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

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 …

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 …

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.

POLITICO Playbook: What Meloni means for America  —  Correction: An earlier version of this newsletter misstated the Congressional Budget Office cost estimate for President Joe Biden's proposed student loan relief plan.  The estimate is $400 billion.  —  With help from Eli Okun and Garrett Ross

Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior From China and Russia  —  Today, we're sharing our findings into two covert influence operations — from China and Russia — that we took down for violating our policy against Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB).  We shared information with our peers …

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.

Lawsuit aims to stop Biden's student loan forgiveness plan  —  A public interest lawyer in Indiana is suing to block President Biden's plan to cancel some student debt, arguing that the policy will force him to pay state taxes on the forgiven amount.  —  The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court …

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.

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

Newest addition to Trump's legal team sidelined in Mar-a-Lago search case  —  The newest addition to former President Donald Trump's legal team, Chris Kise, has been sidelined from the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation less than a month after he was brought on to represent Trump in the matter …

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.

How a party of neo-fascist roots won big in Italy  —  The Brothers of Italy party, which won the most votes in Italy's national election, has its roots in the post-World War II neo-fascist Italian Social Movement.  Keeping the movement's most potent symbol, the tricolor flame …

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.”

John Fetterman Told His Constituents To ‘Eat More Vegetables.’ He Was Flabbergasted When Dr. Oz Told Him the Same.  —  BRADDOCK, Pa.—Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman, who once weighed over 400 pounds, called his rival campaign “nasty” after it suggested he eat a vegetable.

‘It Was All a Hoax’  —  This 27-year-old Venezuelan man was one of 50 migrants taken to Martha's Vineyard from San Antonio, Texas, under the direction of Florida governor Ron DeSantis.  The Republican is currently facing multiple lawsuits claiming he lured the migrants to Martha's Vineyard …

Federal appeals court punts on writer's suit against Trump over rape denial  —  A federal appeals court handed Donald Trump an incremental win Tuesday in a libel suit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll over the former president's denial of her claim that he raped her in a New York department store dressing room in the 1990s.

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 …

Insiders: Axne was in France during vote, Hinson opposes GOP governors flying migrants  —  DES MOINES, Iowa — U.S. Representative Cindy Axne, the 3rd District Democrat from West Des Moines, said that she was on a long-planned family vacation to France in August when her party approved a priority: The Inflation Reduction Act.