Danielle Kurtzleben

Jenny Schulz isn't religious.

"I see religion as something really personal," said Schulz, 26, who works at a nonprofit in Washington, D.C. "So the fact that it is a requirement in politics always seems unusual to me."

She said she "oscillates between atheist and agnostic," but she knows it could ...

Joe Biden couldn't help dropping an f-bomb when President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act. Obama knew he would have "more flexibility" in his dealings with Russia after he was reelected. And back in 2010, Carly Fiorina didn't like Barbara Boxer's hairstyle.

Those are just a few ...

Imagine publishing a list of all of your recent sexual partners in the local paper. That was what one 2001 Florida law, enacted under then-Gov. Jeb Bush, required of some women in the state.

Huffington Post reporter Laura Bassett brought the so-called Scarlet Letter law to national attention in ...

President Obama is once again poised to go it alone on labor policy, this time on overtime. The Labor Department is expected in the coming weeks to release a rule making millions more Americans eligible for overtime work — currently, all workers earning below $455 a week, or $23,660 a ...

When J.R. Hardman, 28, asked to join a group of Civil War re-enactors in a military drill a few years ago, the unit commander said no dice.

Hardman was willing to wear the wool uniform, carry the gear, load the muskets, eat the hardtack, but the brass still said no.

...

On Friday, the Labor Department announced that the economy added 280,000 jobs in May — a strong figure, and a much faster rate than economists expected.

Now imagine that in your state, job creation was nearly four times that fast.

That's what GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry can claim for ...

It's the early presidential campaign season, and candidates are loudly courting voters in high-profile appearances nationwide. But in quiet, closed-press fundraisers, they're also asking well-heeled elites for the cash to keep campaigning. That cash grab is so fast-paced, it would make even hot Silicon Valley startups jealous.

A report ...

In the race for the GOP presidential nomination, Rick Perry is getting in Thursday, and both Jeb Bush and Bobby Jindal have announced that they have announcements to make.

All three have a statistic in their arsenal that almost no other candidate in the race can boast: while they were ...

A new poll says Americans want NSA data collection renewed. Yet another recent survey says Americans want better controls on what kind of data the government can collect. What's going on?

Mother Jones dug up a 1972 essay that Bernie Sanders wrote for the Vermont Freeman, an alternative newspaper. The article, called, "Man-and-Woman," is a commentary on gender roles. But it's also caused a stir, as is bound to happen anytime a candidate mentions rape.

If you haven't been following ...

Sixteen presidential candidates talking over each other doesn't sound much like good TV. CNN and Fox News know this, so when they air their Republican debates later this year, they'll both limit the field to 10 candidates.

Both networks will use polling data to limit the field to only the ...

Thursday night, 10 kids with nerves of steel will compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. It's a tense enough affair without partisan politics being a part of it. But here's a throwback to last year's midterm elections when Republican superPAC American Crossroads did exactly that — made spelling ...

The Nebraska state Legislature voted Wednesday to repeal the death penalty in the state. The 30-19 vote overrides Gov. Pete Ricketts' veto of a law the Legislature passed last week getting rid of the policy.

This makes Nebraska the 19th state in the nation (along with the District of ...

Nebraska's Legislature voted Wednesday to abolish the death penalty, overturning Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts' veto. The state's unicameral legislature overwhelmingly approved the measure in a series of three previous votes.

The repeal comes as other states have experienced complications with new lethal-injection cocktails. But Americans overall still support the practice.

...

Merriam-Webster has released its latest list of new entries, and unsurprisingly, a good share of the words are the products of the internet ("NSFW," "meme," and "clickbait" are among this year's rookie entries). But most years, politics and current events popularize new concepts enough to drag them into the ...

One of the most basic facts about the Trans-Pacific Partnership is also the most important: It's huge.

The trade deal got over a big hurdle Friday when the Senate voted in favor of giving the Obama administration "fast-track" authority to negotiate the deal with Canada and 10 Asian nations.

That ...

The Clinton Foundation on Thursday night disclosed that it earned $12 million to $26 million for speeches given by Hillary, Bill and Chelsea Clinton. The speeches given by Hillary herself were largely at two types of organizations — universities and financial institutions — and have already created headaches for ...

The new Congress is 100 days old, and already Americans disapprove. According to the latest data from the Pew Research Center, nearly 40 percent of Americans think the newest Congress has accomplished less than expected — that's around twice the share who thought the same of the new Democratic ...

Once upon a time, minimum-wage debates were mostly the province of Congress and statehouses. These days, you're more likely than ever to hear these debates in your city hall. The trend continued this week, when the Los Angeles City Council voted to raise the city's minimum wage to $15 per ...

As 2016 campaigns heat up, Republicans are working to boost their momentum among Latino voters, and the numbers make it easy to see why.

The Koch network is funding Spanish-language driver's test review sessions in Nevada, as NPR's Tamara Keith reported this week. And Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio ...