Sarah McCammon

When Taylor Merendo moved to Bloomington, Ind., nearly two years ago, fleeing an abusive marriage, she needed help.

"I was six months pregnant and at that point in time, I really didn't have a stable place to live," Merendo says.

Under a clear sky on July 10, 2015, the Confederate flag that had flown on the South Carolina statehouse grounds since the Civil Rights era came down.

Updated 4:55 p.m. ET

Bad news for history nerds everywhere: Apparently it's not as popular as it used to be to visit living history museums like Colonial Williamsburg. The organization in eastern Virginia says it is cutting jobs and outsourcing multiple job categories in an effort to reduce hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.

Support for same-sex marriage is growing — even among groups traditionally opposed to it — according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. The report, based on a survey conducted earlier this month, suggests public opinion is shifting quickly, two years after the Supreme Court's Obergefell v.

Broken teeth are all too often a punchline in conversations about poor people in rural places. But for Heather Wallace, dental problems are anything but funny.

"Basically it's just like a nerve pain. Your whole body locks up; you have to stop for a second to try to breathe," she said. "And sometimes if it hurts bad enough, you might cry."

The front-runner in Virginia's Republican gubernatorial primary this year, Ed Gillespie, is campaigning on what traditionally would be considered an impressive political resume: former Republican National Committee Chairman, presidential adviser, lobbyist, and, in 2014, unsuccessful Republican nominee for U.S. Senate. In one campaign ad, Gillespie is seen alongside former President George W. Bush, and promises voters, "I know firsthand how the system works."

For his first commencement speech as president, Donald Trump went back to a place that was once key to his efforts as a candidate to shore up support among the Republican base.

Standing before tens of thousands of members of the Class of 2017 and their families at Liberty University's open-air stadium in Lynchburg, Va., Trump thanked the crowd for helping him achieve the presidency.

"I wanna thank you because, boy, did you come out and vote — those of you that are old enough; in other words, your parents," Trump said. "Boy, oh boy, you voted. You voted!"

When 60-year-old Owen Golay talks about the two Confederate flags he flies in his front yard, he sounds like many Southern defenders of such symbols.

"It stands for heritage; it's a part of our history," Golay said.

But it's not really his history. Golay lives in rural Pleasantville, Iowa, about 40 miles from where he was born. He still carries a small Confederate flag that his father gave him as a child. But aside from some people way back in his family tree who fought on both sides in the Civil War, he has no real ties to the South.

After high school, Staff Sgt. Kimi wanted to go to art school, but she didn't have the money. So she joined the military.

Intelligence analysts like Kimi work with drone pilots and others in the Air Force to guide decisions about where to deploy weapons in the fight against ISIS and al-Qaida. (The U.S. Air Force won't release her last name because of the high-security work she does).

A lot of teenage girls grow up looking to magazines like Seventeen or Teen Vogue for tips on fashion and dating. But for some conservative Christian girls and their parents, those magazines can seem a bit risqué. For about two decades starting in 1990, the evangelical Christian group Focus on the Family offered an alternative: Brio magazine, which is making a comeback in May.

This weekend marks 10 years since the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history, at Virginia Tech.

Thirty-two people were killed and many others injured on April 16, 2007, on the campus in Blacksburg, Va. Still others witnessed the shooting and were physically unharmed, but carry psychological wounds that they've also spent the last decade recovering from.

April 6 marks 100 years since the U.S. Congress voted to declare war on Germany, entering World War I. The war took the lives of 17 million people worldwide. What's not as well-known is the role that animals played at a time when they were still critical to warfare.

If the election results of 2016 were really about rejecting the political establishment, then Congress didn't get the memo. After all, 97 percent of incumbents in the U.S. House of Representatives seeking re-election won even as national polls show overwhelming disapproval of Congress.

Opponents of abortion rights have long argued that public funds for services like cancer screenings and contraception should go solely to health clinics that don't provide abortions.

Vice President Pence came to the annual Gridiron Dinner looking ever-so-slightly underdressed.

"I thought I'd be OK wearing a black tie tonight," he joked. "Then Nancy Pelosi asked me to refill her coffee."

Cary Dixon's 29-year-old son has struggled with opioid abuse for years. At first, Dixon says, it was hard to know how to support him as he cycled through several rounds of treatment and incarceration. She says her life revolved around his addiction.

"It's kind of like you're on a parallel track with them," she says. "You wait for the next crisis; you wait for the next phone call. You're upset when you don't get a phone call. You're just — you're desperate, and you're in a state of fear and anxiety so much of the time."

Decorations are sparse at Recovery Point, a residential treatment center in Huntington, W.Va. That's why the bulletin board covered with photos of men stands out. The men spent time here, but didn't survive their addictions. They're all dead now.

"We keep a constant reminder in here for individuals who come into our detox facility. We have, 'But for the grace of God, there go I,'" says Executive Director Matt Boggs, pointing to the words on the board.

Marchers — many of them women — are descending on Washington, D.C., to send a message about abortion to the Trump administration and the Republican-led Congress.

If that sounds like déjà vu, it's not: What the organizers call the March for Life is a protest against legalized abortion, unlike the Women's March last week, which included support for abortion rights in its platform.

A different kind of march

The abortion rate in the United States fell to its lowest level since the historic Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalized abortion nationwide, a new report finds.

The report by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports legalized abortion, puts the rate at 14.6 abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age (ages 15-44) in 2014. That's the lowest recorded rate since the Roe decision in 1973. The abortion rate has been declining for decades — down from a peak of 29.3 in 1980 and 1981.

Donald Trump may face a skeptical public as he prepares to take office, but his staunch supporters seem ready to back him regardless of what he does as president.

And they have a message for those upset with his victory: get over it.

President-elect Donald Trump has made it clear that Vice President-elect Mike Pence will have a major role in governing. He recently tapped Pence to take over leadership of his transition planning from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Pence spent the day Tuesday at Trump Tower as the two men select key members of their administration.

White evangelicals are reliable Republican voters. They also have a long history of demanding that politicians exemplify character and morality in public life.

So for many, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump presents a moral dilemma.