The head of the Federal Aviation Administration has acknowledged his agency should have been more aware of problems at Boeing before a door plug blew off a 737 Max jet during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

Consumer groups are pushing Congress to uphold automatic refunds for airline passengers whose flights are canceled or delayed for several hours.

Two lawmakers from opposing parties are floating a new plan to protect the privacy of Americans' personal data.

The FBI is telling people who were on board the Boeing 737 Max that lost a panel in midflight that they might be victims of a crime.

The Wall Street Journal reports Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into the Boeing jetliner blowout that left a gaping hole on an Alaska Airlines plane this January.

Federal officials are clearing the ways for grounded Boeing planes to resume flying.

The Federal Aviation Administration finally has a Senate-confirmed leader.

The U.S. Coast Guard is apologizing for not taking “appropriate action” years ago when it failed to adequately handle cases of sexual assault and harassment at the service’s Connecticut academy.

Southwest Airlines says planes are taking off again after departures were held up because of what the airline calls an intermittent technical problem.

President Joe Biden’s choice to run the Federal Aviation Administration has withdrawn his nomination.

A bipartisan consensus that Congress should act to toughen regulations on railroads is emerging in the U.S. Senate.

The fate of President Joe Biden's pick to run the Federal Aviation Administration is in doubt.

Congress is hearing about the December meltdown at Southwest Airlines.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing restrictions that would block plans for a copper and gold mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region.

College sports leaders visited Capitol Hill, asking lawmakers to consider rules to govern name, image and likeness money for college athletes.

The commissioners of the Southeastern Conference and the Pac-12 are scheduled to meet with lawmakers in Washington They will lobby for federal legislation to regulate name, image and likeness compensation to athletes.

Democratic leaders have announced an effort to give the Federal Trade Commission increased authority to crack down on oil and gas companies that engage in price gouging.

Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico is back in Congress.

It's summertime and airports are packed with vacationers again.

A U.S. Senate panel has deadlocked on President Joe Biden’s pick to oversee vast government-owned lands in the West amid bitter opposition from Republicans.

A key senator wants to know whether labor shortages are causing delayed and canceled flights at major U.S. airlines.

As the Pacific Northwest swelters in an unprecedented heat wave, an electrical utility in the Washington state city of Spokane has announced that more rolling blackouts have started that will cut off electricity and air conditioning to some customers.

Six decades after University of California forestry professor Harold Biswell experimented with prescribed burns and was treated with ridicule, he is seen as someone whose ideas could save the U.S. West’s forests and ease wildfire dangers.

A federal law governing how college athletes can earn money off their fame seems like a certainty.

The Senate has confirmed geneticist Eric Lander to be President Joe Biden’s chief science adviser.

The Senate is set to approve a big innovation bill aimed at making the U.S. more competitive with China and other countries.

The Senate shelved a big innovation bill aimed at making the U.S. more competitive with China and other countries.

The Senate Commerce Committee has approved President Joe Biden’s nomination of Eric Lander to be chief science adviser.

President Joe Biden wants Congress to know he’s sincere about cutting a deal on infrastructure.

President Joe Biden wants Congress to know he’s sincere about cutting a deal on infrastructure.

FILE - In this Feb. 23, 2021, file photo Interior Secretary nominee Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., speaks during her confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. On March 15, the Senate confirmed her as Interior Secretary. Haaland was confirmed by a 51-40 vote, the narrowest margin yet for a Cabinet nomination by President Joe Biden. Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo and a 35th-generation resident of New Mexico, thanked hundreds of supporters at a virtual party hosted by Native American organizations. Jonathan Nez, president of the Navajo Nation in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, called Haaland’s confirmation “an unprecedented and monumental day for all first people of this country.

FILE - In this Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021, file photo, Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., listens during the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing on her nomination to be Interior secretary, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Jim Watson/Pool Photo via AP, File)WASHINGTON – A key Senate committee on Thursday approved the nomination of New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland to be interior secretary, clearing the way for a Senate vote that is likely to make her the first Native American to lead a Cabinet agency. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved Haaland's nomination, 11-9, sending it to the Senate floor. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the lone Republican to support Haaland, who won unanimous backing from committee Democrats. The committee vote follows an announcement Wednesday by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that she will support Haaland in the full Senate.

FILE - In this Jan. 8, 2021 file photo, President-elect Joe Biden's nominee for Secretary of Commerce, Rhode Island Gov. The Senate has voted to confirm Raimondo as President Biden's commerce secretary. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)WASHINGTON – The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to confirm Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo to serve as President Joe Biden’s commerce secretary and help guide the economy's recovery during and after the coronavirus pandemic. Later Tuesday, the Senate voted 95-4 to confirm Cecilia Rouse to be chair of Biden's Council of Economic Advisers.

