Following the Biden administration’s progress toward lowering prescription drug prices with Medicare price negotiations, some industry advocates want Congress to go a step further and close patent loopholes that prevent generic varieties of top-selling drugs.

“What we’ve been seeing lately is that companies are filing for dozens or even hundreds of patents to extend their monopoly period in order to keep their revenues, and that’s blocking competition from the market,” said Priti Krishtel, co-founder of medicine access nonprofit I-MAK.

Patents give companies 20 years of manufacturing exclusivity on their drugs and are designed to allow pharmaceutical companies to recoup development costs before the formula can be manufactured on a generic basis. Because of the monopoly patents create, prices of drugs under patent are always higher than those with generic alternatives.

Seven of the 10 best-selling drugs in the country are due to run out of patent protection within the next decade, causing pharmaceutical companies to scramble to extend their patents any way possible, Krishtel said.

Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who is a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), explained that while it will be difficult to pass any major health care legislation in a divided Congress, there is some bipartisan support for lowering drug costs.

“The Senate HELP committee has traditionally worked in strong, bipartisan ways on prescription drugs, on mental health, on supporting community health centers. You always have to look for that place where you can find common ground,” Smith said. “Many of the bills that I’ve introduced to bring more competition to drug pricing are bipartisan bills. I’ve worked with Sen. (Bill) Cassidy (R-La.) … and Sen. (Roger) Marshall (R-Kan.) and others. We have to be optimistic.”

Smith said that despite being passed along partisan lines, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which contains lines capping prescription drug prices for Medicare recipients, is popular among both Democrats and Republicans in her state.

The group spoke at an event hosted by The Hill on Thursday moderated by The Hill’s Editor in Chief Bob Cusack. The event was sponsored by the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association.

Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) said a key to any conversation on lowering drug prices is considering how any legislation would impact industry competition. He criticized the IRA price caps by saying they will discourage companies from developing new drugs and calling it a government-sponsored “protection racket.” 

Schweikert instead advocated for “hyper-disruption” in the pharmaceutical sector through financial incentives for manufacturing generic drugs. He praised a new factory being built in Virginia that plans to produce and sell generic insulin for $30 a vial — less than the government price cap for Medicare recipients.

“How do I get almost every company interested into the manufacturing business? How do I almost flood the market with competition?” Schweikert said.

He also advocated for direct-to-consumer drug sales, which could lower purchasing costs for the average American.

Despite signs that some on both sides of the aisle are willing to work toward legislation on the issue, there is little from either party’s leadership that progress is imminent, economic consultant Alex Brill said. Both parties have signaled that any modifications to Social Security or Medicare funding is unlikely in this year’s budget talks.

“The near-term rhetoric, from both parties, doesn’t give me a lot of hope,” Brill said. “There should be a strong desire to say to constituents and patients, ‘We’re going to bring down your health care costs,’ … but the headlines are that in the near-term, those policies are off the table.”

“Ultimately, Congress will be forced to address this issue. These are not choices,” he said. “This will become a necessity for Social Security, for Medicare and for others. They are on unsustainable paths, and structural changes will be required.” 

Four of the top five Republican candidates for Kentucky governor took the stage on Tuesday night for a low-key first debate in one of the year’s most closely-watched races.

State Attorney General Daniel Cameron, Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles, Auditor Mike Harmon and Somerset, Ky., Mayor Alan Keck faced off in Louisville.

Former U.N. Ambassador Kelly Craft declined an invitation to the debate, which was organized by the Jefferson County Republican Party.

The most recent race polls were released in January, with Cameron holding a sizable lead over other candidates. He took 39 percent of respondents’ support, followed by Craft at 13 percent, Quarles at 8 percent, Harmon at 5 percent and Keck at 2 percent.

Each candidate made their case for why they would be the best candidate to take on the popular Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear in November. The GOP primary is May 16.

The four candidates agreed on almost all issues addressed, with each stating that they are pro-life, support the 2nd Amendment, support lowering or eliminating income tax and increasing support for teachers, among other issues. 

They also agreed that the state should ban gender-affirming surgery for minors without parental consent, while Keck and Harmon went a step further and likened those procedures to crimes. 

Observers say the debate lacked the necessary fireworks to upend the current standing of the Republican candidates.

“Cameron came in the favorite and he left the favorite,” Kentucky GOP strategist Scott Jennings said. “The only mentions of (Cameron) from the other candidates tonight were to praise him. As long as that remains, none of them will catch him.”

Cameron focused much of his time attacking President Biden and weighing in on national political issues. Throughout the night, he leaned into Republican culture war talking points, bringing up “critical race theory” and calling social justice policies “far-left indoctrination.”

Cameron also referenced Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) as examples the state could follow, pointing to their support of parental influence over education and on social issues.

Harmon and Quarles leaned on their faith, repeatedly mentioning the role of religion in their lives and the importance they believe it has for the state.

Keck carved a more moderate path, often choosing to not go as far as fellow candidates on more controversial political topics. That includes medical marijuana and sports betting legalization, which Keck said he emphatically supports. All candidates said they were at least open to legalization on those issues, with the exception of Harmon on gambling.

Jennings said Keck might be hoping to get through the primary with the support of more moderate voters.

“In this primary, most of the voters live in and around Louisville and Lexington. There’s a pretty decent suburban cohort which I can see being attracted to a more moderate course,” he said. “With a multi-headed field, no runoff provision, you don’t need 50 percent of the vote to win. That strategy is a pretty provocative thing.”

The candidates were each asked whether they support former President Donald Trump, who has endorsed Cameron in the race. The three other candidates attempted to avoid the question on whether the GOP should move on from Trump, each noting that the focus should be on the 2023 race and not the 2024 one.

Keck went a step further, calling out Trump’s influence on state politics.

“Someone in this field needs to lead Kentucky. While Donald Trump may endorse Mr. Cameron, and he has every right to do it, he can’t come and save Kentucky,” he said. “One of us is going to have to lead, and I’m not looking backwards to 2020, I’m looking to 2023.”

The four candidates seldomly attacked Beshear, who remains popular in red-state Kentucky, until the final minutes of the debate. The same January poll found that Beshear has a 61 percent approval rating.

Candidates’ strategy to focus on their own policy and campaign mostly positively may hurt them come November, Jennings said.

“During a debate like this, every topic I would have expected somebody to pivot to ‘Here’s why Beshear is wrong on it, here’s why I’m right,’ but they just never really did that,” he said. “My advice to the campaigns is tell Republicans how you intend to beat Andy Beshear and why we have to beat Andy Beshear, and that case is yet to be made effectively.”  

Democrats responded by calling attention to the lack of Beshear attacks and pointing to the governor’s record. Beshear has repeatedly touted the state’s record-low unemployment rate and the amount of economic development in the last four years.

“We heard a lot of noise and not a lot of substance, all meant to distract from the lack of plans to deliver real solutions for Kentuckians and their families,” Colmon Elridge, the chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party, said in a statement after the debate. “While Governor Beshear has a long list of accomplishments … tonight I did not hear the GOP candidates talk about policies or actions that would improve the lives of Kentucky families.”

President Biden has thrust GOP proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare spending into a looming faceoff over the country’s debt ceiling. 

While Republican leaders insist they have no plans to slash entitlements, previous remarks and proposals from GOP figures have fueled Democratic rhetoric on the issue. 

“Folks in Congress, they want to eliminate a lot of healthcare coverage — those MAGA Republicans — increase costs for millions of Americans, and make deep cuts in programs that families and seniors depend on. And that’s what’s at stake now,” Biden said in a speech last week.

At the center of the clash over entitlements is the question of what constitutes a “cut.”

But one thing that isn’t in dispute is that the programs carry huge price tags. Here are some numbers to make sense of the debate:

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid make up nearly half of the entire federal budget, with a total annual price tag of $2.7 trillion. That’s over three times as much as the country spends on defense, which is the largest discretionary budget item. 

Entitlement programs are considered “mandatory spending” in the budget process, which also includes basic functions like money sent to state governments. 

Biden’s attacks on GOP entitlement plans have largely focused on Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who has proposed to sunset every federal program as part of efforts to rein in government spending. 

Following Democratic rebuke, Scott amended his proposal to exclude entitlement programs.

Other Republicans, including Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), have also proposed some version of entitlement cuts during their careers. 

In rare agreement with Democrats, former President Trump has been adamant that entitlement programs should not be cut and has attacked former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and other probable primary challengers for their previous backing of efforts to cut the programs.

A fifth of all Americans will receive Social Security benefits in 2023, about 70 million people in total. Another 64 million use Medicare and 84 million receive Medicaid.

The programs are facing a daunting future. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that costs will double by 2033, due to rising medical costs and the increasing number of Americans who are expected to sign up for the programs as the Baby Boomer generation ages.

