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.

In echo of Arizona, Georgia state judge orders Fulton County to allow local voters to inspect mailed ballots cast last fall  —  A Georgia state judge on Friday ordered Fulton County to allow a group of local voters to inspect all 147,000 mail-in ballots cast in the 2020 election in response …

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.

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 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.

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 …

The Jewish man who was the victim of a gang assault in New York says the level of hatred was troubling  —  Jewish man attacked in a ‘gang assault’ in New York City  —  (CNN)A 29-year-old Jewish man, who was attacked in a New York City gang assault said Friday that he could not understand why there was so much hate directed at him.

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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.

Qualified Immunity Shields Police From Justice  —  Holding Cops Accountable, a Year Later  —  When a Minneapolis jury last month convicted the former police officer Derek Chauvin of murdering George Floyd on May 25, 2020, many Americans celebrated.  At last, a moment of accountability …

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.

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.

Risk of Nuclear War Over Taiwan in 1958 Said to Be Greater Than Publicly Known  —  The famed source of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg, has made another unauthorized disclosure — and wants to be prosecuted for it.  —  WASHINGTON — When Communist Chinese forces began shelling islands controlled …

US Rep. Debbie Dingell undergoes emergency surgery for perforated ulcer  —  WASHINGTON — Michigan Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell underwent emergency surgery for a perforated ulcer, her office announced Friday.  —  Spokesperson Mackenzie Smith says Dingell's surgery took place …

Green Finance Goes Mainstream, Lining Up Trillions Behind Global Energy Transition  —  After years of intermittent excitement and fizzled expectations, environmental-oriented investing is no longer just a niche interest  —  Some of the world's biggest companies and deepest-pocketed investors …

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 …

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” …

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.

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 …

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 …