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UPDATE: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has cancelled the first two weeks of the August recess. The Republican Party’s glaring shortcomings are currently impossible for its own lawmakers to ignore. Congress’ failure to pass any major legislation has led to some Senate Republicans calling on their leaders to cancel the August recess. Ten Republican senators said Tuesday that Congress should be in session next month, with only 31 working days scheduled between now and the end of the fiscal year, and zero major accomplishments to speak…

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Two million more Americans are without health insurance thus far in 2017, amid problems with the Affordable Care Act and Republicans’ unpopular efforts to repeal the law. The uninsured rate was up on a quarterly basis for the second time in-a-row this year, according to the results of a survey released Monday by Gallup. The measure of those lacking coverage was at 11.7 percent in the second quarter, up from 11.3 percent in the first quarter, and 10.9 percent at the end of 2016. Gallup…

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Wall Street should take more of a role in the housing market, a Federal Reserve Governor said on Thursday. Speaking before a right-wing think tank in Washington, Jerome Powell said the government’s role in the mortgage industry is “unsustainable.” “Today, the federal government’s role in housing finance is even greater than it was before the crisis,” Powell said in a speech given to the American Enterprise Institute. “Above all, we need to move to a system that attracts ample amounts of private capital to stand…

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Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub Jr. announced on Thursday he would be stepping down from his post later this month. Shaub, entrusted with patrolling conflicts of interest within the Executive Branch, found his oversight efforts often stymied by President Trump, who resisted a full divestiture from his business holdings before taking office. “There isn’t much more I could accomplish at the Office of Government Ethics, given the current situation,” Schaub said in an interview with NPR. He added that recent experiences at OGE “made it…

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Officials in 44 states have gone on the record stating they will not comply with an appeal from the Trump Administration to turn over detailed voter roll information. The blockade shows how distrustful states are of the White House’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which was created by President Trump via executive order in May. As part of its fact-finding mission into so-called illegal voting, the body last week requested from all fifty states comprehensive voter data, including full names, addresses, dates of birth, party…

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The Trump administration confirmed that it considering the integration of two energy regulators that were split after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe due to inherent conflicts of interest. Katharine MacGregor, a high-ranking official at the Department of the Interior, acknowledged the “internal” deliberations on Thursday. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Interior was discussing re-merging the two offices—the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). MacGregor, the ‎Acting Assistant Secretary for Lands and Minerals Management, was asked about…

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