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Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, broke his long faith with the National Rifle Association on Wednesday and said he would vote for a ban on assault weapons.

Powder on a letter for Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi at a mail center in Washington tested positive, but was undergoing further F.B.I. analysis.

After months of negotiations, a bipartisan group of eight senators is poised to offer a sweeping bill to rewrite the nation's immigration laws this week, taking advantage of a changed political alignment that, for the first time in nearly a generation, appears to have opened the way for comprehensive legislation.

The U.S. Senate voted on Thursday to overcome a Republican-led filibuster against tougher gun laws, clearing the way for a major congressional debate on a package of proposals sought by President Barack Obama in the aftermath of the Connecticut school massacre.

A Kentucky Democratic official said Thursday two men tied to an anti-Mitch McConnell super PAC took credit for secretly recording a meeting in which the GOP senator's aides discussed political attacks on Ashley Judd.

With a bipartisan group of senators expected to unveil immigration-reform legislation in the next few days, a brand-new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that nearly two-thirds of Americans – including eight-in-10 Latinos – support giving undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship.

A bipartisan pair of senators introduced a compromise proposal to expand background checks on Wednesday, an agreement which could form the basis for major gun control legislation to pass through Congress.

The leading Senate negotiations on gun control legislation favor expanding background checks, but the effort would as of now fall short of the universal approach backed by President Barack Obama and many Democrats, CNN has learned.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham on Sunday became the first prominent Republican to publicly praise, however lukewarmly, the budget proposal the White House outlined last week. Graham said that while he believes President Barack Obama's plan is overall bad for the economy, "there are nuggets of his budget that I think are optimistic," and that could set the stage for a broad bargain to put the nation's finances on a stronger footing. He was speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press" program.

Carnival, the world's largest cruise operator, has rejected a request from a powerful U.S. senator that it reimburse the U.S. government for the costs it incurs for rescuing the company's ships when they become disabled.