Josh Rogers

Governor Chris Sununu issued an executive order to authorize a policy allowing state workers to bring their children to work up to the age of six months.

Sununu says similar policies have worked in other states and that allowing it in New Hampshire could make it easier for the state to recruit and retain younger workers.

With an aging state workforce, Sununu says he doesn't expect too many current state employees to take advantage of the option of bringing an infant to work. But he thinks opening up that possibility is important.

The question of how Democrats define themselves – beyond opposing President Trump – is one that New Hampshire primary voters will soon face.  And as primary day creeps closer, some leading presidential candidates are working to put their differences in sharper relief. And perhaps no two candidates better illustrate the different approaches to those questions than Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, both of whom campaigned in the state Friday.

Gov. Chris Sununu's reelection campaign raised almost half a million dollars over the past six months.

That haul was made easier by Sununu's veto of a bill earlier this year that sought to limit contributions from certain corporations. 

Efforts to loosen New Hampshire's marijuana laws appear to be losing momentum at the State House, as separate Senate committees took action this week against bills that would make marijuana more accessible.

The legal challenge to the 2017 GOP-backed voting law known as Senate Bill 3 went to trial today in Superior Court in Manchester.

The law tightened rules for people registering to vote in New Hampshire, requiring them to provide documents proving their residency if they register within 30 days of an election.

A state senate committee has voted to back a bill to raise the minimum age to buy tobacco products in New Hampshire to 21. The move comes just months after the state budget bumped up the minimum age to purchase tobacco from 18 to 19.

The Democrats who control the Senate Commerce Committee say it's time make 21 the legal age to buy tobacco. The 3 to 2 party line committee vote ensures the tobacco age debate will restart when the full legislature returns to Concord in January. The commitee's Democrats voted in favor of the bill, the Republicans against. 

Governor Chris Sununu is taking his effort to move back school start dates to Florida. The governor has been pushing the idea of requiring New Hampshire's schools to delay the start of the school year until after Labor Day.

New Hampshire House Speaker Steve Shurtleff has suspended State Rep. Tamara Le from the House Education Committee for a Facebook post in which Le used a profanity to deride private and religious schools.

Le represents North Hampton, where she is also a school board member. Her legislative district also includes Newington, Greenland and a ward in Portsmouth.

Executive Councilor Andru Volinsky has joined Senate Majority Leader Dan Feltes in the Democratic primary for New Hampshire governor.

Both men are Concord lawyers: Volinsky is best known as the lead attorney in the Claremont education funding lawsuits; Feltes spent years as a legal aid lawyer before running for office.

Both men see themselves are leaders on progressive issues.

And both men, in their respective roles at the State House, have the ability to stymie Gov. Chris Sununu’s agenda in the coming year, even before Election Day rolls around in 2020.

In 2016, Steve Bullock won re-election as a Democrat in Montana, which is a state Donald Trump carried by 20 points.

He told the crowd who turned out to hear him in Manchester, at the Politics and Eggs speaking series, not to discount the need to appeal to voters who don't live on the coasts, people who live in places like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

In remarks Tuesday to the New England Council, a corporate group that typically steers a middle course politically, Gov. Chris Sununu said Democrats in Concord have embraced extremism and latched on to what he termed a clown car of presidential hopefuls.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker was back in New Hampshire today. He spoke at “Politics and Eggs” in Bedford, and he turned an event that’s typically on the staid end of the spectrum into something that at times sounded more like a campaign rally.

But afterward, when Booker spoke to reporters, he also confirmed that his campaign is teetering on the brink of financial viability. NHPR’s Josh Rogers joins me now to discuss that and this moment in the New Hampshire primary.

New Hampshire finally has a budget for the next two years.

Republican Governor Chris Sununu vetoed the $13.1 billion passed by the Democratically-controlled legislature in June, and the state's temporary spending plan was set to expire next week. 

The New Hampshire House and Senate are wrapping up their mostly-failed efforts to override dozens of vetoes handed down by Governor Chris Sununu. The record number of vetoes is one byproduct of having divided government in the state.

But there’s also an almost election-year atmosphere at the State House right now. That's not making it easier for lawmakers and the governor to reach agreement on a big job that’s still incomplete – passing a state budget.

Democrats have offered, and Governor Sununu has rejected, what Democratic state lawmakers are calling a compromise on the state budget. The budget process has been at an impasse since Sununu vetoed the budget passed by lawmakers earlier this year.

Republican Bill Weld rolled out the steering committee for his primary challenge to President Trump Tuesday in Concord.

The former Massachussetts Governor has the backing of some old-line Republicans.

New Hampshire Democrats – and nearly every candidate seeking their party’s nomination for president -- were in Manchester Saturday for the state Democratic convention.

Ruth Davis of Durham, who wore a button for Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, said seeing so many candidates up close would prompt many voters, even ones who think they’ve made up their minds, to reassess the field.

A third Republican has jumped into the 2020 race for U.S. Senate. Bryant "Corky" Messner of Wolfeboro, a military veteran and attorney, is pitching himself as a political outsider.

After a labor day weekend that saw another mass shooting, this time in Odessa Texas, gun policy is on the minds of many Democratic primary voters.

When Bernie Sanders spoke in Epsom Tuesday, his focus was healthcare, but when asked about guns by a member of the crowd, Sanders pledged to fight for universal background checks and to limit the availability of so-called assault weapons.

"More and more Americans - and I - certainly believe we should ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons," he said.

It's been seven weeks since the Executive Council voted on party lines to reject Governor Sununu's nomination of Attorney General Gordon MacDonald to be Chief Justice of New Hampshire's Supreme Court. And councilors say Governor Sununu hasn't indicated his plan to fill the vacancy to lead what is now a four member court.

Change versus restoration: it’s a key question, maybe the key question, facing Democrats as they ready themselves to pick a nominee to challenge President Trump.

That question was on the minds of many voters in New Hampshire this weekend as they welcomed a half dozen candidates, including two who put that question in stark relief: the most experienced Democrat running, former Vice President Joe Biden, and the youngest Democrat in the race, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg. 

The New Hampshire Attorney General's office has released the first report required under the terms of its settlement with  St. Paul's School.  The Concord prep school reached an agreement with prosecutors last year stemming from decades-long allegations of sexual misconduct on campus.  

The report is the first St. Paul's will be subject to for five years under the settlement agreement. The report covers the first six months of 2019.