Jeffrey Epstein Death: 2 Guards Slept Through Checks and Falsified Records  —  The guards did not check on him for three hours, officials said.  The disclosures came as the guards and the warden at the jail were removed.  —  The two guards who were in the jail unit where Jeffrey Epstein …

POLITICO Playbook: Behind the scenes of Trump's new gun talks  —  DRIVING THE DAY  —  BEHIND THE SCENES ... QUIET GUN TALKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE ... We were hoping to save this news for this morning, but the NYT beat us to the punch on a few details Tuesday night toward the middle of their gun story.

A Kremlin-Linked Firm Invested Millions in Kentucky.  Were They After More Than Money?  —  Last summer, it looked like things were finally about to change for Ashland, Ky. For two decades, the jobs that once supported this Appalachian outpost of 20,000 people on a bend in the Ohio River …

New York Times demotes editor who sparked fury  —  New York (CNN Business)Jonathan Weisman, the deputy Washington editor for The New York Times (NYT), has been demoted after a pair of incidents in which he ignited controversy on Twitter (TWTR), the newspaper said Tuesday.

Waning of American Power?  Trump Struggles With an Asia in Crisis  —  The Trump administration has taken a hands-off approach to conflicts — from Kashmir to Hong Kong to the rivalry between Japan and South Korea — as Asian officials escalate the battles.  —  阅读.体 …

Trump Advisers Are Wary as President Considers Gun Proposals  —  Following mass shootings, Trump is interested in exploring legislation with new gun restrictions, but his aides are divided on the right approach  —  WASHINGTON—President Trump's public push for gun-control measures …

Stacey Abrams Says She's Open to Being Vice President for Any Democratic Nominee  —  Ms. Abrams, who announced this week that she would not run for president, told The Times she would be ‘honored to be considered.’  —  Stacey Abrams made it official this week that she would not seek …

Stocks Slide, Bonds Flash Warning After Weak Data: Markets Wrap  — U.S. 30-year yield hits record, 10- and two-year yields invert  — Data from China and Germany sours mood after tariff reprieve  —  Want the lowdown on European markets?  In your inbox before the open, every day.

John Hickenlooper Mulling Ending Presidential Bid to Run for Senate  —  CLEAR LAKE, Iowa — Former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado is in discussions about ending his presidential bid and entering the race for his state's Republican-held Senate seat, potentially giving Democrats a strong candidate …

Anti-New York White Supremacist Hate is Rising, NYPD Says  —  When white nationalist Garrett Kelsey discovered an internet video castigating Nordic neo-Nazis, he allegedly turned his fury on the Manhattan-based Jewish group that posted it.  —  From his home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa …

Biden keeps large lead in SC's 2020 Democratic presidential primary  —  COLUMBIA — Despite two shaky debates and some recent misstatements, South Carolina Democratic voters still prefer former Vice President Joe Biden in the South's first presidential primary.

A No-Holds-Barred Assault on Prosecutors  —  Attorney General William Barr pushed back against reforms by progressive prosecutors—but perhaps his greatest vitriol was reserved for the Boston DA's attempt to rein in police.  —  U.S. Attorney General William Barr lashed out at progressive prosecutors …

Man Sues CNN's Don Lemon for Alleged Assault at Sag Harbor Bar  —  A man is suing Don Lemon, claiming the CNN host attacked him at a Hamptons bar last summer.  The suit, obtained by Mediaite, was filed Sunday and seeks unspecified damages for “emotional pain and suffering.”

Over 70,000 people sign petition to rename Fifth Avenue outside Trump Tower after Obama  —  More than 70,000 people have signed onto a petition that seeks to rename the portion of Fifth Avenue in front of the Trump Tower in Manhattan after former President Obama.

Ken Cuccinelli: Statue Of Liberty Poem About ‘People Coming From Europe’  —  Trump's citizenship and immigration chief followed up his earlier comments about the famous Emma Lazarus poem with a racist clarification.  —  Ken Cuccinelli, the Trump administration's acting head of U.S. Citizenship …

AOC Pwns Barstool Sports Creator For Threatening Employees Over Unionizing  —  Dave Portnoy really ought to know better than this, but apparently testosterone trumps brains.  —  Dave Portnoy, the creator of Barstool Sports, threatened he would fire all his employees if they responded …

Biden camp jumped into damage control after upsetting Latino leaders  —  Joe Biden's presidential campaign is quietly playing cleanup with dozens of immigration activists and Latino leaders — weeks after upsetting them by using what they considered loaded language to describe his views on immigration policy.

Trump says he's losing as much as $5B being president  —  During a visit to a Pennsylvania factory, the president claimed without evidence that he was losing money while in office.  —  MONACA, Pa. — President Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday that being president will personally cost him billions of dollars …

Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech  —  ON A BRIGHT Monday in January 2017, at 2:30 in the afternoon, about a thousand Google employees—horrified, alarmed, and a little giddy—began pouring out of the company's offices in Mountain View, California.

Why the Secret Service spent thousands at a Trump hotel  —  Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son, flew to Canada for one of his regular visits to the Yukon mountains to hunt stone sheep with friends.  He was accompanied by Secret Service agents on that August 2017 trip …

Everyone will eventually turn on Trump.  Even Steve Doocy.  —  It's too soon to say when Donald Trump's presidency will end, but it's not too soon to say how it will end.  It will end in disgrace.  And when it does, Trump's defenders will turn on him.  —  Some already have.

Beto O'Rourke resumes campaign amid calls for his exit  —  Ever since the mass shooting in his home town, the media has become intrigued — once again — by Beto O'Rourke.  —  The question now is whether voters will give him a second look.  —  Initial signs for O'Rourke aren't especially promising …

Trump appears to back off plans to commute Blagojevich's sentence after pushback from Illinois Republicans  —  (CNN)President Donald Trump was on the cusp of commuting former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's sentence late last week, multiple sources said.  But then Republican members …

Respect for Fredo, a Character Who Is So Much More Than a Political Insult  —  For a quick lesson in how political insults are born, look no further than Fredo.  On Monday night, the name was trending on Twitter, thanks to a viral video showing an altercation between the CNN anchor Chris Cuomo …

Ocasio-Cortez's Known Donors From Her Own District Are Nearly Non-Existent, FEC Records Show  — Only 10 people who live within Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's congressional district have been recorded making donations to her reelection campaign in 2019, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis …

Trump Needs a Primary Challenge  —  The case for a contender from the right.  —  Mr. Walsh is a former Republican member of Congress from Illinois.  —  There's a strong case for President Trump to face a Republican primary challenger.  I know a thing or two about insurgencies.

Max Boot's Tired White-Supremacy Smear  —  Max Boot has devoted much of the past twelve hours to distorting a response I wrote to his column “Get a grip, white people.  We're not the victims.”  Boot has insisted that mine is “a white supremacist piece,” and implied that I am a “white supremacist.”