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NASA has suspended work on SpaceX’s new $2.9 billion lunar lander contract while a federal watchdog agency adjudicates two protests over the award, the agency said Friday... Elon Musk's SpaceX was picked by NASA on April 16th to build the agency's first human lunar lander since the Apollo program, as the agency opted to rely on just one company for a high-profile contract that many in the space industry expected to go to two companies... SpaceX’s private Starship development will likely continue.A digital illustration of SpaceX's Starship lunar lander sitting on the Moon's surface, as proposed to NASA under its...

Bernie Sanders wants to stop NASA funding for Blue Origin.Just recently we learned about the Blue Origin lawsuit for NASA and wanted NASA to stop supporting SpaceX and finance itself, but yesterday US congressman Bernie Sanders who is known as the person who hates billionaires has expressed his opinion. wish NASA to terminate the contract with Blue Origin, that would mean the race to the moon as the only SpaceX, Bernie Sanders implicitly support SpaceX and Elon Musk true or not?However, the way Cantwell's amendment was written would likely have slowed down NASA and its return to the Moon. Were...

Natalie Andrews @nataliewsj 15m BREAKING: A staff member in Sen. Maria Cantwell’s Washington, D.C. office tested positive for coronavirus, the first positive test tied to Congress. The individual was symptomatic, Cantwell requested tests for other staffers

The Senate is set to escalate a long simmering fight over President Trump's judicial nominees. Republicans are poised to confirm a pick for the influential circuit courts next week without the support of either of the nominee's home-state senators—a first for the Trump era. Eric Miller is the first appeals judge to get a vote on the Senate floor this year, and the 31st of Trump’s presidency. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) set up an initial vote on his Ninth Circuit nomination for Monday evening. “The judicial train is running in the committee and it will soon hit the floor,”...

A prominent donor to the Democratic Party says she is considering withdrawing support for senators who urged their colleague Al Franken to resign after he was accused of sexual misconduct. The donor, Susie Tompkins Buell, has been one of the Democratic Party’s most generous supporters for decades. In particular, she has been a champion of female politicians, including Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Maria Cantwell of Washington. Last month, those senators were among the dozens who called for Franken to resign from the Senate after at least six women accused him of sexual harassment...

The needle on my schadenfreude gauge just moved into the red zone, where my soul may be in peril. After all, it is indecent to take pleasure in the suffering of another being, and I have no excuse. But really, am I supposed to pretend this misspelling by Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) on a giant poster on the hallowed Senate floor doesn't deserve mockery? In the interest of fairness, here is the entire context on video. It is even better because she doesn't notice the misspelling as her aide switches the cardboard posters on the easel, and she drones on,...

Senate Democrats have unveiled legislation to alleviate Puerto Rico’s debt woes, urging that the island be allowed to declare bankruptcy on all of its debt. The bill, released Monday, would allow the U.S. territory to restructure its $72 billion in outstanding debt and create a fiscal oversight board for the island. “For the 3.5 million American citizens living on the island of Puerto Rico, time is running short,” said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), one of the bill’s sponsors. “Congress has to act immediately to fix the federal funding shortfalls and give Puerto Rico the tools it needs to fully restructure...

The reporter who was interviewing President Obama when he famously swatted a fly is suddenly the buzz of DC, thanks to a New York Post gossip item about his marriage. According to unnamed "spies" for Page Six, CNBC Washington correspondent and New York Times writer John Harwood has split from his wife Frankie Blackburn, and it's all because of an alleged romance with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) The Post's March 5 column quotes anonymous "well placed sources" who claim Harwood managed to keep the sordid details out of one DC paper "by sobbing to a reporter until he agreed to...

1 on the Fence Senator Cantwell (D-WA) 41 stand with Iran 58 stand with America

5 on the Fence Senator Blumenthal (D - CT) Senator Manchin (D - WV) Senator Peters (D - MI) Senator Wyden (D - OR) Senator Cantwell (D - WA) 38 stand with Iran 57 stand with America

In the final hours before the House votes on a new leadership-concocted scheme to sneak Obamatrade past the American public, it’s been revealed that pro-Obamatrade forces are now aiming to sneak a renewal of the highly controversial Export Import Bank into the deal to secure Senate passage later if the House passes it on Thursday. “I and all the other members there are looking for a guarantee … for a deal to be good it’s got to have enforcement, TAA, I think it’s got to have Ex-Im reauthorization,” Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat who’s angling for this in the deal,...

