My story of working with Governor Cuomo  —  “Let's play strip poker.”  —  I should have been shocked by the Governor's crude comment, but I wasn't.  —  We were flying home from an October 2017 event in Western New York on his taxpayer-funded jet.  He was seated facing me, so close our knees almost touched.

New analyses show Johnson & Johnson's one-dose vaccine works well.  —  Johnson and Johnson's vaccine has a lower efficacy rate than the vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, which are both around 95 percent. … But in South Africa, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is so far the clear winner.

South Dakota AG pushed by critics to resign over new evidence in fatal car incident: ‘He knew what he hit and he lied’  —  Days after South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg fatally struck a man while driving in September, detectives told the Republican official they had found a pair …

Biden's Stimulus Bill Is a $1.9 Trillion Clunker  —  Senate Republicans are eager to get aid where it's needed, reopen schools and encourage work.  —  Democrats are anxious for any excuse to blow up the Senate filibuster, the last procedural hurdle to one-party government.

Scoop: Biden will call Saudi king ahead of damning report  —  President Biden plans to call Saudi Arabia's King Salman on Wednesday, ahead of the public release of a potentially damning intelligence report about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a source briefed on the call told Axios.

Sen. Ted Cruz Piñatas Created at Dallas Party Store  —  First. it was former President Donald Trump, then U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.  —  Now, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has his own piñata courtesy of a Dallas party store.  —  Last week, Cruz sparked widespread outrage for flying …

Scoop: Senate committee postpones hearing for imperiled Tanden  —  The Senate Homeland Security Committee is postponing a confirmation hearing scheduled Wednesday for Neera Tanden, Axios has learned, a potential death knell for President Biden's nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget.

LGBT Identification Rises to 5.6% in Latest U.S. Estimate  —  WASHINGTON, D.C. — Gallup's latest update on lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender identification finds 5.6% of U.S. adults identifying as LGBT.  The current estimate is up from 4.5% in Gallup's previous update based on 2017 data.

Fanne Foxe, ‘Argentine Firecracker’ at center of D.C. sex scandal, dies at 84  —  At about 2 a.m. Oct. 7, 1974, U.S. Park Police pulled over a silver-blue Lincoln Continental that had been swerving and speeding without headlights on near the Jefferson Memorial in Washington.

Texas Electric Bills Were $28 Billion Higher Under Deregulation  —  Competition in the electricity-supply business promised reliable power at a more affordable cost  —  Texas's deregulated electricity market, which was supposed to provide reliable power at a lower price, left millions in the dark last week.

It wasn't an ‘intelligence failure’ that left the Capitol Police unprepared - it was racism  —  Steven Sund, the disgraced former chief of the Capitol Police Department, was explicitly warned in a Jan. 3 memo from his own intelligence unit that thousands of desperate, violence-prone Trump supporters …

NY Prosecutors Are Looking at Don Jr. in Trump Biz Probe  —  The Daily Beast has learned that investigators have been asking questions in recent days about Trump's eldest son as they expand their criminal probe into Trump's business empire. … For months, some of Donald Trump's top advisers …

Life amid the ruins of QAnon: ‘I wanted my family back’  —  An epidemic of conspiracy theories, fanned by social media and self-serving politicians, is tearing families apart. … She bought ammunition, camping gear, a water purifier and boxes of canned food.

MAGA's Moment of Weakness  —  Trump and his allies have been defeated, humiliated, and betrayed.  It's time to sweep the leg.  —  “We're going to win so much, you're going to be so sick and tired of winning, you're going to come to me and go 'Please, please, we can't win anymore.' You'll say 'Please …

Judge bans enforcement of Biden's 100-day deportation pause  —  A federal judge has indefinitely banned President Joe Biden's administration from enforcing a 100-day moratorium on most deportations  —  Rep. Linda Sanchez on new immigration reform bill presented by Democrats

Tucker Carlson Says No White Supremacy at Riot—An Officer Says He Was Called Racial Slurs  —  Tucker Carlson has claimed that there is no evidence of white supremacy at the Capitol Riot on January 6—on the same day that a Capitol police officer said he was called racial slurs while defending the building during the insurrection.

