PATRICK LEAHY

Washington Democrat Patty Murray has become the first female president pro tempore of the Senate.

The Senate Appropriations Committee, under Patrick Leahy and Richard Shelby, released its 5,000-page omnibus spending bill, to the chagrin of conservatives and many House Republicans

Leaders are racing to complete passage before a midnight Friday deadline or face the prospect of a partial government shutdown going into the Christmas holiday.

The Senate is expected to vote on the $1.7T spending bill first, where support from at least 10 GOP senators will be needed to pass it onto the House.

Congressional leaders have unveiled a $1.7 trillion bill to fund the government.

The Biden administration has reversed a decades-old decision to revoke the security clearance of Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist called the father of the atomic bomb for his leading role in World War II’s Manhattan Project.

Organic dairy and other livestock farmers are calling for emergency federal aid as they grapple with skyrocketing organic feed costs in part from the war in Ukraine and steep fuel and utility expenses.

The Democratic-led House has passed a short-term spending bill to keep government agencies funded at current levels through Dec. 23.

Congress will likely have to fund the government for one week to avoid a partial government shutdown.

A top ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is demanding fresh answers from the U.S. Capitol Police about security failures that led to a brutal attack on Pelosi’s husband last week.

Vermont’s lone member of the U.S. House for the past 16 years has always embraced his role as a liberal Democrat.

Democrat Becca Balint could be on the verge of being elected the first woman and first openly gay person to represent Vermont in Congress.

Families are looking forward with dread as winter approaches with high energy costs and tight fuel supplies.

A veteran senator's objections over Egypt's human rights record have trimmed a symbolically significant $75 million off annual U.S. military aid to that country.

The office of U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy says he is out of the hospital and he's planning to return to Vermont for a full schedule of planned events.

At the recommendation of his doctors, he was expected to remain in the hospital overnight for observation.

Vermont's 82-year-old Sen. Patrick Leahy has been hospitalized after he felt unwell at his McLean, Virginia, home.

The Senate Tuesday advanced a bill to keep the government funded into December after stripping an energy permitting reform proposal from Sen. Joe Manchin.

Sen. Joe Manchin has abandoned his push to speed up the permitting process for energy projects.

Security-sealed rooms and lock bags are some of the ways Capitol Hill keeps classified documents secured.

As the Justice Department’s probe into the Republican former president’s possession of White House materials deepens, lawmakers of both parties have more questions than answers. Congress had asked for the briefing soon after the revelation of the unprecedented Aug. 8 search, but it may be delayed by the legal fight between Trump and the government. “We need to be able to do appropriate oversight for the Intelligence Committee so that we have a better handle on how this particular incident was handled, but so that we avoid problems like this in the future," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

The driver was unaware of the father’s martial arts skills during the racially-motivated attack, according to prosecutors.

After eight terms in the U.S. Senate, the Vermonter writes about his path through the upper house of Congress, which he says once acted as "the nation's conscience" – and could one day again.

Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont and Connecticut are holding primary elections Tuesday to decide who's on the ballot for the November midterms.

The leader of the Vermont state Senate Becca Balint could become the first woman and the first openly gay person to represent the state in Congress.

Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar won a closer-than-expected Democratic primary race against a centrist challenger who questioned Omar's support for the “defund the police” movement.

Businessman Tim Michels has won Wisconsin's Republican nomination to take on Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

The Republican matchup in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race in Tuesday's primary elections features competing candidates endorsed by former President Donald Trump and his estranged vice president, Mike Pence.

Vermont Lt. Gov. Molly Gray and Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint are the leading candidates in a Democratic U.S. House primary that could make either of them the first female member of the state's congressional delegation.

In a surprise victory for Republicans, the Senate on Thursday voted to overturn a Biden administration rule requiring rigorous environmental review of major infrastructure projects such as highways, pipelines and oil wells — a victory enabled in part by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

In a story published July 30, 2022, The Associated Press reported that the Congressional Budget Office estimated that an insulin bill would increase the price of the drug.

