Trump praises ‘Fox & Friends’ for being named ‘most influential’ because he watches it  —  on Thursday praised “Fox & Friends” after a media website named it the “most influential” because he watches it.  —  “Was @foxandfriends just named the most influential show in news?”  Trump tweeted.

Defying Trump, U.N. General Assembly Condemns U.S. Decree on Jerusalem  —  UNITED NATIONS — A majority of the world's nations delivered a stinging rebuke to the United States on Thursday, denouncing its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and ignoring President Trump's threats …

Prosecutors ask FBI agents for info on Uranium One deal  —  On the orders of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Justice Department prosecutors have begun asking FBI agents to explain the evidence they found in a now dormant criminal investigation into a controversial uranium deal that critics …

Mueller Avoids Pitfalls by Giving Trump the Silent Treatment  —  Some Republicans are escalating attacks on Russia probe  —  Special counsel aims to convey credibility, officials says  —  Through all the controversy, threats and noise surrounding the Trump-Russia investigation …

President Commutes Sentence of Iowa Meatpacking Executive  —  President Trump on Wednesday commuted the prison sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, whose Iowa meatpacking plant was the target of a huge immigration raid in 2008, and whose 27-year prison sentence angered many Orthodox Jews.

Mueller Is Looking Into a U.S. Foundation Backed by Russian Money  —  Foundation got $500,000 in undisclosed Russian donations  —  Representatives attended meeting with Trump campaign officials  —  Sara Peterson flew to Moscow in 2012 to take home two Russian orphans just as the Kremlin …

McConnell Wants Bipartisanship In 2018 On Entitlements, Immigration And More  —  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants 2018 to be a year of bipartisanship, even if that means moving on from GOP dreams of cutting welfare and fully rolling back the Affordable Care Act.

Virginia officials will randomly pick winner of tied House of Delegates race on Dec. 27  —  Politicos, mark your calendars for Wednesday Dec. 27.  —  That's the day the Virginia Board of Elections will randomly pick the winner of the high stakes and tied 94th House District race.  —  The impact?

This Congress's clear priorities: corporations, not children  —  It's taken Congress three months to do the bare minimum to help CHIP.  —  Congress is preparing to go home for the holidays having delivered a historic tax cut for corporations — and having done only the absolute minimum …

Exclusive: US making plans for ‘bloody nose’ military attack on North Korea  —  America is drawing up plans for a “bloody nose” military attack on North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons programme, The Telegraph understands.  —  The White House has “dramatically” stepped up preparation …

The Politics of the Republican Tax Bill: A Dissenting View  —  I am not a fan of the new tax bill that the Republican Congress passed.  It will widen the gap between the wealthy and everyone else and increase the likelihood over a decade or so of another crash.

Inauguration Protesters Found Not Guilty On All Charges In Jury Trial  —  Police pursue demonstrators in Washington, DC, on Jan. 20, 2017.  —  A jury on Thursday found six defendants not guilty on all charges they were facing in connection with Inauguration Day protests in Washington, DC, multiple sources reported.

Facebook Job Ads Raise Concerns About Age Discrimination  —  This article was written through collaboration between The New York Times and ProPublica, the independent, nonprofit investigative journalism organization.  —  A few weeks ago, Verizon placed an ad on Facebook to recruit applicants …

Review: In ‘The Post,’ Democracy Survives the Darkness  —  THE POST - NYT Critic's Pick - Directed by Steven Spielberg - Biography, Drama, History, Thriller - PG-13 - 1h 55m  —  Steven Spielberg's exhilarating drama “The Post” is about a subject that's dear to the heart of journalists: themselves!

Fueled by drug crisis, U.S. life expectancy declines for a second straight year … American life expectancy at birth declined for the second consecutive year in 2016, fueled by a staggering 21 percent rise in the death rate from drug overdoses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.

Janet Elder, a Top Editor at The Times, Is Dead at 61  —  Janet Elder, who in a three-decade career at The New York Times rose from reporter to deputy managing editor, along the way spending many years as the editor of news surveys and election analysis, died on Wednesday.  She was 61.

The Real Coup Plot Is Trump's  —  When Donald Trump's campaign was accused of spreading “fake news,” he quickly appropriated the term for himself.  The true purveyors of fake news, he claimed, were television networks like CNN and newspapers like this one.  —  Now, as Mr. Trump and his allies seem …

Memphis removing Confederate statues from Downtown parks  —  Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal  —  The city of Memphis sold two public parks containing Confederate monuments to a nonprofit Wednesday in a massive, months-in-the-planning operation to take the statues down overnight.

You Cannot Be Too Cynical About the Republican Tax Bill  —  The rush to enact the tax bill was designed to mask — as a break for the middle class — what is in fact a $1.4 trillion package of benefits for key donors and lobbyists, the richest members of Congress, President Trump, his family and other families like his.

Long Island Iced Tea Soars 500% After Changing Its Name to Long Blockchain  —  There's a new leader in the sweepstakes for the zaniest name change in the crypto craze.  —  Long Island Iced Tea Corp. shares rose 238 percent after the company rebranded itself Long Blockchain Corp. It's …

Trump Plans Tax Signing on Jan. 3 Due to Technical Issue  —  President Donald Trump plans to sign the tax bill on Jan. 3 to ensure automatic spending cuts to Medicare and other programs don't take effect, according to a House Republican aide familiar with the plans.

Cochran's future in the Senate in doubt  —  Sen. Thad Cochran, chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, hasn't presided over a hearing since early September.  The Mississippi Republican has not given a speech on the Senate floor all year, and he's introduced only two bills during that time, both of them minor.

De Blasio thinks city-funded news outlets would be ‘more fair’  —  There's one sure way for Mayor Bill de Blasio to get better press coverage — own the press.  —  The mayor said he's open to the idea of the city investing in a media outlet that would cover the city.

Designing Against Misinformation  —  Scrolling through News Feed, it can be hard to judge what stories are true or false.  Should you trust everything that you see, even if it comes from someone whom you don't know well?  If you've never heard of an article's publisher, but the headline looks legitimate, is it?

Hell freezes over: Media start admitting that Trump's first year isn't a flop  —  I have sensed for weeks now that some in the media were on the verge of rolling out a contrary take on President Trump's first year in office.  —  And in the wake of yesterday's final passage of massive tax cuts, that moment has arrived.