In the News

The video that rocked the world in July 2014 showed a group of New York City police officers piling onto Eric Garner, who had resisted when they tried to arrest him for selling loose cigarettes outside the Staten Island Ferry Terminal.

As co-chair of the Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus, I have long been a proponent of greater funding for the National Institutes of Health.

There is no one whose life is not touched by disease, and there is no one who cannot benefit from improved medical research. The NIH is our nation's personal Department of Defense for America's health.

On Nov 2, President Obama signed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 into law, lifting the draconian budget caps imposed by sequestration. Congress should take this opportunity to give the NIH a much-needed boost in funding.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen believes when the American flag rises over the U.S. Embassy in Cuba today for the first time in half a century, other barriers will start to fall.

The normalizing of relations with Cuba will open up more trade opportunities for U.S. companies, give Americans more opportunities to travel to the Caribbean island nation and maybe even provide an opportunity for democracy to take root there someday, Cohen said.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen has been urging President Barack Obama for years to make a forceful case for criminal justice reform.He has written letters to Obama and talked to him personally. He’s had conversations on the subject with Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and former Attorney General Eric Holder.

MEMPHIS,. Tenn — When it comes to civil rights and social justice, Judge D’Army Bailey was considered as being one of its most important crusaders. Congressman Steve Cohen of Memphis knew Bailey for many years.

“Judge Bailey was an advocate. He wanted to see social change and civil rights early on and had an opinion on many things and traveled in different circles and had an influence on a lot of people and was respected across racial lines,” Cohen said.

U.S. Rep. Phil Roe has deep-seated roots in the old South. Some of his family members fought in the Confederate army during the Civil War.

But asked on a radio show last week whether it’s time for South Carolina to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of its statehouse, the congressman conceded, “It probably is.”

“The state of South Carolina has got to make that decision, not America,” the Johnson City Republican said. “And I think they’ll do the right thing.”

The airline industry has hit the brakes on its program to shrink the size of carry-on luggage “in light of concerns expressed primarily in North America.”

The International Air Transport Association (IATA), the trade group representing most airlines, launched the initiative, called Cabin OK, last week. It would have shrunk the maximum size of luggage carried onto a flight by 21 percent.

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen is trying to stop U.S. airlines from shrinking the size of carry-on luggage allowed on planes.

The Memphis Democrat filed legislation late Monday that would bar airlines that charge passengers a fee for checked luggage from reducing the maximum size of carry-on bags.