The rule announced this week prohibits girls younger than 15 from buying the drug, known as Plan B, over the counter. The decision was made by the FDA and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, Obama said, pushing back against women's groups that have suggested the White House has interjected its political concern about a touchy subject into the rule process.

Sebelius is comfortable with the ruling and so is he, Obama said Thursday at a news conference in Mexico City, where he is meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

PHOTOS: The White House Correspondents' dinner

This is the Obama administration’s second attempt to come up with new regulations for the sale of emergency contraception. Last year, the FDA chose 17 as the...

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton would be the runaway favorite among Democrats for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination, a new Quinnipiac University poll shows, but activists at EMILY’s List, who have launched a campaign to elect the first female president, aren’t satisfied -- Clinton was the only female choice offered.

“It is a very nice list of Democratic male candidates,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of the group, which supports Democratic female candidates. “I’d like to today challenge any national polling organization to start testing some of these other great women, whether they are secretaries or they are senators. Because the truth is this is a wide-open race if Secretary Clinton doesn’t decide to do this.”

The Quinnipiac survey of 650 Democrats nationwide found that 65% said they would vote for Clinton in a presidential primary. If she were in the race, Vice President Joe Biden would be the second choice at 13%,...

WASHINGTON – President Obama praised Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker for her commitment to American workers on Thursday morning as he nominated her as his next Commerce secretary.

In a Rose Garden announcement, Obama listed Pritzker’s work on programs to promote job creation and job training as critical experience for the cabinet position.

“She knows from experience that no government program alone can take the place of a great entrepreneur,” Obama said. “She knows that what we can do is to give every business and every worker the best possible chance to succeed by making America a magnet for good jobs.”

PHOTOS: The White House Correspondents' dinner

Obama also named longtime friend Mike Froman to serve as the next U.S. trade representative. Froman is a former classmate of Obama’s from Harvard Law School and has been an advisor on global economic issues for the White House since the beginning of the Obama administration.

Pritzker is also an...

In the sort of appearance destined to fan speculation about her presidential aspirations in 2016, Hillary Rodham Clinton will speak in Beverly Hills next week at a gala hosted by the Pacific Council on International Policy.

The nonpartisan group, which focuses on international affairs, plans to honor Clinton on Wednesday night with its inaugural Warren Christopher Public Service Award. Christopher, who served as secretary of State under President Clinton, was involved in the council for many years and chaired its board of directors. He died in 2011.

Clinton is expected to speak broadly about foreign policy, with a particular focus on her work on women’s rights, entrepreneurship and empowerment, an event organizer said.

PHOTOS: The White House Correspondents' dinner

Los Angeles attorney Mickey Kantor, who served as President Clinton's Commerce secretary, and Robert H. Tuttle, who served as ambassador to Britain under President George W. Bush, are among the hosts of the Pacific...

Republicans in Congress, long skeptical of the value of some taxpayer-supported research, have taken aim at the National Science Foundation with a bill that seeks to limit the scope of its grants.

A draft bill by House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), which was obtained by Science magazine, would require the foundation's grants to “advance the national health, prosperity or welfare” or “secure the national defense.” The current National Science Foundation criteria are broader and allow the foundation to weigh the “intellectual merit” and “broader impacts” of the proposed research. 

The bill would also require that projects are not “duplicative” of other federally funded works.

Hints of this approach could be seen in a House Science Committee hearing last month, when presidential science advisor John Holdren, National Science Foundation acting director Cora Marrett and National Science Board Chairman Dan Arvizu...

WASHINGTON — As state leaders debate whether to expand their Medicaid programs next year under President Obama’s healthcare law, new research suggests the government insurance plan for the poor has only a mixed record of improving health.

Medicaid beneficiaries are less likely than the uninsured to have catastrophic medical expenses and significantly less likely to suffer from depression, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found.

But those on Medicaid did no better controlling their blood pressure or cholesterol levels, raising questions about the program’s ability by itself to help low-income Americans become healthier.

The lack of health gains came even though Medicaid beneficiaries went to the doctor’s office and the hospital and filled prescriptions more frequently than those without coverage.

“I think the study dispels two extreme arguments about Medicaid,” said Harvard’s...

WASHINGTON – For all the attention given so far to efforts in Congress to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, nearly four in 10 Americans say they don’t know enough about it to have an opinion, and fewer than one-quarter could correctly answer a couple of basic questions about it, a new poll shows.

The survey, by the Pew Research Center, underscores an important fact in the immigration debate – most of the public has not yet tuned in. A bipartisan proposal negotiated by eight senators has gathered considerable strength, and Senate debate is scheduled to start next week, but because so many Americans remain unengaged, predictions about the bill’s fate almost certainly remain premature.

Just more than half of those surveyed said either that they did not think the immigration bill would have much impact one way or the other on the economy or that they didn’t know what impact it would have. Among those who felt the bill would have an economic impact,...

SEATTLE — Sarah Palin’s last elective position in Alaska ended early when in 2009 she abandoned the governorship midway through her first term.

But tea party activists appear eager for a comeback, urging supporters to contribute money toward recruiting Palin to run for the U.S. Senate in her home state, where, according to an email sent out this week, she has a “clear path” to defeat incumbent Democrat Mark Begich.

“You and I both know that Sarah Palin is a fighter who will stand up to Harry Reid and his pals in the Senate to protect our Constitution in issues like amnesty, gun control and our nation’s crushing debt,” said the email from Todd Cefaratti of the Tea Party Leadership Fund.

“We know that, with Sarah in the Senate, conservatives across America can rest a little easier at night knowing that she’s at the watch,” it said.

If Palin is enthusiastic about running for the Senate in Alaska, she hasn’t said so. Nor has...

WASHINGTON – The race to replace John F. Kerry in the U.S. Senate will offer Massachusetts voters a familiar choice: a longtime Democratic officeholder against a fresh-faced Republican.

Democratic Rep. Edward J. Markey and Republican businessman Gabriel Gomez won their respective party nominations in a special primary election Tuesday, after a campaign overshadowed in the closing weeks by the Boston Marathon bombings.

Markey defeated fellow congressman Stephen Lynch, according to the Associated Press, while Gomez, a political novice, defeated former U.S. Atty. Mike Sullivan and state Rep. Dan Winslow.

Markey and Gomez will face off June 25 to see who will complete Kerry’s unexpired term. The winner will face another election in 2014 to serve a full six-year term.

Kerry resigned the Senate seat he had held for more than 28 years on Feb. 1 to become U.S. secretary of State.

Although Massachusetts remains a Democratic stronghold, observers see in the Markey-Gomez matchup some...

SOMERVILLE, Mass. – Stephen Lynch was in a hurry on Friday morning, first to a pair of diners along Broadway, then down the street to a firehouse. By day’s end, he’d hit 18 stops in six cities and towns in the Boston area, as he worked to do “14 days worth of work in four days,” as a volunteer put it.

Lynch, a Boston-area congressman, is by all accounts the underdog in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by John F. Kerry. Fellow congressman Ed Markey has most of the establishment Democratic support, including a late endorsement from Caroline Kennedy. But Lynch said he was closing the gap in the polls until the campaign went into hiatus in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings.

“It paused everything,” Lynch said. “Certainly we had a lot of momentum going into that week and obviously there’s been an interruption in that.”

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When the campaigns resumed, the...