Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

President Obama is leaning hard on the nation's schools, using the promise of more than $4 billion in federal aid -- and the threat of withholding it -- to strong-arm the education establishment to accept more charter schools and performance pay for teachers.

“As the whole world now knows, Texas has more uninsured than any state in the US. One in six uninsured American children now live in Texas. Not a single Texas city—not Dallas or even Austin, reaches even the national average of citizens who are covered with health insurance. With a record like that maybe Rick Perry ought to take a closer look in the mirror.”

Six months in office, President Barack Obama sought to rally support for sweeping health- care legislation Wednesday night as Congress struggled to find agreement on a historic overhaul. He vowed to reject any measure "primarily funded through taxing middle-class families."

THE church of La Placita, “the little square”, formally called Nuestra Señora Reina de Los Angeles, was founded under Spanish rule at around the same time as the pueblo bearing the same name, the future Los Angeles. As the land on which it stood became first Mexican and then American, it always stayed Latino in both look and character, says Father Richard Estrada. Catholicism and Hispanic culture seemed inseparable there.

A bill that cleared a House committee Tuesday would largely remove private lenders from the federal student loan industry, generating an estimated $87 billion savings over 10 years to fund more government grants and loans.

Apparently deterred by rising unemployment in the U.S., the number of Mexican immigrants who crossed the border dropped sharply in the past year to the lowest level in a decade, even while undocumented workers already here are opting to stay.

The presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain sent more Texans to the polls last year, but the state still had one of the lowest turnouts in the country, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Thanks to a shift in public policy, children are starting school earlier than ever before. But even as preschool becomes the norm for an increasing number of children, access to free, public preschool in Texas remains reserved primarily for children from poor families.

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison reluctantly voted to extend the federal highway trust fund this week while complaining that Texas could lose $408 million because Congress refuses to adopt a more comprehensive transportation program.

Some unauthorized immigrants with stolen Social Security numbers are able to gain clearance for employment in the United States even after being checked through the federal government's pioneering online E-Verify system, senators and the Migration Policy Institute warned Tuesday.

Sen. Lindsey Graham's remarks signal that Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court will move out of committee to the full Senate with some bipartisan support.

Texas Workforce Commission Chairman Tom Pauken warned Wednesday that the state faces continued rising unemployment and blamed policies in Washington for stifling job creation and discouraging consumer spending.

President Obama tried on Wednesday to rally public support for overhauling the nation’s health care system and said for the first time that he would be willing to help pay for the plan by raising income taxes on families earning more than $1 million a year.

President Obama welcomed Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq to the White House on Wednesday and said that despite occasional differences between the two nations’ military forces, the United States was on track for withdrawing combat forces from Iraq by the end of August 2010.

The Obama administration is using its executive powers to change U.S. immigration policies and practices on a range of fronts, not waiting for efforts by Congress to tackle a broader overhaul of the system.

A new report issued by Acorn and Health Care for America Now says communities of color in Texas suffer most from the nation’s “broken” health care system

Leaving the long-term unemployed with a four-month gap between payments is unacceptable and any delays in providing their extended benefits will be fixed by the end of July, Texas Workforce Commission Chairman Tom Pauken said Friday.

Removing César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall from social studies textbooks in Texas seems like a cruel joke to many Latinos and blacks who see such suggestions as a sign that the culture wars are sure to continue in Texas.

WHEN Ron Paul ran for president in 2007, he was gratified to hear students at one of his rallies start chanting “End the Fed”, while setting dollar bills alight. Though the Texas congressman’s pursuit of the White House ended in failure, his campaign against the central bank is gaining some adherents.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke launched a more aggressive defense of the central bank's multitrillion-dollar campaign to prop up the economy, as government bailouts came under fire Tuesday from all directions on Capitol Hill.