Steve Davies

The House Agriculture Committee today takes up legislation that would authorize up to $8.5 billion in aid for disasters in 2020 and 2021. The nine-page bill builds on provisions of the temporary WHIP programs that started in the wake of the 2017 hurricanes and wildfires and then expanded as WHIP+ in 2018 and 2019.

Six groups have filed suit against the Agriculture Department over regulations the Trump administration issued last year to streamline the regulation of gene-edited crop traits and allow companies to decide whether their products need USDA approval.

Republicans and Democrats both say they are close to wrapping up the final details of a bipartisan infrastructure package for the Senate to consider.

The House Agriculture Committee will vote next week on a bill that would extend a popular ag disaster program, WHIP+, for two years. Lawmakers have been working on revisions to the Wildfire and Hurricane Indemnity Program Plus, which provided assistance to producers for losses in 2018 and 2019.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee advanced the nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning to be director of the Bureau of Land Management after a sharply partisan debate over her truthfulness about a 1989 tree-spiking incident on an Idaho national forest.

Supporters of the Growing Climate Solutions Act are signing up new co-sponsors for the Senate-passed legislation in hopes of getting the House to take up the bill.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack sparred with Republican senators Wednesday over a House-passed bill that would create a pathway to citizenship for farmworkers, and the squabble showcased the divisions that have prevented Congress from passing immigration reform legislation for decades.

A major but temporary agricultural disaster program could be in for some revisions. The Wildfire and Hurricane Indemnity Program Plus, or WHIP+, provided assistance to producers for losses in 2018 and 2019.

The nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management, which manages about one of every 10 acres of surface lands in the U.S., will get a vote Thursday in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee after months of debate over her role in the spiking of trees on a national forest in 1989.

A California Superior Court Judge has ruled that a California woman’s claim that Bayer failed to warn her of the dangers of using Roundup is pre-empted by federal law, an argument Bayer has so far failed to make successfully in the federal courts.