Donald Trump Tops Ron DeSantis in Test of GOP Presidential Field, WSJ Poll Finds  —  No candidate beyond the two leaders draws substantial support in the still-developing primary race  —  WASHINGTON—Donald Trump has gained command of the GOP presidential-nomination race over Ron DeSantis …

Smartmatic wants more than Dominion's $787 million payout, plus a retraction from Fox for its 2020 election lies, lawyer says  —  A top lawyer for Smartmatic, the voting technology company whose defamation lawsuit against Fox News is still pending, said Thursday that he won't accept …

BuzzFeed News Is Shutting Down, Company Laying Off 180 Staffers  —  BuzzFeed is shutting down BuzzFeed News because it is not able to turn a profit, according to a memo CEO Jonah Peretti sent to company staff Thursday.  The digital publisher is laying off 15% of its employees, or about 180 people …

Exclusive: Text messages reveal Trump operatives considered using breached voting data to decertify Georgia's Senate runoff in 2021  —  In mid-January 2021, two men hired by former President Donald Trump's legal team discussed over text message what to do with data obtained from a breached voting machine …

Justice Thomas Is ‘Man of Integrity’ Says Ex-Colleague Breyer  —  Retired Justice Stephen Breyer said Clarence Thomas is a “man of integrity,” as his former US Supreme Court colleague faces ethics questions over ties to a Republican donor.  “As far as I'm concerned, I sat next to him on the bench for 28 years.

Ex-CIA chief spills on how he got spies to write false Hunter Biden laptop letter to ‘help Biden’  —  Joe Biden's presidential campaign prompted former acting CIA director Mike Morell to “help Biden” by organizing 50 colleagues to sign a letter in October 2020 falsely claiming that damning emails …

Why My New Novel About Racial Conflict Ran Into Trouble  —  Today's identity politics has led many in the publishing industry to insist that writers can only tell stories about people like themselves.  That's bad for fiction and for our democracy.  Last January, my agents began submitting …

Public schools would have to display Ten Commandments under bill passed by Texas Senate  —  The Senate also passed a bill that would set prayer and Bible reading times during the school day.  —  Public schools in Texas would have to prominently display the Ten Commandments …

Rightwing Edgelords Are the Real Threat to National Security  —  “The amount of Three Percenters and Boogaloo guys I work with is untenable,” said one Department of Defense worker.  —  Ben Makuch  —  Since the beginning of the Biden Administration, the GOP has painstakingly attacked the Pentagon as a …

Poll: GOP voters say fighting “woke” ideology more important than stopping Social Security cuts  —  Most Republican primary voters say fighting “woke” ideology in schools and businesses is more important to them than protecting Medicare and Social Security from cuts, a new Wall Street Journal poll out today showed.

Is DeSantis Just Not Dumb Enough for Republicans? … A little over four years ago, Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign appeared to be, if not inevitable, then at least like the most strongly positioned candidacy to win her party's nomination.  The former Harvard professor had won …

Biden 2024 Re-election Announcement Could Come as Soon as Tuesday  —  A campaign video is said to be in production, and donors are being mobilized, for a run that could be announced early next week.  —  President Biden is nearing a final decision to formally enter the 2024 presidential race …

Top Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn to be questioned for 2nd day by special counsel: Sources  —  Epshteyn met with prosecutors for multiple hours on Thursday, sources say.  —  After meeting with  —  special counsel Jack Smith's  —  office for multiple hours Thursday, top Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn …

Why so many top Republicans want to go to war in Mexico  —  An astonishingly bad idea that's gotten popular very quickly.  —  One of the hottest new ideas in Republican politics is, apparently, launching a war in Mexico.  —  Three recent articles — in Rolling Stone, Politico, and Semafor …

The Obscure GOP Bookkeeper at the Center of the George Santos Mess  —  Nancy Marks, Mr. Santos's former campaign treasurer, has her own history of questionable dealings that have aroused interest from federal investigators.  —  When George Santos was a political neophyte struggling to launch …

Once-a-week nightmare: US mass killings on a record pace  —  The U.S. is setting a record pace for mass killings in 2023, replaying the horror on a loop roughly once a week so far this year.  The carnage has taken 88 lives in 17 mass killings over 111 days.  Each time, the killers wielded firearms.

Abortion ban states see steep drop in OB/GYN residency applicants  —  States that have enacted abortion bans saw a 10.5 percent drop in applicants for obstetrics and gynecology residencies in 2023 from the previous year, according to new data from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Federal prosecutors have considered four possible charges against Hunter Biden  —  Possible charges include two misdemeanor counts for failure to file taxes, a single felony count of tax evasion and a felony related to a gun purchase.  —  Federal prosecutors have considered charging Hunter Biden …

Kremlin tries to build antiwar coalition in Germany, documents show  —  Marrying Germany's far right and far left is a Kremlin goal, according to a trove of Russian documents reviewed by The Washington Post  —  BERLIN — When 13,000 demonstrators gathered at the Brandenburg Gate on Feb. 25 …

The Threat of Civil Breakdown Is Real  —  The Manhattan district attorney's indictment of former President Donald Trump for 34 felonies so far has not resulted in the “death and destruction” that the former president warned of and may have desired.  The protests near the courthouse …

The Florida sheriff vs. the neo-Nazi ‘scumbags’  —  DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Did Sheriff Michael J. Chitwood know how easy it was to make a laser weapon?  Did he know that a laser weapon could be remote-controlled, shoot invisible beams and blind him in 1/15th of a second?

Russia admits its own warplane accidentally bombed Russian city of Belgorod, near Ukraine border  —  Moscow — When a powerful blast shook a Russian city near the border of Ukraine residents thought it was a Ukrainian attack.  But the Russian military quickly acknowledged …

Calling beer Champagne leaves French producers frothing  —  The guardians of Champagne will let no one take the name of the bubbly beverage in vain, not even a U.S. beer behemoth.  For years, Miller High Life has used the “Champagne of Beers” slogan.  This week, that appropriation became impossible to swallow.

The Internet of the 2010s Ended Today  —  BuzzFeed News was more than a website: It defined an era.  —  If you're curious to know what it was like to work at BuzzFeed News in the salad days of the mid-2010s, here is a representative anecdote: I was sitting at my desk one morning …

Republicans follow their new leader, Marjorie Taylor Greene  —  This is the price America pays for Kevin McCarthy's ambition.  —  To understand the consequences of the many concessions the House speaker made to get his job, look at what has happened to the House Committee on Homeland Security.

“Unprecedented” wave of fake threats at schools causes terror  —  “Swatting” calls — fake reports of shootings or bombs that draw an onslaught of SWAT teams and cause schools to lockdown — are rising nationwide. … - “Swatting” is the act of placing a fake emergency call to 911 …

How to Make the Housing Market Worse  —  The federal government props up the housing market in too many ways to count.  The U.S. is unique among rich countries in having the national government insure mortgages, guarantee mortgage securities, and finance mortgages with government-sponsored enterprises.

McCarthy builds a kitchen Cabinet ahead of debt showdown — without his No. 2, Scalise  —  The House GOP is working to unify after a dramatic stretch that saw its budget chief sidelined.  But the speaker and majority leader still have trust issues.  —  After his brutal battle to lead the House …