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?

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 …

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 …

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.

F.D.A. Will Permanently Allow Abortion Pills by Mail  —  The decision will broaden access to medication abortion, an increasingly common method, but many conservative states are already mobilizing against it.  —  The federal government on Thursday permanently lifted a major restriction on access to abortion pills.

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.

WSJ News Exclusive |  Senate Parliamentarian Rejects Democrats' Immigration Proposal in $2 Trillion Bill  —  The proposal marked Democrats' third effort to provide temporary deportation protections and work permits to millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

POLITICO Playbook: ‘This is a real f—ing problem’  —  DRIVING THE DAY  —  SEE YOU IN JANUARY — NYT: “Democrats' $2.2 trillion social safety net, climate and tax bill faced new setbacks on Thursday as President [JOE] BIDEN conceded that the measure was stalled for the moment …

Why Are Republicans Siding With Russia?  —  Because Putinism is catnip to a new breed of American losers.  —  There's been a lot of anger this week over Fox News's born-again populist, Tucker Carlson, going all in on attacking NATO and siding with Russia at the very moment …

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.

Chris Noth Accused of Sexual Assault by Two Women  —  Triggered by the recent ‘Sex and the City’ reboot, the women allege two incidents of misconduct they say took place more than a decade apart.

How Ashley Biden's Diary Made Its Way to Project Veritas  —  New details shed light on the federal investigation into the conservative group's acquisition last year of a journal kept by the president's daughter.  —  In the final two months of the 2020 campaign, President Donald J. Trump …

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.

“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 …

Why 1,320 Therapists Are Worried About Mental Health in America Right Now  —  As Americans head into a third year of pandemic living, therapists around the country are finding themselves on the front lines of a mental health crisis.  Social workers, psychologists and counselors from every state …

Generic Congressional Ballot  —  Republicans Lead 48%-39% on Congressional Ballot  —  The 2022 midterm elections are now 327 days away, and Republicans maintain a strong lead in their bid to recapture control of Congress.  —  The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that …

Omicron outbreak inducing whiplash for many Americans  —  With the omicron variant sending coronavirus cases spiking across the country, the pandemic is once again upending daily life and evoking the early days of the outbreak as scientists race to understand the still-unknown implications of this new type of coronavirus.

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.

Biden: Unvaxxed will ‘overwhelm’ hospitals in ‘winter of illness and death’  —  President Biden sounded like he'd been watching “Game of Thrones” as he warned Thursday that the unvaccinated “will soon overwhelm” US hospitals and vaccine refusers will experience “a winter of severe illness and death.”