Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA) thinks that Democrats will turn a long-red part of Pennsylvania blue on Tuesday.
“I look forward to calling Conor [Lamb] a colleague in about a week when he gets sworn in,” the Massachusetts Congressman told Cheddar in a recent interview.
The showdown for Pennsylvania’s District 18 U.S. House seat is between Lamb, an attorney and former United States Marine, and Republican Rick Saccone, who currently serves in the state legislature. The candidates are vying to fill the seat left vacant by Rep. Tim Murphy, who stepped down amid an extramarital affair scandal last fall.
The GOP has held the seat since 2002, and in the 2016 presidential race Donald Trump won the district by 20 points. But this special election is shaping up to be much closer. A Monmouth University [poll](https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_pa_031218/) released Monday showed Lamb had a lead over Saccone in three different turnout models.
Republicans, who’ve dumped about $8 million into the Saccone campaign compared to the less than $400,000 Democrats gave Lamb, are hoping to avoid an outcome like Roy Moore’s failed Senate run in Alabama last year.
And Kennedy said that if Lamb wins, it could send the opposing party a big message.
“It’s undoubtedly a warning sign for the presidency and for President Trump specifically,” he said. “I think it’s showing that there’s an awful lot of Americans out there that are recognizing the way that a Republican-led Congress is leading the country is not reflective of their values or visions or what they think is right.”
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/all-eyes-on-close-pa-special-election).
Navient, a major student loan collecting company, agreed to cancel $1.7 billion in debt owed by more than 66,000 borrowers across the U.S. and pay over $140 million in other penalties to settle allegations of abusive lending practices.
The recently expired child tax credit helped a wide swathe of families throughout the U.S. Megan Pratz looks into the impact the payments had, and how the end of the program will have a drastic effect on families that could still use the help with child care.
The Supreme Court has stopped the Biden administration from enforcing a requirement that employees at large businesses be vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing and wear a mask on the job.
President Joe Biden says the government plans to double to 1 billion the rapid, at-home COVID-19 tests to be distributed free to Americans.
Buckingham Palace says that Prince Andrew’s honorary military titles and royal patronages have been returned to Queen Elizabeth II with her “approval and agreement.”
The U.S. Army, for the first time, is offering a maximum enlistment bonus of $50,000 to highly skilled recruits who sign up for six years.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has apologized for attending a garden party during Britain’s first coronavirus lockdown, but brushed aside opposition demands that he resign for breaching the rules his own government had imposed on the nation.
North Korea says leader Kim Jong Un oversaw a successful flight test of a hypersonic missile he claimed would remarkably increase the country’s “war deterrent.”
Prices paid by U.S. consumer jumped 7% in December from a year earlier, the highest inflation rate since 1982.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told lawmakers on Tuesday during his confirmation hearing that it is time to wind down the central bank's aggressive pandemic-era policies.
