Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton fled his home to avoid being served with subpoena, court record says  —  In an affidavit, a process server said that the state's top attorney tried evade him as he attempted to deliver a subpoena from an abortion fund's lawsuit against the state.  —  Copy link

Ex-Staffer Says DeSantis TORCHES Trump in Private: ‘Moron Who Has No Business Running For President’  —  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis routinely torches former President Donald Trump in private, calling him a “moron who has no business running for president” according to a former DeSantis staffer.

Republican ex-congressman suggests colleagues ‘had serious cognitive issues’  —  Paul Gosar and Louie Gohmert were eager to believe ‘wild, dramatic fantasies’, claims Denver Riggleman in new book  —  The Republican congressmen Louis Gohmert and Paul Gosar adopted such extreme …

Manchin's energy plan likely to fail Senate test vote as shutdown clock ticks  —  The Senate is hurtling toward a critical test vote on Tuesday that will decide whether congressional leaders will be forced to strip Joe Manchin's energy permitting plan from a short-term government funding patch …

Secret Service took the cellphones of 24 agents involved in Jan. 6 response and gave them to investigators  —  Senior leadership at the Secret Service confiscated the cellphones of 24 agents involved in the agency's response to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol and handed them over to the Department …

Russia Admits to Draft Problems as Anger Flares Into Violence  —  The Kremlin's spokesman tried to shift blame for errors in the call-up to regional agencies on Monday, the same day a gunman attacked a draft office in Siberia.  —  In a rare admission of official mistakes …

Gas leaks from Russian pipelines to Europe raise sabotage fears  —  Europe was investigating leaks in two Russian gas pipelines that churned up the Baltic Sea on Tuesday and raised concerns from Copenhagen to Moscow about sabotage on infrastructure at the heart of an energy standoff.

Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior From China and Russia  —  Takeaways  — We took down two unconnected networks in China and Russia for violating our policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior.  — The Chinese-origin influence operation ran across multiple social media platforms …

Brett Favre is the face of a scandal, but Mississippi's issues go deeper  —  In 2017, a Mississippi nonprofit called Operation Shoestring received a federal grant worth more than $200,000.  But when the organization sought to renew the funding a year later, the money was no longer available.

Hailey Bieber's ‘Brownie Glazed Lips’ Look Is Yet Another Example of Cultural Appropriation in Beauty  —  Hailey Bieber faced criticism over the weekend after a TikTok video she made about “brownie glazed lips” was called out for appropriating a makeup technique favored by Latinas and Black and brown women since the '90s.

Meloni, Mussolini, and the Media … Whenever Italy elects a right-of-center Prime Minister, the international press labels them a fascist and links them to Mussolini (coincidentally, the only Italian PM they've heard of).  What was true for Silvio Berlusconi and Mario Draghi is true of their latest PM …

The Dictator and the Diva  —  Meet Alla Pugacheva, the Russian pop mega-star who is challenging Putin.  —  Of all the different reasons given for Vladimir Putin's decision last week to order “partial mobilization” of Russian reservists, the most unusual one has been offered …

NASA's DART spacecraft successfully slams into asteroid in historic test of planetary defense  —  It was a cosmic smash-up watched around the world.  —  A NASA spacecraft on Monday intentionally slammed into an asteroid in a historic test of humanity's ability to protect Earth …

The Newsweek of think tanks  —  The impressive intellectual devolution of the Heritage Foundation.  —  I opened the think tank chapter of The Ideas Industry with a discussion of the intellectual transmogrificaton of the Heritage Foundation.  It was a pretty juicy story as intellectual arcs go …

Total Bomb!  Chris Wallace's CNN Show Premiere Tanks, Pulls Only 44k Viewers In Key Demo  —  Chris Wallace's much-hyped return to television with the debut of Who's Talking to Chris Wallace scored a paltry 44,000 viewers in the all-important ratings category, RadarOnline.com has learned.

The Russian Clocks Are All Ticking  —  This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture.  Sign up for it here.  —  Vladimir Putin's massive conscription of Russian men …

Activist charged in Jan. 6 attack is among Herschel Walker's campaign ‘captains’  —  Republican Senate hopeful Herschel Walker's campaign recently listed a woman who was arrested in March on charges of participating in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as one of his “county captains.”

Woke is now a dog whistle for Black.  What's next?  —  There's “urban” of course.  And urban's cousin “inner-city.”  —  And then there's “at-risk,” “underserved” and “fatherless” if talking about our children.  “Marginalized,” “low-income” and “welfare-dependent” if talking about the parents of those children.

Alabama GOP chair's family believed voter ID was mark of the beast, brother said in deposition  —  This is an opinion column.  —  When Alabama's voter ID was before the state Legislature, if I had come up with a hypothetical like the Wahl family, the proponents of that bill would have rolled …

Texas 2022: Greg Abbott Leads Beto O'Rourke By Eight in Gubernatorial Election  —  Home Polls Texas 2022: Greg Abbott Leads Beto O'Rourke By Eight in Gubernatorial Election  —  An Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey of Texas voters finds Republican Governor Greg Abbott with an eight point lead …

Freedom Caucus poised to pull its hardest McCarthy punch  —  As the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus plots how to exert its influence on next year's likely GOP majority, its members are poised to holster a potent political weapon: Challenging Kevin McCarthy.  —  With the California Republican still …