The CBO report said that Social Security will run out of funding in 2032, sooner than previously projected. Others estimate that Medicare will also reach a budget shortfall in 2028.

Republicans say action is needed to avoid bankruptcy and a loss of promised benefits, and there seems to be some movement toward bipartisan solutions. 

A group of senators are attempting to reach a deal on changes to Social Security to ensure that it is funded into the future. Talks are in their early stages, but changes could include increasing the retirement age or making higher incomes taxable.

Entitlement spending rapidly outpaces all other spending by the federal government. 

Social Security by itself costs more than every cabinet department and government agency combined, minus the Department of Defense. Social Security spending rose to $1.3 trillion in the 2023 budget. The largest cabinet agency other than Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services, only cost $138 billion

That spending dwarfs notable federal agencies like NASA and the EPA, which cost a comparatively small $26 billion and $12 billion per year each, respectively. 

Biden and Democrats have staunchly defended entitlement programs. Last month, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), alongside Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Val Hoyle (D-Ore.), proposed the Social Security Expansion Act. 

That legislation would use a tax on high-income Americans’ investment profits to fund Social Security for at least the next 75 years and increase benefits for the poorest recipients. Similar legislation was introduced in the 117th Congress. However, it has little hope of advancing in the GOP-controlled House. 

The Biden administration announced plans to bolster Medicare funding as part of its 2024 budget proposal on Tuesday. By increasing the Medicare tax on high-income Americans and closing loopholes, the administration’s proposal would ensure solvency for an additional 25 years, they claim.

“Republicans don’t like being called out on this,” Biden said last month in Tampa. “A lot of Republicans — their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare. Well, let me say this: If that’s your dream, I’m your nightmare.”

However, many Republicans say the alternative to reform is insolvency.

Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), a senior member of both the Budget and Energy and Commerce committees, said the financial health of the entitlements will require Congress to follow a similar model.

“There will be a lot of pushback,” Burgess previously told The Hill. ”But at the end of the day, we all know, particularly the programs that have the trust funds — Social Security and Medicare — when those trust funds are exhausted, there are some bad things that happen to beneficiaries.”

The corruption trial of Larry Householder entered closing arguments Tuesday, two and a half years after the former Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives was arrested and implicated in a $60 million bribery scheme.

Prosecutors allege that Householder orchestrated a broad scheme funded by the utility company FirstEnergy Corp. to win the state Speakership, shore up House allies and pass legislation friendly to the company. That included a $1.3 billion, taxpayer-funded bailout for the company’s nuclear power plants.

Lobbyist and former Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges is also standing trial in the case. He is accused of attempting to bribe an operative working against the bailout legislation.

Both Householder and Borges are charged with racketeering, which could carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison if they are convicted. They pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The trial is now in its seventh week. Householder took the stand in his own defense last week and claimed innocence.

The prosecutor’s case

Householder was Ohio House Speaker from 2001 to 2004 and left government following an investigation into campaign finance violations. He returned to the House in 2017 and was elected Speaker by a bipartisan coalition. 

Prosecutors allege that his 2017 return was funded by FirstEnergy dark money, and that Householder used the utility’s money and influence to buy those speakership votes and support for his agenda.

His agenda centered on a bill that would charge Ohioans a fee on their utility bill to fund two Northern Ohio nuclear power plants owned by FirstEnergy, as well as gut renewable energy regulation in the state.

It was passed and signed into law by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) in 2019. Following an investigation into the alleged bribery scheme, the Ohio state legislature repealed the nuclear energy subsidy portion of the law.

FirstEnergy announced plans to close the two plants in 2018. The company admitted to giving money to Householder and agreed to pay a $230 million fine last year.

Three others were arrested alongside Householder and Borges in 2020. Householder’s political strategist Jeff Longstreath and lobbyist Juan Cespedes both pleaded guilty to racketeering charges and testified against Householder at trial. The third man arrested, lobbyist Neil Clark, died by suicide in 2021.

Householder was removed as House Speaker not long after he was charged with racketeering in 2020. He retained his House seat and was reelected that fall. He was expelled from the House in June 2021.

The investigation and trial have also implicated DeWine, who hired a former FirstEnergy lobbyist as his legislative director and reportedly asked FirstEnergy to help elect his daughter as a county prosecutor in 2019. Lt. Gov. Jon Husted was also part of federal investigations. Neither DeWine or Husted have been accused of a crime.

The trial so far

Federal prosecutors took six weeks to lay out their case against Householder and Borges. The defense took just days to respond.

When he took the stand last week, Householder denied nearly every element of the prosecution’s case. He said the Republicans who testified against him were still holding onto grudges from the 2019 Ohio House Speaker race.

“This divisiveness has to end,” Householder said. “They never gave it up.”

Much of his testimony featured his signature humor and charm, which some analysts believe was an attempt to court the jury.

After taking Friday and Monday off, closing arguments in the case began Tuesday.

“Mr. Householder did not act alone, but he was at the top,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Singer said in closing arguments. “He benefited the most because the enterprise was set up to benefit his political machine.”

Singer said the bribery plan was hatched while Householder was in Washington, D.C. for President Trump’s January 2017 inauguration. Householder denies that the meetings took place, saying that he got pizza with his family instead of steak dinners with the utility company while in the capital.

Householder and FirstEnergy claim that the $60 million donated to Householder-affiliated dark money organizations were legitimate political donations with no strings attached. Singer disagreed.

“The evidence is clear: Mr. Householder received that money knowing what it was for,” he said.

In the defense’s closing arguments, Householder’s attorney Steve Bradley cast doubt on the prosecutor’s timeline of events and sowed doubts on what the government alleged happened. He also said the investigation was poorly executed.

“This was a woefully incomplete investigation,” Bradley said, accusing the government of bias. “They don’t want evidence that is inconsistent with their theory of the case.”

Instead of payment for a bill, as the prosecution alleges, FirstEnergy’s donations to Householder were because of Householder’s long-standing pro-utilities record, Bradley claimed.

The prosecutor made a final appeal to jurors for the government’s case.

“You saw the unlimited money that was flowing from FirstEnergy to Generation Now. You saw that they got in return: a massive subsidy, a massive piece of legislation,” Singer said. “$60 million. Did he receive it knowing that the expectation was to provide legislation in return? The only reasonable answer is yes.”

The jury is now tasked with determining the defendants’ innocence or guilt.

Former president Donald Trump unveiled his utopian ideas for the future of America in a campaign video released Friday. Painting a bleak picture of America’s present compared to a sunny perspective on his own former administration, he promised to implement radical ideas to get back America’s “boldness.”

“Our objective will be a quantum leap in the American standard of living. That’s what will happen,” Trump said in the video.

That “quantum leap” includes using 0.5 percent of all federal land — 3.2 million acres — to charter up to ten “freedom cities,” he said. The federal government would run a contest to select designs for the cities submitted by the general public. 

“These freedom cities will reopen the American frontier, re-ignite American imagination and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people — all hard-working families — a new shot at homeownership and in fact, the American dream,” Trump said.

Almost all of the federal government’s 640 million acres of land is completely undeveloped and much of it is in the rural west of the country. Nevada is home to the most federal land in the country, with 63 percent of the state owned by the federal government.

The freedom cities plan shares some similarities with NEOM, the city building project by the Saudi Arabian government in the country’s west. The most notable Saudi project, The Line, plans to build a 110-mile long, 660 foot wide, completely self-sustaining and car-free city in the desert.

Trump also called for massive investment into vertical takeoff and landing personal vehicles (eVTOL). Trump claimed that companies in the U.S. and China are developing the technology and that the U.S. should take the lead. 

No major U.S. or foreign automaker has proposed such a design. In 2009, NASA released a concept for an eVTOL, which was followed by concepts from Boeing, Bell and Airbus. 

Trump also called on lowering the cost of living and making cars and housing more affordable, as well as launching a “beautification campaign,” tearing down “ugly buildings” and building parks. 

He did not specify how he planned to implement those ideas.

Another proposal from the 4-minute video was for “baby bonuses,” grants from the government given to new mothers. 

Trump launched his presidential campaign in the days after the November 2022 midterm election. He leads early polls for the Republican primary for president.

Nevada Democrats are grappling with turmoil in their ranks ahead of a critical state party chair election this weekend, sparking fears that the divisions could hinder them as they head into 2024.

Top elected officials have called on Nevada Democratic Party Chair Judith Whitmer to resign as she has fielded unflattering headlines in recent weeks — the latest developments in a series of longstanding tensions between progressive and moderate factions of the party.

Democrats worry that the conflict could roll into the 2024 election cycle, where Nevada holds a crucial early presidential primary for Democrats and one of the Senate’s most vulnerable candidates, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), is up for reelection.

“What has happened to the Nevada state party is an embarrassment to progressives and Nevada,” said Peter Koltak, a staffer for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt) 2020 presidential campaign in Nevada. “A lot of it is rooted in incompetence.”

