From 501cstrategies: Even though both the Senate and House will eventually move bills with more money for domestic programs than requested by the President ($5 billion and $4.1 billion, respectively) many of these programs — particularly education programs — will still face decreased funding or, in some case, elimination.

From the The San Francisco Chronicle : Chinese officials have been auditing nonprofit groups in what critics say is an effort to intimidate and disrupt their work. The director of one environmental group, Green Watershed, told the Chronicle that the organization has “experienced investigations through almost the whole of last year.” The group has received grants from the Ford Foundation and other large U.S. donors, the paper reports.

From the Washington Post: Jeffrey Birnbaum decries the weak lobby reform bills and the seeming unwillingness of the Republican Leadership to enact anything at all - even the weak bills passed by the House and Senate. He's not alone. "Initially, I worried that Congress would do this bill too quickly and that it might not be as well-thought-out as it needed to be," said Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which had partial jurisdiction over the legislation. "That fear seems ludicrous now."

People For the American Way Foundation has put out an alert asking for signatures on a petition to Ohio's Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review to reject voter registration regulations that "effectively prevent many nonpartisan civic engagement groups from conducting voter registration activities there. The clear victims of these rules are the members of marginalized groups who are often the focus of registration campaigns. This is voter suppression, plain and simple." The committee meets to vote on Monday, June 26. The online petition is at http://www.pfaw.org/go/OHsuppression