In the News

WASHINGTON — A local congressman is taking action to protect the nation's military bases from Mother Nature. A 2018 Defense Department study found  53 of 79 military installations face current threats from flooding. The list includes Langley Air Force Base, Naval Air Station Oceana, Naval Support Activity Hampton Roads,  and Naval Station Norfolk. Rep. Bobby Scott's (D-Virginia, 3rd District) bill Enhancing Military Base Resilience and Conserving Ecosystems through Stormwater Management (EMBRACE Stormwater Management) Act would implement stormwater best management practices, to reduce flooding on and around military bases, which jeopardizes military readiness, pollutes the Chesapeake Bay, and compounds stress for military families. 

As rumblings of unease over President Biden’s $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill emerge from the Senate, Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott says he’s gearing up to fight for its child care and workforce development programs — as well as a critical bricks-and-mortar need. That bricks and mortar need is school buildings. And coming from a state where the median age of schools is 50 years, well above the national average, it’s a big concern for Scott, D-Newport News who chairs of the House Education and Labor Committee. “If we had $100 billion, that might replace maybe 2% of the nation’s schools,” he said. “And I have to caution, I don’t think we can get that, but I’m working hard for this.”

As Congress gears up to battle over how much to spend on infrastructure, Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, D-Newport News, wants to be sure his Capitol Hill colleagues remember one part of the foundation that keeps an economy growing: Child care. “If we’re going to get all these jobs, people need the things that make it possible to work, and that’s child care,” he told staff at the Downtown Hampton Child Development Center. The pandemic hit child-care facilities hard, he said. Those that remained open faced big bills to arrange for social distancing and hygiene measures — and had to spend that money as parents, stuck at home, decided to keep their children home too. Many simply closed their doors, and face bills to prepare for reopening.

PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — Virginia Congressman Bobby Scott (D-3rd District) has formally asked for the Justice Department to investigate two recent high-profile cases in Hampton Roads involving Black men and police, the fatal police shooting of Donovon Lynch in Virginia Beach and the threatening traffic stop of Army 2nd Lt. Caron Nazario in Windsor. Scott said he has also spoken in person with Attorney General Merrick Garland about launching probes into the incidents, in addition to sending a formal request in writing. “We deserve transparency, accountability, and most of all, the truth about these incidents,” Scott said.

Kevin Ring worked on Capitol Hill during the crafting of the 1994 Crime Bill, which imposed tougher prison sentences and bolstered the War on Drugs. As he remembers it, members of both parties were obsessed with appearing tough on crime. “You couldn’t go far enough,” said Ring, who’s now the president of sentencing reform organization Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “Three strikes? How about two strikes? How about one strike? We couldn’t be punitive enough to satisfy what we thought was public anger about crime and drugs.” Over 25 years after the 1994 Crime Bill and 35 years after the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, the War on Drugs is considered by experts and government officials alike to be one of the biggest failures of American governance in the 20th century.

The House of Representatives isn’t dealing with just COVID-19 relief. Members also voted Tuesday night on a labor law introduced by a senior member of the Virginia delegation. Virginia is one of 27 states that has what some people call a “right to work” law, which union supporters sometimes call a freeloader law. That’s because it allows people who aren’t members of unions and don’t pay union dues to benefit from higher wages and working conditions negotiated on their behalf by unions. That’s why Congressman Bobby Scott of Newport News introduced the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which creates what he calls a “fair-share fee” allowing unions and employers to assess fees supporting the cost of collective bargaining.

WASHINGTON (AP/WAVY) — The House has approved Democratic legislation sponsored by Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott (3rd District) that would invigorate workers’ unions following decades of court defeats and legislative setbacks. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which passed Tuesday on a 225-206 vote, would block so-called Right to Work laws across the country and generally make it easier to organize a union. It would also prohibit companies from hiring replacements for workers on strike. Scott, the bill’s lead sponsor, is also the chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor.

On January 6th, then-President Donald Trump incited a deadly insurrection against Congress while we fulfilled our constitutional duty to count the electoral votes of the states. Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the chair of the House Republican Conference, strongly condemned the president, appropriately stating that “[T]here has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.” In the days since this domestic terror attack on our democracy, troubling public reports of the timeline now reveal that several members of Congress, and perhaps even the vice president, were within moments of being captured and possibly murdered by the mob.