At an April 18 House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on the Fiscal Year 2019 budget for the Judiciary, James Duff, Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, testified about the findings of a working group on workplace misconduct policies and procedures. Duff told the subcommittee members that the Federal Judiciary Workplace Conduct Working Group, which he chairs, found that a main barrier to reporting sexual harassment and other misconduct in the Judicial Branch is the formal nature of the complaint process. He told the panel: “What we’ve been hearing [is that] employees need and want a less formalistic process….

Pending legislation titled the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act states that only the Justice Department can fire special counsels and only for “good cause” — in effect codifying an existing Justice Department regulation. The bill would give the special counsel 10 days to dispute the firing in court. If a panel of three Federal judges determined that the firing was not for “good cause,” the special counsel would be reinstated. In the interim, his staff and investigative materials would be preserved. Senator Lindsey Graham (SC-R) introduced the Sen­ate bill (S. 2644) with cosponsors Senators Chris Coons (DE-D), Thom Tillis…

President Trump’s infrastructure plan, unveiled on Feb­ruary 12, would direct $20 billion toward a new “Transformative Projects Program” for “ambitious, exploratory, and ground-breaking project ideas that have significantly more risk than standard infrastruc­ture projects.” One of the first such innovations that could be fund­ed through the program, according to Undersecretary of Transportation Derek Kan, is the Hyperloop system, a project of SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. The concept envisions a network of low-pressure tubes that carry passengers and cargo between cities in hovering capsules, reducing travel time from hours to minutes. Maryland transportation officials have already grant­ed authority for…

On March 14, the House passed, 407 to 10, H.R. 4904, the STOP School Violence Act. Introduced by Representative John Rutherford (FL-R), the bill would authorize $50 million in grant funding for schools to con­duct training to prevent violence, set up anonymous re­porting systems for threats, and implement other safety measures. Representative Rutherford said, “The best way to keep our students and teachers safe is to give them to tools and the training to recognize warning signs to prevent violence from ever entering our schools’ grounds … this bill aims to do just that.” A Senate companion measure, S. 2495,…

On March 7, Senate Democrats Debbie Stabenow (MI) and Bill Nelson (FL) cohosted a hearing titled, “America Speaks Out: Protecting Our Children from Gun Violence.” The senators heard testimony from sur­vivors of the February shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, along with educators, activists, policy officers, and family members of victims of other mass shootings, including those at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, and Virginia Tech. Although Republican congressional leaders seem re­uluctant to bring gun legislation to the floor in an election year, a number of bills have been introduced in recent weeks, and some…

On January 11, Representative Peter DeFazio (OR-D) introduced legislation designed to accelerate implementation of a key train safety feature. H.R. 4766, the Positive Train Control Implementa­tion and Financing Act, would give railroads until the end of the year to put in place Positive Train Control (PTC), which automatically decreases the speed of a train traveling over the speed limit. It would also prevent the Department of Transportation from granting extensions to railroads seeking to delay that deadline. “Since Congress first passed legislation to mandate PTC implementation in 2008, some railroads have been diligent in implementing PTC while others have clearly…

President Trump recently signed legislation to protect amateur athletes from sexual abuse by enforcing mandatory reporting requirements and extend­ing the statute of limitations for child victims. The Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act, sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA-D), first passed the Sen­ate by unanimous consent on November 14, 2017. The House approved it by a vote of 403 to 3 on January 20, 2018, amended, and the Senate concurred on January 30, by voice vote. The Act requires amateur athletic governing bodies like USA Gymnastics and other amateur sports organizations, including college athletics, to…

A new proposal by the Trump Administration would significantly expand offshore oil and gas lease sales to tracts off the Atlantic, Arctic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts. The draft five-year (2019 to 2024) plan is a major departure from the current 2017 to 2022 plan approved by the Obama Administration that limits lease sales to 10 tracts off the Gulf of Mexico and one off Alaska’s southern coast. In announcing the new policy, Interior Secretary Ryan Zincke said: “Responsibly developing our energy resources on the Outer Continental Shelf in a safe and well-regulated way is important to our economy and energy…

The House-passed version of the tax reform bill included repeal of the Johnson amendment, which prohibits nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations from endorsing specific candidates. Named after then-Senator Lyndon Johnson (TX-D), the amendment was adopted as part of 1954 tax reform legislation. It added a clause to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) definition of 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations that excludes any public charity, private foundation, or religious congregation “which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” Advocates of Johnson amendment repeal,…