The Orlando Sentinel reports: People 40 years and older can be vaccinated at the Orange County Convention Center starting Monday, Mayor Jerry Demings said, his latest move in extending the shot to people ahead of state regulations. Demings said the decision was made with confidence the county has ample supply to handle the potential of people from outside of the …

The Texas Tribune reports: Several bills responding to Texas’ February power outages — including one mandating that power plants prepare facilities for extreme weather and another reforming the Electric Reliability Council of Texas board — were advanced by the Texas House State Affairs Committee on Thursday. None addressed the price ERCOT set for wholesale electricity prices during the storm and …

The Daily Beast reports: Dozens of young White House staffers have been suspended, asked to resign or placed in a remote work program due to past marijuana use, frustrating staffers who were pleased by initial indications from the Biden administration that recreational use of cannabis would not be immediately disqualifying for would-be personnel, according to three people familiar with the …

Mediaite reports: Fox host Sean Hannity got caught on air chilling and vaping a little too long on Thursday night. After the last commercial break of the show, Hannity’s graphics cued up and he appeared on screen as usual, but he apparently wasn’t ready, as he was still wearing reading glasses and had a vape pen in his mouth. A …

The Hill reports: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) insisted Thursday that Republicans were not trying to reverse former President Trump’s election defeat in challenging the results of November’s presidential contest in a testy exchange with CNN’s Manu Raju. McCarthy had endorsed a Texas lawsuit challenging the election results in four battleground states, and he voted to object to both …

Block Club Chicago reports: The city has cut off Loretto Hospital’s supply of first doses for coronavirus vaccinations amid controversy over who it’s vaccinating. Loretto Hospital — a small hospital meant to serve the West Side — is under scrutiny for vaccinating ineligible workers at Trump Tower and for its chief operating officer, Dr. Anosh Ahmed, telling people he vaccinated …

Buzzfeed News reports: Executives at Instagram are planning to build a version of the popular photo-sharing app that can be used by children under the age of 13, according to an internal company post obtained by BuzzFeed News. Current Instagram policy forbids children under the age of 13 from using the service. According to the post, the work would be …

The San Antonio Express-News reports: San Antonio doesn’t have Donald Trump to push around — and claw — anymore. At least not for the time being. Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks on Alamo Plaza moved the wax figure of the former president to a storage room because a few museum visitors — with intense feelings and a lack of self-restraint — kept …

Variety reports: The anonymous woman who first made allegations about Armie Hammer on social media has come forward publicly. “I thought that he was going to kill me,” the woman, named Effie, said through tears on Thursday during a press conference with her attorney, Gloria Allred. Effie is accusing Hammer of violent rape and physical abuse, during their on-and-off four-year …

Law & Crime reports: A former member of the U.S. Army Special Forces and military contractor was arrested on Wednesday and charged with felony assault on a police officer using a deadly or dangerous weapon during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. In a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., federal authorities accused …

San Francisco’s NBC News affiliate reports: The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office announced multiple charges against a woman involved in the San Francisco Uber assault incident. 24-year-old Arna Kimaiai was seen in now-viral video coughing on an Uber driver earlier this month. Kimaiai has been charged with the following charges: attempted robbery (felony), assault on a hire transportation driver (felony), …

Via press release from the Justice Department: A Louisiana man was indicted and charged today in federal court in the Western District of Louisiana on six counts, including hate crime, kidnapping, firearm and obstruction charges. Chance Seneca, 19, of Lafayette, was charged by a federal grand jury on March 18 based on his attempted murder of a gay man and …

Posted today by the Family Research Council: The Bible’s Teaching on Homosexuality – Romans 1:18-32 – The apostle Paul explains that humanity has rejected God, exchanging the truth about Him and the things He created for a lie. While describing the sinful “exchanges” men and women have made, Paul uses the term para physin, which means “unnatural” or “against nature.” …

NBC News reports: An Atlanta-area sheriff’s office on Thursday said it regrets “any heartache” caused by the comments of a department spokesman who said the suspect in the spa shootings that left eight people dead was having a “bad day.” The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office acknowledged that comments Wednesday by Capt. Jay Baker were “construed as insensitive,” but the department …

The Washington Post reports: French Prime Minister Jean Castex on Thursday announced that Paris and several other parts of the country will enter a new lockdown Friday night, as the more transmissible coronavirus variant first identified in Britain is prompting a surge in hospitalizations. The lockdown measures are expected to be in place for four weeks, Castex said during a …

ABC News reports: Pastor John Hagee, who was infected with the coronavirus last year, told his Cornerstone megachurch as he was recovering that “we have a vaccine; the name is Jesus Christ, the son of the living God.” Doctors say remarks like that make it more difficult to ensure that all communities are protected from the virus. Hagee Ministries clarified …

“Biden, not only do I think is a terrible president in these last few months, it’s just terrible for talk radio. I think Biden is a disaster for the country and his ideas are an atrocity. “But he’s boring. He’s just boring. It’s going to be a challenge. It is. It’s going to be a challenge. I’ll tell you that …

Mediaite reports: “You could argue the prudence of the American president calling the Russian president a killer,” said host John Roberts. “But are the facts in dispute here?” Despite first condemning Biden for using “empty rhetoric and name calling” in his comments about Putin, Pompeo conceded that the president might be right to call Putin a killer. “Well he worked …

Karin Zidan reports at Right Wing Watch: Sidney Powell—the pro-Trump attorney who became a heroine in the far-right QAnon movement for pushing fantastical “Kraken” election-fraud lawsuits—will headline a “Make American Free Again” virtual summit later this week. The event, which takes place on Sunday, March 21, will bring together a group of so-called “patriots’ to discuss the “imminent threat to …

ABC News reports: A federal appeals court on Thursday reinstated the conviction of a one-time business partner of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for acting as an unregistered agent of the Turkish government. A jury in Alexandria convicted Bijan Kian at a 2019 trial. After the conviction, though, the trial judge, Anthony Trenga, intervened and overturned the conviction. The …