In the News

After a Capitol Hill hearing with more than a few minutes devoted to a back-and-forth about whether a California congresswoman was asking about foreclosed properties or Oreo cookies, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson lobbed a tweet at a Houston congresswoman and claimed undocumented immigrants were keeping Houstonians from public housing.

"There are more than 100,000 American citizens waiting for public housing in Houston, TX," Carson tweeted Wednesday night at Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat representing Texas' 29th district. "Do you think they should continue to wait while people here illegally are taking their space?"

The Equality Act passed the U.S. House on Friday, with eight Republicans breaking rank to vote with Democratic colleagues for legislation supporters say will add needed federal protections in housing, employment and health care to millions of LGBTQ Americans.

However, the legislation is not expected to be brought up for a vote in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, has referred to the upper chamber as a graveyard for progressive measures.

No Democrats voted against the measure, though three Democratic presidential candidates — Reps. Eric Swalwell, Tim Ryan and Seth Moulton — did not cast votes for or against the bill.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that impeaching President Trump or using Congress‘ inherent contempt powers against his top aides is still "on the table" as Democrats took stock of where their efforts to investigate the president stand.

Mrs. Pelosi, in several appearances, urged patience, saying it was too early to know which direction to go.

"It takes time," she said at an event at Georgetown University Law Center. "We can't have the instant gratification that people want right now."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday held a marathon reading of the redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's 448-page assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The reading began at noon EDT (1700 GMT) and was expected to take 12 to 14 hours. For those who could not make it to the Capitol hearing room to listen, it was being broadcast on C-SPAN and lawmakers plan to release a podcast version.Representative Mary Gay Scanlon, one of the top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, started the reading and nearly two dozen of her colleagues were to take part.

"There [are] a lot of average people who have not seen the Mueller report," Representative Sylvia Garcia, another Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said ahead of Scanlon kicking off the reading.

More than 25 House Democrats, including the chairman and vice chairwoman of the House Judiciary Committee, began a nonstop marathon reading of the entire redacted Mueller report Thursday afternoon.

The reading of all 448 pages of the special counsel's report, taking place in the House Rules Committee room in the U.S. Capitol, is expected to last between 12 to 14 hours, concluding in the early hours of Friday morning.

Earlier this week, Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) told The Washington Post: "We've been saying for weeks that if you think there was no obstruction and no collusion, you haven't read the Mueller report. So, the ongoing quest has been how do we get that story out there while we are waiting for the witnesses to come in."

Three members of Congress from Texas are part of a group of 23 U.S. Representatives who oppose a rule proposed by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson to deny federal housing assistance to households with mixed immigration status.

Mixed immigration status households are those where one or more members are not U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents, refugees or asylum beneficiaries. The rule would affect people living in public housing, as well as those who get assistance for rent or housing vouchers.

The Texas representatives who oppose the new rule are Al Green, Sylvia Garcia and Vicente Gonzalez. All of them are Democrats.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL-26), member of the Judiciary Committee and the first South American-born member of Congress, along with U.S. Rep. Donna Shalala (FL-27), held a press conference with Gustavo Marcano, minister counselor of the Venezuelan government in the United States, and South Florida elected officials, calling on the Trump Administration to swiftly grant temporary protected status (TPS) to Venezuelans currently residing in the United States as well as place a moratorium on deporting non-criminal Venezuelans.

A top Democratic money man is putting his muscle behind boosting Latino voter turnout for the 2020 presidential election.

Henry Muñoz III, the former finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), is undertaking a new effort to raise money from Latino donors and to mobilize Latino voters, as party leaders seek to maximize turnout from a key demographic whose support for Democrats has been softer than expected in recent election cycles.

"It's not going to be good enough this time around to wait until a few months before the election to reach out to the Latino community," Muñoz told The Hill.

"We have an incredible opportunity to grow our support, but we can't treat it like just a fundraising or get-out-the-vote opportunity, we need programs that make us an integral part of the everyday lives of Latinos."