At a press conference in Madrid after the NATO summit, President Biden said he supported changing filibuster rules in the Senate to codify into law the right to an abortion and the right to privacy.

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont has broken a hip in a fall at his home and requires surgery to repair it.

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont underwent surgery Thursday after he broke his hip in a fall at his home.

Vermont appears poised to lose its distinction of being the only state in the country that has never sent a woman to Congress.

Less than a day after a gunman massacred 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Texas, a Wednesday Senate hearing for President Joe Biden’s pick to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reflected the deep political divisions over guns.

Lawmakers are working toward a compromise on President Joe Biden’s $33 billion Ukraine aid request that they hope to have ready as soon as next week.

Lawmakers erupted in cheers after Vice President Kamala Harris announced the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

Democrats in Congress are sounding the alarm over what they claim is mounting evidence that Mexico’s chief prosecutor is assailing the nation’s independent judiciary and selectively targeting for prosecution opponents of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Home-district projects for members of Congress are back, sprinkled across the government-wide $1.5 trillion bill that President Joe Biden signed recently.

Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson forcefully defended her record as a federal judge Tuesday, pushing back on Republican assertions that she would be soft on crime and declaring she would rule as an “independent jurist” if confirmed as the first Black woman on the high court.

The new law includes $3.6 billion in assistance for Ukraine.

Clocking in at 2,741 pages, the package is the culmination of bicameral and bipartisan negotiations between top Democratic and Republican appropriators.

Dozens of the nation’s top law enforcement officials have signed a letter urging the U.S. Senate to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

Police have arrested former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, a step toward fulfilling a request by the United States government for his extradition on drug trafficking and weapons charges.

Top lawmakers say Democrats and Republicans have finally agreed on a framework for overall defense and domestic spending for this year.

More than 600 sitting senators have died or resigned since the first Congress met in 1789.

Democrats are mounting an impassioned bid to overhaul Senate rules that stand in the way of their sweeping voting legislation.

President Joe Biden only rarely talks about last January's violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the conspiratorial lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

U.S. leaders and military veterans are mourning the loss of former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, a World War II veteran and former Republican presidential candidate who served in Congress for 36 years.

Vermont’s sole congressman, Democratic Rep. Peter Welch, says he'll run for Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy’s Senate seat next year.

Vermont's sole member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Democratic Rep. Peter Welch, announced Monday that he will run for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy. Welch's decision comes a week after the 81-year-old Leahy's announcement that he will not seek reelection to the seat he first won in 1974. The 74-year-old Welch said the 2022 election will determine control of the Senate and, with it, what he can accomplish for Vermont families.

Democrat Patrick Leahy’s announcement that he will retire after eight terms in the Senate has set off a scramble in Vermont over the rare opening in the state’s tiny congressional delegation.

A day after announcing he will not seek reelection, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont has told his colleagues in an emotional speech on the Senate floor that the chamber has become a family to him over the last nearly 47 years.

The longest-serving current member of the Senate said he won't seek reelction to the seat he has held for eight terms.

Leahy, 81, is the longest-serving member of the U.S. Senate.

Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont says he won’t seek reelection next year to the seat he's held since 1975.

Senate Democrats forced another test vote on voting rights legislation.

The plan will grant the government power to regulate the prices of some of the most expensive drugs and limit out-of-pocket costs for seniors.

Congressional Democrats are weighing a raft of taxes that would target CEO pay and big U.S. companies that buy back shares.

With possible furloughs only weeks away, the Senate passed a funding bill for the Capitol Police. It also has money for Afghan refugees who face danger with U.S. military leaving the country.

The bill passed 98-0.

The $2.1 billion bill would boost support for the Capitol complex in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, direct funds to the Capitol Police and provide humanitarian support for Afghan refugees.

The bill provides funding for the National Guard and U.S. Capitol Police, which have been under strain since January 6.

Top Democrats and Republicans remain at odds over a last-minute deal to prevent Capitol Police from running out of money.

