Trump tells aides not to talk publicly about Russia policy moves  —  WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's national security advisers spent months trying to convince him to sign off on a plan to supply new U.S. weapons to Ukraine to aid in the country's fight against Russian-backed separatists …

Source: Mueller pushed for Gates' help on collusion  —  Ex-Trump campaign aide Rick Gates pleads guilty  —  (CNN)Special counsel Robert Mueller's team last year made clear it wanted former Trump campaign deputy Rick Gates' help, not so much against his former business partner Paul Manafort …

Advertisers Ditching Laura Ingraham's Show Over Attack On Parkland Survivor  —  The Fox News host mocked 17-year-old David Hogg for not getting into a few colleges.  —  Nutrish, the pet food line owned by celebrity chef Rachael Ray, tweeted Thursday that it will no longer advertise during …

Growth At Any Cost: Top Facebook Executive Defended Data Collection In 2016 Memo — And Warned That Facebook Could Get People Killed  —  Facebook Vice President Andrew “Boz” Bosworth said that “questionable contact importing practices,” “subtle language that helps people stay searchable,” …

The Disturbing Secret Behind An Iconic Cartoon  —  Robyn Byrd and Katie Rice were teenage Ren & Stimpy fans who wanted to make cartoons.  They say they were preyed upon by the creator of the show, John Kricfalusi, who admitted to having had a 16-year-old girlfriend when approached by BuzzFeed News.

Mueller probing Russia contacts at Republican convention: sources  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Investigators probing whether Donald Trump's presidential campaign colluded with Russia have been questioning witnesses about events at the 2016 Republican National Convention, according to two sources familiar …

EXCLUSIVE: More cabinet trouble for Trump?  EPA chief lived in condo tied to lobbyist ‘power couple’  —  For much of his first year in Washington, President Trump's EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt occupied prime real estate in a townhouse near the U.S. Capitol that is co-owned by the wife …

Tarrant County woman sentenced to five years in prison for illegally voting in 2016  —  FORT WORTH  —  A judge sentenced a Rendon woman to five years in prison Wednesday for voting illegally in the 2016 presidential election while she was on supervised release from a 2011 fraud conviction.

Hope Hicks is Gone, and It's Not Clear Who Can Replace Her  —  WASHINGTON — Hope Hicks, the White House communications director who worked behind the scenes to direct the president through multiple professional crises — and decided to resign after she found herself exhausted by them — has left the building.

Pope Francis: ‘There Is No Hell’ … In another interview with his longtime atheist friend, Eugenio Scalfari, Pope Francis claims that Hell does not exist and that condemned souls just “disappear.”  This is a denial of the 2,000-year-old teaching of the Catholic Church about the reality of Hell and the eternal existence of the soul.

A Prominent Liberal Judge From The 9th Circuit Court Has Died At 87  —  Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has died, a court spokesperson confirmed Thursday.  He was 87.  —  Reinhardt, a liberal champion who was appointed to the bench by President Carter in 1980 …

E.P.A. Prepares to Roll Back Rules Requiring Cars to Be Cleaner and More Efficient  —  The Trump administration is expected to launch an effort in coming days to weaken greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy standards for automobiles, handing a victory to car manufacturers and giving …

A bombshell report just confirmed the key underlying premise of the Trump-Russia dossier  —  A new report in The Guardian just confirmed the lede sentence of British intelligence officer Christopher Steele's Trump Russia dossier, which claimed that Russian efforts to recruit Donald Trump stretched …

Student shot at Madison Schools in Ohio gets detention for school-shooting protest  —  MADISON TWP.  - In 2016, he was shot in his school's cafeteria while eating chicken nuggets.  He remembers falling on the ground, unsure what happened, watching students run away from him.

Wooing Saudi Business, Tabloid Mogul Had a Powerful Friend: Trump  —  In July, David J. Pecker, the chairman of the company that owns The National Enquirer, visited his old friend President Trump at the White House.  —  The tabloid publisher took along a special guest, Kacy Grine …

Report: Israeli stealth fighters fly over Iran  —  Two IAF F-35 Adir fighter jets entered Iranian airspace undetected, according to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida.  —  Two Israeli F-35 fighter jets entered Iranian airspace over the past month, Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported on Thursday.

The Police Shooting of Stephon Clark Is Deeply Problematic  —  Focusing on whether the shooting was lawful misses the larger point.  —  A terrible thing happened in Sacramento earlier this month.  Police officers shot and killed an unarmed black man, apparently believing the iPhone he was holding was a gun.

Media vs. Facebook: This time it's personal  —  Facebook and Google execs privately complain about the barrage of critical coverage they face, charging that media companies have a financial incentive to attack them and that media execs are settling scores.  They're right.

Milo Yiannopoulos' charity for ‘white boys’ winds down as mystery remains over the $100,000 raised  —  A charity meant to provide college scholarships for white men started by Milo Yiannopoulos, self-described libertarian and professional internet troll, has shuttered its operations, Yiannopoulos confirmed to NBC News.

Judge denies motion by Stormy Daniels' attorney to depose Trump, Cohen  —  (CNN)A federal judge in California put a temporary stop Thursday to efforts by Stormy Daniels' attorney to depose President Donald Trump and his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen over a $130,000 payout from Cohen to the porn star before the 2016 election.

Trump Repeated A False Claim That The Border Wall Has Started Construction  —  Addressing a crowd in Ohio on Thursday, Trump said construction had begun on his promised border wall, but he was referring to pictures of construction that began in 2009.  —  President Donald Trump on Thursday repeated …

Exclusive: Mattis Drafting Specific Options for Using Defense Dollars to Pay for Trump's Wall  —  When it comes to who's going to foot the bill for his “big, beautiful” border wall, President Donald Trump is trying to change the M from “Mexico” to the “military,” asking the Pentagon to redirect …

A Coup at Veterans Affairs  —  If you're like us, your initial reaction upon hearing that President Trump had picked his personal physician to head the Department of Veterans Affairs was: “What?  You mean the guy who looks like a retired Grateful Dead roadie and said ‘unequivocally’ that Mr. Trump …

Black Marjory Stoneman Douglas students want the movement to include their voices too  —  Eleven percent of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School's 3,000 students are black, but you wouldn't know it from the media coverage of the school's horrific mass shooting in February or the gun control movement that sprung up in the aftermath.

Fake Kirsten Gillibrand flap reveals double standard in our politics  —  Here's a sentence I never thought I would need to write: Kirsten Gillibrand is not involved in a sex scandal.  —  Now I've got your attention, right?  —  That I even need to devote a blog post to this topic is evidence …

The 2016 Exit Polls Led Us to Misinterpret the 2016 Election  —  Crucial disputes over Democratic strategy concerning economic distribution, race and immigration have in large part been based on Election Day exit polls that now appear to have been inaccurate in key ways.

APNewsBreak: California Judge: Coffee needs cancer warnings  —  LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Los Angeles judge ruled that California law requires coffee companies to carry an ominous cancer warning label because of a chemical produced in the roasting process.  —  Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle wrote …