The College Board Strips Down Its A.P. Curriculum for African American Studies  —  After criticism from Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the official course looks different: No more critical race theory, and the study of contemporary topics — like Black Lives Matter — is optional.

The GOP Is Just Obnoxious  —  This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday.  Sign up for it here.  —  Let's say you're a politician in a close race and your opponent suffers a stroke.

Justice Department arrests former ABC News journalist on child pornography charges  —  The Department of Justice on Wednesday announced the arrest of an award-winning investigative reporter on charges related to child pornography.  —  In a statement, the DOJ said that it was charging James Gordon Meek …

George Santos Relative Says They Never Gave $5,800 Reported by the Campaign: “I'm Dumbfounded”  —  Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.  —  Last week, Mother Jones reported that more than a dozen top donors to Rep. George Santos …

Biden and McCarthy meet as White House aides envision a debt ceiling off-ramp  —  President Joe Biden met Wednesday with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in search of a path to lifting the nation's debt ceiling — and averting the potential for an economic catastrophe.

Trump Is Losing the Grifter Class to DeSantis  —  And they matter more than you might think.  —  1. Hungry Dogs Have To Eat  —  There was bad news for the Trump 2024 campaign yesterday and it wasn't Nikki Haley's pre-announcement of her campaign to challenge the former president.1

Feds probing Santos' role in service dog charity scheme  —  NEW YORK — FBI agents are investigating Rep. George Santos' role in an alleged GoFundMe scheme involving a disabled U.S. Navy veteran's dying service dog.  —  Two agents contacted former service member Richard Osthoff Wednesday …

Trump Org. controller to testify to Manhattan grand jury investigating hush money payments  —  A top executive of the Trump Organization is expected to appear Thursday before a Manhattan grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump's alleged role in a hush money payment scheme, people familiar with the matter said.

Fireworks in House after Democrat says ‘insurrectionists’ should be banned from leading Pledge of Allegiance  —  WASHINGTON — A routine House committee meeting erupted into a heated, nearly hourlong debate Wednesday over the Pledge of Allegiance, with one Democratic lawmaker saying that …

Dangerous Fungi Are Spreading Across U.S. as Temperatures Rise  —  Some fungi such as the type that causes Valley Fever might be adapting to endure more heat stress  —  Dangerous fungal infections are on the rise, and a growing body of research suggests warmer temperatures might be a culprit.

Voter fraud at a GOP stronghold leads to another light sentence  —  Quite a few Republican voters were caught casting illegal ballots in the 2020 elections.  In each case, judges didn't exactly throw the book at them.  —  To the extent that the United States has a retirement community known …

FBI finds no classified documents at Biden's Delaware vacation home  —  The FBI has completed its search of President Joe Biden's Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, home and no documents with classified markings were found, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The House GOP's sham hearings are fizzling before they even begin  —  The GOP's conspiracy theories and unhinged accusations work best when Republicans are in the minority, when they can throw out half-baked accusations and make leaps of logic with little consequence.

Trump's Fund-Raising in First Weeks of '24 Race Is Relatively Weak  —  After announcing presidential runs, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush all raised more per day in their out-of-the-gates fund-raising periods.  —  Donald J. Trump's knack for generating millions of dollars simply …

An alleged $500 million Ponzi scheme preyed on Mormons.  It ended with FBI gunfire.  —  In Las Vegas, a lawyer with huge gambling debts is accused of a financial fraud that left hundreds of victims in its wake  —  LAS VEGAS — The FBI arrived at the only house on this stretch of Ruffian Road at 1:25 p.m. …

Guns in the House?  A raucous Natural Resources panel debate  —  House Natural Resources Committee Republicans on Wednesday defeated Rep. Jared Huffman's (D-Calif.) push to reinstate an explicit ban on carrying firearms to the committee room after a lengthy and occasionally heated debate.

Mortgage Bankers Scrambling Over Conservative Court Ruling  —  Faced with the potential invalidation of CFPB's funding structure, the top lobbyist for mortgage companies asks Congress to write the agency's rules into law.  —  The Mortgage Bankers Association, a trade group for mortgage companies …

Illegal border crossings fell sharply in January, U.S. figures show  —  Tighter restrictions applied by the Biden administration against migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti along the southern border last month led to a precipitous drop in the number of people from those countries crossing …

Students Forced to Camp Out in Frigid Weather To Get Housing  —  Davis, CA - If the city council thought they had solved the problem of student housing with the approvals of multi-student housing projects over the last several years, those beliefs were dashed by a string of student commenters who told them otherwise.

Bias and Human Error Played Parts in F.B.I.'s Jan. 6 Failure, Documents Suggest  —  The F.B.I. appeared to be blinded by a lack of imagination, a narrow focus on “lone wolf” offenders and a misguided belief that the threat from the far left was as great as that from the far right, new congressional documents show.