Harrison Smith

Charles D. Ferris, a Washington lawyer who helped enact landmark civil rights legislation as a top aide to Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) and who helped usher in an era of telecommunications deregulation as head of the Federal Communications Commission, died Feb. 16 at his home in Chevy Chase (MD).

Rep Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY), a folksy New York liberal who championed women’s rights and American manufacturing for more than three decades as a Democratic congresswoman, and who became a top lieutenant for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the first and only woman to lead the powerful Rules Committee, died March 16 at a hospital in Washington. She was 88 and the oldest sitting member of Congress. Initially one of just 29 women in the House of Representatives, Rep Slaughter was a flinty advocate of women’s access to health care and abortion.