President Trump on Las Vegas Shooting: “It was an act of pure evil.”

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Today’s Hill Action
Senate Floor Schedule
10:00 a.m.: Convene and proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the nomination of Lee Francis Cissna to be Director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Committee Hearings
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
9:30am – SD-342

Armed Services
10:00am – SD-G50

Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
10:00am – SD-538

Finance
10:00am – SD-215

Foreign Relations
10:00am – SD-419

Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
10:00am – SD-430

Judiciary
10:00am – SH-216

Joint Economic Committee
10:00am – LHOB-1100

Energy and Natural Resources
10:30am – SD-366

Foreign Relations
2:00pm – SD-419

Intelligence
2:00pm – SH-219

Energy and Natural Resources
Subcommittee on Energy
2:30pm – SD-366

House Floor Schedule
10:00am: House will meet for morning hour.
12:00pm: House will meet for legislative business.
First votes expected: 1:30pm to 2:30pm. Last votes expected 5:00pm to 6:00pm.

Committee Hearings
Science, Space, and Technology
10:00am – 2318 Rayburn HOB

Judiciary
Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations
10:00am – 2141 Rayburn HOB

Energy and Commerce
Subcommittee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection
10:00am – 2123 Rayburn HOB

Transportation and Infrastructure
Subcommittee on Aviation
10:00am – 2167 Rayburn HOB

Transportation and Infrastructure
Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation
10:00am – 2167 Rayburn HOB
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Chamber of Commerce pressures lawmakers to back GOP budget

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a right-leaning business lobby, is turning up the pressure on lawmakers to vote for the House Budget Resolution, a key step in the tax reform process.

“Make no mistake, the consequences are great. Failing to pass an FY18 budget would extinguish this once-in-a-generation opportunity to simplify the arcane tax code and thereby help families who are struggling to make ends meet, help employers create jobs, increase American competitiveness, and foster strong, sustained economic growth,” Suzanne P. Clark, the Chamber’s Senior Executive Vice President for Government Affairs, wrote in a letter to House members Monday.

The letter said the budget vote would be recorded on the Chamber’s annual scorecard, measuring which members of Congress have voted for and against the Chamber’s agenda on issues of note.

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Rural Hospitals Are Dying and Pregnant Women Are Paying the Price

Boone, NC — Three years ago, Lucia Parker gave birth to her first child surrounded by people she loved. Her mother, sister, and husband were by her side at Blue Ridge Regional Hospital, and the nurses attending her were family friends. Each of them took turns massaging her back. They lifted her out of a birthing tub and gave her an epidural when the labor pains grew too intense. By the time her son was born, there was not a dry eye in the room. “It felt like family,” Parker says.

The hospital, in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, was 25 minutes from Parker’s home. But this February, when her second baby is due, she won’t be able to deliver there. Instead, she plans to drive an hour-and-a-half southwest to Mission Hospital in Asheville, on mountain roads that could be slick with ice and snow, to give birth in a room with nurses and staffers who are strangers. “I have no idea how that’s actually going to work,” she says. “I am not gonna know anybody when I have this baby.” She doesn’t have much of a choice. Blue Ridge’s labor and delivery unit, which delivered 173 children last year, shut down on September 30. The next closest hospital with a maternity ward, McDowell Hospital in Marion, is roughly an hour southeast of Parker’s home, but she’s afraid to drive there in labor. To reach it, she would have descend 1,400 feet in elevation, navigating a road with curves so tight motorcycle riders call it “The Devil’s Whip.”

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Trump being thrust into gun debate after Vegas shooting

President Donald Trump’s reaction to the country’s deadliest mass shooting – a somber statement from the Diplomatic Room, a moment of silence on the South Law, and a dormant-for-a-day Twitter feed – didn’t make a tragic situation worse.

The president’s words and actions, Democrats and Republicans said, were in line with what any other National Rifle Association-backed president would do. Trump’s call for unity in the face of “an act of pure evil” was accompanied by a day declared by his team to be a no-go zone for political or policy discussions about the nation’s gun laws.

For the first nine months of his presidency, most of the crises Trump has faced have been of his own making. But the shooting, which killed at least 59 and injured more than 500 Las Vegas concert-goers Sunday night, presents a new kind of leadership test.

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