In the News

PORT ANGELES — Rebuilding the Hurricane Ridge Day Lodge destroyed by fire last year is still a long way off, but securing $80 million it is estimated to cost could be a little bit closer.

U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer said Monday any funding most likely would come through a disaster supplement, like the kind the $4 billion in aid the White House recently requested from Congress to pay for things like rebuilding Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are talking about how Congress can make legislation airtight after a landmark Supreme Court ruling opened up a release valve for legal challenges to agency actions.

That 6-3 decision in late June, overturned a long-standing doctrine known as "Chevron deference," which for four decades directed judges to defer to the expertise of agencies in implementing laws.

House Republicans passed the annual defense policy bill by a slim margin Friday morning, overcoming a wave of Democratic opposition to the legislation’s attacks on climate policy and other administration priorities.

House lawmakers sparred over a trio of fiscal 2025 spending bills Monday, rekindling the kinds of partisan feuds on climate and energy riders that contributed to the chaotic fiscal 2024 appropriations process.

The arguments began Monday morning with the release of House Republicans’ fiscal 2025 bills for the State and Homeland Security departments.

It picked up again in the afternoon with a Rules Committee debate on the bill governing Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, which the full House will vote on Tuesday.

The rules will affect new residential construction projects funded by the federal Housing and Rural Development agency. Now, lawmakers are pushing the agency that oversees the nation’s two largest mortgage backers to adopt similar measures.

Growing electricity costs and the need to climate-proof homes as temperatures rise have prompted the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to adopt updated energy standards for new single and multi-family homes.

House Ag Committee Republicans are set to release their farm bill draft on Friday. While the wait continues for the legislation’s specifics, opponents are wasting little time pushing back against what they expect to be an unacceptable bill.

Federal regulators have overhauled the way managers of U.S. power grids will plan and pay for electricity expansions, giving states a bigger role and lifting efforts to add more wind and solar power.

In a 2-1 partisan split, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission required utilities and regional grid operators to plan for electricity growth and a changing mix of energy resources decades into the future. The decision is the most consequential policy initiative from FERC in more than a decade explicitly aimed at regional planning.

A landmark transmission plan released Monday that seeks to bolster renewable energy is deepening the partisan divide on Capitol Hill.

While Democrats applauded the long-anticipated Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rule to enhance the nation’s antiquated grid, Republicans were openly hostile toward it, arguing it would increase energy costs.

The reactions by lawmakers underscored the hurdles that bipartisan permitting and transmission legislation faces in Congress.