Bruce Springsteen's Drunken-Driving Charges Dropped by Prosecutors  —  Musician's blood-alcohol level was under the legal limit, federal prosecutors say; Springsteen pleaded guilty to consuming alcohol in a closed area  —  Federal prosecutors in New Jersey said Wednesday …

Major Trump backer Rebekah Mercer orchestrates Parler's second act  —  Mercer, whose family also invested in right-wing news site Breitbart, controls two of the three board seats at the company  —  When social media website Parler's founding CEO John Matze was pushed out last month …

McDonald's Secretive Intel Team Spies on ‘Fight for $15’ Workers, Internal Documents Show  —  McDonald's collects ‘strategic intelligence’ on workers advocating for a $15 minimum wage, including ‘how and where will FF$15 attack the brand.’  —  For years, McDonald's has internally labeled activists …

Sheryl Sandberg and Top Facebook Execs Silenced an Enemy of Turkey to Prevent a Hit to the Company's Business  —  Amid a 2018 Turkish military campaign, Facebook ultimately sided with Turkey's demand to block the page of a mostly Kurdish militia.  “I am fine with this,” Sandberg wrote.

How Screwed Is the Trump Hotel D.C.?  —  For three years, the lobby of the Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C. was the hedonistic center of the MAGA-verse.  The room glittered with chandeliers and the flashes of sabers slicing open champagne bottles (prefaced by the ringing of a bell to draw eyeballs to the spectacle).

Key Biden aide said pandemic was ‘best thing that ever happened to him’, book says  — Anita Dunn said privately what aides ‘would never say in public’  — Cautious campaigning won Covid battle with Trump  —  A senior adviser to Democrat Joe Biden in his campaign for president believed …

With Ashli Babbitt Killing Shrouded in Mystery, Capitol Officer Who Shot Her Is in Hiding for His Own Safety  —  All told, seven people died in connection with the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6.  But only Ashli Babbitt's death was directly caused by violence that day.

One America News clashes again with White House correspondents over Trump-approved camera tent  —  One America News, the upstart right-wing cable channel that was granted special status by the Trump White House, is clashing again with its mainstream colleagues on the presidential beat.

Top Florida Democrat makes 2022 play as DeSantis' stock rises  —  TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis' profile is growing, and Nikki Fried has noticed.  —  As DeSantis quickly becomes the national conservative media's favorite governor and basks in recent polling that his approval rating is above 50 percent …

Romney predicts Trump would win the 2024 G.O.P. nomination if he ran for president.  —  Senator Mitt Romney of Utah said on Tuesday that he believed Donald J. Trump would win the Republican nomination for president if he ran for his former office in 2024, another indication of Mr. Trump's perceived strength in the party.

Evangelical Leaders Condemn ‘Radicalized Christian Nationalism’  —  A coalition of evangelical Christian leaders is condemning the role of “radicalized Christian nationalism” in feeding the political extremism that led to the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by supporters of former President Trump.

CNN exclusive: A solar panel in space is collecting energy that could one day be beamed to anywhere on Earth  —  (CNN)Scientists working for the Pentagon have successfully tested a solar panel the size of a pizza box in space, designed as a prototype for a future system to send electricity from space back to any point on Earth.

It violates free press rights to bring to trial a Des Moines Register reporter arrested while covering a protest  —  Editorial: The pending charges against a Register reporter who was arrested while covering a social justice protest last spring are a clear infringement on the freedom of the press.

New Omnibus Georgia Senate Proposal Would Severely Restrict Absentee Voting  —  Poll Worker in Bibb Co. looks over an absentee ballot  —  All but three Republicans in the Georgia Senate majority are cosponsoring a massive elections bill that would give Georgia one of the most restrictive absentee …

New York Times Calls for Workplace Changes in Diversity Report  —  “The Times is a difficult environment for many of our colleagues,” the report found.  People of color described “unsettling and sometimes painful day-to-day workplace experiences.”  —  Top executives at The New York Times …