Edward J. Markey (D-MA) have filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in a major case concerning the power of state and local governments to hold fossil fuel polluters financially liable for the damages caused by their products. In hopes of avoiding potentially massive monetary judgments against it, the fossil fuel industry seeks to have the case, BP et al. v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, removed from state court to federal court, where it hopes its arguments will receive a more favorable reception. The senators' brief shows how the industry's removal effort fits into a broader campaign to hamper the government's ability to act on climate change. If the Court rules in the industry's favor, the senators write, the Justices will have bolstered fossil fuel polluters' notion that claims against them are too big to adjudicate. The fossil fuel industry has tried to close every doorlocal, state, federal; legal, legislative, and administrativeto a solution to the climate crisis, the senators write. Here, they invite this Court to ignore the precise question and statute at hand, and render them a larger result one that would help them shut all state legal doors to remedies for the harms they have caused by their carbon emissions and by misleading about the harm. In essence, they propose a novel political doctrine of too big to adjudicate,' to free appellants from bearing the consequences in state courts of their own polluting and misleading. In their brief, the senators reveal the array of anonymously-funded or dark money groups that appear in court as amici curiae to argue on fossil fuel companies' behalf whenever the industry is threatened. While much of their funding is hidden, clues point to close ties between the groups and the fossil fuel industry, such as use of identity-laundering organizations like Donors Trust and close associations with the Koch family donor network. In this case, several of the pro-industry amici have received money directly from giant oil and gas companies, including appellants ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Marathon Petroleum. Another has a former coal industry lawyer serving on its board. The Court's lax interpretation of its own rules for disclosure of amicus funders obscures potential conflicts of interest. Supreme Court Rule 37.6 provides that amicus filers shall indicate whether counsel for a party authored the brief . . . made a monetary contribution intended to fund the preparation or submission of the brief, and shall identify every person or entity . . . who made such a monetary contribution to the preparation or submission of the brief. Yet the Court has interpreted that rule so narrowly that filers only need to disclose the origins of funds used in small expenses incurred in the final stages of preparing the brief, like the cost of printing and binding hard copies of the filing. This allows for the appearance of a groundswell of support for the industry's position, when in fact the amicus filers may be linked through common funding to litigants in the case and acting as one entity. It also leads to the absurd outcome of major trade groups with large fossil fuel companies in their membership filing amicus briefs without disclosing whether they took money from litigants in the case. The senators write, It may be expected that [American Petroleum Institute], an oil and gas industry trade association, would have members that are parties in this case. The [U.S. Chamber of Commerce] and [National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)] purport to represent a broad base of our country's business community, but they will not disclose here or elsewhere who all their members are; and they have not disclosed here or elsewhere which members had a role in making the policy and litigation decisions behind their participation in this case or in the array of climate-related cases in which they have appeared. But more than individual connections to fossil fuels is the pattern of activity by the amicus filers that extends beyond the courts. The independent watchdog Influence Map has found the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and NAM two amicus filers in the case are the top two climate action obstructors in Washington, spending massive sums on lobbying, electioneering, and/or other influencing activities to fight against climate action. And both groups appear in other courts to defend the fossil fuel industry on a regular basis. The senators continue, The fossil fuel-connected amici's legal strategy here is an element of their political one. They seek to prevent judicial action to reduce carbon pollution, because it would reduce demand for their donors' products and intrude on their donors' business model. The senators also push back on the industry's argument that questions of fossil fuel liability are best left to elected branches of government. The senators point to the long history of special interest influence over Congress and the executive, while the courts have historically been less susceptible to that influence. History reveals a long battle between powerful influencers who want to bring government to their heel, at whatever cost to the public, and a public that needs its interests protected against the political might of those big influencers, the senators write. Courts have an important role in this contest as the branch of government built to be less responsive to political might. The case before the Court originates in a suit filed against fossil fuel companies in Maryland state court by the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore. The city sought monetary damages, civil penalties, and other relief for the damages to city infrastructures and the sweeping public health harms inflicted by fossil fuel pollution. The fossil fuel companies sought to remove the case from the Maryland court to the federal district court. Both the federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rejected the industry's removal arguments. Now the Supreme Court will weigh in during the coming term. A copy of the senators' brief is available here.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-cheers-hfc-agreement-renewable-incentives-and-other-environmental-breakthroughs-in-omnibus-funding-bill,"Whitehouse Cheers HFC Agreement, Renewable Incentives, & Other Environmental Breakthroughs in Omnibus Funding Bill",2020-12-22,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.22.20 Whitehouse Cheers HFC Agreement, Renewable Incentives, & Other Environmental Breakthroughs in Omnibus Funding Bill Expanded suite of federal incentives will boost offshore wind and solar energy and HFCs agreement could avoid 0.5C of warming by end of the century Washington, DC U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, cheered passage of the omnibus government funding package that contains several pieces of significant bipartisan climate legislation, an HFC agreement, and expanded incentives for renewable energy. These measures will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Provisions championed by Whitehouse will help encourage investment in wind and solar energy, streamline the adoption of new clean energy technologies, and establish a new federal program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industry. This funding bill will help accelerate our transition to a clean energy economy, said Whitehouse. There are many important provisions in this legislation, including one that will reduce HFCsone of the more potent greenhouse gases out thereperhaps helping us avoid up to 0.5C of warming by the end of the century. We are running out of time in the fight against climate change, which is why we need to press forward on every front we can. I am proud to have worked with colleagues from both sides of the aisle to get this legislation passed. Whitehouse's environmental priorities that will be signed into law with the omnibus include: Offshore Wind Incentives for New Development (WIND) Act: Whitehouse's Offshore WIND Act will extend the 30 percent Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for offshore wind through 2025. The bill is also sponsored by Senator Edward J. Markey (D-MA) in the Senate and Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI) in the House. The Energy Department has found that the United States could install a total of 22,000 megawatts of offshore wind projects by 2030 and 86,000 MW by 2050, creating tens of thousands of jobs in coastal communities along the Atlantic Coast. The nation's first offshore wind project at Block Island, Rhode Island began operations in 2016 and is now producing enough electricity each year to power 17,000 homes. The American Manufacturing and Innovation (AIM) Act: The bill will implement a 15-year phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) at the national level for the first time. The amendment requires the Environmental Protection Agency to implement an 85 percent phasedown of HFCs, reducing production and import of HFCs to no more than 15 percent of the 2011-2013 average by 2036. Clean Industrial Technology Act (CITA): With Senator Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV), Whitehouse has championed the CITA to unleash innovation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sources and making American companies more competitive in the global economy. The bill helps address the roughly 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions that come from hard-to-reduce industrial sources, including heavy road and rail transport, shipping, aviation, chemical production, steel and cement production, and heat production. Extensions of wind and solar tax credits: One-year extension of wind Production Tax Credit for 2021 and a two-year extension of solar Investment Tax Credit through 2022. Carbon capture tax credit: Whitehouse's 45Q Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) Tax Credit Amendments Act of 2020 will update a key tax credit enacted in 2018 to encourage investment in carbon capture projects, including direct air capture. The legislation is also sponsored by Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV). Whitehouse previously authored legislation passed into law in 2018 to strengthen the incentive, helping put a value on reducing carbon pollution. Utilizing Significant Emissions with Innovative Technologies (USE IT) Act: The USE IT Act, sponsored by Whitehouse and Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), expands carbon utilization and direct air capture research. The bill also supports federal, state, and non-governmental collaboration in the construction and development of carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS) facilities and carbon dioxide pipelines. Creation of new fund to remediate ocean plastic pollution: $75 million for ocean plastic and marine debris remediation, including the creation of a new fund to finance the reduction and prevention of marine debris across the world. Increased funding for Whitehouse's Coastal Fund: The legislation includes $34 million for the National Oceans and Coastal Security Fund, a $1 million increase above FY20 funding levels. Whitehouse created the Fund to restore and strengthen the natural infrastructure protecting coastal communities. Increased funding for climate research: The omnibus includes $182 million for NOAA climate research, a 7 percent increase above FY20, and a direction for NOAA to consider a new cooperative institute related to climate adaptation. Water Resources Development Act (WRDA): The final bill, commonly referred to as the WRDA bill, authorizes programs and projects within the Army Corps of Engineers' Civil Works Program to improve America's water infrastructure. Among its many provisions, the bill seeks to improve resiliency against worsening extreme weather events, including enhanced flood and storm protection for communities. Technology Transition Act: Whitehouse and Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) introduced the Technology Transition Act to commercialize new technologies developed by the Department of Energy that promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The bill creates a new high-level mission for DOE to focus on climate change and emission reduction and elevates the office of technology transitions into the Secretary's office to advance the commercialization of technologies that reduce emissions. Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-cotton-applaud-signing-of-als-disability-insurance-access-act,"Whitehouse, Cotton Applaud Signing of ALS Disability Insurance Access Act",2020-12-22,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.22.20 Whitehouse, Cotton Applaud Signing of ALS Disability Insurance Access Act New law grants ALS patients and families immediate access to the Social Security Disability Insurance benefits they've earned Washington, DC U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) today applauded the signing into law of the ALS Disability Insurance Access Act, bipartisan legislation that eliminates the five-month waiting period before ALS patients can receive the Social Security Disability Insurance benefits they earned by contributing to Social Security. The legislation builds on previous steps by Congress and the Social Security Administration to accommodate the difficult prognosis for those diagnosed with ALS. The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 96-1 and cleared the House unanimously. This represents a simple act of humanity for Americans battling a disease that often moves too quickly for the current system, said Whitehouse. Allowing patients and their families to immediately access the benefits they've earned will offer comfort as they confront a difficult diagnosis. Thank you to the tireless advocates and allies all over the country who joined our fight to get this done. Americans suffering from ALS shouldn't have to wait for assistance, especially given their tragically short life expectancyand now they won't have to, said Cotton. By waiving the statutory disability benefits waiting period, our bill makes support available to those suffering from this terrible disease much faster. I'm grateful to my colleagues in Congress and the president for helping bring relief to Americans living with ALS. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurodegenerative disease affecting the ability of the brain to control muscle movements. Individuals with ALS progressively lose the ability to speak, walk, and breathe. The intended purpose of a five-month waiting period is to allow temporary conditions to reverse. However, there is currently no cure or treatment to halt or undo the effects of ALS, and some ALS patients lose their fight with the disease before ever receiving benefits. The ALS Disability Insurance Access Act would help alleviate some of the financial hardship that accompanies an ALS diagnosis, and support those living with ALS and their families. The passing of the ALS Disability Insurance Act is a huge victory to the ALS community and is the result of years of dedicated advocacy all across the country, said Beth Flanagan, Executive Director of the ALS Association Rhode Island Chapter. ALS is 100 percent fatal. People lose their ability to control their muscles, including their ability to walk, feed themselves, talk and breathe. It usually takes 12 months to diagnose ALS and at that time patients are often already impaired. ALS patients and their families need immediate support to help tackle the emotional and financial burden that comes with diagnosis. We are so grateful to Senator Whitehouse for championing this cause and helping to provide the ALS community hope. This legislation eliminates an unnecessary burden placed on the shoulders of people confronting a cruel, expensive and burdensome disease. It is a testament to the tenacity and perseverance of ALS advocates who laid the groundwork for victory through the hard work of building a coalition of legislative champions across partisan lines, said Calaneet Balas, President and CEO of the ALS Association. We are grateful to Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Tom Cotton and Reps. Seth Moulton and Peter King, along with all congressional champions who have worked alongside the ALS community for years to achieve this victory. From this day forward, the ALS community has left its mark on changing policy for the betterment of thousands, said I AM ALS CEO Danielle Carnival, Ph.D. To the advocates who drove this change, to the Congressional officials who championed this forward, to the entire ALS community: today brings renewed hope and dignity. Whitehouse and Cotton first introduced the ALS Disability Insurance Act in 2016. The legislation was sponsored in the House by Congressmen Seth Moulton (D-MA) and Peter King (R-NY). ### Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-leads-fight-secure-funding-opioid-abuse-prevention-veterans-mental-health,"Cicilline Leads Fight to Secure Funding for Opioid Abuse Prevention, Veterans Mental Health, Afterschool, and Other Rhode Island Priorities, Totaling $28 Billion",2020-12-22,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"Cicilline Leads Fight to Secure Funding for Opioid Abuse Prevention, Veterans Mental Health, Afterschool, and Other Rhode Island Priorities, Totaling $28 Billion Dec 21, 2020 Issues: Education, Energy, Environment, Fiscal Responsibility, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Jobs and the Economy WASHINGTON U.S. Congressman David N. Cicilline (RI-01) led the effort to secure multiple priorities for Rhode Islanders in the relief package that Congress is considering tonight. In recent weeks, Cicilline worked with House negotiators to ensure the bill addressed the opioid crisis, provided mental health services for veterans, funded afterschool programs, and addressed several other key issues important to Rhode Island. This bill provides new resources to fight opioid abuse, ensure veterans have access to mental health care, and give kids a safe place to go when their school day ends, said Cicilline. These are important priorities for all of us, but especially in Rhode Island. Among the priorities that Cicilline led the fight to include are: $185 million for the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Grant Program (COAP), which gives law enforcement and first responders new resources to purchase naloxone and train personnel on how to use it. $3 million for State Opioid Response grants, which reduce opioid overdose deaths through prevention, treatment, and recovery programs, including those focused on prescription drug abuse. $115 million for the Veterans Crisis Line (a $4 million increase) so that servicemembers experiencing a mental health emergency can get the help they need 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. $1.3 billion for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (a $10 million increase), which provide afterschool programming for children who would otherwise be on their own at the end of the school day. A one-year extension of protections against deportation for Liberian refugees living in Rhode Island. $23.7 million for the Special Olympics Education Programs (a $3.6 million increase). $22.5 billion for Pell Grants and an increase in the maximum award available to applicants. $20 million for submarine workforce development initiatives. $2.7 billion for the National Park System (a $111 million increase), including the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor. $127 million for the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCOR) and $17 million for Defense EPSCoR, two programs that provide millions of dollars for research each year at Rhode Island's colleges and universities. $25 million for gun violence research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). $360 million to prevent childhood lead poisoning (a $70 million increase). $965 million for the National Marine Fisheries Service (a $123 million increase) to provide for the stewardship of Rhode Island's ocean resources and their habitat. $5 million for the prevention of hate crimes.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-statement-stopgap-covid-19-relief-package,Cicilline Statement on Stopgap COVID-19 Relief Package,2020-12-22,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"Cicilline Statement on Stopgap COVID-19 Relief Package Dec 21, 2020 Issues: Education, Energy, Environment, Fiscal Responsibility, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Jobs and the Economy, Seniors WASHINGTON U.S. Congressman David N. Cicilline (RI-01) issued the following statement after voting for the bipartisan agreement to fund the federal government and provide COVID-19 relief to the American people, including survival checks and increased unemployment protections that he fought to include: The bill we passed tonight will provide some measure of relief, but it is nowhere close to addressing the totality of this crisis. Democrats have spent the last eight months fighting to pass another relief package that includes substantial cash payments to families, increased unemployment benefits, resources for the heroes fighting on the frontlines of this pandemic, and massive investments in a nationwide testing regime and vaccine distribution. Instead of working with us, Republicans sat on their hands while hundreds of thousands of Americans died and millions more lost their jobs. Congress needs to do more. That fact could not be any clearer. Many economists have said that the risk of doing too little is far greater than the risk of doing too much in this moment. In addition, public health experts predict this pandemic will continue well into 2021 and that a much more comprehensive response from Congress is needed. We should heed their advice. In the months ahead, Congress must pass a larger package that provides greater relief to working people and meets the urgency of the challenges we face.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-support-bipartisan-covid-relief-package,Langevin to Support Bipartisan COVID Relief Package,2020-12-22,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WARWICK, R.I. Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI) today announced his support for H.R. 133, an omnibus spending bill consisting of all 12 fiscal year 2021 appropriations bills that also includes $900 billion in COVID-19 relief. This fourth major COVID bill will provide direct payments of $600 to individuals, support for small business through forgivable loans, $300 weekly enhanced unemployment benefits, and dedicated funding for nutrition, rent, and school aid. The House is expected to pass the package later this evening. The following statement may be attributed to Congressman Langevin. As our public health and the nation's economic stability continue to hang in the balance, it is clear the American people need more help to get through this pandemic. While the package we're considering today is not perfect, it reflects bipartisan consensus. It keeps the federal government open, delivers critical aid to those most in need, ends the practice of surprise medical billing, and supports Rhode Island manufacturing with funds for the Virginia-class submarine program. The situation is dire. The COVID-19 relief package will get cash into the pockets of working families struggling to make ends meet and deliver additional aid for our small businesses to keep their doors open. Further, it will ensure that people who have lost their jobs can stay afloat and that we carry out robust vaccination operations so that lives can be saved. This package will dedicate considerable resources to help the hardest hit Americans continue to put food on their tables with enhanced food benefits and keep roofs over their heads with an extension of the eviction moratorium and billions in emergency relief for renters. By no means is this package a silver bullet, but it does represent real progress. After all, it has been 220 days since the House first passed the Heroes Act to provide relief to struggling Americans. The challenges we face today did not appear overnight, and Congress will have to provide additional support if we hope to continue to turn the corner. I am pleased we could work across the aisle to advance this bill, and I'm ready to get to work on another once President-elect Biden takes the helm. Appropriations provisions fact sheet. Coronavirus relief provisions fact sheet. Additional policy provisions fact sheet.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/senator-markey-senator-whitehouse-and-rep-langevin-applaud-inclusion-%E2%80%9Coffshore-wind,"Senator Markey, Senator Whitehouse, and Rep. Langevin Applaud the Inclusion of Offshore WIND Act Provision in Year-End Spending Bill",2020-12-22,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"Washington Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Congressman Jim Langevin (RI-02) applauded the inclusion of key components of their legislation, theOffshore Wind Incentives for New Development (WIND) Act (S. 1957), as part of the year-end spending package. The provision would extend the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for offshore wind facilities at 30 percent through 2025, as called for in the Offshore WIND Act. Introduced in June 2019 by Senators Markey and Whitehouse, and Rep. Langevin, the Offshore WIND Act would spur the growth of offshore wind energy in the United States by extending tax credits for the renewable energy industry. In addition to extending the offshore wind ITC, the omnibus budget package extends the ITC for solar and the production tax credit (PTC) for onshore wind. It makes permanent energy efficiency improvements for commercial buildings and extends a credit of up to $2,000 for the purchase of energy efficient homes, as well as extends credits for non-business energy property purchases. The package also includes a five-year extension of the tax used to fund the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. Offshore wind has the potential to change the game on climate change, and those winds of change are blowing off the shores of Massachusetts, said Senator Markey. Offshore wind projects are a crucial part of America's clean energy future, creating tens of thousands of jobs up and down the East Coast and reducing carbon pollution. In our effort to harness this potential, we will now be able to provide this burgeoning industry the long-term certainty in the tax code that it needs. Our workers and our manufacturers stand ready to meet the demands of the offshore wind industry, and our economy stands ready to reap the winds of success. My big thanks to Senator Whitehouse and Rep. Langevin for their continued partnership and dedication to this legislation. Rhode Island's first-in-the-nation offshore wind farm charted a course for wind energy in American waters, said Senator Whitehouse. Now our growing offshore wind industry will have the certainty to follow Rhode Island's lead. That means huge investment in coastal communities and jobs, plus lots of clean, affordable energy for consumers. I'm proud to have worked with Sen. Markey and Rep. Langevin to get this legislation over the finish line. As home to the United States' first offshore wind farm, my district has seen first-hand the power and benefits of renewable energy, and it's important that other communities are able to tap into it as well, said Rep. Langevin. The extension of these vital incentives will strengthen our ability to produce clean energy, create good-paying jobs, reduce harmful emissions, and make communities more resilient. I thank Senators Whitehouse and Markey for their leadership in advancing this legislation and helping to build a greener, more sustainable future. Offshore wind has the potential to create tens of thousands of jobs up and down the East Coast. The extension of the ITC will play a critical role in ensuring that this nascent industry receives the support necessary to establish a new clean energy economy in the United States. Our offshore waters have the potential electricity-generating capacity of 2,000,000 megawatts (MW), and coastal states are ready to harness that new power. To date, states have set offshore wind procurement targets of more than 29,000 MW, and the Energy Department found that the United States could install a total of 86,000 MW of offshore wind projects by 2050. With ambitious state targets and the extension of the offshore wind ITC, the offshore wind industry will be able to support good jobs in manufacturing, installing, and maintenance and create clean electricity all along the US coasts. In recent years, the ITC has been instrumental in the rapid expansion of renewable energy capacity. Due in large part to the ITC, the United States made the second-largest amount of investments in renewable energy capacity in 2019, with $55.5 billion in investmentsan increase of 28% from 2018. Additionally, despite the coronavirus crisis, domestic renewable energy capacity grew significantly in 2020, with an estimated increase of 19,000 MW of solar capacity and 15,000 MW of wind capacity. The nation's first offshore wind project at Block Island, Rhode Island began operations in December 2016 after being initiated nearly nine years ago and is now producing enough power each year to power 17,000 homes. The Vineyard Wind 1 projectthe first project planned for federal waters off the coast of Massachusettswill generate clean, renewable, cost-competitive energy for more than 400,000 homes and businesses across the Commonwealth, while reducing carbon emissions by over 1.6 million tons per year. Massachusetts has set a goal of procuring a total of 3,200 MW of offshore wind, following recommendations in a 2019 study from the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/-bipartisan-save-our-seas-20-act-signed-into-law,Bipartisan Save Our Seas 2.0 Act Signed into Law,2020-12-21,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.21.20 Bipartisan Save Our Seas 2.0 Act Signed into Law SOS 2.0 is America's most comprehensive marine debris legislation ever Washington, D.C. U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) today welcomed the signing of the Save Our Seas (SOS) 2.0 Act, the most comprehensive legislation ever passed by Congress to address the plastic debris crisis threatening coastal ecosystems and communities, and harming marine life. Save Our Seas 2.0 is officially lawanother milestone in our effort to clean up marine debris and ocean plastic pollution across the globe, said Senator Whitehouse, who co-founded the bipartisan Senate Oceans Caucus to find common ground in responding to issues facing the oceans and coasts. I'm grateful for the bipartisan partnership of Senators Sullivan and Menendez on this issue. We're already hard at work expanding on the laws we've passed to tackle the scourge of plastic waste washing up on shores from coast to coast. After two years of collaboration, hard work and advocacy, I am incredibly excited to announce that the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act is now the law of the land, said Senator Sullivan. This historic accomplishment is the result of so many people who love our oceans: members of Congress who span the country and political spectrum, members of the administration, stakeholders in industry and environmental groups, and everyday citizens. SOS 2.0 will improve America's ability to clean up waste, advance international cooperation with nations responsible for the majority of trash entering the oceans, and explore innovative ways to manage and even reuse plastic waste. This bill will be particularly important for Alaska, a state that disproportionately experiences the impact of ocean debris with our thousands of miles of coastline. I commend President Trump for signing SOS 2.0 into law, and I also thank my colleaguesSheldon Whitehouse, Bob Menendez, Suzanne Bonamici, Don Young, and all of the other cosponsorsfor being such strong partners and champions for our oceans, fisheries, wildlife and coastal communities. I am thrilled to witness this monumental legislation be signed into law to bolster U.S. leadership and global engagement in confronting the plastic waste and marine debris crisis, Senator Menendez said. Pollution in our world's oceans is a global problem with dramatic and enduring implications for our livelihoods and well-being. As a landmark bipartisan environmental victory, SOS 2.0 represents a stepping stone toward greater collaboration and progress in our efforts to preserve a most vital resource that sustains life today and will provide for generations to come. The Save Our Seas 2.0 Act is composed of three main pieces: Strengthening the United States' domestic marine debris response capability with a Marine Debris Foundation, a genius prize for innovation, and new research to tackle the issue. Enhancing global engagement to combat marine debris, including formalizing U.S. policy on international cooperation, enhancing federal agency outreach to other countries, and exploring the potential for a new international agreement on the challenge. Improving domestic infrastructure to prevent marine debris through new grants for and studies of waste management and mitigation. SOS 2.0 builds on the success of the Save Our Seas Act, introduced by Senators Sullivan and Whitehouse in the Senate and Representatives Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) and Don Young (R-Alaska) in the House, and signed into law by President Trump in October 2018. Print Email Tweet Next Article Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-supports-long-overdue-deal-to-provide-direct-relief-to-families-and-small-businesses,Whitehouse Supports Long-Overdue Deal to Provide Direct Relief to Families and Small Businesses,2020-12-20,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.20.20 Whitehouse Supports Long-Overdue Deal to Provide Direct Relief to Families and Small Businesses Bipartisan compromise will send much-needed boost to RI in the form of direct cash payments, forgivable small business loans, and expanded unemployment insurance Washington, D.C. U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) this evening expressed support for a bipartisan deal that will inject $900 billion into the national economy, provide direct relief to families and small businesses, and keep the federal government open amid the ongoing pandemic. Whitehouse issued the following statement about the agreement reached today: Rhode Islanders have made so many painful sacrifices this year to save lives, and those difficult decisions have left many families in need of a financial lifeline. As Americans begin to get vaccinated, this agreement will help workers and families make it through this difficult period. The relief on the way includes cash payments to households, boosted unemployment benefits, and forgivable loans for small businesses. In addition, increased investments in vaccine procurement and distribution will hasten our return to normal. It is worth noting tonight that Democrats in the House passed multiple relief bills that Leader McConnell held up for months and months. This deal should not have taken so long, and there is still more that needs to be done. While the bipartisan compromise will provide support for schools, transit, rental assistance, and public health programs, states and localities need additional budgetary relief, which I will keep fighting for. Print Email Tweet Next Article Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/cyberspace-solarium-commission-statement-dual-hat-considerations,"Cyberspace Solarium Commission Statement on ""Dual-hat"" Considerations",2020-12-20,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WASHINGTON Senators Angus King (I-ME), Ben Sasse (R-NE) and Congressmen Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Jim Langevin (D-RI), the four legislators serving on the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, released the following statement regarding reports that the Department of Defense is considering ending the dual-hat arrangement that sees the Commander of United States Cyber Command jointly appointed to be the Director of the National Security Agency: Congress laid out clear criteria about when it would be appropriate to consider whether to split the dual-hat worn by the commander of USCYBERCOM and the Director of the NSA. To our knowledge, these criteria have not been met. The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act requires the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to certify to Congress that splitting of the dual-hat will not pose unacceptable risks to the national security interests of the United States. This certification has not been made, and any attempt to split the dual-hat arrangement before this certification is made would clearly violate the law. Our government is currently responding to a cyber incident where a sophisticated adversary had access to thousands of U.S. networks. Regardless of whether it's better to keep or end the dual-hat arrangement between NSA and CYBERCOM, now is not the time to do it. We believe in continuing policy discussions about this arrangement, but it is unwise for any decisions to be made in the immediate future.