Poli Alert Political & Civics

On Wednesday, the White House unveiled a second set of official Obama portraits in an event hosted by President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden and attended by the Obamas. In keeping with tradition, the former president and first lady chose the artists who would paint them — Robert …

Jennifer Shutt, Iowa Capital Dispatch The U.S. Senate is on track to vote on a bill codifying marriage equality as soon as next week with negotiators increasingly confident it could become law. Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins said Wednesday they’re close to getting at …

Erik Gunn, Wisconsin Examiner Under bright sunshine at Milwaukee’s first official Labor Day celebration since 2019, President Joe Biden rallied 6,000 union members in a speech that lived up to the holiday’s unofficial role: kicking off the final stretch of the fall election campaign season. Biden’s speech, delivered at Laborfest …

Jennifer Shutt, Virginia Mercury COVID-19 booster shots are on track to become as frequent as the annual flu shot, though high-risk people may need more than one dose per year, Biden administration officials said Tuesday. “For a large majority of Americans, we are moving to a point where a single …

Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams As political voices—including U.S. President Joe Biden—sound the alarm about the state of American democracy nine weeks away from the midterms, FiveThirtyEight on Tuesday published an analysis highlighting election deniers on the ballot. To determine which candidates bought into former President Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that …

Jim Small, Arizona Mirror All three of the defendants in a lawsuit filed last month by a coalition of news organizations and civil libertarians say they won’t defend a law set to go into effect later this month that would make it a crime to take video of police officers …

Erik Gunn, Wisconsin Examiner In his two terms in office, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has run hard against government spending. Since his first Senate campaign in 2010, the Oshkosh Republican has described himself as an outsider and business creator who has succeeded without government help. He has dismissed big-ticket bills …

Adam Ganucheau, Mississippi Today Exactly one week since tens of thousands lost running water in Mississippi’s capital city, officials on Monday announced they believe every Jackson resident has water once again. “We have returned water pressure to the city,” Gov. Tate Reeves said in a press conference on Monday. “The …

Political observers on Monday said U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon “engaged herself in obstruction of justice” by ruling that the U.S. Department of Justice must halt its review of materials seized at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. Cannon, who was appointed by the former Republican president and …

Geoff Pender, Mississippi Today U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson said the state bears some blame for neglecting Jackson for decades, but if the capital city cannot properly run its water system, “I would not be in favor of the city being given back the authority to run it.” “Because it doesn’t …

Just over a week after President Joe Biden unveiled a plan to cancel $10,000 in federal student loan debt for most borrowers and reform the income-driven repayment program, his administration on Thursday was rebuked once again for its ongoing effort to deny bankruptcy relief to some of the nation’s most …

Jacob Fischler, Georgia Recorder The Biden administration is asking Congress for emergency funding to support Ukraine’s military, national COVID and monkeypox responses and to help communities affected by natural disasters. The current fiscal year ends Sept. 30 and Congress has not passed a funding measure for next year, so a …

Hugh Jackson, Nevada Current Commentary On the eve of the Labor Day weekend in a midterm campaign year, the president of the United States gave a speech at the site where both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were debated, and made an urgent request of the nation’s electorate: …

Peter Hall, Pennsylvania Capital-Star Campaigning for Pennsylvania’s Republican gubernatorial and U.S. Senate nominees on Saturday, former President Donald Trump cast Doug Mastriano and Dr. Mehmet Oz as vital leaders in a fight to take back the state and country starting with this year’s midterm election. Trump spoke for nearly two …

Ariana Figueroa, Georgia Recorder The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late Thursday signed off on the approval from the agency’s independent vaccine advisers that recommended an updated coronavirus vaccine booster this fall. The CDC recommended boosters from Pfizer-BioNTech for those who are 12 years old and older and from Moderna for …