In the News

March 12, 2024

Bipartisan group of lawmakers push Biden to do more on IUU fishing

by Chris Chase

A bipartisan group of lawmakers from the U.S. House of Representatives has sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden urging him and the administration to take increased action against illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The letter, sent by House Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries Subcommittee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-California) and House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Arizona), was signed by 26 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. …  Continue Reading


March 07, 2024

Reps. Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman’s State of the Union guests highlight gun violence and extremism

by Marisa Endicott

U.S. Reps. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, and Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, sought to highlight the specters of gun violence and religious extremism respectively in their choice of guests for President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech. Thompson’s pick, Liz Russell, is the former manager of The Pathway Home in Yountville, where on March 9, 2018, an Army veteran suffering from serious mental health issues and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder showed up at the residential treatment center with an …  Continue Reading


March 07, 2024

Huffman: Funding package includes money for Coyote Dam feasibility study

This week the U.S. House of Representatives passed the first six Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations bills, which Rep. Jared Huffman (D - San Rafael) described as including “significant victories for California’s Second Congressional District (and) over $9 million in federal funding for projects that (Huffman) nominated as part of the Community Project Funding process.” Huffman also noted in a press release that the spending bills include “historic funding for Native American Housing Assistance …  Continue Reading


March 05, 2024

Freethought Caucus’ Huffman invites Christian nationalism critic to State of the Union

by Jack Jenkins

Amanda Tyler, lead organizer of Christians Against Christian Nationalism, will attend the State of the Union address Thursday (March 7) as a guest of U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, co-founder of the Congressional Freethought Caucus. Tyler has become one of the loudest voices in Washington and in the country speaking against the Christian nationalist movement, a decentralized but insistent collection of preachers, politicians and self-appointed champions of ideas that fuse church and state, with …  Continue Reading


March 04, 2024

Rep. Jared Huffman says Bolinas will reopen post office after one year

It’s been a year since the Post office was closed in the Marin County town of Bolinas. Since then, residents have had to make a twenty three mile round-trip along narrow, windy roads to pick up their mail from other postal facilities. Today, community members met with their Congressional representative, who promised a new post office will be built. For full interview: …  Continue Reading


March 04, 2024

Hearing will focus heat and light on new GOP wildlife bill

by Michael Doyle

 A new Republican-authored habitat conservation bill that recasts the Endangered Species Act will be batted around by a House panel this week. Introduced by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), the “America's Wildlife Habitat Conservation Act," veers away from the bipartisan “Recovering America’s Wildlife Act” that lawmakers have championed since 2016. H.R. 7408 had 21 GOP co-sponsors as of Friday afternoon. It offers a lot less money to states than RAWA, as the latter bill is commonly known. The …  Continue Reading


March 01, 2024

House Republicans trumpet ESA changes in wildlife bill

by Michael Doyle

House Republicans on Thursday promoted their new wildlife conservation proposal that so far lacks the bipartisan support once enjoyed by its predecessor legislation. Democrats, however, seethed at the new bill, with one prominent House lawmaker calling it "toxic." Dubbed the "America's Wildlife Habitat Conservation Act," the GOP-authored measure would authorize but not mandate hundreds of millions of dollars for state-run wildlife conservation programs. It would also rearrange the …  Continue Reading


February 21, 2024

Marin congressman tours Bolinas Road storm damage

by Cameron MacDonald

Local and county leaders joined U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman on a tour this week of a rural road ravaged by winter storms. Several parts of Bolinas Road damaged during last year’s winter storms will require an estimated $30.29 million to repair along a 6.5-mile stretch of the country road. “You add up the critical infrastructure, the high recreational traffic demand, the local community — what a vital lifeline this is,” Huffman said on Wednesday. “This is more than just another road …  Continue Reading


February 20, 2024

Education Department says FAFSA fix is coming for Social Security issue

by Medora Lee

A fix is on its way for students who haven't been able to complete the new federal financial aid application because their parents don't have Social Security numbers, the Department of Education said Tuesday. The Education Department said a permanent fix will come in the first half of March, but in the meantime, there's a workaround. Students should complete the steps for the workaround only if they must meet "critical state, institutional or other scholarship organization aid deadlines" by …  Continue Reading


February 16, 2024

US lawmakers call on Biden administration to impose Magnitsky sanctions against Chinese companies

by Chris Chase

A group of U.S. lawmakers has called on U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen to impose Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (GloMag) sanctions on Chinese companies named in the October 2023 Outlaw Ocean Project report on forced labor in Chinese processing facilities. U.S. representatives Jared Huffman, Mike Gallagher, Raul Grijalva, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Betty McCollum, James Moylan, Josh Gottheimer, Jill Tokuda, Marry Peltola, …  Continue Reading