“Is the party going to get new leadership and be a partner in elections or is it going to continue to be an isolated, rump organization?” he added.

Roughly two years since a group of democratic socialist candidates, led by Whitmer, took the reins of the state party formerly run by operatives associated with the famed “Reid machine” — a group of establishment Democrats once led by the late Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) — Nevada Democrats have seen a growing rift between progressive and establishment members of the party.

Not long after the 2021 state party chair elections, career Democratic operatives and the entire permanent staff of the Nevada Democratic Party resigned. Progressives allege that those staffers took much of the party’s money with them and left the organization in financial and logistical disarray.

Those divisions deepened heading into the 2022 midterm elections as the same operatives who fled the Nevada Democratic Party founded a new organization, Nevada Democratic Victory. It acted as what some called a “shadow party,” fundraising and campaigning on behalf of candidates like Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.) while the state party coordinated its own campaign efforts focusing on down ballot races — creating a split screen of two different campaign efforts run by Democrats in the state. 

Finally, the bubbling tensions between progressives and establishment Democrats in the Silver State came to a fore last month. Officials started calling on Whitmer to resign following reporting that the state party had removed over 230 members of Nevada State Democratic Party’s governing body ahead of their state party chair elections – a move that Whitmer argues was not politically motivated. Meanwhile, top politicians like former Gov. Steve Sisolak (D), along with influential organizations like the Culinary Workers Union, have endorsed her challenger, state Assemblywoman Daniele Monroe-Moreno.

“It’s time for our State Party to get back to basics and to reunite our Democratic family. That means raising the resources to be successful, restoring trust with our grassroots members and local elected leaders, and serious year-round organizing in every corner of the state,” Monroe-Moreno told The Hill in a statement.

Now Nevada Democrats are staring down contentious state party leadership elections just months after the midterms and the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) move to make Nevada one of the second presidential primary states. 

“The state Democratic Party is not the party respected by elected officials,” said Jon Ralston, founder of The Nevada Independent newspaper and a respected political commentator in the state. “There’s no evidence that they’ve done what a party needs to do.”

Some suggest the damage has already been done. Even if the party split is mended, it has already had a negative impact on the state, Koltak and Ralston said. As infighting makes headlines, large donors may be less likely to spend in the state, and Nevada’s reputation in the Democratic National Committee may falter. 

And while Nevada Democrats, including Cortez-Masto, won most of their major seats in 2022, some insiders believe it was more despite Whitmer’s influence than because of it, raising questions of whether Democrats might work around the state party again next cycle if tensions persist.  

“If you’re ultra-ideological, the state party is the wrong place for you,” Koltak said.“What they got was a big electoral machine that they were not prepared to run.”

Some politicos believe that Sisolak, who lost reelection to Republican Joe Lombardo by about 30,000 votes, could have at least lost by a smaller margin without party infighting.

“It didn’t make things easier having to navigate a new process,” one longtime Nevada Democratic staffer said, who asked to be anonymous out of concern for their career future in state politics.

In an interview with The Hill last month, Whitmer argued that the operatives who ran the state party before she was elected “sort of burned the house down before we even got the keys” following the state party elections and explained that “our intent has always been to build a stronger, more inclusive party, where every voice is heard, everybody has a chance to participate.”

But the state party chair also voiced concern that unresolved tensions between Nevada Democrats could hurt them going into 2024.

“I think it will have an impact if the narrative continues to be from the other side” of this electron “that they’ve got to get control of a party back away from progressives and that they’re embarrassed by progressives, that’s going to be a problem,” Whitmer said.

“Because that … sets us up for a wider conflict that I don’t want to see happen,” she added. 

Others suggest if the lingering tensions persist, that could trickle down to intraparty divisions in key races.

“The first part is, do we see a lot of primary challenges, right?” said David Damore, professor and chair of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“[Rep.] Dina Titus, for example, got challenged from this group of, sort of, the leftover Sanders campaign people. She crushed it. I think the open question is what happens when seats [become] open?”

While the last election suggests that Nevada Democrats can stillremain competitive in holding onto key Senate and House seats despite internal turmoil, it could come at the cost of a united front among members.

“You have two trains of thought. One is we need unity, don’t upset the applecart. And then the second thing that you need is a functional organization that supports candidates and actually works to get them elected,” said former Nevada GOP executive director Zachary Moyle.

“Ideally, you want both of those. But you know, honestly, the past decade it feels like parties [have been having to choose] which one do I want more instead of aiming for both.”

Whitmer’s leadership has now inspired the same “Reid machine” Democrats to attempt to wrestle control of the party back again.

Meanwhile, the Las Vegas branch of the Democratic Socialists of America, who backed Whitmer in her leadership election in 2021, have declined to endorse her, saying that the party has turned its back on the principles the leadership slate it was elected to fulfill.

Some observers suggest that the state party chair outcome could mean a return to the way things were before Whitmer took the reins.

“Assemblywoman Monroe-Moreno is someone who people who already have a vested interest prefer,” the longtime staffer said. “If Assemblywoman Monroe-Moreno were to win, the coordinated campaign would likely go back to the state party.”

Strict regulations on drug safety and testing make it difficult to develop new treatments for rare, obscure and deadly diseases, according to experts. As the Orphan Drug Act turns 40, advocates want Congress and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be more flexible when supporting the development of treatments and cures for rare diseases. 

“Quality and access are the two largest challenges for the next few years,” Thomas Crawford, a pediatric neurologist at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, said. “There’s a need to modify and move the Orphan Drug Act into the next generation.”

Rare diseases are defined as those with fewer than 200,000 patients. There are estimated to be about 10,000 rare diseases impacting 30 million Americans, half of whom are children, according to the National Institute of Health (NIH).

The 1983 Orphan Drug Act provided a framework for developing treatments for these rare diseases through financial incentives for drug manufacturers and expedited approvals. Before the ODA, there were less than 40 treatments for rare diseases. Now there are over a thousand, but an estimated 90 percent of rare diseases still don’t have a treatment, advocates say.

“Rare diseases really aren’t that rare,” said Heidi Ross, vice president of policy at the National Association of Rare Disorders. “There are millions of Americans who are still holding out that chance and still want that opportunity to change the lives of their loved ones, to change the lives of themselves.”

Industry experts and patient advocates discussed the future of the ODA at an event hosted by The Hill on Tuesday to celebrate Rare Disease Day, the international day of advocacy for rare disease treatment. The event was sponsored by Alexion, the rare disease division of AstraZeneca, and moderated by The Hill’s Editor-in-chief, Bob Cusack.

Many of the barriers for rare disease treatment development are regulatory, Crawford and others said. When developing treatments, researchers are allowed to go outside of set guidelines in order to treat deadly cases of disease. However, there is no guidance from the FDA or Congress on how far they can or should go outside those guidelines, or what that may look like.

That makes it difficult for the FDA to approve treatments for rare diseases, which usually have less certainty in treatment outcomes, according to former FDA official Frank Sasinowski. Sasinowski helped implement the ODA while with the office, and has since worked as a rare disease advocate.

“It’s akin to being told that you as an FDA official should be allowed to color outside the lines, but we’re not going to tell you how far before you’ve gone too far. And we’re not going to tell you what colors you can use. It’s a terrible burden,” he said.

Some experts proposed the development of regulations corresponding to the size of the disease itself. A disease with fewer cases and a higher severity would perhaps be easier to approve a treatment for compared to one which is more common or less severe, for example.

“The idea that you can have one regulatory authority for a disease that affects two kids or 200,000 with the same metric of safety is crazy,” Crawford said. “It also has to do with cost because if the safety bar is so high, that means the costs are usually so high that (patients) can’t do it.”

But to do that, the FDA should look to patients, not Congress, Global Liver Institute founder Donna Cryer said. Cryer herself suffers from a rare form of liver disease, she said. She advocated for patient-focused drug development meetings, which has been used in limited cases by the FDA.

“Having patients set what is the right mark between the benefits, the safety and the efficacy of a particular treatment in the context of the disease … getting that directly from patients about what risk they are willing to take, frankly, is much more useful either to FDA than having the data all by themselves, and it’s certainly not something the legislature is qualified to do,” Cryer said.

One concern that some experts shared with Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) is the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act on rare disease treatment development. The portion of the IRA which regulates drug prices could lead to reduced industry revenue and to reduced investment in research, analysts say.

“I was very concerned about the provisions of the (Inflation Reduction Act), especially when it comes to rare and orphan diseases,” Miller-Meeks said following the panel. “Even a CEO admitted that there are drugs that will never come to the marketplace. We already know companies that are standing back from research and development, and that means research and development into diseases that are uncommon.”