Sen. Maria Cantwell engaged in a very public maneuver on the Senate floor Thursday, withholding her vote in favor of the big trade bill until she got assurances that there would be a vote on renewing the Export-Import Bank. Afterward, explaining the fervency of her support for the Ex-Im Bank, she told such a howler that even the Capitol press corps, not empowered to actually call a senator a liar, made sure to offer readers the opportunity to reach that conclusion on their own. The Democrat from Washington state, where Boeing is the single largest employer, said her support for...

Half of all the Democratic women in the U.S. Senate are featured in a new video voicing their support for Kentucky Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes. The video, released Thursday after first being shown at Grimes’ event with Hillary Clinton Wednesday evening, shows six women in the U.S. Senate saying “Shatter the glass. Break the ceiling. It’s time for Alison!” Of the twelve women in the Senate Democratic caucus, U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), Patty Murray (D-WA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) are shown...

ASHBURN, Virginia - The latest back-and-forth over the Washington Redskins name includes a stern letter from two lawmakers and a new "community voices" campaign from the team. A letter sent Monday from Congressman Tom Cole [R-Oklahoma] and Senator Maria Cantwell [D-Washington], tells NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell that the league is on "the wrong side of history" and mentions the league's tax-exempt status. Cantwell chairs the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Cole is a member of the Chickasaw Nation. The lawmakers specifically objected to Goodell's Super Bowl week news conference, when he said the Redskins name has been "presented in a...

Senator Michael Baumgartner will suspend his campaign for US Senate for two days this week to travel to Georgia to advise an army battalion soon to deploy to Afghanistan. Baumgartner will lecture the 63rd Signals Battalion at Fort Gordon on counterinsurgency and the economy of Afghanistan. He will return to the campaign trail on Friday, June 8. “It’s a tremendous honor to be asked once again to help prepare our nation’s finest for the difficult challenges of fighting the war in Afghanistan,” Baumgartner said. Baumgartner, who holds a Masters degree in International Development from Harvard, served as an economics officer...

1. Ben Nelson, D-Neb. 2. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. 3. Jon Tester, D-Mont. 4. Scott Brown, R-Mass. 5. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah 6. Dick Lugar, R-Ind. 7. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio 8. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. 9. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine 10. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

Today the Senate Finance Committee voted 12-11 to approve another amendment sponsored by Washington's Maria Cantwell. This one would allow states to use federal money to bargain with private insurers to provide low-cost health care to low-income Americans. That's quite a mouthful, I know. It's also quite an accomplishment. Cantwell's office is calling it a "public plan," and while the senator should be proud of slipping it through Finance, "public plan" is probably going a bit too far. As Ezra Klein writes, Cantwell's amendment.... ...allows states to negotiate with insurers on behalf of people between 133 percent and 200 percent...

Earlier today, the following announcement appeared online at the Whitehouse website "Organizing for America". The link is now dead, but here it is anyway... http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gpfcqt Our representatives are under attack by Washington insiders, insurance companies, and well-financed special interests who don't go a day without spreading lies and stirring up fear. We need to show that we're sick and tired of it, and that we're ready for real change, this year. Please come to the event, and make sure that the most powerful voices in this debate are those calling for real reform. Please try to arrive by noon; space...

An upcoming speech on health care was touted last week by Sen. Maria Cantwell's press office. It was then delayed by a few hours. Then, the speech was deep-sixed as Cantwell flew to Spokane for the weekend. No mention of the speech has come this week, as the Senate wrapped up its work before the August recess. Has Washington's junior senator adopted a long-ago motto of Virginia Sen. Harry Byrd: Silence is golden? Cantwell is a member of the Senate Finance Committee. A bipartisan group of six committee members - not including Cantwell - is trying to hammer out a...

WASHINGTON – A Democratic senator on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee inadvertently explained why her colleagues have no intention of ending the moratorium on offshore oil drilling or increasing the areas open for exploration and production – no matter how popular the idea might be with gas prices soaring. In an interview with Bloomberg TV's "Money and Politics" last night, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., explained Democrats don't want to increase supplies of oil and gasoline because they want to wean Americans off of petroleum products. Asked point-blank if Democrats in the Senate would consider how increasing the supply of...