A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced legislation last week to bring greater transparency to the federal Bureau of Prisons following reporting from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that exposed gaps in oversight of the federal prison system. The Federal Prison Oversight Act would require the Justice Department to create an ombudsman to field complaints about prison conditions and direct the DOJ inspector general to evaluate risks and abuses at all 122 federal prison facilities. The inspector general also would provide recommendations to address deficiencies and report findings to Congress and the public, the Associated Press reports.

The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations says it has uncovered “shocking long-term gaps in federal oversight, including hundreds of uncounted deaths in 2021 alone.” Committee Chair Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia, expounded on the findings, saying the investigation uncovered nearly 1,000 deaths in custody in 2021 that went uncounted by the Department of Justice. The committee reports that the Justice Department has been inconsistent with the publishing of data, despite the Death in Custody Act, which requires a count to be made each year. In 2000 and 2014, Congress again passed legislation directing the department to comply with the law but the committee says the department shows no sign it is about to restart reporting the data. Read more of the committee’s findings in a piece by Poynter (scroll to the last article).

Democratic lawmakers want to add 51 judges to the country's federal appeals courts, a move they say is necessary to reduce case backlogs but that would also give President Joe Biden a chance to appoint more judges, Reuters reports,. U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia on Wednesday led a group of seven Democrats in introducing the Circuit Court Judgeships Act of 2022, which they said would address understaffed appellate courts nationally. Under the bill, eight circuits would gain judges including the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit, which would get 10 more, and the conservative-leaning New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with 13 new ones for 30 total. Despite growing caseloads, the appeals courts have not gained any new judges in over three decades.

The U.S. Senate will not vote on legislation to codify same sex marriage rights until after the midterm elections, bipartisan negotiators announced last week. The move follows weeks of behind-the-scenes discussions among five U.S. senators from both political parties who have been drafting an amendment to the House-passed legislation that they hoped would secure more Republican votes. The U.S. House passed the Respect for Marriage Act in July by a bipartisan vote that received the backing of 47 Republican lawmakers. The legislation would also protect interracial marriages, Tennessee Lookout reports.

Five of Tennessee's congressional representatives and its junior senator, Bill Hagerty, traded corporate stocks while in office, according to an investigation by The New York Times. Several members also traded in industries directly related to their Congressional committee work. The Nashville Post covers the story, which involves Reps. Steve Cohen, Chuck Fleischmann, Mark Green, Diana Harshbarger and John Rose.

U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican from the Knoxville area, is calling on Congress to pass a bill he introduced earlier this year known as the “Fentanyl Traffic Elimination Act.” It’s an effort to bring forward more serious penalties after a smuggler is caught. “It really is going after the drug cartels and the heavy pushers that are doing it, and if they’re caught it increases their criminal penalty to life in prison,” Burchett said. WATE News reports that Tennessee ranks fifth in the country for overdose deaths. The Centers for Disease Control say nearly 106,000 people across the country died from drug overdoses in the last year.

The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday sent to the president a bill eliminating the statute of limitations for victims of child sex abuse who seek to file civil claims. The “Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act” had passed the Senate in March, WKRN reports. The measure calls for removing the statute of limitations for minors filing civil claims relating to a number of sex abuse crimes, including forced labor, sex trafficking, sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children. Under current law, minors who experience sexual abuse are able to file federal civil claims until they turn 28 years old, or until 10 years after the violation or injury is discovered. There is no statute of limitations in place for criminal offenses involving child sex abuse.

The U.S. House of Representatives is considering a bill from U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a Memphis Democrat, that would direct the National Park Service to study the feasibility of adding lynching sites in and around Memphis to its properties. The Lynching Sites Project of Memphis, a nonprofit seeking to commemorate about two dozen locations, has been working to document the sites, Tennessee Lookout reports. Congress enacted bills with similar missions earlier this year, voting to add a former Japanese internment camp in southeastern Colorado to the park system and to expand sites related to the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case in Kansas.

The U.S. Senate today confirmed Memphis attorney Andre Mathis to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Reuters reports. Mathis, a partner at Butler Snow, was confirmed on a 48-47 vote, despite prior objections from Tennessee Republican Senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty. He will be the first Black male and second Black person from Tennessee to sit on the Ohio-based 6th Circuit. Mathis is the second of President Joe Biden’s judicial picks to be confirmed this week.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Board recently approved its FY 2023 budget outside of a public board meeting and without any public hearings “for fear there would not be a quorum to legally approve the budget,” the Times Free Press reports. With only five of the nine seats on the board filled, the federal utility needs every director to obtain a quorum for major actions. Two additional members will roll off the board at the end of the year, leaving the board even smaller unless their successors are named before then. The U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate and Nuclear Safety was to hold a hearing today to consider three new nominees: William J. Renick, a county judge executive in Kentucky; Adam "Wade" White, a former mayor in Mississippi; and Joe Ritch, a Huntsville, Alabama, attorney who was on the TVA board previously from 2012 to 2016. It previously held hearings on four Biden nominees.