Miller-Meeks said she hopes to see bipartisan support for rolling back that section of the IRA and she has seen some bipartisan support for expanding the use of telehealth and allowing generic production of drugs like insulin, she said.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, launched just a year ago, has resulted in a stunning amount of U.S. military assistance for the war-torn country.

It’s set off a deep political debate over how much support the U.S. should offer, though so far there’s been more agreement than disagreement about offering aid to Ukraine.

Here’s a look at the numbers behind the spending that shows what U.S. dollars are being used for and how it compares to other federal spending.

Highlights of how the $29.3 billion in military aid breaks down:

Infantry arms/equipment

• More than 8,500 Javelin anti-armor systems

• Over 50,000 other anti-armor systems and munitions

• More than 1,600 Stinger anti-aircraft systems

• 2,590 TOW missile

• 13,000 grenade launchers and small arms

• Over 111,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition

• More than 75,000 sets of body armor and helmets

• Thousands of surveillance systems, night vision googles, thermal imagery systems etc.

• C-4 and other explosives for obstacle clearing

• Mines and mine clearing equipment

• More than 350 generators

Air Defense

• 8 NASAM systems

• 12 Avenger air defense systems

• HAWK air defense system missiles

• Laser-guided rocket systems

• One Patriot air defense battery and munitions

• RIM-7 missiles for air defense

• High speed anti-radiation missiles (HARMs)

Manned aircraft

• 20 Mi-17 helicopters

Drones

• More than 700 armed Switchblade drones

• 1,800 armed Phoenix Ghost drones

• VAMPIRE Counter-unmanned aerial systems

• 15 ScanEagle unarmed aerial systems

• Puma unarmed aerial systems

Coastal Defense

• 2 Harpoon coastal defense systems

• 58 coastal and riverine patrol boats

• Unmanned coastal defense vessels

• RIM-7 missiles for air defense

Radar, communications and satellite services

• 4 satellite communication antennas

• 2 radars for drones

• 10 air surveillance radars

• More than 50 counter-artillery radars

• 4 counter-mortar radars

• Tactical secure communications systems

Artillery and ammunition

• 160 155mm Howitzers and up to 1,094,000 artillery rounds

• 72 105mm Howitzers and 370,000 artillery rounds

• 38 HIMARs systems

• 30 120 mm mortar systems and ammunition

• 100,000 rounds of 125mm tank ammunition

• 10,200 155mm rounds of Remote Anti-Armor Mine (RAAM) Systems

• 65,000 152mm artillery rounds

• 50,000 122mm GRAD rockets

• 30 120mm mortar systems and about 166,000 rounds

• 545,000 rounds of 25mm ammunition

• 20 60mm and 82mm mortar systems

Ground support vehicles

• More than 1,700 Humvees

• 109 Bradley Fighting vehicles

• 298 tactical vehicles to tow weapons

• 34 Tactical Vehicles to recover equipment

• 30 ammunition support vehicles

• 44 trucks

• 88 trailers

• 10 command post vehicles

• More than 100 light tactical vehicles

Tanks and Armored carriers

• 45 refurbished T-72B tanks (sent from the Czech Republic)

• 300 M113 armored personal carriers

• 250 M117 armored security vehicle

• 580 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPs)

• 100 armored medical treatment vehicles

• 31 MaxxPro MRAP vehicles

• 31 M1 Abrams tanks

• 90 Stryker Armored Personnel Carriers

• 6 armored utility trucks

Timeline of U.S. spending and aid deployment

Since Russia first attacked Ukraine a year ago on Feb. 24, the United States has directed nearly $50 billion in assistance to the war-torn country, including humanitarian, financial, and military support. A timeline of aid deployment:

• Feb. 24, 2022: Russia attacks Ukraine after Kremlin troops amass for weeks along the country’s border.

• Feb. 25, 2022: U.S. pledges its first military aid package to Ukraine, $350 million in weapons that includes Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

• March 11, 2022: Ukraine takes possession of 5 Mi-17 helicopters pledged by the U.S. in January, with more on the way.

• March 16, 2022: U.S. pledges sending Switchblade Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems – armed drones that are launched from the ground and Kamikaze their targets – to Kyiv along with more Stinger anti-aircraft systems, Javelin anti-tank weapons and more as part of an $800 million package.

• April 13, 2022: U.S. expands the types of weaponry it’s giving to Ukraine in $800 million arms package that include Howitzers, artillery, unmanned boats for coastal defense and other equipment not part of prior aid packages. Foreseeing the war will stretch longer than initially expected, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks sits down with defense CEOs from top firms including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, BAE Systems and more to discuss the industrial impact on weapons production for Ukraine.

• April 21, 2022: Pentagon announces Phoenix Ghost attack drones to Ukraine as part of a $800 million lethal aid package.

• May 31, 2022: Administration officials reveal US is sending Ukraine High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), as part of a $700 million package. The weapon is the first advanced, long-range rocket system sent to Ukraine, with rounds that can fire roughly 50 miles away. The systems give Kyiv more precision on far away targets than previously sent artillery.

• June 15, 2022: U.S. announces it will provide two vehicle-mounted Harpoon coastal defense systems, intended to defend coastlines, as part of a $1 billion military aid package to Kyiv.

• July 1, 2023: Defense Department unveils an $820 million weapons package to include two National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), air defense systems that can hit targets up to 100 miles away and are used to protect the skis above Washington, D.C.

• Aug. 8 2022: U.S. confirms it has sent AGM-88 High Speed Radiation Missiles (HARM) to Ukraine.

• Aug. 19, 2022: Pentagon announces it would send Ukraine TOW anti-tank missiles for the first time as well as Scan Eagle Unmanned Aerial Systems as part of a $775 million security assistance package.

• Aug. 24, 2022: U.S. commits VAMPIRE Counter-unmanned aerial systems – which uses small missiles to shoot drones out of the sky – as part of a $2.98 billion weapons package.

• Nov. 4, 2022: The Pentagon announces it will for the first time fund tanks – specifically T-72 from the Czech Republic – sent to Ukraine as part of a $400 million military assistance package.

• Dec. 21, 2022: U.S. announces it will give Ukraine a Patriot surface-to-air guided missile defense system as part of a larger $1.85 billion security assistance package. The system – designed to hit mid- and high-altitude targets such as missiles, fighter jets, bombers and drones – is considered a major gain for Ukraine as it had been begging Western officials for the system for months.

• Jan. 6, 2023: Administration announces it will send M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle to Ukraine for the first time as part of a $3.75 billion new military assistance package.

• Jan. 15, 2023: Ukrainian troops arrive at Fort Sill, Okla., to begin training for several months on Patriot systems.

• Jan. 19, 2023: Pentagon announces $2.5 billion package to include hundreds of additional armored vehicles – including for the first time Stryker armored vehicles.

• Jan. 25, 2023: U.S. agrees to send Ukraine 31 M1 Abrams tanks worth $400 million, changing course after initially insisting the vehicle was not appropriate for the fight and shoring up an agreement with Germany to send its Leopard tanks to the conflict.

• Feb. 3, 2023: The most recent U.S. lethal aid tranche to Ukraine, worth nearly $2.2 billion, includes for the first time the ground-launched small diameter bomb, a bomb-tipped rocket with a range of 90 miles.

Ice coverage on the Great Lakes has hit record lows in mid-February, following unseasonably warm weather in the Midwest and Canada.

Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revealed that ice covers only 5.7 percent of the Great Lakes as of Thursday, the lowest figure for this time of year since NOAA began keeping detailed records in 1973.

Ice covered about 40 percent of the Great Lakes on Feb. 16, 2022, and 42 percent of the area on the same date in 2021, according to the data.

NOAA expects similar ice coverage — around 35-40 percent — during this time of the year, as peak ice coverage usually occurs between mid-February and early March. However, coverage peaked at 21 percent earlier this month following a regional cold snap and has rapidly reduced since, according to data.

The agency attributed the coverage to an unseasonably warm January — when the temperature was about 5.1 degrees warmer than average nationwide.

“We see signals of a shift from snow to rain. We see winter snow storms, which can have record snow amounts, followed by rain and melting,” University of Michigan climate science professor Richard Rood said in a statement. “The message? There is definitive warming.”

“There is an accumulation of heat and its effects throughout the basin. Declining lake ice is part of this coherent story of accumulation of heat,” Rood added.

The next lowest figure for mid-February came in 2012, when 7.1 percent of the lake was covered by ice. Only one other time — in 2002 — has the figure gone below 10 percent on this date.

The low ice cover may put coastlines at an increased risk of erosion or contribute to more severe snow storms, according to NOAA researcher Ayumi Fujisaki-Manome. 

“The moisture and heat from the lake surface water are absorbed into the atmosphere by storm systems, and then fall back to the ground as snow in the winter,” she said in a statement. “When ice is not present, we can end up with big snow storms like those that hit Buffalo, New York in December.”

