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Multiple Republican senators broke with President Trump on Wednesday after he announced on Twitter than transgender troops would be banned from serving in the military. In separate statements, GOP Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Richard Shelby (Ala.), and Orrin Hatch (Utah) all criticized Trump for his decision that Obama-era rules allowing transgender troops to serve would be reversed. McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, ripped the call and said that Trump shouldn't be making policy announcements via tweet. “The President’s tweet this morning regarding transgender Americans in the military is yet another example of why major...

Congress is moving toward passing a short-term spending bill to avoid a government shutdown, but some lawmakers are warning it could be the first in a series of stopgap funding measures over the next year to avoid a fight over President Trump’s border wall. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the top appropriator in the Senate, said it’s possible Congress will spend the next fiscal year passing several stopgap bills, known as continuing resolutions (CRs). "I don't know if we'll end up in a shutdown, but we could end up with continuous CRs," he said. "That could be the endgame." Lawmakers are...

As you read last evening, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi abandoned her foolish fight over the border crisis relief bill, "reluctantly" agreeing to approve the Senate's bipartisan legislation.  House Democrats had been playing games over President Trump's (New York Times-endorsed) $4.5 billion supplemental budget request for humanitarian aid and logistical support at the Souther border, stripping it out of previous legislation before finally passing a partisan and landmine-filled version of their own earlier this week.  The upper chamber, meanwhile, hammered out a reasonable compromise, which was supported by the president.  Mitch McConnell put the House-passed bill on the floor for an...

The top two appropriators in the US Senate have reached an agreement on a $4.6 billion funding package to address the influx of migrants at the southern border that has been deemed a "humanitarian crisis," according to three people familiar with the deal. The agreement between Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the panel, includes $2.88 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services to be directed to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which administration officials warned lawmakers would run out of money by the end of...

After a revised budget proposal from the Whitehouse added another $1.6billion mostly to pay to stop more SLS delays NASA announced that their plan to return to the Moon in 5 years would be named 'Artemis'. Which is of course the best name for any lunar program, so good in fact that NASA aren't the first people to use the name of this goddess for a space program. So let's have a quick tour of other projects with the same name. Realistically, the budget may not happen, for obvious political reasons, but I hope the name stays.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) wouldn’t speak about the subpoena itself, but defended the character of Burr in leading the Intelligence Committee. “I support his leadership and think that he has done a good job,” she said, the Washington Post reported. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), another member of the committee, also defended Burr’s leadership, and questioned whether some of his colleagues understood that their work was different from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that concluded earlier this year. “Mueller is a criminal justice investigation. Ours is an intelligence investigation about the Russia threat and about the way our agencies performed,” Rubio...

Now, government officials are dialing up the pressure on Boeing to speed up development of the long-overdue rocket, called Space Launch System or SLS. The space agency contracted Boeing in 2012 to build SLS's core components. Bridenstine's remarks came after US Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday at a National Space Council meeting in Alabama that news of more hangups with the SLS program were a "great disappointment," and the current timeline is "just not good enough." Boeing began building SLS's core stage, the backbone of the rocket, about seven years ago. Officials said at the time that SLS would...

BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – Gov. Ron DeSantis sent a letter to President Donald Trump on Tuesday requesting that the United States Space Command (USSPACECOM) be headquartered in Florida. “Today, I submitted a request to President Trump formally asking him to headquarter United States Space Command in Florida,” said Governor DeSantis. “As the world’s premier gateway to space, Florida has been the departure point for more cargo and humans to space than any other place in the world, so I believe our state is the logical choice to base this new command. In addition to my request to the President, I...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the soul of the Democrat Party. By definition, she is crazy. Take her very seriously. Jeff Bezos did not. He had, after all, bought off the equally crazy mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, to get the city to pay for a second Amazon "headquarters" there. Now the deal has fallen through. Fingers are pointed by the political and media class, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is spiking the ball. She should. She killed it. New York City is a socialist mess with an underbrush of rules and taxes so thick that no one can navigate it without...

NASA wants ideas for moon landers, space tugs and refueling ships. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine details the agency's plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2028 to space industry teams. (Image: © Joel Kowsky/NASA) =================================================================== WASHINGTON — NASA really wants to land astronauts on the moon in 2028. But to do that, the agency is looking to commercial space companies to build the landers, space tugs and refueling stations required to make a moon exploration effort that lasts. "This time, when we go to the moon we're going to stay," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told a roomful of space...