Senate Democrats are proposing $3.7 billion in emergency spending to secure the Capitol, repay outstanding debts from the Jan. 6 insurrection and help the federal government defray costs from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Weeks before the police agency is slated to run out of money, the Democratic Senate Appropriations chair and the panel's ranking Republican introduced competing emergency funding bills.

It's high summer along the border between the United States and Canada and people on both sides are wondering when the two governments will ease border-crossing restrictions imposed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two men who have been charged in the fatal shooting of a security guard during a June 11 bank robbery could face the death penalty, if federal prosecutors decide to seek it.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's Cabinet chief and other allies have been included in a list of senior officials in Central America deemed corrupt by the U.S. State Department.

The roar of applause that typically greets a new president entering the House chamber softened to just a few hundred hands clapping as Joe Biden arrived to deliver his first joint address to Congress.

More than a dozen Senate Democrats have sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden complaining of a woeful environmental track record by his Brazilian counterpart and urging him to condition any support for Amazon preservation on significant progress reducing deforestation.

Three of the picks are Black women whom Biden wants for the federal courts of appeals, often a stepping stone to the Supreme Court. Circuit, in particular, is a place where presidents have searched for Supreme Court justices. Some liberal Democrats have urged Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who is 82, to retire to allow Biden to choose a possible replacement. Other Black women who would be front-runners if a spot on the U.S. Supreme Court were to open are California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger and U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs. Ad“This trailblazing slate of nominees draws from the very best and brightest minds of the American legal profession," Biden, a former Senate Judiciary Committee chair, said in a statement.

Claver-Carone was elected as the new president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in the fall of 2020. (AP Photo/Juan Karita, File)MIAMI – The cyberattack crested just as finance officials from across Latin America were descending on Washington to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Inter-American Development Bank. On Sept. 24, 2019, requests from more than 15,000 internet addresses throughout China flooded the bank’s website, knocking part of it intermittently offline. Details of the attack, which has not been previously reported, are contained in an IDB internal document reviewed by The Associated Press. But membership has been a cheap way for China to expand its reach in Latin America.

A dirty word for many Republicans is making the rounds on Capitol Hill -- earmarks. It's a question that's vexing Republicans as they consider whether to join a Democratic push to revive earmarks, the much-maligned practice where lawmakers direct federal spending to a specific project or institution back home. Democratic appropriators in the House see a solution and are proposing a revamped process allowing lawmakers to submit public requests for “community project funding” in federal spending bills. The ranking Republican on the committee, Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, said earmarks would not increase the amount of money spent in a bill. “That’s something I feel pretty strongly about.”Norman worries that earmarks would be used to entice Republicans to vote for bills with expensive price tags.

Democrats passed it 51-50 in the evenly split Senate, as Vice President Kamala Harris had to cast her first tiebreaking vote. The Senate passed a budget resolution early Friday, moving toward passing a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill after a marathon of votes on dozens of amendments. The chamber will have to vote again because the Senate passed a separate version. The budget resolution directs committees to write legislation reflecting Biden's Covid relief package, while staying under the $1.9 trillion target. Democrats hope to pass a relief package before March 14, when a $300 per week unemployment supplement approved in December expires.

Eye Opener: Biden vows to increase COVID-19 vaccine supply The Biden administration has promised to ramp up the U.S. supply of COVID-19 vaccine doses. Also, Senator Patrick Leahy was hospitalized just hours after presiding over the opening of former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial. All that and all that matters in today's Eye Opener. Your world in 90 seconds.