February 15, 2024

House lawmakers air deep-seated differences on ESA

by Michael Doyle

House members alternately bashed and defended the Endangered Species Act on Wednesday in a hearing that highlighted partisan differences galore but showed no room for compromise on updating a key component of the landmark 1973 law. The hearing before the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries dealt with but one ESA-related bill, H.R. 6784, that itself addressed only one specific part of the law. Still, lawmakers used the occasion to launch broader salvos. "While …  Continue Reading


February 15, 2024

House members raise questions about Johnson’s invite of ‘hate preacher’

by Nina Heller

Lawmakers are asking for answers after a guest chaplain known for his incendiary preaching was sponsored by Speaker Mike Johnson to give the House’s daily opening prayer last month, according to a letter sent to the speaker and the Office of the Chaplain signed by 26 Democratic House members.  The letter describes pastor Jack Hibbs as “a radical Christian Nationalist who helped fuel the January 6th insurrection and has a long record of spewing hateful vitriol toward non-Christians, …  Continue Reading


February 14, 2024

$72 million headed to Klamath River restoration, agriculture infrastructure

by Jackson Guilfoil

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced roughly $72 million in federal funds for Klamath River restoration projects and agriculture infrastructure. Advocates for the Klamath River and agricultural interests are often at odds — one wants cleaner, colder rivers that allow for healthy ecosystems, while the other seeks greater flow diversions for food production — but both appear to benefit from the investment, which would fund the completion of a restoration project, the …  Continue Reading


February 07, 2024

PG&E drops diversion options from its PVP proposal, Mendocino County officials report

by Justine Frederiksen

Mendocino County officials said they will continue working on options for maintaining water diversions between the Eel and Russian rivers that were created more than 100 years ago for the Potter Valley Project, despite the announcement by the Pacific Gas and Electric company last week that it will no longer include plans being formulated by a regional group for modification of the hydroelectric plant’s infrastructure in its proposal for decommissioning the facility. “It’s a shock, and we’re …  Continue Reading


February 06, 2024

Are lawmakers eating seafood produced by slaves?

by ROB HOTAKAINEN

After working for years to rid the country of foreign seafood produced by enslaved people, Rep. Jared Huffman says the issue has struck close to home. “We have been eating slavery-tainted seafood in the Capitol — I mean, that’s just a certainty,” the California Democrat said in an interview Friday. Huffman is among a group of 22 bipartisan House members who say the Biden administration has not done enough to crack down on Sysco, a major Texas-based supplier that provides food throughout the …  Continue Reading


February 02, 2024

Salmon fishermen to see $20.6 million in relief funds

by Sage Alexander

The federal government announced Thursday that $20.6 million in relief funds would be distributed in California for the fall 2023 salmon fishery resource disaster. This follows the cancellation of last year’s salmon season across the state after abysmal reports of Chinook populations in the Sacramento and Klamath rivers. Coupled with other fishing seasons cut short in Eureka, one charter fisherman characterized it as the worst fishing year in over a decade. The funds, which a National Oceanic …  Continue Reading


January 26, 2024

Biden administration to pause natural gas export approvals as it updates how to assess projects

by RACHEL FRAZIN

The Biden administration will pause approvals of some natural gas export facilities as it considers changing how to evaluate them, the administration announced Friday. The current analyses the Energy Department uses to decide whether to authorize exports of liquified natural gas (LNG) do not “adequately account” for factors such as domestic energy costs or planet-warming emissions, the White House said in a fact sheet.  As a result, the administration is temporarily pausing pending decisions …  Continue Reading


January 24, 2024

Feds provide nearly half a billion dollars toward construction of Humboldt Bay marine terminal supporting offshore wind

by Mary Callahan

Plans for a high-tech marine terminal to support the building and operation of offshore wind turbines off the Humboldt County Coast received a boost of nearly half a billion federal dollars Monday. The $426,719,810 grant for the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District comes through the U.S. Department of Transportation, funded in part by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs act of 2021. The funding is for construction of the onshore facilities to support ambitious state …  Continue Reading


January 19, 2024

Eureka to receive $1.9 million to increase local EV charging stations

by Sage Alexander

The federal government announced a $1.9 million federal grant to build electric vehicle charging stations in Eureka. This will mean 21 more public charging stations in 14 locations spread across Eureka, construction of which likely will begin during 2025. Some fast chargers will be added. City Manager Miles Slattery said this will significantly increase the amount of EV chargers and spread them throughout Eureka, making the chargers more convenient to use. “The more convenient we can make …  Continue Reading


January 18, 2024

Sonoma State Receives $7.9 M Grant To Expand Middle School STEM Program

by Maggie Fusek

 A $7.9-million grant from the US Department of Education (ED) to Sonoma State University’s STEM and Computing Education Support (STEMACES) program is the result of a decade of success building technology to enable innovative science education and make it accessible to underrepresented students. STEMACES, which aims to improve middle school student achievement in science and increase the competency of STEM teachers in rural communities, was built on a tech teaching platform funded by two …  Continue Reading

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