“If you can believe it, all the news we just laid out for you, all those crucial developments that you just watched that we aired last night live on this program, were largely ignored by the abusively biased news media in this country. Instead, for 24 hours these lazy, these abusively biased echo chamber people in the fake news overpaid …

Politico reports: President Donald Trump crowed Friday morning that “NBC NEWS is wrong again” after the network was forced to issue a correction on reporting that initially said Trump’s longtime personal attorney had been the subject of a federal wiretap. NBC News issued both on-air and online corrections to state that Michael Cohen, the attorney at the center of efforts …

The Associated Press reports: Oklahoma legislators approved a measure Thursday to grant legal protections to faith-based adoption agencies that cite their religious beliefs for not placing children in LGBT homes and lawmakers in Kansas were close to passing a similar measure. The Oklahoma House’s 56-21 vote sent its measure to Republican Gov. Mary Fallin, who has not said whether she …

The Kansas City Star reports: The Missouri General Assembly has taken the historic step of calling itself back into special session to decide whether to impeach Gov. Eric Greitens. According to the petition signed by 138 House members and 29 senators — both more than the three-fourths required in each chamber to call a special session — lawmakers will consider …

From the Hollywood Reporter: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has expelled Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski from its membership, the organization said Thursday. The Academy’s board of governors, following its new procedure for enforcing a Standards of Conduct that it adopted in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, voted to expel the comedian and the director …

Politico reports: West Virginia GOP Senate hopeful Don Blankenship is amping up his racial attacks on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell with a new ad declaring, “Swamp captain Mitch McConnell has created millions of jobs for China people.” “While doing so, Mitch has gotten rich,” Blankenship adds. “In fact, his China family has given him tens of millions of dollars.” …

Just in from hate group leader Tony Perkins: After eight back-breaking years, you can’t blame people for being skeptical about Donald Trump’s promise to pull religious liberty out of Obama’s trash heap. After all, most Christians had emerged from the last two terms like veterans of a war, bruised and traumatized. For the first time, they’d seen an American president …

Talking Points Memo reports: NBC News corrected its bombshell report on the wiretapping of Michael Cohen Thursday, saying that President Trump’s longtime personal attorney’s phone calls were monitored, rather than listened to, by federal investigators. Tom Winter, one of the authors of the report, said on MSNBC Thursday that the original report claiming that Cohen’s phones had been tapped “in …

Courthouse News reports: Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Thursday filed a request for 70 blank subpoenas in the Virginia court presiding over one of two criminal proceedings involving former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. The two-page filing doesn’t offer much in the way of details, but each subpoena orders the recipient to appear at the federal courthouse in Alexandria on …

Notoriously anti-LGBT Vice President Mike Pence this afternoon swore in homocon Richard Grenell as US ambassador to Germany as Grenell’s partner held the bible. Grenell’s history of misogynistic tweets, including attacks on Rachel Maddow’s appearance, had, in part, delayed his confirmation for months. Last week he was approved by the Senate in a 56-42 vote that fell largely along party …

The Washington Post reports: The Rev. Patrick J. Conroy, the House chaplain who announced his resignation under pressure last month, informed Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) Thursday that he wanted to rescind his offer and remain in his position at least through the end of this year. In a two-page letter, Conroy informed Ryan that he gave in to pressure …

TechCrunch reports: Yes, it’s that time again — password changing time. On Thursday, Twitter revealed that a bug caused the platform to store user passwords in unmasked form. Normally, sensitive personal data like passwords would be stored in hashed form using a mix of letters and numbers to protect the content of the password itself. In this instance, it sounds …

Nashville’s NBC affiliate reports: Four people have been shot inside Opry Mills Mall, according to police. Police said one shooter is in custody and the search continues for the second shooter. Metro Police are responding to multiple calls of shots fired at the Opry Mills Mall. Police are blocking traffic from entering the mall area. This story is developing. Opry …

The Atlantic reports: As Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt faces a seemingly endless stream of scandal, his team is scrambling to divert the spotlight to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. And the White House isn’t happy about it. In the last week, a member of Pruitt’s press team, Michael Abboud, has been shopping negative stories about Zinke to multiple outlets, …

The Hill reports: Rudy Giuliani called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to intervene in the Michael Cohen case and put the people behind the probe “under investigation” in a phone call with The Hill on Thursday. “I am waiting for the Attorney General to step in, in his role as defender of justice, and put these people under investigation,” Giuliani …

The New York Times reports: Over the opposition of lawyers for a company owned by President Donald J. Trump, State Supreme Court Judge Eileen Bransten ruled Thursday that a condominium on the Upper West Side could remove the bronze letters spelling out his name from its 46-story building. The ruling opens the door for the 377 condo owners at 200 …

Gird your loins! NPR reports: President Donald Trump acknowledged Thursday he repaid his personal lawyer for hush money given to porn actress Stormy Daniels after claiming previously he didn’t know about the payments. The issue is one that is expected to come up at Thursday’s White House press briefing. The money, paid just before the 2016 election to stifle Daniels’ …

Media Matters reports: A branch of the Russian-owned news outlet Sputnik reported as real a fake story that Israel had used a nuclear weapon on Syria from YourNewsWire, a fake news site that experts have described as a proxy and a pusher of Russian-supported narratives. On April 30, Israel launched a missile attack on facilities in Syria allegedly connected to …

The Hill reports: Former prosecutor Solomon Wisenberg compared former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s legal strategy to a murder-suicide on Thursday after Giuliani said in an interview that President Trump reimbursed his attorney, Michael Cohen, for the $130,000 he paid to adult-film star Stormy Daniels. “I liken it to a murder-suicide,” Wisenberg told CNN’s Dana Bash. “He metaphorically murdered …

IMPORTANT: The report below has since been retracted. NBC News reports: Federal investigators have wiretapped the phone lines of Michael Cohen, the longtime personal lawyer for President Donald Trump who is under investigation for a payment he made to an adult film star who alleged she had an affair with Trump, according to two people with knowledge of the legal …