Rep. Duncan Hunter to plead guilty in campaign finance scandal, leave Congress  —  Longtime congressman says he wants to spare his family the spectacle of a trial, which was to start Jan. 22  —  After years of denials and claims he was the target of a political witch hunt, Rep. Duncan Hunter …

GOP impeachment report claims Trump did nothing wrong  —  President Trump committed “no quid pro quo, bribery, extortion, or abuse of power,” Republicans on the House committees investigating the Ukraine controversy have concluded in a 110-page report reviewed by Axios ahead of its formal release.

Senate panel look into Ukraine interference comes up short  —  With the impeachment inquiry charging forward, President Donald Trump's allies have defended his demand for political investigations from Ukraine by claiming that the government in Kyiv tried to sabotage his candidacy and boost Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Speaks Out on Trump, Putin and a Divided Europe  —  'I don't trust anyone at all'

Giuliani associate asks court to release material for impeachment inquiry  —  An attorney representing Rudy Giuliani's indicted associate, Lev Parnas, asked that materials seized during his client's arrest be released to the House committees leading the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Georgia governor set to buck Trump on Senate appointment  —  In defiance of Trump, Brian Kemp has begun informing fellow Republicans that he will appoint business exec Kelly Loeffler to the soon-to-be-vacant seat.  —  Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has been getting pressure about his prospective Senate pick.

The surprising second choices of Democratic primary voters upend political cliches  —  A war between ‘progressives’ and ‘moderates’?  Voters don't see things the way pundits do.  —  To many observers, the Democratic presidential primary has highlighted the “profound ideological divides between …

California Gov. Newsom to campaign in Iowa for Kamala Harris  —  SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom will travel to Iowa to campaign for Sen. Kamala Harris as she tries to rebound amid a critical stretch in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Trump administration quietly releases Lebanon military aid  —  1 of 3  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has quietly released more than $100 million in military assistance to Lebanon after months of unexplained delay.  —  That's according to two congressional staffers …

Here Are The Latest Secret Memos From Mueller's Report  —  BuzzFeed News sued the US government for the right to see all the work that Mueller's team kept secret.  Today we are publishing the second installment of the FBI's summaries of interviews with key witnesses.

Warren's Son Attended One of Nation's Most Elite Private Schools  —  The Haverford School's leafy campus, arched doorways, and neatly uniformed boys would seem to denote the sort of class and privilege that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has decried on the campaign trail.

‘Free, Melania’ offers new details about the life of a private first lady  —  Adapted from Kate Bennett's “Free, Melania: The Unauthorized Biography” set for release Tuesday.  —  Washington (CNN)First lady Melania Trump, like those before her, has battled the vast juxtaposition between public perception and private citizen.

‘OxyContin Just Started Showing Up’  —  Purdue Pharma introduced its opioid painkiller, OxyContin, in 1996, when the Class of 2000 entered high school.  Some students began experimenting, often combining prescription opiates with alcohol at parties.  —  For many, what started …

Trump Is Making the Al Capone Tax-Evasion Defense Against Impeachment  —  “The fact that they have long wanted to impeach the president suggests those Democrats view the Trump-Ukraine matter as just the latest, and perhaps the best, chance to get the president,” argues fiercely pro-Trump columnist Byron York today.

Trump campaign to blacklist Bloomberg News  —  President Trump's 2020 campaign announced Monday it will no longer allow reporters from Bloomberg News to obtain credentials to cover Trump campaign events.  —  The big picture: Campaign manager Brad Parscale described the decision …

Wealthy Mercer family spent millions on conservative causes in 2018 as they distanced themselves from Trump  — Republican megadonors Robert and Rebekah Mercer donated over $12 million to a variety of conservative causes last year despite distancing themselves from being associated with President Donald Trump.

What Trump has actually done in his first 3 years  —  A big tax cut, unprecedented environmental degradation, Wall Street unleashed, and a whole lot of judges.  —  The scandals, the leaks, the outrages, and the bizarre tweets of the last three years can distract from an important fact …

Meet The Chinese Diplomat Who Got Promoted For Trolling The US On Twitter  —  BEIJING, China — The most interesting diplomat in the world these days may well be Zhao Lijian, the combative, bombastic, frankly Trumpy voice of the People's Republic of China on Twitter.

False Idol — Why the Christian Right Worships Donald Trump  —  On the morning of September 29th, six weeks before the 2016 election, Donald Trump was in a conference room at Trump Tower in New York talking to leaders of the religious right about sex-reassignment surgery.

Traditional ‘foreign policy’ no longer exists.  Democrats are the last to know  —  Progressives need a new doctrine, championing the interests of the global 99% against a transnational oligarchy  —  There are few phrases as fundamental to US politics as foreign policy.

When a crusading Maltese journalist was murdered, her sons vowed justice.  Almost miraculously, it's happening.  —  In a life that was anything but ordinary, this seemed a routine enough moment.  —  Daphne Caruana Galizia climbed into the rented gray Peugeot parked outside her home on Oct. 16, 2017, headed for the bank.

State lawmakers acknowledge lobbyists helped craft their op-eds attacking Medicare-for-all  —  Emails show opponents are mobilizing at local level to try turn Americans away from big health care changes.  —  Lobbyists either helped draft or made extensive revisions to opinion columns published …

Ukraine scandal: I know why Trump top dogs — Mulvaney, Pompeo, Perry & Bolton — won't bark  —  Because it would be so easy for these people to clear the president, it's hard to escape the conclusion that their silence is part of a cover-up.  —  One of Sherlock Holmes' most famous cases …