U.S. Government Ethics Chief Will Resign, Casting Uncertainty Over Agency  —  WASHINGTON — Walter M. Shaub Jr., the government's top ethics watchdog who has repeatedly gone head-to-head with the Trump administration over conflicts of interest, said on Thursday that he was calling it quits.

Back to the Center, Democrats  —  The path back to power for the Democratic Party today, as it was in the 1990s, is unquestionably to move to the center and reject the siren calls of the left, whose policies and ideas have weakened the party.  —  In the early 1990s, the Democrats relied …

President Trump Apparently Couldn't Find A Hotel To Book For The G20 Summit  —  He is one of the most powerful people in the world.  He is coming to the meeting of 20 powerful countries.  And he has a problem: no hotel room for the G20.  —  White House officials apparently waited too long …

Trump Cites Russian Election Meddling But Blames Others Too  —  Says intelligence community's failings on Iraq raise doubts  —  Trump makes remarks ahead of meeting with Russia's Putin  —  President Donald Trump said he believes Russia meddled in the 2016 election but maintained that the U.S …

Trump hands a victory to Polish nationalists  —  Historians and observers say the president's decision to break with tradition by skipping a trip to Warsaw's Holocaust memorial plays into the ruling party's message.  —  President Donald Trump is unlikely to suffer politically at home …

Bannon Ally Leaves White House As McMaster Consolidates Power  —  Former Breitbart writer Tera Dahl has exited the National Security Council in a blow to the Trump White House's nationalist wing.  —  Reporting From Washington, D.C.  —  As rival factions inside the White House continue …

United takes seat away from 2-year-old; resells ticket  —  With tickets in hand, Shirley Yamauchi - a teacher at Kapolei Middle school and her 27-month old son were on the final leg of an 18-hour flight from Hawaii to Boston.  —  “He and I, we had both our tickets scanned, we both went on board no problem,” Yamauchi said.

Russia-born dealmaker linked to Trump assists laundering probe  —  Felix Sater, who worked on Trump Soho, turns against Kazakh former business partners  —  Read next … Donald Trump faces renewed scrutiny of the riches that flowed into his real estate empire from the former Soviet Union …

The Network Against the Leader of the Free World  —  Jeffrey A. Zucker hasn't been getting a lot of sleep lately.  But he says that's nothing new.  —  “I don't sleep that much anyway,” Mr. Zucker, the president of CNN, said on Wednesday in his fifth-floor office, just off the network's glassy Midtown Manhattan newsroom.

18 States Sue Betsy DeVos Over Student Loan Protections  —  Democratic attorneys general from 18 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the Education Department and its secretary, Betsy DeVos, challenging the department's move last month to freeze new rules …

In TV Ratings Game, Networks Try to Dissguys Bad Newz from Nielsen  —  In a game largely sanctioned by TV-ratings firm Nielsen, television networks try to hide shows' poor performances on any given night by forgetting how to spell.  That can dramatically improve a show's average viewership.

Trump voter commission discloses names of members, plan to store data at White House  —  The Trump administration formally identified its 10-member commission seeking voter data from all 50 states in a court filing Thursday that also said the commission intends to keep the data it collects at the White House.

Pence: ‘We will put American boots on the face of Mars’ … Vice President Pence pledged during a tour of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday that the U.S. would put humans on Mars.  —  “Here the Hubble Space Telescope, the New Horizons, and so many other technological wonders lifted off …

Trump's Life-Tenured Judicial Avatar  —  So Neil M. Gorsuch, the aw-shucks humble servant of the law whom the country encountered during his mind-numbing confirmation hearing, turns out to be a hard-right conservative.  No real surprise there, and by now, no real news either …

GOP tensions rise over Cruz proposal  —  Tensions between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell  —  (R-Ky.) and his old antagonist, Sen. Ted Cruz  —  (R-Texas), have reappeared in the high-stakes negotiation over healthcare reform.  —  Cruz is insisting on a reform to the Senate GOP bill …

Photo ‘showing Amelia Earhart’ is not the US aviator  —  A photo of a woman claimed to be missing US aviator Amelia Earhart is said today to be proof that she survived a crash into the Pacific Ocean 80 years ago - but the picture has a major flaw, it can be revealed.

‘South Park’ creator on avoiding Trump: We don't want to become CNN  —  Trey Parker, a co-creator of the Comedy Central staple “South Park,” says the next season of the not-for-children cartoon is going to be scaling back on political humor, according to an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

Inside the Trump-Putin meeting  —  There will likely only be six people in the room when President Trump meets President Putin on Friday at the sidelines of the G-20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany.  —  According to an official familiar with the meeting's planning, it will be Trump, Putin …

The Remaking of Donald Trump  —  In the multicultural days of The Apprentice, he rose to a level of popularity with minorities that the GOP could only dream of.  Then he torched it all to prepare for a hard-right run at the presidency.  —  Donald Trump had been thinking about running …

One reason the GOP health bill is a mess: No one thought Trump would win  —  Sen. Patrick J. Toomey offered a simple, remarkable explanation this week for why Republicans have struggled so mightily to find a way to repeal the Affordable Care Act.  —  “Look, I didn't expect Donald Trump to win …

'There's a $3,000 bounty on your head in Philadelphia': Woman gets death threats after Facebook video of her urinating on an American flag goes viral  — She captioned the video, which she posted on Facebook and later deleted: ‘F*** your nationalism.  F*** your country.  F*** your stupid f****** flag’

We Should Cheer CNN's Ritual Suicide  —  If you ever had any doubt that Donald Trump was right that the mainstream media is the enemy of the American people, CNN corrected your inexplicable inability to comprehend this painfully obvious truth by choosing July 4th to threaten some guy for daring to make fun of Its Medianess Holiness.

The Conservative ‘Resistance’ Is Futile  —  The right has never made one significant move against the liberal culture machine.