Ice currently covers 0.1 percent of Lake Erie and none of Lake St. Clair, near Detroit. According to NOAA maps, current ice is concentrated in western Lake Michigan near Green Bay, Wisconsin, and the northern fringes of Lakes Superior and Huron.

The record high ice coverage for Feb. 16 came in 1979, when about 90 percent of the lakes were covered.

The year has so far been warmer than normal for the Midwest and Ontario — with average temperatures in January and February running between 6 and 10 degrees above average. This week in particular has been especially warm, as Cleveland hit 70 degrees and Detroit 62 degrees on Wednesday.

Temperatures are expected to drop closer to seasonable levels in the coming weeks, according to weather forecasts.

The often overlooked Office of the Architect of the Capitol was thrust into national headlines this week after President Biden fired its most recent occupant, Brett Blanton, on Monday. 

To most, the architect’s role is still unknown, given that the role extends far beyond construction and infrastructure these days.

Day-to-day, the architect is the caretaker of the Capitol Building, responsible for its maintenance and upkeep. That includes planning and executing renovations and restorations, as well as managing changes to policies, including those related to security.

Architects of the Capitol were appointed by the president to indefinite terms until 1989, when the terms were limited to 10 years.

The Capitol complex comprises 18.4 million square feet of buildings, 570 acres of grounds and more than 2,000 employees. 

The architect is also one of three members of the Capitol Police Board, which manages building security. The architect is responsible for planning where to put security barriers and managing points of entry for visitors and members of Congress alike.

That responsibility brought Blanton under fire for his role in the response to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Blanton stayed home that day and coordinated with Capitol Police and other colleagues via phone and radio as officers were injured and some later died following their efforts to protect the building and its occupants from violent protests.

Blanton was questioned by the House Administration Committee on Thursday regarding his work on Jan. 6, an alleged misuse of funds and his future in the office.

“I’m trying to understand why you physically weren’t here on a pretty important day,” Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), said at the hearing. “Especially given the fact that you have access to information, being on the Capitol Police Board, about potential problems that we have on this campus.”

Blanton more recently came under Congressional scrutiny after an Inspector’s General report found that he may have misused government funds, including letting his family drive his government-issued vehicle. 

A bipartisan group called on him to resign following hearings last week, including Speaker of the House Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

When the office was founded in 1793, the title’s meaning was more literal. The first Architect of the Capitol, William Thornton, was the building’s actual architect. Thornton originally designed a Capitol with a low, wood and copper dome that was never built, though much of the central portion of the building was constructed from his design. 

Thornton’s successors oversaw multiple dome iterations before the current dome was designed by the fourth Architect of the Capitol, Thomas Walter, in the 1850s. Construction of the dome was interrupted by the Civil War and completed in 1866. The 1850s also saw the construction of the House and Senate wings of Congress, also by Walter.

Later Architects of the Capitol oversaw the construction of the House and Senate office buildings, the Supreme Court building, and made minor renovations to the Capitol itself, including adding electricity, heating and more recently Wi-Fi to the complex. The final major expansion of the Capitol was in 2000, with the construction of the Capitol Visitor Center under the 10th Architect, Alan Hantman.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) was displeased with Republicans who yelled, jeered and interrupted President Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday.

“I find it disturbing and sad that the State of the Union has devolved into a junior high softball game,” she said at a Washington Post Live event on Thursday.

Biden’s address was the rowdiest in recent memory, as numerous Republicans spoke up midspeech. 

As Biden noted that some Republicans wished to sunset Social Security and Medicare, he was interrupted by dissenting legislators, which turned into a back-and-forth, resulting in what Biden, in the moment, called an agreement not to cut those programs. When Biden mentioned the fentanyl crisis and the U.S.-Mexico border, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) yelled: “It’s your fault!”

“Everyone is raucous — I was worried people were going to start throwing hot dogs and popcorn at each other,” Sinema said. “I find it beneath the dignity of the United States Congress. What I find most disturbing about it is that it’s normalized.”

Sinema said the problem isn’t exclusive to one party, though, arguing that similar conduct has been an issue for years. She even compared her colleagues’ behavior to that of the young children she counseled as a social worker.

“One thing I would tell kids early, early on is that you get to make your own choices. You have your own agency. Someone else might say something that’s hurtful, but that’s about them. You get to make the decision about how you behave,” she said.

The Arizona senator also made her position clear on the ongoing debt limit debate. As House Republicans demand budget cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit, Biden has advocated for a “clean” raise of the debt ceiling, with no strings attached.

Sinema supports the president’s position, but still wants to look at budget cuts separately, she said.

“Should we address the debt limit? Yes. Should we do it without causing panic in the markets or downgrading our rating as has happened in the past in 2011? Absolutely,” Sinema said. “Do we need to have discussions about inappropriate and runaway spending in Washington, D.C.? Absolutely. Should one be held hostage to the other? No.”

She was also quick to criticize the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border and immigration, but similarly put blame on previous administrations as well.

“This administration, just like the administrations before this one — this is true under Biden, it was true under Trump and it was certainly true under Obama — all of those administrations have failed to adequately secure our border,” Sinema said.

Sinema led a bipartisan cohort to the border last month and chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on border management.

“The Biden administration continues to say the border is secure. That’s factually inaccurate,” she said.

She called on her colleagues to continue work on bipartisan immigration reform legislation, which may include a path to citizenship for migrants already in the U.S. and reform the asylum-seeking process, she said.

Automotive industry experts joined Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) on Wednesday in expressing concern over the implementation of electric vehicle subsidies included in the Inflation Reduction Act.

“It is incredibly complicated, and it needs to be fed to the consumer in a way that makes sense to them,” S&P Global analyst Stephanie Brinley said at The Hill’s EV/AV Summit on Wednesday.

Electric vehicle advancement is facing two hurdles, according to industry experts: cost and charging infrastructure. The Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law contain provisions that fund electric vehicle charging stations and subsidies for purchasing new and used electric vehicles. 

But Republicans are skeptical that subsidies aimed at influencing consumer choices are the right approach.

“The American consumer should pick what they want to drive. The worst thing that could ever happen is for the federal government to pick the winners and the losers,” Latta said. “If the federal government gets involved with this I can guarantee we’re going to have a problem.” 

The summit — sponsored by Hyundai — was moderated by The Hill’s editor in chief Bob Cusack and energy and environment reporter Rachel Frazin.

Industry advocates focused their concerns on the specificity of the subsidies. To qualify for subsidies, an electric car must have a certain proportion of its battery parts manufactured in the U.S., but industry advocates say it’s unclear what parts count as “battery parts” and point to other pieces of the legislation that are still unclear.

“A lot of the concerns we have are with the way the law was drafted and the implementation of it,” said Jennifer Safavian, president of Autos Drive America. “There are a lot of requirements in order for a vehicle to be eligible for a $7500 tax credit. … From the manufacturers’ perspective, they are still trying to understand what those requirements are and they are waiting for the Treasury Department to put out guidance.”

“For consumers, who we all hope will purchase these vehicles and get more of these vehicles on the road, it’s very confusing for them because the restrictions change … there’s a lot of confusion,” she said.

Despite a lack of clarity on which vehicles can qualify for subsidies, industry experts said they do believe the new laws will help increase proliferation of electric vehicles. 

The experts and members of Congress from both parties also expressed support for funding more electric vehicle infrastructure.

Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), the ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said investments in EV infrastructure would help as well. 

“To make this happen you need the supporting infrastructure. It’s not just having the electric vehicle yourself at home, you need to be able to charge it, you need to be able to feel confident that when you travel there’s an infrastructure network available to you as well,” he said. 

Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) on Tuesday ripped the Biden administration’s decision to delay shooting down a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the weekend, saying the delay made the U.S. look weak.

Scott said during a House Financial Services Committee hearing on Chinese economic competition that he was concerned about the “fast-growing possibility of a China-led world order,” which he said would include China’s military controlling key global trade routes.

“And that’s why I was concerned, deeply concerned, about this balloon business and why the president allowed this balloon to go all over our country and not blow it down,” Scott said.

“I love the president, I support him, but this move not to blow down that balloon sends a powerful message to both our enemies and our friends,” he added later. “It’s all about data, it’s all about intelligence, it’s all about knowledge, and they got us on this one.”

A suspected Chinese spy balloon captured the nation’s attention last week as it floated from Alaska to the coast of South Carolina before it was destroyed by an F-22 fighter jet off the coast on Saturday. 

Despite calls from lawmakers to shoot down the balloon as soon as it was identified, the Biden administration and military experts warned that the debris would create safety concerns on the ground. Biden reportedly ordered for the balloon to be shot down Wednesday, but the military waited until the balloon was over the ocean to destroy it. 

Scott isn’t the first Democrat to criticize the Biden administration’s response. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said he’s “demanding answers” after the balloon floated over his state.

