Latest news with #AmyKlobuchar
Time of India
11 hours ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Fiercest Senate Clash Between Democrats As Klobuchar Slams Booker's Protest
/ Jul 30, 2025, 08:37AM IST Tensions exploded on the Senate floor in one of the most dramatic Democratic showdowns. Senator Amy Klobuchar forcefully condemned Senator Cory Booker's protest tactics, accusing him of undermining national unity during a high-stakes debate. With pointed words and unwavering tone, Klobuchar sparked a fiery confrontation. Booker fired back with a blistering, impassioned response, defending his stance and challenging Klobuchar's leadership in a rare, public intra-party clash.
The Hill
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
The Fix Our Forests Act prioritizes industry over nature
America's public forests are under assault. We have already seen the massive timber harvests called for by President Trump's executive order, the elimination of the Roadless Rule, and the gutting of wildlife protection efforts. Those are the broad stokes, but there are also finer maneuvers underway, such as abandoning the traditional practice whereby forest personnel paint-mark the trees selected for cutting, handing those decisions over instead to the timber companies themselves. Or the various subsections that keep popping up in the 'Big Beautiful Bill' — for example, giving timber companies an option to pay for hastened environmental review and defunding endangered species recovery efforts. It also arbitrarily requires the Forest Service to increase harvests by 250 million acres annually for nine years. This is the context within which we must now view the Fix Our Forests Act, a logging-in-the-name-of-fire-prevention bill, stuffed with provisions that significantly override scientific and citizen review. If it passes, those overrides would be handed over to an administration that has made clear its ambition to 'log, baby, log' using whatever tools of governance it can. For the next three and a half years, the Fix Our Forest Act would be the Trump Our Forests Act. Trump is wasting no time opening the forests to extraction, yet his two main vehicles — the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management — are somewhat limited in their authority as federal agencies. Many of Trump's ambitions are therefore vulnerable to legal challenge by the citizenry. This is where the Fix Our Forests Act comes in. By putting the environmental overrides and judicial constraints into statute, Congress imbues these agencies with greater legal authority, significantly raising the legal bar for citizen redress. That so many Democrats appear willing to go along with this is nothing less than astonishing, especially given that just last year Senate Democrats shot the bill down, largely due to those very overrides of citizen control. Why the sudden acquiescence? Let's call it a political fear of fire. When Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), an enthusiastic Fix Our Forests Act supporter, introduced the bill for the May 6 Senate Agriculture Committee hearing, she invoked ' growing threats across the nation,' putting wavering Democrats in the difficult position of looking soft on wildfire. She then linked the Fix Our Forests Act to the horrific January fires in Los Angeles, which were still burning when Fix Our Forests Act proponents rushed a revised version of the bill through the House to capitalize on the tragedy. It was a deceitful move, though. The Fix Our Forests Act, which focuses on logging in the backcountry, would have done nothing for the people of Los Angeles. The fires they suffered were grassland and chaparral fires on non-federal land and spread from building to building in the city. This sort of mismatch between claim and reality appears throughout the Fix Our Forests Act. It claims to be about fire reduction, yet it allows harvest of a forest's most fire-resilient trees — the larger, mature ones. It claims to be science based yet ignores science which draws different conclusions. It claims to protect communities from fire yet focuses mostly on wildlands logging far from human settlement. There seems to be some confusion as well. One of the main arguments against the 'fuels reduction' narrative, is that it's not fuels but climatic conditions — hot, dry, windy — that precipitate fire. Yet Klobuchar made her case for the Fix Our Forest Act by citing 'Rising temperatures, drier summers, longer fire seasons and earlier snow melt…' In other words, climate. In fact, many studies show that industrial scale thinning, by exposing soil to sunlight, exacerbates the very climatic conditions Klobuchar referred to — heat, desiccation and wind. To be sure, real people are in real danger. But as it turns out, there's already a bill to help them. The Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience Act provides designated funding to actual communities to do the things that will truly provide protection, such as hardening homes, improving emergency escape and access, and treating the land immediately around the communities themselves, all while using the process to lower insurance premiums. That bill has been held back in favor of the Fix Our Forest Act, with nary a peep from Democrats. Fear of fire is understandable, but political fear of fire — following the political winds on a bill that strips citizens of their ability to contest logging on millions of acres of maturing forest — isn't. If Democrats then hand such a bill to an administration that shows clear contempt for public process and governance, they will betray their own tradition of environmental stewardship. Democrats have been looking pretty hapless lately. Here's their chance to show some grit, by saying no to the Fix Our Forest Act and championing the Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience Act, which puts people and forests first, not industry profits.
