Conrad

Passes via voice vote

Bill fails.

Bill passes

FEDERAL JUDGE STRIKES DOWN OBAMACARE A federal judge in Texas on Friday ruled that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional now that Congress has eliminated a penalty for those who forgo health insurance, casting doubt on the embattled health law and coverage for millions of Americans. Republicans eliminated the ACA’s penalty for not having coverage in the Trump Tax cut. Mandatory health coverage was an integral part of the original law, intending to draw healthier people into the insurance pool to help offset the costs of sicker enrollees. The Supreme Court has upheld the ACA as constitutional based on Congress’s taxing power. The ruling, while invalidating the law, didn’t immediately block enforcement of the ACA. An estimated 20 million people gained coverage, mostly through Medicaid expansion and the ACA exchanges, since October 2013, according to a 2016 report from the Department of Health and Human Services.

SKY HIGHWAY TO BE BUILT IN SKIES OVER FLORIDA A proposed change to the flight paths above South Florida could turn the local airspace into a sky-high Interstate 95, according to critics of the Federal Aviation Administration’s proposed plan to consolidate current flight paths into narrower and more concentrated bands of traffic. The Miami International Airport Noise Abatement Advisory Committee, who heard the FAA’s pitch for its Next Generation Air Transportation System during a recent meeting, expressed concerns about the added noise pollution that more concentrated flight paths could pose to communities not accustomed to such intense air traffic. Characterized by the agency as an “ongoing transformation of the air traffic control technology and procedures in the United States,” NextGen largely hinges on shifting the National Airspace System from ground-based radar to satellite navigation, and modifying flight paths to make them safer and more fuel efficient. The federal agency said NextGen will save $15.5 million in fuel and 46.1 thousand metric tons in carbon a year. Concerned residents in the area could follow the lead set by those from communities in Arizona, Maryland and California where NextGen flight paths have been challenged. In Maryland, the state’s attorney general filed a petition in June with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit challenging new flight paths at Reagan National Airport.

Graham - Nay Tillis - Nay

Graham - Aye Tillis - Nay

Veto override fails

This is a good speech but it fails to make mention of the aid package which was given by the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation. Many of the listeners are wondering if you're aware of it. Certainly fires up the anti-tariff sentiment though.

Congratulations.

Tillis - Nay Graham - Nay

SUPREME COURT TO CLOSE DOUBLE JEOPARDY LOOPHOLE When motorist Rodney King received more than 50 baton-strikes from police on a Los Angeles roadside in 1991, state charges against the four officers failed to produce convictions. But after another round of prosecution in which the federal government charged the officers with violating Mr King’s civil rights, two of the attackers were sentenced to 30 months in prison. Ordinarily, the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition on double jeopardy—“nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb"—shields individuals from being prosecuted (and punished) repeatedly for the same crime. Since 1850, though, the Supreme Court’s “separate sovereigns” doctrine has permitted such dual prosecutions on the theory that each level of government gets to enforce its own laws. The Supreme Court will soon hear a case which will put this doctrine to the test. In 2015, when Terance Martez Gamble was pulled over in Mobile, Alabama for having a broken headlight, the officer smelled marijuana and found a gun in his car. As a convicted felon, Mr Gamble was barred from possessing a firearm. Alabama prosecuted Mr Gamble for this crime and he spent one year in prison, but the federal government soon piled in, charging him for the same offence under federal law and putting Mr Gamble behind bars until February 16th 2020. Mr Gamble wagered his freedom on a claim that the “separate sovereigns” principle entrenched though it may be violates the constitution. The federal district court refused to throw out the federal conviction, noting that only the Supreme Court is empowered to find dual prosecutions inconsistent with the double-jeopardy clause. It will take five justices to overturn the 168-year-old precedent that gives states and the federal government licence to prosecute individuals separately for the same infraction.

Recognised