hearings

Congressional hearings featuring Big Tech head honchos, including yesterday’s affair between the Senate Judiciary and the execs from major social platforms, often get a bad rap. These bitter brawls  have been panned at turns as “kabuki theater” and “hot mess”—and for good reason. With a few exceptions, the primary output of these events tends to be new viral C-SPAN clips.But that doesn’t mean they’re entirely useless. Regardless of whether tech companies face any real consequences (they don’t) or Congress passes any laws…

The House Homeland Security Committee will hold its first impeachment hearing against DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas next week House Republicans will kick off 2024 by initiating impeachment proceedings against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. According to Punchbowl News, the House Committee on Homeland Security plans to hold its first impeachment hearing against the secretary next week.  In November, the House voted to refer an impeachment resolution against Mayorkas to the…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Providing defendants with legal counsel during their initial bail hearing decreases use of monetary bail and pretrial detention, without increasing the likelihood that defendants fail to appear at the subsequent preliminary hearing, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Researchers found that…

The US House of Representatives held the first in a series of public hearings on 8 March aimed at exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic began. Members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic acknowledged that the question of where the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus originated has become highly politicized. But they said that both hypotheses describing its emergence — one, that it spread naturally from animals to people; the other, that it leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China — must be explored. “This question is…

State regulators want to hear from people who are having trouble with high utility bills while the Polis administration is offering rebates of up to $1,044 to qualified Coloradans to help with heat expenses. Saying that “energy affordability is a crisis” for many Coloradans right now, state regulators will hold a public hearing Tuesday afternoon on escalating utility bills. People can sign up to speak to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission 3-4:30 or 5:30-6. People in the Denver area and across the state have reported…

California lawmakers are calling for a sweeping investigation into corruption in the state’s cannabis industry, legislative hearings on the exploitation of farmworkers and new laws to thwart labor trafficking in response to revelations of rampant abuses and worker deaths in a multibillion-dollar market that has become increasingly unmanageable.The proposals follow aseries of Times investigations last year showing that California’s 2016 legalization of recreational cannabis spurred political corruption, explosive growth in…

The implosion of cryptocurrency exchange FTX has drawn the attention of politicians, with the House and the Senate set to hold hearings on the mess on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively. The House's Committee on Financial Services is first up at 10AM ET with a hearing titled, "Investigating the Collapse of FTX, Part I."  First up to testify is new FTX CEO John J. Ray III, but following the arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas on Monday and subsequent charge by the SEC, it's unlikely that the co-founder and former…

The House Jan. 6 select committee has postponed its next hearing indefinitely, citing Hurricane Ian’s looming landfall in Florida. Initially set for Wednesday, the hearing could be the panel’s last one, although members are sending conflicting signals on that front. The committee said on its Twitter account that it would announce a new date “soon.”“Unless something else develops, this hearing at this point is the final hearing,” committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told reporters last week, according to ABC News.…

A crosswalk signal is seen outside the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, U.S., June 27, 2022.Elizabeth Frantz | ReutersThe Supreme Court starting Monday will allow members of the public to attend oral argument hearings for the first time since the Covid-19 lockdown of March 2020, the court's press office confirmed in a statement Wednesday.The resumption of public access will coincide with the beginning of the high court's October term, when the court's justices are due to hear arguments in three cases.And the…

Evidence is mounting that white nationalist groups who want to establish an all-white state played a significant role in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol that left five dead and dozens wounded.Thus far, the hearings “have documented how the Proud Boys helped lead the insurrectionist mob into the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C,” journalist James Risen wrote in the Intercept.Based on July 12, 2022, testimony from a former Oath Keepers member, the white nationalist group coordinated with the Three Percenters,…