On December 11, President Trump signed a   Presidential Memorandum entitled "Reinvigorating America's Human Space Exploration Program." The memorandum amends Presidential Policy Directive-4 of June 28, 2010 (National Space Policy) and is aimed at furthering the Administration's efforts in advancing space exploration by directing the NASA Administrator to lead an innovative space exploration program to send American astronauts back to the Moon, and eventually Mars. Read more... 

On December 12, the House passed, by a vote of 294-129, the Community Institution Mortgage Relief Act of 2017 (  H.R. 3971), which would amend the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlements Procedures Act to increase the size of two exemptions created by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Under the first CFPB exemption that H.R. 3971 proposes expanding, escrow accounts would no longer be required for riskier, high-priced loans at banks with less than $25 billion in assets, a sharp increase from the CFPB's current $2 billion threshold. The second CFPB exemption that H.R. 3971 proposes to expand, known as the "small servicer exemption," would relieve mortgage service companies that service up to 30,000 mortgage loans, as opposed to the current limit of 5,000, from more rigorous rules and notification requirements that larger servicers must follow, such as how they provide billing statements, manage home insurance, and contact homeowners about their mortgages. Read more...  

On December 14, the House passed, by a vote of 275-146, the Privacy Notification Technical Clarification Act ( H.R. 2396), which would amend the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) annual privacy notice requirements with respect to how financial institutions share non-public personal information of their customers with other companies. GLBA requires financial institutions to issue physical privacy disclosure notices to consumers that describe the institution's privacy policies if it shares or sells customers' non-public personal information with affiliates or third parties. In 2015, Congress amended GLBA to waive the annual physical notice delivery requirement for any financial institution that does not share information with non-affiliated third parties and does not change its privacy policy from the last time it was disclosed. H.R. 2396 proposes to extend the 2015 waiver by exempting any financial institution from the physical annual privacy policy notice requirement, provided the institution has not changed its policies for the sharing of non-public information and has not changed its privacy policy from the most recent disclosure. The result would be an exemption for financial companies that do share or sell customer information from annual notice requirements to provide clear and conspicuous physical notice to customers that they are able to opt-out from having their personal information shared and sold to unaffiliated third-party companies. Read more... 

On December 13, the House passed, by a vote of 289-135, the Iranian Leadership Asset Transparency Act ( H.R. 1638), which would require the Secretary of the Treasury to compile and submit a report detailing the known assets held by senior Iranian political and military leaders, along with descriptions of how they acquired the assets and how they were used. This information would need to be submitted to Congress, be updated at least annually for the next two years, and be submitted in unclassified form (with a classified annex if necessary). It also requires that the unclassified portion of the report be made available to the public by posting on the Treasury Department's website. Read more here.