The Federal Reserve's policy committee met Tuesday and Wednesday, and the world is waiting for the results. At 2 p.m., the Federal Open Market Committee will release both a statement announcing its policy stance and the committee's economic projections, revealing how its members expect growth, employment and inflation to evolve in the years ahead. At 2:15, Chairman Ben Bernanke will begin a news conference, first giving a prepared statement describing the Fed's goals and policy stance, then taking questions from reporters. If the past is a guide, the whole thing will be over by about 3:15 p.m. We'll be liveblogging all of it here, so come back early and often! Read full article >>    
Posted 17 minutes 30 seconds ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

Congress has approved a plan to avoid furloughs for U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees during fiscal 2013, according to a Wednesday statement from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Read full article >>    
Posted 17 minutes 30 seconds ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

A new study confirms allegations made by state prosecutors that some of the nation’s biggest banks are violating the terms of the $25 billion national mortgage settlement, the landmark agreement to clean up shoddy foreclosure practices. Read full article >>    
Posted 41 minutes 29 seconds ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

Note: We originally posted this item on April 5. We're resurfacing it now, in light of Sen. Lisa Murkowski's Wednesday announcement that she supports gay marriage. With the Supreme Court expected to rule soon on cases involving gay marriage, the issue is front and center once again. So, it's worth revisiting which Senate Republican might be next to follow in the footsteps of Murkowski and Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). We've taken Murkowski off the list, and reached out to the offices of the remaining senators on it. We will update with any change in position. Read full article >>    
Posted 47 minutes 28 seconds ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

That CBO report showing that the Senate bill will boost the economy? It's not good enough for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). Even if it does help the economy, he says, "the benefit will go to the business owners." He worries that "the 21 million Americans who can't find full-time work will have an ever harder time getting a job and supporting their families." Immigration, he warns, could be "the biggest setback for poor and middle-class Americans of any legislation Congress has considered in decades." Read full article >>    
Posted 1 hour 5 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

The details of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs have been gradually emerging since Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the agency, leaked classified documents describing them earlier this month. Still, basic questions remain unanswered regarding the scope of the surveillance and the protocols according to which the NSA gathers and analyzes data. Google, one of the corporations cooperating with the NSA, challenged a gag order on Tuesday in the hope of being able to discuss the relationship freely: Read full article >>    
Posted 1 hour 5 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

Well that was something. On a day when there is already a strange hothouse atmosphere around the Federal Reserve's policy statement and Ben Bernanke's afternoon news conference, there was a long, often tense exchange on CNBC just now between Rick Santelli, the network's sometimes-bombastic correspondent (recall that it was one of his rants that launched the tea party movement), and Jon Hilsenrath, chief economic correspondent at The Wall Street Journal. Read full article >>    
Posted 1 hour 11 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

Some Hispanic leaders in Prince George’s County are criticizing County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D) for not naming a Hispanic to the county’s reconfigured Board of Education. Under a state law that changed the governance structure of the county school system, Baker was given the power to select three new members to the board, name the board chairman and vice chairman and select the new schools chief. The County Council was given able to name one new school board member. Read full article >>    
Posted 1 hour 23 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

People no longer trust their government, their media or much of anything else to do the right thing. That lack of confidence, which has accelerated in the last decade or so, is a major (and often overlooked) factor in the current political morass in which the country finds itself -- deeply divided along partisan lines without anything even close to objective force able to referee us through the mess. Read full article >>    
Posted 1 hour 44 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

It’s rematch time for the White House softball team, which you might recall got smoked last summer by a team fielded by a coalition of pro-marijuana groups. The two teams square off again on Wednesday night at the field on the Ellipse just off the White House’s front lawn. Read full article >>    
Posted 2 hours 1 minute ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

This year's NBA Finals have gotten much attention for the entertaining match-up between two of the most powerful Big 3s in the league--Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili of the San Antonio Spurs and LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade of the Miami Heat. Read full article >>    
Posted 2 hours 13 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

