Oversight

This week Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), a member of the House Science Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, led an appropriations request to protect funding for NASA’s Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission. The President’s recently-released budget recommended the elimination of the mission, even though it was identified as the top priority on the National Research Council’s most… Read more »

Roll Call | President Donald Trump continued his attacks Tuesday morning on Puerto Rican leaders over hurricane aid and blasted a top House Democrat over what he described as hypocrisy over special Justice Department investigations. Trump fired off a number of tweets Monday night blasting Senate Democrats for shooting down a disaster relief bill over their concerns it… Read more »

Falls Church News Press |  Speaking before a surprisingly large turnout of over 200 at a town hall at Edison High School in Franconia Tuesday night, U.S. Rep. Donald S. Beyer Jr., a Democrat who represents the 8th District of Virginia that includes the City of Falls Church, said he’s “confident” the full report submitted by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller last week will be made… Read more »

Independent Journal Review | Democrats are outraged over Education Secretary Betsey DeVos‘ proposed a new department budget that includes cutting all $18 million of federal funding to the Special Olympics. Lawmakers in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives are reassuring the public that they will fight for the organization’s funding. “This will never happen. Full… Read more »

WUSA 9 |  Friday, special counsel Robert Mueller turned over his long-awaited report on the Russia investigation. After two years of investigation – which, at times entangled President Donald Trump’s family and resulted in charges against some of his associates – the report is now in the hands of Attorney General William Barr. Immediately after the news broke Friday night,… Read more »

Business Insider |  It's been a rough week for President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. Questions surrounding the circumstances of his security clearance (and whether Trump influenced the process), still loom as lawmakers demand the US Justice Department launch an investigation into the matter. According to people who were briefed on a… Read more »

Yahoo News |  Facing more than a dozen investigations into his conduct last spring, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that he was starting a legal defense fund, raising concerns about the propriety of a government official raising money to fend off official investigations into potential misuse of government funds, among other… Read more »

TIME |  It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing Jared Kushner would forget. On Dec. 13, 2016, Donald Trump’s son-in-law met with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a multibillion-dollar state-run Russian development bank, who was in the U.S., the bank later said, as part of a new investment strategy. To memorialize the event, Gorkov even gave Kushner a piece of art and a bag of dirt from the… Read more »

Talking Points Memo |  Democratic Reps. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Don Beyer (D-VA) on Tuesday asked Attorney General Bill Barr to conduct a criminal probe into the ongoing controversies surrounding senior adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s security clearance. In a letter to Barr, Lieu and Beyer said they were “deeply disturbed” by the latest developments — that Trump ordered… Read more »

The Acting Inspector General (IG) of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today informed Rep. Don Beyer and other House Democrats that neither disgraced former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt nor his private attorney ever consulted the EPA Ethics Office regarding his legal defense fund. The OIG letter was written in response to a series of questions about Pruitt’s legal defense fund… Read more »