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On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated that the Department of Transportation has “taken so many steps on rail safety policy” since the East Palestine derailment and is “doing everything we can with the authorities that we already have,” but accidents have gone up despite this because Congress needs to act. Buttigieg said, “For our department, the process mainly has to do with making sure things like this can’t happen again, which is why we’ve taken so many steps on rail safety policy and are pressing Congress to do more with the power that it has.”

The majority of Americans want even higher amounts of food aid for struggling families, according to a new poll from the Save the Children Action Network. The survey, shared exclusively to The Hill, could be a warning sign for conservatives seeking to cut payments under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as part of the discussion on a new farm bill this year. “It’s important to note: If anything, most people would opt to increase benefits. Only 4 percent wanted to decrease them,” said Lori Weigel, who runs the Republican polling firm New Bridge Strategy, one of the firms that...

Manufactured homes have long been a way for lower-income people to become homeowners but now this demographic is also feeling the pressure of rising costs and many fear for their future. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the average national price for a manufactured home rose almost 50 percent over the course of the pandemic, from $82,900 to $123,200.

Over 100 Republicans in the House are vowing in a new letter that they will not vote to increase the debt ceiling — calling the issue a “problem created by Democrat spending.” Citing trillions of dollars of government spending proposed by Democrats, the 103 House Republicans promised not to increase the debt ceiling under any circumstance, according to the letter obtained by Fox News. “Democrats have embarked on a massive and unprecedented deficit spending spree. Without a single Republican vote, they passed a $1.9 trillion ‘Covid relief’ bill in March even though $1 trillion was still unspent from previous bipartisan...

A study published in the Nature science journal found that heavy wildfire smoke could be linked to an increase in COVID-19 cases. Researchers looked at Washoe County in northern Nevada, which saw a simultaneous increase in COVID-19 cases while also being exposed to wildfire smoke last year. “We had a unique situation here in Reno last year where we were exposed to wildfire smoke more often than many other areas, including the Bay Area,” Gai Elhanan, co-lead author of the study, told the Reno Gazette Journal.

Older adults who drink diet soda may experience greater increases in their waist size over a decade than those who do not drink diet soda, according to a new study. Researchers found that the average increase in waist circumference among the people in the study who drank diet soda daily was more than triple that of the people who did not drink diet soda. Among the people who drank diet soda only occasionally, the increase was more than double that of those who did not drink diet soda. "The more people drank diet sodas, the more their waistlines expanded," said...

As the old saying goes, there are two things that are certain in life, death and taxes. Tomorrow night during his 2015 State of the Union speech, President Obama will announce that people paying taxes their entire lives just isn't good enough. The President wants the current 40 percent death tax rate increased to 60 percent. Americans for Tax Reform breaks down the details: 2. Stealth increase in the death tax rate from 40% to nearly 60%. Under current law, when you inherit an asset your basis in the asset is the higher of the fair market value at the...

On this date in 1794, President George Washington signed a measure making the first changes to the American flag, by ordering the stars and stripes to be increased by two each, to symbolize the admissions of Vermont and Kentucky to the Union. The 15-star, 15-stripe flag would remain the standard for the United States for 23 years, until the admission of five more states would bring the next changes to the flag, reverting the number of stripes to a permanent 13 but increasing the stars for each state admitted thereafter.

What this means for a typical family of four $621 billion is a pretty eye-glazing number. Most readers will find it easier to think about how this number translates to a typical American family—the very family candidate Obama promised would see $2,500 in annual savings as far as the eye could see. So I have taken the latest year-by-year projections, divided by the projected population and multiplied the result by 4. Simplistic? Maybe, but so too was the President’s campaign promise. And this approach allows us to see just how badly that promise fell short of the mark. Between 2014...

CNSNews.com) - The Obama administration passed another fiscal milestone this week, according to new data released by the Treasury Department. As of the close of business on Oct. 3, the total national debt was $14,837,099,271,196.71—up about $44.8 billion from Sept. 30. That means that in the less-than-three-years Obama has been in office, the federal debt has increased by $4.212 trillion--more than the total national debt of about $4.1672 trillion accumulated by all 41 U.S. presidents from George Washington through George H.W. Bush combined. This $4.212-trillion increase in the national debt means that during Obama’s term the federal government has already...

