Author

Ashley Murray

Ashley Murray

Ashley Murray covers the nation’s capital as a senior reporter for States Newsroom. Her coverage areas include domestic policy and appropriations.

A worker tells people that the Silicon Valley Bank headquarters is closed on March 10, 2023.

Members of U.S. Senate panel press financial regulators on massive bank failures

By: - March 28, 2023

WASHINGTON — Financial regulators promised a full review of Silicon Valley Bank’s massive failure as members of a key U.S. Senate panel on Tuesday interrogated the officials about what led to the second-largest bank collapse in U.S. history. Members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs asked if the Federal Reserve could […]

Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, sits during the House Judiciary Committee's markup of Articles of Impeachment against President Donald Trump

U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson vows to stop ‘radical leftist’ influence on education

By: - March 24, 2023

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republicans on Thursday continued to press accusations that a “woke agenda” is deteriorating parents’ rights in their local school districts. The first hearing this Congress of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government convened to examine whether a 2021 Department of Justice memo played a role in […]

A vial of fentanyl

As opioids overdose deaths keep rising, report urges lawmakers to develop new approaches

By: - March 16, 2023

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers should view America’s staggering opioid crisis, including the rise of illicit fentanyl, through an “ecosystems” approach, argues a massive RAND Corporation report published Thursday. That means they should examine the gaps and interconnections among emergency response, data collection, education, treatment, housing and law enforcement, the report advises. The 600-page volume — which […]

An Air Force fighter jet is secured to the surface

Pentagon to halt use of firefighting foam that contains PFAS as cleanup costs mount

By: and - March 16, 2023

WASHINGTON — Battered by years of criticism from U.S. lawmakers and environmental advocates, the Department of Defense will stop purchasing PFAS-containing firefighting foam later this year and phase it out entirely in 2024.  The replacement for Aqueous Film Forming Foam has yet to be determined, and advocates are frustrated it’s taken so long to halt […]

A worker tells people that the Silicon Valley Bank headquarters is closed on March 10, 2023.

Biden says U.S. bank deposits are safe despite tumult over California bank collapse

By: - March 13, 2023

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden reassured Americans early Monday that their money is safe in U.S. banks, after a tumultuous weekend following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and a move by regulators to shut down a second lender. Americans “should feel confident that their deposits will be there, if and when they need them,” […]

Representative Julia Letlow

GOP bill mandating federal Parents Bill of Rights passed by U.S. House committee

By: - March 9, 2023

WASHINGTON – A national “Parents Bill of Rights” is headed for a full U.S. House vote after the House Committee on Education and the Workforce early Thursday approved the measure designed to empower parents to inspect books and other teaching materials in schools. Lawmakers on the committee debated the GOP-backed bill that would federally mandate […]

Colleen Shogan

Biden pick for U.S. archivist caught up in controversy over missing presidential documents

By: - February 28, 2023

WASHINGTON — The nominee for archivist of the United States made her second appearance before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee Tuesday, after the panel blocked her last Congress following a high-profile probe into records at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Colleen Shogan, an executive for the nonprofit White House Historical Association […]

President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress as Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-California, listen

Biden in State of the Union address draws boos and shouts from a combative GOP

By: and - February 7, 2023

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden began his State of the Union address Tuesday — his first to a divided Congress — with an appeal to bipartisan priorities, but later criticized parts of the GOP agenda and got a sense of Republicans’ appetite for conflict during one combative stretch. Biden opened the 72-minute speech with an […]

A Chinese balloon flies above Billings, Montana on Feb. 1, 2023.

Chinese surveillance balloon now drifting across the middle of the U.S., Pentagon confirms

By: - February 3, 2023

WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will postpone his planned trip to Beijing after the U.S. detected a Chinese surveillance balloon hovering over Montana. A senior State Department official said Friday that despite the Chinese government claiming the balloon had entered U.S. airspace accidentally, its presence was a “clear violation of sovereignty.” The […]

Dr. David Obert receives a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination

U.S. House panel probes extent of fraud in federal COVID-19 relief programs

By: - February 2, 2023

WASHINGTON — From 2020 to 2022, a group of Minnesotans pretended to be serving meals to low-income children, all the while filing for reimbursement under a federal COVID-19 relief program aimed to buoy child nutrition as schools and childcare centers closed.  In all, the schemers defrauded the government of $250 million, the Minnesota Reformer reported. […]

A large brown envelope labeled "archival documents" stamped with the word "classified."

U.S. House Oversight chair’s agenda: Hunter Biden, COVID origins, classified documents

By: - January 30, 2023

WASHINGTON — House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer on Monday previewed his priorities for this Congress, which he says will include a heavy focus on the handling of classified documents, the origins of the COVID-19 virus, and what he described as possible “influence peddling” by Hunter Biden. The Kentucky Republican addressed reporters and […]

a syringe, pills and a vial of fentanyl

U.S. House GOP takes aim at fake pills containing deadly fentanyl sold on social media

By: - January 26, 2023

WASHINGTON — On a June 2020 morning, Amy Neville entered her son’s bedroom to wake him for an orthodontist appointment.  Fourteen-year-old Alex didn’t wake up.  He died of fentanyl poisoning after taking a counterfeit pill he bought from someone he met on Snapchat, Neville told GOP lawmakers Wednesday during a roundtable discussion of the role […]