Brett Neely

During the first night of the second Democratic presidential debate, the question of how to reduce gun violence emerged as one issue on which the sometimes-splintered Democratic Party speaks with as close to one voice as it can.

"As your president, I will not fold," vowed Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., before rattling off her list of proposals, which included background checks, an assault weapons ban and "something" about magazines.

Updated at 9:44 a.m. ET

The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a vote for Wednesday to authorize subpoenas for the full version of special counsel Robert Mueller's report, the committee announced Monday.

North Carolina prosecutors have announced that Leslie McCrae Dowless, the political operative accused of illegally collecting absentee ballots in that state's 9th Congressional District, has been indicted on charges of obstruction of justice and possessing absentee ballots.

The issue of gerrymandering — the ability of politicians to draw legislative districts to benefit their own party — burst into view as a major political issue in 2018.

Even as voters and courts vigorously rejected the practice this year, politicians in some states are doing their best to remain in control of the redistricting process. Critics argue that amounts to letting politicians pick their own voters.

In a case that could shed light on the finances of the secretive Trump Organization, a federal judge has signed orders to issue 30 subpoenas on behalf of the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia in their lawsuit alleging that President Trump is profiting from foreign and state governments' spending at the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C.

Updated at 4:25 p.m. ET

A day after a key lawmaker said the U.S. government was not doing enough to take election interference by foreign powers seriously, the Trump administration responded forcefully with a surprise White House briefing to emphasize the breadth and extent of its election security initiatives.

"The president has taken decisive action to defend our election systems from meddling and interference," national security adviser John Bolton said at the briefing.

With less than four months to go, how much are this year's midterm elections at risk for the kind of interference sowed by Russia in 2016?

Updated at 8:30 p.m. ET

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify on Capitol Hill on April 10 and 11 before the a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees, followed by one before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, to answer questions about how the company protects its users' data.

Updated at 1:15 a.m. ET Thursday

An Amtrak train carrying House and Senate Republicans to their annual retreat in West Virginia struck a garbage truck Wednesday morning near Charlottesville, Va.

At least one person was killed, according to a statement released by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Updated at 9:00 a.m.

Reaction to President Trump's first State of the Union speech followed the familiar choose-your-own-partisan-narrative script that's dominated political life since the 2016 election.

Republican members of Congress frequently offered safe, predictable praise particularly around economic policy. Said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.: "We're coming out of this economic funk that we were in throughout the Obama years and the president was right to talk about it and to take some credit for the direction America is heading in."

Updated at 10:01 p.m. ET

The Senate will vote at noon on Monday to end the government shutdown. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the floor Sunday evening and laid out a plan to restore government funding for three weeks and consider immigration proposals, while bipartisan talks continue to end the impasse that has triggered a partial government shutdown since Friday night.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer objected to a vote on Sunday evening, but not the plan to vote on Monday.

For 20-odd hours, Virginia Democrats were giddy with the news that a recount had delivered Shelly Simonds a seat in the House of Delegates with a victory margin of a single vote. The Democratic win would mean a 50-50 party split in the House of Delegates, ending 17 years of Republican control and forcing a rare power-sharing agreement.

In odd-numbered years, Election Day consists of a hodgepodge of state, local and special elections.

But in an era when, to flip an old phrase, all politics is national, these low-profile, low-turnout elections might have a lot more to say about the direction of the country than may have been the case just a few years ago.

Two governors races and one president in the background

When West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice stood next to President Trump during a campaign rally in Huntington, W.Va., on Thursday to announce that he was switching parties and becoming a Republican, it was a historic moment for the GOP.

Kid Rock, the singer whose career has spanned rap, hard rock and country music, is fueling the speculation that he intends to announce a bid for the U.S. Senate next year to challenge incumbent Democrat Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. That is unless it's all a publicity stunt.

UPDATED 3/24/2017 4:45 PM

Republican leaders in the U.S. House have pulled the American Health Care Act from the floor after failing to round up enough votes within their own caucus.

Had the bill passed, Americans would have no longer been required to buy health insurance, and it would have eliminated the current subsidies that are used to bring down the cost of premiums.

NPR and dozens of member stations collected public statements from members of Congress to help the public understand where lawmakers stood on this issue.

A day after shocking the political and foreign policy establishments on both sides of the aisle with a call for Russia to hack into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's email, Republican nominee Donald Trump now says he was being "sarcastic."

Less than 24 hours earlier, Trump said he would welcome Russian hackers releasing any emails they could "find" from the private email server Clinton used while serving as secretary of state.

Less than 12 hours after he was booed for not endorsing GOP nominee Donald Trump during his late-night speech before the Republican National Convention, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wasn't backing down.

At an emotional event with the Texas RNC delegation Thursday morning, Cruz defended his decision to withhold his endorsement at a time when Republicans are trying to rally around their nominee ahead of the general election.

After repeatedly denying that elements of a 2008 speech by Michelle Obama were used in Melania Trump's address on the first night of the Republican National Convention, an employee of the Trump Organization took responsibility for the flap on Wednesday.

In a statement issued by the Trump campaign, staff writer Meredith McIver accepted responsibility for the addition of Michelle Obama's words in the speech.

This election year may well go down as the conspiracy-theory election, thanks to Donald Trump's ceaseless efforts to inject unsubstantiated plots into the American political debate.

A day after de facto Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said "there's nothing to learn" from making his tax returns public before this November's elections, the billionaire is taking heat from the party's 2012 nominee over that stance.

After Bernie Sanders lost four of the five presidential primaries Tuesday night, the Democratic hopeful's campaign is laying off many staffers.

Noting that 80 percent of the nominating contests have been completed, Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said in a statement that "we no longer require many of the loyal and dedicated state and national support staffers who helped us."

It appears that the attacks on presidential candidate Donald Trump's business record seem to have touched a nerve.

Despite three more primary and caucus victories on Tuesday, Trump eschewed a traditional victory speech, adding in a press conference — and something else: a table piled high with a veritable Trump-ucopia of Trump-branded products.

"I have very successful companies," the New York billionaire told reporters at the event at Trump National Golf Club Jupiter, in Jupiter, Fla., as raw steaks, bottles of wine and vodka, and magazines stood near the man himself.

The most recent Republican presidential nominee is taking shots at Donald Trump's fitness to be president.

And he's not mincing his words.

Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, called the current GOP front-runner "a phony, a fraud" in a speech Thursday morning in Salt Lake City. And he didn't stop there.

After taking fire from all sides of the political spectrum for not condemning an endorsement from a white supremacist leader, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump blamed the incident on a "very bad earpiece" used in a cable news interview.