Behind closed doors, Republican lawmakers fret about how to repeal Obamacare  —  PHILADELPHIA — Republican lawmakers aired sharp concerns about their party's quick push to repeal the Affordable Care Act inside a closed-door meeting Thursday, according to a recording of the session obtained by The Washington Post.

Trump says ‘torture’ works, but he'll defer on decision over tactics to his defense secretary  —  President Trump said Friday that he continues to believe torture methods can be effective to combat terrorism, but he pledged to defer over whether to implement such tactics to Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, who has opposed them.

Trump's First Week: Governing Without a Script  —  The new president seems to be running his administration much like he ran his company and campaign, eager to weigh in on every issue and willing to make last-minute calls  —  A directive to revive two controversial oil pipelines awaited …

Trump argument bolstered: Clinton received 800,000 votes from noncitizens, study finds  —  Hillary Clinton garnered more than 800,000 votes from noncitizens on Nov. 8, an approximation far short of President Trump's estimate of up to 5 million illegal voters but supportive of his charges of fraud.

Calexit backers can begin collecting signatures to qualify for 2018 ballot  —  Backers of a proposed constitutional amendment seeking California's secession from the U.S. can begin collecting voter signatures to qualify for the 2018 ballot, the secretary of state's office said Thursday.

McCain warns Trump he'll fight on lifting Russian sanctions  —  (R-Ariz.) is urging President Trump not to make a “reckless” move to lift Russian sanctions, warning that he would work in Congress to reinstate the sanctions as law.  —  “For the sake of America's national security and that of our allies …

How Author Timothy Tyson Found the Woman at the Center of the Emmett Till Case  —  With a renewed cultural interest in the 1955 murder that catalyzed the 20th century civil rights movement, an interview with the author of a new book who tracked down the long-hidden woman at its center.

A viral Washington Post story about State Department resignations is very misleading  —  On Thursday morning, the Washington Post published a piece with an explosive headline: “The State Department's entire senior management team just resigned.”  The piece alleged that Undersecretary …

The end of Sarah Palin is here … Remember how former Alaska governor Sarah Palin was going to use her political celebrity to build an army of like-minded politicians via her political action committee?  —  Yeah, not so much.  —  Michael Beckel of the Center for Public Integrity flagged for me this news …

Melania Trump wins round in libel suit over blogger's ‘escort’ claims  —  First lady Melania Trump prevailed Friday in the first round of a $150 million libel suit she filed against a Maryland blogger over a report he published last summer about claims that Trump worked as a “high-end escort.”

Mikhail Gorbachev: ‘It All Looks as if the World Is Preparing for War’  —  Mikhail Gorbachev was the president of the Soviet Union and is the author of The New Russia.  —  The world today is overwhelmed with problems.  Policymakers seem to be confused and at a loss.

Rod Blagojevich's 20-year-old daughter Amy unloads on Barack Obama  —  Patti Blagojevich with her daughters Annie, center, and Amy on Aug. 9, 2016, at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago after former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's resentencing.  —  Scratch the Obamas off Amy Blagojevich's Christmas card list.

Donald Trump thinks he is the modern Andrew Jackson.  Here is why he isn't.  —  It's rapidly become conventional wisdom that President Trump is the modern-day incarnation of Andrew Jackson.  Establishment Republicans, long unsure of how to understand Trump and his successes in any sort …

The Bannon coup  —  White House and Hill GOP leaders are astonished by the unambiguous, far-reaching power of Steve Bannon and policy guru Stephen Miller over, well, just about everything.  — They wrote the Inaugural speech and set in fast motion a series of moves to cement Trump as an America-first Nationalist.

No Mention Of Jews In Trump Holocaust Statement Breaks With Tradition  —  President Donald Trump did not explicitly mention Jews in his Friday statement commemorating the millions exterminated by the Nazis, an omission that the Anti-Defamation League called “troubling” and out of step with past presidential statements.

New wave of anti-evolution bills hit states  —  New legislation introduced in a handful of states would allow alternatives to the theory of evolution to be taught in classrooms, the latest wave of measures backed by religious conservatives targeting broadly accepted scientific curriculum.