Virginia Thomas, a conservative activist married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, repeatedly pressed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in a series of urgent text exchanges in the critical weeks after the vote, according to copies of the messages obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News. The messages – 29 in all – reveal an extraordinary pipeline between Virginia Thomas, who goes by Ginni, and President Donald Trump’s top aide during a period when Trump and his allies were vowing to go to the Supreme Court in an effort to negate the election results. On Nov. 10, after news organizations had projected Joe Biden the winner based on state vote totals, Thomas wrote to Meadows: “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!...You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”

One S.C. ZIP code is a hot spot for diabetic amputations. There, residents are cut off from basic services that might help save their limbs and lives. When doctors cut off legs, a justified cynicism grows under the bandages. Between 52% and 80% of diabetic patients die within five years of a below-the-knee amputation, studies show, thought to be at least partly because patients stop walking. “That’s worse than any cancer diagnosis that we know right now,” said Dr. Dan Clair, a vascular surgeon working to save limbs and the immediate past chairman of surgery at Prisma Health Midlands and the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. “I think it’s almost impossible to convey what an amputation means. … For us (as physicians), it’s a defeat. For the patient, it’s a horrible experience. We’re depressed because we know what it means for the people we’re caring for.” An amputation is avoidable when diabetes is well managed.

About 500 operators and technicians at Chevron’s Richmond refinery went on strike starting Monday. It’s the first labor strike at the plant in more than 40 years. The union representing these workers says that Chevron hasn’t offered enough in the way of pay increases, benefit contributions, and worker safety. Chevron claims the union has asked

Locked-in ALS patient also asked to listen to Tool ‘loud’ and ordered a curry

Intrepid Response is a little-known but powerful app that lets police quickly upload and share information across agencies. But what happens to the information it collects?

Alex Jones’s lawyers told a judge on Tuesday that the Infowars founder was too sick to answer questions under oath at his court-ordered deposition the next day. Their arguments were similar to those they had made the day before in a written motion requesting a postponement in the court case in which relatives of those killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School sued him for calling the massacre a “giant hoax.” A delay was necessary, they said, because a doctor “remains firm in his initial recommendation that Mr. Jones neither attend a deposition nor return to work” since he “stands at serious risk of harm.” But Jones was at work right around the time they were making those very arguments to the judge, they later conceded. Specifically, he was at his recording studio in Austin in the middle of broadcasting four hours of “The Alex Jones Show.” Just as his lawyers were about to argue he was too sick to testify, Jones warned listeners that a cabal of global elites plan to start a nuclear war or otherwise trigger a global crisis in the coming months to cover up massive financial crimes they’ve committed over the decades. Connecticut state Judge Barbara Bellis denied the motion for a postponement. But Jones didn’t show for the deposition scheduled Wednesday. Bellis has now ordered Jones to appear Thursday to give sworn testimony. Opposing lawyers requested the judge issue a warrant for Jones’s arrest if he fails to show again.

The ride-hailing giant is partnering with two taxi technology companies in New York City.

Grimes casually revealed that she "DDOS"'d and "basically blackmailed" Hipster Runoff to take down a picture of her

How did Judith Clark, a 31-year-old white woman, find herself in the middle of a plot to pay for the foundation of a new Black republic in the continental United States?