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner oversaw the largest increase in the national debt of any Treasury secretary in American history, presiding over a $3.7 trillion increase in the debt. According to data from the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Public Debt, the national debt has increased $3,723,575,990,130.10 from Jan. 26, 2009 until June 30, 2011, Geithner’s entire tenure to date as Treasury secretary. When Geithner took office the total national debt stood at $10.6 trillion. As of June 30, 2011, it had risen to $14.3 trillion.

PARIS (AFP) – Global warming driven by human activity boosted the intensity of rain, snow and consequent flooding in the northern hemisphere over the last half of the 20th century, research released Wednesday has shown. Two studies, both published in Nature, are among the first to draw a straight line between climate change and its impact on potentially deadly and damaging extreme weather events. Australia, Sri Lanka, Brazil and Pakistan have all been recently ravaged by massive flooding, raising questions as to whether global warming was at least partly to blame. Computer models have long predicted that the observed rise...

Three Kurdish resistance fighters were killed over the weekend during clashes with Turkish military forces currently occupying Northern Kurdistan (often referred to as South East Turkey). Two of the rebels were killed near Uludere in Sirnak province, close to the border with Iraqi Kurdistan, when soldiers pursued a group of fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) who had allegedly detonated explosives on a road as a military vehicle passed. The blast had failed to claim any casualties.

WASHINGTON, May 28, 2010 – Afghan soldiers, supported by International Security Assistance Force troops, have completed a clearing operation aimed at disrupting insurgent presence in and around Bala Murghab, north of Heart in Afghanistan’s Badghis province, military officials reported. After several days of fighting, Afghan soldiers and their coalition partners, using close-air support and mortar fire, removed insurgents from the southern edge of Bala Murghab during Operation “Subh Bakhair,” or “Good Morning.” The increased security is allowing Afghan and international forces to distribute food and provide medical assistance to residents, officials said. It's also allowing long-term projects to begin, including...

MIAMI (Reuters) – The 2010 Atlantic hurricane season will produce an above-average eight hurricanes, four of them major, posing a heightened threat to the U.S. coastline, the Colorado State University hurricane forecasting team predicted on Wednesday. In its second forecast in four months for the 2010 season, the leading storm research team founded by hurricane forecast pioneer William Gray said the six-month season beginning on June 1 would likely see 15 named tropical storms. The team forecast a 69 percent chance of at least one major hurricane making landfall on the U.S. coastline in 2010, compared with a long-term average...

"To get all 58 Democrats and two independents on board, Reid, among other things, had to drop a government-run insurance option and a Medicare buy-in and had to increase taxes by $25 billion more than planned, bringing the total tax increases to $518 billion."

But is the 65-year-old Democratic vice presidential nominee-to-be physically fit to be "a heartbeat away"? One medical expert says yes, despite his increased risk for suffering an aneurysm. Biden underwent surgery in 1988 to repair two berry aneurysms on opposite sides of his brain. (A berry aneurysm gets its name because the bulge it creates is so small it looks like a tiny blueberry.)

WASHINGTON, July 28, 2008 – The latest GI Bill considerably improves the opportunity for today’s servicemembers to obtain their education, a senior Defense Department official said. President Bush signed the Post-9/11 Veterans Education Assistance Act of 2008 on June 30. The new law mirrors the tenets of the original GI Bill, which gave returning World War II veterans the opportunity to go to any school they wanted while receiving a living stipend, Bob Clark, the Pentagon’s assistant director of accessions policy, said. “The original GI Bill was said to be one of the most significant social impacts of the...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30, 2007 – The Iraqi security forces are standing up and coalition forces are redeploying, but security challenges remain, U.S. officials in Baghdad said today. Some 2,200 Marines and sailors have left Iraq as part of the regular rotation, and Iraqi soldiers have replaced them. Marine Brig. Gen. Charles M. Gurganus, ground element commander in Iraq’s Anbar province, and coalition spokesman Navy Rear Adm. Mark I. Fox spoke at a Baghdad news conference. The 2,200-member 13th Marine Amphibious Unit has left the country. The unit was part of the surge forces and held the area north of Fallujah...

Coral reveals increased hurricanes may be the norm 18:00 06 June 2007 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic The recent increase in the number of major Atlantic hurricanes may just be a return to the norm after a period of unusually low storm frequency, say researchers. Johan Nyberg of the Geological Survey of Sweden and colleagues used marine sediment cores of coral samples from the northeast Caribbean to build a proxy record of wind shear and sea-surface temperatures since 1730, and from this they estimated hurricane activity since that time. High wind shear – the difference in speed and direction between...