McConnell cracks door to Electoral Count Act reform  —  Mitch McConnell is signaling he's open to reforming the Electoral Count Act, one year after a mass of Republicans objected to certification of President Joe Biden's win ahead of an attempted insurrection.

2022 House Overview: Still a GOP Advantage, but Redistricting Looks Like a Wash  —  The surprising good news for Democrats: on the current trajectory, there will be a few more Biden-won districts after redistricting than there are now — producing a congressional map slightly less biased in the GOP's favor than the last decade's.

Omicron Is Milder  —  How should that affect your behavior?  —  The details of the Omicron variant are becoming clearer, and they are encouraging.  —  They're not entirely encouraging, and I will get into some detail about one of the biggest problems — the stress on hospitals …

Chicago Schools Close After Teachers' Union Votes for Remote Learning  —  Kids shut out of classrooms as union clashes with district officials  —  More than 290,000 kids in Chicago Public Schools were shut out of the classroom Wednesday after the city's teachers' union voted against returning to in-person learning.

Macron says his strategy is to ‘piss off’ France's unvaccinated as Covid surges  —  Parliament suspends vaccine pass debate and rivals criticise president for ‘vulgar’ expression and ‘lack of empathy’  —  President Emmanuel Macron has come under fire from political rivals for saying he wanted to …

The GOP isn't even trying to sound coherent anymore  —  We must stop pretending the GOP is a real political party made up of coherent adults.  To understand why, let's examine a single day this week.  —  On Tuesday, former president Donald Trump, the undisputed head of the party …

Husband: Kelly Ernby wasn't vaccinated when she died of COVID-19 complications  —  GOP leaders say Ernby's death won't deter them from speaking out against coronavirus vaccine mandates.  —  Deputy District Attorney and GOP activist Kelly Ernby wasn't vaccinated when she died early this week …

More than 40 percent of Americans live in counties hit by climate disasters in 2021  —  As climate-fueled extreme weather intensified last year, more than 80 percent of Americans experienced a heat wave.  The impacts of fires and severe storms also spread.  —  2021 ended as it began: with disaster.

The Ridiculous Fantasy of a National Divorce  —  The solution is not some sort of secession or civil war.  The solution is for the Right to stop being rank amateurs when it comes to politics and governance.  —  Every now and then an absurd idea enters the discourse and picks up a sort of memetic traction in spite of itself.

Treasury Sanctions Milorad Dodik and Associated Media Platform for Destabilizing and Corrupt Activity  —  Dodik's Destabilizing and Corrupt Activities Undermine 26 years of Progress Since the Dayton Peace Accords  —  WASHINGTON — Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control …

J.D. Vance Versus Film Twitter  —  How film critics helped send the ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ author off the cliff.  —  I'd be remiss if I didn't note, briefly, that the online collective known as Film Twitter—critics, Letterboxd users, and sundry others—managed to completely break Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance's brain.

Don't Look Up Doesn't Get the Climate Crisis  —  Don't Look Up is an obscenely overlong, occasionally funny satire of American media and politics.  But it aspires to be something more.  —  As he has emphasized in interviews, director Adam McKay conceived of the film as an allegory for the climate crisis.

I-95 in Va. reopens as motorists battle bailout traffic jam on Route 1  —  Have you or someone you know been stuck on I-95?  Tell WTOP about your experiences.  —  Listen to WTOP live online and on the radio at 103.5 FM.  Download the free WTOP News app for Android and Apple phones to sign up for custom traffic and weather alerts.