According to a criminal complaint, Wisconsin wildlife officials repeatedly claimed they needed to collect sturgeon eggs for scientific research. Instead, they made caviar and ate it.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago police Superintendent David Brown led a response to protests and looting last spring plagued by “confusion and lack of coordination” that risked the safety of both police and citizens, the city’s watchdog found in a report released Thursday. Inspector General Joseph Ferguson’s lengthy findings listed a litany of shortcomings and inconsistencies at the Chicago Police Department’s command level that manifested themselves in chaos on the street. Police brass lacked plans for mass arrests, leading to people facing charges that were either too serious or too light, the report states. One sergeant said his cops stopped making looting arrests because it was taking too long for transport vehicles to arrive. Officers were often unclear on who was in charge or what they were supposed to do. Scattered direction led to “strategic and tactical incoherence,” according to the report, where early in the protests police generally did not make arrests when people damaged property but the next day were told to crack down on vandals. Echoing the complaints of protesters that police reacted brutally with batons and pepper spray, Ferguson pointed to “out-of-policy, dangerous and disrespectful actions by CPD members.” The full extent of those excesses may never be clear, however, because many officers failed to wear or switch on body cameras, Ferguson wrote. He noted also that some officers covered their names and star numbers. Emails and statements from [Mayor] Lightfoot — who ran on a promise to reform the Police Department — portray her as plugged in to the response and concerned about the public perception of the department as trouble unfolded. In an email to emergency management officials, she urged them to preserve video footage because “we need to make sure that if there are any accusations of misconduct by CPD, we have the video to disprove it ...” She also told Ferguson’s office, “(T)his was clearly a concerted effort to bring chaos to our cities. Who were these people? ... (T)his was a conspiracy, sophisticated, paid for and promoted by someone in multiple cities across the country at the same time. That’s not a coincidence.”

Dominion sent letters to Lindell in December and January demanding that he retract false claims about their machines. Instead, the MyPillow CEO doubled down.

Former President Donald Trump's longtime personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is "not currently representing President Trump in any legal matters," senior Trump adviser Jason Miller told CNN on Tuesday.

Rep. Debbie Lesko suggested Hispanics are not Americans in comments she made during a congressional hearing on vaccine distribution plans. Rep. Debbie Lesko said Hispanics are “very good workers” but implied they are not Americans in comments she made during a congressional hearing on vaccine distribution plans. Lesko, R-Ariz., who represents a West Valley congressional district that includes Sun City, said she had compassion for Hispanics, but also equated them with illegal immigrants in a broad statement condemned as insensitive from at least one of her House colleagues. “I worked with people that are Hispanic. I mean they’re very good workers,” Lesko said during the hearing. “You know, we’re compassionate people, but for goodness sakes, we have to take care of American citizens, or people that are here legally, first.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) signaled late Tuesday he would oppose the Equality Act, legislation to expand the prohibition on anti-LGBTQ discrimination under federal law, throwing a massive wrench into plans of the bill's supporters to guide it into law.

Wardlow is an attorney for MyPillow, the Chaska company owned by Trump supporter Mike Lindell.

In a blog posted on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's website, Perry is quoted responding to the claim that “those watching on the left may see the situation in Texas as an opportunity to expand their top-down, radical proposals.” “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business,” Perry is quoted as saying. “Try not to let whatever the crisis of the day is take your eye off of having a resilient grid that keeps America safe personally, economically, and strategically.”

Under a Biden administration, the nominations are expected to go from the Pentagon to the White House within weeks and then to the Senate for approval.

