US Politics News

Republican Bradley Byrne on Tuesday won the special election for Alabama's vacant 1st Congressional District, easily defeating Democrat Burton LeFlore.

Rhode Island's new insurance marketplace said on Tuesday it will extend its deadline until the end of the year for consumers to sign up for private coverage plans under President Barack Obama's healthcare law and still get benefits on January 1. The HealthSource RI marketplace will let individuals who select a plan by December 31 and pay by January ... (more)

Technology company executives pressed President Barack Obama on Tuesday to rein in the U.S. government's electronic spying after a court dealt a blow to the administration's surveillance practices.

U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday he will oppose President Barack Obama's appointment of Janet Yellen as the next head of the Federal Reserve, citing concerns about her willingness to defend the dollar.

Kurt DelBene, a recently retired Microsoft executive who headed the software giant's Office unit, will spearhead efforts to continue the overhaul of the federal government's website for health insurance, the government said on Tuesday.

President Barack Obama nominates Robert Leon Wilkins , Nina Pillard and Patricia Millett to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit during a ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C., on June 4, 2013.

The issue at hand is small, even for local politics: The sudden closure, over four days, of a pair of access lanes from Fort Lee, N.J., onto the George Washington Bridge into New York.

Germany's Parliament elected Chancellor Angela Merkel to a third term as the leader of Europe's biggest economic power on Tuesday, nearly three months after an awkward election result forced her to put together a new governing coalition.

Democrats used their newly initiated lower threshold for defeating filibusters Monday to win Senate confirmation of President Obama's nomination of former top Pentagon lawyer Jeh C. Johnson to be secretary of homeland security.

White House press secretary Jay Carney speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, Monday, Dec. 16, 2013.

File photo: U.S. Rep. Trey Radel speaks during a press conference, on Capitol Hill, July 9, 2013 in Washington.

Demonstrators protest outside a McDonald's restaurant located inside of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum as part of a nationwide protest of fast food workers in this Dec. 5 photo.

Republican leaders and several hard-right groups are displaying the classic signs of a political divorce, including bitter name-calling and reprisals against one another.

A federal judge ordered a program of "high intensity" home supervision Monday for Ryan Loskarn, who was fired last week as Sen. Lamar Alexander's chief of staff after being arrested on federal charges of possession and distribution of child pornography.

The fired chief of staff for Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander will live with his parents in Maryland and be electronically monitored while he awaits trial on charges of possession and attempted distribution of child pornography.

The fired chief of staff for Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee is returning to court in Washington after his arrest on charges of possession and attempted distribution of child pornography.

Three Senate Republicans have spoken out against the bipartisan budget deal that the House approved last week because of concerns about spending cuts that would affect working-age military retirees.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer laid it all out last week for the lawyer who was trying to get the Supreme Court to adopt his interepretation of an international agreement meant to thwart a parent who abducts a child and flees to another country.

Of course Hillary Clinton's possible presidential run looms large for 2016. But it could be a factor in 2014 too.

The budget package crafted by Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan - heads of the Senate and House Budget Committees - recalls political scientist Charles E. Lindblom's famous 1959 essay, " The Science of 'Muddling Through .'