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 …

New Pegasus hack found targeting Apple devices through iMessage, researchers say  —  Apple released a software update Monday to fix a security flaw exploited in hacking iPhones and other devices made by the company  —  Spyware researchers have captured what they say is a new exploit …

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

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) …

Our Most Reliable Pandemic Number Is Losing Meaning  —  A new study suggests that almost half of those hospitalized with COVID-19 have mild or asymptomatic cases.  —  At least 12,000 Americans have already died from COVID-19 this month, as the country inches through its latest surge in cases.

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.

Federal judge temporarily blocks Iowa's ban on mask mandates in schools  —  Iowa school districts again have the power to enact mask mandates after a federal judge temporarily blocked a law banning them from doing so.  —  U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pratt issued a temporary restraining …

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.

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 …

Blinken testifies on Afghanistan: “We inherited a deadline, but not a plan”  —  Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered an unwavering defense of the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan on Monday, insisting it was “time to end America's longest war” and praising the evacuation from Kabul as “extraordinary.”

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,” …

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.

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?

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.”

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.

Afghan evacuee flights to US halted for another week amid measles outbreak  —  All of the flights to the United States carrying Afghan evacuees have been put on pause amid a measles outbreak.  —  The U.S. has implemented “at least” an additional seven-day holding period starting on Monday …