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-collins-bill-support-health-and-wellbeing-family-caregivers-be-signed-law,"Langevin, Collins Bill to Support the Health and Wellbeing of Family Caregivers to be Signed into Law",2020-12-20,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"Washington, D.C. Following unanimous passage by the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, theLifespan Respite Care Reauthorization Actheads to the President's desk to be signed into law.Authored by Representative Jim Langevin (D-RI) and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), along with Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), this bipartisan legislation will support the health and wellbeing of family caregivers by authorizing $10 million annually for the Lifespan Respite Care program from fiscal year 2020 through fiscal year 2024. The Lifespan Respite Care Reauthorization Act will provide critical funds to improve access to respite care services and help ease the burden on family caregivers,said Representative Langevin, who co-authored the Lifespan Respite Care Act that became law in 2006. There are an estimated 53 million family caregivers in the country, and respite care continues to be one of their most frequently reported unmet needs. I thank Senator Susan Collins for championing this measure with Senator Tammy Baldwin, and I am grateful to Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers for co-leading this bill in the House. Our work would not have been possible withoutthe passionate advocates who have dedicated their lives to ensuring that family caregivers receive the support they need. I urge the President to sign the Lifespan Respite Care Reauthorization Act immediately and expand respite care services and supports to help families in Rhode Island and across the country. In my conversations with family caregivers, I have found what they need most is respite care, a break from the 24/7 job of caregiving. Caregivers provide an estimated $470 billion in uncompensated care each year.Yet, an astounding 85 percent of caregivers have not received any respite services at all,said Senator Collins. Respite care is essential to caregivers as it helps to reduce mental stress and physical health issues they may experience. I look forward to seeing this legislation become law, which will give caregivers and their loved ones the support they need by ensuring that quality respite is available and accessible. Every day, family caregivers in Wisconsin and across our country tend to the needs of their loved ones, said Senator Baldwin. Although this work can be very rewarding, it can also be emotionally and physically challenging. I'm proud to see my bipartisan legislation with Senator Collins win approval from both chambers of Congress. Together, we're going to help ensure continued funding for the Lifespan Respite Care Program so that our family caregivers can access the support and relief they need. I'm looking forward to the President signing this important bill into law. There are millions of people in America today providing care to loved ones with chronic, debilitating conditions. Respite care agencies provide these family caregivers with short-term relief and serve as an essential part of a comprehensive health care approach, said Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers. Thank you to Rep. Jim Langevin for partnering on this bipartisan legislation to expand services and access to respite care and improve outcomes for people in Eastern Washington and all across the country. I'm proud to help get this bill signed into law. The National Respite Coalition applauds Representative Jim Langevin, Senator Susan Collins, Senator Tammy Baldwin, and Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers for championing the Lifespan Respite Reauthorization Act to final passage. The pandemic has exacerbated the social isolation and economic insecurity felt by family caregivers and their loved ones, with devastating effects on their health and wellness. Respite may be their only lifeline,said Jill Kagan, Director of the ARCH National Respite Network. The Lifespan Respite Care Program, through very modest investments, allows states the flexibility and creativity to make sure family caregivers of children and adults are receiving quality respite services, even during COVID-19. The NRC stands ready to work with its partners and with our Congressional champions to make sure the program is fully funded and implemented. Respite care providestemporary relief to caregivers from their ongoing responsibilities. By protecting the health of caregivers, respite care decreases the need for professional long-term care and allows individuals who require care to remain at home. To date, 41 states have received funding through the Lifespan Respite Care program. The program provides competitive grants to states to establish or enhance statewide respite resources and help ensure that quality respite is available and accessible to all family caregivers. TheLifespan Respite Care Reauthorization Act of 2019is endorsed by 100 leading caregiver and respite organizations, including AARP, the ARCH National Respite Coalition, Autism Society of America, the Arc, and the National Alliance for Caregiving. A group of 100 national, state, and local organizations across the country havesubmitted a letter of support. There are 53 million family caregivers in the United States that provide an estimated $470 billion in uncompensated care each year.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-statement-on-regan-for-epa-administrator,Whitehouse Statement on Regan for EPA Administrator,2020-12-18,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.18.20 Whitehouse Statement on Regan for EPA Administrator Washington, DC Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, released the following statement on President-elect Joe Biden's selection of North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Michael Regan to serve as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator: The end of polluter capture of the Environmental Protection Agency is in sight. Mr. Regan is no fossil fuel lobbyist or dark money fundraiser; he's fought polluting industries to protect the communities they harm. Picking him signals a return to the core mission of the agencydefending our environment in service of the health and safety of the American people. The Biden administration faces massive environmental challenges, especially climate change. To avoid calamity, Biden's team will need to act with urgency and a willingness to fight against the big polluters that have stymied progress to this point. I look forward to learning more about Mr. Regan's battle plans for the fights ahead. Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-duckworth-urge-biden-harris-prioritize-millions-americans-disabilities-hire,"Langevin, Duckworth Urge Biden & Harris to Prioritize Millions of Americans with Disabilities, Hire and Appoint People with Disabilities Throughout the Administration",2020-12-18,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WASHINGTON, D.C. U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and U.S. Representative Jim Langevin (D-RI-02) today wrote a letter urging President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to hire and appoint people with disabilities across all agencies and departments and select appointees who will prioritize the rights of people with disabilities from Day One of the incoming administration. In their letter, Duckworth and Langevin noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted the disability communitywhich approximately 61 million Americans belong to. Millions of Americans with pre-existing medical conditions are at higher risk of severe complications from COVID-19, and people with intellectual and development disabilities are three times more likely to die from the disease compared to others. Further, many employees and students with disabilities have lost access to reasonable accommodations due to precautions taken because of the ongoing pandemic. It is therefore imperative that you expeditiously fill political appointments across the federal government with disability policy experts to address these challenges, including appointees with a diversity of lived experiences, Duckworth and Langevin wrote. To that end, we urge you and your administration to hire people with disabilities at all levels of the executive branchfrom the Cabinet downand across all departments and agencies. We also urge the swift appointment of highly qualified candidates in key positions, including at the National Council on Disability (NCD), Access Board, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration for Community Living, HHS Office of Civil Rights, Division of Civil Rights at the Department of Justice, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services and Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education, Duckworth and Langevin continued. Additionally, we hope you will fulfill your campaign promise of appointing a Director of Disability Policy within the Domestic Policy Council on Day 1 and encourage you to appoint the chair of the NCD at the same time. Finally, it is crucial that the Biden-Harris administration involve people with disabilities at all stages of policy development. Since she was first elected to Congress, Duckworth has been a fierce advocate for disability rights. She led efforts to protect the ADA last Congress, gathering enough supportfrom her Senate colleagues to block a House bill that would have gutted enforcement of the landmark civil rights legislation and rewarded businesses that have failed to make their facilities accessible to people with disabilities. Duckworth passedlegislation to require airlines to disclose the number of lost bags and broken wheelchairs to ensure travelers are treated with dignity. Duckworth has also been a vocal opponent of recent GOP attacks on the disability community in the GOP COVID-19 relief proposals and has fought for increased funding for home and community-based services for seniors and people with disabilities. Langevin, co-founder of the Bipartisan Disabilities Caucus and the first quadriplegic to serve in the House of Representatives, has been a fierce champion of disability rights since his election to Congress. Langevin has promoted disability rights across all sectors, including disaster planning and transportation. He is committed to furthering policy that expands the hiring of people with disabilities in the workforce and focuses on upholding the rights of all Americans to achieve social and economic independence. A full copy of the letter is available online here and below. Dear President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris: As Congressional leaders in disability policy, we commend you on your stated commitment to hiring a diverse workforce that reflects the American people. Our country is currently in the midst of a public health, racial justice, and economic crisis, and it will require all of us working together to recover. As you work to fill key positions in the executive branch, we urge you to hire and appoint people with disabilities throughout all agencies and departments and select appointees who will prioritize the rights of Americans with disabilities from Day 1 of your administration. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 61 million Americans have a disability. Physical, mental, intellectual and developmental disabilities impact people of all ages, races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations and geographic locations, and anyone can become disabled at any time. Major federal laws ensuring the rights of people with disabilitiesthe Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Air Carrier Access Act and morehave been in place for decades. However, people with disabilities continue to face discrimination and a lack of equal access in almost every aspect of daily life, including in employment, education, healthcare, housing, transportation and goods and services. On top of existing and longstanding barriers to equal access, the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to ravage communities across the Nation, has disproportionately impacted people with disabilities. In general, the millions of Americans with pre-existing medical conditions are at higher risk of severe complications from COVID-19, and people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are three times more likely to die from COVID-19 compared to others diagnosed with the disease. Further, people with disabilities are more likely than the general public to live in congregate settings, rely on public transportation and depend on caregivers who come into their homes, all of which increase the risk of exposure to COVID-19. Moreover, many students and employees with disabilities have lost access to reasonable accommodations at school and in the workplace. It is therefore imperative that you expeditiously fill political appointments across the federal government with disability policy experts to address these challenges, including appointees with a diversity of lived experiences. To that end, we urge you and your administration to hire people with disabilities at all levels of the executive branchfrom the Cabinet downand across all departments and agencies. We also urge the swift appointment of highly qualified candidates in key positions, including at the National Council on Disability (NCD), Access Board, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration for Community Living, HHS Office of Civil Rights, Division of Civil Rights at the Department of Justice, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services and Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education. Additionally, we hope you will fulfill your campaign promise of appointing a Director of Disability Policy within the Domestic Policy Council on Day 1 and encourage you to appoint the chair of the NCD at the same time. Finally, it is crucial that the Biden-Harris administration involve people with disabilities at all stages of policy development. Thank you for your commitment to hiring a diverse workforce and ensuring the rights of people with disabilities are at the forefront of all decision-making and executive actions throughout your administration. We look forward to supporting your efforts and working with you along the way. Sincerely, -30-",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/smith-and-langevin-statement-armed-services-committee%E2%80%99s-commitment-cybersecurity,Smith and Langevin Statement on Armed Services Committees Commitment to Cybersecurity,2020-12-18,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WASHINGTON, D.C. Representatives Adam Smith (D-Wash.), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities, today issued the following statementon the importance of sound cyber policy to national security in the wake of the SolarWinds breach that has impacted several federal agencies. The pervasive access enabled by the SolarWinds supply chain compromise is deeply disturbing. The SolarWinds cyber operation bears every hallmark of sophisticated nation-state activity that can undermine our national security, and it is imperative that Congress move forward with oversight to understand the impacts and root causes of this campaign. Thankfully, the House Armed Services Committee is well-equipped to conduct such oversight. In fact, many of the provisions in this year's defense authorization bill, currently awaiting the President's signature and widely regarded as one of the most significant cybersecurity bills Congress has ever considered, are immediately responsive to SolarWinds-like incidents. The House Armed Services Committee places an enormous emphasis on the technology and networks that enable the Department of Defense and the military services to be the finest in the world. Maintaining our superiority requires secure supply chains and the highest quality technology, as well as protection of the Department's massive network architecture from intrusion. To that end, the committee regularly holds oversight hearings and briefings on all facets of cyber- and technology-related matters and engages with the Department daily. The importance of this dedicated focus on making the nation's information and communications technology infrastructure more resilient has been underscored by the SolarWinds incident and the grave risk its poses to the nation. In the 116th congress alone, the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities has held hearings on topics ranging from Department of Defense Information Technology, Cybersecurity, and Information Assurance; Cyber Mission Force and Military Operations in Cyberspace: A Framework for Oversight; Review of the Recommendations of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission; Interim Review of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence Effort and Recommendations; and Securing the Nation's Internet Architecture. The subcommittee also holds quarterly classified briefings on the Department's cyber operations. Each year, the National Defense Authorization Act addresses an increasing number of cyber- and technology-related issues. As capabilities powered by sophisticated artificial intelligence and machine learning become central to the warfighter, oversight of the cyber domain will become increasingly important. In the FY21 NDAA alone, Congress addressed so many cyber-related issues that an entirely new Title was added to accommodate them. The subcommittee played a leading role in advancing several significant legislative proposals based on actionable recommendations from the Cyberspace Solarium Commission for a cybersecurity posture based on the strategic vision of layered cyber deterrence. Among these critical provisions is the National Cyber Director Act, which would establish a Senate-confirmed position within the Executive Office of the President with budgetary and policy authority to break down silos. The National Cyber Director would also play a key role in coordinating national incident response efforts, like those happening right now. As the largest agency in the federal government, the Department of Defense faces unique challenges regarding the security of its data and networks. These challenges range in terms of scope and scale. The demands on the Department's infrastructure, which must connect and remain accessible to 1.3 million active-duty service members, 750,000 civilian personnel, and more than 811,000 National Guard and Reserve service members, are uniquely complex. The most recent incident involving software from SolarWinds underscores this very challenge. DOD components, field activities, agencies, and offices are responsible for building, sustaining, and protecting their own networks, and keeping DOD personnel connected while simultaneously keeping DOD data secure a monumental challenge. As leaders on the Armed Services Committee, we will continue to push cyber- and technology-related issues to the forefront of national security. While we are proud of the cyber provisions that have become law in recent years, there is clearly much work to do. BACKGROUND What has Congress done on cyber/technology issues? In the FY 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, there were 87 separate provisions squarely focused on cyber- and technology-related matters. This included provisions on topics as wide-ranging as diversity in the STEM workforce, to the establishment of an AI Education Strategy, to strengthening the Chief Information Officer's authority over DOD networks. In the FY 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, there were 113 separate provisions squarely focused on cyber- and technology-related matters. This included the establishment of a National Cyber Director, direction to establish specialized cyber teams with blended authorities, and the centralization of cybersecurity efforts for the industrial base under one Senate-confirmed official. The FY 2021 NDAA incorporated 17 recommendations from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and 20 recommendations from the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. What is HASC planning for in the future? There is tremendous opportunity to shift more attention from a platform-centric focus to a network-centric focus. This will necessitate greater oversight of inter-departmental efforts such as Joint All-Domain Command & Control (JADC2), where all services participate but the oversight and management remain nascent. The committee will work to ensure the Department's military and civilian leaders continue to adapt to a changing warfighting domain. This will necessitate senior executives, flag officers, and general officers be well-versed in all the recognized warfighting domains. The Department and military services will require leaders that have deep experience with emerging technologies, network architectures, cyber operations, and space transformation. What tools has Congress provided that the Department is not utilizing? We will push the Department of Defense, not only to account for utilizing the tools Congress has afforded, but toward the novel application of these authorities to different problem sets. Too often in our oversight, we have found the Department unaware of the tools, such as unique hiring and acquisition authorities, already available through the annual defense authorization bill.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-introduces-bipartisan-legislation-to-finance-global-marine-debris-prevention-and-reduction-,Whitehouse Introduces Bipartisan Legislation to Finance Global Marine Debris Prevention and Reduction,2020-12-17,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.17.20 Whitehouse Introduces Bipartisan Legislation to Finance Global Marine Debris Prevention and Reduction New trust fund would complement Save Our Seas Act and Save Our Seas 2.0 Washington, D.C. U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) introduced legislation that would bring the international community together to address the alarming amount of plastic and trash polluting our oceans and marine environments. The Unify Nations in Trash Elimination (UNITE) for our Oceans Act would direct the U.S. government to work with international partners to finance promising projects that promote the sustainable use of materials and the reduction of plastic and other waste filling the world's oceans. If we don't find answers fast, we'll have more tons of plastic waste in our oceans than living fish by the middle of the century. Solving that problem requires work with other nations on new international solutions, said Senator Whitehouse. I'm excited that Senators Graham and Coons, and my ocean plastics partner Senator Sullivan, have joined together to introduce this bipartisan bill to combat a massive challenge facing our oceans. The Unify Nations in Trash Elimination (UNITE) for our Oceans Act would: Direct the Secretary of State to work with U.S. federal agencies, individual countries, and international organizations to establish a Trust Fund for Marine Debris and Plastic Pollution. The goal of the Trust Fund is to prevent and reduce marine debris and plastic pollution and facilitate the sustainable production and consumption of resources. The Trust Fund would be managed by a Board of Trustees, comprised of representatives of the countries that contribute. Specify that the Trust Fund will award grants to national and local governments, non-governmental organizations, and other entities to complete projects that would reduce marine debris and plastic pollution. These projects include efforts to reduce the amount of trash and plastics entering marine environments, encourage the use of sustainable materials, reduce the use and improper disposal of single-use plastics, and promote reduction, reuse, and recycling of materials that pollute marine environments. Direct the Secretary of State and the Board of Trustees to appoint an Administrator to manage the Trust Fund, implement standards and procedures to monitor the use of funds, and establish criteria to determine how grants will be awarded. Establish an Advisory Board to the Trust Fund to provide guidance in the development and implementation of grant projects and in leveraging contributions to the fund. Authorize $150 million to be appropriated for U.S. contributions to the Trust Fund each year for two years. The UNITE for Our Oceans Act is the latest Whitehouse effort aimed at preventing and reducing the marine debris and plastic pollution plaguing the world's oceans. Whitehouse and Sullivan authored the Save Our Seas Act, which was signed into law in 2018. More recently, Whitehouse, Sullivan, and Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) teamed up to write Save Our Seas 2.0, which builds on the success of the initial legislation. Save Our Seas 2.0 has been approved by both chambers of Congress and awaits the President's signature. Roughly eight million metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste from land enters the oceans each year. Ninety percent of this plastic enters the oceans from ten rivers, eight of which are in Asia. Plastic has been found in areas as remote as the Mariana Trench, the deepest known point in the ocean. The text of the UNITE for Our Oceans Act is available here, and a summary of the bill is here. Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-statement-google-antitrust-lawsuit,Cicilline Statement on Google Antitrust Lawsuit,2020-12-17,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"Cicilline Statement on Google Antitrust Lawsuit Dec 17, 2020 Issues: Consumer Protection and Financial Reform WASHINGTON House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David N. Cicilline (RI-01) issued the following statement today: Today's filing affirms much of the evidence the Antitrust Subcommittee uncovered during our investigation into Google's anticompetitive conduct. Like Facebook, Google abused their monopoly power in the marketplace. Like Facebook, they need to be broken up and held accountable. I applaud the 38 attorneys general who joined in this action today. It is a critical and necessary step for restoring competition in the digital marketplace.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/sen-whitehouse-remarks-in-the-nomination-hearing-for-the-hon-raul-arias-marxuach,Sen. Whitehouse Remarks in the Nomination Hearing for the Hon. Raúl Arias-Marxuach,2020-12-16,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/sen-whitehouse-remarks-on-the-save-our-seas-20-act,Sen. Whitehouse Remarks on the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act,2020-12-16,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/time-to-wake-up-278-save-our-seas-20,Time to Wake Up 278: Save Our Seas 2.0,2020-12-16,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/time-to-wake-up-278-save-our-seas-act-20-colloquy,Time to Wake Up 278: Save Our Seas Act 2.0 Colloquy,2020-12-15,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.15.20 Time to Wake Up 278: Save Our Seas Act 2.0 Colloquy Madam President, while Senator Grassley is on the floor, I would thank him for his remarks about the First Step Act and let him know that on the Judiciary Committee, I look forward to working with him to continue to advance that. As the Senate knows, the Grassley-Durbin segment and the Cornyn- Whitehouse segment were the two key pieces of that bill, and it is terrific to hear the Senator and our chairman at the time chose support to continue that work. So I am grateful. What I would like to do now is to follow the conversation we had about oceans a minute ago in the context of my ``Time to Wake Up'' speeches. Obviously, the oceans are taking a colossal beating from climate change, from the warming, from the chemical acidification that it causes. It is warming at a rate of multiple detonations of Hiroshima- level nuclear weapons per second in the ocean. That is the amount of heat that is added, if you want to put an image to it. So we have done some good things on oceans in this Congress, and I would like to summarize some of those. One, obviously, is Save Our Seas 2.0 that Senator Sullivan, Senator Menendez, and I just discussed, but we also have a little package of enforcement provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act that focus on what is commonly called illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing--IUU fishing--which is a really boring and bureaucratic name for extremely bad behavior. Essentially, it is modern slavery at sea for the crew, who are miserably trapped on these illegal, pirate fishing vessels. They are also an avenue for trafficking of humans, of narcotics, of arms, or whatever. Once you are out in a boat outside, beyond the realm of the law, operating illegally and doing whatever you can for money, you will do pretty much anything there is. So in addition to ransacking our common seas, these pirate fishing fleets are really dangerous vectors for really dangerous criminal conduct. I am glad that we have put a little more heat on the Navy to up its game and report on its implementation of previously passed measures. I am glad that we have directed the Navy to work with the Coast Guard, which has the substantive jurisdiction over all of this, and to work with the private sector involved in solutions to this. There are such things as private sector satellites that track the wake and the signal of these illegal fishing vessels, and coordinating that with our intelligence and our research I think will really help in fighting that battle, so that we are sharing the information that we can and gathering the information that we can to be more effective. Finally, as I recall from my travels with the late Senator McCain, when you went to coastal countries near China, you always heard the same complaint. We went to the Philippines and heard it. We went to Vietnam and heard it. We went to Indonesia and heard it. There are probably others if I could remember more clearly that I could add to that list. But the complaint was that the Chinese fishing fleet is incredibly aggressive, it is trespassing into foreign sovereign waters, it is fishing illegally and outside of any respect for the domestic protections of these nations, and it is often violently protected by Chinese vessels, by navy or other vessels of the Chinese Government. So focusing on that as a place to push back and protect our oceans while at the same time diminishing this bad behavior by China is also a good thing. So that was our suite of progress on pirate fishing in the NDAA. In the omnibus, we expect at least $75 million to go, for the first time, into a new fund to tackle ocean plastics and for ocean plastic work in the administration. So those are bits of good news, and I am delighted that those things have happened. The less good news from this past year is that coasts remain sadly underfunded, and we have missed some real opportunities. Two of the accounts that demonstrate how badly funded coasts are facing these threats from the changing oceans are the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which should properly be called the inland and freshwater conservation fund, and the Army Corps Flood and Coastal Storm Damage Reduction Fund. If you go back and look at how this money actually gets spent, for every dollar that the Land and Water Conservation Fund spends in an inland State, in a landlocked State, per capita, it spends only 40 cents in a coastal State--a dollar per capita inland, 40 cents per capita coastal. And that actually understates the coastal discrepancy because it doesn't count the spending in coastal States that isn't on coasts. You have coastal States like New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas that have big, big upland inland areas in which most of the Land and Water Conservation Fund money goes. So what we really ought to do is call this what it is, which is an inland and freshwater conservation fund, and have a parallel coastal and saltwater preservation fund to make sure that coasts are treated fairly. I did not even get the chance to ask for some adjustments to treat coasts more fairly as an amendment when we reconsidered the Land and Water Conservation in the so-called Great American Outdoors Act, which was frustrating because everybody--at least on my side of the aisle-- talks a good game about how we need to have more amendments, we need to have more amendments. That deal got locked down before it got to the Senate floor. Nobody was allowed an amendment. So that was frustrating, but we will fight on because coasts need to be treated fairly, and with sea level rise and warming and fisheries moving about and storm surge worsening and more hurricanes, the dangers to coasts are greater than before, not less. On the Army Corps account, that is even more extreme. If you go back through the last 10 years, the best year the coasts had in the flood and coastal storm damage account was 1 coastal dollar for every 19 inland dollars--1 coastal dollar for every 19 inland dollars. Tell me how that is fair to coasts facing those same risks. And that is the best year. The worst year was 120 times more for inland projects than for coastal projects--less than a penny on the dollar. Less than a penny on the dollar for America's coasts. So we have a lot of work to do to make sure that we are doing what we need to do for our coasts. I am hoping that we can move the OFFSHORE Act--that there is even a faint chance of getting it done in the last few days. It had a successful hearing in Energy and Natural Resources. It has 19 bipartisan cosponsors, including Commerce Chairman Wicker, and it would treat wind energy offshore the same way for revenues that we treat oil drilling offshore--i.e., 37.5 percent to the nearby State, 12.5 percent to a dedicated fund. In this case, it would be the Oceans and Coastal Fund because it is oceans and coastal. It is one of the ironies that most of the money that comes off of coastal oil drilling-- offshore oil drilling--gets moved into the Land and Water Conservation Fund, where it goes out West and is spent on inland, not coastal, projects. So we continue to have real work to do. There is the BLUE GLOBE Act, which I have with Senator Murkowski, on data monitoring in the oceans and Great Lakes--we are going to continue to push forward--and our Blue Carbon bill, which will help us address the changes in the oceans that climate change is wreaking. With Blue Carbon, things like growing mangroves are incredibly powerful as a carbon sink, kelp and sea grass--to get that research done and do the work we need to to deacidify our oceans while we still have reefs that are alive. My ideal would be a ``big blue bill''--a big blue bill that combines BLUE GLOBE, Blue Carbon, and others and, for once, finally, finally, finally, finally, finally takes our oceans and coasts seriously. I get that we are terrestrial mammals, but a lot of us care for our coasts, a lot of us care for our seas, a lot of our economies are dependent on our oceans, and the health of the planet is dependent on the cooling and on the oxygen that oceans provide. So we mess around with our oceans at our peril. I hope that the Biden administration will take climate change as deadly serious as it needs to be taken and that it will step up a significant step from the degree of attention climate change got in the Obama administration. We have to recognize the danger to our future if we remain negligent--it is that simple. And we have to make sure we free ourselves from the thrall of the fossil fuel industry's climate denial machine because the fossil fuel industry does not want what is best for America, does not want what is best for people, does not want what is best for oceans and the environment; it wants what is best for its profits, period, and end of story. So we really, really, really, under the Biden administration, need a serious climate bill to safeguard the oceans on the only planet that we call home. I yield the floor.