Wire Politics

President Barack Obama expects the federal budget deficit to reach $1.33 trillion this year, administration officials said Friday evening, the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits.

President Barack Obama expects the federal budget deficit to reach $1.33 trillion this year, administration officials said Friday evening, the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits.

President Barack Obama attempted to quell a political firestorm over health care and religion Friday, saying he would still assure that every woman in America gets free contraception but agreeing that religious institutions will not be forced to provide it. Instead, insurers will.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi predicts that five large states will put Democrats in striking distance of gaining control of the House after the November elections.

The White House said Friday it won't recoil from raising grave human rights concerns during a getting-acquainted visit next week by China's likely future leader.

Social issues dominated the 2012 presidential race Friday, as President Barack Obama tried to calm a storm over religion and birth control and the Republicans vying to replace him jockeyed to outdo each other in proving their conservative fervor.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says he thinks it would be wrong to allow women to serve in combat.

Conservatives are fired up, convinced that this will be a big year, but they worry that Mitt Romney will make their task harder.

Under fierce election-year fire, President Barack Obama on Friday abruptly abandoned his stand that religious organizations must pay for birth control for workers, scrambling to end a furor raging from the Catholic Church to Congress to his re-election foes. He demanded that insurance companies step in to provide the coverage instead.

Michelle Obama says her daughters' main concern about the coming presidential election is all about them.

Mitt Romney and Ron Paul rarely even acknowledge each other in the Republican presidential race, focusing their attention and attacks on rivals Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum instead. That curious detente is being tested in Maine's caucuses this week, where Romney's reputation as a political shape shifter is going head-to-head with Paul's consistent libertarian views.

A federal court sent a message Friday that the Texas primaries shouldn't be pushed past April because of bitterly disputed voting maps and ordered the state and minority rights groups to spend the weekend back at the bargaining table.

President Barack Obama is raising money for his re-election campaign from a small group of wealthy donors who each paid $35,800 to meet with him at a hotel near the White House.

Gabrielle Giffords, the recently retired congresswoman from Arizona who was shot in an assassination attempt 13 months ago, returned to Washington Friday for double honors. The Navy named a ship after her and she saw President Barack Obama sign the last piece of legislation she authored into law.

The nation's Roman Catholic bishops are expressing grave doubts about President Barack Obama's revamped health care rule on birth control. They say it raises serious moral concerns and lacks clear protections for certain employers, insurers and individuals.

Mitt Romney says he has a "severely conservative" record as he looks to win over voters who favored his rivals in recent contests.

A federal appeals court's decision to delay the deportation of seven illegal immigrants until the Obama administration re-evaluates their cases could encourage thousands of other illegal immigrants to seek similar rulings and could open the door to uncomfortable questions about the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S, experts said.

President Barack Obama's new budget predicts a $1.3 trillion deficit for the ongoing fiscal year but that would drop to $575 billion in 2018 if the president gets his wish to raise taxes and if policymakers can live within tight restraints on the Pentagon and other Cabinet agency budgets, the White House said Friday.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the Marine Corps on Friday to re-investigate and take appropriate action against the Marine snipers who posed with a logo resembling a notorious Nazi symbol.

The government could lose nearly $3 billion on Energy Department loans for green energy programs - far less than the $10 billion Congress set aside for the high-risk program, according to an independent review.

Rick Santorum stirs his ever-growing crowds when he promises to right a country awash in "immoral debt" and to replace an administration he argues has "callousness toward life and family and faith."

President Barack Obama signed into law Friday a final bill authored by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was wounded in an Arizona shooting rampage a year ago.

A federal appeals court has denied a request to reconsider a lawsuit challenging a Texas law that requires doctors to perform a sonogram before an abortion.

Rick Santorum is telling conservatives he's the only Republican presidential candidate who shares their values and implicitly attacking rival Mitt Romney as a moderate.

Corporations are asking the Supreme Court to allow them to spend freely to influence upcoming elections in Montana, despite a state high court ruling upholding a ban on independent corporate campaign spending.

The White House has support from a key Catholic health group on its compromise birth control policy.

A new ethics investigation of the House Financial Services Committee chairman's investment activities during the events leading up to and surrounding Congress' $700 billion bailout of Wall Street sets back lawmakers' election-year efforts to rebound from their record low standing with the public.

Senior campaign aides to Republican Mitt Romney will begin appearing at fundraising events for an independent political group supporting his White House run, officials said Friday. The decision comes days after President Barack Obama gave his campaign the OK to do the same.

Turkey's foreign minister said Friday he will propose new ways to pressure Syria when he meets with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday.