Memphis

MEMPHIS – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09), a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, applauded today's commutation of the life sentence being served by 70-year-old Curtis McDonald but urged President Trump to use a more systematic approach to release thousands of similarly situated non-violent offenders before he leaves office.

Congressman Cohen made the following statement:

MEMPHIS – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09) today led a letter with 32 other Members of Congress demanding that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) alert the non-tax filers of its new Economic Impact Payment (EIP) registration deadline of November 21, 2020. Currently, the agency has no plans to contact non-filers and notify them of its new deadline, despite the fact that it recently sent direct letters to non-filers concerning the original deadline of October 15, 2020.

MEMPHIS – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09), a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, today announced a Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) grant of $2 million to the City of Memphis. Over the past decade, Congressman Cohen has been a leader in efforts to increase spending under the initiative, and Memphis has receive substantial resources under the program. At its peak, the rape kit backlog reached 12,000 untested kits in Memphis alone with an estimated 400,000 sitting in evidence rooms nationwide.

MEMPHIS – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09) has received a perfect 100 percent on the Clean Water Action scorecard, the environmental group's assessment of 18 environmentally significant votes in the 116^th Congress now drawing to a close. Those included a vote in opposition to leaving the Paris Climate Agreement in June 2019 and votes against oil drilling in sensitive areas later in 2019 to a July 2020 vote in support of $4.5 billion a year for replacement of harmful lead service lines.

Congressman Cohen made the following statement:

MEMPHIS – Congressmen Steve Cohen (TN-09) and Joe Wilson (SC-02) have introduced the Holding Russia Accountable for Malign Activities Act in response to the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and other crimes against political opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announced earlier today that it has concluded that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent which, according to experts, can only be used by the Russian Federation.

MEMPHIS – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09) today applauded the decision by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to extend by five weeks the deadline for the estimated 9 million people eligible for Economic Impact Payments (EIPs) but who do not file federal income tax returns. Congressman Cohen wrote to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig on September 23 asking the agency to extend the deadline and increase its efforts to reach those eligible for the $1,200 payments authorized by the CARES Act since March. The deadline has now been extended from October 15 to November 21.

WASHINGTON – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09), Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties with jurisdiction over voting rights, today condemned vote-suppression efforts in Texas and Pennsylvania aimed helping President Trump just a month before the November 3 election.

WASHINGTON – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09) released the following statement after hearing that President Trump and the First Lady have tested positive for exposure to the coronavirus:

"I hope that the President and First Lady have only mild cases from exposure and remain safe from this dreaded virus and that they can return to their family after the required quarantine."

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