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-joins-msnbcs-jonathan-capeharts-inaugural-show-discuss-lgbtq-representation,Cicilline Joins MSNBC's Jonathan Capehart's Inaugural Show to Discuss LGBTQ+ Representation in the Biden Cabinet,2020-12-13,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"PAWTUCKET LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus Co-Chair Congressman David N. Cicilline (RI-01) appeared on the premiere episode of MSNBC's The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart to discuss the need for LGBTQ diversity in the future Biden Cabinet. Also joining with Cicilline, Congressional Black Caucus Chair Karen Bass (CA-37), Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Chair Judy Chu (CA-27), and Congressional Hispanic Caucus member Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (TX-16). Click on the image to view the entire segment. Below is a transcript of Cicilline's questions and answers with Capehart. David N. Cicilline LGBTQ+ Diversity in Bident Cabinet December 13, 2020 Jonathan Capehart: President-Elect Biden has consistently promised to make diverse representation a feature of his incoming administration. And on that end, he's delivered. A Black and South Asian woman for Vice President. The first female Treasury Secretary. Black secretaries of HUD and Defense. A Cuban immigrant heading Homeland Security. And the list continues. Still, many voices in the Democrat's broad coalition say Biden can do more, and they're turning up the pressure on him to follow through. Joining me now are, Rhode Island Congressman David Cicilline, co-chair of the LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus, California Congresswoman Judy Chu Chairwoman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, Texas Congresswoman Veronica Escobar who is a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and Congresswoman from California, Karen Bass, Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. All, thank you very much for being here. Last week was interesting because it seemed like every story in the paper, every story I heard on television, was one constituency of the Democratic Party after another, saying that the Biden-Harris Administration, incoming Biden-Harris Administration had not picked enough members of their community to be in the Administration. I'm going to go round-robin and start with Congresswoman Bass and ask, which agency is the priority or is there a particular candidate who is a priority to be in the Cabinet in the Administration?... Congressman Cicilline, speaking of Transportation, one name that I saw reported late last week was Mayor Pete Buttigieg of Indiana, openly gay married man, who ran for president, won Iowa. Is he someone who is on your list as a priority and is Transportation, an agency that's a priority? Congressman Cicilline: Look, I think he absolutely is someone who we all recognize would be an extraordinary member of this Administration. But we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the Biden Administration is on track to be the most diverse in American history. We think it's particularly important that members of the LGBTQ+ community that have been traditionally underrepresented at the highest levels of government be included in this Administration. We have no doubt that the President-Elect will keep his commitment to ensure that his Cabinet reflects the full diversity of our country and brings strength to the work, and that includes members of the LGBTQ community. There are lots of terrific candidates out there like Pete Buttigieg, Randi Weingarten, Fred Hochberg, and many others who are worthy of Cabinet positions. But we know the President-Elect is just beginning this process and we're confident that he will have a cabinet that reflects the full diversity of our great country. Capehart: Fred Hochberg who was the Small Business Administration Chief in the Obama Administration Randi Weingarten, who is the teachers union president... So, when I was reading those stories this week, and reading about the different letters and the different messages that were being sent to the incoming Biden-Harris Administration, I'm just wondering if you guys trust that the Biden-Harris Administration will actually govern in the way that he promised. He promised to have the most diverse cabinet, the most diverse government, and to have everyone's interests at heart when it comes to governing, but reading these letters I wondered, do folks really believe he will actually follow through? Congressman Cicilline? Cicilline: You know absolutely, look, I have tremendous confidence in the President-Elect and the policies of the Biden-Harris Administration that will support equality and support progress on issues that affect all of the communities that are represented in this segment today. And I too am thrilled with all of my wonderful friends. I think we all recognize the policies will advance the issues important to our community, but we want to be sure that personnel reflects that too. And by the way, it's not only important to the individual communities we represent. It enhances the quality of the work when different perspectives, different ideas, different talents are brought to bear on the many challenges facing the American people. So it's good for America that the Administration reflects the diversity that we're speaking about. I think we all have that in common that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will bring that in their Administration. Part of our role as advocates is to make sure we're pushing them hard to be sure they're thinking carefully about these appointments, the LGBTQ+ community has never been represented in the Cabinet of the President of the United States. The time has passed and the time has come, finally. So we're doing our jobs raising our voices, promoting our cause, and we are at least speaking for myself, have full confidence that the Biden-Harris Administration will keep their commitment, and it will be the most diverse administration in the history of our country. Capehart: Congressman David Cicilline, Congresswoman Judy Chu, thank you very much. Congresswoman Veronica Escobar and of course Congresswoman Karen Bass, thank you all very much for being here on this first show.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-cheers-passage-of-beneficial-ownership-provisions-in-ndaa,Whitehouse Cheers Passage of Beneficial Ownership Provisions in NDAA,2020-12-11,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.11.20 Whitehouse Cheers Passage of Beneficial Ownership Provisions in NDAA Legislation in must-pass defense bill clamps down on use of American shell corporations to hide the assets of criminals and foreign enemies; Whitehouse has long championed transparency to aid law enforcement in accessing to beneficial ownership information Washington, DC Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) released the following statement today on provisions included in the National Defense Authorization Act to help prevent criminals and foreign enemies from hiding assets from law enforcement and tax authorities. The defense bill provisions will require reporting of the beneficial owner the real person behind U.S. corporations for use by law enforcement, revealing whether criminals, foreign state actors, and terrorists are exploiting American shell corporations to hide money. I'm thrilled to see this important legislation included in the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act. It's far too easy for a domestic criminal or foreign strongman to set up a shell corporation in the United States to hide their ill-gotten gains. I've fought to pass legislation to shine a light on who's actually behind American shell corporations, so law enforcement can take on the abuse of America's legal and financial institutions more effectively. Now, we're poised to pass that transparency into law. Thank you to my partners in this work, Senators Grassley, Feinstein, Graham, Crapo and Brown, for making this win possible. This has been a long struggle through a lot of disinformation. With Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Whitehouse led the bipartisan TITLE Act to require the collection of information on the real person behind the incorporation of a company in the United States a goal the NDAA beneficial ownership provisions will achieve. Whitehouse and Grassley's bill would have required beneficial ownership information to be collected by states for use by law enforcement. Whitehouse agreed to the Senate Banking Committee compromise version of the provisions included in the NDAA, which will collect beneficial ownership information at the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. In the Senate, Whitehouse has long fought against illegal activity facilitated by shell corporations and other methods of obscuring the flow of illicit funds. In addition to championing the TITLE Act, he has introduced comprehensive legislation to limit foreign influence in our elections, which includes measures to guard against foreign adversaries using shell corporations to carry out their agenda. He has also led hearings in the full Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, and the Helsinki Commission to highlight the issue and spur action to address dangers from shell corporations. Whitehouse is recognized as a leading thinker on the threats to our democracy from kleptocrats and other foreign enemies seeking to exploit America's laws and democratic system of government. Last year, Whitehouse published an article with General David Petraeus in the Washington Post calling on U.S. leaders to take a more active role globally in defending the rule of law and democratic institutions. He has also spoken at numerous think tanks and forums such as the Atlantic Council, Sedona Forum, and Hudson Institute about the dangers of foreign influence and kleptocracy. Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-maritime-security-measures-clear-congress,Whitehouse Maritime Security Measures Clear Congress,2020-12-11,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.11.20 Whitehouse Maritime Security Measures Clear Congress Key protections against illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing poised to become law Washington, DC U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) cheered passage today of his maritime security proposal as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which has now cleared Congress. Whitehouse's provisions will help defend against illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IU) fishing activities. The House and Senate have both agreed to the legislation with veto-proof majorities. I'm thrilled to see my maritime security proposal set to become law, said Whitehouse. Rhode Islanders rely on healthy fisheries for their livelihood and to sustain a vibrant, healthy ocean. My proposal will defend our fisheries by boosting enforcement of important protections against pirate fishing on the high seas. Thank you to Congressmen Langevin and Panetta for their partnership in passing this proposal. Joining Whitehouse in pushing for the maritime security proposal were Congressmen Jim Langevin (D-RI) and Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), who succeeded in including the legislation in the House version of the NDAA. Whitehouse's proposal includes provisions related to maritime security and illegal activity at sea. It would: Require the Department of Defense to report to Congress on the Navy's implementation of measures to combat illegal fishing that were included in the FY 2020 NDAA. Direct the Navy to work with the Coast Guard to assess commercial solutions for tracking vessels engaged in illegal fishing and other unlawful activity at sea, and sharing that information among U.S. maritime services and partner nations. Require the Office of Naval Intelligence to report to Congress on the way bad actors like China use their distant-water fishing fleets to challenge the sovereignty of their neighbors, supplement the aggressive activities of their naval and coast guard vessels, and undermine the interests of the U.S. and its allies. Each year, IUU fishing produces between 11 and 26 million tons of seafood, resulting in global economic losses valued between $10 billion and $23 billion. According to a 2014 report by the Marine Conservation Institute, Rhode Island may have lost as much as $24 million in revenue and as many as 400 jobs due to IUU fishing. Whitehouse is a founding member and Co-Chair of the bipartisan Senate Oceans Caucus, which works to find common ground in protecting our oceans and coasts. A central focus for the Oceans Caucus has been ending illegal fishing. Through the Caucus's leadership, Congress has taken key steps to guard against IUU fishing, including ratifying a series of key IUU treaties with partner nations and passing implementing legislation to bring those treaties into effect. Print Email Tweet Next Article Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-portman-klobuchar-introduce-cara-20-to-increase-access-to-treatment-prevention-and-bolster-fight-against-addiction-epidemic,"Whitehouse, Portman, Klobuchar Introduce CARA 2.0 to Increase Access to Treatment, Prevention & Bolster Fight against Addiction Epidemic",2020-12-10,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.10.20 Whitehouse, Portman, Klobuchar Introduce CARA 2.0 to Increase Access to Treatment, Prevention & Bolster Fight against Addiction Epidemic Legislation will serve as a marker for bipartisan progress in the new Congress Washington, DC Today, U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Rob Portman (R-OH), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced the bipartisan Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) 2.0 to increase the funding authorization levels for the Comprehensive Addiction & Recovery Act (CARA) programs enacted in 2016 and put in place additional policy reforms to help combat the opioid epidemic that has worsened during the coronavirus pandemic. CARA was a bipartisan, national effort designed to ensure that federal resources were devoted to evidence-based education, treatment and recovery programs that work. In FY 2020, CARA programs were funded at $658 million. CARA 2.0 builds on this effort by increasing the funding authorization levels and laying out new policy reforms to strengthen the federal government's response to this crisis. Senator Portman's and my CARA bill was the most wide-ranging federal addiction legislation ever passed, said Senator Whitehouse. Now, it's time to deepen CARA's reach into communities where the opioid crisis rages, and add important new reforms like expanding treatment options for new mothers and building our recovery workforce. I'm pleased to join Senator Portman and a bipartisan group of cosponsors to expand on the progress we've made in the fight against the opioid crisis. In recent years we have made real progress in fighting the scourge of addiction thanks to resources from the bipartisan CARA law, in addition to other bipartisan efforts in Congress. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges and we are now seeing a heartbreaking surge in overdose deaths. That is why we must redouble our efforts to combat addiction and help those who are suffering during this crisis, said Senator Portman. In the new Congress, we have a unique opportunity to work together in a bipartisan way and I believe that CARA 2.0 can help us make a real difference in combating this epidemic. I want to thank Senator Whitehouse and my bipartisan colleagues for their leadership and partnership on this important national effort. Every day, families across Minnesota and the country lose loved ones to addiction, Senator Klobuchar said. The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act 2.0 will give Americans access to vital treatment and recovery services. It will also ensure that commonsense prevention measures are implemented across the country, such as requiring the use of state prescription drug monitoring programs. We must continue to address this public health emergency and provide assistance to the millions of Americans who are suffering. CARA 2.0 authorizes $765 million in dedicated resources to evidence-based prevention, enforcement, treatment, criminal justice, and recovery programs. CARA 2.0 is part of the necessary response to the urgent call for adequate and sustained resources that appropriately reflect the magnitude of the crisis. CARA 2.0 Policy Changes: New research into non-opioid pain management alternatives. New research on long-term treatment outcomes to sustain recovery from addiction. Establishes a National Commission for Excellence in Post-Overdose Response to improve the quality and safety of care for drug overdoses and substance use disorders. Sets a three-day limit on initial opioid prescriptions for acute pain as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Requires physicians and pharmacists use their state PDMP upon prescribing or dispensing opioids. Mandates physician education on addiction, treatment, and pain management. Prohibits States from requiring prior authorization for medication-assisted treatment under Medicaid. Establishes a pilot program to study the use of mobile methadone clinics in rural and underserved areas. Removes the limit on the number patients a physician can treat with buprenorphine and methadone. Creates a sense of Congress that an employee using medication-assisted treatment is not in violation of the drug-free workplace requirement. Permanently allows providers to prescribe medication-assisted treatment and other necessary drugs without a prior in-person visit, and to bill Medicare for audio-only telehealth services. Expands access to federal housing for individuals who have misused substances or have a drug-crime conviction. Incorporates changes in grant programs to gather more data on who receives services to achieve more equitable outcomes across race and socioeconomic status and emphasizes delivering culturally competent services. CARA 2.0 Authorization Levels: $10 million to fund a National Education Campaign on the dangers of prescription opioid misuse, heroin, and lethal fentanyl. $25 million for training and employment for substance abuse professionals, including peer recovery specialists. $300 million to expand evidence-based medication-assisted treatment (MAT). $200 million to build a national infrastructure for recovery support services to help individuals move successfully from treatment into long-term recovery. $100 million to expand treatment for pregnant and postpartum women, including facilities that allow children to reside with their mothers. $20 million to expand Veterans Treatment Courts. $10 million for a National Youth Recovery Initiative to develop, support, and maintain youth recovery support services. $50 million to provide quality treatment for addiction in correctional facilities and in community reentry programs. $30 million for deflection and pre-arrest diversion programs in the criminal justice system. The CARA 2.0 bill text is here, section-by-section here, and a summary here. Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/sen-whitehouse-and-peter-morley-share-aca-open-enrollment-information,Sen. Whitehouse and Peter Morley Share ACA Open Enrollment Information,2020-12-10,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/sen-whitehouse-and-rep-porter-on-dark-money__whiteboards-vs-charts,Sen. Whitehouse and Rep. Porter on Dark Money - Whiteboards vs. Charts,2020-12-10,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/time-to-wake-up-277-donorstrust-990s,Time to Wake Up 277: DonorsTrust 990s,2020-12-10,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/time-to-wake-up-277-donors-trust,Time to Wake Up 277: Donors Trust,2020-12-09,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.09.20 Time to Wake Up 277: Donors Trust Mr. President, I mentioned recently in one of these speeches that an identity-laundering group called Donors Trust decided to do a letter to the editor of my home State paper asserting that they were just as innocent as newborn lambs. The Center for Media and Democracy has recently obtained the IRS form 990 for calendar 2019 for this little lamb, Donors Trust, and it has some fascinating findings. Donors Trust took in a total of $312 million in donations in 2019-- nearly a third of a billion dollars--up from $198 million in 2018. Of that, more than two-thirds came from two huge donations--two--one for $150 million and another for $69 million. Out of the $312 million they received, $219 million came in two donations, and both of the donations were anonymous. Now, who makes anonymous donations of that size? Most people making a donation that big want their name on the building at the university. What is going on? Who has that kind of money to give away and a desire to hide themselves? One wonders. Donors Trust gave out $162 million in anonymized grants in 2019-- mostly to rightwing groups. This is up from $142.3 million in 2018. I should actually probably not say that Donors Trust gave them out but, rather, that they transmitted the funds for the anonymous donors because a donor can tell Donors Trust where the money is to go. Donors Trust then provides the expedient service of hiding the donor's identity. So where did this anonymous money go? Well, grants of interest include $7 million to the Federalist Society--1 year, $7 million--up from last year's $5.9 million. Yes, this is the same Federalist Society that has selected judges and Justices for the Trump administration. Is it not obvious that big special interests might buy their way to the Federalist Society judicial selection table with big, anonymous donations? When you farm out to secretive private organizations the power to select Supreme Court Justices and the secretive organizations take big, anonymous donations, what else are you to expect? It would be interesting to know who paid for a voice in selecting Supreme Court Justices, and it would be interesting to know what business they may have before the Court. But all of that is shrouded in secrecy and anonymity. It would be logical to assume that $7 million bought a seat or two at that table; we just don't know for whom or what their interests were. Relatedly, Donors Trust transmitted $10.5 million to something called the 85 Fund, a Leonard Leo shell group formerly known as Judicial Education Project. Who is Leonard Leo? Leonard Leo ran the Justice- picking, Court-packing scheme for the Federalist Society for years until an expose by the Washington Post made it prudent for the operation to bring in a new face named Carrie Severino. It is a little bit like replacing a burned agent in a covert operation with a new agent. The logical conclusion is that this $10 million is also related to packing the courts with special interest-chosen judges and Justices, and if so, that brings the total for that project to over $17 million, counting the Federalist Society money--$17 million in 1 year just through Donors Trust. Of course, once you have packed the Court with agreeable Justices, you need to tee up agreeable cases for them. And guess what. Donors Trust also transmitted $2.7 million to advocacy groups that bring those cases, including the groups that presented to the Supreme Court Janus, the anti-labor case, and Shelby County, the anti-voting rights case. These are just two of the more infamous of the 80 5-to-4 partisan decisions giving big wins to Republican donor interests--just the kind of interests that have the money to push millions through Donors Trust and the motive to use Donors Trust to cover their tracks. When this dark-money-funded enterprise is not busy at the task of packing the Court, it is busy propagating climate denial and obstruction. It has been at that particular scheme for years. Climate denial and related political obstruction, packing the courts, and electing Republicans are the three primary purposes of this dark-money enterprise. To keep climate denial cooking, Donors Trust transmitted nearly $19 million to rightwing local so-called think tanks, collectively called the State Policy Network--a group that propagates climate denial and obstruction at the State government level--and to ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which drafts up rightwing and climate denial and obstruction legislation for State legislators. This ALEC group is so reprehensible that even ExxonMobil withdrew its support for it--or maybe they just laundered their support through Donors Trust. We don't know. Not content with climate denial and obstruction at the State level, Donors Trust also transmitted $4.5 million in anonymous money to eight different national climate denial organizations. These include the Heartland Institute, notorious for comparing climate scientists to the Unabomber and sending 200,000 fake, climate-denying textbooks to school teachers around the country. On this graphic prepared by a researcher into the climate denial enterprise, Donors Trust is front and center, right here, right in the middle of the web, and that Heartland Institute is right here, part of the network. The other organization that it funded is the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which planted noted climate denier Myron Ebell to lead the Trump transition at EPA and usher in the disgraced Scott Pruitt as Administrator. On a personal note, I should thank Donors Trust for transmitting $769,000 from some anonymous donor or donors to a dark-money opposition research group called Capital Research Center, which has as one of its tasks to feed misinformation about me to rightwing media outlets. I think that is my reward for calling out this whole crooked dark-money operation. And wouldn't you know--they send out a dark-money group to defend their dark-money operation. I appreciate the attention and the irony. Others in the Donors Trust dark-money creep show include $4 million to Project Veritas, which cooked up deceptive sting videos in Minnesota and other States to feed the false election fraud narrative of Donald Trump and the far right, and also $1.5 million to a beauty called VDARE Foundation, whose website is a vector for anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and White nationalism. I can see why someone would want to hide giving a million dollars to that. Donors Trust has a tag-along entity that sends a lot of money into the same places--the Charles Koch Foundation. In fact, it is a little hard to tell where this Koch Foundation ends and where Donors Trust begins. Donors Trust has provided significant financial support to the Koch political operation's major front group through the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which is here on the graphic. It is like a reunion going through this research. And Donors Trust, in turn, has received financial support from the Charles G. Koch Foundation. So money out to the Koch political operation and in from the Koch Foundation. I don't know why the Koch Foundation couldn't just have given the money directly. It has been reported that the Koch network has provided Donors Trust with most of its backbone, even to the point of being described as part of the Koch network, and the Donors Trust employees have extensive histories within the Koch network of political front groups. The Center for Public Integrity reported this gem: ``At a private Koch fundraising meeting in the summer of 2010, Donors Trust hosted cocktails and dessert for . . . a `target-rich environment' of wealthy donors.'' Sweet indeed. So when we look at this Charles Koch Foundation, we are looking at something interlinked with Donors Trust, and sure enough, there is also overlap in where the money goes. In 2019, this Koch Foundation gave out $141 million, up from $127 million in 2018. For the State-level climate denial State Policy Network we talked about, it gave $2.5 million across 13 so-called think tanks, and it gave nearly half a million dollars to that same ALEC-- American Legislative Exchange Council--we talked about. Other Koch grants of note include over $22 million to George Mason University, whose role as a hothouse for developing deregulatory and climate denial theories is well documented in Nancy Maclean's terrific book, ``Democracy in Chains.'' This $22 million continues a relationship that helped put Koch operative Neomi Rao from George Mason into the Trump White House and then onto the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to do the Koch operation's business from behind robes. Remember those special interest front groups that tee up legal cases for the judges and Justices who have been ushered onto the courts? The Koch Foundation turns up there too. The Koch Foundation has spread $6.2 million around 10 separate amici curiae--friends of court, so-called-- that showed up in a case called Americans for Prosperity v. Becerra. And what do you know? Yes, Americans for Prosperity is that Koch political operation's main front group--such a small world. Why would Koch political interests want to fund amici in a case where a Koch front group is already the plaintiff? Well, let's look at that case. The ``Becerra'' in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Becerra is the California attorney general, a nominee for HHS Secretary now, I gather. The case is an abstruse technical challenge to how the IRS shares tax information with States. Why this gathering of the Koch-funded clan of front groups around this little technical case? Because the lifeblood of all this dirty operation is dark money. Indeed, today, our Supreme Court is the Court that dark money built. So the dark money operation sees a chance to enshrine dark money in the American Constitution. The dark money forces that built this Court want the Court to expand the First Amendment to protect anonymous, dark money political spending by secretive billionaires and corporate interests. This is the case where they intend to make their move. It is waiting in the Supreme Court right now. Who knows, maybe it has been waiting for Justice Barrett. Lined up as amici curiae in this otherwise nondescript case, in the order of their Koch Foundation funding, are: the Cato Institute--I can't read this well enough to point them out, but these are inhabitants of this graph as well--$2.4 million from the Koch Foundation; Texas Public Policy Foundation, $1.5 million; Pacific Legal Foundation, $1 million; New Civil Liberties Alliance, $1 million; Buckeye Institute, $104,200; Independent Women's Forum, $100,000; Pacific Research Institute, $100,000; Philanthropy Roundtable, $30,000; Institute for Justice, $12,584; and National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, $8,156. When you look at the kind of money that is being doled out, I think the Institute for Justice and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation have some cause to complain that they got treated so poorly with such small donations from such a big operation. The gathering of that clan is not the only clue that something is up. Big players in the dark money racket, like the fossil fuel titan Marathon Petroleum and the massive climate obstructer that calls itself the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are already objecting to requests for information about their dark money operations by asserting that such a right exists. They are already asserting that such a right exists, while the dark money schemers are lining up in this case to make that push to the Supreme Court. Wouldn't it be convenient if they helped build a Court willing to agree with them and establish this new right to dark money influence? This whole dark money mess smells to high heaven. Why big donors feel they have to hide? Why this complicated network to play Whac-A-Mole with different groups who can show up? Why the orchestration of Supreme Court briefs with groups that purport to be separate? Why the whole scheme? It is a recipe for corruption. It prevents citizens from understanding what is going on in their own democracy. It empowers the worst forces in politics. It is the mechanism through which climate denial has been effectuated, and it is wrapping its tentacles more and more tightly around our U.S. Supreme Court. And Donors Trust--that sweet little lamb--is at the center of the web dolling out hundreds of millions of dollars--some lamb. Donors Trust is a wolf in lamb's clothing or perhaps better to say Donors Trust provides the lamb's clothing that cloaks the wolves so that they can feed more voraciously and anonymously on America's body politic. I yield the floor.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-praises-ftc-state-attorneys-general-holding-facebook-accountable,"Cicilline Praises FTC, State Attorneys General for Holding Facebook Accountable",2020-12-09,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"Cicilline Praises FTC, State Attorneys General for Holding Facebook Accountable Dec 9, 2020 Issues: Consumer Protection and Financial Reform WASHINGTON House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David N. Cicilline (RI-01), who oversaw a 16-monthlong investigation into the market dominance of major tech platforms, issued the following statement today: ""Facebook is a monopoly."" ""Its abuse of its dominance harms competition, innovation, and other businesses. In the absence of competition and accountability, Facebook has harmedpeople's privacy and allowed disinformation to flourish on its platform, threatening our democracy."" ""Facebook has broken the law. It must be broken up. I applaud the FTC and state attorneys general who are leading this effort today. This marks a major step in our ongoing work to bring the tech industry's monopoly moment to an end.""",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-speaks-bill-end-revolving-door-recidivism,Cicilline Speaks on Bill to End Revolving Door of Recidivism,2020-12-09,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"WASHINGTON U.S. Congressman David N. Cicilline (RI-01) spoke on the House floor today to urge passage of the One Stop Shop Community Reentry Program Act, which will provide funding to create Community Reentry Centers to help formerly incarcerated people re-enter society. Click the image below to watch Cicilline's speech on the House floor. The full text of his remarks is embedded at the end. David N. Cicilline One Stop Shop Community Reentry Program Act December 8, 2020 Madam Speaker, for the roughly 10 million people who, each year, reenter communities from jail or prison, the consequences of a criminal sentence can last a lifetime, creating barriers to accessing safe housing, employment, and even something as basic as a government ID. As Mayor of Providence, I assembled a reentry council to bring together community leaders including religious leaders, employers, housing professionals, to help people returning to their communities with the goal of giving people a chance to fully re-enter society after they've completed their sentence. During my time as Mayor, I saw how providing community-based reentry services helps to ensure that justice-involved individuals have the support they need for a smooth transition back into society. When formerly incarcerated people have access to their basic needs being met, like food assistance and employment opportunities it can significantly reduce the likelihood they will commit a new offense, and as a result, make our communities safer. It gives returning citizens the ability to provide for themselves, for their families, and be productive members of their communities. That's why I am proud to support H.R. 8161, the One Stop Shop Community Reentry Program Act, which provides 5-year grants to community-based organizations and other eligible entities to create Community Reentry Centers. The One Stop Shop Community Reentry Program Act incentivizes community-based solutions to overcoming barriers to housing, education, employment, and health care. It seeks to end the revolving door of recidivism. It promotes healing by encouraging treatment and family counseling. It helps people navigate life after prison and successfully reenter their communities. It makes our communities safer. And it gives people a fair shot at a second chance. A chance at redemption. A chance at success. I thank Chairwoman Bass for her extraordinary leadership on H.R. 8161. I urge my colleagues to support this excellent legislation bill. I yield back.