The Verge
22-07-2025
- Business
- The Verge
Democrats are desperately trying to revive the click-to-cancel rule
is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform. Democratic lawmakers are taking multiple routes to try to revive the Federal Trade Commission's 'click-to-cancel' rule after an appeals court blocked it on procedural grounds right before it was set to take effect. Democrats already introduced legislation earlier this month to codify the rule, which would require subscription services to let customers cancel as easily as they signed up, through congressional vote. But now a group of lawmakers are also pressuring Republican FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson to reinstate it. Seven Democrats led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) appealed to the chair in a letter shared exclusively with The Verge, urging him to revise the rule so that it can take effect. 'Putting this commonsense consumer protection in place is vital to foster competition, innovation, and fairness,' wrote the lawmakers, including Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who are also behind the click-to-cancel legislation. The click-to-cancel or negative option rule would have barred companies from throwing up roadblocks to ending gym memberships, streaming video subscriptions, and other services — eliminating extra steps of talking to a live agent, for example, to cancel a subscription purchased with a click of a button. But a federal appeals court ruled this month that the rule had to be thrown out because the FTC, under former Democratic Chair Lina Khan, had deprived companies and trade groups that petitioned against the rule a fair chance to talk the agency out of it. It's not yet clear whether either path toward restoring it will be fruitful, given that passing bills in a deeply divided legislature is a tall task, and Ferguson alongside Republican Commissioner Melissa Holyoak voted against the rule the first time around. But Democrats' insistence on reviving it shows they believe it to be a politically winning consumer protection issue, a position some Republicans might also come around to. The letter's Democratic signatories argue comments submitted on click-to-cancel show overwhelming support for the measure. 'A review of more than 16,000 comments from the public made clear what should be obvious: Businesses should not be allowed to trap consumers in costly subscriptions by making it difficult to unsubscribe—costing consumers valuable time and money while stifling competition,' the lawmakers wrote. 'We urge the FTC to cure any perceived procedural defect and reissue the rule as quickly as possible to ensure consumers are protected from predatory subscription traps.' 'Businesses should not be allowed to trap consumers in costly subscriptions by making it difficult to unsubscribe' There's some reason for hope that the FTC could get the rule back on track, even if it might look different than last time around. In her dissenting statement on the original rule, Holyoak wrote that she might have voted differently '[h]ad political leadership at the Commission taken more time to engage with other Commissioners to refine and improve the Rule.' But that path forward still looks murky, especially in light of President Donald Trump's upheaval of the FTC, an issue that's still working its way through the courts. Trump broke Supreme Court precedent to fire the two Democratic commissioners at the agency earlier this year, removing what could be key votes for the click-to-cancel rule. Last week, Democratic Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, who voted for the rule the first time, returned to work at the FTC after a federal judge ruled that Trump's attempt to fire her was unlawful. Smiling outside the FTC building on the day of her ephemeral return, Slaughter wrote on X that her first priority would be 'calling a vote on restoring the Click to Cancel Rule.' But her return was short-lived, after an appeals court this week granted an emergency stay keeping her from agency work while the case plays out. (Trump also attempted to fire Democratic Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, who later resigned his position to take another role while the case played out in court. A federal judge dismissed his claims without prejudice). While pushing for Ferguson to reinstate the rule at the FTC, Klobuchar is also supporting Van Hollen's Consumer Online Payment Transparency and Integrity (Consumer OPT-IN) Act and Gallego's Click to Cancel Consumer Protection Act, which were introduced after the appeals court blocked the FTC rule. But Klobuchar and other Democrats aren't looking at it as an either-or proposition. 'The FTC should always be looking out for consumers and they did the right thing when they issued this rule,' Klobuchar said in a statement. 'Consumers deserve protection from subscription traps and it is time for the FTC to reinstate the rule to do just that.'
Washington Post
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Republicans said they would cut waste. Instead, they rewarded it.
Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, is a U.S. senator from Minnesota. No one can doubt that the federal government needs reform. From our national debt to our tax code, major issues require serious solutions. In addition to taking on tax fairness and income inequality, that list includes addressing government inefficiencies and waste.
CNN
21-07-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett, US hostage envoy Adam Boehler and Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke - State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash - Podcast on CNN Podcasts
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett, US hostage envoy Adam Boehler and Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke State of the Union 44 mins On CNN's State of the Union, Jake Tapper presses Senator Amy Klobuchar on why Democrats didn't release the Epstein files during the Biden Administration, Congressman Tim Burchett says Trump's call to release grand jury material in the Epstein case is a "good start." US hostage envoy Adam Boehler discusses the Trump administration's prisoner exchange with Venezuela that freed ten detained US nationals. Former Democratic Congressman Beto O'Rourke weighs in on the GOP's controversial push to redraw its congressional map to help Republicans. Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres, former Republican Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler, former Trump campaign adviser Bryan Lanza, and CNN Political Commentator Karen Finney break down the state of both parties six months into President Trump's second term.
