States | featured news

As healthcare costs for the poor soar across the United States, perhaps no state will feel the loss of federal stimulus money more than Florida.

Republican states are trying to make it harder to vote... An attack on the right to vote is underway across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot. If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we’d condemn it as election-rigging. But it’s happening here, so there’s barely a whimper.

State governments across the country are laying off teachers, closing public libraries and parks, and reducing health care services, but there is one place they could get $23 billion if they could only agree how to do it: Internet retailers such as Amazon.com.

New York isn't North Korea, but it's the closest thing you'll find in the U.S. -- at least according to a new report from a libertarian think tank.A Mercatus Center study has pegged New York as the country's "least free" state, 49 slots behind "Live Free or Die" New Hampshire. Its authors gave the state particular abuse for its taxes, "by far the highest" in the country, according to their methodology.

The Supreme Court’s 5-to-3 decision on Thursday amounted to a green light for vigorous state efforts to combat the employment of illegal workers.

Tax income has been outpacing forecasts — good news as Sacramento struggles with a $15-billion budget deficit. GOP leaders are already using it as fodder against Gov. Brown's proposed tax increases.

Legislation would make it a crime to produce or distribute photos and videos taken secretly at agricultural facilities, a practice animal rights groups oppose.

The first-ever ranking of peace in the United States finds that the nation overall is the most peaceful since 1995, with Maine ranked as the most peaceful state and Lousiana the least.

Despite soaring poverty and unemployment, California and Los Angeles County have fared better on many indicators during the recession than the nation as a whole, according to a report released Tuesday by USC.

As states scramble for revenue sources, a growing number are adding something new advertising on school buses.