USCP Officers Arrest California Man with Bayonet & Machete  —  This morning the United States Capitol Police arrested a California man who had multiple knives in his truck near the Democratic National Committee headquarters.  —  “This is good police work plain and simple,” said Chief Tom Manger.

Facebook Says Its Rules Apply to All.  Company Documents Reveal a Secret Elite That's Exempt.  —  A program known as XCheck has given millions of celebrities, politicians and other high-profile users special treatment, a privilege many abuse  —  Mark Zuckerberg has publicly said Facebook Inc. allows …

Help!  I Couldn't Stop Writing Fake Dear Prudence Letters That Got Published  —  Sometime at the tail end of 2018, shortly after abandoning yet another draft of what was supposed to be my fifth Young Adult novel, I took up a different form of fiction: I started writing fake letters to Dear Prudence, Slate's long-running advice column.

Trump says Dems ‘disparaged’ COVID-19 vaccine while he was president: ‘Now they wonder why’ some are hesitant  —  Trump criticizes Biden's new COVID-19 vaccine mandates for employers  —  Joe Biden's Massive Vaccine Mandates  —  EXCLUSIVE: Former President Donald Trump blamed Democrats …

George W. Bush just threw a whole lot of shade at Donald Trump  —  (CNN)The man who was president during the attacks of September 11, 2001, used a speech commemorating the 20th anniversary of that terrible day to call out the “malign force” coursing through the country thanks to the presidency …

Justice Amy Coney Barrett argues Supreme Court isn't ‘a bunch of partisan hacks’  —  LOUISVILLE, Ky. — In the wake of a controversial decision on abortion rights, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett told a crowd of more than 100 here that she doesn't believe the highest court in the land is politically driven.

What the Never Trumpers Want Now  —  Many of the conservatives and Republicans appalled by Donald Trump's presidency clutched a hope through the bewildering years: Someday this would all be over and politics would return to normal.  —  But normal has not returned.

Apple Issues Emergency Security Updates to Close a Spyware Flaw  —  Researchers at Citizen Lab found that NSO Group, an Israeli spyware company, had infected Apple products without so much as a click.  —  Apple on Monday issued emergency software updates for a critical vulnerability …

Veronica Wolski, Woman Who QAnoners Demanded Hospital Treat COVID With Ivermectin, Dies  —  A woman who became the center of a harassment campaign against a Chicago hospital as QAnon supporters demanded they treat her COVID-19 diagnosis with ivermectin has died, according to reports.

Homeland Security chief of staff abruptly resigns  —  Karen Olick, chief of staff to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, announced on Monday that she will be leaving for a new, undisclosed opportunity.  —  Jennifer Higgins, the current associate director of Refugee …

Republicans Are Settling on a Strategy for Election Losses: It Was Rigged!  —  In taking a page from Trump's big lie playbook, some on the right are already baselessly suggesting a Gavin Newsom victory in the upcoming California recall would be the result of fraud.

POLITICO Playbook: Grisham dishes on Melania  —  DRIVING THE DAY  —  THE WEEK AHEAD: JOE BIDEN campaigns with GAVIN NEWSOM in Long Beach, Calif., tonight before voters there decide Tuesday whether Newsom should be recalled (polls show him up by double digits) ... Secretary …

Lab-grown woolly mammoths could walk the Earth in six years if geneticist's new start-up succeeds  — Tech entrepreneur Ben Lamm is helping to fund a project by Harvard geneticist George Church to revive the woolly mammoth.  — The project, called Colossal, aims to create a calf in as little as six years, Church told CNBC.

California couple die of covid, leaving five kids behind.  Their newborn is 3 weeks old.  —  Davy Macias, 37, was intubated and dying of complications from covid-19 when doctors helped her give birth to her daughter.  She would never see her baby.  —  Her husband, Daniel Macias, 39 …

Trump endorses backer of election fraud claims for Arizona secretary of state  —  Former President Trump endorsed Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem (R) for Arizona secretary of state, backing a key supporter of his voter fraud claims to oversee the Grand Canyon State's elections.

The F.E.C. dismisses claims that Twitter illegally blocked a Hunter Biden article.  —  The Federal Election Commission has dismissed Republican accusations that Twitter violated election laws in October by blocking people from posting links to an unsubstantiated New York Post article …

Chris Wallace's grilling of a GOP governor exposes a much bigger scam  —  When Chris Wallace grilled the Republican governor of Nebraska over his opposition to vaccine mandates on Sunday, the Fox News anchor did a fine job of exposing the incoherence of one GOP lawmaker's positioning on the issue.

Seven reasons to think Senate Democrats will actually change the filibuster  —  The party has to pass voting rights legislation.  Changing the rules is the only way to do it.  —  In the middle of a brazen nationwide assault on voting rights, of a kind we have not seen since Jim Crow …

Schools facing critical race theory battles are diversifying rapidly, analysis finds  —  Downingtown, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, has been changing.  And the school district has tried to change with it.  —  In 1994, students of color made up just 5 percent of the enrollment in the Downingtown Area School District.

Most Hollywood Writers' Rooms Look Nothing Like America  —  I. “You Can Hear a Pin Drop”  —  Carl Winslow, the protagonist of the '90s sitcom Family Matters, wore his badge with honor.  On the show, about a middle-class Black household in Chicago, Winslow (played by Reginald VelJohnson) …

It made me sick to watch a once-male special forces combat veteran beat up a woman on TV - it's time to stop this trans sport insanity before women start being killed  —  It was the moment ideology met cold, hard reality.  —  Alana McLaughlin, 38, the second transgender MMA fighter to compete in the sport …

Afghan American woman's escape highlights secretive CIA role in Kabul rescues  —  Five days after Afghanistan's fall, Shaqaiq Birashk, holed up in her Kabul apartment, was contacted by a stranger offering to have her picked up and escorted to the airport for evacuation.

Former US Sen. Al Franken talks political downfall, return to comedy before Northampton show  —  The past few years have been unsettling for many — and Al Franken is no exception.  —  After a successful career in comedy, including a lengthy stint on NBC's “Saturday Night Live,” …

George Packer's Center Cannot Hold … In recent years, the books of liberals have shrunk in line with their aspirations.  For 2019's A Thousand Small Sanities, New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik took 272 pages to explain, groovily, how liberalism is “teenage texting raised to the power of law.”

USA-POLICING/MINNEAPOLIS  —  After the brutal killing of a Black man went viral and triggered national protests, Minneapolis police underwent an abrupt shift: Officers began making fewer traffic stops, drug and gun checks, Reuters found.  With the city engulfed in violence, citizens ask: Where are the police?

Enforcing Biden's workplace vaccine-or-test mandate falls to a ‘toothless’ federal agency that Trump gutted, experts say  — A “woefully understaffed” federal agency is tasked with enforcing Biden's workplace vaccine mandate.  — Experts told Insider that OSHA, with limited resources, has its work cut out for it.

GOP ‘Moderate’ Blasted Capitol Riots — and Cozied Up to a Jan. 6 Bus Trip Organizer  —  Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick called Jan. 6th a “coup attempt,” but that didn't stop him from attending a fundraiser at the home of a man who helped bus hundreds of people to Washington for a “Million MAGA March”

Fauci says he supports vaccine mandates for air travel  —  Top infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci says air travelers should get the coronavirus vaccine to fly.  —  “I would support that if you want to get on a plane and travel with other people, that you should be vaccinated,” he told theSkimm.