Via press release from Texas AG Ken Paxton: Griddy passed skyrocketing energy costs to customers with little to no warning, resulting in consumers paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars each day for electricity. Griddy misled Texans and signed them up for services which, in a time of crisis, resulted in individual Texans each losing thousands of dollars. As Texans …

The Washington Post reports: “Cool it with the vaccine selfies for a while,” read the headline of a Boston Globe opinion column. “Go ahead, share your vaccine selfie,” the Atlantic’s Brit Trogen wrote. Posting a vaccine selfie when many are still not on the priority lists is boastful and could end up inflaming people’s fear of missing out (otherwise identified …

The BBC reports: Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and two former associates have been sentenced to three years in jail – two of them suspended – for corruption. Sarkozy, 66, was found guilty of trying to bribe a magistrate, Gilbert Azibert, by offering a prestigious job in Monaco in return for information about a criminal inquiry into his political party. …

The Hill reports: A former top strategist for Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns is taking steps to run for a U.S. House seat left vacant by the late Rep. Ron Wright (R-Texas), who succumbed to the coronavirus earlier this year. Katrina Pierson, a Tea Party activist who served as a spokesperson for Trump’s 2016 campaign and as top adviser on his …

Wired reports: DDoSecrets cofounder Emma Best says that the hacked data includes not only all of Gab’s public posts and profiles—with the exception of any photos or videos uploaded to the site—but also private group and private individual account posts and messages, as well as user passwords and group passwords. “It contains pretty much everything on Gab, including user data …

The Associated Press reports: President Joe Biden is planning a virtual meeting Monday with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — a chance for the pair to talk more fully about migration, confronting the coronavirus and cooperating on economic and national security issues. Mexico’s president has said he intends during the meeting to propose to Biden a new Bracero-style immigrant …

NBC News reports: As president, Donald Trump railed against the “deep state” working within the federal government to undermine his presidency. But before he left office, he quietly embedded dozens of his own political appointees in career government positions and appointed other loyalists to influential boards and groups — one of the final, but possibly most enduring, ways he attempted …

The New York Times reports: What happened over the next 12 hours illustrated the speed and the scale of a right-wing disinformation machine primed to seize on a lie that served its political interests and quickly spread it as truth to a receptive audience. The weekslong fiction about a stolen election that President Donald J. Trump pushed to his millions …

“If this is the epitome of support for Trump, the straw poll that was taken this weekend and released just before Trump spoke, showed of all the participants 55% supported Trump being re-elected as president. “That is a pathetic figure. I would have expected 90%. So if 55%, one month after leaving office at CPAC, is the best he can …

Reuters reports: Texas’s largest and oldest electric power cooperative on Monday filed for bankruptcy protection in federal court in Houston, citing a disputed $1.8 billion bill from the state’s grid operator. Brazos Electric Power Cooperative Inc is one of dozens of electricity providers facing enormous charges stemming from a severe cold snap last month. The fallout threatens utilities and power …

The Guardian reports: The Hyatt Hotels Corporation called symbols of hate “abhorrent” on Sunday after the design of a stage at the right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at one of its hotels drew comparisons to a Norse rune used by Nazis during the second world war. Hyatt said all aspects of conference logistics, including the stage design, were managed …