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-applauds-house-passage-final-fiscal-year-2021-defense-bill,Langevin Applauds House Passage of Final Fiscal Year 2021 Defense Bill,2020-12-09,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WASHINGTON Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI), chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities and a member of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, today voted to advance the Conference Report to accompany H.R. 6395, the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2021. The FY21 NDAA authorizes approximately $732 billion in spending for national defense, including approximately $69 billion for overseas contingencies operations. It passed the House by a vote of 335-78-1 and now heads to the Senate for consideration. The defense bill, which is expected to be passed by Congress for a 60th consecutive year, includes a three percent pay increase for service members; makes critical investments in military infrastructure, technology, and training; and establishes an independent commission to undertake the removal of Confederate names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia from Department of Defense facilities. It also includes Langevin's National Cyber Director Act, the culmination of more than a decade of work to ensure someone is in charge of cybersecurity within the White House. This year's bipartisan defense bill will make crucial investments to maintain the United States' readiness, expand our capabilities, and provide critical support to our troops to keep our country secure, said Langevin. Providing for the common defense means ensuring our service members can carry out their missions effectively by establishing policies and programs that will make our nation more resilient for the threats of today and those of tomorrow. From well-deserved raises for our service members to promoting diversity and inclusion among ranks and advancing policies that reinforce a more comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy, this legislation will better position us to protect Americans and our interests. Langevin fought to reject President Trump's cuts to the submarine force, and the final bill includes funds for a second Virginia-class submarine. General Dynamics Electric Boat does significant work on the Virginia-class and the new Columbia-class submarine programs in Rhode Island's Second Congressional District at Quonset. Langevin also successfully advocated for provisions to help attract and retain top science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, talent to boost the nation's defense workforce; implement cybersecurity reforms based on 27 recommendations included in the Cyberspace Solarium Commission's report released in March; enact artificial intelligence policies based on 10 recommendations from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence; and confront emerging biological threats following the devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, based on a Langevin amendment, the bill will require the Department of Defense to update its climate change adaptation roadmap to plan for and confront the national security impacts of climate change. In last year's NDAA, Langevin included a civics education pilot program at Department of Defense schools and funded the pilot with $2 million. The program underscores how civics can help protect against foreign mis- and disinformation campaigns and covers critical thinking, media literacy, voting and other forms of civic engagement. The FY21 NDAA renews $2 million in funding and directs implementation to begin no later than 120 days after the bill is signed. As threats evolve, being more secure requires that we take action today, and that's what this bill allows us to do. I'm excited that it supports local manufacturing and jobs in Rhode Island at Electric Boat. This year's defense bill is also, hands down, the biggest cyber bill Congress has ever passed, and it includes several amendments I authored that codify actionable recommendations from the Cyberspace Solarium Commission for a forward-leaning, layered cybersecurity strategy, continued Langevin. In a world in which online connectivity is becoming more important for government, business, and the operation of critical infrastructure, cybersecurity is a national security imperative. The establishment of a National Cyber Director in the Executive Office of the President to oversee and lead a whole-of-nation strategy, coupled with efforts to ensure our forces have world-class talent and the ability to innovate, are vital to protecting the homeland. I urge my Senate colleagues to give this bipartisan bill all due consideration and advance it to the President's desk to become law. Highlights of the FY21 NDAA.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-young-introduce-bipartisan-bill-to-add-hydrogen-as-qualified-energy-resource-to-strengthen-economy,"Whitehouse, Young Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Add Hydrogen as Qualified Energy Resource to Strengthen Economy",2020-12-08,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.08.20 Whitehouse, Young Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Add Hydrogen as Qualified Energy Resource to Strengthen Economy Washington, D.C. U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) have introduced the Hydrogen Utilization and Sustainability (Hy USA) Act to include hydrogen among the renewable resources eligible for the Renewable Electricity Production Tax Credit (PTC). The bipartisan bill would incentivize investment in hydrogen-based energy, a next-generation carbon alternative. We need to find alternative low-carbon fuels to power the economy, said Senator Whitehouse. Our bipartisan hydrogen-based energy incentive holds promise to open additional carbon-free pathways as we reassert America's global leadership on climate change. As the most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen is an emerging energy source that we must seriously target today, said Senator Young. Our bipartisan bill would promote increased investment in hydrogen to strengthen the American economy and build energy leadership abroad. Hydrogen energy has been billed as a promising energy alternative to carbon for years, yet has not seen national investment like other renewable energy sources. Proponents of hydrogen see emerging use in a variety of industries, including transportation and electric vehicles as well as more general electricity production. Hydrogen infrastructure has gained the support of over $100 billion in global investments. It is estimated that hydrogen infrastructure could generate 700,000 jobs in the next ten years. In December 2019, Senator Young signed a letter to express the importance of continued national investment in hydrogen production. View the letter here. For the full bill text, click here. Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-statement-president-elect-biden-nominating-lloyd-austin-secretary-defense,Langevin Statement on President-Elect Biden Nominating Lloyd Austin as Secretary of Defense,2020-12-08,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WASHINGTON Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, released the following statement regarding President-elect Joseph R. Biden's announcement that he intends to nominate Lloyd Austin as the first African-American to serve as Secretary of Defense: I am excited that President-elect Biden has selected Lloyd Austin as the first African-American to be nominated for Secretary of Defense. Austin's nomination is a signal to all service members and civilians that people of color have every business joining the military and becoming national security leaders. As a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, I know General Austin understands that the Department of Defense cannot operate on its own and that its actions must be nested in a whole of government approach. Austin served forty-one distinguished years as an Army Officer at almost every echelon within the Department of Defense. A battle tested leader, Austin served in critical positions such as the Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army and most notably as the Commander of United States Central Command. Austin understands the importance of fighting as a coalition, and he ensured our servicemembers always fought alongside our allies and partners. However, General Austin has only been retired from the Army for four years at this point, and it would require an act of Congress to allow him to serve as the senior civilian at the Department of Defense. I firmly believe in civilian control and oversight of our military. In keeping with my position on granting a waiver for General Mattis, I believe there should be an open hearing on General Austin's views of the civilian-military relationship before we vote to grant him a waiver to serve as the Secretary of Defense. An open hearing will allow Austin to answer questions regarding the value of civilian expertise, his civilian background, his service, and his vision for the Department of Defense. Congress was not afforded this opportunity under the previous administration, and I hope that President-elect Biden will not repeat this mistake.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/senators-release-watchdog-report-showing-serious-challenges-facing-the-us-national-air-quality-monitoring-system,Senators Release Watchdog Report Showing Serious Challenges Facing the U.S. National Air Quality Monitoring System,2020-12-07,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.07.20 Senators Release Watchdog Report Showing Serious Challenges Facing the U.S. National Air Quality Monitoring System Report requested by Whitehouse, Collins, Carper highlights troubling decline in federal support for the nation's network for tracking air pollution Washington, D.C. U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Tom Carper (D-DE), and Susan Collins (R-ME) today released a report from Congress's watchdog agency, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), showing a number of serious challenges facing the vital national air quality monitoring system. When adjusted for inflation, the GAO report shows a steady decline in federal support for state and local monitoring efforts that are central to the basic function of the national air monitoring system. It also shows an uneven understanding of concentrations of dangerous air toxics near industrial facilities. The consequences of these problems tend to hit low-income communities and communities of color the hardest since they are often located in industrial areas and rely on underfunded local programs. An effective air quality monitoring system helps guard against public health threats triggered by air pollution. In downwind states like Rhode Island, missing a bad air day' warning could mean serious consequences for high-risk groups, said Senator Whitehouse. These findings point to troubling gaps in the EPA's funding and oversight of the network, which can disproportionately affect people of color and low-income communities. Congress and the EPA ought to act swiftly on the GAO's recommendations. The State of Maine, located at the end of our nation's air pollution tailpipe,' is on the receiving end of pollution generated in other states, said Senator Collins. Understanding the occurrence of harmful air pollutants is critical for public health, particularly for Maine which has among the highest rates of asthma in the country. This report also underscores the need for Congress to pass legislation, such as the Comprehensive National Mercury Monitoring Act I introduced with Senator Carper, that would improve air quality monitoring. To ensure that all Americans can breathe clean air, we must first be able to effectively measure the pollutants that exist and where, said Senator Carper. As we are about to celebrate 50 years of progress with the Clean Air Act, today's GAO report is a reminder that the EPA can and must do better when it comes to protecting the public from air pollution. This report is a wake-up call that investments and updates are needed in our aging air pollution monitoring system. For too long the air monitoring system has been ignored, especially in terms of tracking air toxics, like mercury, in our communities. For a decade, I have worked with Senator Collins on legislation to improve how we track and monitor mercury pollution, S.181, Comprehensive National Mercury Monitoring Act. Today's GAO study gives us just another reason why our legislation and other legislation that improves our air monitoring systems need to pass Congress. The national ambient air quality monitoring system measures concentrations of air pollutants and provides standardized information on pollution levels across the country. This information is essential to helping the EPA and state and local agencies enforce the Clean Air Act and understand the health risks to the public. Despite national improvements in air quality over the last few decades, many areas still face serious problems. According to an EPA report based on 2010 population statistics, around 40 percent of the U.S. population currently live in areas that do not meet the Clean Air Act's National Air Quality Standards for at least one common outdoor pollutant. It is critical to have data to ensure compliance with our laws and manage environmental and public health risks, the GAO report notes. A decline in EPA funding necessary to sustain this monitoring system is a serious impediment to collecting this information. The GAO report shows that federal funding for state and local monitoring programs has remained relatively level over the past 16 years, amounting to an approximately 20 percent decrease when adjusting for inflation. Declining federal support forces agencies to choose between hiring staff, upgrading to newer technology, and maintaining the current level of service, particularly as air quality monitoring costs continuing to increase. The report recommends a funding increase to help operate and maintain air monitoring networks across the country. The GAO report also includes an in-depth examination of the role of the national air quality monitoring system, how it is managed, national air quality trends, and the need for additional information in addition to the recommendations for action listed below: Develop, publish, and implement an asset management framework for sustaining the system that considers key characteristics of effective asset management, such as resources needed to sustain the monitoring system, using quality data to manage infrastructure risks, and targeting resources toward assets that provide the greatest value. Establish an air quality monitoring modernization plan that considers leading practices including establishing priorities, assessing risks, and identifying the resources needed to achieve goals, and measuring and evaluating progress. The full report is accessible here. Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-wicker-bill-to-level-playing-field-for-international-sport-becomes-law,Whitehouse-Wicker Bill to Level Playing Field for International Sport Becomes Law,2020-12-07,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.07.20 Whitehouse-Wicker Bill to Level Playing Field for International Sport Becomes Law Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act will help crack down on state-sponsored doping Washington, D.C. U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Roger Wicker (R-MS) today announced that the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act, which they introduced last year, has been signed into law by President Trump. The Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act aims to level the playing field for international sport by cracking down on state-sponsored doping schemes like the one deployed by the Russian government in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. This law sends a strong bipartisan signal that the United States will stand up for whistleblowers and against criminal interference in international sport, said Senator Whitehouse. The World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee have failed to hold the Russian government accountable for systemic cheating in Sochi. Ahead of the next Olympics, we've established stiff penalties for doping and sent a message to Russia and the world that state-sponsored fraud will not be tolerated. This law is a great bipartisan accomplishment for the rights of athletes, the protection of whistleblowers, and our common goal of keeping criminals out of international sports, said Senator Wicker. The world's top athletes should not have a life achievement ripped away from them through fraudand no whistleblower should live in fear of retaliation for exposing that fraud, as Dr. Rodchenkov has been forced to do. Whitehouse and Wicker both serve on the Helsinki Commission, an independent commission of the U.S. government charged with monitoring compliance with the Helsinki Accords and advancing comprehensive security among the 57 member countries. As a professional athlete, it's encouraging to see impactful anti-doping measures like whistleblower protection and information sharing supported by the federal government. There is more to do on all fronts regarding improving anti-doping measures in professional sports, but this is an important step forward. Doping in sport is a criminal offense as far as what's stolen from clean athletes, so this helps bolster USADA's ability to detect, stop and give consequence to it, said Providence-based Olympic runner Molly Huddle. The Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act advanced through the legislative process entirely on consensus-based procedures, demonstrating the wide bipartisan support for the measure. The legislation also has received overwhelming support from amateur and professional sport organizations, including the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee Athletes' Advisory Council, the U.S. Olympians and Paralympians Association, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, and PGA TOUR. The Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act will: Establish criminal penalties for participating in a scheme in commerce to influence a major international sport competition through prohibited substances or methods. This section applies to all major international sport competitions in which U.S. athletes participate, and where organizing entities receive sponsorship from companies doing business in the United States or are compensated for the right to broadcast their competition there, so that international fraud against Americans will not go unpunished. Penalties will include fines of up to $1,000,000, or imprisonment of up to 10 years, depending on the offense. Provide restitution to victims of such conspiracies. Athletes and other persons who are victims of major international doping fraud conspiracies shall be entitled to mandatory restitution for losses inflicted upon them by fraudsters and conspirators. Protect whistleblowers from retaliation. By criminalizing participation in a major international doping fraud conspiracy, whistleblowers will be included under existing witness and informant protection laws. Establish coordination and sharing of information with the United States Anti-Doping Agency. Federal agencies involved in the fight against doping shall coordinate and share information with USADA, whose mission is to preserve the integrity of competition, inspire true sport, and protect the rights of athletes, to enhance their collective efforts to curb doping fraud. In 2016, Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov exposed the Russian state-sponsored doping scandal that took place during the 2014 Sochi Olympics. By deceiving international anti-doping authorities and swapping athletes' samples, Russian officials cheated U.S. athletes out of Olympic glory and U.S. corporations out of honest sponsorships. These corrupt officials used bribes and illicit payments, sometimes through U.S. financial institutions, to commit this fraud. Unfortunately, the masterminds behind the Russian doping operation escaped punishment for their actions because there was no U.S. legal mechanism to bring them to justice. In February 2018, the Helsinki Commission held a briefing featuring Dr. Rodchenkov's attorney, Jim Walden, on combating fraud in sports and the role of whistleblowers in safeguarding the integrity of international competitions. In March, Commissioners Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Rep. Jackson Lee met with Dr. Rodchenkov to discuss the threat posed by Russia to the United States, corruption in international sports bodies, and how the United States can contribute to the international effort to counter doping fraud. In July, the Helsinki Commission held a hearing that explored the interplay between doping fraud and globalized corruption and U.S. policy responses, including the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act. In October 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted seven individuals for involvement in a Russian-operated military intelligence program in which GRU officers are alleged to have conducted sophisticated hacking of U.S. and international anti-doping agencies who investigated and publicly condemned Russia's state-sponsored doping program. The hacking victims also included 230 athletes from approximately 30 countries. The operation was part of a disinformation campaign in which victims' personal email communications and individual medical and drug testing information, sometimes modified from its original form, was used to promote media coverage to further a narrative favorable to the Russian government. In October 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted a further six individuals for involvement in a Russian-operated military intelligence program in which GRU officers are alleged to have conducted sophisticated hacking of entities and organizations involved with the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Games. Print Email Tweet Next Article Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/greenpeace-oceans-campaign-director-john-hocevar-remarks-for-eeo-day,Greenpeace Oceans Campaign Director John Hocevar Remarks for EEO Day,2020-12-04,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/rep-cicilline-remarks-for-eeo-day,Rep. Cicilline Remarks for EEO Day,2020-12-04,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/rep-langevin-remarks-for-eeo-day,Rep. Langevin Remarks for EEO Day,2020-12-04,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/sen-reed-remarks-on-eeo-day,Sen. Reed Remarks on EEO Day,2020-12-04,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/sen-schatz-remarks-for-eeo-day,Sen. Schatz Remarks for EEO Day,2020-12-04,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/sen-whitehouse-appears-on-bbc-world-to-discuss-the-covid-19-response-in-rhode-island,Sen. Whitehouse Appears on BBC World to Discuss the COVID-19 Response in Rhode Island,2020-12-04,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-statement-withdrawal-us-forces-somalia,Langevin Statement on the Withdrawal of U.S Forces from Somalia,2020-12-04,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WARWICK, R.I. Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, issued the following statement regarding President Trump's announcement to draw down United States forces from Somalia. The President's decision to withdraw forces from Somalia is a surrender to al Qaeda and a gift to China. Al Qaeda's affiliate al Shabaab is a formidable presence in Somalia, and our special operators have partnered with elite Somali units to tackle this threat. Our security presence also enables intelligence, diplomacy, food assistance, and disaster relief. When U.S. forces leave Somalia in response to today's order, it becomes harder for diplomats and aid workers to help people resolve conflicts without violence and loss of life. With upcoming elections in Somalia and conflict raging in neighboring Ethiopia, abandoning our partners could not come at a worse time. Al Shabaab will message our withdrawal as a victory, which may propel some of their political affiliates into government. All the while, China will seize the opportunity to build their influence in the region, to the detriment of those who care about representative governance and equality. ###",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-legislation-to-support-mental-health-needs-of-veterans-named-in-honor-of-johnston-native-lance-cpl-daniel-j-harvey-jr,Whitehouse Legislation to Support Mental Health Needs of Veterans Named in Honor of Johnston Native Lance Cpl. Daniel J. Harvey Jr.,2020-12-03,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.03.20 Whitehouse Legislation to Support Mental Health Needs of Veterans Named in Honor of Johnston Native Lance Cpl. Daniel J. Harvey Jr. Bipartisan bill would create pilot program to better support veterans transitioning to civilian life Washington, D.C. U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has introduced bipartisan legislation to better support the mental health needs of servicemembers and veterans as they return home. The Daniel J. Harvey Jr. and Adam Lambert Improving Servicemember Transition to Reduce Veteran Suicide Act would create a new pilot program embedded in the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) to provide more robust counsel to servicemembers about mental health and services available at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers. The bill was named to honor the memory of two Marines who lost their lives to post-traumatic stress disorderone of whom was Johnston native Lance Cpl. Daniel J. Harvey Jr., a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan and passed away in 2015 at the age of 22. Johnston's own Lance Corporal Daniel Harvey Jr. was a hero to Rhode Islanders and to our nation. Our community lost Lance Corporal Harvey long before his time, said Whitehouse. We have to do better by servicemembers who return home bearing invisible wounds of war. Every veteran should have easy access to the very best carefor both mental and physical healththat this nation has to offer. Harvey attended Johnston High School, where he was captain of the Johnston/North Providence co-op hockey team. He graduated in 2010 and enlisted in the Marines. The legislation would establish a pilot program at ten different Transition Assistance Center locations. As part of the pilot, TAP counseling would include discussion related to possible loss of community or identity crises while transitioning to civilian life. Servicemembers would be provided with information regarding the mental health programs and benefits available at their local VA facility. The legislation would require a social worker or mental health professional from a servicemember's local VA to be in touch within 90 days of transitioning to set up an appointment. The Secretaries of Defense and VA would assess whether to expand the pilot program after five years. Fifteen veterans in Rhode Island lost their lives to suicide in 2018, according to the VA. The Daniel J. Harvey Jr. and Adam Lambert Improving Servicemember Transition to Reduce Veteran Suicide Act is also sponsored by Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Joni Ernst (R-IA). Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-remarks-bill-authorizing-105-million-blackstone-national-heritage-corridor,Cicilline Remarks on Bill Authorizing $10.5 Million for Blackstone National Heritage Corridor,2020-12-03,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"WASHINGTON U.S. Congressman David N. Cicilline (RI-01) spoke on the House floor moments ago to urge passage of the National Heritage Area Act, legislation that authorizes $10.5 million for the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor over the next 14 years. Click the image below to watch Cicilline's speech on the House floor. The full text of his remarks is embedded at the end of this email. David N. Cicilline National Heritage Area Act December 3, 2020 I rise in strong support of H.R. 1049, the National Heritage Area Act. Since 1984, the National Heritage Area program has played a vital role in preserving the history, culture, and natural beauty of our nation's most historically and naturally significant communities. It has worked closely with those communities to help make them vibrant and ensure their place as part of the national landscape. In my home state of Rhode Island, the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor plays a vital role in preserving the history of communities in the Blackstone Valley, the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution. In addition to preserving this history, the coordinating entity for the Blackstone Valley Heritage Corridor works hand-in-hand with the National Park Service to support the continued development of the Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park, which runs from Providence and Pawtucket, through Worcester, Massachusetts. I was proud to lead the House effort to establish this National Park in 2014 and look forward to seeing its continued growth and development in close coordination with the Heritage Corridor. The relationship between the Heritage Corridor and the Blackstone Valley National Historical Park plays a vital role in telling the story of how America became a prosperous nation through its mills and factories, and the immigrant communities in Rhode Island and Massachusetts that worked in those industries and helped build the foundation of this country. The National Heritage Area Act will ensure that this relationship can continue by authorizing funds for Heritage Areas through 2034 and fostering new opportunities for relationships between Heritage Areas and the National Park Service to grow. While the Trump Administration has proposed eliminating this critical program year after year, I am grateful for the work of my colleague from New York, Congressman Paul Tonko, for his leadership on this issue, and I thank Chairman Grijalva and the Natural Resources Committee for their efforts to bring this legislation to the floor. I urge passage of H.R. 1049 to support the National Heritage Area program and continue preserving our nation's history and natural beauty. I yield back the balance of my time.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/national-cyber-director-act-will-be-included-year-end-defense-bill,National Cyber Director Act Will Be Included in Year-end Defense Bill,2020-12-03,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WASHINGTON Cyberspace Solarium Commissioner Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and co-chair and co-founder of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, today announced that legislation he has led to establish a National Cyber Director has been included in the Conference Report for the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released today. The provision, which is based on Langevin's National Cyber Director Act, would create a Senate-confirmed position in the Executive Office of the President with policy and budgetary authority to oversee development and implementation of the national cyber strategy and to coordinate national cyber incident response efforts. I've been working on bolstering our nation's cybersecurity for more than a decade, and it is abundantly clear the country needs someone in charge of cybersecurity at the highest levels of government, said Langevin. The inclusion of the National Cyber Director Act in this year's National Defense Authorization Act brings us closer to establishing an overarching and more effective cyber strategy to protect the nation. With increased reliance on information technology infrastructure for communication, commerce and personal use, as well as national security purposes, it is more critical than ever that there is an expert bringing all the elements of government together and ensuring that we are pulling oars in the same direction to protect Americans. I thank Congressman Mike Gallagher for helping to advance this bipartisan bill, House Oversight and Reform Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney for holding a hearing on this important legislation, Senator Angus King for championing this provision in the Senate, and Senator Mike Rounds for helping us refine the language to move forward. In 2010, Langevin first introduced legislation to create a White House cyber director based on a recommendation from the Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency, which he co-chaired. Most recently, the creation of a National Cyber Director was included as a key recommendation in the Cyberspace Solarium Commission's report released in March. The Commission was established by the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019 and was entrusted with developing actionable recommendations for a unified, strategic national response to evolving threats and adversaries in cyberspace. The National Cyber Director Act represents a paradigmatic shift in how the government handles cybersecurity, continued Langevin. The inaugural National Cyber Director will inherit a long list of priorities, from coordinating cybersecurity budgets across the entire federal government to planning to protect COVID vaccine distribution over the next several months, as well as protecting our elections. I look forward to working with the incoming Biden Administration to ensure that the first National Cyber Director is properly empowered to break down silos across the many agencies with cyber responsibilities. The NDAA authorizes national defense spending and has been passed by Congress for 59 consecutive years. The House is expected to take up the Fiscal Year 2021 NDAA, which includes the provision to establish the National Cyber Director, next week. After passage in the Senate, the bill would head to the President's desk for his signature to become law.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/senate-approves-whitehouse-cotton-als-disability-insurance-access-act,Senate Approves Whitehouse-Cotton ALS Disability Insurance Access Act,2020-12-02,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.02.20 Senate Approves Whitehouse-Cotton ALS Disability Insurance Access Act Legislation would eliminate five-month waiting period before ALS patients can access disability benefits Washington, DC U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) today applauded Senate passage of the ALS Disability Insurance Access Act, bipartisan legislation to eliminate the five-month waiting period before ALS patients can receive the Social Security Disability Insurance benefits they earned by contributing to Social Security. The legislation would build on previous steps by Congress and the Social Security Administration to accommodate the difficult prognosis for those diagnosed with ALS. The bill passed in a 96-1 vote. Allowing Americans who face this difficult diagnosis to immediately receive the benefits they have earned is a simple act of humanity that will make life easier for ALS patients and their families, said Whitehouse. I hope the House will act quickly so we can finally eliminate this bureaucratic obstacle. Americans suffering from ALS shouldn't have to wait for assistance, especially given their tragically short life expectancyand now they won't have to, said Cotton. By waiving the statutory disability benefits waiting period, our bill makes support available to those suffering from this terrible disease much faster. I'm grateful to my Senate colleagues for supporting this important legislation, and I strongly urge the House to do the same. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurodegenerative disease affecting the ability of the brain to control muscle movements. Individuals with ALS progressively lose the ability to speak, walk, and breathe. The intended purpose of a five-month waiting period is to allow temporary conditions to reverse. However, there is currently no cure or treatment to halt or undo the effects of ALS, and some ALS patients lose their fight with the disease before ever receiving benefits. The ALS Disability Insurance Access Act would help alleviate some of the financial hardship that accompanies an ALS diagnosis, and support those living with ALS and their families. The five-month waiting period for Social Security Disability Insurance for those living with ALS creates a major barrier in the ability to access vital health care, benefits and support services for those bravely fighting the disease, said Beth Flanagan, Executive Director ALS Association RI Chapter. Over the course of the five-month waiting period, people with ALS experience progressive loss of function that leads to more treatment and higher levels of care. The out of pocket expense to care for a loved one with ALS is approximately $250,000 and SSDI benefits are critically important in helping to ease that financial burden for patients and their families. The ALS Association RI Chapter is grateful to Senator Whitehouse for his steadfast support of the patients and families we serve. ALS is a cruel disease that progresses fast, currently without a cure. Help can't come soon enough once someone is diagnosed and this bill recognizes that. It takes courage to be a true champion for patients and we are grateful to Senators Whitehouse and Cotton for introducing this legislation, I AM ALS CEO Danielle Carnival said. To the thousands of advocates who drove this bill forward, you are our hope. You are changing history one step at a time. This passage in the Senate is in celebration of your efforts. The ALS Association and ALS community urges the House to immediately pass the ALS Disability Insurance Access Act, which just passed the Senate, said Calaneet Balas, President and CEO of The ALS Association. The legislation would make SSDI benefits accessible to people with ALS right away. Our community has worked tirelessly with congressional champions over the years laying the groundwork for this bill, educating lawmakers and the public about the rapid progression of ALS and the long delays in diagnosis. Over the course of a five-month waiting period, many people living with ALS will experience serious loss of ability and will have incurred significant expenses for care and treatment. They urgently need support. Whitehouse and Cotton first introduced the ALS Disability Insurance Act in 2016. The legislation awaits approval in the House, where it is sponsored by Congressmen Seth Moulton (D-MA) and Peter King (R-NY). Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/time-to-wake-up-276-another-peek-into-the-web-of-denial,Time to Wake Up 276: Another Peek Into the Web of Denial,2020-12-02,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.02.20 Time to Wake Up 276: Another Peek Into the Web of Denial Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, today is my 276th climate speech, and my increasingly battered graphic is showing its wear, but for the first time in a really, really long time, there is real hope for climate action in America. The light of science will shine in a Biden administration. Our U.S. Government will heed actual data. Agencies will act on facts. The White House will care about the harm carbon pollution does right now across the country. President Biden will restore the EPA to its role of safeguarding our air and water and will task the State Department to surge climate policy abroad. Every Department--from Transportation to the USDA, to HUD, to the SEC--will have a role in turning this ship around before catastrophe. At last, the Biden administration will cleanse America's government of its grimy infestation of polluter lackeys, stooges, and hangers-on and will shut off the disastrous handouts to fossil fuel industry donors. A flood of cleansing executive actions will wash away the grime. The American Presidency, with its great power, will shake free of the polluters' grip, but the Presidency alone cannot spare us. Congress must pass a comprehensive climate bill, stop rewarding polluters from polluting, and clean up our energy market so it is not corrupted by or for the fossil fuel industry--for instance, putting a real price on carbon to pay for the fossil fuel damage. We have to invest in new, green infrastructure to create millions of jobs. We need to prepare communities along our coasts for rising seas, others for higher temperatures, and other climate dangers. We need to address the dangerous systemic financial risks fossil fuel presents to our economic system. There is work to be done, and it is overdue. So what has been stopping us? Four years ago, Senate Democrats came to the Senate floor and here exposed this web of denial and obstruction that had been built by the fossil fuel industry to prevent meaningful action on climate change. This evil web is a front for billionaire polluters like the Kochs and fossil fuel pushers like ExxonMobil and Marathon Petroleum. To hide its funders, this web uses creepy identity-scrubbing groups like Donors Trust and Donors Capital. They move money and people around in the web in a Whac-A-Mole array of disposable groups with misleadingly wholesome names like the Heartland Institute and the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Benjamin Franklin would vomit at this abuse of his name. Following Big Tobacco's playbook, this web of denial kept the polluters' fingerprints off the dirty work of sowing doubt about climate science, just as the tobacco industry fraudulently stood up front groups to dispense denial of the harms of tobacco. This polluter web of denial also kept the Republican Party in line by spending stunning amounts of money in American politics Dr. Robert Brulle, now at Brown University, created this graphic off of his research, and it gives you a sense of how big and how complex this web of denial is that the fossil fuel industry stood up, and it is funded by huge amounts of dark money by anonymous funders. When we exposed this web back in 2016, fossil fuel giants like ExxonMobil said it was out of the climate denial and obstruction business. Exxon claimed it had not funded the Heartland Institutes of the world for a decade. Fossil fuel executives said they knew climate change was a threat, and they claimed to have turned the page on this nonsense. Well, that just ain't so. The network of phony front groups, identity-laundering outfits, and bogus PR campaigns is alive and well. Like any threatened crooked enterprise, it morphs to hide in its surroundings, but we just caught another glimpse of it through a New York Times expose of the corporate PR firm FTI Consulting. FTI started 40 years ago as a hired gun for parties in litigation and now offers virtually any nasty service a corporation could need. According to the Times, the fossil fuel industry employs FTI for a lot of dirty work. One thing FTI does is to stand up fake front groups. The New York Times chronicles how organizations like Citizens to Protect PA Jobs, New Mexicans for Economic Prosperity, and the Liberty Energy Project actually all trace back to FTI through common employees, internet domain registrations, and other ties. Each of these pop-up groups suggests that it is a broad coalition of regular Americans. Each sports a flashy website, like this one, with neighborly looking folk in scenic vistas, and, of course, they all make the fossil fuel case for cutting corporate taxes and slashing environmental protections. We call these fake environmental grassroots groups ``Astroturf''--a product manufactured by big, powerful special interests to look like grassroots support. This one is a classic--Texans for Natural Gas. The Times writes about this outfit: Acting as Texans for Natural Gas representatives, FTI employees have launched pro-industry petitions, produced videos and reports on the importance of the Permian Basin oil field, and written opinion pieces for local newspapers supporting fossil fuels. The site features testimonials from three women-- I am quoting still-- two of whom are represented with stock photos-- Let me interrupt the quote for a minute because you know you can go to the internet and find stock photos of people you can use. So these aren't real testimonials. These are fake FTI testimonials with stock photos to make it look like it is credible. OK, I will go back to the quote: and one with a photo used without permission from the Flickr page of a photographer in the Philippines. Classy, huh? This bag of polluter tricks is pretty familiar to those who have studied the web of denial here, but FTI is also pulling some new tricks. One new target is fossil fuel's own investors. A new challenge for oil and gas companies is their own shareholders--even their biggest institutional investors--calling on them to identify and address climate risks. For instance, last spring, BlackRock, the largest institutional investor in the world, voted at a shareholder meeting to remove two Exxon directors and install an independent Exxon chairman, all to improve this oil giant's ``insufficient progress'' in addressing its business risk from climate change. That kind of warning shot sends shivers down the spine of a big polluter. So there is FTI, which popped up a group in 2018 called Main Street Investors, which commissioned studies arguing that activist shareholders harm shareholder value, and it launched a website, divestmentfacts.com, to argue against big university endowments, pension funds, and other big investors divesting from fossil fuels. The Times notes about this scheme: ``At least six academic papers published on this website were by professors who, in addition to their university jobs, were also working for Compass Lexecon, [an] FTI subsidiary.'' Neat trick using shareholder money to fool shareholders. Who paid FTI to set up Main Street Investors? The National Association of Manufacturers, which the watchdog group Influence Map has called the worst climate obstructor in America. So it is no surprise that they are paying for this phony nonsense. The question is, Who paid the National Association of Manufacturers to set this up? They won't say. So we have to take a guess. There is more that FTI is up to. Don't like your news coverage? FTI can build you your own news site. The Times found FTI lurking behind Energy In Depth and Western Wire--two sites that churn out pro-fossil fuel articles and spread them around the internet. With mass extinction of real local newspapers underway, FTI is busy setting up polluter news pages to fill the void. It is clever, if repulsive. Of course, FTI does dirty work on social media. After New York City filed a climate lawsuit against Exxon, FTI launched a social media attack on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. In a pantomime twofer, FTI used content from its phony Energy In Depth news site in its paid-for social media attack. Who paid? They won't say. Take a guess. Another FTI campaign bought social media ads to steer people to another FTI front group, the Arctic Energy Center, which promotes-- guess what--drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off the Alaskan coast. In yet another campaign, FTI's shadowy special strategic communications unit set up a phony Facebook profile to secretly track environmental protesters. It did this for Apache Energy, which wanted to drill for fossil fuel next to a State park in Texas. See the pattern? But wait. It gets even creepier than this, if you can believe it. FTI has a menu that it offers to its clients of fake personas. These fake personas use fake social media and message board accounts to interfere in internet debate--say by harassing local citizens who are concerned about pollution and who may be criticizing FTI's clients, so they will bomb into the internet debate around that, offering fake personas as the phony voice to disrupt that debate. This is actually their menu. You have what they call ""the Derailleur.'' ""The Derailleur seizes on a seemingly innocuous section of the otherwise negative narrative and attempts to pull the comment thread into a discursive discussion around that detailed non-issue.'' They offer next the ""Drunken Conspiracy Theorist Uncle.'' ""The Drunken Conspiracy Theorist Uncle agrees with the negative commenter but conflates other unrelated and offensive issues into it, lumping it all together into an unpalatable whole.'' They also offer the ""Semantic Nitpicker,'' who ""asks an endless series of questions seeking clarification or pointing out minor flaws in the way the argument is constructed. This can be played both friendly and oppositionally, but by different stacks of kids.'' On it goes through the ""Skeptical Capitalist,'' the ""Patronizing Voice of Reason,'' the ""Confused Time Traveler,'' the ""Concerned Hipster,'' and believe it or not, here is a real beauty--the ""Dog Typing on a Keyboard.'' You can pay FTI to send somebody real behind a fake persona to go interfere anonymously in somebody else's conversation--in this case, claiming a dog typing on a keyboard. ""The dog typing on a keyboard chimes in with very poor grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and posts frequently to clutter up the thread and make it very hard to read''--basically packing the debate with so much nonsense that everybody has to tune out. These are actually services offered to the fossil fuel industry clients that they pay for. They pay to disrupt legitimate internet debate using phony, paid-for personas that come in occupying these characteristics, I guess you would call them. It is unbelievably disgusting behavior for any corporation to engage in, which is probably why they hide the money. You may ask, why? Why on Earth would fossil fuel companies spend big money on all this fancy, fake activity--from phony Astroturf groups to fake attack campaigns, to the dog typing on the keyboard? Why would the fossil fuel industry go through all these complex, phony schemes? Won't they ultimately get caught? Well, the answer is simple, and it is a number--$650 billion. Six hundred and fifty billion dollars is the subsidy for fossil fuel in the United States of America every year. Every year, $650 billion. Another year, another $650 billion, according to the International Monetary Fund, which is kind of a technical bean counter organization that is not an environmental group by any stretch. So let's say you are getting that $650 billion subsidy every year. Even if all this fakery ends up exposed, if in the meantime you have disrupted the opposition and kept your business scheme going, you have reaped another year of multi-hundred-billion-dollar subsidies. I mention in this web of denial the identity-laundering group called Donors Trust, and I will come back to them right now because I have called them out over and over. Donors Trust just put a letter to the editor into my home State newspaper to assure its readers that Donors Trust is just as pure as the driven snow. Of all the newspapers in the world, Donors Trust just happened to pick mine. I appreciate the attention. But let's get the facts straight because here is Donors Trust, right in the middle of the web of denial. It has been called ``the dark-money ATM of the right,'' behind ""the right's assault on labor unions, climate scientists, public schools, [and] economic regulations.'' It has been called ""the Right's favorite dark-money conduit, [which] allows the identities of wealthy conservative donors to stay hidden.'' It has been called ``Donors Trust, the Right-Wing Secret Money Machine.'' And it is smack in the middle of this dirty, dark fossil fuel web that has propagated and funded the lie--the lie of climate denial. From FTI and all of its schemes and its typing dogs to Donors Trust, the sleaze and the scale of the fossil fuel scheming is itself a signal of the mischief afoot. You don't put up a phony-baloney operation of this magnitude unless you have some real nasty stuff that you are trying to defend and mislead people about. Well, for $650 billion a year, you can crank up a lot of sleazy mischief. Here in Congress, we can't keep dancing to the tune of this crowd. We still don't know which party will control this Chamber next year, but we do know that the Senate is out of excuses on climate change. It is time for a strong climate bill that can be signed into law by a new President, swept into office with the most votes in history on a strong commitment to climate action. It is on us. It is on us whether this web of denial will hold us back or whether we will break free at last of its corrupting influence and do, for once--for once--our duty instead of its bidding. I yield the floor.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/sen-whitehouse-delivers-remarks-on-his-als-disability-insurance-access-act-on-the-senate-floor,Sen. Whitehouse Delivers Remarks on his ALS Disability Insurance Access Act on the Senate Floor,2020-12-02,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/sen-whitehouse_-environment-and-public-works-committee-on-the-american-nuclear-infrastructure-act,Sen. Whitehouse - Environment and Public Works Committee on the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act,2020-12-02,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"December 2 | Sen. Whitehouse speaks in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act of 2020, which was approved by the committee today.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/time-to-wake-up-276-another-peek-into-the-web-of-denial,Time to Wake Up 276: Another Peek Into the Web of Denial,2020-12-02,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-sullivan-menendez-marine-debris-bill-heads-to-presidents-desk,Whitehouse-Sullivan-Menendez Marine Debris Bill Heads to President’s Desk,2020-12-01,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"12.01.20 Whitehouse-Sullivan-Menendez Marine Debris Bill Heads to President's Desk Senate approves technical changes to Save Our Seas 2.0 Washington, D.C. U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) are applauding final Senate passage of the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act this evening, sending the bill to the President's desk. The Save Our Seas 2.0 Act was introduced in June 2019 to address the plastic debris crisis threatening coastal economies and harming marine life. The legislation seeks to help reduce the creation of plastic waste, find uses for the plastic waste that already exists to keep it from entering the oceans, spur innovation and tackle the problem on a global scale. It builds on the initial progress secured by the Save Our Seas Act, which was sponsored by Whitehouse and Sullivan and signed into law by President Trump in 2018. While marine debris presents a massive international challenge, it's a manmade problem that we can solve by finding creative solutions at home and abroad, said Senator Whitehouse, who co-founded the bipartisan Senate Oceans Caucus to find common ground in responding to issues facing the oceans and coasts. Save Our Seas 2.0 is a wide-reaching, bipartisan bill that builds on progress we've already made addressing ocean pollution. There's much more that needs to be done to tackle the scourge of plastic waste washing up on our shoresSave Our Seas 3.0 is already in the pipeline. Save Our Seas 2.0 is the most comprehensive marine debris legislation ever to pass Congress, said Senator Sullivan. This proves that major bipartisan achievements on some of the biggest environmental challenges are possible. The progress we have made over the past few years on the marine debris crisis, beginning with the original Save Our Seas Act, is historic and constitutes a whole-of-government approach to helping protect our pristine environment across the globe and, particularly, in Alaska, which has more coastline than the rest of the Lower 48 combined. I thank my colleagues in the House and Senate for coming together to clean up our oceans, spark innovation on managing plastic waste, and protect our fisheries and coastal communities. Today is a great day for New Jerseyans and all Americans in the fight to protect our beautiful coastlines and beach communities from the growing scourge of plastic waste washing up on our shores. Save Our Seas 2.0 provides the most comprehensive set of tools to help bolster the United States' leadership and response to this growing global environmental and economic challenge and I'm so pleased to see it become law, said Senator Menendez, Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Roughly eight million metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste from land enters the oceans each year. Ninety percent of this plastic enters the oceans from ten rivers, eight of which are in Asia. The plastic breaks down into tiny pieces that can enter the marine food chain and harm fish and wildlife. Plastic has been found in areas as remote as the Mariana Trench, the deepest known point in the ocean. The Senate first passed Save Our Seas 2.0 in January and today approved technical changes made in the House. The House version of the bill was sponsored by Representatives Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) and Don Young (R-AK). Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/statement-death-former-risd-president-roger-mandle,Cicilline Statement on Death of Former RISD President Roger Mandle,2020-12-01,2020,2020-12,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"Cicilline Statement on Death of Former RISD President Roger Mandle Nov 30, 2020 PAWTUCKET U.S. Congressman David N. Cicilline (RI-01) issued the following statement this morning: ""The American arts and higher education communities have lost a giant. Roger Mandle was a passionate advocate for art and design. I was privileged to get to know and work with him during his time at RISD. He was an extraordinary man, and a great civic leader in Providence. As the longest tenured president in RISD's history, he ensured that Rhode Island remained home to the top arts and design school in the world. Equally important, he believed deeply and understood fully the important role of great universities and colleges in the success of cities. He will be deeply missed."" ""My thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Gayle, and their entire family.""",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/press-releases/whitehouse-congratulates-president-elect-biden-and-vice-president-elect-harris,Whitehouse Congratulates President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris,2020-11-28,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"Providence, RI – U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) today issued the following statement regarding the election of Joe Biden to serve as the 46th President of the United States of America: “After four long years, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will restore heart, decency, and competence to the White House. The Biden administration will govern for every American as they steer the country through a number of urgent crises: a once-in-a-century pandemic, a lopsided economic disaster, a dramatically changing climate, and a reckoning for racial justice. The work begins immediately to ensure every American can get affordable health care, a quality education, and a job that pays a living wage. “President Trump has wielded the power of the presidency toward one goal: to turn Americans against one another. There is hard work ahead of us to bring the country together again and repair America’s standing in the world. But the people have spoken and, by a resounding margin of more than four million votes, have set a new course for history. The democratic process worked, and we intend to see through a peaceful transition to the new administration.”",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-06-28T00:39:51Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/chairs-langevin-and-speier-issue-statement-support-mich%C3%A8le-flournoy-secretary-defense,Chairs Langevin and Speier Issue Statement in Support of Michle Flournoy as Secretary of Defense,2020-11-26,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WASHINGTON Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities, and Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-CA), Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, today issued the following statement encouraging President-elect Biden to nominate Michle Flournoy as Secretary of Defense. We encourage President-elect Biden to seriously consider nominatingMichle Flournoy to be Secretary of Defense. As chairs of the House Armed Services Committee's Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities subcommittee and the Military Personnel subcommittee, we are keenly aware of the critical need for a leader with Flournoy's expertise on complex national security issues. Ms. Flournoy's sound policy experience will be vital to ensuring strong civilian oversight of the military, professionalism and ethics in our special operations forces, workforce diversity, and activities to strengthen our technological edge through science and innovation. Flournoy would be the first woman nominated to be Secretary of Defense. As the Department struggles with toxic workplace culture even as it opens special operations and the combat arms to women, breaking this glass ceiling is long overdue. The U.S. military has had difficulty attracting and retaining a diverse workforce, and the top ranks at the Pentagon remain unreflective of America. Ms. Flournoy understands that a diverse workforce is essential to innovation and improving the effectiveness of national security problem solving. Asseniormembers of Congress, we sincerelyappreciate thatMs. Flournoy isheld in thehighestregard as a preeminent defensepolicy expertwho has worked tirelessly todevelop effectivebipartisan solutions to the nation's problems. She is trusted and empoweredby those she works with and those who work for her.Following the tumultuous past four years, Ms. Flournoy's steady leadership, future vision, and firm grasp of strategy, personnel policy, andthenext generationof defense technologiesis exactly whatweneed.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-statement-on-democratic-leadership-of-senate-judiciary-committee,Whitehouse Statement on Democratic Leadership of Senate Judiciary Committee,2020-11-24,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"11.24.20 Whitehouse Statement on Democratic Leadership of Senate Judiciary Committee Washington, DC Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the following statement today regarding new Democratic leadership on the Judiciary Committee: In the wake of Ranking Member Feinstein's announcement, I look forward to the question of succession on the Senate Judiciary Committee being decided by the caucus. I will abide by the caucus's decision. Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/chairman-langevin-supports-defense-department-reorganization-strengthens-civilian,Chairman Langevin Supports Defense Department Reorganization that Strengthens Civilian Oversight of Special Operations,2020-11-24,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WARWICK, R.I. Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities, today sent a letter to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller expressing his support for Miller's memo requiring the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict to report directly to the Secretary of Defense. This reorganization effort clarifies the Department's chain of command and strengthens civilian oversight of Special Operations Forces. The following statement may be attributed to Congressman Langevin. Today, I have sent a letter to Acting Secretary of Defense Miller regarding his decision to have the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict (ASD SO/LIC) report directly to him. While I was not informed of the reorganization in advance, I support it because it will clarify the administrative chain of command between the Secretary of Defense and ASD SO/LIC in a manner consistent with Congressional intent. I support efforts to strengthen civilian oversight of Special Operations Forces, who conduct some of our most secretive and sensitive missions. I will follow implementation closely to ensure the reorganization does not remove the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from the development and oversight of special operations policy. As he prepares to take office, I urge President-elect Biden to prioritize the Senate confirmation of an ASD SO/LIC who will singularly represent the position, perform no other duties, and provide stable, civilian leadership. While for the past two decades our primary adversaries have been terrorist groups, today we are faced with state actors who employ proxies, exhibit diplomatic and economic influence, and wage sophisticated information operations. Special Operations Forces will continue to perform some of the military's most dangerous missions but as part of a broader strategy that equally relies on other U.S. forces. An empowered ASD SO/LIC will direct this change and inculcate the cultural shift special operators need in this era of great power competition. Full text of the letter.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-names-mike-deangelis-district-director,Langevin Names Mike DeAngelis District Director,2020-11-24,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WARWICK, R.I. Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI) today announced that Mike DeAngelis is joining his staff as District Director. DeAngelis will take on the role held by Seth Klaiman, who is departing to be Chief of Staff for Rhode Island General Treasurer Seth Magaziner. I want to thank Seth for his invaluable work as a member of my team, said Langevin. While Seth certainly leaves big shoes to fill, I am confident that Mike will excel in this new role as we continue our diligent work for the Second Congressional District. Mike offers a wealth of knowledge and understanding of Rhode Island and has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to making our state better. I am fortunate to have him at the helm of my district operations. DeAngelis has served as Campaign Manager and Finance Director for the Langevin for Congress campaign since 2013. Prior to that, he worked as Deputy Campaign manager in support of Langevin's successful reelection efforts. He also served as Finance DirectortoPedro Segarra's successful bid for mayor of Hartford, Connecticut,in 2011,andwasDeputy Campaign Manager for StevenCostantino'sProvidence mayoral campaign in 2010. DeAngelis is a graduate of the University of Rhode Island where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science. His first dayasDistrict Director will be December 1st.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-statement-president-elect-biden-nominating-haines-director-national-0,Langevin Statement on President-Elect Biden Nominating Haines as Director of National Intelligence,2020-11-24,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"Langevin Statement on President-Elect Biden Nominating Haines as Director of National Intelligence Nov 24, 2020 November 23, 2020 WARWICK, R.I. Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI), chair of the House Armed Services Committee's Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee and a member of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, released the following statement regarding President-elect Joseph R. Biden's announcement that he intends to nominate former Deputy National Security Adviser Avril Haines to be Director of National Intelligence: President-elect Biden promised to break with President Trump's politicization of the intelligence community, and his pick of Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence is an excellent first step. President Trump has regularly ignored and degraded the intelligence professionals who put their lives on the line to keep us safe, and I do not envy the task Haines will have in rebuilding trust in our political leadership. However, from the first time she briefed me on the Intelligence Committee while serving as Deputy Director of the CIA, I have been impressed by Ms. Haines's candor, insight, and deep policy knowledge, and I know she will do a terrific job as the first woman to lead the intelligence community. People often say that personnel is policy,' and President-elect Biden is making clear that he will bring a thoughtful, sober approach to the intelligence collection and analysis so important to our national security. I commend him for his selection of Avril Haines, I offer her my heartfelt congratulations for this well-deserved honor, and I look forward to working with both of them to combat the array of threats facing our nation.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-thompson-introduce-bipartisan-resolution-recognizing-national-career,"Langevin, Thompson Introduce Bipartisan Resolution Recognizing National Career Development Month",2020-11-24,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WASHINGTON Congressmen Jim Langevin (D-RI) and Glenn GT' Thompson (R-PA), co-chairs of the Congressional Career and Technical Education (CTE) Caucus, today introduced a resolution recognizing National Career Development Month, which is observed every November. Every November, we underscore career development because when we help students think and plan for their future, they're one step closer to being successful, said Rep. Langevin. Whether pursuing a higher education, participating in an apprenticeship, or exploring entrepreneurship, career development is a lifelong skill that can help ensure success no matter a student's interests and background. National Career Development Month serves as an opportunity to show students the possibilities of tomorrow. A highly skilled and trained workforce is a business's best competitive edge, saidRep. Glenn GT' Thompson. Designating November as National Career Development Month is an opportunity to promote career development and to encourage employees, jobseekers, and students to take advantage of the resources available, which can lead to high-paying, family-sustaining jobs. National Career Development Month marks a time for students and workers of all ages to consider and focus on future career options. Career exploration is essential in shaping the students of today into the leaders of tomorrow. National Career Development Month is also a time to recognize the professionals who guide and advise students as they explore career options. Throughout this month, schools, businesses, and organizations host activities that promote experiences and engagements that connect students with professionals who work and thrive in their own careers, offering students a first-hand look at different career possibilities that align with their interests and skills. These opportunities promote self-assessment and help students learn vital social and performance skills, build confidence, and set career goals. Text of the resolution.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-applauds-appointment-of-secretary-kerry-to-serve-as-first-ever-climate-envoy-on-national-security-council,Whitehouse Applauds Appointment of Secretary Kerry to Serve as First-Ever Climate Envoy on National Security Council,2020-11-23,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"11.23.20 Whitehouse Applauds Appointment of Secretary Kerry to Serve as First-Ever Climate Envoy on National Security Council Washington, DC Today, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, released the following statement on President-elect Joe Biden's announcement of former Secretary of State John Kerry as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. Kerry will be the first-ever member of the National Security Council focused exclusively on climate change. Appointing Secretary Kerry to this role is a very good move. John Kerry brings an array of important talents and knowledge to the administration: a long record of leadership on climate change policy; many remarkable achievements as Secretary of State; and a deep knowledge of and appreciation for protecting our oceans, which are at the center of so many climate-related challenges. As important as the person the president-elect selected for this position is the creation of the position itself. Climate change is a massive threat to national security. It's past time for our president to have a member of their National Security Council focused squarely on the climate crisis. I commend the President-elect and his team on this appointment and look forward to working with John in the battles ahead. Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouses-anti-doping-bill-passes-senate-goes-to-president-for-signature,"Whitehouse’s Anti-Doping Bill Passes Senate, Goes to President for Signature",2020-11-23,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"11.23.20 Whitehouse's Anti-Doping Bill Passes Senate, Goes to President for Signature Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act to help level playing field for international sport Washington, D.C. U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse today announced that the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act has passed the U.S. Senate, completing its course through both chambers of Congress. The bill now goes to the President for signature. The Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act aims to level the playing field for international sport by cracking down on state-sponsored doping schemes like the one deployed by the Russian government in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Russia's malicious, corrupt behavior on the international stage demands a strong rejoinder, said Whitehouse. The World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee have failed to hold Russia accountable for its brazen cheating program in Sochi. Ahead of the next Olympics, the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act will create stiff penalties for doping and send a message to Russia and the world that state-sponsored fraud will not be tolerated. Passage of the bipartisan legislation has been spearheaded in the Senate by Whitehouse and Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS). Whitehouse and Wicker both serve on the Helsinki Commission, an independent commission of the U.S. government charged with monitoring compliance with the Helsinki Accords and advancing comprehensive security among the 57 member countries. The Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act advanced through the legislative process entirely on consensus-based procedures, demonstrating wide bipartisan support for the measure. The legislation also has received overwhelming support from amateur and professional sport organizations, including the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee Athletes' Advisory Council, the U.S. Olympians and Paralympians Association, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, and PGA TOUR. The Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act will: Establish criminal penalties for participating in a scheme in commerce to influence a major international sport competition through prohibited substances or methods. This section applies to all major international sport competitions in which U.S. athletes participate, and where organizing entities receive sponsorship from companies doing business in the United States or are compensated for the right to broadcast their competition there, so that international fraud against Americans will not go unpunished. Penalties will include fines of up to $1,000,000, or imprisonment of up to 10 years, depending on the offense. Provide restitution to victims of such conspiracies. Athletes and other persons who are victims of major international doping fraud conspiracies shall be entitled to mandatory restitution for losses inflicted upon them by fraudsters and conspirators. Protect whistleblowers from retaliation. By criminalizing participation in a major international doping fraud conspiracy, whistleblowers will be included under existing witness and informant protection laws. Establish coordination and sharing of information with the United States Anti-Doping Agency. Federal agencies involved in the fight against doping shall coordinate and share information with USADA, whose mission is to preserve the integrity of competition, inspire true sport, and protect the rights of athletes, to enhance their collective efforts to curb doping fraud. In 2016, Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov exposed the Russian state-sponsored doping scandal that took place during the 2014 Sochi Olympics. By deceiving international anti-doping authorities and swapping athletes' samples, Russian officials cheated U.S. athletes out of Olympic glory and U.S. corporations out of honest sponsorships. These corrupt officials used bribes and illicit payments, sometimes through U.S. financial institutions, to commit this fraud. Unfortunately, the masterminds behind the Russian doping operation escaped punishment for their actions because there was no U.S. legal mechanism to bring them to justice. In February 2018, the Helsinki Commission held a briefing featuring Dr. Rodchenkov's attorney, Jim Walden, on combating fraud in sports and the role of whistleblowers in safeguarding the integrity of international competitions. In March, Commissioners Sen. Ben Cardin (MD) and Sen. Cory Gardner (CO) and Rep. Jackson Lee met with Dr. Rodchenkov to discuss the threat posed by Russia to the United States, corruption in international sports bodies, and how the United States can contribute to the international effort to counter doping fraud. In July, the Helsinki Commission held a hearing that explored the interplay between doping fraud and globalized corruption and U.S. policy responses, including the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act. In October 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted seven individuals for involvement in a Russian-operated military intelligence program in which GRU officers are alleged to have conducted sophisticated hacking of U.S. and international anti-doping agencies who investigated and publicly condemned Russia's state-sponsored doping program. The hacking victims also included 230 athletes from approximately 30 countries. The operation was part of a disinformation campaign in which victims' personal email communications and individual medical and drug testing information, sometimes modified from its original form, was used to promote media coverage to further a narrative favorable to the Russian government. In October 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted a further six individuals for involvement in a Russian-operated military intelligence program in which GRU officers are alleged to have conducted sophisticated hacking of entities and organizations involved with the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Games Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-statement-president-elect-biden-nominating-haines-director-national,Langevin Statement on President-Elect Biden Nominating Haines as Director of National Intelligence,2020-11-23,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"Langevin Statement on President-Elect Biden Nominating Haines as Director of National Intelligence Nov 23, 2020 WARWICK, R.I. Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI), chair of the House Armed Services Committee's Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee and a member of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, released the following statement regarding President-elect Joseph R. Biden's announcement that he intends to nominate former Deputy National Security Adviser Avril Haines to be Director of National Intelligence: President-elect Biden promised to break with President Trump's politicization of the intelligence community, and his pick of Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence is an excellent first step. President Trump has regularly ignored and degraded the intelligence professionals who put their lives on the line to keep us safe, and I do not envy the task Haines will have in rebuilding trust in our political leadership. However, from the first time she briefed me on the Intelligence Committee while serving as Deputy Director of the CIA, I have been impressed by Ms. Haines's candor, insight, and deep policy knowledge, and I know she will do a terrific job as the first woman to lead the intelligence community. People often say that personnel is policy,' and President-elect Biden is making clear that he will bring a thoughtful, sober approach to the intelligence collection and analysis so important to our national security. I commend him for his selection of Avril Haines, I offer her my heartfelt congratulations for this well-deserved honor, and I look forward to working with both of them to combat the array of threats facing our nation.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/reed-and-whitehouse-call-on-gsa-administrator-to-end-unprecedented-delay_provide-critical-transition-resources-to-president-elect-biden,Reed & Whitehouse Call On GSA Administrator to End Unprecedented Delay & Provide Critical Transition Resources to President-Elect Biden,2020-11-20,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"11.20.20 Reed & Whitehouse Call On GSA Administrator to End Unprecedented Delay & Provide Critical Transition Resources to President-Elect Biden GSA Administrator's needless delay in providing resources to Biden transition creates unacceptable risks to pandemic response & national security WASHINGTON, DC Today, after a six-day hand recount of ballots in Georgia reaffirmed that President-elect Joe Biden won a clear victory in the Peach State, U.S. Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) are urging the head of the General Services Administration (GSA) to expeditiously sign off on the transition process. The Senators say it is critical for the GSA to release $9.9 million in transition funds for the incoming Administration, allow the President-elect to receive high-level briefings, and begin the security clearance and background check process for future Biden Administration employees. However, President Trump's political appointee, Emily Murphy, administrator of the GSA, and formerly a staffer for the Republican National Committee (RNC) has yet to ascertain that Joe Biden won the election and sign off on the official paperwork. Voters decide elections, not presidential appointees. It is clear that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the election and the recount in Georgia is further proof of a resounding victory. Ms. Murphy's refusal to ascertain President-elect Biden's win is a dangerous political stunt that puts America's public health and national security at risk and could create unnecessary financial hardship on taxpayers, said Senator Reed. In trying to delay the inevitable, Ms. Murphy's partisan intransigence is doing the nation a real disservice. She bears full responsibility for damage caused by knowingly and needlessly truncating the transition process, which the bipartisan 9-11 Commission Report cited as a contributing factor to America's unpreparedness for the terrorist attacks of September 11. Transitioning the federal government to a new administration is a complex process that takes months under normal circumstances, and the pandemic only complicates matters further, said Senator Whitehouse. Every day that goes by without the Trump administration acknowledging the will of an overwhelming majority of the American people imperils the health, security, and economic wellbeing of the nation. Reed and Whitehouse teamed up with U.S. Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) and several colleagues in penning a letter to GSA Administrator Murphy urging her to end her unprecedented delay, immediately ascertain Vice President Joe Biden as President-elect and Senator Kamala Harris as Vice President-elect, and make available the transition resources that are provided by law. The United States is in the midst of a pandemic that has now claimed over 250,000 lives, with the number of new cases rising daily. Our country also faces a number of ongoing threats, including physical and cyber attacks from foreign actors, violence from domestic extremists, and natural disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes, the 41 Senators wrote. The GSA Administrator's ascertainment of a President-elect is also critical for agencies' willingness to share information with the transition team, including classified information, as well as for the expeditious processing of security clearances for candidates for high-level national security positions. Your delay in acknowledging Vice President Biden's status as President-elect could undermine efforts by the incoming Administration to meet the needs of the American people in a time of national emergency, continued the Senators. Under the Presidential Transition Act, GSA is charged with providing resources and support to the President-elect and Vice President-elect so they can be ready to govern from Day One. Administrator Murphy must complete the ascertainment process to allow the President-elect's transition team to receive needed information from agency officials at public health and national security agencies, ensure incoming national security officials can receive background checks and access to classified information and provide federal funding and resources to support the transition process. A smooth and efficient transition is one of the hallmarks of American democracy. With the exception of the Presidential election in 2000 and the resulting recount, ascertainment by GSA normally happens within a day after a winner is declared, including in 2008 and 2016. The bipartisan 9/11 Commission found that the shortened transition following the 2000 recount created serious vulnerabilities, including delays related to key national security appointments. President-elect Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States at 12 noon on January 20, 2021. Joining Peters in sending the letter were U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Tom Carper (D-DE), Jack Reed (D-RI), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Chris Coons (D-DE), Ed Markey (D-MA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Tina Smith (D-MN), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Tom Udall (D-NM), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Bob Casey (D-PA), Patty Murray (D-WA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Mark Warner (D-VA), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Jon Tester (D-MT), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Doug Jones (D-AL). Text of the letter follows: Dear Administrator Murphy, We are writing to express deep concern regarding reports that the General Services Administration (GSA) has delayed providing President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris with the resources they need to ensure a timely and efficient presidential transition. We urge you to immediately ascertain Vice President Biden as President-elect and Senator Harris as Vice President-elect and allow the transition team to receive the resources required under the law. We also request an urgent briefing on steps GSA is taking to ensure an orderly transition. The United States is in the midst of a pandemic that has now claimed over 250,000 lives, with the number of new cases rising daily. Our country also faces a number of ongoing threats, including physical and cyber attacks from foreign actors, violence from domestic extremists, and natural disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes. The independent, bipartisan 9/11 Commission cited the shortened transition timeline for then President-elect George W. Bush as a factor in delaying key national security personnel appointments, potentially hampering the new Administration. A timely transition is critical to ensure coordination between the current and incoming Administrations, provide the incoming Administration with the resources they need to immediately address these challenges, and safeguard the public health and our national security. Under the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, as amended, GSA is charged with providing resources and support to the President-elect and Vice President-elect. Specifically, GSA must provide office space, communication services, funding for transition staff compensation, and other support. In response to a request from the Administration, Congress has appropriated $9.9 million to GSA for transition related activities. The GSA Administrator's ascertainment of a President-elect is also critical for agencies' willingness to share information with the transition team, including classified information, as well as for the expeditious processing of security clearances for candidates for high-level national security positions. Your delay in acknowledging Vice President Biden's status as President-elect could undermine efforts by the incoming Administration to meet the needs of the American people in a time of national emergency. This delay is also unprecedented. In both 2008 and 2016, President-elect Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump, respectively, were recognized by the GSA Administrator as President-elect within a day of the general election. In 2000, this decision was delayed due to an ongoing court case regarding less than 1,000 votes in a single statea far closer election than this one. The results of this election are clear. Vice President Biden will be the next President of the United States, and Senator Harris will be the next Vice President. It is past time to recognize the will of the American people so that the work of government can continue. The orderly transition of power from one President to another is a bedrock principle of our democracy and one of GSA's most important duties. We urge you to fulfill your responsibilities, ascertain Vice President Biden as President-elect and Senator Harris as Vice President-elect, and provide their transition team with the resources the law requires. We also request that, no later than November 23, 2020, GSA provide a briefing to staff of the Committees on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Appropriations, and Environment and Public Works regarding the presidential transition process and the support that GSA has provided to date. Thank you for your attention to this critical matter. Sincerely,",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-bill-will-promote-civics-ed,Cicilline Bill Will Promote Civics Ed,2020-11-20,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"WASHINGTON U.S. Congressman David N. Cicilline (RI-01) introduced legislation today to study the availability of civics education for young people in the United States. ""For decades, civics education has become less and less of a priority in our schools. It's not only a shame, it hurts our democracy. At a time when misinformation runs rampant, we need to give young people a solid footing in knowledge of our government, said Cicilline. Right now, only nine states and the District of Columbia require at last a year of civics education before you earn a K-12 degree. This bill is the first step towards fixing that."" The Commission on American Civics Education Act establishes a high-level commission to study the most effective civics education programs throughout the country. The commission will identify effective programs and courses of study, as well as deficiencies that exist in state programs. It will then produce a report outlining its findings, programs that may be used as a national model, and potential actions for the Department of Education to take. Commission members would be appointed by Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate, with each chamber appointing 5 members. Both the House and Senate will each appoint a co-chair to lead the commission's activity. Click here to read the text of the bill.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/national-apprenticeship-bill-langevin-pre-apprenticeship-amendment-passes-house,National Apprenticeship Bill with Langevin Pre-Apprenticeship Amendment Passes House,2020-11-20,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WASHINGTON Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI), Co-chair of the Congressional Career and Technical Education (CTE) Caucus, today voted in favor of the National Apprenticeship Act of 2020, legislation that reauthorizes the National Apprenticeship Act of 1937 for the first time since its enactment. The bill will invest more than $3.5 billion over five years to expand opportunities and access to Registered Apprenticeships, youth apprenticeships, and pre-apprenticeships to boost the nation's workforce and economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill passed the House by a vote of 246 to 140. The National Apprenticeship Act of 2020 is a significant investment to help Americans get back to work as millions of unemployed workers rely on unemployment benefits each week to stay afloat. The legislation supports the creation of nearly 1 million new apprenticeship opportunities on top of the expected growth of the apprenticeship system. It also includes a Langevin led amendment that allows pre-apprenticeship programs to use grant funds to provide stipends for participants to cover out-of-pocket costs such as housing, transportation, and childcare. Pre-apprenticeship programs are usually unable to provide income support to participants during the program, which has been noted as a challenge for program completion. I'm proud to have voted for theNational Apprenticeship Act of 2020, which is critical to expanding important work-based learning experiences during the deep economic downturn we're facing because of the pandemic, said Langevin. To build America back better and ensure an economic comeback, we have to have a workforce that is ready to get the job done. By expanding and strengthening the Registered Apprenticeship program, more workers can earn while they learn,' more businesses will have the talent they need, and our economy will be able to recover from these unprecedented headwinds. I'm also pleased that the final bill includes my amendment that allows pre-apprenticeship programs to provide stipends for participants. The Registered Apprenticeship system is America's most successful federally authorized workforce development program. According to the Department of Labor, 94 percent of people who complete Registered Apprenticeships are employed upon completion, earning an average starting wage of above $70,000 annually. Unfortunately, only 0.3 percent of the overall U.S workforce has completed an apprenticeship. The National Apprenticeship Act of 2020: Encourages employer participation and recruitment for individuals with barriers to employment, including individuals impacted by the criminal justice system. Codifies and streamlines standards for registered apprenticeships, youth apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs, including requirements for apprenticeship agreements and program registration to ensure consistency in quality standards and worker protections. Codifies existing regulations and practices to ensure that all individuals have an equal opportunity to participate in programs under the national apprenticeship system, and to increase diversity in the occupations offered and the individuals participating in programs, especially in high-skill, high-wage, and in-demand industry sectors and occupations. Codifies the Department of Labor's (DOL) Office of Apprenticeship, including roles and responsibilities such as: Increasing participation in programs under the national apprenticeship system through technical assistance and program recognition activities. Bringing together industry sector leaders and experts, including employers, industry associations, joint labor-management organizations, labor organizations, education and training providers, credential providers, and apprentices to establish national frameworks to expand apprenticeships to new occupations and sectors. Improving the data infrastructure to improve reporting and publicly disseminating information about apprenticeship programs. Codifying the National Advisory Committee on Apprenticeships. Establishing the evaluation system for the national apprenticeship system to bring performance metrics in line with those of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. Codifies the roles and responsibilities of the State Apprenticeship Agencies (SAAs) to include: Authorizing annual funding for State Apprenticeship Offices and SAAs at $75 million for fiscal year (FY) 2021, increasing by $10 million annually to reach $115 million for FY 2025, with one-third of funds equally distributed to all states and outlying areas, and two-thirds of funds distributed via formula to SAAs. Requiring SAAs to submit plans for registered apprenticeship activities, which generally mirror existing state requirements under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. Strengthens the connections between the Department of Education and Department of Labor through an interagency agreement to support the creation and expansion of youth apprenticeships, college consortiums, and data sharing agreements. ###",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/uri-and-friends-of-green-hill-pond-win-coastal-resilience-grant-from-whitehouse-created-program,URI & Friends of Green Hill Pond Win Coastal Resilience Grant from Whitehouse-Created Program,2020-11-19,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"11.19.20 URI & Friends of Green Hill Pond Win Coastal Resilience Grant from Whitehouse-Created Program $129K federal grant will support dune and habitat restoration along Green Hill Pond Providence, RI U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse today announced that a partnership between the University of Rhode Island and the nonprofit Friends of Green Hill Pond has received a $129,191 matching grant from the National Coastal Resilience Fund, which was developed by Whitehouse to restore and strengthen the natural infrastructure protecting coastal communities. The partners will use the award to restore dunes and habitat along Green Hill Pond, a salt pond located in South Kingstown and Charlestown. Restoration of the dunes and habitat surrounding Green Hill Pond will boost one of the area's first lines of defense against flooding, said Whitehouse, a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Scientists predict that rising sea levels will encroach on Rhode Island's coastline in the years ahead, so I'm working to prepare homes and businesses now by delivering funding for projects like this one. An undeveloped section of the dune protecting Green Hill Pond has a relatively low profile, placing the pond, as well as nearby homes, at risk of flooding during even modest storms. Based on recent studies, the adjacent community is among the most vulnerable areas to coastal flooding in Rhode Island. The University of Rhode Island and Friends of Green Hill Pond will use the federal grant to design and permit plans for a nature-based dune restoration to alleviate flood risk for nearby homes and to improve water quality. The design team will also develop a plan in conjunction the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to support plover nesting habitat in the area. Many coastlines across the U.S., including the southern shore of Rhode Island, are facing an accelerating rate of erosion and flooding due to sea level rise and intensification of coastal storms, said M. Reza Hashemi, assistant professor of ocean engineering and principal investigator of the project. The proposed integrated approach includes computer modeling, in-situ surveys, environmental studies and stakeholder engagement. It will provide valuable information for coastal communities, coastal engineers, environmental scientists, stakeholders, and regulating agencies that are interested in applying living shoreline methods and dune restoration projects to coastal areas in Rhode Island and across the country, added Reza, who is leading the multidisciplinary team of URI scientists from three colleges oceanography, engineering, and environment and life sciences. We are extremely grateful that NFWF is providing funding, alongside Friends of Green Hill Pond and the University of Rhode Island, to the Green Hill Pond Dune and Habitat Restoration project, said Dennis Bowman, President of the Friends of Green Hill Pond. This effort is critical to the area's community resilience and to promote the restoration of a precious wild oyster and fishery habitat. The project was championed at the local level by State Senator Dennis Algiere, whose district includes Green Hill Pond. Algiere helped secure state funding to complete a feasibility study for the project last year, and he wrote a letter of support for the application to the National Coastal Resilience Fund. I am pleased that the hard work of Friends of Green Hill to bring this crucial issue to our attention has resulted in this grant, Senator Algiere said. I look forward to working with them and other community groups in the future to protect our coastal communities. I am grateful to Senator Whitehouse, URI and federal partners for getting this project off the ground. The National Coastal Resilience Fund is administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In this round, the Fund will invest $37 million in 46 projects aimed at strengthening natural infrastructure to protect coastal communities and enhance fish and wildlife habitat. Past projects that have received funding from the National Coastal Resilience Fund include the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management's restoration of habitat along Quonochontaug Pond and the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council's (CRMC) research and planning effort to prevent flooding along Rhode Island's coastline. CRMC projects the Rhode Island coastline will see between 9 and 12 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century. Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-chairs-ietc-briefing-impact-covid-19-defense-it-systems,Langevin Chairs IETC Briefing on Impact of COVID-19 on Defense IT Systems,2020-11-19,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WASHINGTON Chairman Jim Langevin (D-RI) and the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities (IETC), today held a briefing by Department of Defense officials including Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy and Director of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and Commander of the Joint Force Headquarters Department of Defense Information Network (JFHQ-DODIN) Vice Admiral Nancy A. Norton, focusing on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the nation's information and communications technology. The following statement may be attributed to Congressman Langevin, who chaired the briefing: Today, I hosted a briefing on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Department of Defense IT systems. I hosted similar calls this year with Department officials on our chem-bio defense program, biological research, and threat reduction efforts with other countries. We must gather lessons learned from the COVID-19 response as we prepare for the next phase of the pandemic and other bio threats in the future. Tragically, cases have soared in recent weeks, hospitals are filling up, and deaths are rising. This brief focused on the vulnerabilities of the Department of Defense's information and communications technology. This year, the Department has worked to secure information networks and enable teleworking, even with sensitive information. Going forward, we must continue to modernize so that we harness the latest digital technology and, ultimately, never send our servicemembers into a fair fight. We must also take this moment to identify how we can better fight through a pandemic. This year, scientists and engineers advanced our bio detection and response capabilities. Scientists also built on defense research from earlier years that accelerated our vaccine production process. We must continue to support American ingenuity and early-stage, basic research. This is how we confront challenges before they become crises. As we approach winter, we cannot let our guard down. Nor can we accept defeat in the face of the remaining work that lies ahead. Our country has risen to the occasion before and stared down long odds many times. We will prevail again. By learning from this year, we will be stronger in 2021 against the pandemic. We will be better equipped against future biological threats and other emerging threats in the decades to come.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/reps-langevin-and-smith-pre-apprenticeship-stipend-amendment-added-national,Reps. Langevin and Smith Pre-Apprenticeship Stipend Amendment Added to National Apprenticeship Bill,2020-11-19,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WASHINGTON Representatives Jim Langevin (D-RI) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.) successfully included an amendment to the National Apprenticeship Act of 2020 that would allow pre-apprenticeship programs to use grant funds under the legislation to provide stipends for participants to cover certain out-of-pocket costs such as housing, transportation, and childcare. Pre-apprenticeship programs are valuable training opportunities that serve as the starting point of rewarding careers, and they are even more critical as we wrestle with the economic disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Rep. Langevin, co-chair of the Congressional Career and Technical Education Caucus. I'm joining Chairman Smith to advance legislation to provide financial support for out-of-pocket costs for hard-working Americans participating in these programs because it will help them advance and help the nation meet the growing demand for highly skilled workers. This legislation underpins the earn and learn' approach that will prepare workers in areas ranging from advanced manufacturing to healthcare for success in a 21st century economy. With persistent inequities in our society and a struggling economy further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, we must do more to help people obtain the education and skills they need to succeed, said Rep. Adam Smith. Rep. Langevin and I have heard from pre-apprenticeship programs in our districts that some of the biggest barriers people face entering and completing these programs are the costs to cover living expenses and fees associated with the programs themselves. This amendment would help pre-apprenticeship programs remove those barriers for students so they can obtain the initial credentials they need to enter an apprenticeship program and put them on a pathway to quality, high-paying jobs. This amendment that passed today was based on legislation recently introduced by Langevin and Smith, The Pre-Apprenticeship Wrap-around Support Services Fund Act of 2020. This legislation would establish a new grant program at the Department of Labor which would provide funding for pre-apprenticeship programs to use for direct support to pre-apprentices. Unlike most apprenticeship programs, pre-apprenticeship programs are usually unable to provide income support during the program. By allowing pre-apprenticeship programs to put grant funds towards stipends, it will help ensure equitable access and increased retention and completion of these programs. Further, pre-apprenticeships will help students who have missed school time, especially those who have not been able to engage in in-person Career Technical Education (CTE) lab time, due to the pandemic. In an effort to prevent further spread of the virus, many facilities have had to close and thus limited access to hands-on experiences and training. Pre-apprenticeships will help bridge the knowledge gap and provide extra support to make up for lost learning time. Text of the Amendment to H.R. 8294, the National Apprenticeship Act of 2020, can be found here and text of the Pre-Apprenticeship Wrap-around Support Services Fund Act of 2020 can be found here.