Conservatives mount a whisper campaign smearing Khashoggi in defense of Trump  —  Hard-line Republicans and conservative commentators are mounting a dark whisper campaign against Jamal Khashoggi that is designed to protect President Trump from criticism of his handling of the dissident …

Kelly, Bolton Get in Profane Shouting Match Outside the Oval Office  —  President Donald Trump's chief of staff and his national security adviser engaged in a profanity-laced argument outside the Oval Office on Thursday, according to three people familiar with the episode.

Trump administration does about-face on announcement that top HUD aide would lead Interior watchdog  —  Interior Department officials said Thursday that they did not approve the hiring of a political appointee as the agency's acting watchdog, calling the announcement of her move by Housing …

A President Who Believes He Is Entitled to His Own Facts  —  WASHINGTON — He accepts less-than-credible denials from autocratic heads of state about nefarious acts.  He disputes the existence of man-made climate change and insists that photographic evidence of the crowd at his inauguration is fake, part of a media plot to harm him.

Trump's Focus on a Washington Building Project Draws Scrutiny  —  WASHINGTON — Nearly two years before he would begin his presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump arrived in Washington to show off his plans for a luxury hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue under a deal he had reached to lease the site from the General Services Administration.

A day in the life of an HSBC exec who wakes up at 5:30 a.m. to work out, always eats green, and studies at Stanford in her free time  —  Melania Edwards is always on the move.  —  The HSBC exec, who's part of the bank's Global Venture Capital Coverage Group, works from two Northern California offices an hour apart.

A Defector From Conservatism With a Clear Vision of Trump's Rise  —  When Max Boot was a young conservative apparatchik on the make, the key moment in his career occurred when he got a meeting with Robert Bartley, editor of The Wall Street Journal editorial page, one of the movement's most prestigious and influential organs.

Paul Manafort is spending A LOT of time with Robert Mueller these days  —  (CNN)Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and special counsel Robert Mueller have been spending a whole lot of time together of late, according to CNN's Katelyn Polantz and Evan Perez.  The duo write:

A Conservative Group's Closed-Door ‘Training’ of Judicial Clerks Draws Concern  —  The conservative legal movement has long cultivated law students and young lawyers, partly to ensure a deep bench of potential judicial nominees  —  A bipartisan Senate truce has fallen apart as Republicans renew …

Another former GOP governor of Kansas just endorsed Dem Laura Kelly over Kris Kobach  —  A second former Republican governor of Kansas is spurning Kris Kobach's run for the office in favor of Democrat Laura Kelly's candidacy.  —  Former Kansas Gov. Mike Hayden, who served from 1987 to 1991 …

Burlington police chief reacts to Madelyn Ellen Linsenmeir obituary: ‘I have a problem’  —  Burlington police Chief Brandon del Pozo posted this to his Facebook account on Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018.  —  I have a problem with this obituary.  —  Born here in Burlington, Madelyn was the 30-year old mother of a toddler.

Ex-Trump Adviser Jason Miller Sues Will Menaker of ‘Chapo Trap House’ Over Tweet  —  First, he sued Gizmodo Media and a reporter over a claim he gave an abortion pill to a stripper.  Now he is suing the reporter's boyfriend over a tweet.  —  Jason Miller, a former senior campaign aide to Donald Trump …

HBO's ‘Veep’ gag and new Joe Donnelly political ad are basically the same  —  Dwight Adams, dwight.adams@indystar.com  —  Many Hoosiers who saw the latest Joe Donnelly ad entitled “Axe” may have viewed it and thought, “well, there's a fella who likes to chop his own wood!”

Rihanna Declined Super Bowl LIII Halftime Show Offer in Support of Colin Kaepernick … Rihanna stands with Kap.  The “Work” singer declined an offer to headline the Super Bowl LIII Halftime Show because she “supports Colin Kaepernick,” a source tells Us Weekly exclusively.

Fake intern who recorded McCaskill campaign had access to voter info, campaign says  —  A conservative activist with Project Veritas posed as an intern with U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill's campaign and had access to voter information, according to a stack of documents McCaskill's lawyer delivered …

How Trump frames the 2018 election choice: “Democrats create mobs.  Republicans create jobs”  —  From CNN's Betsy Klein and Kevin Liptak  —  President Trump, at his rally in Missoula, Montana, framed the midterms as “an election of Kavanaugh, the caravan, law and order, and common sense.

Eight Stories of Men's Regret  —  Late on the Friday afternoon of Sept. 21, the same week that Christine Blasey Ford went public with accusations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh, The New York Times invited male readers to tell us about their high school experiences.

Dear God, Hillary Clinton.  Please, Just Go.  —  No one benefits from her latest venture back onto the political scene.  —  We're three weeks out from the 2018 midterm election, and Hillary Clinton is popping up again like a Halloween ghoul who keeps rising from the grave to terrorize the American public …

Vladimir Putin uses speech to herald end of US hegemony  —  Russian president Vladimir Putin shrugged off worsening relations with the west and talked up Moscow's burgeoning diplomatic friendships in Asia and the Middle East, as he hailed the end of a US-dominated unipolar world.

Cory Booker: Canada Is More American Than America  —  “Canada - I can't stand how they're out-Americaning us in Canada.  Trudeau - give me a break.”  —  Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), a possible 2020 candidate for president, said that he “can't stand how they're out-Americaning us in Canada” …

In Admissions, Harvard Favors Those Who Fund It, Internal Emails Show  —  In one 2013 email headlined “My Hero,” former Kennedy School Dean Ellwood thanked Harvard's admissions dean for his help accepting a set of students with very particular qualifications.  “[Redacted] and [redacted] are all big wins.

In Alabama, Black People Are 4 Times More Likely Than White People To Be Arrested For Marijuana Possession  —  A new report details Alabama's “War on Marijuana” ahead of a key DA election.  —  Wesley Shelton was dozing off on a park bench in Montgomery County, Alabama, when a police officer approached him in late 2016.

Fourth former Scott Walker secretary comes forward to criticize governor  —  A fourth former secretary for Gov. Scott Walker has come forward to criticize the Republican governor after resigning from his job leading Madison's economic development agency in order to speak more freely.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos ranks No. 1 among S&P 500 CEOs in political spending  —  His $10 million gift to a nonpartisan, veterans-focused fund ‘could be seen as an act of goodwill’  —  There's political giving by the S&P 500 CEOs, and then there's Jeff Bezos's giving.

Among Amazon HQ2 Watchers, Northern Virginia Checks the Most Boxes  —  SEATTLE — Amazon won't say a word about where it plans to put its much-hyped second headquarters.  Officials in the 20 cities and regions named as finalists say that they don't know anything — and that even if they did, they wouldn't share it publicly.

Revealed: Russian billionaire set up US company before Trump Tower meeting  —  Aras Agalarov, who attended the meeting with Donald Trump Jr in June 2016, formed a shell company with an accountant who has had clients accused of money laundering and embezzlement

Trump Believed His Stormy Daniels ‘Horseface’ Tweet Was Politically Brilliant  —  The president workshopped it before tweeting it out.  And he doesn't care about the angry reactions.  —  Donald Trump caught various West Wing officials off-guard on Tuesday when he decided to describe …

The Rage of All Women  —  “Man-hating dyke” is the worst thing you can call a lesbian.  But in the #MeToo era, it's time to reclaim it.  — We Owe Queer Radicals Everything … In the wake of the Kavanaugh hearings, a dyke friend in her twenties posted that, real talk, she doesn't like men.