Tennessee abandons vaccine outreach to minors — not just for COVID-19  —  The Tennessee Department of Health will halt all adolescent vaccine outreach - not just for coronavirus, but all diseases - amid pressure from Republican state lawmakers, according to an internal report and agency emails obtained by the Tennessean.

Iranian Operatives Planned to Kidnap a Brooklyn Author, Prosecutors Say  —  Masih Alinejad spoke critically of her native country's autocracy.  Now an Iranian intelligence official and three others have been indicted in New York.  —  An Iranian American journalist living in Brooklyn …

Ken Starr helped Jeffrey Epstein with ‘scorched-earth’ campaign, book claims  —  Book by Miami Herald journalist details extraordinary efforts by special prosecutor who hounded Bill Clinton to aid sex trafficker  —  Ken Starr, the lawyer who hounded Bill Clinton over his affair with Monica Lewinsky …

Schumer launches long-shot bid for legal weed  —  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer released sweeping draft legislation Wednesday to legalize weed, officially kickstarting a difficult debate in his chamber that also makes a major splash for one of his campaign promises.

Inside the secret plan for the Texas Democratic exodus: A phone tree, a scramble to pack and a politically perilous trip  —  They activated the plan with a phone tree late Sunday: Pack your bags — and make sure they weigh no more than 45 pounds.  Be ready to leave Austin at noon tomorrow.

Norwegian Cruise Line sues Florida surgeon general over vaccine passport ban  —  (CNN) — Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings is suing Florida's surgeon general over the state's law that prohibits companies from requiring customers and employees to provide documentation of Covid-19 vaccination status.

William Barr clashes with former Trump appointee from Pa. over handling of election-fraud claims  —  A war of words broke out Tuesday among former senior Justice Department officials over Pennsylvania politics and the aftermath of the 2020 election, fueled by former president Donald Trump's release …

‘We are seeing people passing quicker than before’: What hospitals look like in US Covid hot spots  —  (CNN)Dr. Sergio Segarra says when Covid-19 patient numbers in the Miami hospital he works in dipped below 20 last month, he began feeling optimistic.  —  “I remember seeing articles …

Facebook staffers were told by execs to scrap any mention of Russia in a 2017 white paper on the platform's security concerns: ‘We started to feel like we were part of a cover-up’  — Facebook's 2017 white paper initially mentioned Russian election interference, a new book says.

‘He wished he had gotten the vaccine:’ Local man battling COVID-19 from ICU for months  —  GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — Blake Bargatze, 24, was the only one in his family to not get vaccinated and now he remains in a hospital ICU more than three months after contracting COVID-19, according to his family.

Democrats face these major headwinds in 2022 elections  —  History and a handful of issues threaten the Democrats' narrow congressional majorities in next year's midterm elections.  —  Even though President Joe Biden's job approval ratings remain solid if unspectacular …

How Tucker Carlson became the voice of White grievance  —  Tucker Carlson huddled in a low-ceilinged dungeon that had served as a holding pen for Africans bound for enslavement in the United States.  It was a July day in 2003 in Ghana, and Carlson stood alongside some of America's most prominent civil rights leaders.

There's a Word for What Trumpism Is Becoming  —  “I became worse.”  That's how double impeachment changed him, Donald Trump told a conservative audience in Dallas last weekend, without a trace of a smile.  This was not Trump the insult comic talking.  This was the deepest Trump self.

George W. Bush calls withdrawal of U.S. and other NATO troops from Afghanistan “a mistake”  —  Former President George W. Bush on Wednesday criticized the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan and said civilians were being left to be “slaughtered” by the Taliban.

DeSantis' anti-riot law didn't apply as Cuba protesters shut down a Miami-Dade road.  Hmmm . . .  Gov. DeSantis should have just laid it on the line when a reporter asked about the hundreds upon hundreds of Cuban-American demonstrators and their supporters who shut down a portion of the Palmetto Expressway in Miami-Dade County.

The tedium of the Trump-books news cycle  —  “The Trump books are coming.”  Late last month, Katie Rogers, a White House correspondent at the New York Times, warned us that we could soon expect a raft of new titles about Trump's final months in office to hit bookstores …

Sacha Baron Cohen, Showtime win dismissal of Roy Moore defamation lawsuit  —  British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen on Tuesday won the dismissal of a $95 million defamation lawsuit by Roy Moore, a former U.S. Senate candidate from Alabama who claimed he was tricked into being portrayed falsely …

Emails Reveal Cops Fanned Flames as FBI Debunked Antifa Hoax  —  LIE SEASON … Wildfires are back and could be worse than ever.  Just don't tell the cops manufacturing wild rumors about how they start.  —  On Sept. 11, 2020, the same day the Federal Bureau of Investigation released …

New York takes conservative approach counting virus deaths  —  ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The federal government's count of the COVID-19 death toll in New York has 11,000 more victims than the tally publicized by the administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, which has stuck with a far more conservative approach to counting virus deaths.

Critical Race Theory has no idea what to do with Asian-Americans  —  However, with the emergence of several racial groups that have come to be just as successful as whites, critical race theorists have come up with the term, “white adjacency.”  Robin DiAngelo, author of the now-infamous book White Fragility …