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-leads-senate-democrats-in-introducing-tax-credits-to-protect-children-from-home-lead-hazards,Whitehouse Leads Senate Democrats in Introducing Tax Credits to Protect Children From Home Lead Hazards,2020-11-18,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"11.18.20 Whitehouse Leads Senate Democrats in Introducing Tax Credits to Protect Children From Home Lead Hazards Legislation would provide federal tax credits up to $4K to cover costs of removing dangerous toxin Washington, D.C. With lead hazards lurking in about 3.6 million homes of families with young children nationwide, U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Gary Peters (D-MI), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) today introduced legislation to help American families cover the cost of eliminating lead from their homes. The Home Lead Safety Tax Credit Act of 2020 would significantly broaden the national response to this public health challenge by providing refundable tax credits for homeowners, landlords, and tenants to remove lead from homes. Every parent should have the peace of mind of knowing their child is safe in their own home. Yet, millions of older houses have hidden lead hazards that can set children up for a lifetime of heartbreakingly needless challenges. Our tax credits would go a long way toward removing lead from those homes once and for all, said Senator Whitehouse, who has a long history of fighting lead contamination. While serving as Rhode Island Attorney General in 1999, Whitehouse initiated legal action to hold lead paint manufacturers accountable for the hazards of their products. Lead poisoning is an irreversible, preventable tragedy that robs many families and children of their future. We need to do everything we can to eliminate this hazardous lead from American homes, which are vulnerable because so many were built before 1978 when lead paint was banned, said Senator Schumer. These new federal tax credits will help America's families and communities cover the cost of removing lead hazards in their homes and protect the health of their children. We need to act now and we need to act fast to get toxic lead out of our homes and address this concerning public health hazard. The legislation would create tax credits worth up to $4,000 to cover half the cost of abating lead hazards in paint, pipes, or soil. The new tax credits would be available to offset the costs of removing lead from houses built before lead-based paint was banned for residential use in 1978, supplementing state and local lead control programs. Lead is a powerful neurotoxin that can severely compromise the behavioral and cognitive development of children. Despite the widespread contamination of U.S. housing stock, funding for lead abatement programs like the Lead Hazard Control Grant Program has only provided lead abatement for about 400,000 homes since 1993. Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/time-to-wake-up-275-georgia-on-my-mind,Time to Wake Up 275: Georgia on My Mind,2020-11-18,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"11.18.20 Time to Wake Up 275: Georgia on My Mind Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is timely that I should be giving my ``Time to Wake Up'' speech with the distinguished Senator from Louisiana presiding because I am going to be talking about sea level rise, and seeing him in the chair reminds me of a recent report on what sea level rise is doing to the great State of Louisiana, ``the sportsman's paradise,'' in which a scientist from Tulane University--a Tulane University geologist--was asked about the report about what the State had to look forward to from sea level rise, and he said: ``What it says is we're screwed.'' NOLA, the news website in New Orleans, in Louisiana, ran that headline. So I know the Senator is sympathetic to it. But today, all eyes are on Georgia, which for the first time in generations voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate, and the two Senate races are headed for runoff elections, which will decide the balance of power in this body. Georgians of every race and background turned out to reject the politics of fear and division that came from the White House for the last 4 years and to reject the disdain for facts and science that has cost Americans so much in battles like COVID and climate change. Perhaps buried in the election outcome in Georgia was Georgia's knowing the threat of climate change. For people along Georgia's coast, climate change is no Chinese hoax; it is a clear and present danger. In the spring of 2014, I took a climate trip along the coast of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. I met with scientists and students, outdoorsmen, faith leaders, and State and local officials, who cherish their coastal communities, as Louisianans do and as Rhode Islanders do. They saw the seas rising and acidifying due to carbon pollution. Georgians told me how deeply they care about their coast. That caring has powered them through some tough battles. They fought hard against fossil fuel development off Georgia's shores, and they won. It is not hard to understand why Georgians fight for their coasts against fossil fuel pollution. Near Savannah, I visited Fort Pulaski and Tybee Island. NOAA has a tide gauge at Fort Pulaski. It has been measuring sea level since 1935. The tide gauge takes straightforward measurements--clear, irrefutable facts. That tide gauge showed sea levels up over 8 inches since it was installed. For low-lying areas, those 8 inches of sea level rise are a problem already, but it is going to get worse. Climate change worsens coastal flooding in two ways. First, it raises the level of the sea as glaciers and ice sheets melt into the sea and as warmer oceans expand. Second, climate change powers up stronger and more frequent hurricanes, which send those higher seas as higher storm surges farther inland. So it is important to look at how far and how often sea level rise and storm surges will flood coastal areas. This is the map of Georgia's coastal area around Savannah. Here is Savannah. Here is the coastline. Here is the ocean. Here is Tybee Island. This dot here is Fort Pulaski, where the tide gauge is. That is what it looks like now, but ``now'' is not going to stay because here is what Georgia has coming at it. Based on NOAA information, this is the risk of flooding along the Georgia coast. It takes NOAA's intermediate prediction of sea level rise--``intermediate'' meaning it is not the most extreme scenario; it is the midrange prediction--and it shows the risk in any year of a 4- foot-deep flood. So here we are in 2020, and the risk is negligible. It is about 3 percent, meaning in present circumstances, you get a 4-foot flood through that area every 33 years. But by 2040, the risk is over 40 percent, which means that a 4-foot flood in that area is now not happening every 33 years, it is happening virtually every other year. By 2060, you hit 100 percent. You are getting a 4-foot flood in coastal Georgia every year. Of course this tops out at one flood per year based on the percentages, but if you look at this trajectory, clearly we are headed for multiple 4-foot floods per year in the outyears. When I was on Tybee Island, I met city councilman Paul Wolff, who showed me the city of Tybee's new stormwater tide gate, which they just installed to protect the island from sea level rise. He explained that the road out to Tybee Island, which is here, running along that edge, flooded already 45 times per year with just 1 foot of sea level rise. The city had already put in place a short-term plan for 14 to 20 inches of sea level rise by 2060. They were already thinking what the community would need to do as seas rise and acting on the best science back at that time. But now consider this: Consider sea level rise and storm surges combining to produce a 4-foot flood every year, at least once a year. Here is what that map looks like when you put 4 feet of water there. This is the Savannah area, and here is Tybee Island. This is all land in gray, and now all of this is underwater. Tybee Island has turned into just a tiny little atoll, basically, out in the ocean. The road that I was talking about is now not just occasionally washed over with water; for 5 miles, that road is underwater. Now, 4 feet of flooding happening every year is obviously bad, but remember, that wasn't the worst-case scenario; that was the intermediate NOAA scenario. Here is an extreme case--10 feet of sea level rise. That was Tybee Island. There is nothing left. Do you want an island now? Your island is Savannah--Savannah Island, surrounded by water. Well before the physical disaster of sea level rise and storm surge and flooding happens, something else comes first: an economic disaster, because we are not the only people looking at these projections of 4 feet and 10 feet of flooding. So do insurance companies. So do banks selling mortgages In these populated areas that are now land, how do you insure against a 4-foot flood that will happen every year? You can't buy a flood insurance policy for an event that happens every year. How do you get a 30-year mortgage for a property that will have flooded at least 30 times by the end of the mortgage? That economic punch--when you can't get insurance and when you can't get a mortgage on the property, that punch lands long before the floods come. Take Chatham County and Glynn County. According to a report by Climate Central, over $2 billion in property value would be lost in those two counties with 3 feet of sea level rise. Up the flooding to 8 feet, and it is over $7 billion in property value destroyed--people's homes, people's businesses. When a buyer can't get insurance and when a buyer can't get a mortgage, sellers face plummeting property values. The market unbalances rapidly because all of a sudden, you don't have many eligible buyers. The only buyers you have are people who can afford the property without having to borrow and who can afford to take the hit of an annual flood without insurance. That is not a big crowd. So the bottom falls out of the coastal property market. That collapse in the coastal property market is what financial experts call a systemic risk. ""Systemic risk'"" is the mildest and blandest term for a catastrophe that I know. It means that the whole economy is threatened by the economic collapse of coastal property values. It is not just me saying it. In 2016, the top economists for U.S. mortgage giant Freddie Mac projected that climate-driven flooding along U.S. coasts will cause a property value collapse, leading to economy- wide losses ``greater . . . than those experienced in the housing crisis and the Great Recession.'' For those of us who remember 2008 and the pain and the difficulty and the harm and the fear that was caused by that mortgage meltdown-- greater than that, is what Freddie Mac says. That is not an environmental group, by the way; that is Freddie Mac. It has already begun. Lenders are already requiring bigger and bigger downpayments in coastal areas, sometimes as much as 40 percent of a home's value before they will insure the remainder. Flood insurance premiums continue to rise, and coverage limits leave many seaside property owners exposed to huge losses. The people who own this flooded property are going to want to know why Congress paid more attention to fossil fuel polluters than we paid to coastal property owners; why we would only listen to the people causing this problem and not listen to the innocent property owners who are going to suffer billions and, if you multiply it out, trillions of dollars in losses. When I was in Georgia in 2014, a local clammer named Charlie Phillips took me out over the marshes on his airboat. It was a boat he built himself. He is a member of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, which runs the regional fishery, so Charlie knows his stuff. He has been an outdoorsman his whole life, and he needs fresh, clean water for his Georgia clams. Charlie told me that changes in the climate are hurting the ecosystem that supports his and his employees' livelihoods. Six years ago, Charlie was worried about a perilous future, one that looks even more perilous now and one to which we have not responded for 6 long years. Well, one hopeful change is that we have a President-elect now--a President-elect who understands what is happening to our climate and who understands what is happening to our coastal communities. He is from Delaware. He gets it. The question is, How will Congress respond? Will Republicans allow a strong, comprehensive climate bill? So far, there is no sign of that, not in this building. At some point, we will--mark my words--we will finally cast off the grim and malign grip of the fossil fuel polluters and their massive political influence machines. At some point, we will finally listen to the people now on dry land whose homes and businesses are going to be predictably flooded out because we did nothing. I will tell you that it had better be soon because time is not on our side. As these coasts flood--not just the Georgia coast but the New Jersey coast, the Rhode Island coast--as these coasts flood, coastal property owners will demand answers, and the Georgia voters who live near the Georgia coast are entitled to an explanation of why nothing is being done. I yield the floor.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/time-to-wake-up-275-georgia-on-my-mind,Time to Wake Up 275: Georgia on My Mind,2020-11-18,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-statement-house-leadership-elections,Cicilline Statement on House Leadership Elections,2020-11-18,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"Cicilline Statement on House Leadership Elections Nov 18, 2020 WASHINGTON U.S. Congressman David N. Cicilline (RI-01) issued the following statement today: I want to congratulate my friend, Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark, on her election a few moments ago. This was a hard fought campaign and a spirited discussion of the future direction of our caucus. Now, as we always do, we will come together and work together to deliver on the promises we have made to raise wages rebuilding our infrastructure, lower health care costs, take on climate change, deliver racial justice, and crack down on corruption. I look forward to being a part of those efforts and doing whatever I can to make real progress for the people we serve.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-condemns-firing-cisa-director-christopher-krebs,Langevin Condemns Firing of CISA Director Christopher Krebs,2020-11-18,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WARWICK, R.I. Congressman Jim Langevin (RI-02), a senior member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, member of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, and co-founder and co-chair of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, decried the removal of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Christopher Krebs. The death throes of the Trump Administration increasingly put our national security in jeopardy, said Langevin. Chris Krebs is a public servant of impeccable integrity. His work at CISA has drawn praise from across the political spectrum, and his team has done an exemplary job improving our election security over the past four years. It is sadly ironic that Chris's greatest success is the reason he has been removed from office. The President's inability to accept the election results and his lashing out at those willing to speak the truth about his lies has gone from petulant to downright dangerous. Krebs is CISA's inaugural director, and he presided over the standup of the agency in 2018. He has made improving the nation's election security in the wake of the 2016 Russian interference campaign the hallmark of his work, and CISA has operated a Rumor Control page that debunks dis- and misinformation about the 2020 election. Krebs was fired after making statements and posting content on the page that contradicted the President's false narrative that the election has been stolen from him. The President provided no evidence to back up his assertions in the tweets announcing his firing of Krebs. Director Krebs's departure opens the door for our adversaries to target us in cyberspace, continued Langevin. His service to the country deserves more than his firing for refusing to lie for the President. I wish Director Krebs and his family the best of luck in his future endeavors, and I hope all Americans will take a lesson from his integrity.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/sen-whitehouse-questions-jack-dorsey-and-mark-zuckerberg-on-spread-of-misinformation,Sen. Whitehouse Questions Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg on Spread of Misinformation,2020-11-17,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-statement-nagorno-karabakh-conflict,Langevin Statement on Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict,2020-11-16,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"November 14, 2020 WARWICK, R.I. Congressman Jim Langevin (RI-02), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and a member of the House Armenia Caucus issued the following statement regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict: I want to offer my deep sympathies to the Armenian people who have lost so much in the past few weeks. Since September, Azerbaijan has conducted a punishing campaign on the peaceful residents of Artsakh. With the help of Turkish mercenaries, Azerbaijani troops bombed churches and schools. The toll of their attacks has been devastating. I am deeply disappointed that the United States did not play a more active role in resolving this conflict and promoting the interests of peace and prosperity. Our country, at its finest, is an honest broker between conflicting parties. Our diplomats facilitate agreements that are fair and uphold human rights. Unfortunately, Secretary Pompeo let this moment slip and surrendered it to Russia, which in turn facilitated a one-sided deal against Armenia. The Trump Administration ignored the warning signs of Azerbaijani aggression and signaledagainthat it will not protect those who share our values. As one of the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, the U.S. remains responsible for working on a lasting peace settlement. I urge our government to work with France to revisit this agreement with Russia to prevent Azerbaijan from being rewarded for shedding innocent blood. We must hold bad actors like Turkey and Azerbaijan accountable so that others do not follow their example.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-statement-ongoing-situation-armenia,Cicilline Statement on the Ongoing Situation in Armenia,2020-11-14,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"PAWTUCKET U.S. Congressman David N. Cicilline (RI-01), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued the following statement today: ""Since Azerbaijan's unprovoked attacks in September, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in conflict. I stand with Armenia's democratic government, which has defended its ancestral land from Azerbaijan's military."" ""Azerbaijan has attacked Armenians along the shared border and on civilian populated lands. Azerbaijan has used illegal cluster bombs and shelled churches, community centers and schools. Rather than attempt to mediate the conflict, the United States has stayed silent. Our silence has allowed the violence to continue; it has allowed Turkey to instigate further hostilities, and it must stop."" ""As a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a member of the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues, I was deeply disappointed that the United States failed to play a role in the peace agreement that was announced this week. The agreement does not resolve the core issues at play, including the status of Nagorno Karbakh. As a member of the Minsk Group, the United States should be actively working to resolve the conflict, not ceding the region to Russia and Turkey. Now more than ever, American leadership is needed to protect Armenia and Artsakh and prevent additional regional conflicts.""",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-european-charges-amazon-abused-its-dominance-dual-role-market,"Cicilline on European Charges that Amazon Abused its Dominance, Dual Role in the Market",2020-11-11,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"Cicilline on European Charges that Amazon Abused its Dominance, Dual Role in the Market Nov 11, 2020 Issues: Consumer Protection and Financial Reform PAWTUCKET This morning, the European Commission filed a statement of objections as part of its investigation into whether Amazon has abused its dominance online. The Commission noted that Amazon has abused its dual role as a platform as both a marketplace for independent sellers and a competitor in this marketplace through its use of non-public marketplace seller data allows Amazon to avoid the normal risks of retail competition and to leverage its dominance in the market for the provision of marketplace services. House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David N. Cicilline (RI-01) issued the following statement in response to today's filing: As we found as part of a 16-month bipartisan investigation, Amazon has monopoly power over sellers on its platform. Because of its immense power, Amazon currently can get away with arbitrarily suspending sellers, increasing and changing seller fees overnight, and free riding off of entrepreneurs' investments and hard work by appropriating their ideas and competitively sensitive data. Sellers do not have recourse or a competitive alternative to Amazon's marketplace. They are stuck. I applaud the European Commission for thoroughly examining Amazon's dominance in this market, and encourage the Federal Trade Commission to do the same.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-remarks-ubs-european-virtual-conference,Cicilline Remarks at the UBS European Virtual Conference,2020-11-11,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"PAWTUCKET Antitrust Subcommittee Chair David Cicilline (RI-01) delivered the remarks below today at the UBS European Virtual Conference. David N. Cicilline UBS European Virtual Conference November 10, 2020 Thank you very much for that kind introduction, Charles. It is a pleasure to join you for today's virtual conference. I know we all wish that we could have met in person, but I am glad that we are able to have this important conversation, even if virtually. As Charles mentioned, as the Chairman of the House Antitrust Subcommittee, I have led a comprehensive, bipartisan investigation into the state of competition online over the past year and a half. One of our main goals of this top-to-bottom review was to really roll up our sleeves and understand how these markets work. It has been decades since Congress conducted an antitrust investigation. And many of the markets we investigated were highly technical, dynamic, and complex, so we wanted to be sure to get it right by having as thorough and inclusive a process as possible as this work was long overdue. As part of this process, we collected a significant volume of evidence during the investigation, including tens of millions of pages of documents, interviews with nearly 250 market participants, and dozens of hearings and roundtables with leading experts. Last month, we released a 450-page report with our findings and recommendations. We found that Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple each serve as a gatekeeper over a key channel of distribution in the digital economy. The evidence we reviewed showed that by controlling access to certain markets, these companies can pick the winners and losers throughout the economy. Not only are they dominant, but the evidence showed they abuse their dominance in two key waysby exploiting firms that rely on their platforms and excluding rivals. This has real consequence on businesses that operate online, and whether these markets are open and fair, or increasingly controlled by just a few dominant firms. The evidence we gathered and reviewed during the investigation showed that each of these companies uses its gatekeeper power to further entrench its dominance. Their position in the market allows them to spy on businesses that use their platform. And they can use this data to acquire potential competitors, copy features and services, and cut off rivals. For example, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, said that the purpose of acquiring Instagram was to neutralize a competitive threat and to essentially buy time before another competitor sprouted up, rather than to improve its offerings or build new products. Facebook's senior executives, meanwhile, openly discussed the company's acquisition strategy as a land grab to shore up Facebook's position. These dominant firms are also able to abuse their gatekeeper position to enter into and dominate other lines of business, including through a playbook of wide-ranging anticompetitive conduct, such as self-preferencing, tying together products and services, and more. Although there are some differences in the recommendations proposed in our Report and by some of my Republican colleagues, there is widespread agreement on the facts. We agree that Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple each possess and have abused their monopoly power, in ways that have harmed competition and consumers. Looking forward, the Report includes a menu of recommendations for Congress and the antitrust enforcers at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Our recommendations are deeply rooted in the facts. We need to respond to the factual record by addressing the dominance and anti-competitive conduct that we uncovered. These recommendations include steps to restore competition to the digital markets by addressing the incentives and ability of dominant platforms to abuse their gatekeeper power. They include structural separations and prohibitions on certain dominant firms operating in adjacent lines of business, prohibitions on platforms engaging in self-preferencing, and requirements relating to interoperability and data portability. We also recommend strengthening the antitrust laws. Statutory reforms include updating Section 7 of the Clayton Act by strengthening the merger enforcement laws to favor competition over consolidation. Updating Section 2 of the Sherman Act to prohibit abuses of dominance and clarify prohibitions on anti-competitive and harmful conduct. And strengthening overall antitrust enforcement by overriding court decisions that have strayed from Congress' original intent that the antitrust laws establish a presumption in favor of competition and against monopoly. Last, we recommend institutional reforms to revive antitrust enforcement by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission and eliminating barriers to private enforcement of the antitrust laws. Our next steps will be to consider legislation in line with the recommendations laid out in the Report. We will continue that work through the lame duck and into the next Congress. Our Report and recommendations will be the center of gravity for our agenda to reinvigorate the antitrust laws and antitrust enforcement. Like our investigation, I expect that process to be bipartisan. As I mentioned before, there is widespread agreement across the Subcommittee that Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple possess and have abused their monopoly power. Now that we have identified the problem, it's critical that we use all the tools Congress hasincluding legislating, granting rulemaking authority, and conducting oversightto start solving this problem for the American people. Thank you again for having me as part of today's conversation.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-statement-on-supreme-court-arguments-in-challenge-to-affordable-care-act,Whitehouse Statement on Supreme Court Arguments in Challenge to Affordable Care Act,2020-11-10,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"11.10.20 Whitehouse Statement on Supreme Court Arguments in Challenge to Affordable Care Act Washington, DC Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a member of the Senate Finance and Judiciary committees, released the following statement today on Supreme Court arguments in California v. Texas, a challenge to the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act: The Republican campaign to tear down the Affordable Care Act comes before a Supreme Court packed with donor-approved justices who have signaled clearly their ill intentions for the health care law. If the justices side with the special interests propping up this attack on the ACA, Americans with pre-existing conditions, patients at risk of reaching lifetime caps on care, children on their parents' plans, and the over 62,000 Rhode Islanders with coverage thanks to the Medicaid expansion face losing the care they need. A host of other important parts of the law like the accountable care organizations that drive health care innovation in places like Rhode Island would fall away, too. And we are in the midst of the most deadly public health crisis in our nation's history, making ACA protections more important than ever. I hope the Court considers what tearing down the ACA would mean to the American people before it yields to the will of right-wing donors and special interests. With the constitutional challenge to the health care law before the Court, over 130 million Americans with pre-existing conditions could lose protections; the law's Medicaid expansion covering 17 million people nationwide could end; insurance companies could once again charge women more than men; and insurance companies could stop covering basic services like maternity care, cancer screenings, and contraception. In September, Whitehouse joined Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) in issuing a Senate Democrats Captured Courts report on the special-interest campaign to control the federal judiciary. That campaign has targeted a tremendous amount of dark-money spending on undermining the health care law, including funding litigation against it. Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/time-to-wake-up-274-glimmer-of-light,TIme to Wake Up 274: Glimmer of Light,2020-11-10,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"11.10.20 TIme to Wake Up 274: Glimmer of Light Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, as I begin my remarks, let me thank my friend Senator Lankford for his eloquent comments about our veterans and those who have served and given their lives for us. I am here with my trusty and battered ""Time to Wake up"" graphic because, after 4 dark years on climate, there is at last a glimmer of light on the horizon. President-Elect Biden has promised to redirect the executive branch to address climate change in the clear light of real science, out of the dark swamp of fossil fuel denial and obstruction trying to head off a climate catastrophe while there is still time, if there is still time. There is a lot the executive branch can do. The President can lead diplomatic and international trade initiatives. The environmental regulatory agencies of government can be freed from corrupting influence to do their duty with vigor based on science and the law. Securities regulators can put climate risk to the economy at the forefront, as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has just done. Purchasing decisions can be directed toward a clean energy future. Permitting decisions can be made with the social cost of carbon pollution in mind, as courts have already begun to demand even in the corrupt Trump era. On the investigative side, the administration can begin a hard look at the forces of corruption that have blockaded action on climate change: Who did this and how? Did their political spending violate campaign finance, conflict of interest, or other laws? Did their toxic propaganda violate laws against fraud, as the tobacco industry's did? Was their occupation of regulatory agencies a rolling conspiracy to violate the Administrative Procedures Act, and if so, how and for whom was it organized? Has their interference in the judiciary compromised the rights of parties or the integrity of courts? American citizens deserve a full and fearless exposition of why Congress has thwarted the public will to do something--anything-- meaningful to address this climate crisis and at whose behest. What were the forces of corruption, and how did they accomplish their nefarious purpose? There is a lesson in democracy here for the citizens of this great Republic--a lesson that is now hidden behind phony front groups and subterranean rivers of anonymous money. There is every reason to believe that the biggest covert op in history has been run in and against our own government. That is no way for a ""city on a hilll"" to be governed. But with all the executive branch policy work and all the investigations that are due and overdue, there is no pathway to climate safety that does not go through Congress. Action by Congress is a necessity, not a luxury. I have seen no study showing any pathway to safety without action by Congress. To make that pathway to safety possible, we will have to change a few things. One is, as I said, to investigate the denial and obstruction campaign run by the fossil fuel industry, how it used its dark weaponry of political spending--much of it anonymous--and political propaganda. The executive branch can do this, but so can the House. Sadly, here in the Senate, the power of the fossil fuel industry assures no such investigation will happen in our committees if Republicans keep control of the Senate. But the House or a high-level Presidential commission or our Department of Justice all have tools to bring the light of transparency into these dark and slimy corners. Separately, we can display to the American people what corporate America says about climate change versus what it does in Congress. It may even surprise some CEOs what their corporate lobbying posture actually is. If you are a CEO who is sincere about this, you ought to commission an audit of your corporate lobbying and electioneering on climate. Here is what you will find, unless you are maybe Patagonia or Ben & Jerry's: Most every major American corporation does nothing in Congress on climate- zip, zero, nada. TechNet lobbies for the supposedly climate-friendly Silicon Valley giants like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. It even represents green energy companies. Yet this year its glossy, 13-page menu of priorities for Congress never even mentioned climate change or green energy. Coke and Pepsi lobby Congress through an American Beverage Association that doesn't lift a finger on climate. That corporate behemoth, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce- three times the lobbying muscle of its next nearest rival, sometimes the biggest dark-money spender in elections, a persistent voice in our courts and regulatory agencies-- that chamber is in a statistical tie for America's worst climate obstructer- worst. Representing Ford and GM, Abbott Labs and Johnson & Johnson, Citibank and Bank of America, Delta and United, Target and Home Depot, Intel and AT&T, and dozens of other big businesses is a worst climate obstructer in America. That deserves some explaining. Don't just blame Congress. By doing nothing, Congress is exactly following what corporate America actually asks of Congress: Do nothing. Do nothing. We don't care. Want to open a pathway for a safe climate through Congress? Republicans in Congress are going to have to hear that their corporate benefactors demand climate action. They aren't hearing that now. They are hearing the opposite. They are hearing: We don't care. Democrats are ready. We have been ready for a decade. Republicans, at least since Citizens United--it was quite bipartisan before that decision--won't touch the issue, and by an amazing coincidence, that party is almost entirely funded by the unlimited and often anonymous donations of the fossil fuel industry. The money is often hidden, of course, behind donor trusts and shell corporations and 501(c)(4) tax organizations, but it is there, and it is billions. The rest of corporate America has not pushed back. They have their own tax breaks to protect and their own industry priorities to pursue, and climate change just doesn't make it into their corporate political agenda. Getting the so-called good guys off the bench and onto the field could make a big difference, but they are not there now- not yet. If corporations are going to fail this moral test so catastrophically, it is fair to ask what good it does to give corporations any role in our politics, let alone the commanding role they now assert in the U.S. Congress. The Founding Fathers, for one, would be astonished to see these monsters loose in our politics at all, let alone so large and in charge. But that is for another day. Right now, there is a lot President- Elect Biden can do to break the political logjam fossil fuel money has built: Investigate it, expose it, and then overwhelm it. Recruit allies to help push back hard. Give no audience or corner to corporations funding climate obstruction. Make lobbying groups disclose who their big donors are so the American citizen isn't played for a chump- the mark in a giant con game. If you don't think big American industries are capable of committing massive fraud, read the decision of the Federal judge in the fraud case the United States won against Big Tobacco for that scheme of lies or read the decision of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding her verdict. It took investigation to get to the truth, not politics. Indeed, investigation had to pierce through a fog of industry politics and lies. But at the end of the day and, more specifically, at the end of the investigation, the truth was out, and the truth was massive industry fraud I yield the floor.