Lin Wood—the pro-Trump attorney turned far-right conspiracy theorist and QAnon celebrity—has called on hundreds of thousands of his supporters to dig up dirt on Georgia officials involved in a disciplinary case against him. Wood also doxed the officials by posting their addresses on his Telegram channel, where they can be accessed by more than 800,000 followers. “I could use the help of an Army of Patriots due to the time limitation,” Wood wrote on Telegram last Saturday. “If you have any information that might impact the ‘competency, qualifications or objectivity’ of any members, would you email the information to me? Their social media posts, political affiliations, representative clients (for example, what if one or more of them represent Dominion), lawsuits filed against them, etc. would all potentially provide me with relevant information that could form the basis of a challenge.” The State Bar of Georgia proceeded with an inquiry into Wood after receiving information that Wood “may have violated one or more of the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct.” The grievance, dated Feb. 5, 2021, was uploaded by Wood to Dropbox.

A federal judge has ruled that two of the most memorable participants in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol should remain in jail while their trial is pending. Eric Munchel, who notoriously hopped a guardrail in the Senate chamber while armed with a taser and zip ties, along with his mother, Lisa Eisenhart, espouse ideas so dangerous and chilling that they couldn’t safely be released into the community, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ruled on Wednesday.

The U.S. Capitol Police are investigating two incidents related to the new metal detectors set up outside the House chamber: one involving a member of Congress potentially assaulting a police officer and the other involving a lawmaker trying to bring a gun onto the House floor. HuffPost personally observed and publicly reported on both incidents over the last month, and Capitol Police called this reporter in on Wednesday for an interview about both altercations. On Jan. 12, the night of the first votes after the U.S. Capitol insurrection and the decision to put magnetometers outside the House chamber, HuffPost observed Rep. Russ Fulcher (R-Idaho) roughly push his way past an officer who was operating the metal detectors. The best way to describe what Fulcher did was he “manhandled” the officer, a Black woman who was significantly smaller than the congressman.

Toyah Willcox tells us about her and husband Robert Fripp's bonkers lockdown videos, why she sees herself as honouring Barbara Windsor, how they might influence King Crimson going forward, and how they've inspired a surge of interest in her kitchen cupboards. Plus, tQ's top seven lockdown home broadcasts!

California’s vote to classify Uber and Lyft drivers as contractors has emboldened other employers to eliminate salaried positions—and has become a cornerstone of bigger plans to “Uberize” the U.S. workforce.

Officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said that grid operators implemented blackouts to avoid a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for months.

A once high-flying political fundraiser who prosecutors say gave illegal campaign contributions to Joe Biden, Lindsey Graham and a host of other U.S. politicians while secretly working for foreign governments is set to be sentenced Thursday. Imaad Zuberi is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles more than a year after he pleaded guilty to charges of tax evasion, campaign finance violations and failing to register as a foreign agent. Prosecutors want the California businessman to spend at least a decade in prison, saying the scope of his campaign finance and foreign influence related crimes — including unregistered lobbying for governments with spotty human rights records like Sri Lanka and Turkey as well as a Ukrainian oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin — is unprecedented.

“I've decided to say "screw it" and post receipts showing that Scott Siskind (the guy behind Slate Star Codex) isn't being honest about his history with the far-right. The context is that I'd been publicly critical of the rationalist community's relationship with /1”

After zipping hundreds of millions of miles through space, the Mars rover Perseverance is just hours away from attempting to land on the red planet in what has been described as one of the most daring robotic maneuvers in NASA’s history. The car-size rover, which launched in July 2020, is aiming to touch down on Mars on Thursday at around 3:55 p.m. ET. If successful, Perseverance will become NASA’s fifth rover to land on the red planet and will kick off the agency’s most ambitious mission yet to examine whether life ever existed on Mars. “Perseverance is attempting to answer one of the biggest questions in the history of humanity: Is there life elsewhere in the solar system?” said Chris Carberry, co-founder and CEO of Explore Mars, a nonprofit organization that advocates for human exploration of the planet. “If people can’t get excited about this mission, I don’t know what’s wrong with them.” Carberry said the mission could reveal tantalizing new details about Mars’ history and geology. But first, Perseverance has to stick its landing. And that will be no small feat.

Host PJ Vogt’s departure from the show will be permanent.

The mass inequality of America’s first Gilded Age thrived on identity-based partisanship, helping extinguish the fires of class rage. In 2021, we’re headed down the same path.