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Updated at 2:57 p.m. ET Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., will preside over former President Donald Trump's trial in the Senate, a Senate source tells NPR. Leahy, 80, is the president pro tempore of the Senate, a constitutional role given to the longest-serving lawmaker in the majority party. The president pro tempore is third in the line of presidential succession, after the vice president and House speaker. "I have presided over hundreds of hours in my time in the Senate," Leahy told reporters. "I don't think anybody has ever suggested I was anything but impartial in those hundreds of hours." Leahy...

Rarely has our nation seen a judge more competent and qualified to serve on the Supreme Court than Amy Coney Barrett. During her confirmation hearing, she held me in thrall with the magnificence of her mind. Only once before has anyone inspired the thought, "Greatness walks amongst us." His name is Trey Gowdy. In Amy Coney Barrett, I feel the same awe and chills once again. With Amy's confirmation, Lady Justice will no longer peek from underneath her blindfold. No longer will there be a finger surreptitiously pushing down on one side of her Scales of Justice. When Barrett's Senate...

Democrats in 2016 demanded Senate Republicans "do their job" and give a hearing and vote to President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, in spite of it being a presidential election year. Obama, then-vice president Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, then-Senate minority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and Senate Democrats ripped Republicans, who were in control of the Senate, for their decision not to consider Garland. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) said the Senate had approved judges as late as "September" in election years, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) said the notion that Obama could not nominate a judge...

The Philippines has banned two U.S. lawmakers from visiting and will introduce tighter entry restrictions for U.S. citizens should Washington enforce sanctions over the detention of a top government critic, the president's spokesman said on Friday. President Rodrigo Duterte will impose a requirement on U.S. nationals to get visas should any Philippine officials involved in the incarceration of Senator Leila de Lima be denied entry to the United States, as sought by U.S. senators Richard Durbin and Patrick Leahy. Duterte's move comes after the U.S. Congress approved a 2020 budget that contains a provision introduced by the senators against anyone...

FBI and two of its former directors — Robert Mueller and James Comey — look increasingly incompetent ... It is now widely known that bureau officials who were directly tied to the “collusion” investigation against Donald Trump and the email security inquiry against Hillary Clinton had strong political bias against the current president. ... that anti-Trump bias is just the tip of the iceberg. Evidence such as the discredited Russian dossier and the bombshell wiretapping memo make it clear that Comey and the entire agency began with an agenda and then worked backwards, doing whatever was necessary to make their...

The Senate Judiciary Committee erupted with infighting Thursday as a top Republican lawmaker pushed legislation aimed at crafting new rules for asylum-seekers from Central American countries. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the chairman of the committee, faced immediate accusations as he brought up the bill that he was violating Senate rules. In a dispute that quickly got personal, Ranking Member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the committee was one Democrat shy of having a quorum during a meeting last week and therefore could not advance the bill. “Why even have rules?” Feinstein asked rhetorically. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., backed her up,...

Former Sen. Al Franken says he “absolutely” regrets his December 2017 resignation over a sexual misconduct scandal — and some of the senators who’d pressed him to quit are also questioning their actions. “I can’t go anywhere without people reminding me of this, usually with some version of ‘You shouldn’t have resigned,’” Franken, the former “Saturday Night Live” funnyman-turned-politician, said in a lengthy look back at the incident in The New Yorker. “Yup,” was his usual reply, he told the magazine. Pressed on whether he means it, he adds: “Oh, yeah. Absolutely.” Leeann Tweeden, a conservative talk-radio host, had accused...

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...

Terrorists need their guns more than their victims need surgeries. In 2002, Shmuel Waldman, an American from New Jersey, was shot while boarding a bus in Israel. The terrorist attack killed 2 people and left 40 injured. Among that 40 was Shmuel whose leg was blown apart, forcing him to undergo multiple surgical procedures, and leaving him suffering from PTSD. The terrorist who shot him was Said Ramadan, a “police officer” working for the terrorists who run the Palestinian Authority. The attack had been planned by senior Palestinian Authority officials and the Palestinian Authority viewed Ramadan as a hero. Waldman...

was first elected to the Senate in November 1974, just three months after President Richard M. Nixon resigned. Congress and the nation were both shaped and scarred by the Watergate scandal, by the strain it placed on our democratic institutions, and the mistrust in government that ensued. Those years serve as a reminder that a democracy hidden from the people is no democracy at all. The parallels between then and now are many. In both sagas, a politically motivated theft — one a burglary, the other a hacking — led to an investigation described by the president as a “witch...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican and Democratic U.S. senators proposed legislation on Thursday that would let an estimated 72,000 Venezuelans remain in the United States after fleeing chaos in their country. Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Bob Menendez introduced the legislation along with Democrats Dick Durbin, Patrick Leahy and Cory Booker. It would immediately grant “Temporary Protected Status” to allow Venezuelans who passed security checks to remain in the United States for 18 months. There was no immediate indication of whether the Senate’s Republican leaders would allow the measure to come up for a vote.

On the first day of his presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders picked up the support of his fellow home-state senator, Democrat Patrick Leahy. Leahy, who endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primary, says he’ll back Sanders this year. In a statement, Leahy said the Democratic field was strong and “Bernie’s entry makes the field even stronger.” He called Sanders “a proven leader with a strong message.” …

"The agreement reached tonight would include: -$1.375b for border barriers (55 new miles of bollard fencing) -Dems drop call for new cap on ICE beds for detentions in interior -Overall cap on detention beds drops from 49,057 to 40,520 Per congressional official."

Congressional negotiators say they have reached an agreement in principle to avert a government shutdown at the end of this week. The four lead bipartisan negotiators, emerging from talks Monday night, declined to get into details on how the agreement was struck, but when asked whether it included barrier funding and a resolution to the detention bed issue, Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby said: "We got an agreement on all of it." Shelby's comments follow those from a Democratic aide involved in the border security funding talks who said earlier Monday negotiators are "very, very close" to an agreement and...

NEWS FROM THE UNITED STATES SENATE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 4, 2019 Udall, Heinrich, Senate Democrats Introduce Bill to Prevent President From Using Emergency Declaration to Raid Funds for Border Wall RAIDER Act of 2019 stops President Trump from bypassing Congress and raiding as much as $35 billion from military construction and disaster response funds for land acquisition or construction of his wall WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), along with U.S. Senators Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Dianne Feinstein...

Then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft was "feeble," "barely articulate" and "stressed" moments after a hospital room confrontation in March 2004 with Alberto R. Gonzales, who wanted Ashcroft to approve a warrantless wiretapping program over Justice Department objections, according to notes from FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III that were released yesterday. One of Mueller's entries in five pages of a daily log pertaining to the dispute also indicated that Ashcroft's deputy was so concerned about undue pressure by Gonzales and other White House aides for the attorney general to back the wiretapping program that the deputy asked Mueller to bar...

Not just content to win elections, the Left is trying to destroy its political opponents by calling for criminal prosecution of Bush administration officials for political and legal decisions the Left does not like. Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy is leading this banana republic style campaign to criminalize policy decisions made by a duly elected previous administration.

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...

Senator Patrick Leahy's (D-VT) rather bizarre denunciation of the US Supreme Court's decision to ease government control of campaign contributions has syndicated conservative talker Mark Levin wondering: is he slurring his speech? You be the judge.