Greene on Wednesday sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray that backs defense lawyer claims that four defendants charged with conspiring to kidnap Whitmer were steered by undercover FBI agents and informants.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-confronts-doj-whitmer-kidnapping-plot

Zelenskyy highlighted several dangerous actions by Russia around nuclear power plants during the invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/ukraine-concerns-zelenskyy-global-control-russian-nukes

Reps. Steve Scalise and Matt Gaetz met Wednesday to discuss leaked audio of the House minority whip suggesting the Florida firebrand may have acted illegally after the Capitol riot. And Scalise isn’t quite offering a full-throated apology.

The private sitdown followed Gaetz’s scathing rebuke of the top two House GOP leaders over leaked audio that showed them criticizing conservatives in their conference. The tape, reported by The New York Times, features Scalise calling Gaetz’s actions after the Jan. 6 insurrection “potentially illegal” — a reference to the latter’s comments hitting Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and other fellow Republicans.

Scalise appears to have offered Gaetz a partial mea culpa rather than complete remorse.

“I said: ‘I’m sorry if this caused you problems,’” the Louisiana Republican told POLITICO in a brief interview, indicating that he spoke on the January 2021 tape out of a potentially hazy understanding of the facts: “I still haven’t been able to get all the details of what those accusations were, but I was being told things, and I know members were getting death threats and I was just very sensitive to that.”

The meeting in Scalise’s office came hours after Gaetz first pressed the GOP whip behind closed doors Wednesday morning to either issue a retraction of his criticism or a clarification.

Leaving their meeting, Gaetz declined to comment on the details of their conversation, simply saying: “I want to reflect on it further.”

Scalise noted that he talked with Gaetz about the Times’ tape and said that at the time of the post-insurrection call, “it was presented” to him that the Floridian was putting some members in danger with his public remarks.

“There were a lot of things that we were being told,” Scalise said. “Some turned out to be accurate, some not. In his case, we haven’t gotten the details of the things that were all said about him. But, you know, clearly those things didn’t happen, because he was never charged with anything related to it.”

When asked if he would apologize once he had all the information that Gaetz didn’t commit a criminal act by attacking Cheney in public following the Capitol siege by then-President Donald Trump supporters, Scalise replied “sure.”

Scalise and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s conversations with fellow House GOP leaders have caused an uproar in Washington — but not significantly imperiled the California Republican’s standing as the undisputed frontrunner for speaker in 2023, should his party win back the chamber as expected.

Perhaps the most enduring fault line opened by the Times’ latest tape-based reporting, then, is Gaetz’s antagonism toward Scalise over the suggestion that the younger conservative may have broken the law by publicly chiding Cheney and others who spoke out against pro-Trump forces.

While Scalise didn’t address his own past in his recollection of his meeting with Gaetz, he’s long treated physical threats as personal matters; he was shot multiple times by a gunman who opened fire on members practicing on a baseball field in 2017.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/27/scalise-and-gaetz-meet-privately-after-tension-over-leaked-audio-00028344

A federal judge on Wednesday denied Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s request to terminate an agreement he entered with the SEC in 2018 requiring him to run certain Twitter posts by securities lawyers for pre-approval.

The judge also denied Musk’s motion to quash a new subpoena by the SEC. The decision came as Musk was in the process of acquiring Twitter for $44 billion.

The 2018 agreement was part of a $40 million settlement over charges that Musk misled investors by falsely tweeting that he had secured funding to take Tesla private. Musk relinquished his role as chair of Tesla’s board as part of it.

The SEC in November served Musk with a subpoena after he tweeted about potentially selling a large portion of his holdings in Tesla without obtaining pre-approval. Musk, who routinely publicly disdains the SEC, in February accused the agency of a harassment campaign aimed at chilling his right to free speech and moved to seek an end to the agreement.

“With regard to the First Amendment argument, it is undisputed in this case that Musk’s tweets are at least presumptively ‘protected speech,’” U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman wrote in his opinion denying the motion Wednesday. “At the same time, however, even Musk concedes that his free speech rights do not permit him to engage in speech that is or could ‘be considered fraudulent or otherwise violative of the securities laws.’”

Liman noted that parties can waive First Amendment rights in consent decrees as the one Musk has with the SEC.

“Musk’s argument that the SEC has used the consent decree to harass him and to launch investigations of his speech is likewise meritless and, in this case, particularly ironic,” Liman wrote. “The Supreme Court has instructed that ‘modification should not be granted where a party relies upon events that actually were anticipated at the time it entered into a decree.’”

Musk should have anticipated that he would be subject to further SEC investigations, Liman said.

In response to the decision, Musk lawyer Alex Spiro said “stay tuned.”

“Nothing will ever change the truth, which is that Elon Musk was considering taking Tesla private and could have,” Spiro said. “All that’s left some half-decade later is remnant litigation which will continue to make that truth clearer and clearer.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/27/judge-rejects-elon-musks-motion-sec-consent-decree-tweets-00028341

Pilot project aimed at Ukrainians is part of the proposal.

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-commission-proposal-migration-pact-t-ukraine/

https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/home/havenly-reeses-book-club-reading-room-collection?iid=CNNUnderscoredHPcontainer

Both Warsaw and Sofia say they have alternatives to Russian supplies.

https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-bulgaria-life-no-russia-gas/

Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., repeated calls Wednesday for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign amid a crisis at the southern border, calling his leadership a failure.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/clay-higgins-implores-mayorkas-resign-border-crisis-impeachment

The plummeting water level of Lake Mead has exposed one of the reservoir’s original water intake valves for the first time, officials say.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/us/water-intake-exposed-lake-mead-drought-climate/index.html

MSNBC, CBS and The View panicked over Elon Musk’s commitment to free speech and the idea of less content moderation on Twitter.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-cbs-the-view-misinformation-free-speech-musk-twitter