The embattled mayor of San Diego officially steps down today. Allegations of sexual harassment against Bob Filner have rocked the eighth-largest American city, which now has to pick up the pieces and elect a new mayor.
Frustration with New York City’s unaffordability and its aggressive police tactics is elevating Bill de Blasio, once dismissed as a left-leaning long shot, into the lead of the Democratic mayoral primary field, according to a poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
In the pre-Labor Day walkout, workers in at least 58 cities will picket restaurants such as McDonald's, Burger King and KFC during peak lunch hours, calling for $15-an hour-pay and the right to form a union without fear of retaliation. The event is also intended to roughly coincide with the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, a protest as much about economic justice as civil rights.
In a brief Wednesday, state attorneys said those marriage licenses were never valid, and compared gay and lesbian couples to "12-year-olds" who are also barred from marrying under state law.
Unless a handful of wavering Democrats change their minds, the Republican-controlled Missouri legislature is expected to enact a statute next month nullifying all federal gun laws in the state and making it a crime for federal agents to enforce them here.
Twenty years ago, the notion of a Republican-controlled Arkansas was unthinkable. But as the state readies for 2014’s hotly contested governor’s race, Republicans have a shot at cementing their newfound dominance in the longtime southern Democratic stronghold.
It took two votes and eight hours of mostly closed-door politicking and vote wrangling, but the state Senate approved a plan late Tuesday to expand Medicaid health care coverage to 470,000 low-income Michiganders.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed nearly 30 measures into law Tuesday, including one allowing noncitizens who are permanent legal residents to serve as poll workers in California elections.
The recall elections for two Democratic lawmakers has become a political soap opera — with subplots, new characters and daily developments — that Tuesday included a $350,000 donation from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court.
A New Mexico judge on Monday declared same-sex marriage legal, ordering the clerk of the state’s most populous county to join two other counties in issuing licenses for gay and lesbian couples.
But several states have started to question whether these organizations should qualify for such benefits, since they are private entities in most respects.
Nikki Haley, the nation’s youngest governor, is expected to face Democratic state Sen. Vincent Sheheen of Camden in a repeat of their 2010 race, which Haley won by 4.5 percentage points.
The governor left one measure unsigned: a bill to prevent North Carolina courts from recognizing Islamic Sharia law in family cases. He called House Bill 522 “unnecessary.” The bill will become law without his signature after Sunday night.
The state took over the job of verifying the Detroit primary results after the Wayne County Board of Canvassers last week refused to certify results prepared by the county clerk’s staff that differed greatly from unofficial results the city’s elections department compiled on election night.
Just last week, Idaho was ordered to cover the $376,000 in legal fees a woman there spent on suing the state after she was charged for an illegal abortion, according to the Associated Press. Combined with its past defense of abortion limits, the state has shelled out more than $1 million since 2000. And it’s far from alone.
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