Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) is back in the U.S. Senate more than a month after the 49-year-old lawmaker suffered a stroke.
“Great to be back at work!” Luján said on this Twitter feed Thursday. The post includes pictures of the legislator in a meeting room, in what appears to be a Congressional corridor and in front of his desk.
“It’s an absolute honor to be back,” Luján said after drawing applause upon entering a hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Luján said he appreciated all the notes and prayers he received. “It worked,” he added.
“We certainly want to welcome him back to being in our midst… [want him] to continue taking care of himself and prioritize that as well,” Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) was saying during the webcast hearing, seconds before Luján entered the chamber.
“There are things that transcend partisanship and politics and I want to join every member of this committee in welcoming Ben Ray Lujan” back, said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the ranking GOP member. “You are looking good, I notice you have a haircut.”
Luján’s return also has implications for partisan purposes in a Senate evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.
The Hanford Site in Washington state returned to business as usual by 3 p.m. Pacific time Tuesday after an apparent false alarm over reports of shots being fired. “We have found no evidence to suggest there was an active shooter,” the Benton County Sheriff’s Office posted on its Facebook page later that day.
Hanford officials believe the reported shots were some type of work-related noise, and the sheriff’s office is still trying to discover the cause, said Paul Noel, a Department of Energy spokesman at Hanford.
The noise occurred in central Hanford’s 200 East area, which borders Hanford’s radioactive waste vitrification plant. “There’s a lot of construction in that area,” Noel said. The noises occurred at about 10:40 a.m. The site went into a lockdown, which is standard procedure when this type of alarm occurs, Noel said.
The noise came from inside or from near the 2750E Building, an administrative building populated mostly by employees of Washington River Protection solutions, which manages Hanford’s 177 underground tanks and the radioactive wastes in them. About 200 people worked in the 2750E Building, and they were evacuated. By 1 p.m., the lockdown was lifted. But the evacuees from the 2750E building were still being interviewed, and officers from the Tri-Cities, sheriff’s department and Hanford security went through the 2750E Building to hunt for a shooter and victim. None was found.
John Longenecker, currently president of Longenecker & Associates, will replace his wife Bonnie Longenecker as chief executive officer of the Las Vegas-based Department of Energy subcontractor, the company announced Tuesday along with other management appointments.
Martin Schneider, current senior vice president for business development at Longenecker & Associates (L&A), will become president and Christine Gelles, the senior vice president for operations, will become chief operating office, according to a company press release. The job changes to take effect July 1. Bonnie Longenecker, who will continue to chair the company board.
Schneider joined L&A as a vice president in 2015 after a long stint leading ExchangeMonitor Publications. Gelles joined Longenecker as a vice president in 2016 after leaving the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management where she held supervisor posts including deputy assistant secretary for waste management and acting manager of Environmental Management’s Los Alamos field office in New Mexico.
