'He's Not OK': The Entirely Predictable Unraveling of Madison Cawthorn  —  HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. — In August of 2015, 16 months after the accident that nearly killed him and left him unable to walk, Madison Cawthorn exchanged text messages with the friend who had fallen asleep at the wheel and careened into a concrete wall.

Musk Says His Twitter Takeover Is ‘On Hold,’ Then Says He's ‘Still Committed’  —  Mr. Musk said he wanted to confirm Twitter's findings that spam and fake accounts make up less than 5 percent of its users.  —  Elon Musk escalated the drama surrounding his $44 billion bid to purchase Twitter on Friday …

I Invented Gilead.  The Supreme Court Is Making It Real.  —  In the early years of the 1980s, I was fooling around with a novel that explored a future in which the United States had become disunited.  Part of it had turned into a theocratic dictatorship based on 17th-century New England Puritan religious tenets and jurisprudence.

N.M. Congressional Democrats Call On President Biden To Expedite Solar Tariff Investigation Impacting Jobs, Investments In New Mexico  —  WASHINGTON - U.S. Senators Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and U.S. Representatives Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) …

Electability Argument Falling Flat in 2022  —  For the last six years, the one thing that has kept the Democratic Party unified and motivated is Donald Trump.  Fear and loathing got Democrats to turn out in the 2018 midterms, and kept those voters engaged in 2020.

Erdogan says Turkey not supportive of Finland, Sweden joining NATO  —  President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday it was not possible for NATO-member Turkey to support plans by Sweden and Finland to join the pact, saying the Nordic countries were “home to many terrorist organisations”.

White House prepares to ration vaccines as Covid funding impasse looms  —  A painful and foreboding reality is setting in for the White House as it enters a potentially dangerous stretch of the Covid fight: It may soon need to run its sprawling pandemic response on a shoestring budget.

Scoop: New Trump venture  —  Donald Trump has found a new way to milk his ex-presidency — and test another — hitting the lucrative motivational speaking circuit with more fervor than any other active U.S. politician in history. … - It's privately run — and, according to organizers, it's driving huge audience interest.

‘He absolutely betrayed me’: Steve Schmidt tells all about John McCain  —  This week on Playbook Deep Dive, we sat down over Zoom with Steve Schmidt, the architect of the late Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential run, to hear what amounts to an untold chapter of that exhaustively chronicled campaign.

POLITICO Playbook: SCOOP: Behind the McCarthy subpoena  —  DRIVING THE DAY  —  PENCE TO HOLD RALLY FOR TRUMP FOE — Georgia Gov. BRIAN KEMP may be one of former President DONALD TRUMP's biggest GOP targets in this year's primaries.  But that's not stopping former VP MIKE PENCE from openly embracing him.

Georgia county under scrutiny after claim of post-election breach  —  Effort by county official to investigate 2020 contest underscores growing threat to election security, experts say  —  A former elections supervisor in rural Coffee County, Ga., has told The Washington Post that she opened …

Alito reluctant to discuss state of Supreme Court after Roe leak  —  In his first public address since the explosive leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion he wrote that would overturn Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. breezed through a detailed examination of statutory textualism …

Elon Musk Trolls Twitter  —  Programming note: Money Stuff was supposed to be off today, but then my boss, Elon Musk, called me in to work anyway.  —  Oh Elon  —  No, absolutely not:  —  None of this!  Come on.  — “Temporarily on hold” is not a thing.

House of Representatives to give staff free Peloton memberships, costing taxpayers  —  The House of Representatives is planning to announce they will give staffers in Washington, D.C., and in district offices, free Peloton memberships using taxpayer dollars each month amid skyrocketing inflation.

Pence to headline Georgia rally for Kemp in new break with Trump  —  Former Vice President Mike Pence will headline a get-out-the-vote rally with Gov. Brian Kemp on the eve of Georgia's May 24 primary, marking a new split with Donald Trump as each maneuver for a possible 2024 White House run.

“Traditional” Catholics and white nationalist “groypers” forge a new far-right youth movement  —  Activist arm of right-wing Catholic outlet Church Militant is increasingly entwined with racist “groyper” movement … The activist wing of Church Militant is called the Resistance network.

We wanted to endorse in Republican primaries this year.  We can't.  —  With Pennsylvania voters headed to the polls Tuesday to choose the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor and U.S. Senate, it's as if the primaries are occurring on two different planets.On the Republican side …

Detention of WNBA's Griner in Moscow extended for 1 month  —  MOSCOW (AP) — The lawyer for WNBA star Brittney Griner said Friday her pre-trial detention in Russia has been extended by one month.  —  Alexander Boykov told The Associated Press he believed the relatively short extension …

Netflix Fires Major Warning Shot At Its Woke Employees With New ‘Culture Memo’  —  A new corporate culture memo from Netflix is taking a hardline stance on attempts to silence artistic expression by warning those who are offended by the streaming service's content that they may want to go find a job somewhere else.

Opinion J.D. Vance, migrant babies and the unhinged GOP enemy hunt  —  Just when you thought our politics couldn't get any dumber, this week brought two new GOP attacks that spectacularly defied expectations.  The Biden administration, we were told, is redirecting scarce infant formula …

Boris: Working from home doesn't work  —  EXCLUSIVE: In my experience you make a coffee, go to the fridge, hack off a piece of cheese and walk very slowly back to your computer, PM tells Mail  —  WORKING from home doesn't work, Boris Johnson said today - as he called for a return to the workplace to ‘drive up productivity’.

US intelligence community launches review following Ukraine and Afghanistan intel failings  —  Washington (CNN)The US intelligence community is carrying out a sweeping internal review of how it assesses the fighting power of foreign militaries amid mounting pressure from key lawmakers …

Texas has declared open season on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube with censorship law  —  (CNN)Texas residents can now sue Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for allegedly censoring their content after a federal appeals court sided Wednesday with the state's law restricting how social media sites can moderate their platforms.