Last week was a big week if you love online gambling and you live in the Garden State. New Jersey legalized online gambling. Host Rachel Martin talks with NPR's Mike Pesca.

Transcript

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

It's rodeo time in Houston, Texas. For three weeks, the city's football stadium plays host to the world's biggest rodeo. And that means chili cook-offs, petting zoos, fried everything, and, oh yeah, there's also the rodeo. Big name performers competing for big money. And as Brenda Salinas reports, it's not just the cowboys getting the crowd riled up.

BRENDA SALINAS, BYLINE: Out of the eight events in professional rodeo, there's one just for women: barrel racing.

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Rachel Martin talks with Sister Pat Farrell, immediate past president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, about the role and status of women in the Catholic Church. The two also talk about the church's handling of revelations of child sexual abuse by priests.

Sunday, one woman will make history in the National Football League. Lauren Silberman, a 28-year-old life-long soccer player, will be the first woman to try out at the NFL's regional combine in New York.

Host Rachel Martin speaks with congressional scholar Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution about the economic and political impact of sequestration. He is the co-author of a book about political gridlock, called It's Even Worse Than It Looks.

Host Rachel Martin and NPR's Scott Horsley cover the three most important elements of the federal budget cuts known as sequestration, which went into effect Friday.

Karl Rove had a sharp message to California's Republican Party Saturday. He implored party leaders to "get up off the mat" and work to revitalize the state GOP. Republicans hold no statewide offices in California and have given up a supermajority to Democrats in the state legislature.

In Syria's northern province of Aleppo, the war is far from over. Yet civilians are planning a dramatic gesture: an election for a civilian government.

This weekend, delegates from across the province are taking part in the first free vote outside of the control of President Bashar Assad's regime. Its location: Gaziantep, Turkey.