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/sen-whitehouse-on-election-interference-in-the-4th-day-of-crossfire-hurricane-hearings,Sen. Whitehouse on Election Interference in the 4th Day of Crossfire Hurricane Hearings,2020-11-10,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/sen-whitehouse-on-stonewalling-from-the-department-of-justice,Sen. Whitehouse on Stonewalling from the Department of Justice,2020-11-10,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/time-to-wake-up-274-glimmer-of-light,Time to Wake Up 274: Glimmer of Light,2020-11-10,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-congratulates-president-elect-biden-and-vice-president-elect-harris,Whitehouse Congratulates President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris,2020-11-07,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"11.07.20 Whitehouse Congratulates President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris Providence, RI U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) today issued the following statement regarding the election of Joe Biden to serve as the 46th President of the United States of America: After four long years, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will restore heart, decency, and competence to the White House. The Biden administration will govern for every American as they steer the country through a number of urgent crises: a once-in-a-century pandemic, a lopsided economic disaster, a dramatically changing climate, and a reckoning for racial justice. The work begins immediately to ensure every American can get affordable health care, a quality education, and a job that pays a living wage. President Trump has wielded the power of the presidency toward one goal: to turn Americans against one another. There is hard work ahead of us to bring the country together again and repair America's standing in the world. But the people have spoken and, by a resounding margin of more than four million votes, have set a new course for history. The democratic process worked, and we intend to see through a peaceful transition to the new administration. Print Email Tweet Next Article Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-statement-biden-harris-winning-presidential-election,"Langevin Statement on Biden, Harris Winning Presidential Election",2020-11-07,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WARWICK, RI Congressman Jim Langevin (RI-02) today issued the following statement on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris being elected as President and Vice President of the United States: The American people in historic fashion have made their voices heard and elected Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as our next President and Vice President of the United States. I commend them for running a strong and truly inspiring campaign that sought to unite us and restore faith not only in our democracy, but also in each other. I am confident that they will serve with dignity, uphold our democratic principles, and work incredibly hard for all Americans. ""Our nation continues to wrestle with unprecedented division and daunting economic and public health challenges that we will overcome if we all work together. Strong and competent leadership is especially critical during this challenging time, and President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris are committed to facts and science, leading through hope, and promoting mutual respect and understanding. I look forward to working with the Biden-Harris Administration to turn the corner on the pandemic, create economic opportunity for middle-class families, and protect our nation from foreign and domestic threats, including malicious cyber adversaries who present a greater risk to our country with each day that passes. The road ahead of us is long and it will be anything but easy, but with President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris at the helm, I am certain that we will build a better America together.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/trump-signs-langevin-bill-improve-intercountry-adoption-information,Trump Signs Langevin Bill to Improve Intercountry Adoption Information,2020-11-02,2020,2020-11,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WASHINGTON Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI), co-chair of the Bipartisan Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth and a member of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption, today announced that President Donald J. Trump has signed into law H.R. 1952, the Intercountry Adoption Information Act. The bill ensures prospective adoptive parents have access to the information they need when attempting to adopt a child from another country. Langevin introduced the bill with Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) in the House, while the Senate version was led by Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Ben Cardin (D-MD). The Intercountry Adoption Information Act will ensure families ready to welcome children into their homes and hearts have the proper information to successfully navigate the international adoption process, said Langevin. There are millions of children here and abroad who are yearning to join their forever families and we can help by closing the information gap that many families face when adopting from another country. Providing prospective parents with clear and updated information on policies and processes related to intercountry adoptions will help fulfill the dreams of children in need. Langevin and Collins introduced the Intercountry Adoption Information Act on March 28, 2019. The legislation unanimously passed the House of Representatives on May 20, 2019, and the Senate on September 30, 2020. ""It is critical that all U.S. government efforts and policies that impact permanency and adoption are transparent, accessible and publicly available, said Adoption RI Chief Executive Officer Darlene Allen. Making the decision to bring a child into your home through foster care, public adoption or inter -country adoption, is life changing. That decision must include all relevant, up-to-date and factual information as possible."" The Intercountry Adoption Information Act requires the Department of State include in an annual report information on countries that have carried out a new policy or law that has reduced or prevented adoptions involving immigration to the United States. Further, the Department of State will be required to include information on efforts to encourage the resumption of stalled or halted adoption proceedings within these countries. These requirements will ensure families have access to consistent, up-to-date information about the adoption policies of foreign countries and how they affect adoption proceedings.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-resolution-declares-november-pancreatic-cancer-awareness-month,Whitehouse Resolution Declares November Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month,2020-10-31,2020,2020-10,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"10.31.20 Whitehouse Resolution Declares November Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month Washington, D.C. U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), along with Representatives Andr Carson (IN-07) and Anna Eshoo (CA-18), has introduced a resolution to raise awareness about pancreatic cancer and to support the designation of this November as Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. The bicameral effort comes as the world continues to mourn several American leaders who battled the very aggressive cancer, including Congressman John Lewis and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I'm proud to join Representatives Eshoo and Carson to designate November as Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month and to recognize the Rhode Islanders battling this heartbreaking disease, said Whitehouse, who last year helped establish a federal research program to find a cure for pancreatic cancer. This November, I hope people across the country will join the fight to find a cure for pancreatic cancer. Approximately 57,000 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year. Described as a silent killer, pancreatic cancer does not have an early detection test. The resolution recognizes the importance of increasing funding for pancreatic cancer research at the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health, and of reducing the disease's outsized effect on communities of color. As a 14-year survivor of pancreatic cancer, many thousands of Americans have perished from this terrible cancer since my diagnosis, said Diane Borrison of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. I am grateful to Representatives Carson and Eshoo and Senator Whitehouse for this resolution, designating November 2020 as Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, as a means of raising awareness about the disease and the urgent need for additional research funding. The passing of Congressman John Lewis and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has brought this need into sharp focus. No early detection methods, too few treatment options, and for too many no hope. We must do better. Designating November 2020 as Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month is an important step in the right direction. Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-statement-on-barrett-confirmation-vote,Whitehouse Statement on Barrett Confirmation Vote,2020-10-27,2020,2020-10,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"10.27.20 Whitehouse Statement on Barrett Confirmation Vote Washington, DC U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the following statement this evening on the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: It is a sad day for the Senate and for the Court. My Republican colleagues smashed norms and traditions of the world's greatest deliberative body' in a headlong pursuit, for someone, of Supreme Court power. They put the rule of because we can' over the traditions and precedents of the Senate, the principles we hold dear as an institution, and the integrity of the federal judiciary. This Trump Supreme Court nomination, like the two that preceded it, arose from a massive, sophisticated, dark-money campaign. Big corporate and right-wing donor interests, likely with business before the Court, are behind that campaign. Their influence is a rot that undermines the credibility of the Court, and a stain on our judiciary. The rushed, special-interest ram job in the midst of a pandemic shows why we must expose that rot, from the private groups channeling hundreds of millions of dollars into judicial selection and confirmation, to the armada of orchestrated groups lobbying courts for outcomes the anonymous donors want. With this vote, my Republican colleagues forfeit their right to call procedural fouls. And they disrespect Justice Ginsburg's fervent' wish that her replacement be chosen by the president elected on November 3rd. Republicans may rue the day they chose the rule of because we can.' Print Email Tweet Previous Article",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/langevin-statement-confirmation-amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court,Langevin Statement on the Confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to Supreme Court,2020-10-27,2020,2020-10,Democrat,Senate,RI,Jim Langevin,L000559,langevin.house.gov,,,legacy,"WARWICK, R.I. Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI) issued the following statement regarding the Senate confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States: It is outrageous that Senate Republicans and the Trump Administration have pushed through a Supreme Court nominee just a week before one of the most critical elections of our lifetimes. Senate Republicans have effectively dismissed the voices of voters on a selection that could impact healthcare, voting rights, and many other foundational issues for decades to come. Justice Ginsburg was animated by a passion for advancing equality and protecting the marginalized from the powerful. During the rushed Senate confirmation process, I heard no evidence that Justice Barrett will be a judge in the mold of Justice Ginsburg. Rather, time and again, it seemed clear that she would represent an ideological extreme in the service of corporate interests, not the American people. The hypocrisy of this nomination process is astounding. When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to even hold a hearing, never mind a vote for President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, seven months before the election, he proclaimed: The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,' and advocated for the confirmation to proceed after a new president was elected. By fast-tracking this process even as Americans are casting their votes, Majority Leader McConnell is ignoring the will of the American people to advance his political agenda. What is even more frustrating is that this rushed confirmation has been prioritized over a COVID-19 relief bill. The country continues to wrestle with a pandemic that has shuttered businesses, infected nearly 9 million Americans, and claimed the lives of more than 225,000. More than five months ago the House passed the Heroes Act to provide critical aid to those in need, and earlier this month we passed a revised version of that aid package to meet Senate Republicans in the middle. It is shameful that Majority Leader McConnell has failed to advance a Senate proposal to help Americans during a global pandemic but had enough time to rush through a court confirmation.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/sen-whitehouse-appears-on-the-week-with-joshua-johnson-to-discuss-dark-money-in-the-courts,Sen. Whitehouse Appears on the Week With Joshua Johnson to Discuss Dark Money in the Courts,2020-10-26,2020,2020-10,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/sen-whitehouse-delivers-remarks-on-court-capture-on-the-senate-floor,Sen. Whitehouse Delivers Remarks on Court Capture on the Senate Floor,2020-10-26,2020,2020-10,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-statement-pompeo-investigation,Cicilline Statement on Pompeo Investigation,2020-10-26,2020,2020-10,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"PAWTUCKET Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC) Chair David N. Cicilline (RI-01), who introduced The White House House is Not a Political Prop Act (H.R.8655) last week to strengthen prohibitions against conducting campaign activity in Federal buildings, issued the following statement today after learning that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is under investigation for his speech last summer to the Republican National Committee: This is the most corrupt administration in modern times. Each day, it seems, we learn more about how President Trump, his Cabinet, and White House officials are undermining the rule of law in order to advance their own personal and political ambitions. It will take a long time to reverse the damage this administration has done. One of the first things we need to do is strengthen existing anti-corruption laws. No future president should feel free to use the White House, Federal buildings, National Parks, Air Force One, or other taxpayer-financed facilities and vehicles as political props for a campaign like this president has. That's why I introduced legislation last week that establishes a clear red line prohibiting the use of Federal property for campaign activities. We cannot let President Trump's actions become the new normal. Whenever he leaves office, we will have to get to work restoring decency and integrity to the Oval Office.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-statement-supreme-court-confirmation-vote,Cicilline Statement on Supreme Court Confirmation Vote,2020-10-26,2020,2020-10,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"Cicilline Statement on Supreme Court Confirmation Vote Oct 26, 2020 Issues: Health Care, LGBT Issues, Women's Issues PAWTUCKET Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC) Chair David N. Cicilline (RI-01) issued the following statement today: The American people should have a say in who gets a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. Instead, just eight days before a presidential election, Republicans will vote today to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a nominee who threatens the progress our country has made over the years to expand access to health care, protect the LGBTQ+ community from discrimination, address the threat of climate change, and guarantee that women can make their own health care decisions. President Trump has made clear that he wants the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act, even though he has no plan to replace it. In fact, he's in court right now trying to strike the law down and take away protections from millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in that case in just 15 days. By confirming Judge Barrett later today, Republicans are making clear that they stand with the President in this shameful scheme to rip away health care from millions in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic. The American people deserve better.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-offers-resolution-condemning-dark-money-effort-to-pack-supreme-court,Whitehouse Offers Resolution Condemning Dark Money Effort to Pack Supreme Court,2020-10-24,2020,2020-10,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"10.24.20 Whitehouse Offers Resolution Condemning Dark Money Effort to Pack Supreme Court Sweeping special interest campaign to influence the federal judiciary underlies Republican hypocrisy in rushed SCOTUS push; GOP presses forward with SCOTUS packing while seeking to block COVID relief Washington, DC Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, just offered a resolution on the Senate floor expressing a sense of the Senate that unlimited anonymous spending to influence our judiciary undermines the integrity of our judicial system and damages Americans' confidence that all people receive equal justice under law. Whitehouse offered the resolution as an alternative to a Republican measure seeking to limit Congress's longstanding authority over the federal judiciary. The GOP measure comes as Republicans go to extraordinary lengths to pack the courts, including seeking to jam through a Supreme Court nominee within days of a presidential election. Republicans' rush to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg culminates an unprecedented, norm-smashing effort to pack the Supreme Court. Republican Leader Mitch McConnell refused to move forward with Judge Merrick Garland's nomination in March 2016 citing proximity to an election even with that election eight months away. Numerous Republicans joined McConnell in arguing against considering a Supreme Court nominee during a primary election season. McConnell later fabricated a new standard to justify moving forward on a Supreme Court nominee, and, in late September, the Republican leaders signaled his party would take up a replacement for Ginsburg. Now, with over 50 million votes already cast in the general election, Republicans are pushing to jam through their extreme, partisan nominee to a lifetime appointment on the Court. To illustrate the cause of Republicans' strange, hypocritical behavior, Whitehouse's resolution lays out the troubling pattern of anonymous dark money spending to boost President Trump's Supreme Court and other judicial nominees. Private organizations, funded by what a Washington Post investigation found to be over $250 million in dark money, play a dominant role in every phase of judicial selection. Dark money groups also engage in an intricate influence campaign to lobby sitting judges to rule in special interests' favor once installed on the bench. New details of this court-capture scheme come to light regularly. Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington released new findings concerning an $80 million dark money group that has been at the center of Supreme Court nomination battles in recent years. Republicans' rush to fill the Supreme Court vacancy comes as the Trump White House and Senate Republicans fail to reach agreement on legislation to counter the devastating effects of COVID-19. Reporting shows Senate Republicans are actively pushing back against any deal between the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before the election to provide vital assistance for the American people. Senate Democrats have released a series of reports on the right-wing special interest campaign to capture the courts. Those reports are available here. Full text of Whitehouse's resolution is below. Title: Expressing the sense of the Senate that dark money undermines the integrity of the judicial system and damages the perception that all people receive equal justice under law. Whereas dark money organizations, funded by anonymous donors, have played an outsized role in the selection of judges and justices of the Supreme Court of the United States (referred to in this preamble as the Supreme Court) under President Trump and spent millions of anonymous dollars on advertising campaigns supporting those selections; Whereas the people of the United States have no idea who is funding these campaigns and what business the funders might have before the courts; Whereas, under President Trump, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies (referred to in this preamble as the Federalist Society) has played a central role in the selection of President Trump's judicial nominees, including his 3 nominees to the Supreme Court, for example (1) in 2016, then-candidate Trump said that all of his judicial selections would be hand-picked by the Federalist Society; (2) in 2017, then-White House Counsel Don McGahn boasted that the judicial selection process had been in-sourced to the Federalist Society; (3) Leonard Leo, the Co-Chairman of the Federalist Society, twice took a leave of absence from the Federalist Society to work in the White House and advise President Trump on his Supreme Court nominations; (4) approximately 86 percent of President Trump's Supreme Court and appellate court nominees have been members of the Federalist Society; and (5) Judge Amy Coney Barret has spoken at 26 Federalist Society events since 2014 and, at the time of his confirmation in 2018, Justice Brett Kavanaugh had spoken at over 50 Federalist Society events; Whereas the Washington Post reported that Leonard Leo has helped raise $250,000,000 from mostly anonymous donors to promote conservative legal causes and judges; Whereas groups engaged in these activities do not disclose their funders, meaning the people of the United States have no idea who is behind this sophisticated operation to influence the selection of judges and justices; Whereas dark money groups like the Judicial Crisis Network (referred to in the preamble as JCN) have helped shape the composition of the Supreme Court by spending tens of millions of anonymous dollars on advertising campaigns opposing or supporting Supreme Court nominees, specifically (1) JCN spent $7,000,000 to block President Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 2016; (2) JCN pledged to spend $10,000,000 to support President Trump's nomination of then-Judge Neil Gorsuch to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 2017; (3) JCN also spent $10,000,000 to support President Trump's nomination of then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 2018; and (4) JCN has pledged to spend $10,000,000 to support President Trump's nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court; Whereas JCN is a dark money organization and does not disclose its funders to the people of the United States; Whereas JCN has received multiple massive contributions from the anonymous donors, specifically (1) a $15,881,000 anonymous contribution in tax year 2018; (2) a $17,100,000 anonymous contribution in tax year 2017; (3) a $21,464,995 anonymous contribution in tax year 2016; and (4) a $17,920,000 anonymous contribution in tax year 2015; and Whereas the American people have no idea who made these massive contributions and what business the contributors might have before the courts: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that (1) fair and impartial courts are a bedrock of American democracy and crucial to maintaining the faith of the people of the United States in the justice system; (2) this massive dark money operation to influence the selection and confirmation of judges and justices creates significant conflict of interest concerns for the judiciary and undermines the integrity of the courts and the justice system; and (3) the people of the United States deserve to know who is behind this massive dark money campaign to capture the courts.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-bill-prohibits-use-white-house-political-conventions,Cicilline Bill Prohibits Use of White House for Political Conventions,2020-10-23,2020,2020-10,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"PAWTUCKET Following President Trump's outrageous decision to accept the 2020 Republican nomination from the South Lawn of the White House, Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC) Chair David N. Cicilline (RI-01) today introduced legislation that will prevent future presidents from abusing their public office for political gain. More than any president in modern times, Donald Trump has used and abused his office to benefit his re-election campaign. Each day, it seems, he pushes past a new boundary, said Cicilline. The White House is not a political prop. It belongs to the American people. Donald Trump doesn't get that. His actions make clear that we need to rewrite the ethics laws to prohibit future presidents from using the White House and other taxpayer-funded buildings or vehicles for political purposes. The White House is Not a Political Prop Act makes clear that it is unlawful for the President of the United States to use Federal property for campaign activities. The bill would prohibit actions like hosting a political convention from the White House, giving a campaign speech from the White House Press Briefing Room, or using Air Force One as a backdrop for a campaign rally. In August, shortly before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Vice President Mike Pence delivered his own acceptance speech from the Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine. First Lady Melania Trump also spoke from the Rose Garden during a convention that helped the Republican Party raise $76 million. Observers denounced Trump's decision to deliver his acceptance speech with the Truman Balcony as a backdrop, calling it a gross misuse of public resources that turned federal employees, including Marine guards, into props. Cicilline's bill, which has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee, would block future commanders-in-chief from wantonly abuse their office in a similar manner. The full text of Cicilline's bill is available here.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-statement-recognizing-artsakh%E2%80%99s-independence,Cicilline Statement on Recognizing Artsakhs Independence,2020-10-23,2020,2020-10,Democrat,Senate,RI,David Cicilline,C001084,cicilline.house.gov,,,legacy,"PAWTUCKET U.S. Congressman David N. Cicilline (RI-01), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued the following statement today: ""Today as Secretary Pompeo prepares to meet with the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, he should know that there is a strong historical case to be made for Artsakh's Independence. This land has been part of historical Armenia and populated by Armenians for thousands of years. An early cradle of Christianity, its landscape is covered in churches and monasteries, built hundreds of years ago. These are the same churches that are being bombed and shelled today by the Azerbaijani military."" ""There is, as well, a compelling legal argument for Artsakh's liberty, one based on international law and the commonly accepted principles of democratic self-determination. But, today, Artsakh's most urgent claim to independence is one of survival. Now entering the fourth week of Azerbaijan's brutal attacks, the citizens of Artsakh are left sheltering against a rain of illegal cluster-bombs, they know that any return to Azerbaijani control will exile them from their historic homeland."" ""If Azerbaijan ever had a claim to Artsakh, based on Soviet gerrymandering or any other tenuous assertion of sovereignty, they have today, by their own actions, forfeited any such rights. Each bomb launched, each bullet shot, each drone attack targeting the civilians of Artsakh strengthens this democratic Republic's already strong case for freedom."" ""With history and international law already on the side of Artsakh recognition, we see today that this proud land's very survival depends on United States and international recognition of the independent status of the Artsakh Republic. For this reason, I join with my Congressional colleagues in calling for full and formal United States recognition of Artsakh.""",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/sen-whitehouse-remarks-in-the-judiciary-committee-executive-business-meeting-to-nominate-judge-barrett-to-the-supreme-court,Sen. Whitehouse Remarks in the Judiciary Committee Executive Business Meeting to Nominate Judge Barrett to the Supreme Court,2020-10-22,2020,2020-10,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"10.22.20 Sen. Whitehouse Remarks in the Judiciary Committee Executive Business Meeting to Nominate Judge Barrett to the Supreme Court Mr. Chairman, I'll try to be brief. Let me first say how surprised I am that Senator Kennedy finds us all interesting, because I have operated under the principle for many years that everybody from Louisiana is more interesting than I am. I would like to associate myself, just for the sake of time particularly, with the remarks of Senator Blumenthal, who spoke in a way that I thought was very true and eloquent and does not need my repetition. I do want to suggest to colleagues that the rule of because we can, which is the rule that is being applied today, is one that leads away from a lot of the traditions and comities and values that the Senate has long embodied. There are Republican members on this committee of whom I am very fond, but don't think that when you have established the rule of because we can that, should the shoe be on the other foot, you will have any credibility to come to us and say, yeah I know you can do that, but you shouldn't because of X Y or Z. Your credibility to make that argument at any time in the future will die in this room and on that Senate floor if you continue to proceed in this way. I hope that that is not the case, but please don't think that there are two separate rules, that when there is Republican majority the rule is because we can and when there is a Democrat majority the rule is oh no you can't do it that way. With respect to Senator Cornyn's questions about why we are concerned, let me associate myself with the description that Senator Coons gave, which I thought was very thorough and complete. I would summarize it by saying we are concerned because of what you have said, and what other senators have said, in briefs and in public pledges about the Affordable Care Act, about Roe vs. Wade, about Obergefell. We are concerned about these things because of what President Trump has said. The man who made the choice and told us that that choice was being made specifically to cover him in an election litigation and to terminate health coverage under the ACA. He's your president. Why should we not take him at his word? You don't answer that question. Your party platform, the Republican Party platform, calls for judges to reverse the Obamacare cases, the Affordable Care Act that is, Roe vs Wade and Obergefell, the gay marriage case. We didn't say that that's what your plan was. You said that that's what your plan was, and you said in your party platform that you were going to do it through your judicial appointments. That's how you reverse decisions You put that threat in play, and I've got to say I've got an awful lot of Rhode Islanders who depend on the Affordable Care Act. I've got a lot of Rhode Islanders who want to have some autonomy over the decisions about their body that roe vs wade protects. I've got a lot of Rhode Islanders who either are married to someone of their sex, or wish to be and plan to be, or have friends and family members whom they love who either are married to somebody of their same sex or wish to be. So when you put those rights in play by putting that threat in your party platform, you have no standing to criticize us for taking it seriously. That's what you said. Reverse the Obamacare cases, reverse Roe vs. Wade, reverse Obergefell. The last thing that I will say is that while we express our dismay and concern about the significant and disturbing procedural anomalies that are happening in this nomination, all of the last three nominations have been characterized by significant and disturbing procedural anomalies. All three. The Garland to Gorsuch episode, the Kavanagh confirmation, and now this one. There is a commonality to that that is very disturbing and it suggests the presence of outside forces and interests that are driving these conspicuous disturbing anomalies. Last weekend I was at home preparing for this, sitting at a desk with papers out all around me, trying to assemble my thoughts, and I was in a room with the windows closed and I couldn't feel any breeze. We have pretty good windows in my house, and the wind doesn't blow through them. But I could look out the window - we look out over a pond - and I could see the water on the pond rippling as the wind blew across it. I could see the trees outside bending as the wind blew through the trees. I could see the rushes along the edges of the pond whipping back and forth as the wind blew through them. I didn't need to feel the wind to know that the wind was blowing outside because the clues were obvious. The clues are obvious that something is happening behind all of these significant and disturbing procedural anomalies and I for one intend to find out exactly what has been going on. It has been going on behind front groups and using anonymous money. That was not, I don't think, what the founding fathers had in mind when they stood up this robust democracy - that big sneaky interests would hide behind phony front groups and use secret money to get their way. That's not what generations of Americans fought and bled and died for, and I make a commitment here that I will spend every effort that I must to get to the bottom of why these anomalies have taken place. Thank you, Chairman.",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/videos/watch/sen-whitehouse_-how-big-anonymous-donors-bought-the-supreme-court,Sen. Whitehouse - How Big Anonymous Donors Bought the Supreme Court,2020-10-22,2020,2020-10,Democrat,Senate,RI,Sheldon Whitehouse,W000802,www.whitehouse.senate.gov,,,legacy,"About Services Agency Assistance Success Stories Grants Flag Requests Visiting D.C. Student Resources Email Sheldon Events Community Dinners Community Outreach Issues Issue List Legislation News Press Releases In the News Speeches Op-Eds Press Kit Videos x x MENU",1,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z,2026-03-30T12:14:52Z