While the House is not in session this week, the Senate will convene for a brief three day session prior to Memorial Day recess. The Senate stands adjourned until 1:45 P.M. today, when it will hold a brief pro forma session. On Tuesday, the Senate will convene at 10:00 A.M. and will resume consideration of the nomination of Dara Lindenbaum to be a Member of the Federal Election Commission. The Senate is also expected to confirm Stephanie Dawkins Davis to be United States Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit. The Senate is expected to spend Tuesday working through a long list of pending nominations on which cloture has been filed.
The House stands adjourned and will be in a committee work week this week, followed by Memorial Day recess starting May 30th. The House will next meet for votes on Tuesday, June 7th at 6:30 P.M.
This week in the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) says he will bring a House-passed domestic terrorism bill to the floor for a procedural vote in response to the recent mass killings of 10 people in Buffalo by a lone, white gunman. There are not 60 votes in the Senate to take up the bill. Senate Republicans are determined to kill the measure, which would establish offices in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice and the FBI to track and analyze domestic terrorist activity, and compare it to a disinformation security group created at DHS but since put on hold by the Biden administration following conservative criticism. The House approved its bill 222-203 on a mostly party-line vote on Wednesday, with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Illinois) casting the only Republican vote in favor.
Separately, two House-passed measures approved last week intended by Democrats to tackle the infant formula shortage remain question marks in the Senate this week. Republican leaders say they’re concerned about whether $28 billion proposed to help the Food and Drug Administration avoid future formula shortages would provide help in the near-term. The House by a large bipartisan vote last week also approved a rule change for infant formula obtained through the government’s women, infants and children supplemental nutrition program (WIC) to help low-income families. On Sunday in response to Biden’s presidential order last week, the Department of Health and Human Services formally invoked the Defense Production Act “in order to ensure manufacturers obtain raw materials and consumables needed to further accelerate production of infant formula,” Secretary Xavier Becerra announced. The department said Abbott Laboratories and another manufacturer will be on a fast track for materials required to speed up formula supplies.
