House Republicans blocked Democrats’ attempt to meet President Donald Trump’s demand to pay most Americans $2,000 to help weather the coronavirus pandemic.
Republicans objected to the bill House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer sought to pass by unanimous consent Thursday to replace the $600 payments in the latest pandemic relief legislation with the $2,000 payments.
Colin Royal is a recent graduate of Morehouse College, and current NYU graduate journalism student.
At Morehouse, he obtained the distinction of Co-Valedictoriant while being heavily involved on-campus. He was the former Editor-in-Chief of The Maroon Tiger and Director of Morehouse Journalism Departments 2024-2025 Senior Capstone Documentary.
Professionally, he has worked with multiple companies covering a variety of disciplines. He has worked for professional media organizations like Dow Jones and the Harvard Business Review.
This summer he joined The Bond Buyer team after training with Dow Jones' News Fund.
Kathryn Miller covers wealth management and financial advisors for Financial Planning as part of the Dow Jones News Fund program.
Her reporting focuses on the people, firms and policy issues shaping the advice industry, with a particular interest in the intersection of wealth management and health care. She brings experience covering health care, business, politics and local government.
Kathryn is completing her master's degree in Magazine, News and Digital Journalism at Syracuse University. She has served as assistant executive producer of The NewsHouse and worked as a health reporting intern at Syracuse.com. She previously covered health care for the Fort Worth Report, where her work included reporting on hospital expansions in Fort Worth.
A native of Arlington, Texas, Kathryn earned her bachelor's degree in psychology from Texas A&M University in 2023. At Texas A&M, she was editor of the student newspaper.
In her free time, Kathryn enjoys yoga, very long walks and supporting her local movie theater.
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Chip Merlin is a nationally recognized attorney who has dedicated his career to representing policyholders in insurance disputes. He is the founder of Merlin Law Group and can be reached at cmerlin@merlinlawgroup.com.
“House and Senate Democrats have repeatedly fought for bigger checks for the American people, which House and Senate Republicans have repeatedly rejected — first, during our negotiations when they said that they would not go above $600 and now, with this act of callousness on the Floor,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement Thursday.
Democrats will try again with a roll call vote on a new bill Dec. 28, when the House also plans a vote to override Trump’s veto on the National Defense Authorization Act. Since current government spending runs out that day — and funds for the rest of the fiscal year are included in the virus relief bill Trump criticized and hasn’t signed -- the House could also pass another stopgap measure to avert a partial government shutdown.
Republicans on Thursday tried to seek unanimous consent on a measure to examine taxpayer money spent on foreign aid, but Democrats blocked that move. In his complaint Tuesday about Congress’s combined virus aid and government spending bill, Trump criticized federal resources spent on international programs, even though that spending was allocated as part of the bipartisan appropriations process.