Author: Laura Olson
Laura Olson covers the nation's capital as a senior reporter for States Newsroom, a partner of Maine Beacon. Her areas of coverage include politics and policy, lobbying, elections, and campaign finance.
The U.S. House voted Tuesday to remove from the Capitol a bust of the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, a Marylander who wrote the despised Dred Scott decision—as well as evict statues and busts of men who fought for the Confederacy or served in its government. The legislation passed on a vote of…
Senate Republicans on Friday blocked consideration of a bill creating a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate what happened leading up to and during the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol. Legislation to form an investigatory panel into that attack passed the House of Representatives earlier this month, with 35 House Republicans joining Democrats in…
Maine officials are enticing residents to get a COVID-19 vaccine by offering free fishing or hunting licenses and L.L. Bean gift cards. Ohio has the National Guard taking shots to the lobbies of senior housing facilities, so those residents only need to come downstairs. And in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz says that if residents of…
With demand for COVID-19 vaccines dropping in many states, the federal government is changing how those doses are allocated. Under the new policy, any doses that a state doesn’t request from its weekly, population-based allotment will be held in a general pool, and states with higher demand can request additional shots from that surplus. President…
Lauren McCauley contributed to this reporting. Standing in the same House chamber where a violent mob temporarily disrupted the certification of his victory, President Joe Biden on Wednesday heralded the country as “on the move again” as he sketched out his expansive vision for a post-pandemic America. Biden in his first address to a joint…
For the second time, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a measure to make the District of Columbia the 51st state, sending the historic bill to the Senate on a party-line vote. “We look forward to a swift vote in the Senate on this essential legislation,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, (D-Calif.), said ahead of…
Federal and state officials now face trying to reach Americans unable or unwilling to get the COVID-19 vaccine, after meeting President Joe Biden’s goal of administering 200 million doses within his first 100 days in office. To aid in that push, Biden on Wednesday called on employers to give their workers time off with pay…
Use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 shot will remain paused for at least a week, after a federal vaccine advisory panel said Wednesday that it had too little data on a rare but serious blood-clotting condition reported in at least six women. That means states and federally run vaccine sites will be relying on…
Beacon reporter Evan Popp contributed to this story. While vaccine eligibility opened up to all Mainers 16 and over Wednesday, President Joe Biden said that as of April 19 eligibility would be expanded to American adults across all 50 states. Biden’s remarks on Tuesday came as a number of states, including Maine, have seen an…
President Joe Biden is directing states to make all adults eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine by May 1, according to a White House memo ahead of his first primetime address Thursday evening. Biden’s COVID-19 advisers are projecting that enough Americans in priority groups will be able to access the vaccine by the end of April…