Federal

WASHINGTON - The nation's sluggish recovery can't seem to catch a break. Persistent federal spending cuts and a slowdown in business investments thwarted hopes for stronger economic growth in the first quarter, setting up more modest gains in jobs and income into the summer. The U.S. economy expanded at an annual rate of 2.5% in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department reported Friday. That was a big improvement from the measly 0.4% increase in the fourth quarter, when deep defense cuts and smaller stockpiling by companies slashed growth.

The Obama administration's Home Affordable Refinance Program is at last helping legions of American homeowners with upside-down mortgages. Nearly 1.1 million homeowners with little or no equity were able to refinance last year under HARP, which assists borrowers who are current on their monthly payments. That's nearly as many as in the three previous years combined, and the latest figures show that early this year, the pace of these refis abated only slightly. The program has become a success story after a stumbling start with slack lender participation.

WASHINGTON - Married same-sex couples cannot make joint contributions to federal candidates as opposite-sex couples are permitted to do, the Federal Election Commission said Thursday, a decision that gay rights advocates said reinforced their case for overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. The five-member, bipartisan panel said the 1996 law defining marriage as between a man and woman prohibited the commission from viewing gay couples as spouses,...

On Monday, the Obama administration announced a new policy to provide legal help to mentally disabled immigrants awaiting deportation trials in federal detention centers. A day later, a federal judge in Los Angeles reached the same conclusion, ruling that the Department of Homeland Security is required to provide free legal assistance to immigrants in detention if they are not capable of representing themselves because of mental illness. Both decisions are welcome and could help bring more fairness to the system.

For thousands of years, Yosemite toads thrived 10,000 feet high in the Sierra Nevada range, emerging from partially frozen lakes in spring to reproduce and eat enough insects to survive another season of hibernation under the ice. Since the 1960s, however, the once common toad with a musical mating call has been decimated by livestock grazing, fungal infections, pesticides and the appetites of non-native stocked trout. On Wednesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed federal Endangered Species Act protection for the Yosemite toad and the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog, along with 2 million acres of proposed critical habitat across the range for the cold-climate amphibians.

Even as California makes preparations to appeal federal court rulings on the quality of care and crowding of conditions in state prisons, new orders are in the making. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton on Tuesday dusted off a pending August 2012 order for the state to produce a plan to improve the quality of inmate mental health care, and gave it a new July 1 deadline. The judge's order notes that compliance was interrupted by the state's bid in January to end court oversight of prison mental health care.

WASHINGTON - Top executives from failed hybrid car maker Fisker Automotive Inc. denied claims in Congress that the company had used political connections to secure $192 million in government loans to finance a flawed business plan. The executives appeared Wednesday before Congress for the first time since the Department of Energy seized $21 million Fisker had remaining in an account April 11. The Anaheim company was approved for a $529-million loan in 2010 and received $192 million before getting cut off. Fisker laid off most of its workers this month and is expected to file for bankruptcy.

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court unanimously backed the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate a controversial form of coal mining called mountaintop removal, overturning a lower court decision that barred the agency from stopping a large coal mine in West Virginia. The ruling by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is likely to set off considerable political backlash from industry, some utilities and their congressional allies who have long contended that the EPA's regulatory efforts are killing the coal sector.

Washington's tug of war over the federal budget has many wonders, but the biggest one of all must be the lengths to which politicians and pundits will go to deprive Granny and Grandpa of $30 a month. That's the amount by which benefits for the average Social Security retiree would be reduced by 2023 under a provision in President Obama's new budget. It might not sound like much to the president or fans of the proposal in both parties and the Washington commentariat. For the retiree trying to stretch an average monthly check of about $1,200 to cover housing, healthcare and every other necessity under the sun, it looms rather larger.

On Monday, the first business day after budget cuts forced the furlough of air traffic controllers, the on-time performance of the nation's airlines dropped nearly 10%. That was a finding based on statistics compiled by Flightstats.com, a website that monitors airline performance rates. To cut more than $600 million called for under federal sequestration, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered air traffic controllers and others to take one day off work in every two-week period.