Government & Regulation

Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards defended fetal tissue research before a House committee Tuesday, arguing that it offers potentially lifesaving answers on degenerative eye disease, Down syndrome and infectious diseases. The Republican-led House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is conducting one of four investigations into Planned Parenthood in the wake of a series of…

Sen. Chuck Grassley is asking federal investigators to give him the names of officials at the American Red Cross who did not cooperate with the government's recent inquiry into the charity. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office Monday morning, saying that the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he heads, "has…

Congress could finally hear directly from Planned Parenthood's leader next week after months of controversy—on the day before it confronts a potential government shutdown spurred by conservatives demanding an end to the group's federal funding. The timing of the possible Sept. 29 hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has Democrats crying foul,…

Los Angeles County supervisors rejected a push to exempt nonprofits and job-training programs from a plan to increase the minimum wage for workers in county-controlled areas to $15 an hour by 2021. The measure to increase the wage in unincorporated areas first was passed by a split vote in July. The board approved the final…

Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration is trying a new approach to remove Planned Parenthood from Louisiana's Medicaid program, this time saying it has a reason to block the organization's clinics. Jindal, an anti-abortion Republican running for president in 2016, had initially ended Medicaid provider agreements with Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast's clinics in Baton Rouge and New…

Federal legislation is being unveiled today that would force the American Red Cross to do something that it has repeatedly resisted: open its books and operations to outside scrutiny. The proposed American Red Cross Sunshine Act comes in response to a government report, also being released today, that finds oversight of the charity lacking and…

Faced with the loss of most of its fundraising staff, University of North Carolina-Greensboro (UNCG) is poised to keep these employees by dipping into the money they raise. UNCG officials talked last week with trustees about the possibility of levying a fee on its endowment, a university-wide savings account that provides millions of dollars each…

Timothy Sedlak, a private investigator in Florida, was charged Monday with trying to gain unauthorized access to a charity's computer system allegedly while doing research on whether some nonprofits are “unintentionally” providing financial support to Islamic jihadists. The charity wasn't identified in a complaint filed against the 42-year-old Sedlak in federal court in the Southern…

Conservative lawmakers who demanded Planned Parenthood executives answer for “alleged atrocities” are holding the first in a series of congressional hearings on Wednesday on the video controversy that has rallied anti-abortion Republicans and could become the flashpoint in a battle over government shutdown. Noticeably absent from the hearing, however, is Planned Parenthood itself. The House…

On June 25, 2015, the Associated Press reported that Paul LePage, the Republican governor of Maine, had been accused of pressuring the Good Will-Hinckley school, a nonprofit charter school for at-risk youth, into removing Mark Eves from his position as president. According to the report, LePage threatened to withhold from the school $500,000 in yearly funds if it kept Eves on board, which, in turn, could have led the school to miss out on 
another $2 million in private funds, a potentially devastating blow to the small nonprofit. Eves, as it happens, is Maine’s Democratic House Speaker...