Press Headlines

The House approved an extension of the Violence Against Women Act, the nation's landmark anti-domestic violence law, accepting on Thursday the version pushed by Democrats in the Senate, which included new protections for the gay community and Native

Utah's congressional delegation reacted strongly Wednesday to the looming sequester deadline that would trigger $85 billion in automatic cuts to the federal budget

Rep. Jim Matheson says Utahns want members of Congress to work longer hours and spend more time in D.C. to solve the nation's fiscal challenges.

Plans to store the nation's high-level reactor waste in Utah are officially dead. The consortium of utility companies behind the idea has asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to scrap its license for a 100-acre parking lot for radioactive w

Lingering interest • Whether Utah might still be in the running for a new site is unclear at this point. But the legal wrangling about the Skull Valley site isn't over. And Skull Valley Chairwoman Lori Bear says discussions are ongoing with the In

Washington • Rep. Jim Matheson has lost faith in Nancy Pelosi's leadership of the House Democrats and his party's modest gains in the recent election haven't changed that.

Senate President Mike Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, flayed state regulators for their tepid response to new reports by the Legislative Auditor General's Office that suggested the state relies too heavily on others – including the regulated companie

WASHINGTON – Pressing an election-year point, Republicans pushed yet another bill through the House on Wednesday to repeal the nation's two-year-old health care law, a maneuver that forced Democrats to choose between President Barack Obama's

Utah will swap mineral rights with the Ute Indians in a land exchange that advanced in Congress.

Washington • The House moved Thursday to strike a new tax on medical devices before it goes into effect, the latest attempt in a persistent campaign to remove this funding source from President Barack Obama's signature health-reform law.

The competing bill, the Wasatch Wilderness and Watershed Protection Act, was created after two years of public meetings and was introduced by Representative Jim Matheson, a Democrat who represents the area.

Last week Matheson wrote to Energy Secretary Steven Chu on the pace and cost-effectiveness of the agency's current strategy for the cleanup. He noted that the job won't be done until 2029 at the current rate.

(KCPW News) Utah Congressman Jim Matheson is pressing the Department of Energy on a five-year contract it awarded last year for the removal of 3.1 million tons of radioactive mill tailings from the Moab Tailings Project Site along the Colorado River

Deseret News editorial calls for maintaining progress on radioactive tailings cleanup on the Colorado River near Moab.

Rep. Jim Matheson has a goal to protect critical watershed in the Wasatch canyons above the Salt Lake Valley, and to that end has resurrected wilderness-designation legislation that ignited intense debate in 2010

It's so seldom these days that Democratic and Republican members of Congress, environmentalists, and state and federal land managers agree on anything, so that when it happens the phenomenon demands attention.

Washington •A measure that would preserve Ute Indian lands while opening up other areas in Utah for oil and gas exploration appears to be winning over environmentalists, tribal officials and land managers.

A new contractor is set to take over the uranium-mill cleanup near Moab by the end of the month.

SALT LAKE CITY – The nation cannot abide a "patchwork" of 50 different state immigration laws but U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson says it is unlikely Congress will take on the issue of comprehensive immigration reform any time soon.

Ted Shimizu, a World War II veteran who had a hand in earning the Congressional Gold Medal and was honored at a luncheon Saturday, was thinking, instead, of his fellow Japanese-American soldiers who lost their lives in Europe.

Rep. Jim Matheson joined a Republican counterpart from Colorado on Thursday evening on a "telephone town hall" calling for easier development of oil, gas and oil shale in the West.

SALT LAKE CITY – People exposed to radiation because of nuclear weapons testing in Nevada were honored Friday with a ceremony at the Utah State Capitol.

Call it the fable of letting the camel's nose into the radioactive tent. It's the notion that, if the state sticks with its plan to allow blended radioactive waste to continue coming into Utah, then still more too-hot waste is sure to follow and U

Rep. Jim Matheson is joining Rep. Rob Bishop in questioning a $25,000 EPA grant to the Repertory Dance Theatre to fund a dance program to teach Salt Lake schoolchildren about pollution and the environment.

U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, said he was "very disappointed" with the failed congressio­nal debt "supercommittee" Tuesday while visit­ing St. George and Cedar City to donate money to Southern Utah charities.

A proposal, passed by the U.S. House on Wednesday, would allow a person with a Utah concealed weapons permit to carry a gun in California, New York, and just about every other state, whether officials there liked it or not.

The Interior Department on Thursday urged Congress to preserve several hundred thousand acres of public land in southeastern Utah as wilderness, an idea that brought a swift rebuke from Utah's federal delegation.

Desolation, Westwater and Mill Creek canyons in Utah's Grand County are among 18 backcountry areas Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said merit wilderness protections by Congress.

A new contract for cleaning up the uranium mill tailings cleanup outside of Moab brings in an Idaho company to replace lead contractor EnergySolutions, Inc., and Rep. Jim Matheson says it will also mean a dramatic slowdown of work at the site.

The uranium tailings cleanup outside of Moab was honored last week with a U.S. Department of Energy Secretary's Achievement Award. The award, presented by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., recognized the cleanup's

Seventh-graders meet with U.S. Representative

Jim Matheson - Mike Ross response on Freedom to Invest Act

Washington • Rep. Jim Matheson huddled in his Capitol Hill office eyeing television images of the burning twin towers until he heard a police officer rushing through the hallway screaming for everyone to evacuate.

A huge one-time tax break to lure back some of the approximately $1.4 trillion in earnings held abroad by U.S. companies would produce nearly 3 million jobs over two years, according to a study released Wednesday by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

(KCPW News) As the business sector anticipates President Obama's job creation speech to Congress Thursday night, Democratic Utah Representative Jim Matheson is hoping to see some specific plans. But how much of an impact can a speech, or the federal g

WASHINGTON – When President Barack Obama talks to the nation about the economy Thursday, a Utah congressman will be listening for one of his own proposals to grow the private sector and encourage jobs.

The plan to store thousands of tons of nuclear waste in Utah's west desert could again surface after a federal panel suggested finding a temporary home for the spent fuel now piling up at reactors across the country.

The Blue Dog Coalition is urging the newly formed congressional debt-reduction panel to work together toward a bipartisan agreement.

Whew!" or "Dang!" – readers can choose their response (or worse) to passage of the debt ceiling compromise. The measure passed handily, but without much help from Utah's congressional delegation. Only Rep. Jim Matheson supported it. That raises some interesting questions.

Rep. Rob Bishop boasted last week that it was time to forge a workable compromise on the debt-ceiling crisis ("Bishop takes his own road on debt-crisis talks," Tribune, July 31). When I read that report, I thought: Bully for Bishop! Finally, we have a Uta

For weeks, the debt-ceiling debate has been defined by a clash of the extremes; tea party conservatives seeking to dramatically reshape government and committed liberals afraid that doing so would squeeze the poor and the working class.

WASHINGTON - On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011, in an attempt to address the growing financial concerns with federal spending and the concern over raising the nation's debt

A major natural gas development in the Uintah Basin that could create more than 4,000 jobs over the life of the project moved closer to reality Thursday following the announcement of a plan to mitigate air quality impacts of developing more than 3,675 nat