POLITICO Playbook: Youngkin's crowds dwarf McAuliffe's on election eve  —  DRIVING THE DAY  —  TERRY MCAULIFFE wanted GLENN YOUNGKIN and DONALD TRUMP to campaign together so badly that when it didn't happen, McAuliffe simply invented a Youngkin-Trump event that didn't exist.

9,000 Unvaccinated N.Y.C. Workers Put on Unpaid Leave as Mandate Begins  —  Mayor Bill de Blasio said thousands more did get the shot and that the first day of the vaccine mandate went smoothly, without significant service disruptions.  —  Hundreds of firefighters called in sick in what appeared to be an organized protest.

Manchin didn't sign off on framework, no ‘rush’ to get deal  —  Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he didn't sign off on a framework for a $1.75 trillion social spending and climate bill before it was released from the White House, and that he didn't think there was a “rush” to get a deal.

Facebook, Citing Societal Concerns, Plans to Shut Down Facial Recognition System  —  Saying it wants “to find the right balance” with the technology, the social network will delete the face scan data of more than one billion users.  —  Facebook plans to shut down its decade-old facial recognition system …

Republican senator Josh Hawley worries feminism has driven men to ‘pornography and video games’ … The effort to combat toxic masculinity in the US has led men to consume more pornography and play more video games, the Missouri senator Josh Hawley claimed in a speech to a group of Republicans.

Scoop: FEC lets foreigners finance U.S. ballot fights  —  The Federal Election Commission has ruled foreign donors can finance U.S. referendum campaigns, opening the door to foreign spending on fights over high-profile policy issues, Axios has learned.  —  Why it matters: Foreign nationals …

Georgia official: Trump call to ‘find’ votes was a threat  —  ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump was threatening Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger when he asked him to help “find” enough votes to overturn his loss in Georgia to Democratic President Joe Biden, Raffensperger writes in a new book.

Yale Law Diversity Director at Center of ‘Traphouse’ Controversy Got an Anti-Semite Invited to the Yale Law Journal  —  The Yale Law School administrator caught on tape pressuring a student to apologize for an allegedly racist party invitation pushed the Yale Law Journal to host a diversity trainer …

Photos show QAnon believers gathering in Dallas — where they believe JFK Jr. will reveal he's still alive  —  On Monday night, believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory congregated for a mass gathering at the AT&T Discovery Plaza in Dallas, Texas.  —  According to reporter Steven Monacelli …

A Homeless Man Has Spent 800 Days At Rikers After Stealing Cold Medicine.  Now His Prison Sentence May Be Beginning.  —  Blind in one eye and at risk of losing vision in the other, 58-year-old Reginald Randolph is now on the verge of being sent to state prison to serve out a maximum of four years.

The NRA's ‘First Lady’ Thought Donald Trump Owed Her a Favor.  Here's How That Went  —  A new book chronicles how Wayne and Susan LaPierre used his gun lobbying job as their ticket to high society, bizarre elephant hunting safaris, and millions in questionable spending

Breitbart has outsized influence over climate change denial on Facebook, report says  —  A new report suggests 10 publishers, including Russia Today and the Federalist Papers, are responsible for nearly 70 percent of interactions with climate change misinformation on the platform

Russian security chief meets with CIA director in Moscow  —  MOSCOW (AP) — A top Russian security official met the visiting chief of the Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday, a rare encounter amid tensions between Moscow and Washington.  —  Nikolai Patrushev, the powerful secretary …

Poison in the Air  —  Mapping Cancer-Causing Industrial Air Pollution … From the urban sprawl of Houston to the riverways of Virginia, air pollution from industrial plants is elevating the cancer risk of an estimated quarter of a million Americans to a level the federal government considers unacceptable.

The Risky Move That Could Save Kyle Rittenhouse—or Doom Him  —  The alleged far-right vigilante has to prove he was scared when he killed—and there's one simple way to do that.  —  Kyle Rittenhouse's highly anticipated and politically polarizing murder trial began on Monday.

Actor Kristy Swanson, Who Spread Virus Misinformation, Is Hospitalized With COVID-19  —  The pro-Trump actor, best known for her titular role in “Buffy The Vampire Slayer,” said she's developed pneumonia.  —  Actor Kristy Swanson, the original “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” …

Shutting Down Historical Debate, China Makes It a Crime to Mock Heroes  —  Under a new law, China has zealously prosecuted even the perceived slander of Communist figures, broadening Xi Jinping's campaign to dominate party orthodoxy.  —  The young woman in Beijing began her post complaining …

The 13 biggest hoaxes in America, according to Donald Trump  —  Some men use words like a scalpel, leveraging their power incisively and conservatively.  Others use words the way Wile E. Coyote uses a boulder perched at the edge of a cliff.  —  Former president Donald Trump is more of a push …

More people globally see racial, ethnic discrimination as a serious problem in the U.S. than in their own society  —  Concerns about racial and ethnic discrimination are widespread in most of the 17 advanced economies surveyed by Pew Research Center this spring.

There's always someone out there willing to make the GOP's fascism seem respectable  —  It's hard to pick one apologist to pick on.  —  It's election week.  So it bears repeating.  The race for Virginia governor is not going to tell us much about next year's congressional elections.