The House Appropriations Committee will convene a key oversight hearing later today to examine the U.S. Forest Service’s budget request for the upcoming fiscal year, with testimony from Chief Tom Schultz. The hearing represents one of Congress’s primary opportunities to scrutinize both the administration’s funding priorities and the agency’s evolving direction. This will be Schultz’s first public testimony since the announcement of the relocation of the agency’s headquarters to Salt Lake...

Yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee opened its electronic portal for FY27 earmark requests for House members, allowing them to submit programmatic, language, and Community Project Funding (CPF – the House’s designation for earmarks) requests on behalf of their constituents. Deadlines for each House account are below: Friday, March 13 th : ·       Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration ·       Commerce, Justice, and Science ·       Financial Services and General...

Before a second killing by ICE agents in Minneapolis over the weekend created major objections to advancing increased Homeland Security funding (and could very well lead to the second government shutdown in 6 months), the remaining 6 FY26 appropriations bills were largely on a glidepath to final passage in the Senate. And despite one of the tensest political environments in modern history, the progress on moving 9 out of 12 appropriations bills up to this point is in no small part due to...