“I will be pulling people before my committee to get real answers on how this happened, and how we can prevent it from ever happening again,” Tester, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said in a statement Friday.

Scott’s comments came alongside his concerns about China’s growing threat to the American economy and military, which committee members of both parties echoed. 

“I am deeply concerned with the fast-growing possibility of a China-led world order that includes the Chinese military controlling the South Pacific trade routes because the South Pacific trade routes are now the lifeline of the entire global economy,” he said.

Scott and Tester are among the few Democrats who have joined dozens of Republicans in lambasting Biden’s decisionmaking. The House GOP majority is gearing up to investigate and grill Biden officials over the international incident. 

The Chinese government also denounced the Biden administration’s decision to shoot down the balloon at all, claiming that it was for civilian use.

A handful of states are emerging as big winners in the new House Republican majority as their representatives head to prominent roles on key panels.

Republicans from states including Texas, Florida, Mississippi and Kentucky are chairing or sitting on some of the highest-profile committees. These assignments offer lawmakers the opportunities to address issues in their states and to cement or launch their careers, as is the case for some freshmen.

Here are the states that won key representation on influential panels in the new House.

Kentucky

Hard work has paid off for the delegation from the Bluegrass State, with a slate of representatives holding significant influence on the Appropriations, House Rules, Judiciary, and Oversight and Accountability committees. That includes Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), Rules and Judiciary member Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), the House dean.

“We have members who chose paths when they got in and stuck with them,” Republican strategist Tres Watson said. “A lot of Kentucky’s influence is due to patience.”

The rising star of the group is Comer, who is leading the House investigation into the Biden administration and Biden family. 

Scott Jennings, a Kentucky-based GOP strategist, said Comer’s rise is part being in the right place at the right time and part smart maneuvering. In the lead up to the 118th Congress, several senior members either left the committee or left Congress entirely, making way for Comer to rise to the top.

Massie is the most surprising of the group, Jennings and Watson said of the northern Kentucky representative, who made a career of being an outsider and a contrarian. 

“[Massie] played it smart and stuck with McCarthy all the way through,” Jennings said. “He has forged a relationship with leadership that’s unique because it bridges between the two wings of the party.”

Florida

Long a swing state, Florida is shifting to a Republican stronghold. Seating assignments from the 118th Congress back that up, with Sunshine State representatives getting a considerable number.

“Florida is the epicenter of the GOP and the envy of the nation,” Florida GOP strategist Ford O’Connell said. “This is the heyday for Florida politics.”

Much of Florida’s influence is thanks to national politics. Former President Trump now lives in South Florida, and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is making headlines amid speculation of a 2024 presidential run and his agenda-setting policy on education and health care.

That spotlight has made it easier for Florida representatives to make their own gains, O’Connell said, such as Rep. Matt Gaetz’s seats on the influential Armed Services and Judiciary committees. 

Five Florida Republicans sit on the House Foreign Affairs Committee — the most of any state — and four sit on the Armed Services Committee, also leading the country.

“The Florida delegation has the ability to drive policy for the rest of the nation,” O’Connell said.

Texas

Texas Republicans are chairing several key House committees, even after recent high-profile retirements. Rep. Kay Granger chairs the Appropriations Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Jodey Arrington chairs the Budget Committee and Rep. Roger Williams chairs the Small Business Committee.  

Former Rep. Kevin Brady retired after the last Congress and was the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee. In recent years, Texas lost prominent centrist Reps. Will Hurd, who represented a southwestern border district and was at the time the House’s only Black Republican, and Kenny Marchant, then-ranking member on the Ethics Committee, to retirements, among others.

Still, that’s not to suggest Texas lawmakers are without influence: Five GOP Texans in total sit on the Appropriations Committee, which is responsible for allocating federal funding, and five Texas Republicans also serve on the Judiciary Committee.

Mississippi

Rep. Michael Guest now chairs the House Ethics Committee, a panel whose responsibilities include investigating House members or staff who may have broken House rules. His placement comes amid a slew of probes and negative headlines already embroiling first-term Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.). 

Mississippi also enjoys representation on the Appropriations, Armed Services and Homeland Security committees. Guest sits on both the Appropriations and Homeland Security panels, while Rep. Trent Kelly (R) sits on the Armed Services and Intelligence committees and Rep. Mike Ezell (R) also sits on the Homeland Security Committee. 

Guest’s spot on the Appropriations Committee is especially noteworthy for Mississippi given the panel is responsible for allocating federal money and the Magnolia State is one of the poorest in the country. 

“I think just having both Michael Guest and Sen. [Cindy] Hyde-Smith on Appropriations gives us a voice at the table to make sure that Mississippi doesn’t get shorted,” said Mississippi-based GOP strategist Henry Barbour.

Ohio

Two of the state’s House Republicans chair two of the most powerful committees: Rep. Jim Jordan chairs the House Judiciary Committee, including its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, while Rep. Michael Turner chairs the Intelligence Committee. 

Jordan has positioned himself as one of the Biden administration’s key adversaries, whose Judiciary select subcommittee is likely to target the Justice Department, among the federal agencies it could probe. Jordan and Turner also sit on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

Ohio-based GOP strategist Mark Weaver noted that Ohio Republican lawmakers on committees are also likely to address issues that are top-of-mind in the state, including coal, natural gas and oil — important parts of the economy in the eastern part of the state.

“In a divided Congress, it’s difficult to pass legislation. But the House oversight function continues on its own, meaning every one of these chairmen of committees will be able to use the power of subpoena to call in people and put them under oath and make them tell the truth about things like what’s happening in the domestic energy situation,” Weaver said.

New York

Several of the New York Republicans who delivered major wins in the November midterms also notched leading committee assignments this Congress. 

Rep. Nick Lalota sits on the Armed Services and Homeland Security committees. Rep. Mike Lawler, who ousted powerful former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D), sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Rep. Anthony D’Esposito is also a member of the Homeland Security Committee.

Former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), once a member of House GOP leadership and GOP strategist, said that he believed New York would punch “considerably above its weight in this Congress.”

“That’s partially because they supplied new members, and we have a narrow majority. So New York gets a lot of credit for that,” he said, adding that those freshman Republicans entered Congress well-qualified.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, the House Republican Conference chair, also enjoys several important committee assignments, which include sitting on the Judiciary select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government. 

The State of the Union address is an opportunity for a president to lay out their policy agenda, laud their own accomplishments and create a sense of national unity. 

But there’s often another person or scene that dominates headlines and drags attention away from the speech itself. 

Here’s eight of the most memorable reactions and responses over the last 15 years.

2022: Boebert heckles Biden

Last year’s distraction came from freshman Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who yelled  at President Biden while he discussed how burning waste led to cancer and death for many service members — including his son.

“A cancer that would put them in a flag-draped coffin,” Biden said. “I know —”

“You put them in, 13 of them!” Boebert interrupted.

She was referencing an attack in Afghanistan which killed 13 Americans in 2020, but the disruption was met with shock and gasps from both halves of the chamber.

“One of those soldiers was my son, Major Beau Biden,” Biden finished.

Boebert and then-ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) also recited “build the wall!” during an immigration section of Biden’s speech. She refused to apologize afterward.

2020: Pelosi tears up Trump’s speech

Just weeks after the House impeached then-President Donald Trump for the first time, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) marked the end of his speech with a symbolic protest of her own. As Republicans stood to applaud Trump, Pelosi stood and tore her copy of Trump’s speech in half. 

She later called it the “courteous thing to do,” given Trump’s actions. Trump later claimed that Pelosi’s actions were “very illegal.” 

Republicans denounced the Speaker for tearing up the speech, but nothing came from their calls for her to be censured.

2019: Pelosi’s sarcastic clapping

Tearing up Trump’s speech wasn’t Pelosi’s first time making a scene at Trump’s State of the Union. The year before, as Trump denounced “revenge politics,” Pelosi stood and gave him a pointed, sarcastic clap. 

It was the memorable image of the 2019 speech, so much so that it became a viral meme and a move she repeated multiple times over the following months for laughs.

2015: Ruth Bader Ginsburg falls asleep

Seated front and center, it’s difficult for the Supreme Court justices not to be the center of attention in crowd shots during the State of the Union address. In an unintentional distraction, then-81-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg nodded off during President Obama’s speech in 2015.

She later said that she wasn’t “100 percent sober,” blaming a bottle of “very fine California wine,” provided by Justice Anthony Kennedy at a dinner prior to the speech for her drowsiness.

2015 wasn’t the first time Ginsburg fell asleep during a State of the Union address. Two years before, Ginsburg again blamed a bottle of Kennedy’s wine for nodding off during the 2013 address. 

2014: Biden connects with the crowd

As Vice President, Joe Biden sat directly behind President Obama for his State of the Union speeches. But Biden occasionally stole attention from his president, especially during the 2014 speech. 