GOP senators are nudging President Donald Trump to give up hopes for a $5 billion down-payment on a border wall in 2019. “My goal is to get the [budget] bills passed” in December, said Sen. Richard Shelby, the GOP chairman of the Senate’s appropriations committee, said Nov. 15 after meeting Trump for a budget discussion. His committee has penciled in $1.6 billion for the wall in 2019, compared to the $5 billion in the draft House bill. “If it’s ‘Wall or nothing!’ they’re going to get nothing,” the top Democrat on the Senate’s appropriations bill, Sen. Patrick Leahy, said November...

When Elon Musk and his team at SpaceX were looking to make their Falcon 9 rocket even more powerful, they came up with a creative idea — keep the propellant at super-cold temperatures to shrink its size, allowing them to pack more of it into the tanks. But the approach comes with a major risk, according to some safety experts. At those extreme temperatures, the propellant would need to be loaded just before takeoff — while astronauts are aboard. An accident, or a spark, during this maneuver, known as “load-and-go,” could set off an explosion. The proposal has raised alarms...

Boeing and NASA are working together in order to build the Space Launch System (SLS). The rocket is believed to be capable of transporting humans and cargo into deep space. According to reports, the rocket is estimated to be the most powerful rocket system ever built. Boeing also set up a promotional website for the rocket in which it calls out Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, calling the Falcon Heavy too small for deep space exploration. “The Falcon Heavy launch turned heads in February, but SpaceX’s rocket is a smaller type of rocket that can’t meet NASA’s deep-space needs,” the statement...

For years now, the Pentagon has been in the market for new heavy-lift launch vehicles – rockets that can lift between 44,000 to 110,000 pounds. Currently, the only market options available are either too costly or too reliant on Russian-made parts.To that end, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced that he will begin devoting most of his company’s efforts on developing the “BFR” – short for Big F-ing Rocket – which will allegedly be so huge and powerful that it will make the company’s previous rocket lines outdated in just a few short years. Musk stated at the South by Southwest...

Jeff Bezos just donated $33 million to 'dreamers' Jeff Bezos just donated $33 million to 'dreamers' 41 Mins Ago | 00:41 Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos donated $33 million in college scholarships for "dreamers" — childhood undocumented immigrants granted stay in the country under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. TheDream.Us, a nonprofit working toward college access for undocumented immigrants, said the donation from Bezos and his wife MacKenzie is the largest in the organization's history and will fund 1,000 scholarships. "My dad came to the U.S. when he was 16 as part of Operation Pedro Pan," Bezos said...

An independent safety panel recommended NASA not certify SpaceX's commercial crew system until the agency better understands the behavior of pressure vessels linked to a Falcon 9 failure in 2016. That recommendation was one of the stronger items in the annual report of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) released by NASA Jan. 11, which found that NASA was generally managing risk well on its various programs. The report devoted a section to the composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) used to store helium in the second stage propellant tanks of the Falcon 9. The investigation into the September 2016 pad explosion that destroyed...

GOP Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, who chairs the Rules Committee, said further particulars cannot be made public, in order to respect the confidentiality afforded to victims. “While the Rules Committee has been eager to provide this information in a transparent manner, it has been our priority to protect the victims involved in these settlements from further harm,” the senator said in a statement attending the report.

The battle of the billionaires between Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson looks set to finally blast its first passengers into space next year. Speaking at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in Colorado, Jeff Ashby, a former NASA astronaut who is director of safety and mission assurance for Jeff Bezos' space firm Blue Origin, said the firm is now 'a year out' from human flights. It comes as Richard Branson claimed in October he will travel to space on his Virgin Galactic craft within six months. Elon Musk is also expected to soon reveal the launch schedule for a...

The company's ultimate goal is to become part of the space tourism industry, which most science fiction from the last century assumed we'd have going by now. Blue Origin isn't planning to actually send tourists into space until 2019, but the fact that Mannequin Skywalker returned safely is a great sign. Had it returned in multiple pieces, that 2019 window probably wouldn't be doable anymore. The enormous windows on the capsule are a reflection of Blue Origin's rather unique goal. Unlike SpaceX, which wants to send astronauts to Mars for a possible colony, or Boeing, which is mostly content helping NASA on their rockets, Blue Origin is interested in sending civilians...

Credit six-term Republican Sen. Richard Shelby for Democrat Doug Jones’ shocking win in Alabama, senators from both parties said Wednesday. Shelby, Alabama’s senior senator and the state’s most influential official, publicly opposed GOP nominee Roy Moore and declared before the election that ”the state of Alabama deserves better” than a former judge accused of sexual contact with teenage girls decades ago. A former Democrat, Shelby, 83, announced weeks before the election that he had already cast an absentee ballot for another, unspecified Republican, even as President Donald Trump and other prominent state Republicans stood up for Moore. “I give the...