Matt Gaetz's ex-girlfriend to cooperate with federal authorities in sex trafficking investigation  —  Washington (CNN)Federal authorities investigating alleged sex trafficking by GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz have secured the cooperation of the congressman's ex-girlfriend, according to people familiar with the matter.

Wake Technology Services audited a Pennsylvania election as part of the #StopTheSteal movement  —  The company that is conducting a hand recount of nearly 2.1 million Maricopa County ballots conducted an election audit in rural Pennsylvania county at the request of a state senator …

Trump is sliding toward online irrelevance.  His new blog isn't helping.  —  The former president's aides said his new online presence would ‘redefine the game.’ But his heavily promoted blog is seeing few visitors.  —  On the Internet, former president Donald Trump is sliding toward something he's fought …

The ‘gaffe machine’ gets a tuneup: Joe Biden stays surprisingly on message as president  —  WASHINGTON - Joe Biden was four months away from declaring his candidacy for president when an interviewer asked him about his well-documented history of saying precisely the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time …

America's rich people could have saved local journalism — and perhaps democracy.  They refused.  —  It didn't have to turn out this way.  —  Local investors — especially in a prosperous town like Chicago — could have stepped forward to block a hedge fund from gaining control of several of the nation's top daily newspapers.

The New Furies of the Oldest Hatred  —  Take a good look at who is speaking out against Jew-hate.  And who is staying silent.  —  6 hr ago  —  The furies have been unleashed.  They were everywhere you looked these past two weeks, though you won't read about them much in the papers.

Abuse of power by Biden's Justice Department: Let Arizona conduct its own election audit  —  President Joe Biden's Department of Justice is being run by ideologues with a history of partisan enforcement of civil rights laws.  —  The latest offender is Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Pam Karlan.

So wrong: Chicago mayor declares she will only grant interviews to ‘journalists of color’  —  “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  — Martin Luther King, Jr., Aug. 28, 1963.

Patrick Leahy signals he'll run for ninth Senate term  —  The Senate's longest-serving Democrat, long assumed to be on the cusp of retirement, is leaning toward giving it another go.  —  Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who has served since 1975 and is in the line of presidential succession …

PolitiFact retracts Wuhan lab theory ‘fact-check’  —  An awful lot of people in the press were eager last year, maybe a little too eager, to dismiss the theory suggesting the COVID-19 virus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China.  —  It was foolish then to reject the theory outright without any conclusive evidence.

Ted Cruz turns up the trolling to fill the Trump Twitter void  —  On Nov. 8, 2016, the people of the United States of America elected a Twitter troll as our president.  Yes, that's rather reductive — Donald Trump is certainly many other things — but it's also true.

Epstein guards to skirt jail time in deal with prosecutors  —  The two Bureau of Prisons workers tasked with guarding Jeffrey Epstein the night he killed himself in a New York jail have admitted they falsified records, but they will skirt any time behind bars under a deal with federal prosecutors, authorities said Friday.

Support for Black Lives Matter Surged Last Year.  Did It Last?  —  This article is part of a special section on George Floyd  —  and America, a year after his death.  Read more about this project  —  in a note from deputy Opinion editor Patrick Healy in our Opinion Today newsletter.

GOP Balks as White House Cuts Infrastructure Price Tag to $1.7 Trillion  —  New plan lowering cost of President Biden's package from original $2.3 trillion falls flat with Republicans  —  WASHINGTON—A slimmed-down White House proposal aimed at kick-starting bipartisan infrastructure negotiations fell flat …

A Third Of California Restaurants Close Permanently Due To Lockdowns  —  A little more than a year after Governor Gavin Newsom instituted the lockdowns, nearly a third of California restaurants have closed permanently.  —  According to The Associated Press, California's lockdowns have left …

Republicans Move to Limit a Grass-Roots Tradition of Direct Democracy  —  Through ballot initiatives, voters in red states have defied legislators' wishes and produced liberal outcomes in recent years.  Republicans want to make the practice harder, or even eliminate it.

Former Canadian ambassador to Israel worked for Black Cube, an Israeli intelligence firm  —  Controversial private sector company composed of ex-members of the Mossad, other Israeli intelligence agencies  —  Vivian Bercovici, Canada's former ambassador to Israel, worked …

Republican Rep. Gonzalez, who voted to impeach Trump, warns of a GOP ‘recipe for disaster’  —  CLEVELAND — Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, warned Friday that many in his party are engaged in a “losing strategy” …

Same Data, Same Strategy: A New Look at How the Trump Campaign and Russian Intelligence Operated in 2016  —  The recent Biden administration sanctions on the Russian government are part of an ongoing effort to push back against the Kremlin's malign influence campaign against the West.

Windsor Mayor Foppoli resigns after sexual assault allegation by reality TV star Farrah Abraham  —  Windsor Mayor Dominic Foppoli said Friday he was resigning from office, bowing to pressure that continued to build six weeks after a Chronicle investigation first detailed several women's allegations that he sexually assaulted them.

Hey conservatives, this is why liberals don't believe you care about free speech  —  If conservatives wonder why liberals aren't inclined to trust their supposed concern for free speech, controversies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Associated Press would be a good place to start.

Rebekah Jones Admits She Was Never Asked to Delete COVID Deaths in Florida  —  On Twitter last night, Rebekah Jones confirmed the central case within my long piece on her deception: That she was not, in fact, asked to delete COVID deaths in the state of Florida.

Marjorie Taylor Greene compares House mask mandates to the Holocaust  —  Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene's AOC fixation  —  (CNN)Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, during an interview on a conservative podcast this week, compared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to continue …

Ammon Bundy takes first step toward running for Idaho governor … He's banned from the Idaho Capitol building, but that didn't stop Ammon Bundy from taking the first step toward running for Idaho governor.  —  Bundy, who lives in Emmett, filed paperwork Friday to appoint a treasurer to a campaign for governor.

Chief of staff for GOP lawmaker spoke to law enforcement after overhearing talk of storming FBI building on January 6  —  (CNN)A top aide to Republican Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida says he spoke with both the Capitol Police and the FBI on the morning of January 6 after overhearing a man …