News

The Interior Department’s three-year moratorium on new coal leases on federal land could be longer than three years, Secretary Sally Jewell told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday. The length of the coal-lease freeze will depend on how long it takes the department to conduct its review of the federal coal-lease program, which Jewell estimated would take three years. But she warned that depending on the circumstances, some reviews have taken “six or seven years.” Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) expressed doubt that it could take three years to conduct the study, saying two years should be more reasonable. He

President Barack Obama’s plan to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba slammed into a wall of Republican opposition on Tuesday, stopping cold Obama’s hope for a bipartisan effort to “close a chapter” that began in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The long-awaited proposal, which was requested by Congress, is Obama’s last attempt to make good on an unfulfilled campaign promise by persuading Congress to change the law that prohibits moving detainees accused of violent extremist acts to U.S. soil. Fourteen years after the facility opened and seven years after Obama took office, the president argued it

A preacher, a doctor, a historian, a governor, two businessmen, a few veterans and some lawmakers walk into a bar … and the “bear den” is born. Every other week or so, an email will circulate among the Senate Republicans elected in 2014 with a line like, “Hey, you guys want to have a bear den?” The regular morning meetings take place in one of their offices, and the meeting name derives from the hotel bar in Hershey, Pa., where they gathered during their first joint Republican retreat. “I always joke that we should have a grunt as our official greeting or something,” Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., said with a laugh.

A pair of Republican senators has resurrected an old idea: splitting the Ninth Circuit, the largest and most liberal court of appeals in the country, into two courts. Sens. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, aren’t the first to try. The Ninth Circuit dominates the western United States, serving about one-fifth of the population of the country, and the resultant caseload has created a bureaucratic logjam that court-watchers of all stripes dislike. Conservative critics derive extra motivation from the fact that the court, long perceived as being dominated by California, issues reliably liberal decisions that bind a full 20