Senator presiding over impeachment trial hospitalized hours after colleagues sworn in as jury Just hours after being sworn in as the jury in former President Trump's upcoming impeachment trial, Senator Patrick Leahy was hospitalized after he feeling unwell. Leahy is presiding over the trial, in place of Chief Justice John Roberts. Siobhan Hughes, a congressional correspondent with the Wall Street Journal, joins CBSN's Elaine Quijano to discuss what would happen if Leahy is unable to preside over the trial and what will happen between now and when the trial starts in two weeks.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat set to preside over the upcoming impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, has returned home after being taken to a Washington hospital for evaluation Tuesday out of an abundance of caution, his spokesman said. "The Capitol Physician suggested that Senator Leahy go to George Washington University Hospital this evening for observation, out of an abundance of caution," his spokesman David Carle said in a written statement. "After getting test results back, and after a thorough examination, Senator Leahy now is home. The House impeached Trump earlier this month for inciting the riot by his supporters at the Capitol complex on Jan. 6. The mob disrupted a joint session of Congress, which was confirming the election of Joe Biden as president.

"The president pro tempore has historically presided over Senate impeachment trials of non-presidents," Leahy confirmed in a statement on Monday. "When presiding over an impeachment trial, the president pro tempore takes an additional special oath to do impartial justice according to the Constitution and the laws. Roberts presided over Mr. Trump's first impeachment trial, as designated by the Constitution. But the Constitution is silent on the question of who presides over the Senate trial of a former president, and a former president has never faced an impeachment trial. But the Vermont senator also said that he considers his role as president pro tempore as "one of the highest honors and most serious responsibilities of my career. "

Senators to be sworn in for impeachment trial against former President Trump U.S. senators will be sworn in Tuesday for the second impeachment trial against former President Donald Trump, setting the stage for arguments to begin in February. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the longest-serving Democrat in the chamber, will preside over the trial. Nikole Killion reports.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) exits the Senate chamber after the third day of the Senate impeachment trial of U.S. President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, January 23, 2020. Sen. Patrick Leahy, not Chief Justice John Roberts, will preside over the imminent impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump. Leahy, of Vermont, is the president pro tempore of the Senate and is the longest-serving active Democrat in the chamber. The president pro tempore of the Senate historically presides over impeachment trials of non-presidents. Roberts presided over Trump's first impeachment trial, about a year ago.

"The president pro tempore has historically presided over Senate impeachment trials of non-presidents," Leahy confirmed in a statement on Monday. "When presiding over an impeachment trial, the president pro tempore takes an additional special oath to do impartial justice according to the Constitution and the laws. Roberts presided over Mr. Trump's first impeachment trial, as designated by the Constitution. But the Constitution is silent on the question of who presides over the Senate trial of a former president, and a former president has never faced an impeachment trial. But the Vermont senator also said that he considers his role as president pro tempore as "one of the highest honors and most serious responsibilities of my career. "

From left, Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., participate in the Senate Democrats news conference on coronavirus relief proposals on Wednesday, March 11, 2020. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)Senate Democrats on Wednesday unveiled more than a dozen "critical measures" intended to provide relief to local communities in the wake of the deadly coronavirus outbreak. Democratic lawmakers have been pushing for a relief proposal that is "targeted to the people who need help," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told NBC News earlier Wednesday. Trump has also indicated that his administration would propose relief to the airline and cruise ship industries, which have been impacted by the outbreak. Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the number of deaths attributable to the coronavirus in the U.S.

President Donald Trump ordered the Department of Defense to roll back restrictions on the use of land mines, the White House announced on Friday. The new policy will enable the use of anti-personnel land mines elsewhere in the world in "exceptional circumstances." Anti-personnel land mines that do not self-destruct are banned by more than 150 countries because of their tendency to inflict civilian casualties, often years after they are used in conflict. Defense Secretary Mark Esper described land mines as an "important tool" during a press conference Friday at the Pentagon alongside his Italian counterpart. "The White House claims that the previous policy put our military at a 'severe disadvantage against our adversaries.'

The American imprisoned for five years in Cuba tells 60 Minutes about his final minutes on the tarmac - and how Senator Patrick Leahy came to his aid

The actor, director and activist used his star power to press Congress for more foreign aid for the Democratic Republic of Congo. He also gave a Hollywood hat-tip at a Senate hearing Thursday, calling out Sen. Patrick Leahy for his cameo in Batman. The Vermont senator is known for being a Batman fanatic. Gayle King reports.