In the News

A college education typically is out of reach for people who are in prison, and even formerly incarcerated students often face questions about their past in the admissions process. Senator Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, wants to remove those restrictions for students who have been involved with the criminal justice system. He is spearheading bills that would restore Pell Grants for incarcerated students and encourage colleges to drop admissions questions about applicants’ criminal...

August 22 — Democrats are ready to go on the health care offensive. And Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) may have a new plan for them to do it. In an interview with Vox, Schatz revealed that he’s preparing a new bill that could grant more Americans the opportunity to enroll in Medicaid by giving states the option to offer a "buy-in" to the government program on Obamacare's exchanges. His proposal would expand the public health insurance program from one that covers only low-income...

Legislation to expand Medicare reimbursement of telemedicine could be attached to an end-of-the-year bill such as a continuing resolution to fund the government, Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz told supporters today. “I think we have an opportunity in the next three months to actually get something done in one of the must-pass vehicles,” said Schatz, speaking at a luncheon hosted by ACT — the App Association. Schatz has championed the CONNECT for Health Act (S. 2484), which...

Aug. 10 — Hillary Clinton is surging not only in national polls but also in key swing states—and that is good news for a bloc of Senate Democrats who hope to put climate change back on the front burner and fill a vacuum of leadership triggered by the departure of once-towering Senate figures on the global warming issue. Control of the Senate was already up for grabs, given Republicans who now hold a 54–46 majority must defend 24 seats; Democrats are defending only 10. Clinton,...

THIS SUMMER, for the first time in 22 years, 12,000 prison inmates can use federal funding to take college courses — a change that could ease their transition to civilian life and reduce the chances they will commit crimes again upon release. A two-page bill in the Houseand Senate would offer the same opportunity to hundreds of thousands more. In 1994, Congress banned Pell Grants for prisoners. The rule remains in place, but last year the Obama...

Florida health officials have identified 10 more cases of locally transmitted Zika in the Miami area. That means, as of Monday, there are 14 known cases of the virus caused by mosquitoes in the continental U.S. That’s not counting thehundreds of such cases in Puerto Rico. And Zika won’t stop there. Soon, more babies with Zika-related microcephaly will arrive in hospitals, facing a horrible fate and expensive treatment. Recently I wrote about why Washington...

Florida's governor says the state has concluded that four mysterious Zika infections likely came from mosquitoes in the Miami area. Gov. Rick Scott said Friday that no mosquitoes in the state have tested positive for Zika. But he says one woman and three men in Miami-Dade and Broward counties likely contracted the virus through mosquito bites. More than 1,650 Zika infections have been reported in the U.S., but the four patients in Florida would be the first not linked to travel outside the U.S....

The leaders of the United States, Canada and Mexico will pledge on Wednesday that by 2025 half of their overall electricity generation will come from clean power sources, according to administration officials. The commitment — which will be a joint one, rather than an individual commitment by each nation — represents an aggressive target given the reliance by the United States and Mexico on fossil fuels for much of their electricity supply. Roughly 59 percent of Canada’s...

Last month wasn’t just the hottest June on record—it continued the longest-ever streak of record-breaking months: 14.  The start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere gave us the hottest June since 1880, according to data released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). That follows the hottest May, April, March, February, January, December, November, October, September, August, and July. Before June 2016, June 2015 held the...

Merrick Garland hit an unwanted milestone on Tuesday as the federal appeals court judge's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court reached its 125th day with no Senate action, tying for the longest pending nomination ever to the high court. In a move with little precedent in American history, the Republicans who control the Senate have simply refused to take any action on President Barack Obama's nomination of Garland, 63, for a lifetime job on the nation's top court. Having been nominated on March...

Americans waste an unfathomable amount of food. In fact, according to aGuardian report released this week, roughly 50 percent of all produce in the United States is thrown away—some 60 million tons (or $160 billion) worth of produce annually, an amount constituting “one third of all foodstuffs.” Wasted food is also the single biggest occupant in American landfills, the Environmental Protection Agency has found. What causes this? A major reason is that...

After years of big promises, telemedicine is finally living up to its potential. Driven by faster internet connections, ubiquitous smartphones and changing insurance standards, more health providers are turning to electronic communications to do their jobs—and it’s upending the delivery of health care. Doctors are linking up with patients by phone, email and webcam. They’re also consulting with each other electronically—sometimes to make split-second decisions on heart...

President Obama may have chosen to locate his library in his adopted home state of Illinois, but a new move by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) suggests he may leave his biggest environmental footprint in his home state of Hawaii. Schatz sent a letter Thursday to the president asking him to consider expanding the Papah?naumoku?kea Marine National Monument, which President George W. Bush created a decade ago, to more than four times its current size of 139,800 square miles. The area, which surrounds...

The leaders of India and the United States vowed Tuesday to ratify the Paris climate accord this year, pledged to nail down terms for limiting a potent greenhouse gas used as a refrigerant in air conditioners, and set a one-year deadline for concluding a deal for six commercial nuclear power plants. But the two sides provided few specifics about how they would achieve those goals beyond saying that President Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who were meeting at the White House, share the...

WHEN MEMBERS of Congress visit their districts over the Memorial Day recess, we hope they keep in mind a warning from Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Zika virus, for which there is no effective vaccine or therapy, can infect a person in a flash, he said during a visit to The Post on Thursday. “You can get a mosquito bite and your life changes,” he said. The virus is mild for most people but in pregnant women can lead to fetal...