White House Meeting Started With Sweets, but Quickly Turned Sour  —  Trump and congressional leaders remain at odds over border-wall funding; ‘Bye bye!’  —  WASHINGTON—President Trump opened the latest face-to-face negotiations with lawmakers like he was comforting members of one of his golf clubs.

Exclusive: Mueller Is Holding Top Secret Intelligence That Will Sink the Trump Presidency  —  Another day, another bombshell emanating from the Special Counsel investigation into President Donald Trump and his links to the Kremlin.  We now have more proof that Robert Mueller really does …

Married Amazon Boss Jeff Bezos Getting Divorce Over Fling With Movie Mogul's Wife  —  The ENQUIRER's blockbuster exclusive of world's richest couple's break-up!  —  The marriage of the world's richest couple is set to explode in all-out war — after billionaire Jeff Bezos was caught cheating …

House Democrats now asking questions about Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin  —  Mnuchin will give the House a classified briefing Thursday, after a request from the Democratic chairs of the main House investigative panels.  —  WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has agreed …

Coast Guard families told they can have garage sales to cope with government shutdown  —  Employees of the U.S. Coast Guard who are facing a long U.S. government shutdown just received a suggestion: To get by without pay, consider holding a garage sale, babysitting or serving as a “mystery shopper.”

Law firm that represented Russian interests part of mystery Mueller subpoena case  —  Supreme Court rules against mystery company  —  Washington (CNN)One law firm involved in a foreign government-owned company's challenge of a mysterious grand jury subpoena related to the Robert Mueller investigation …

A beefed-up White House legal team prepares aggressive defense of Trump's executive privilege as investigations loom large  —  A beefed-up White House legal team is gearing up to prevent President Trump's confidential discussions with top advisers from being disclosed to House Democratic investigators …

Reduced inspections ‘put our food supply at risk’  —  The furloughing of hundreds of Food and Drug Administration inspectors has sharply reduced inspections of the nation's food supply — one of many repercussions of the partial government shutdown that make Americans potentially less safe.

Tom Steyer, Billionaire Impeachment Activist, Won't Run Against Trump  —  Tom Steyer, the California billionaire who has crusaded for President Trump's impeachment, said on Wednesday that he would not join the pack of Democrats running for president in 2020 and would instead redouble his efforts to topple Mr. Trump before the election.

People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds  —  And the finding holds true across party lines  —  Older Americans are disproportionately more likely to share fake news on Facebook, according to a new analysis by researchers at New York and Princeton Universities.

Pastor Who Praised Pulse Nightclub Gunman Resigns After Allegedly Paying for Sex  —  A Baptist minister in Texas who came to national attention in 2016 when he praised the gunman who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., resigned from his ministry last week after allegedly using drugs …

Evangelical group wants gays removed from anti-lynching bill  —  Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver opposes including the words “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” in a federal anti-lynching bill.  —  The U.S. Senate last month unanimously passed a bill that would explicitly make lynching a federal crime.

Mueller protection bill likely to get new committee vote  —  A bill to protect special counsel Robert Mueller is likely to get another vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee if the Russia probe is still going later this winter, new Chairman Lindsey Graham said in an interview on Wednesday.

Sorry, Angela Davis Is No One's Human Rights Hero  —  The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the Alabama museum and research center dedicated to the history of the Civil Rights Movement, has rescinded a prestigious award to activist, academic and Birmingham native Angela Davis …

A Memorial for Jamal Khashoggi  —  On Thursday, I will be joining the documentarian Alex Gibney and the former F.B.I. special agent Ali Soufan, along with lawmakers, journalists, human-rights advocates, and friends, at the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, D.C., to honor Jamal Khashoggi …

Trump Thinks He's His Own Best Messenger.  Where Does That Leave Bill Shine?  —  WASHINGTON — At the beginning of the government shutdown, Bill Shine was about as far away from the capital as President Trump's most senior communications official could get.

Virginia Study Finds Increased School Bullying In Areas That Voted For Trump  —  After the 2016 presidential election, teachers around the country reported they were seeing increased name-calling and bullying in their classrooms.  Now, research shows that those stories — at least in one state — are confirmed by student surveys.

You Should Meditate Every Day  —  Sure, it's become a wellness fad.  But it's the best way I've found to keep digital monsters at bay.  —  Because I live in Northern California, where this sort of thing is required by local ordinance, I spent New Year's Day at a meditation center …

Josh Hawley to furloughed federal workers: No comment  —  Josh Hawley, Republican U.S. senator from Missouri  —  Josh Hawley has a message to federal workers in Kansas City who won't receive paychecks this week: No comment.  —  Wednesday, the freshman Republican Missouri senator was asked …

The Feds Are Using a Gag Order To Censor a Critique of Its Prosecutions.  Bring on the Lawsuits.  —  The Cato Institute and Institute for Justice team up to fight for the right to publish a book attacking behavior by the SEC.  —  The liberty-loving attorneys of the Institute for Justice …

Steve Bannon Angled for a Job Lobbying on Behalf of E-Cigarette Giant Juul  —  The offer was, ultimately, rebuffed.  —  Juul Labs, which hawks flavored e-cigarettes that teens love, recently drew a controversial suitor: ex-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Shutdown's economic damage: $1 billion a week  —  As federal workers face the prospect of missed paychecks during the partial government shutdown, their financial reality is rippling into the broader economy.  —  The roughly 800,000 government employees who are either furloughed …

Top Bernie Sanders 2016 adviser accused of forcibly kissing subordinate  —  On the final night of the Democratic National Convention in July of 2016, Bernie Sanders' staffers went out to a Mediterranean restaurant and hookah bar in Center City Philadelphia to celebrate and mourn the end of the campaign.

Trump threatens to cut off disaster funding for California fire victims … President Trump injected new uncertainty into California's wildfire recovery efforts, tweeting early Wednesday that he has ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency not to send more disaster funding to state officials …