What Do Jotted Talking Points Say About Trump's Empathy?  —  WASHINGTON — For more than an hour on Wednesday, President Trump listened quietly to entreaties for action, personal stories of grief and loss, and expressions of raw anger, clutching a white notecard with talking points written on it.

Rick Gates, Trump Campaign Aide, to Plead Guilty in Mueller Inquiry and Cooperate  —  WASHINGTON — A former top adviser to Donald J. Trump's presidential campaign indicted by the special counsel was expected to plead guilty as soon as Friday afternoon, according to two people familiar …

Poll: Support for stricter gun laws rises; divisions on arming teachers  —  Nearly two-thirds of Americans support stricter laws on gun sales, including an increasing number of Republicans, but the public divides on the idea of allowing more teachers and school officials to carry guns.

MetLife, Symantec Dump NRA After Boycott Calls Grow  —  Companies that offered benefits to the gun group's members are dropping their association following the Parkland massacre.  —  A call to boycott the National Rifle Association became the top trend on Twitter as users …

Exclusive: Federal documents detail sweeping potential NCAA violations involving high-profile players, schools  —  Documents and bank records obtained in discovery during the federal investigation into the underbelly of college basketball detail in meticulous fashion the expenditures …

Laura Moser  —  Democratic voters need to hear that Laura Moser is not going to change Washington.  She is a Washington insider, who begrudgingly moved to Houston to run for Congress.  In fact, she wrote in the Washingtonian magazine, “I'd rather have my teeth pulled out without anesthesia” than live in Texas.

Putin ally said to be in touch with Kremlin, Assad before his mercenaries attacked U.S. troops … A Russian oligarch believed to control the Russian mercenaries who attacked U.S. troops and their allies in Syria this month was in close touch with Kremlin and ­Syrian officials in the days …

Trudeau's India trip is a total disaster — and he has only himself to blame … How did Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the world's favorite liberal mascot — a feminist man, with movie-star good looks, a 50 percent female cabinet and a political lexicon that has replaced “mankind” …

Inside Atomwaffen As It Celebrates a Member for Allegedly Killing a Gay Jewish College Student  —  ProPublica obtained the chat logs of Atomwaffen, a notorious white supremacist group.  When Samuel Woodward was charged with killing 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein last month in California …

Gothamist Lives, Thanks to a Boost From Public Radio  —  AFTER BILLIONAIRE JOE Ricketts announced the shuttering of local news organizations Gothamist and DNAInfo last fall, readers across the country mourned the loss of the beloved sites, and worried about the vulnerability of journalism in the digital age.

New York's Waldorf Astoria is now controlled by the Chinese government  —  One of the symbols of New York luxury is now in the hands of Beijing.  —  The Chinese government has taken control of Anbang Insurance Group, a Beijing-based conglomerate that has aggressively acquired overseas companies …

Summerville woman decides to take down Confederate flag she's flown for 7 years  —  In this Sept. 8, 2011, photo, the Confederate flag is displayed on a pole outside Annie Caddell's home in Brownsville community of Summerville.  Caddell raised her flag poles after neighbors erected fences to hide her flag.

An Epidemic of Dishonesty on the Right  —  Enough with the rancid conspiracy theories  —  First it was the Holocaust, now Parkland — is there any act of depravity to which the less respectable right-wing media cannot imagine a connection for George Soros?

Data Clashes With Emotion As CPAC Immigration Panel Goes Off The Rails  —  NATIONAL HARBOR, MD — The only panel dedicated to immigration at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference quickly went off the rails Thursday, with audience members drowning out panelists' presentation …

AP sources: Adelson offers to help pay for Jerusalem embassy  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is considering an offer from Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson to pay for at least part of a new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, four U.S. officials told The Associated Press.

Second Russian Athlete Tests Positive for Doping at Olympics  —  Russian athlete who wore “I don't do doping” t-shirt, has been busted for..... doping.  —  GANGNEUNG, South Korea (AP) — A second Russian athlete has failed a doping test at the Pyeongchang Games, a day before the International …

Is America a ‘Nation of Immigrants’?  Immigration Agency Says No  —  LOS ANGELES — The federal agency that issues green cards and grants citizenship to people from foreign countries has stopped characterizing the United States as “a nation of immigrants.”  —  The director of United States …

Yet another way Obama's spies apparently exploited the Trump ‘dossier’  —  The much-hyped Obama intelligence report that determined “Vladimir Putin ordered” Hillary Clinton's campaign e-mails hacked and leaked “to help Trump's chances of victory” has been accepted as gospel among DC punditry …

In Trumpworld, every day is yesterday  —  When it comes to President Trump — and his trickle-down moods that drive the West Wing, his party, the nation — February 2018 is no different than February 2017: he's still stuck on the exact same internal fights about trade, the same complaints about top staff …