A glimmer of hope on Joe Manchin and voting rights?  —  By now, you'd be forgiven for concluding the chances of Sen. Joe Manchin III supporting a filibuster carve-out to pass democracy protections are somewhere between nonexistent and extremely nonexistent.  —  The West Virginia Democrat …

South Africa Hospitalization Rate Plunges in Omicron Wave  — Cases remain high compared with previous Covid waves  — Omicron infections may have peaked in epicenter Gauteng  —  South Africa delivered some positive news on the omicron coronavirus variant on Friday …

GOP agrees to pay up to $1.6 million of Trump's legal bills in N.Y. probes  —  The Republican Party has agreed to pay up to $1.6 million in legal bills for former president Donald Trump to help him fight investigations into his business practices in New York, according to Republican National Committee members …

Judge Overturns Purdue Pharma's Opioid Settlement  —  The ruling said the company's owners, members of the Sackler family, could not receive protection from civil lawsuits in return for a $4.5 billion contribution.  —  A federal judge on Thursday evening unraveled a painstakingly negotiated …

A Person of the Year: Jamie Raskin  —  How one politician devoted his fight for democracy to his lost son.  —  Ninety-four years ago, the editors of Time magazine declared the transatlantic aviator and anti-Semite Charles Lindbergh their first-ever Man of the Year.

Russia Lays Out Demands for a Sweeping New Security Deal With NATO  —  The proposal, coming as Russia masses troops on the border with Ukraine, was directed at the United States and Ukraine's other Western allies.  —  KYIV, Ukraine — Russia outlined on Friday its demands for a sweeping …

Herschel Walker's campaign falsely claimed he graduated from college  —  Republican Herschel Walker's campaign deleted a false claim that he graduated from the University of Georgia hours after it was posted on a website promoting his U.S. Senate bid.  —  The former football star's campaign removed …

Kanye West's ‘Independent’ Campaign Was Secretly Run by GOP Elites  —  The campaign took steps, experts say, to mask its connections to GOP operatives.  That could violate federal election laws.  —  New documents show Kanye West's doomed White House campaign—styled as an “independent” …

Six Bay Area Men Arrested For a Staggering 70 Attacks on Asian Women  —  The suspects allegedly targeted Asian women exclusively, according to the Santa Clara DA, and had a pattern of attacking women walking alone to their cars.  —  In the wave of attacks on Asian Americans since …

Biden admin asks Supreme Court to allow nationwide health worker vax mandate  —  The Biden administration on Thursday asked that the Supreme Court allow it to impose its vaccine mandate on health care workers nationwide after lower courts froze it in two dozen mostly Republican-led states.

The puzzle of Joe Biden's unpopularity  —  I find President Biden's unpopularity puzzling.  He is rounding out his first year in the White House with the lowest end of first-year approval ratings of any elected president in modern times with the exception of Donald Trump.  Why?

Harvard won't require SAT or ACT through 2026 as test-optional push grows  —  The fast-spreading movement aims to limit the role of the standardized exams in college admissions  —  Harvard University will extend for four years a policy begun soon after the coronavirus pandemic emerged …

The world as we know it is ending.  Why are we still at work?  —  From the pandemic to climate change, Americans are still expected to work no matter what happens.  —  For a moment in early 2020, it seemed like we might get a break from capitalism.  —  A novel coronavirus was sweeping the globe …

House oversight committee releases report detailing efforts of Trump administration officials to ‘undermine’ Covid-19 efforts in US  —  (CNN)Trump administration officials made “deliberate efforts to undermine the nation's coronavirus response for political purposes,” a House oversight committee led …

REVIEW: What I Learned From Hillary Clinton's Master Class on ‘The Power of Resilience’  —  You've probably heard the saying: Those who can, do.  Those who can't, teach.  In this day and age, those who really can't become Master Class instructors on how to fail.

Washington Post Grasps for New Direction as Trump-Era Boom Fades  —  News outlet's audience is down sharply, amid sector-wide declines; subscription growth has stagnated as readers look beyond politics  —  Top Washington Post officials gathered last week and discussed how to respond …

The FBI Said It Busted A Plot To Kidnap Michigan's Governor.  Then Things Got Complicated.  —  The case seemed like a lock — until an informant and one FBI agent were charged with crimes, another was accused of perjury, and a third was found promoting a private security firm.  And that wasn't all.

Select Committee Subpoenas James P.  “Phil” Waldron  —  Washington—Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) today announced that the Select Committee has issued a subpoena to James P.  “Phil” Waldron for records and testimony.  Mr. Waldron appears to have been involved with efforts to promote claims about fraud in the 2020 election.

“I Started Seeing Agents Everywhere”  —  Her father was persecuted, poisoned and imprisoned.  Now Daria Navalnaya discusses her experience during the attack on her father, what he wrote to her from prison and how she feels about the perpetrators. … I wrote to him: You've got to understand …

Life without Wallace  —  Presented by the Black Women's Health Imperative  —  Welcome to POLITICO's West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration.  With Allie Bice.  —  “Fox News Sunday” was one of the few shows on Fox News …

Biden's Vaccine Mandate Triggers a Winter of Lockdowns  —  What happens when you fire nurses and then claim there's no more hospital space.  —  Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Dominion Voting wins key decision in lawsuit against Fox News  —  (CNN Business)A judge in Delaware has found that Fox News' coverage of election fraud after the 2020 election may have been inaccurate, and is allowing a major defamation case against the right-wing TV network to move forward.

More Than 60,000 Interpreters, Visa Applicants Remain in Afghanistan  —  About 33,000 of those could be eligible for immediate evacuation, State Department says  —  WASHINGTON—More than 60,000 Afghan interpreters and others who have applied for visas to seek shelter in the U.S …

Kamala's Conundrum: She's Doing a Great Job But Her Story's Not Getting Out  —  AN UNPRECEDENTED POSITION … If the VP's record is supported as it should be, the chattering classes will spin it into the idea that the president is a lame duck.  If not, it will be spun as a critique of her.

Protect Abortion Rights?  Virginia Democrats' Vacation Plans Get in the Way.  —  Some Virginia Democrats want to codify abortion rights into state law in their final weeks in power.  But several state senators do not want to upend their travel to Hawaii, Europe and Africa.

Melania Trump emerges to launch new NFT platform meant to ‘inspire’ — and earn cash  —  Former president Donald Trump once called bitcoin a scam that “competed against the dollar,” but on Thursday Melania Trump announced a new business venture embracing cryptocurrency and digital art.

In Alabama, Brooks looks to redeem himself with Trump amid campaign struggles  —  (CNN)Just before Donald Trump took the stage at an August rally in Alabama that was meant to boost GOP Rep. Mo Brooks' US Senate bid, the former President ran into one of Brooks' primary opponents offstage.

The Fed's words still don't measure up to the challenge of inflation  —  The Federal Reserve's recognition that inflation is not transitory, that the U.S. labor market is very tight and that priority now must be given to price stability is welcome, if belated.