President Donald Trump’s trade wars continue to create global turmoil and churn for financial markets. Monday, May 12th’s move—a temporary suspension of his “Liberation Day” bombast and 90-day pause until massive tariffs are fully imposed on China—seemed in part prompted by warnings of a dire toy shortage and the sour reaction to Trump blathering about … dolls. “A young lady, a… Read more »

Over 100 Democratic lawmakers are pushing for Congress to restore $535 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the current federal budget. The two-year advance funding for public radio and television has been removed from the budget package by congressional Republicans, along with an additional $60 million for the public broadcasting interconnection system, which… Read more »

Nearly 100 House Democrats are calling on Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to restore tens of millions of dollars in federal family planning grants to more than a dozen organizations that have been frozen for more than two months. In a letter to Kennedy sent Friday and seen first by The Hill, 95 lawmakers said the organizations that had their Title X… Read more »

One of Houston's busiest community centers and polling locations is set for a major upgrade, thanks to recently secured federal funds. The West Gray Metropolitan Multi-Service Center, managed by the Houston Parks and Recreation Department, has been approved to receive a $1 million through a Community Project Funding Request made by Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher as part of the Housing and… Read more »

The Federal Emergency Management Agency faces an uncertain future as the Trump administration signals potential elimination of the disaster response agency, while Congress pursues competing reform efforts and internal reviews reveal the agency is unprepared for the upcoming hurricane season. "President Trump has been very clear since the beginning that he believes that FEMA and its… Read more »

Funding cuts to FEMA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have Houston-area leaders preparing to pick up the slack in the event of a hurricane, Harris County Commissioner Lesley Briones said Friday. Ahead of hurricane season's first day Sunday, Briones joined U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Houston) and local emergency leaders to address the federal cuts under… Read more »

Worries mount as U.S. House Republicans advance a major tax bill that includes increasing private universities' endowment tax from 1.4% currently to up to 21%. The measure has been tucked into the text of a 1,116-page bill, dubbed “The One Big Beautiful Bill,” which made it out of committee last weekend in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill holds the majority of President… Read more »

With just 10 days left until the official start of hurricane season, Rep. Lizzie Fletcher is sounding the alarm about growing staffing and resource shortfalls at the very agencies responsible for issuing life-saving storm warnings. On Wednesday, Fletcher hosted a live webinar with top weather and emergency experts to spotlight how federal budget cuts, a hiring freeze and a wave of… Read more »

Hurricane Harvey, the category 4 storm that devastated the Gulf Coast in 2017, made landfall on a Friday night. By Saturday night, torrential rainfall engulfed the Texas coast, and League City, where the National Weather Service’s Houston/Galveston forecast office is located, was right near ground zero. Jeff Evans, the meteorologist-in-charge at the time, recalled the uncertainty of… Read more »

The divide between Republicans and Democrats over the future of Medicaid was well encapsulated this week by two of Houston's congressional members during an all-night rumble that resulted in one Democrat calling U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw “a jerk.” Crenshaw and U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, D-Houston, are both members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee that advanced a plan that will… Read more »