The Commerce Committee approved the nomination of Buttigieg, a 39-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, on a 21-3 vote. His nomination now heads to the full Senate, where a vote could happen as early as this week. He would be the first openly gay person, and one of the youngest, confirmed by the Senate to a Cabinet post. Biden has been urging the Senate, where Democrats hold a bare majority, to move quickly on his Cabinet picks given the current COVID-19 crisis. He signed an executive order mandating masks on airplanes and in public transportation to help stem the spread of the deadly virus.

In a report released Friday, Dec. 18, 2020 the Senate Commerce Committee also said the FAA continues to retaliate against whistleblowers. In a report released Friday, the Senate Commerce Committee also said the FAA continues to retaliate against whistleblowers. Both grew out of concern about the agency's approval of the Boeing Max. The Senate report, however, criticized a key part of the FAA review. It said that Boeing “inappropriately influenced" FAA testing of pilot-reaction time to a nose-down pitch of the plane.

WASHINGTON – Less than a week before Election Day, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google are set to be grilled by Republican senators making unfounded allegations that the tech giants show anti-conservative bias. With the election looming, Republicans led by President Donald Trump have thrown a barrage of grievances at Big Tech’s social media platforms, which they accuse without evidence of deliberately suppressing conservative, religious and anti-abortion views. The tech platforms are gateways to news online. It proposes that Congress enact rules preventing tech platforms from taking local news content without fair payment. “For too long, social media platforms have hidden behind Section 230 protections to censor content that deviates from their beliefs,” Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the committee chairman, said recently.

FILE - In this Aug. 30, 2006, file photo, former Republican Sen. Slade Gorton, center, is introduced at a fundraiser for Republican Senate candidate Mike McGavick in Bellevue, Wash. Gorton, who served in the Washington Legislature, and as state attorney general before he became a three-term U.S. senator, has died. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)SEATTLE Slade Gorton, a patrician and cerebral politician who served as a U.S. Senate Republican leader before he was ousted by the growing Seattle-area liberal electorate in 2000, has died. Gorton died Wednesday in Seattle, said J. Vander Stoep, who served a Gorton's chief of staff in the Senate. In 1980, he won a coveted U.S. Senate seat by knocking off the legendary Maggie Warren G. Magnuson, appropriations committee chairman and Senate president. But within a year, Evans decided to vacate the other Senate seat, and Gorton launched his comeback.

Former Obama NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco, a scientist at Oregon State University, said in an email that high level officials put politics and their own jobs above public safety. By the time the two tweets were posted, Alabama was no longer in the hurricane centers warning cone, although it had been in previous days. Jacobs said things went crazy in the middle of the night.Then-NOAA communications chief Julie Kay Roberts told the inspector generals office that Walsh told her there are jobs on the line. The report said there was no credible evidence found to say that jobs were threatened. The Inspector General instead selectively quotes from interviews, takes facts out of context.The White House declined comment.

The committee's top Democrat, Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington where Boeing builds the long-grounded 737 Max joined Wicker in criticizing FAA's failure to turn over documents. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, pressed Dickson on whether Boeing lied to the FAA about safety concerns around the Boeing plane. This week, Wicker and Cantwell introduced legislation to revamp the FAA's process for certifying new passenger planes. Boeing hopes to win FAA approval this year for changes it is making to the plane so airlines can resume using it. Dickson said, as he has many times, that FAA will approve Boeing's work when it is convinced the plane is safe.

The bill would spend about $2.8 billion per year on conservation, outdoor recreation and park maintenance. "Americas hundreds of millions of acres of public lands are the result of hundreds of years of exploration and conservation,'' said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnnell, R-Ky. Those measures are especially needed now, when communities surrounded by public lands have high unemployment rates because of shutdowns caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Gardner said. Trump has tweeted in favor of the lands bill, saying it "will be HISTORIC for our beautiful public lands.'' Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., credited a new coalition of lawmakers from both parties who support conservation and public lands.

The bill, set for a Senate vote this coming week, would spend about $2.8 billion per year on conservation, outdoor recreation and park maintenance. McConnell told the two senators, who are both seeking reelection this year, that he would not consider the bill unless Trump was on board. Cantwell credited Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., for forcing attention on the conservation fund by blocking a 2018 spending bill that did not renew the program. While widely supported, the outdoors bill faces sharp opposition, mainly from Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and other Gulf Coast senators pushing to ensure it includes revenue-sharing for their states from offshore drilling. Calling Trump's record on the environment "the worst one in history,'' Cantwell said Gardner, Daines and other Republicans will be forced to defend the president as they go before voters.