Scoop: Beto plans Texas comeback in governor's race  —  Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke is preparing to run for governor of Texas in 2022, with an announcement expected later this year, Texas political operatives tell Axios.  —  Why it matters: O'Rourke's entry would give Democrats a high-profile candidate …

Trump Looks for Challenger to Depose Mitch McConnell as Split Widens  —  GOP's most influential figure and its top elected official are divided on policy, politics and who should lead the party in the future  —  WASHINGTON— Mitch McConnell's record-long reign as Senate Republican leader …

Fox News Poll: Majorities favor mask and vaccine mandates as pandemic worries increase  —  Three-quarters of registered voters are ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ concerned about the pandemic  —  Fox News Flash top headlines for September 19  —  Majorities support mask and vaccine mandates advocated …

Scoop - Manchin: Delay Biden plan to '22  —  Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is privately saying he thinks Congress should take a “strategic pause” until 2022 before voting on President Biden's $3.5 trillion social-spending package, people familiar with the matter tell Axios.

‘The pay is absolute crap’: Child-care workers are quitting rapidly, a red flag for the economy  —  Child care employment is still down more than 126,000 positions as workers leave for higher-paying positions as bank tellers, administrative assistants and retail clerks.

Why the US should offer to buy France's submarines for Vietnam  —  The U.S. would achieve three objectives by purchasing a number of Shortfin Barracuda submarines from France and then giving them to Vietnam.  —  First, the Biden administration would repair relations with America's oldest ally.

Taliban-run Kabul municipality to female workers: Stay home  —  KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Female employees in the Kabul city government have been told to stay home, with work only allowed for those who cannot be replaced by men, the interim mayor of Afghanistan's capital said Sunday …

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves attacks vaccine mandates, downplays state's high death toll  —  WASHINGTON — Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves downplayed the severity of the coronavirus pandemic in his state on Sunday, while challenging the legitimacy of vaccine mandates rolled out by the Biden administration.

The Trump Prophets Regroup  —  When you are in the business of prophecy, what do you do when prophecy fails?  —  This spring, the media mogul Stephen E. Strang made an unusual apology to readers in the pages of his glossy magazine.  —  Mr. Strang presides over a multimillion-dollar …

Did Donald Trump Make the Church Great Again?  —  How unchurched Evangelicals are helping create a God-and-country lifestyle brand.  —  From the very beginning of the white Evangelical embrace of Donald Trump, there have been a series of raging debates about how that embrace would affect the church.

Georgia Is How American Democracy Falls Apart  —  Through a bevy of bills and rule changes, Georgia Republicans are trying to codify the essential goal of the Jan. 6 riots: a rigged system in which Democrats can't win elections.  —  ATLANTA ― David Dreyer just needed a nap.

Biden's Del Rio border crisis - admin cedes control of US security to cartels  —  For every 1,000 people the Border Patrol was able to process, another 5,000 entered  —  Officials plead with Biden for more resources as southern border worsens  —  On June 17, 2021, the Department …

The Look of Gentrification  —  If you think of gentrification as coffee shops and bike lanes then you don't understand gentrification at all.  It's about what's inside, not outside.  —  My grandparents' house was located in a nice neighborhood in Berkeley, California filled with bungalows, Victorians and a few dingbat apartments.

Why Wokeism Will Rule the World  —  The woke movement could be the next great U.S. cultural export — and it is going to do many other countries some real good.  —  I am decidedly un-woke.  As a professor of economics, I strongly favor a market-oriented approach.

Kellyanne Conway told Trump that he didn't have ‘swagger’ in 2020 and said his campaign resembled Hillary Clinton's 2016 bid: book  — Kellyanne Conway was brutally honest with Trump about his 2020 campaign missteps, per a new book.  — “What you didn't have this time was the hunger and the swagger,” she said of Trump's 2020 run.

Syrian detention camp rocked by dozens of killings blamed on Islamic State women … AL-HOL CAMP, Syria — The killings have taken on a creeping sense of inevitability, guards say.  No one admits to hearing them, let alone knowing who is responsible.  —  On a recent morning …