The findings further resonate in a state that continues to lead the nation in the number of uninsured. Texas remains one of 19 states that has chosen not to expand Medicaid under the ACA. In Texas, 63% of those polled said they support an expanded Medicaid program. Similarly, 68% in Florida also favored a Medicaid expansion. These numbers are significant because of the states surveyed, only Florida and Texas did not expand the safety-net program.   read more

Many mines already operate at a loss, and there's not enough money in the fuel anymore to enable their owners to keep their promises to clean up the land. This reclamation crisis looms because of a practice called self-bonding, which allows coal companies to promise to eventually cover the cost of cleaning up abandoned mines without first setting aside the necessary money. Nationwide, self-bonding in the coal-mining industry tops $3.3 billion.   read more

Democrats shouted "Shame! Shame!," but seven Republicans switched their votes under pressure from House leaders Thursday and defeated a measure to protect gay rights. Maloney and other Democrats were incensed. "They literally snatched discrimination from the jaws of equality," Maloney said. Democrats loudly chanted as their leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, yelled up from near the well of the House at her members, shouting at them to vote down the underlying bill.   read more

Judge Richard J. Leon’s ruling reopens the district’s long fight over how much room the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms leaves for local regulation — and whether it applies only to firearms in the home, or to guns carried outside as well. The law gave the police the discretion to grant concealed-carry licenses only to those with “good reason to fear injury” or other specific reasons, such as having a job in which they carried large amounts of cash or valuables.   read more

Including women in a potential mass mobilization has roiled social conservatives. They see such a mandate as another step toward blurring gender lines similar to allowing transgender people to use public lavatories of their choosing. But proponents see the requirement as a sensible step toward gender equality. They point to the Pentagon's decision late last year to open all front-line combat jobs to women as removing any justification for gender restrictions on draft registration.   read more

When the Democrats still controlled the Senate in Dec. 2014, committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein sent a copy of the full report to President Obama, with a letter encouraging the president to use the full report in future development of CIA programs. Feinstein chose not to seek declassification of the full committee study at that time, however, and the committee's new chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, has since demanded that Obama to return all copies of the Final Full Report immediately.   read more

Unwanted robocalls are an increasingly vexing problem, in general, because of new technology that makes it easier to initiate automated calls and harder for the authorities to track them. Unwanted calls are the subject of more than 1.7 million complaints a year to the FTC. Recently, the calls have become a particular problem for cellphone customers, including some who report receiving repeated calls that are actually intended for people who previously had the same cellphone number.   read more

Ohio has repeatedly pushed back executions while it looks for drugs. It now has more than two dozen inmates with execution dates, but no drugs to put prisoners to death with. Some states are using compounded versions of drugs that fall outside of FDA approval. Other states have passed laws allowing older methods of execution if lethal drugs are unavailable: Utah has approved the use of firing squads, Tennessee passed a law allowing the electric chair, and Oklahoma has approved nitrogen gas.   read more

The case is related to Felix Sater, a former Mafia informant and one-time business associate of Trump. The U.S. government wanted to protect Sater's role as an informant after he was convicted in 1993 for stabbing a man in the face with a broken margarita glass and again five years later for participating in a $40 million stock fraud scheme tied to the Bonanno and Genovese crime families.   read more

“The current approach,” wrote Shaw, “permits the justices to dole out the valuable asset of a Supreme Court argument to friends and former employees, in a way that is reminiscent of the cronyism and patronage that characterized government employment” before the Civil Service reforms of the 19th century. One of the study’s notable findings, she added, was that “gender and race diversity numbers for invited advocates lag behind even the already low overall numbers in Supreme Court advocacy.”   read more

In what would be the grandest about-face among rightward leaning states, Oklahoma is now moving toward a plan to expand its Medicaid program to bring in billions of federal dollars from Obama's new health care system. Despite furious opposition by conservative groups, Republican Gov. Mary Fallin and some GOP legislative leaders are pushing the plan, and support appears to be growing in the overwhelmingly Republican Legislature.   read more

How can society balance the right to privacy with the needs of science and medical research? In an era of increasingly sophisticated genetic analysis, some privacy advocates fear insurance companies could access blood samples and charge higher premiums for people found to have a genetic predisposition to diseases such as Alzheimer's. Krimsky said law enforcement could also potentially access states' newborn blood stores to use them to create DNA databases of law-abiding citizens.   read more

Myra Williams died from exposure to asbestos after years of contact with the material at home through handling her husband's work clothes. As part of his job at Placid Oil, according to the documents, Jimmy Williams was required to crawl over equipment insulated with asbestos. "Take-home asbestos exposure will continue to harm families across America due to the negligence of companies that failed to properly protect workers," said plaintiff's attorney Jeff Gaughan.   read more

If the ruling stands, it would be a major setback of millions of low-income Americans who benefit from the cost-sharing subsidies that help them pay for out-of-pocket costs. Collyer's ruling disappointed congressional Democrats, who vowed to appeal. Elizabeth Wydra, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, said the judge's ruling is "unprecedented" as it allowed "a partisan faction of Congress to use the courts to settle a political dispute over the interpretation of a statute."   read more

In response to the nation’s financial crisis, Milwaukee put in place policies to help people stay in their homes; for example, giving residents three years to pay property taxes before foreclosing. Now, unscrupulous landlords are exploiting those policies. What some landlords have figured out is that they can buy a property and collect rent — but not pay taxes — while letting it fall into disrepair. Then three years later, they let the city repossess the property, which erases the tax bill.   read more

Nursing home costs are rising largely because residents are more likely to arrive with chronic conditions like diabetes or emphysema that need more medical attention, said Greg Crist, a spokesman for the American Health Care Association, the country's largest trade group for nursing homes. He added that the average nursing home resident takes 11 prescription medications. "They're living longer, they're not necessarily living healthier," he said.   read more