Once omnipresent Kushner now MIA from Trump's political pack  —  (CNN)As Donald Trump plotted his Conservative Political Action Conference appearance last week, and a broader, more-robust plan to return to politics as an omnipresent disruptor, one person was conspicuously absent from the confab.

Inspector General's Report Cites Elaine Chao for Using Office to Help Family  —  The Justice Department under the Trump administration declined to open a criminal investigation into the actions by Ms. Chao when she was transportation secretary.  —  WASHINGTON — While serving …

Honors for Doug Mills  —  Doug won 10 awards from the White House News Photographers Association, including Photographer of the Year and Political Photo of the Year.  Gabriella Demczuk was also honored for her contribution to a magazine piece.  —  The Times won 11 awards …

House Democrats pass sweeping elections bill as GOP legislatures push to restrict voting  —  The House late Wednesday night passed expansive legislation to create uniform national voting standards, overhaul campaign finance laws and outlaw partisan redistricting, advancing a centerpiece …

The danger of a fourth wave  —  The U.S. may be on the verge of another surge in coronavirus cases, despite weeks of good news.  —  The big picture: Nationwide, progress against the virus has stalled.  And some states are ditching their most important public safety measures even as their outbreaks are getting worse.

Did the Pentagon wait for Trump's approval before defending the Capitol?  —  Three hours and 19 minutes.  —  That's how long it took from the first, desperate pleas for help from the Capitol Police to the Trump Pentagon on Jan. 6 until the D.C. National Guard finally received permission to help put down the bloody insurrection.

POLITICO Playbook: Schumer and his flip phone get their moment  —  DRIVING THE DAY  —  A busy Wednesday night in the House:  —  H.R. 1 ... “House passes sweeping bill on election, government reforms,” by Sarah Ferris: “Nearly every Democrat voted for the bill, which includes a slew of ballot access …

New mask wars threaten Biden's pandemic response at critical moment  —  The White House is on a collision course with red state governors over mask mandates and other coronavirus restrictions, testing the bipartisan unity that President Joe Biden has tried to tap in curbing Covid.

Just one Republican backed the George Floyd police overhaul bill.  He ‘accidentally pressed the wrong voting button.’  —  When the U.S. House on Wednesday flashed a final vote tally for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would ban chokeholds among other sweeping police policy changes …

Former Trump appointees say they're still waiting on their vacation payouts  —  A number of former Trump political appointees have still not received their lump-sum vacation payouts and required forms that are necessary to file for unemployment benefits as they face a tough job market in a Democratic Washington.

David Brooks's Side Hustle Was Funded By Facebook And Jeff Bezos's Father  —  New York Times columnist David Brooks is drawing a second salary for his work on an Aspen Institute project funded by Facebook and other large donors — a fact he has not disclosed in his columns.

Kelly Loeffler Just Lost Her WNBA Team to a Player She Refused to Meet  —  A massive story just went down in Atlanta, if we take the time to acknowledge it.  —  By any measure, it should be the biggest story in sports: a franchise owner runs a racist Senate campaign, throwing their own Black players under the bus in the process.

U.S. suspends federal agent who joined crowd outside Capitol during rampage, lawyer says  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has suspended an agent who was outside the Capitol when a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the building, his lawyer said …

Three of Gov. Greg Abbott's four coronavirus medical advisers say they weren't directly consulted prior to lifting mask mandate  —  One adviser said he thinks it's too soon for the state to stop requiring masks in public.  —  Copy link  —  In April 2020, an optimistic Gov. Greg Abbott announced …

Oh, Yeah, Now We Remember Why We Thought Andrew Cuomo Was a Jerk  —  For a quarter-century or so, anyone who hung around New York politics, or knew people who did, had a file full of anecdotes and impressions of Gov. Andrew Cuomo.  To summarize the file: He was a talented and ambitious guy who was often a jerk.

Pediatrician: The pandemic is taking an alarming toll on children  —  How teens are coping with COVID-19's mental health crisis  —  Lee Savio Beers, MD, FAAP, is the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.  The views expressed in this commentary belong to the author.  View more opinion at CNN.

White House weighs minimum wage negotiations with Republicans  —  The White House is weighing whether to engage in talks with Republicans on a minimum wage hike once Congress passes its Covid relief bill, two sources with knowledge of their strategic thinking say.

Republicans Won Blue-Collar Votes.  They're Not Offering Much in Return.  —  Party leaders want to capitalize on Donald Trump's appeal to the white working class.  But in recent weeks, they've offered very little to advance working people's economic interests.

Apple Threatens North Dakota, Suffers Crushing Loss in Arizona: “A Lot of It is Just Fear”  —  Facebook, Apple, Google do not obey the law.  Lawmakers know it.  —  4 hr ago  —  Welcome to BIG, a newsletter about the politics of monopoly and finance.  If you'd like to sign up, you can do so here.

Here's how a single resignation, retirement or death could flip control of the 50-50 Senate  —  19 seats could potentially flip if there was an unexpected vacancy, according to state vacancy rules.

Republicans, please save your party  —  President Trump's address last weekend to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), in which he publicly identified his opponents, had all the charm and grace of another speech given in 1979, by Saddam Hussein, in Baghdad.

Extremists discussed plans to ‘remove Democratic lawmakers’: FBI-Homeland Security bulletin … The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI sent a joint intelligence bulletin to state and local law enforcement agencies late Tuesday warning that some domestic groups have …

New Estimates on Senate's Slightly Revised Cash Payment … As the Senate takes up the COVID relief bill passed by the House last week, Senate Democrats have proposed to lower the income level at which the $1,400 cash payments would be phased out.  New estimates from ITEP demonstrate that …

ATTACK OF THE WOKE TEEN CAREER KILLERS  —  I was a mere 70 pages into Donald McNeil's brief about his firing from The New York Times when I emailed a dozen of my friends to demand they read it immediately.  But they don't have my perseverance, so here are the highlights.

As Senate rushes $1.9 trillion bill through Congress, Biden faces doubts over whether it's still the right package  —  The pandemic was exacting a brutal toll when, six days before his inauguration, President-elect Joe Biden first released his $1.9 trillion relief proposal.

Trump made Twitter the White House's spiked-ball cudgel.  Ron Klain wants to change that.  —  After four years in which the White House used Twitter as a tool to batter the media and knife political opponents, the Biden administration is trying a softer touch.