The founder and leader of one of the District’s top-performing charter schools was surprised Tuesday with a $25,000 award for her efforts to close the achievement gap. Shantelle Wright leads Achievement Prep Public Charter School, whose students — mostly from low-income Ward 8 families — score far above the citywide average on math and reading tests. Read full article >>    
Posted 2 hours 13 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is worried that not enough Americans are worried about social safety net spending. The nation’s largest business lobbying group launched a renewed effort on Wednesday to reduce projected federal spending on safety-net programs, labeling them a “ticking time bomb” that, left unchanged, “will bankrupt this nation.” Read full article >>    
Posted 2 hours 43 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

A few items that caught our attention on Wednesday: IRS is about to pay $70 million in bonuses despite administration directive. That's according to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who said his office has learned that the IRS is executing an agreement with the employees' union on Wednesday to pay the bonuses. A directive from the White House budget office tells agencies to not pay discretionary monetary awards under the sequester "unless legally required," according to an Associated Press article. Read full article >>    
Posted 3 hours 1 minute ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

Earlier this week, Delaware's casinos got a surprise windfall. Just days after saying no to tax breaks, Gov. Jack Markell (D) proposed that $8 million of the state's budget surplus be distributed amongst its three struggling establishments, to forestall the layoffs that at least one of them had threatened. Read full article >>    
Posted 3 hours 13 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

In March, when Ben Bernanke last faced the press for a news conference, we brought you "Drunk Ben Bernanke," our best guess as to how the Federal Reserve chairman might respond to questions thrown at him if he were feeling particularly blunt. That is, how might an inebriated Bernanke face the press. Read full article >>    
Posted 3 hours 13 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

Community colleges have greatly evolved in the past two decades, adopting many hallmarks of traditional colleges but, often, at a much lower price. Many schools now offer a wide variety of clubs, sports and study abroad programs. Their campuses feature coffee shops, recreation complexes and posh lounges, spaces that encourage students to hang out instead of hopping back in their cars or catching the bus after class. Read full article >>    
Posted 3 hours 13 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

Attorney General Eric Holder, constantly skewered by conservatives, came under fire recently from Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who said Holder wasn’t up to the job. Some might think heavy incoming from another flank might cause Holder to leave. Read full article >>    
Posted 3 hours 19 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

Tuesday's CBO score of the Gang of Eight immigration reform bill was pretty much a slam dunk for the bill's supporters. As Ezra put it, "This isn't just a good CBO report. It's a wildly good CBO report." But that doesn't mean there aren't holes that the bill's opponents can try to poke in that picture. Read full article >>    
Posted 3 hours 25 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

To quell public concerns about its domestic surveillance programs, the National Security Agency on Tuesday provided new information about safeguards designed to protect Americans' privacy. More transparency is welcome, but the disclosures raise the question: why wasn't this information made public a long time ago? Read full article >>    
Posted 3 hours 37 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

Rand Paul seems to be crossing over to the mainstream--or maybe, it’s the other way around. When Kentucky’s junior senator arrived in Washington just over two years ago, he seemed destined to inhabit the role of perpetual outlier. But now, he’s in the mix on just about everything that is happening, and talked about as a credible presidential contender in 2016. Read full article >>    
Posted 3 hours 43 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

The Pew Research Center released a study last week that examined the lives of LGBT Americans. One portion of the study, which has garnered significant media attention is the relationship between LGBT people and religion. The study found that LGBT people tended to be more religiously affiliated than the general population, and views all major religions as unfriendly toward LGBT people. Read full article >>    
Posted 4 hours 29 seconds ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

Welcome to Wonkbook, Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas's morning policy news primer.To subscribe by e-mail, click here. Send comments, criticism, or ideas to Wonkbook at Gmail dot com. To read more by Ezra and his team, go to Wonkblog. Read full article >>    
Posted 4 hours 18 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is a Dallas Cowboys fan in a New York Giants/Jets world. And Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is the guy with the off-the-mark NBA Finals prediction. Those are both good things for them in the world of politics. Read full article >>    
Posted 4 hours 42 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story

Last week, I noted that the United States puts more youths and teenagers in jail than any other developed country, with about 70,000 detained on any given day in 2010. And there's plenty of evidence suggesting that this policy does far more harm than good. Read full article >>    
Posted 4 hours 42 minutes ago - 06/19/13 - Full Story