Who's Afraid of Howard Schultz?  —  Democrats seem to be afraid he might give them a policy debate.

Bernie Sanders to propose dramatic expansion in estate tax on richest Americans, including 77 percent rate on billionaires  —  Sanders's “For the 99.8% Act” would target the wealthiest 0.2 percent of estates.  —  Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will unveil a plan Thursday to dramatically expand …

Virginia lawmaker says she wouldn't have co-sponsored controversial abortion bill if she had read it closely  —  A Virginia lawmaker sent an email to her constituents Wednesday night apologizing for attaching her name to a controversial abortion bill without reading it closely enough.

Stone Arrest Exposes the Cancer Eating American Criminal Justice  —  Last week's arrest of Roger Stone at the behest of Special Counsel Robert Mueller incites me to recall Joseph Welch's famous question of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy at the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?

NRA Heavyweight Wanted Access to Putin: Leaked Email  —  “[I]mpressing the NRA's Russian hosts is the quickest way to secure a private interview with President Putin,” an organizer of the NRA's infamous 2015 trip to Moscow wrote.  —  Betsy Woodruff  —  A former NRA president hoped …

Trump singled out Dan Coats in morning rant about intelligence community  —  (CNN)President Donald Trump seethed Wednesday morning as he watched the highlights of his intelligence chiefs testifying on Capitol Hill and singled out Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats by name during his morning rant …

'It's some galaxy brain stuff they wanted us to believe:' How Russia's effort to sabotage Mueller's investigation backfired  —  The fake trove of the special counsel's files were immediately dismissed as largely fabricated by the reporter and researcher who received them.

APNewsBreak: ICE force-feeding detainees on hunger strike  —  Federal immigration officials are force-feeding six immigrants through plastic nasal tubes during a hunger strike that's gone on for a month inside a Texas detention facility, The Associated Press has learned.

Amy Klobuchar may be best equipped to send the president packing  —  Surely the silliest aspirant for the Democrats' 2020 presidential nomination is already known: “ Beto ,” a. k.a.  Robert Francis, O'Rourke is a skateboarding man-child whose fascination with himself caused him to live-stream …

Why We Are Quitting RedState  —  For more than a decade, RedState was a solid voice in the world of online conservative commentary.  Unfortunately, the allure of Trumpism has left the once great site a shell of its former self.  —  In 2015, before the Republican tide shifted …

Michael Bloomberg's Secret Plans to Take Down Trump  —  Michael Bloomberg has bigger plans for 2020 than running for president.  The billionaire and former New York City mayor has been openly dreaming of the White House for 25 years, and spent huge amounts of time and money four times …

Family of Fallen Navy Linguist Fights Regulation That Forced Her Deployment  —  WASHINGTON — Navy Chief Petty Officer Shannon Mary Kent wasn't supposed to be in Syria.  —  Last year, the 35-year-old mother of two was slated to attend a clinical psychology doctoral program near Walter Reed …

Rand Paul awarded more than $580K after neighbor's attack  —  U.S. Sen. Rand Paul was awarded more than $580,000 in damages and medical expenses on Wednesday in his lawsuit against the neighbor who tackled him and broke several of his ribs in a dispute over lawn maintenance.

The 15 Things You Need to Know About Chris Christie's Book  —  Chris Christie's tell-all, Let Me Finish, has now hit shelves, and it's absolutely the second most interesting book about Donald Trump released this week.  —  Is it worth you slogging through the entire 400 pages?  Hard pass.

The Trump-Russia Investigation and the Mafia State  —  It's been a strange two and a half years.  From the first allegations, in July, 2016, of Russian meddling in the U.S. election campaign, to the arrest of President Donald Trump's former adviser Roger Stone last week …

Kim Davis Must Pay Legal Fees After Same-Sex Marriage Battle, Kentucky Governor Says  —  Gov. Matt Bevin's lawyers say taxpayers “should not have to collectively bear the financial responsibility for Davis' intransigence.”  —  FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — As a candidate for governor in 2015 …

Trump stiffs Feinstein and Harris on judges. . .mostly  —  Yesterday, I wrote about the three conservatives President Trump nominated for the Ninth Circuit last year, but did not renominate this year.  The unwillingness to renominate the three came about after a request by California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris.

Mike Johnston to run for Senate, becoming Cory Gardner's highest-profile challenger yet  —  The Western Slope 44-year-old came in third place in the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary.  —  Mike Johnston, a Western Slope-born former state senator, wants to be the Democrat who unseats Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner in 2020.

White House preps emergency wall plan while Congress negotiates  —  Congress has until Feb. 15 to discuss a border security deal, but the White House is already finalizing its plan B — declaring a national emergency.  —  The White House is finalizing details of a potential national emergency declaration …

2020 Democrats weigh how to recapture voters in Midwest  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — The clearest path for Democrats to return to the White House runs straight through the upper Midwest, fueling debate over who is best positioned to recapture the region's working-class voters who broke for President Donald Trump in 2016.

Maduro Turns to Special Police Force to Crush Dissent  —  CARACAS, Venezuela — The agents barged into the home of Yonaiker Ordóñez, 18, on Sunday morning as he slept.  Dressed in helmets and carrying rifles, the men grabbed the teenager and forced him to another room without explaining why they came, his family said.

ICE Ran Fake College to Target Undocumented Immigrants  —  Fake university.  Real consequences.  —  Scott Bixby  —  For years, the Department of Homeland Security has operated a fake university in the Detroit suburbs as part of an undercover operation that lured undocumented immigrants seeking to obtain fraudulent student visas.

What an Old Watergate Document Can Teach the House Judiciary Committee  —  The chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary faced a vexing problem: Pressure for impeachment was building, but while lots of evidence against the president was public, key pieces of it were not.

‘Get this done’: McConnell moves to avoid new shutdown  —  Mitch McConnell is willing to go big, go small or anything in between to avoid another government shutdown.  He's even willing to appeal to a higher power.  —  At a meeting with GOP chairmen on Wednesday, the Senate majority leader …

WATCH: Ocasio-Cortez Caught Lying About Her Comments On Israel Occupying Palestine  —  In an interview this week, socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) lied about remarks she made in July 2018 during an interview on PBS's “Firing Line With Margaret Hoover,” falsely claiming …

Tim Scott still opposes Thomas Farr, and has sharp words for conservative critics  —  U.S. Sen. Tim Scott has a message for the conservatives excoriating him for opposing Thomas Farr to be a district court judge: They ought not challenge the conclusion of the Senate's only black Republican …

The Perils of Reporting on an Investigation of the President … Listen and subscribe to our podcast from your mobile device:  —  The special counsel's office disputed an explosive BuzzFeed report claiming that President Trump had instructed his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress …

Foxconn Reconsidering Plans for a Wisconsin Factory Heralded by Trump  —  It was heralded a year and a half ago as the start of a Midwestern manufacturing renaissance: Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics behemoth, would build a $10 billion Wisconsin plant to make flat-screen televisions, creating 13,000 jobs.

Morton Sobell, Last Defendant in Rosenberg Spy Case, Is Dead at 101  —  Morton Sobell, who was convicted in the Cold War spy trial that delivered Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to their deaths and divided the nation for decades, died on Dec. 26 in Manhattan, his son, Mark, confirmed on Wednesday.

Former Mass. Gov. William Weld to announce possible run for president  —  HIDE TRANSCRIPT SHOW TRANSCRIPT  —  William Weld, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts who was the Libertarian Party's nominee for vice president in 2016, is mulling a run for president and could make an announcement …