"I think of Senator Grassley's 12,000 votes, hundreds of hearings, countless numbers of tweets. Probably four-dozen sweater vests later, he's still the same down-to-earth Iowa farmer who visits every one of the state's 99 counties every year," Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said from the Senate floor. Read More
CEDAR RAPIDS, IA -- Meth has been called one of the most dangerous drugs, and with 1.2 million admitted users in the United States, experts believe the danger is real. Here in Iowa, the numbers are down, but experts said the drug still poses a real danger, so much so that one senator said something has to be done to keep our citizens safe. People who have been involved with the drug, like Stephanie Beliel, said it was one of the strongest drugs she’d tried. "I've tried numerous times to quit meth and for some reason it just kept pulling me back,” Beliel said. Right now, she’s 76 days sober, but she said it’s been a long journey. Read More
Senator Charles Grassley wants to know why a college student was awarded $4.1 million in a settlement with the DEA. In 2012, a 20-year-old college student from the UC San Diego was found locked up in handcuffs in a DEA detention cell five days after he was mistakenly arrested. He had received no food or water for the previous 120 hours. For more than two years, Sen. Grassley sought answers and accountability from the DEA through letters, congressional hearings, and speeches on the Senate floor. Read More
MAPLETON, IA - Iowa's senior US Senator is back in the state while Congress takes its Columbus Day recess. Chuck Grassley held town hall meetings Monday in Storm Lake, Ida Grove, and Mapleton. A couple dozen people met with the Senator in Mapleton talking about topics ranging from healthcare to defunding Planned Parenthood. Read More
The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee says he is delaying another one of President Barack Obama's nominees to the State Department to protest what he calls the administration's continued failure to respond to inquiries about the department's use of private emails and other questions. Read More
A bipartisan group of Senate leaders has reached a deal on criminal justice legislation that would allow well behaved prisoners to earn time off their sentences and effectively reduce long criticized mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Republican Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) have agreed to a package aimed at making the criminal justice system fairer, particularly for African Americans, following the Baltimore and Ferguson riots. Read More
The bipartisan leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee want to expand the government’s commitment to obtaining a warrant before using controversial spying devices that pick up information from people’s cellphones. Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and top Democrat Patrick Leahy (Vt.) on Tuesday asked Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to follow the Justice Department’s lead and commit to getting a warrant before using the “StingRay” devices. Read More
By Stephen Dash- Forbes.com The number of people attending college has grown… Read More
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa on Tuesday received the 2015 Fueling Growth Award from Growth Energy for his work to develop policies that support clean-burning, domestically produced ethanol. Grassley was presented the award at the Growth Energy Advocacy Conference in Washington, D.C., where he spoke about renewable energy and the Renewable Fuel Standard. “I’m honored to receive this award,” Grassley said. “I’ve been an advocate of renewable fuels for a long time, starting with ethanol. Alternative energy sources reduce our dependence on foreign oil, increase national security, and create jobs for American workers in addition to extending our fuel supply and lowering prices at the pump.” Read More
The chairman of the powerful SenateJudiciary Committee on Thursday demanded the Obama administration explain why it allowed Hillary Rodham Clinton to be the only Secretary of State in more than a half-century without a permanent independent watchdog to police conduct inside the department. Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, wrote in a letter to Mrs. Clinton’s successor, John Kerry, that he thinks some of the problems uncovered after the fact about Mrs. Clinton’s tenure, such as improper handling of classified information on a private email server, may have been prevented or detected had President Obama named a permanent inspector general at the State Department much sooner. Read More