At one point, Biden was caught making finger guns, pointing and laughing at someone in the crowd — another moment which was made into a meme.

It was never discovered specifically who Biden was pointing to, but he revealed to late night host Seth Meyers weeks later that a “senior senator” had chastised him on his way to the speech, asking Biden not to stand and clap at every one of Obama’s points.

“And then I counted, 17 times this particular senator stood up in front of the president, so I went like this (finger guns) to point to him,” Biden told Meyers. “Talk about a suck up! This guy was telling me ‘don’t stand up’ and, boom, he was the first guy up.”

2013: Marco Rubio needs his water

Following every State of the Union address since 1966, it has been tradition for the opposing party to give a response to the president’s speech directly after. This year, it will be delivered by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-Ark.). 

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) was 2013’s speaker for the GOP, and delivered a truly memorable response — and not in a good way. 

The freshman senator made headlines after he repeatedly touched his lips, gasping for water, and awkwardly sipped from a comically small bottle mid-speech. 

The water gaffe didn’t help what was received as a mediocre and poorly-delivered speech, but it didn’t spoil Rubio’s political career. He went on to run an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2016 and get re-elected on a wide margin in 2022.

Rubio has repeatedly embraced the water gaffe as self-deprecating humor. His PAC used it to fundraise in the days after the speech in 2013, and he’s joked to future State of the Union response speakers and even former President Trump to avoid his water mistakes. 

2010: Alito shrugs off Obama

Supreme Court justices generally limit their opinions to their official rulings. But that wasn’t the case with Justice Samuel Alito in 2010, after President Obama criticized the court’s recent decision in Citizens United v. FEC. The ruling found that political contributions equated free speech, and opened the floodgates for corporate money to fund American elections.

During Obama’s remarks denouncing the ruling, Alito repeatedly shook his head and mouthed “not true.” It was a surprising move from the usually-silent Supreme Court. Both Obama’s criticism and Alito’s reaction received mixed responses from both sides of the aisle.

2009: Joe Wilson to Obama: ‘You lie!’

One infamous interruption of a Presidential speech wasn’t at a State of the Union address at all, but during President Obama’s first address to a joint congress. The speeches serve the same purpose as a State of the Union address, and marks the president’s first speech to congress in their term. 

While selling a healthcare reform bill that, after months of changes, became the Affordable Care Act, Obama noted that undocumented immigrants would not have access to healthcare under the plan. But Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) thought it was doubtful Obama would follow through with  that promise, and yelled out, “you lie!”

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced a new bill Thursday that would prevent the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) from banning gas stoves. 

The Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act comes on the heels of national debate over gas stoves after a CPSC commissioner raising the prospect of a ban on the appliances, citing studies that show gas stoves reduce air quality in homes and can lead to an increased risk of asthma in children in some cases. 

The CPSC has not considered any official recommendations to ban or limit the sale of gas stoves. 

“I’ll tell you one thing, they’re not taking my gas stove out,” Manchin said at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Thursday. “My wife and I would both be upset.” 

That commissioner’s statements sparked online outrage from conservatives, with viral tweets of people leaving on their gas stoves and segments featured on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. 

Manchin announced the new bill in the committee meeting Thursday, and found support from committee ranking member John Barrasso (R-Wyo.).

“What has reached a boiling point is anger against the Biden administration’s insanity of proposing to ban gas stoves. It’s astonishing,” Barrasso said.

David Turk, the deputy Energy secretary, reiterated to the committee that neither the department nor the Biden administration has any intention of banning gas stoves. The White House made similar statements last month.

The debate reignited last week when the Energy Department introduced new efficiency standards for household appliances, but Turk said every major manufacturer already has appliances that meet those standards and that it would not result in a ban or limit on gas stoves.

Still, Cruz said in a statement that the bill was a necessary guard against “radical environmentalists.”

“Make no mistake, radical environmentalists want to stop Americans from using natural gas,” he said. “The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s proposed ban on gas stoves is the latest egregious scaremongering by the Far Left and their Biden administration allies.”

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced a new bill Thursday that would prevent the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) from banning gas stoves. 

The Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act comes on the heels of national debate over gas stoves after a CPSC commissioner raising the prospect of a ban on the appliances, citing studies that show gas stoves reduce air quality in homes and can lead to an increased risk of asthma in children in some cases. 

The CPSC has not considered any official recommendations to ban or limit the sale of gas stoves. 

“I’ll tell you one thing, they’re not taking my gas stove out,” Manchin said at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Thursday. “My wife and I would both be upset.” 

That commissioner’s statements sparked online outrage from conservatives, with viral tweets of people leaving on their gas stoves and segments featured on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. 

Manchin announced the new bill in the committee meeting Thursday, and found support from committee ranking member John Barrasso (R-Wyo.).

“What has reached a boiling point is anger against the Biden administration’s insanity of proposing to ban gas stoves. It’s astonishing,” Barrasso said.

David Turk, the deputy Energy secretary, reiterated to the committee that neither the department nor the Biden administration has any intention of banning gas stoves. The White House made similar statements last month.

The debate reignited last week when the Energy Department introduced new efficiency standards for household appliances, but Turk said every major manufacturer already has appliances that meet those standards and that it would not result in a ban or limit on gas stoves.

Still, Cruz said in a statement that the bill was a necessary guard against “radical environmentalists.”

“Make no mistake, radical environmentalists want to stop Americans from using natural gas,” he said. “The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s proposed ban on gas stoves is the latest egregious scaremongering by the Far Left and their Biden administration allies.”

House Republicans took aim at the country’s bedrock environmental policy in their first meeting in charge of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday, painting a bleak picture of the energy sector under President Biden and pushing for sweeping action to boost gas production. 

“We need to be doing more to secure and unleash American energy,” Chairwoman Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said during the six-hour hearing.  

Republicans pushed for federal agencies to simplify the permitting and assessment process that they blame for curbing growth of the energy industry and infrastructure, with many members backing a rewrite of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which was enacted in 1970.  

Democrats largely spent their time lauding the achievements of the $2.2 trillion Inflation Reduction Act passed last year, which included billions in renewable energy and electric vehicle subsidies as part of the largest climate change investment in U.S. history. 

“Our path to true energy security is not to double down on oil and gas,” Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) said. “Despite the pain of these price fluctuations, Republicans continue to propose the same false solution: more oil and gas.”

Earlier this month, the House passed two bills limiting use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which the Biden administration relied on to help relieve gas price woes last year. Committee ranking member Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) called the two bills “misguided.”

Republican committee members blamed high gas prices over the past year on the Biden administration and derided Democratic efforts to subsidize production of solar and wind generators. Energy experts believe high gas prices are mostly due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and rising global prices, and that the president has little impact on the gas market.

Paul Dabbar, an undersecretary of Energy under former President Trump, said under the previous administration “the U.S. became the undisputed dominant country in energy.”

“But this balanced approach has taken a detour, and we’re back to asking Riyadh, Caracas and Tehran for their help. … As we confront the challenges of the energy market today, we’d do well to remember the ingredients that made us so successful not so long ago,” he said.

The main target of the Republican criticisms was the NEPA, which requires energy projects to produce detailed environmental impact assessments before proceeding with construction. Advocates argue it has prevented projects which would destroy the environment and has mitigated the potential damage of others.

When asked the single best thing Congress could do to help energy expansion, both Dabbar and energy executive Robert McNally pointed to re-writing NEPA. Their sentiment was echoed by multiple Republican members, including Rep. Dan Crenshaw (Texas). 

Crenshaw spoke about the Ten West Transmission Line, a 125-mile high voltage power line between California and Arizona, which began planning in 2016 and is scheduled to go online in 2025, a timeline he blamed on NEPA regulations. 

“That’s nearly 10 years start-to-finish, nearly 4 years of which was just to get the environmental impact statement approved,” Crenshaw said. “We put a man on the moon in less time than that! Does that seem like a healthy permitting and regulatory system to anyone? Surely not.”

He also questioned the necessity of ecological permits that protect certain plants and wildlife.

“In Nevada, we couldn’t build a lithium mine because of some useless plant called Tiehm’s buckwheat. I’m not kidding, look it up,” he said. “In Oregon, we can’t mine lithium because of a sage grouse, which is basically just a fancy version of a chicken.”

Tiehm’s buckwheat was declared an endangered species in December. Environmentalists believe the two lithium mines could make both the buckwheat and sage grouse species extinct. The Nevada project will still go forward after the Department of Energy offered a $700 million loan for the mine.

Republicans found some support among Democrats in their complaints about NEPA, with  Peters agreeing that it was often putting the brakes on expanding electricity infrastructure. 

“Over the last decade, we’ve built just 1800 miles of [high voltage transmission lines] because each one takes more than 10 years to complete, and seven of those ten years are just for planning and permitting,” Peters said. 

