Source: Mueller pushed for Gates' help on collusion  —  Ex-Trump campaign aide Rick Gates pleads guilty  —  (CNN)Special counsel Robert Mueller's team last year made clear it wanted former Trump campaign deputy Rick Gates' help, not so much against his former business partner Paul Manafort …

Trump tells aides not to talk publicly about Russia policy moves  —  WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's national security advisers spent months trying to convince him to sign off on a plan to supply new U.S. weapons to Ukraine to aid in the country's fight against Russian-backed separatists …

TripAdvisor says it will stop ads for right-wing TV host Laura Ingraham after she criticized Parkland shooting survivor  —  Online travel website TripAdvisor said it will stop advertising on right-wing host Laura Ingraham's television show after she attacked a survivor of the February Parkland, Florida school shooting on Twitter.

Mueller probing Russia contacts at Republican convention: sources  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Investigators probing whether Donald Trump's presidential campaign colluded with Russia have been questioning witnesses about events at the 2016 Republican National Convention, according to two sources familiar …

Growth At Any Cost: Top Facebook Executive Defended Data Collection In 2016 Memo — And Warned That Facebook Could Get People Killed  —  Facebook Vice President Andrew “Boz” Bosworth said that “questionable contact importing practices,” “subtle language that helps people stay searchable,” …

Hope Hicks is Gone, and It's Not Clear Who Can Replace Her  —  WASHINGTON — Hope Hicks, the White House communications director who worked behind the scenes to direct the president through multiple professional crises — and decided to resign after she found herself exhausted by them — has left the building.

The Disturbing Secret Behind An Iconic Cartoon  —  Robyn Byrd and Katie Rice were teenage Ren & Stimpy fans who wanted to make cartoons.  They say they were preyed upon by the creator of the show, John Kricfalusi, who admitted to having had a 16-year-old girlfriend when approached by BuzzFeed News.

Privatizing the V.A. Will Hurt Veterans  —  It has been my greatest professional honor to serve our country's more than 20 million veterans.  Almost three years ago, I left my private sector job running hospitals and came to Washington to repay my gratitude to the men and women who put their lives on the line for our country.

Russia Will Expel 150 Diplomats, as Tensions With West Reach Fever Pitch  —  LONDON — Intensifying Russia's clash with Europe and the United States, the Kremlin on Thursday announced that it would expel 150 Western diplomats and close the American consulate in St. Petersburg.

A bombshell report just confirmed the key underlying premise of the Trump-Russia dossier  —  A new report in The Guardian just confirmed the lede sentence of British intelligence officer Christopher Steele's Trump Russia dossier, which claimed that Russian efforts to recruit Donald Trump stretched …

EXCLUSIVE: More cabinet trouble for Trump?  EPA chief lived in condo tied to lobbyist ‘power couple’  —  For much of his first year in Washington, President Trump's EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt occupied prime real estate in a townhouse near the U.S. Capitol that is co-owned by the wife …

Pope Francis: ‘There Is No Hell’ … In another interview with his longtime atheist friend, Eugenio Scalfari, Pope Francis claims that Hell does not exist and that condemned souls just “disappear.”  This is a denial of the 2,000-year-old teaching of the Catholic Church about the reality of Hell and the eternal existence of the soul.

Wooing Saudi Business, Tabloid Mogul Had a Powerful Friend: Trump  —  In July, David J. Pecker, the chairman of the company that owns The National Enquirer, visited his old friend President Trump at the White House.  —  The tabloid publisher took along a special guest, Kacy Grine …

Tarrant County woman sentenced to five years in prison for illegally voting in 2016  —  FORT WORTH  —  A judge sentenced a Rendon woman to five years in prison Wednesday for voting illegally in the 2016 presidential election while she was on supervised release from a 2011 fraud conviction.

Crazed girls flood Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz with fan mail  —  Sun Sentinel  —  Mass murderer Nikolas Cruz is getting stacks of fan mail and love letters sent to the Broward County jail, along with hundreds of dollars in contributions to his commissary account.

The Fascist Right Is Bloodied and Soiled  —  Recently, on a cold, gray Monday afternoon in East Lansing, Michigan, about 500 militant anti-fascists gathered in a parking lot with the intention of stopping Richard Spencer, the high-profile white nationalist, from speaking at Michigan State University.

Report: Israeli stealth fighters fly over Iran  —  Two IAF F-35 Adir fighter jets entered Iranian airspace undetected, according to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida.  —  Two Israeli F-35 fighter jets entered Iranian airspace over the past month, Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported on Thursday.

Student shot at Madison Schools in Ohio gets detention for school-shooting protest  —  MADISON TWP.  - In 2016, he was shot in his school's cafeteria while eating chicken nuggets.  He remembers falling on the ground, unsure what happened, watching students run away from him.

Conn. congresswoman kept aide on staff for 3 months after she learned of threat allegation  —  The threat from Rep. Elizabeth Esty's chief of staff arrived in a voice mail.  —  “You better f—  g reply to me or I will f—  g kill you,” Tony Baker said in the May 5, 2016 …

Trouble in candy land  —  How Peeps, pensions and a lawsuit threaten to upend the American retirement system  —  On April 1, hundreds of millions of marshmallow chicks and bunnies called Peeps will peer out from Easter baskets at American children.  —  They are a pastel symbol of Easter joy …

Media vs. Facebook: This time it's personal  —  Facebook and Google execs privately complain about the barrage of critical coverage they face, charging that media companies have a financial incentive to attack them and that media execs are settling scores.  They're right.

Fake Kirsten Gillibrand flap reveals double standard in our politics  —  Here's a sentence I never thought I would need to write: Kirsten Gillibrand is not involved in a sex scandal.  —  Now I've got your attention, right?  —  That I even need to devote a blog post to this topic is evidence …

APNewsBreak: California Judge: Coffee needs cancer warnings  —  LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Los Angeles judge ruled that California law requires coffee companies to carry an ominous cancer warning label because of a chemical produced in the roasting process.  —  Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle wrote …

The House Exodus  —  How the historically high number of open seats affects the November calculus  —  KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE  — As of this writing, just 379 of 435 House districts will have incumbents running in them this November.  That's the second-lowest total of the post-World War II era.