Scoop: Moderate Democrats buck Biden tax hikes  —  President Biden's plan to pay for his coming infrastructure package with big tax hikes already is meeting some resistance from moderate Democrats, a stumbling block for his progressive ambitions.  —  Why it matters: If this discomfort turns …

Trump lawyer Lin Wood to run for South Carolina GOP chair  —  Lin Wood, the defamation and personal injury lawyer who took up former President Trump's baseless accusations of election fraud, will run to lead the South Carolina Republican Party less than a month after moving to the Palmetto State from his home base in Georgia.

Remote Work Is Here to Stay.  Manhattan May Never Be the Same.  —  New York City, long buoyed by the flow of commuters into its towering office buildings, faces a cataclysmic challenge, even when the pandemic ends.  —  Spotify's headquarters in the United States fills 16 floors of 4 World Trade Center …

POLITICO Playbook: Chuck Schumer's 51-vote gambit  —  DRIVING THE DAY  —  BREAKING OVERNIGHT — EVER GONE? ...  “Aided by Moon and Tide, Giant Ship Is Partially Refloated,” NYT  —  SPOTTED: MIKE and KAREN PENCE car shopping at Ourisman Honda in Tysons Corner.

Inside America's Most Interesting Magazine, and Media's Oddest Workplace  —  The publication of the “Harper's letter” attracted huge attention.  Most people had stopped reading the magazine, which is stranger and better than you might expect.  —  Last August, when the pandemic seemed endless …

Donald Trump Rails on Biden During Wedding Speech at Mar-a-Lago  —  DONALD TRUMP MAR-A-LAGO WEDDING SPEECH ... Enough About The Couple, Let's Talk About Me … It's been over 4 months since the November election, and Donald Trump is still acting like a sore loser — that, or a belligerent wedding guest.

He said he was going to watch cartoons.  Instead, he opened his dad's gun safe. … WEST PELZER, S.C. — The boy knew where the key to the gun safe was.  He had always known.  —  It was a balmy evening in summer 2014, just five days after Tyler Paxton celebrated his 11th birthday with chicken nuggets and meatballs.

Cruelty at the border is not the same as strength or an effective immigration strategy  —  Not only did cruelty fail as a deterrent, it was wildly unpopular and contributed to Republican defeats in 2018 and 2020.  —  Do you have to be cruel to secure the southern border?

Amazon started a Twitter war because Jeff Bezos was pissed  —  Snarky tweets targeting Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren came after the CEO told execs they weren't pushing back hard enough on critics.  —  SHARE All sharing options  —  Amazon has long been at odds …

U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time  —  WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans' membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup's eight-decade trend.  In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church …

AP Exclusive: WHO report says animals likely source of COVID  —  BEIJING (AP) — A joint WHO-China study on the origins of COVID-19 says that transmission of the virus from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario and that a lab leak is “extremely unlikely,” …

The State Assault on Voting Rights Hurts All of Us  —  Republicans are cynically supporting anti-voting measures that will ultimately hurt both parties—and our country.  —  When John F. Kennedy squared off against Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, 64 percent …

Pete Buttigieg has a bridge to sell you  —  As he took over a sprawling department with tens of thousands of workers and a $90 billion budget, Pete Buttigieg was having a fairly unusual problem: He couldn't locate the Department of Transportation's vaunted library.

Insurrection fundraiser: Capitol riot extremists, Trump supporters raise money for lawyer bills online  —  Brenna Smith Jessica Guynn Will CarlessUSA TODAY  —  Defendants accused in the Capitol riot Jan. 6 crowdfund their legal fees online, using popular payment processors and an expanding network …

AP sources: SolarWinds hack got emails of top DHS officials  —  Suspected Russian hackers gained access to email accounts belonging to the Trump administration's head of the Department of Homeland Security and members of the department's cybersecurity staff whose jobs included hunting threats …

Sarah Obama, matriarch of Obama family branch in Kenya, has died.  She was at least 99  —  Nairobi, Kenya — Sarah Obama, the matriarch of former President Obama's Kenyan family has died, relatives and officials confirmed Monday.  She was at least 99 years old.

French philosopher Michel Foucault ‘abused boys in Tunisia’  —  The philosopher Michel Foucault, a beacon of today's “woke” ideology, has become the latest prominent French figure to face a retrospective reckoning for sexually abusing children.  —  A fellow intellectual, Guy Sorman …

How mRNA Technology Could Change the World  —  Synthetic mRNA, the ingenious technology behind the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, might seem like a sudden breakthrough, or a new discovery.  One year ago, almost nobody in the world knew what an mRNA vaccine was, for the good reason …

Dems vulnerable to redistricting consider ditching House for higher office  —  Many of the House's most vulnerable Democrats won't know for several months if their seats will be winnable next year.  And for some, a once-daunting statewide run just got a lot more appealing.

U.S. News Issues THIRD Version Of Law School Rankings In Advance Of Their Public Release On Tuesday (12:01 AM ET)  —  At 3:53 PM ET on Sunday, U.S. News emailed Deans and other law school administrators the following:  —  Best Law Schools  —  For the overall ranking …

The Unlikely Team of Prosecutors Hunting Trump in Georgia … The public integrity unit at the Fulton County District Attorney's office once had a miserable reputation.  Now, a new crew there is investigating the biggest target of them all.  —  A sheriff's deputy who went to law school but remained a cop for another two decades.

America's pandemic dead deserve accountability after Birx disclosure  —  (CNN)The hundreds of thousands of citizens whose deaths from Covid-19 could have been avoided are owed national and political accountability, but the polarization of America that exacerbated the pandemic threatens to deprive them of their due.

Analysis |  Strategic Pact With China Gives Iran Breathing Room at a Critical Time  —  Meanwhile, many members of Israel's defense establishment have reservations about Netanyahu's tough stance against Jordan  —  The main strategic development over the weekend took place in Tehran …

Former CDC director says Sec. Alex Azar pressured them to falsify COVID-19 data doctors needed  —  Two former officials on President Donald Trump's COVID-19 task force reported being pressured by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to change the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that doctors …

My New Band Is: Someone You Know  —  Sexual assault reporting in the newsroom, with an important disclosure  —  [I'm afraid this newsletter is not at all funny, and I know that's part of the reason some of you subscribe because you've told me that.  But it's important—or important to me, anyway, so bear with me.

Even the GOP's three best arguments against D.C. statehood don't stand up to scrutiny  —  Opponents of D.C. statehood have at most three arguments that deserve any respect.  They involve the Founders' intent, retrocession to Maryland and the 23rd Amendment.  —  But none stands up to scrutiny, as I'll discuss below.

Trump's former pandemic coordinator suggests a restrained response may have cost hundreds of thousands of lives.  —  In interviews broadcast on CNN Sunday night, former President Donald J. Trump's pandemic officials confirmed in stark and no uncertain terms what was already an open secret in Washington …