Daily news coverage of politics, policy, and issues shaping the nation.
Jill Rothrock knows the moment she hit rock bottom. It was 2007, and Rothrock went into the pharmacy in Bucksport, Maine, to pick up a prescription for Vicodin that she had called in herself. Her two daughters were in the car, and after she had picked up the pills, Rothrock got back into a car…
Today on “Full Measure,” we have a report on “The Missing”—the hundreds of illegal immigrants who cross the border, never to be seen alive again. Their remains are found in remote desert areas. For this story, I traveled to the Tucson, Ariz., morgue where advanced forensic science is used to identify the remains, and let…
President Barack Obama has not been able to move his Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, through the Senate but Republicans continue to advance the president’s lower court nominees. The chamber on Monday is set to take up the nomination of Paula Xinis, a partner and senior trial attorney at Murphy, Falcon & Murphy—the Baltimore law…
Louisiana Republicans and the state’s attorney general are aiming to deter cities and localities from having “sanctuary” immigration policies by threatening to withhold funding from those that do. While the designation of a “sanctuary city” is informal, it generally refers to jurisdictions where local officials refuse to fulfill requests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement…
RALEIGH, N.C. — A North Carolina state senator fired back at U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch after she compared the state’s bathroom bill to Jim Crow laws and likened it to state-sponsored discrimination. “Frankly, I find it appalling that someone from North Carolina would work so hard to hurt the state where she’s from,” state…
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has unspent money left over from the fight in 2013 against the Ebola epidemic overseas. But HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell has not deployed that money to combat the coming Zika virus because of what she considers prior commitments. House Republicans want to repurpose old Ebola money for…
A state agency wants to remove a small-town judge in Wyoming from two posts because she told a reporter that her religious beliefs would prevent her from solemnizing same-sex marriages. In her full-time responsibilities, Municipal Judge Ruth Neely isn’t authorized to preside over marriages. In part-time duties on the local Circuit Court, though, she could…
The U.S. Senate’s first spending bill of 2016 allocates $261 million more than President Barack Obama requested and lacks significant conservative amendments, but it still sailed to passage Thursday in the Republican-led chamber. An overwhelming number of senators on both sides of the aisle approved the energy and water development appropriations bill, by a vote of…
A federal judge delivered a blow to the Obama administration and the president’s signature health care law Thursday in a lawsuit mounted by the House of Representatives. But the lawsuit’s future could be impacted further by November’s elections. U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer sided with the House in a case challenging how the Obama administration…
Do you know the difference between a democracy and a constitutional republic? Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett wants to clear up any confusion. Barnett, director of Georgetown’s Center for the Constitution, wrote the book “Our Republican Constitution” to explain what the founders really meant by “We the People” in the U.S. Constitution. During a…
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is pushing back against the idea that the judicial nomination process is broken after being criticized for not holding a hearing to confirm President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. The Senate Judiciary Committee, tasked with checking the president’s power to appoint federal judges, has held hearings for 38 of Obama’s judicial…
RALEIGH, N.C. — Two days after North Carolina and the Justice Department announced dueling lawsuits, The Daily Signal sat down with Lt. Gov. Dan Forest. Forest, a Republican, called the Obama administration “shameful” for equating the state’s so-called bathroom bill to Jim Crow laws and other forms of state-sponsored discrimination. “To use Jim Crow laws…
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has called for school superintendent Kent Scribner’s resignation after Scribner adopted new transgender student guidelines for his district, without the input of parents, school board members, and others in the community. “The district did not seek any public comment or input from parents or the public,” Fort Worth resident Julia…
Policies allowing a person who is biologically male to access women’s restrooms and locker rooms can create negative, unintended consequences, according to some sexual abuse survivors. “The presence of a male of any variety, whether he’s somebody who identifies as a trans or not, whether he has deviant motives or not, that’s irrelevant to the…
A group of students at the University of North Carolina are fighting back against the Obama administration’s civil rights lawsuit against the state this week by filing a lawsuit of their own, alleging that the federal government is forcing them to choose between their educational pursuits and personal privacy. “Our clients, the students, are between…
U.S. ARMED FORCES, Iraq—The aircraft parked on the ramp at this military base in northern Iraq offer a symbolic counterpoint to the White House narrative that U.S. forces are on the sidelines of the ground war against the Islamic State. U.S. Army medevac Blackhawk helicopters are based here, including the one that picked up mortally…
The Obama administration is changing its rules for the remaining 11 co-ops started under Obamacare to now allow them to more easily attract outside investors, paving the way for states and large hospital systems to potentially inject cash into the struggling nonprofit insurers. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued an interim final rule…
What do honeybees on cocaine, drunken songbirds, and sexy goldfish have in common? Each was the subject of extensive, taxpayer-funded research and each features prominently in Sen. Jeff Flake’s most recent expose on government waste. The Arizona Republican’s oversight report—”Twenty Questions: Government Studies That Will Leave You Scratching Your Head“—highlights $35 million worth of federally…
For Mary Mayhew, reforming the state’s welfare system hasn’t been easy. But the impact those reforms have had on Maine residents makes it all worth it. Since joining Gov. Paul LePage’s administration in 2011, Mayhew, commissioner of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, and LePage, a Republican, have implemented changes to Temporary Assistance…
A House panel issued subpoenas to two organizations in an effort to access information related to the purchase and sale of aborted baby body parts. The House of Representatives Select Investigative Panel issued subpoenas on April 29 to Scinto Group, LLP and Five Star Bancorp to get accounting and bank records of StemExpress, a biomedical…