Politics and Government

One of the Democrats top election themes this year was stopped cold in the Senate on Wednesday. Republicans successfully blocked Democrats from even taking up a bill to raise the minimum wage.

Senate Republicans blocked a vote Wednesday on a bill to raise the nation's minimum wage. But don't expect that to be the end of the story.

For more than a year now, Democrats, including President Obama, have been pushing to boost the minimum wage. Their latest target is $10.10 an hour.

GOP critics argue that would depress hiring in an already weak job market.

But raising the wage is popular with voters, and Democrats plan to make the issue a rallying cry between now and the November elections.

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And I'm Robert Siegel. Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens testified in a Senate hearing today on the surge of secret money in politics. Stevens retired from the court a few months after the Citizens United ruling in 2010. He had issued an emphatic dissent in the case, which allowed corporations and unions to spend without limits in campaigns.

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The Obama administration has sent Congress a $302 billion measure to fund highway and other infrastructure. The White House contends that unless Congress acts, the Highway Trust Fund will run out of money this summer.

Here's NPR's Brian Naylor.

BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE: The Obama administration proposes closing some corporate tax loopholes to augment money raised by the gas tax. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx also wants to give states the authority to put new tolls on interstate highways.

Youth is a time of idealism and energy, except, perhaps, when it comes to voting in the midterm elections.

A new Harvard Institute of Politics poll finds that interest in voting in the November 2014 elections among 18- to 29-year-old voters is lower now than just several months ago — and even lower than it was at a similar point in 2010.

This post was updated at 9:30 a.m. ET.

The European Union has followed the U.S. in imposing a new round of sanctions on Russia for the Kremlin's intervention in Crimea and alleged support of separatist elements inside eastern Ukraine.

The sanctions, which specifically target Russian President Vladimir Putin's "inner circle," drew a response from Moscow, which described them in Cold War terms.