The far-right Media Resource Center has revoked giving its William F. Buckley Media Excellence Award to Sean Hannity. That’s gotta sting! CNN reports: Buckley, the founder of the National Review, who died in 2008, was hailed in his day as “arguably the most important public intellectual in the United States.” Giving an award in his name to Hannity — a …

The Texas Tribune reports: For the third time this year, a committee of state lawmakers will consider measures to restrict bathroom use for transgender residents in what’s expected to be an hours-long hearing Friday that could draw out hundreds of Texans to testify. On the Senate State Affairs Committee’s agenda are Senate Bill 3 and Senate Bill 91 — both …

Mediaite reports: Much has been said about just how friendly Fox & Friends is to the Trump administration, but this might set a new water mark of accommodation. White House advisor Kellyanne Conway was all set to appear this morning, and as the show came back from commercial break, she was on what was described by Ainsley Earhardt as a …

Hawaii News Now reports: The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency is kicking off an educational campaign aimed at helping residents and visitors figure out what to do if the state is the target of a nuclear missile attack from North Korea. The agency said the threat to the islands from the rogue nation is “currently assessed to be low.” But officials …

Newsweek reports: Stephen Colbert is on a one-man mission to find a recording that allegedly shows President Donald Trump watching two prostitutes urinate on a bed in a Moscow hotel presidential suite. Or, as Colbert dubbed the fabled video, “the pee pee tape.” On Thursday’s episode of The Late Show, Colbert continued his Russia Week string of episodes, showing highlights …

CBS News reports: One of President Trump’s attorneys is denying a Washington Post report that Mr. Trump’s legal team has been “discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons” with respect to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Jay Sekulow tells CBS News chief White House correspondent Major Garrett, “Pardons are not being …

The Associated Press reports: U.S. officials say the Trump administration will ban American citizens from traveling to North Korea following the death of university student Otto Warmbier who passed away after falling into a coma into a North Korean prison. The officials said Friday that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had decided to impose “geographic travel restriction” for North Korea, …

Hoo boy. The Washington Post reports: Some of President Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons, according to people familiar with the effort. Trump has asked his advisers about his …

Lehigh Valley Live reports: With the mayor’s stroke of a pen, Allentown has officially banned conversion therapy for minors in the city. The law prohibits licensed mental health professionals from counseling, practices, or treatments that seek to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Officials said Allentown is now the second municipality in the state, and 60th in the …

From the Family Research Council’s daily prayer: Heavenly Father, it is time for you to act, for your law is being broken! This policy must be rejected: it brazenly defies You, God our Creator, and Your fixed, eternal moral laws. We defied your definition of marriage, now we defy the very apex of your created order, mankind created in your …

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports: A Kentucky Republican Party county chairman has resigned after he was arrested in Tennessee on charges of indecent exposure and resisting arrest in a department store, the GOP and police said. David Narramore, 54, of Whitesburg was arrested Saturday night in a Belk department store in Kingsport, Tenn., according to police there. A store employee told …

Oh good grief: White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday befuddled members of the press corps when she shared visual aids at a briefing where video cameras had been banned. While touting President Donald Trump’s so-called “MAGAnomics”, Sanders directed reporters to two large monitors behind the podium. “Is this still off-camera?” MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson reportedly asked the …

This afternoon Trump marked the first six months of his term by issuing a jingoistic, openly nationalist, three and half minute self-infomercial which stitches together various speeches made starting back on inauguration day. Prominent in the excerpted speeches is the address he made in Poland. That’s the speech he yesterday told the New York Times was the “greatest speech ever …

The Hill reports: President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida filed requests with the government on Thursday to hire 70 temporary foreign workers as cooks, housekeepers and servers at the private club, according to records posted by the Labor Department. The jobs would begin on Oct. 1 and end in May 2018, according to the filings. Those positions would take advantage …

The Guardian reports: A neo-Nazi leader has pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, more than a year after a viral video showed him repeatedly shoving a young black protester at a Trump campaign rally in Louisville, Kentucky. Matthew Heimbach, an avowed National Socialist and the leader of the Traditionalist Worker party, will not face jail time in the case, sparking protest …

The Pioneer Press reports: The first thing to understand about President Donald Trump, former Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann said Wednesday, is that the billionaire president is a normal person. “He is quite honestly one of the most regular guys you would ever meet,” said Bachmann, an adviser to Trump on faith issues who prayed over the president in the Oval …

Moments ago OJ Simpson was granted parole by a unanimous vote of the Nevada Board of Parole Commissioners. The Washington Post reports: The Hall of Famer reacted emotionally and with a smile as each of the four delivered their votes on whether he should be freed after serving nearly nine years of a nine-to-33-year sentence for 12 convictions, including kidnapping …

Raw Story reports: Deutsche Bank has agreed to hand over records of its financial dealings with President Donald Trump after months of stalling and insistence that the records are confidential and privileged information. Vanity Fair‘s Bess Levin wrote on Thursday that the German company was one of the last banks on Wall Street willing to do business with Trump after …

Via press release from the ACLU: The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against four federal agencies demanding documents from the Trump administration that provide clarity on how the administration plans to implement its ‘religious freedom’ executive order. The ACLU initially filed records requests with the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, …

The Daily Beast reports: The Trump administration has spent taxpayer money meant to encourage enrollment in the Affordable Care Act on a public relations campaign aimed at methodically strangling it. The effort, which involves a multi-pronged social media push as well as video testimonials designed at damaging public opinion of President Obama’s health care law, is far more robust and …