U.S. Asks Taliban to Spare Its Embassy in Coming Fight for Kabul  —  The demand seeks to stave off an evacuation of the embassy by dangling aid to future Afghan governments — even one that includes the Taliban.  —  WASHINGTON — American negotiators are trying to extract assurances …

How the Pandemic Now Ends  —  In September 2020, just before COVID-19 began its wintry surge through the United States, I wrote that the country was trapped in a pandemic spiral, seemingly destined to repeat the same mistakes.  But after vaccines arrived in midwinter, cases in the U.S. declined and …

The GOP strategy for retaking power is about to take an ugly new turn  —  It is a brutal reality about this political moment that Republicans can capture the House while dwelling almost exclusively in the safe confines of their alternate information environment.

Donald's Plot Against America  —  I felt as though I had stumbled across a crime scene so violent that I couldn't process it, let alone synthesize the images in front of me.  The parts remained stubbornly separate, and there was no way to grasp the meaning of the whole.

Gaetz associate providing feds intel, documents as probe into congressman continues: Sources  —  Former tax collector Joel Greenberg is cooperating with investigators.  —  As the federal investigation into Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz continues into the summer, sources tell ABC News that Gaetz's …

Texas Senate passes bill with new voting restrictions after a Democrat filibustered for 15 hours to try to stop the measure  —  AUSTIN — The Texas Senate on Thursday approved a bill that contains new voting restrictions after a Democratic senator filibustered for 15 hours to try to stop the legislation …

Rachel Maddow Seriously Considers Leaving MSNBC  —  As her contract draws to a close, sources told The Daily Beast, the MSNBC icon has been weighing taking her brand elsewhere. … Rachel Maddow has been MSNBC's most high-profile on-air personality for more than a decade …

Rumble, a YouTube rival popular with conservatives, will pay creators who ‘challenge the status quo’  —  The video site has exploded during the pandemic as a home for anti-vaccine misinformation and conservative complaints about Big Tech censorship  —  A fast-growing YouTube rival popular …

California dad killed his kids over QAnon and ‘serpent DNA’ conspiracy theories, feds claim  —  A California surfing school owner who was charged with killing his two children in Mexico is a follower of QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories who thought the children “were going to grow …

‘Everybody I Know Is Pissed Off’  —  The vaccinated, across party lines, have kind of had it with the unvaccinated, an array of new polls suggests.  —  While most state and national GOP leaders are focused on defending the rights of unvaccinated Americans, new polling shows that the large majority …

San Francisco to become first major U.S. city to mandate full vaccination for many indoor activities  —  San Francisco will become the first major city in the country to require proof of full vaccination against the coronavirus for a variety of indoor activities, including visiting bars restaurants …

Emails: Senior DOJ officials wrangled over baseless Trump voter fraud allegations  —  During Donald Trump's final weeks in office, top Justice Department officials wrangled over how the FBI should handle a particularly wacky voter fraud allegation promoted by the then-president and his allies.

What Rosen told U.S. senators: Trump applied ‘persistent’ pressure to get Justice to discredit election  —  Former president Donald Trump's last attorney general has told U.S. senators his boss was “persistent” in trying to pressure the Justice Department to discredit the results of the 2020 election.

Harris County judges move to block arrest of more than 40 Texas Democrats as legal fights over quorum bust continues  —  It's unclear how long the orders will remain in place, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has already indicated the state plans to fight them.  —  Copy link

Greg Abbott Surrenders to the Coronavirus  —  A year and a half into the pandemic, Texas is running out of hospital beds.  —  The Texas Tribune reported on Tuesday that nearly 10,000 COVID-19 patients have been hospitalized, and that the state's intensive-care units are being overwhelmed.

EXCLUSIVE: Cyber expert says his team can't prove Mike Lindell's claims that China hacked election  —  SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — The cyber expert on the “red team” hired by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell now says the key data underpinning the theory that China hacked the 2020 election unveiled at the Cyber Symposium is illegitimate.

Don't Panic, But Breakthrough Cases May Be a Bigger Problem Than You've Been Told Current public-health messaging may understate the scale and risk.  —  The term itself, perhaps, is a problem.  “Breakthrough” sounds bad — implying an immune-escape mutation, likely rare, and therefore alarming.

White House seizes an opportunity to whack DeSantis  —  MIAMI — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made himself the national face of the anti-Biden Covid-response resistance.  —  So the president decided to punch it.  —  For the past two weeks, Biden and his allies have publicly escalated a war …

San Fernando Valley Man Found Guilty in Terror Plot to Bomb a Rally in Long Beach  —  A federal jury convicted a California man today for attempting to bomb a rally in Long Beach for the purpose of causing mass casualties.  —  According to court documents and evidence presented at trial …

FBI Arrests ‘Tunnel Commander,’ An Anti-Abortion Extremist Who Fought Cops On Jan. 6  —  David Mehaffie was charged with attacking law enforcement during a January riot at the U.S. Capitol Building.  —  An Ohio man who was identified by online investigators in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack …

This Recently Arrested Trump Ally Could Have a Lot to Say About Ivanka Trump's Husband Jared Kushner … The private equity investor was booked on federal charges for lobbying the former president on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.  This legal situation possibly has serious consequences for one Trump family member: Jared Kushner.

Column: Here's how Fox News' white supremacist propaganda can be stopped  —  In March 2006, then-CNN host Lou Dobbs told viewers about a Mexican conspiracy to reconquer the Southwest, which the United States took from Mexico 158 years earlier in the Mexican-American War.

CDC Director Says She's Struggling to Communicate With Americans About Covid-19 Amid Politics, Mistrust  —  ‘My job is to put my head down, ignore the criticism and do the right thing for the public,’ Rochelle Walensky said in an interview  —  Rochelle Walensky said the patients she treated …

Ben Shapiro's Book Is a Glib Rationale for Right-Wing Authoritarianism The Authoritarian Moment is anti-anti-Trumpism distilled.  —  Like many conservative intellectuals, Ben Shapiro reacted to Donald Trump's rise with horror, declaring, “ I will never vote for this man.”

A 45-year-old Kansas mayor needs a pacemaker after a long-haul covid fight: ‘I thought I was going to beat it’  —  Michelle De La Isla describes herself as one of the healthiest people she knows.  She is a biker and runner, so when she caught the coronavirus in January, the Topeka, Kan., mayor said she expected a speedy recovery.

Pope Francis Is Tearing the Catholic Church Apart  —  Mr. Dougherty, a senior writer at National Review, has written extensively about faith and the Roman Catholic Church.  —  In the summer of 2001, I drove up to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to find what we called “the traditional Latin Mass,” …