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 …

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 …

McCarthy Is Coming Up Short in Support for House Debt-Limit Bill  —  House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is coming up short in support for his first big legislative effort, a bill tying a debt ceiling increase to spending cuts, risking serious damage to both his stature and the US economy.

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 …

Abbott Aims to Pardon Racist Murderer Who Sent Explicit Texts to Apparent Minor  —  After an Austin jury unanimously convicted Sergeant Daniel Perry of murder, it took Governor Greg Abbott less than one full day to call for his pardon.  —  Legal experts and lawmakers have described …

Ex-DeSantis donor cuts big check for Youngkin  —  Billionaire GOP donor Thomas Peterffy on Thursday wired a $1 million check to Youngkin's political action committee.  —  Days after withholding his financial backing for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, billionaire GOP donor Thomas Peterffy …

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.

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 …

Stanford Law School's Black Students' Group Will No Longer Help Law School Recruit Minority Students in the Wake of Duncan Apology  —  Group decries ‘scapegoating’ of diversity dean and ‘White supremacist practices’  —  Stanford University's Black Law Students Association will no longer help …

Any Questions?  Biden Holds Fewest News Conferences Since Reagan  —  As President Biden prepares to announce his bid for a second term as soon as Tuesday, his decision to keep the news media at arm's length is part of a deliberate strategy.  —  WASHINGTON — In the 100 years since Calvin Coolidge …

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.

More than 60 California liberal groups call on Feinstein to resign  —  A coalition of more than 60 progressive grassroots groups claiming to represent more than 100,000 Californians sent a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asking her to resign.  —  The coalition, which includes …

Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks  —  A couple of years ago Jake Morgan, a farmer who lives just outside Raleigh, in North Carolina, realised he needed a new vehicle to get around his property.  At first he was looking at “side-by-sides”—a sort of off-road utility vehicle.

Nikki Haley's White Dress at Daughter's Wedding Sparks Fierce Debate  —  Presidential candidate Nikki Haley has inadvertently sparked a fierce debate on social media about wedding no-noes on her daughter's big day.  —  Most guests at weddings get excited about the traditional moments …

California jury finds Tesla Autopilot did not fail in crash case  —  A California state court jury on Friday handed Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) a sweeping win, finding that the car maker's Autopilot feature did not fail to perform safely in what appears to be the first trial related to a crash involving the partially automated driving software.

In Secret Recording, a Top City Library Official Calls Alaska Natives “Woke” and “Racists”  —  Despite Judy Eledge's history of inflammatory comments and social media posts, Alaska's governor has awarded her public money and a national role.  What's more, city and state agencies meant …

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 …

We will hold the country hostage until our demands are met — once we know them  —  It's a stickup!  Don't move!  We are serious!  There is a reason we are holding up this bank, and it's because — well, the point is, we can agree, things are out of control with the money!

Pennsylvania Teachers, Activists Concocted Bogus LGBTQ Bullying Epidemic for Political Gain, Investigation Finds  —  The protests outside Lenape Middle School carried on for four straight days last May.  —  Young students, some drawn by the lure of free pizza, walked out of their Pennsylvania school …

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.

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.

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 …

Liable Sources  —  If you're wondering why your AI is racist, here's a clue  —  The Washington Post had a barn-burner of a story on the data used to train AI chatbots and generative text apps, based on a paper out of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 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?

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 …