The fact that Republicans don’t talk much about marriage equality these days doesn’t mean they’ve accepted it. For several decades, Republicans used Supreme Court nomination hearings to sharpen their knives against Roe v. Wade. They have long seized the opportunity to make their case against Roe, railing against the decision as a paragon of judicial activism and overreach. During Ketanji Brown Jackson’s hearings this week, GOP senators have, predictably, condemned Roe—but not as much as might be expected. Instead, many senators have turned their attention to a different precedent that’s likely next on their hit list once Roe likely falls this summer: Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision recognizing same-sex couples’ constitutional right to marry. Loathing for Obergefell emerged early on Tuesday, when Republican Sen. John Cornyn launched a frontal assault on the ruling, then sought Jackson’s reaction. He began by criticizing “substantive due process,” which holds that the “liberty” protected by the due process clause protects substantive rights, not just procedural ones. The Supreme Court has used this theory to enforce “unenumerated rights” that it deems fundamental, including the right to marry, raise children, use contraception, and terminate a pregnancy. Along with equal protection, it served as the basis of Obergefell. According to Cornyn, however, this doctrine is “just another form of judicial policymaking” that can be used “to justify basically any result.” Obergefell, Cornyn told Jackson, was “a dramatic departure from previous laws” that contradicted “234 years” of history. Most states, he pointed out, had not yet repealed their bans on same-sex marriage when the “edict” came down. “Do you share my concern,” he asked Jackson, “that when the court … creates a new right, declaring that anything conflicting with that is unconstitutional, that it creates a circumstance where those who may hold traditional beliefs on something as important as marriage, that they will be vilified as unwilling to assent to this new orthodoxy?” Cornyn then lectured Jackson about the alleged evils of Obergefell. “When the court overrules the decisions made by the people,” he told her, “as they did in 32 of the 35 states that decided to recognize only traditional marriage between a man and a woman, that is an act of judicial policymaking.” The senator went on to claim that “Dred Scott, which treated slaves as chattel property, was a product of substantive due process.” (That’s not actually true, but it marks an obvious effort to sully decisions like Obergefell with the taint of racist origins.) Cornyn also dismissed Obergefell as “court-made law that we’re all supposed to salute smartly and follow because nine people who are unelected, who have lifetime tenure, whose salary cannot be reduced while they serve in office—five of them decide that this is the way the world should be.”

The pictures and videos of flooding on Birmingham’s city streets last week were startling, even for residents familiar with the city’s long-term issues with flash floods. One man drowned in Wednesday’s flash flooding. Birmingham Fire Chief Cory D. Moon said firefighters did more than 20 water rescues on March 16 in a period of about an hour and 20 minutes. “Just this year, we’ve responded to over 50 water rescues,” he said. Joseva Lawrence Speed, 60, died March 16 when he was swept away in flash flooding in the 800 block of 24th Street outside St. Vincent’s Hospital. Speed was trying to get into a family member’s vehicle when he went under water. Bystanders pulled Speed from the water but were unable to revive him. Nearly four inches of rain fell in areas of downtown in a short period that day, creating flooding in areas that rarely see such problems, the mayor’s office said after the flooding. It created dangerous, deadly conditions, and it could happen again. Last week’s flash flooding throughout Birmingham is all part of a much bigger picture that needs to be addressed, said Dr. Hamed Moftakhari, assistant professor for civil, construction and environmental engineering at the University of Alabama. “I don’t think Birmingham is an exception,” he said. “Our infrastructure for storm drainage is quite old in many cities around the United States. We are designing to a rainfall and urbanization plan that is outdated.”

Less than two years after racial justice protests sparked calls to “defund the police,” states and jurisdictions are using pandemic aid to pad already bloated law enforcement budgets.

Tribble clarified during his testimony Tuesday that the practice was not specific to fatal shootings and badges were bent for any officers who were involved in shootings. “I think it was a way to signify the fact that we would stand up and do our job,” Tribble testified.

Gov. Gavin Newsom proposes $11 billion in a California tax rebate to offset high gas prices, including $400 debit cards per vehicle.

Inside the apartment complex, the soldiers were telling their prisoners that Ukraine was about to be liberated, Ms. Anishchenko said. Ms. Borodyuk recalled a more senior Russian officer attempting to comfort a girl in the basement where they were detained. “He said: ‘My daughter is 8 years old too. I love her very much. I miss her. Don’t be afraid, little girl, we will liberate you from Nazis.’”

Madeleine Albright, the first woman US secretary of state, who helped steer Western foreign policy in the aftermath of the Cold War, has died. She was 84 years old.

This is not a happy story.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi affirmed her support Wednesday for U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, who was forced into a primary runoff earlier this month after the FBI raided his home. “I support my incumbents,” Pelosi said during an unrelated news conference in Austin. “I support every one of them, from right to left. That is what I do.” Cuellar, a centrist Democrat, is in the runoff against Jessica Cisneros, the progressive challenger who ran against him in 2020 and lost by a small margin. In the lead-up to that primary, Pelosi visited Laredo and campaigned for Cuellar, which she did not do this time.

The Liberals have agreed to launch a new dental care program for middle- and low-income Canadians and advance a number of other NDP priorities in exchange for New Democrats propping up the federal government until 2025.

We can all name daily newspaper comics that have outlived their creators: Mary Worth; Mark Trail; Nancy. But while some vanish into the background, others command the passionate and/or sardonic attention of readers. Zach Rabiroff speaks with the writers, artists and editors behind today's legacy strips.