Press Releases

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) announced BNSF Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) publicly filed weekly grain backlog status updates as required by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board (STB). A summary of the reporting data specific to North Dakota from the last 10 weeks is below. Following STB’s hearing on “Urgent Issues in Freight Rail Service” in April, BNSF Railway, CSX Transportation, Norfolk Southern Railway, and Union Pacific submitted service recovery plans,... CONTINUE READING

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and James Lankford (R-OK) introduced the Transparency and Honesty in Energy Regulations Act, a bill to prohibit the federal government from using the flawed social cost of carbon, social cost of methane, social cost of nitrous oxide, or the social cost of any other greenhouse gas metrics in the rulemaking process. “The social cost of carbon is an arbitrary and inconsistent metric. It is... CONTINUE READING

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Senate Banking Republicans sent a letter to Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Sandra Thompson raising significant concerns with the Equitable Housing Finance Plans which contemplate race-based housing subsidies. The Equitable Housing Finance Plans announced on June 8, 2022 were developed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs) at the direction of the FHFA. The GSEs’ recently-released... CONTINUE READING

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and the Senate Banking Committee Republicans criticized Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler for the SEC’s lack of transparency and disregard for a significant congressional oversight request concerning the SEC’s 500-page proposed climate disclosure rule—a sweeping new regulation that will harm consumers, workers, and the entire U.S. economy at a time when energy prices are skyrocketing.On June 15, Banking Republicans sent a... CONTINUE READING

U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) announced the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) awarded $280,000 to the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to implement a program to provide drinking water program assistance to underserved, small and disadvantaged communities in the Tri-County Water District. The funds will be used by North Dakota to carry out projects and activities needed for public water systems to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act, programs to provide household... CONTINUE READING

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) issued the following statement on the payment adjustment for the Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP):   “The Livestock Indemnity Program exists to assist producers who had above normal livestock fatalities as a result of storms, like the significant blizzards which impacted North Dakota this spring. The storms coincided with calving season and caused significant fatalities among newborn calves.... CONTINUE READING

WASHINGTON – U.S Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Richard Burr (R-NC) sent a letter to U.S. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona criticizing the Administration’s proposed changes to Title IX and urging an extension of the public comment period by 30 days.In the letter, the senators underscore how the proposed changes to the Title IX rule for adjudicating sexual misconduct cases on college campuses threaten students’ Constitutional right to due process and run counter to federal... CONTINUE READING

***Click here to download video. Click here for audio.***WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joined The Record with Greta Van Susteren on Newsmax to discuss the Fufeng group’s purchase of farmland near the Grand Forks Air Force Base. Senator Cramer also highlighted his request to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) review the purchase and expressed national security concerns about this investment. Excerpts and... CONTINUE READING

The Equal Access to Green Cards for Legal Employment Act eliminates arbitrary per-country limits on employment-based visas.WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and John Hickenlooper (D-CO) introduced the Equal Access to Green Cards for Legal Employment (EAGLE) Act of 2022, a bill which will benefit the U.S. economy by allowing American employers to focus on hiring immigrants based on their merit, not their birthplace. The EAGLE Act phases out the 7% per-country limit on... CONTINUE READING

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA) urged the Department of Energy (DOE) to implement the Direct Air Capture (DAC) Hub Program established under the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act the way Congress intended. Currently, DOE is imposing onerous, one-size-fits-all requirements on grant applicants, limiting the program's ability to work.“Congress designed this program to assist in deploying and bringing down the long-term cost of... CONTINUE READING

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), and Roger Wicker (R-MS) sent a bipartisan, bicameral letter urging Acting National Institute of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Lawrence A. Tabak to expand funding opportunities for research in osteopathic medicine. Osteopathic physicians have expertise in the musculoskeletal system and receive additional training in osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT), a hands-on technique and non-pharmacological solution to pain management.... CONTINUE READING

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) announced today the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) awarded $500,000 to the North Dakota Department of Transportation (NDDOT) for the repair and reconstruction of federal-aid highways and roads on federal lands which suffered serious damage as a result of April 2022 severe storms and flooding in eastern North Dakota.North Dakota’s disaster declaration for severe spring storms was approved last week.... CONTINUE READING

***Click here to download video. Click here for audio*** WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joined Fox & Friends to discuss his opposition to the Fufeng group’s purchase of farmland near Grand Forks Air Force Base. Senator Cramer highlighted national security concerns and his recent request for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to review the purchase. Excerpts and full video are below.On National Security... CONTINUE READING

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) introduced a joint resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), with the other 48 of their Senate Republican colleagues to nullify the Biden Administration’s new regulation, “National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Implementing Regulations Revisions.” The regulation reverses common sense permitting reforms implemented by the... CONTINUE READING

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, penned an essay in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy on restoring states’ rights and federalism in environmental policy.“Tension between the States and the federal government has existed since the beginning. However, recent Democrat political leadership has trended toward federal dominion well outside the bounds of the law. Nowhere is this more evident than environmental legal... CONTINUE READING

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, issued the following statement on the beginning of Carbon Capture Sequestration (CCS) at Red Trail Energy: “The future of responsible energy development and innovation runs through North Dakota. The United States’ first permitted carbon capture sequestration project is up and running in Richardton. For the past month, Red Trail Energy has removed carbon dioxide from an existing... CONTINUE READING

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) announced BNSF Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) publicly filed weekly grain backlog status updates as required by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board (STB). A summary of the reporting data specific to North Dakota from the last 10 weeks is below. Following STB’s hearing on “Urgent Issues in Freight Rail Service” in April, BNSF Railway, CSX Transportation, Norfolk Southern Railway, and Union Pacific submitted service recovery plans,... CONTINUE READING

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND), John Thune (R-SD), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) sent a letter requesting that U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack address implementation issues with the Emergency Relief Program (ERP), which helps producers offset the impacts of natural disasters that occurred in 2020 and 2021. “USDA’s work in implementing the ERP to help farmers and ranchers who suffered disaster-related losses in 2020 and 2021 has been meaningful to... CONTINUE READING

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Tae Johnson expressing concern over the dangers of President Biden’s continued implementation of catch and release policies in response to the border crisis. In particular, the concerns focus on how the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program is failing to accomplish its stated goals.“Under the Alternatives to Detention... CONTINUE READING

WASHINGTON – National security concerns are growing over Chinese food manufacturer Fufeng Group’s purchase of roughly 370 acres of land near the Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota. U.S. Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND), John Hoeven (R-ND), and Marco Rubio (R-FL) sent a letter to U.S. Department of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and U.S. Treasury Department Secretary Janet Yellen requesting the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) review the purchase.“This property is... CONTINUE READING