“We have NEPA to thank for a great deal of environmental preservation, but its implementation is inevitably slow.”

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) led a push for infrastructure permitting reform in the Senate during negotiations over the Inflation Reduction Act last year, which he is still attempting to get passed in the new Congress.

Democrats on Tuesday also blasted the oil industry’s record profits this year given the high prices of oil and gas worldwide. ExxonMobil made $55.7 billion in 2022, a record for the company.

“The profits of oil and gas companies, to be very candid, drive me insane,” Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) said. 

“Some of our colleagues on the other side suggest that this is a necessary evil … but then you see how they’re using these profits, and we see that Chevron announced that it would be spending $75 billion to buy back its own shares and only investing $12 billion into its business to increase production.”

A representative from the White House echoed Sarbanes’s sentiment Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s outrageous that Exxon has posted a new record for Western oil company profits after the American people were forced to pay such high prices at the pump amidst Putin’s invasion,” the White House said in a statement. 

“It’s even more baffling that House Republicans today chose to continue echoing the talking points of the Big Oil lobby.”

China is warning House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) against visiting Taiwan after reports that the GOP leader is planning a trip later this year to the island, which is a flashpoint in the rising tensions between Beijing and Washington.

“We urge certain individuals in the U.S. to earnestly abide by the one-China principle,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said in a statement Monday, indirectly referring to McCarthy’s plans, adding China is “opposed to any official interactions with Taiwan.”

The Chinese response follows a Punchbowl News report last week that the Pentagon is in the “early stages” of planning McCarthy’s visit to Taiwan, possibly this spring.

McCarthy’s visit would mirror one by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) last year which also drew ire from the Chinese government and further strained tensions with the U.S.

It also comes as House Republicans stake out a hard-line position on China, with the new Congress establishing a select committee on U.S.–China economic relations as one of its first actions earlier this month.

“China is the No. 1 country when it comes to intellectual property theft,” McCarthy said on “Meet the Press” in November. “All the other nations combined, China steals more than them. We will put a stop to this and no longer allow the administration to sit back and let China do what they are doing to America.”

The committee will “expose and fight against the Chinese Communist Party’s cyber, trade, and military threats against America,” McCarthy tweeted last month.

China claims Taiwan — a self-governing democratic island nation off the coast of China — has an illegitimate government and that China has rightful control over the island. As Chinese President Xi Jinping expands his power within China, fears are rising that he will seek to exert control over Taiwan in the coming years, through economic, military or other means. 

While the U.S. officially adheres to the “one China” policy, which does not recognize the sovereignty of Taiwan, the U.S. has consistently supported Taiwan both economically and militarily as a democratic bulwark against the authoritarian Chinese government.

President Biden has repeatedly suggested that he would send U.S. troops to help repel a potential Chinese invasion of the island. 

Upon Pelosi’s visit to the Taiwanese capital Taipei last August, which came with broad bipartisan support, China responded with a massive show of force, including air and sea drills and a potential cyberattack on the Taiwanese government.

Chinese officials called Pelosi’s visit “like playing with fire,” at the time.

Those drills have only increased in recent months, including a record number of Chinese aircraft drawing near Taiwanese airspace in December. That may have been in response to the Biden administration’s announcement of an additional $425 million in arms for Taiwanese defense, made weeks before. That sale has received bipartisan praise, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are pushing the Biden administration for more Taiwan aid.

A bipartisan working group is preparing a renewed push for paid family leave, despite facing stiff political headwinds with a new GOP majority in the House. 

The Bipartisan Paid Family Leave Working Group  — made up of six congresspeople, half Republicans and half Democrats — will begin meeting next month, Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) said at a Washington Post Live event on Wednesday. 

“It’s not going to be fast, and that’s on purpose,” Bice said. “Sometimes the best ideas are slow, methodical, thoughtful initiatives and that’s what we intend to do over the next months or even a year.”

The first meeting will be on Feb. 7, the same day as Biden’s State of the Union address. Bice said the group is starting with a “blank slate,” and Houlahan said that “nothing is off the table” for consideration. 

“Having women in the workforce is a benefit,” Bice said. “Finding solutions to the paid family leave issue is something that’s going to be good for all families across the board.”

About a quarter of Americans have access to paid family leave through their employers, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data. Only 6 percent of workers in the bottom 10 percent of wages had access to leave, compared to 43 percent of workers in the top 10 percent of wages, the BLS found.

Other group members include Reps. Colin Allred (D-Texas), Julia Letlow (R-La.), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) and Haley Stevens (D-Mich.).

One likely point of contention is how any paid leave plan would be funded and delivered. While Republicans tend to propose tax-based benefits, Democrats have preferred direct government assistance in previous proposals. 

However, both Bice and Houlahan said they are open to all options, including those more generally favored by the other party.

Houlahan highlighted legislation she worked on which provided 12 weeks of paid parental leave for federal employees and military service members — fathers, mothers and other caregivers — as an example of incremental progress on the issue. 

“This is not just an issue for women in the workplace, this is an issue for families,” she said. “We’re not just talking about the woman in the relationship, we’re also talking about every caregiver.”

Bice and Houlahan teased the working group in a column in The Hill last month.

“In the coming months, we plan to study options for making working and caregiving more compatible,” they said. “We will also study the effects of paid family leave on maternal health, infant development, and family connectivity. We will learn from state leave programs that have been successful for businesses and for the financial security of working caregivers.”

Paid family leave was originally included as part of “President Biden’s Build Back Better plan last year, however, a standoff with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WVa.) resulted in the leave provisions being scrapped. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 already provides unpaid family leave for workers, and Bice and Houlahan want to build on that legacy 30 years after its passing.

“There is no time better than now, it should have been done years ago,” Bice said. “Our objective is to bring all sides together, not just in a bipartisan fashion like we’re doing, but also engaging with the Senate … This presents a great opportunity for us now.”

A majority of Americans still support sending military aid to Ukraine, but that majority is thinning, according to new polling from global research firm Ipsos. 

54 percent of Americans support sending weapons to Ukraine, down from 59 percent last spring, according to the new survey. 

That rate is still higher than the average opinion of Western countries in the poll — members of the European Union, NATO and Australia — which stayed the same at 48 percent since the beginning of the war. 

The Ipsos poll surveyed 19,000 people from 23 countries around the world in late November and early December last year.

Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova spoke at the Army and Navy Club on Tuesday to discuss the poll and international support for Ukraine’s war effort.

“This is an existential war not only for Ukraine,” Markarova said. “We have to actually not think about the next election … but think in terms of how to avoid a catastrophe.”

Though the U.S. and E.U. have committed billions worth of weapons to Ukraine since the war began 11 months ago, Kyiv has kept up pressure for even heavier weapons, particularly as it braces for a renewed Russian offensive in the coming months. 

Ukraine’s demands for heavy tanks have caused tension among its Western allies in recent weeks; however, a standoff between the U.S. and Germany appears to be nearly resolved, with reports Tuesday that both countries are preparing to commit tanks. 

“We’re working with our partners here on all [military] capabilities,” Markarova said. “So whatever our partners are able to provide us that can be scalable, that we can use effectively on the battlefield, we are grateful.”

Earlier this month, the Biden administration announced nearly $4 billion in military aid for the conflict, the latest in a series of billion-dollar packages that it says proves its commitment to support Ukraine until the war is won. 

However, the polling shows that some Ukraine fatigue is being felt in America and other allied countries. 

Support for Ukrainian refugees has slid on average globally. While most people still support helping refugees — 66 percent of respondents globally and in the U.S. — those rates have fallen by 7 and 6 percent, respectively, in the last year.

“In the U.S., there is tepid support for the status quo,” said Clifford Young, president of U.S. public affairs at Ipsos. “That status quo is the United States helping Ukraine economically and with military material, but not with boots on the ground.”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is also becoming increasingly partisan. House Republicans have cast doubts on the future of U.S. support for Ukraine, especially economic and humanitarian aid. Polling appears to show that that sentiment is felt among some Republican voters as well.

“There is attenuation of support … especially among Republicans,” Young said.

Global inflation and economic uncertainty is also driving skepticism about continued support for Ukraine, the polling found. A majority of respondents globally agreed that, “Given the current economic crisis, [their country] cannot afford to lend financial support to Ukraine,” including 59 percent of Americans. 

However, oil and gas sanctions against Russia from European countries remain popular despite their impact on rising heating gas prices this winter. 

Non-economic sanctions are also popular. Two-thirds of global respondents said that Russian athletes should continue to be barred from international competition, with 76 percent of Americans agreeing.

Support for Ukraine militarily and economically is strongest in the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Poland, and weakest in Hungary, India and Thailand, the poll found. Overall, support was weaker in Latin America and Asia than in North America and Europe.