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The 2016 election has thrust populist candidates and big-spending outside groups to center stage. These trends further marginalize the traditional role of the national political parties. Thrown on defense by [...]

Byline: Eliza Newlin Carney When the Supreme Court decided in January to toss out the decades-old ban on direct corporate and union campaign spending, U.S. politics changed overnight. In Citizens [...]

Updated at 9:45 a.m. National party leaders are raising hundreds of millions for a high-stakes redistricting war that will define the political playing field for the next decade. And reform [...]

When the Federal Election Commission ruled last month that the advocacy group Citizens United could skirt certain campaign finance laws by calling itself a news organization, few reporters paid much [...]

Byline: Eliza Newlin Carney Against all odds, organized labor leaders are waging an unusually aggressive, costly, and well-coordinated campaign to elect union-friendly Democrats this fall. It's an uphill battle. Democrats [...]

Byline: Eliza Newlin Carney On a mild spring day in early May, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., stopped by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's office for a chat. McConnell had just [...]

Disclosure has become ground zero in the campaign finance wars now that the Supreme Court has lifted restrictions on political spending by corporations, unions and activist groups. The intensifying debate [...]

Having spent the last year warring over climate legislation, environmental and industry lobbyists are now facing off over an even higher-stakes trophy: the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection [...]

In the wake of the Supreme Court's recent ruling to deregulate corporate political spending, public attention has focused squarely on whether businesses and for-profit companies will now lavish big money [...]

Having mounted an unprecedented push for a consumer protection agency as the centerpiece of a financial industry regulatory overhaul, consumer advocates may soon face a painful choice: bail or bite [...]

Congressional Democrats have moved quickly to sketch out legislation that would blunt the impact of the Supreme Court's recent ruling to free up corporate political spending. But the first official [...]

Having thoroughly ticked off the K Street crowd with a string of controversial lobbying restrictions last year, President Obama has signaled that he's not done yet -- either with anti-lobbyist [...]

In the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark ruling to free up corporate political spending, First Amendment advocates have scoffed at the notion that Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission [...]

Campaign reform advocates stunned by the Supreme Court's sweeping rejection of existing limits on political spending are taking comfort in two small consolations. First, while the court threw out decades-old [...]

The Supreme Court has yet to issue its long-anticipated ruling on corporate political spending, but many campaign finance activists and experts are already convinced that American elections will never be [...]

Nearly a year after President Obama launched his administration with sweeping new ethics and transparency rules, the war over lobbyists and their role in Washington is just beginning. On the [...]

A simmering conflict between the House ethics committee and its fledgling investigative arm has escalated into open combat, prompting watchdogs to warn that lawmakers may be gearing up to kill [...]

LOOKING FOR MORE? If you think the health care reform fight has been aggressive, hear this: The lobbying war over climate change could be even nastier. The climate bill battle [...]

For years, First Amendment champions have argued that all campaign finance rules tread on free speech and that American elections should be completely deregulated. It's a sweeping premise that Congress [...]

A loaded question looms over Senate health care negotiations as they enter the crucial phase between now and mid-October: What if Democrats don't win the 60 votes they need to [...]

A wave of inflammatory ads bashing President Obama 's health care plan has prompted liberal groups to push back with letters, petitions and calls for media outlets to pull the [...]

As the Supreme Court gears up for its Sept. 9 oral argument of a major First Amendment challenge to campaign finance rules, the case known as Citizens United v. FEC [...]

Federal and state regulators are moving aggressively to rein in so-called pay-to-play abuses -- the cozy deals that involve kickbacks or campaign contributions given in return for lucrative government contracts [...]

As lawmakers on Capitol Hill mull the best way to overhaul the voter registration system, advocacy groups that endorse fixes are pointing overseas for answers. Unlike the United States, which [...]

It's all well and good for reform advocates on Capitol Hill to pick a fight with the White House over who sits on the Federal Election Commission. Certainly the numerous [...]

Of all the puzzling things about the Supreme Court's recent move to rethink corporate political spending limits, the strangest is the timing. It's odd enough that the high court should [...]

The Obama administration has deftly defused a nasty argument with some of its allies over restrictions on lobbyists seeking economic stimulus money, but the war over how to regulate lobbyists [...]

At a time when the federal budget tops $3 trillion, it's easy to see why some regard earmarks, which account for an estimated 1 percent of spending, as insignificant. But [...]

Even as Congress and the Obama administration mull a new round of campaign finance regulations, a series of legal challenges threatens to dismantle the existing rules, election law experts warn. [...]

Judging by the tone of oral arguments in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder last week, the Supreme Court appears poised to strike down a key provision [...]

Pity the poor lobbyist. First, President Obama imposed strict revolving-door rules on lobbyists seeking jobs in his administration. More recently, the White House has banned executive branch officials from even [...]

As the Supreme Court prepares to take up a landmark challenge to the nation's voting rights laws, a central question looms over the case: Has American politics moved beyond race? [...]

Of all the new ethics and lobbying restrictions enacted on Capitol Hill in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal, lobbyists have always been particularly worried about the so-called bundling [...]

With the economy still in crisis and Congress bracing for major policy fights over health care and energy regulation, it's hard to see how an obscure issue like public financing [...]