Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, deemed the White House "weak" after President Trump on Friday apparently took Russian President Vladimir Putin's word that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election — a contradiction of U.S. intelligence agencies' overwhelming consensus to the contrary. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reported the conversation after Trump and Putin's first-ever meeting during the G-20 summit in Germany, though a senior Trump administration official has since denied Trump accepted Putin's assurances.

McFaul argued that while there can be "disagreements with Russia about policies," there cannot be "disagreements about basic facts," like that Russia meddled in the U.S. election:

McFaul also scoffed at Putin and Trump's apparent focus on how to "move forward," as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson put it, given it was the leaders' first-ever face-to-face meeting. After Putin annexed Crimea, "propped up" Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and meddled in the U.S. elections, "of course, he wants to 'move on,'" McFaul wrote. Becca Stanek

Two and a half years after leaving NBC, Ann Curry has announced she will be making her return to the small screen, Variety reports. Starting in 2018, Curry will host a new six-part series on PBS called We'll Meet Again.

We'll Meet Again will feature "reunions between people who have been affected by real-life events," Variety reports, including World War II, the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and the Sept. 11 attacks. Curry told Variety she signed onto the project quickly because she "had a sense of the potential depth of the stories."

Curry was unceremoniously dropped from NBC's Today show in 2012 and had been working in a separate production unit of NBC News until 2015. After she left NBC News, Curry founded her production company, Blink Films, which will co-produce We'll Meet Again. Kimberly Alters

President Trump has a gender gap problem. Hillary Clinton won among female voters by about 14 percent in November, and recent polling consistently shows the president is more popular among men.

That holds true among white evangelical Christians — some of Trump's most reliable supporters — with one key exception: White evangelical women in the millennial generation are actually more likely to back Trump (73 percent gave him their vote in 2016) than their male counterparts (60 percent voted Trump):

(Christianity Today)

"Christian conservative women are realizing their voice isn't being heard," says Kelsey Gold, a Trump supporter who recently graduated from Liberty University and coordinated a group called Young Women for America. "Most of us don't condone the rhetoric that Trump uses, but most support his policies," she added in comments for a piece exploring this unusual dynamic in Christianity Today.

Scott Waller, chair of the political science department at the evangelical Biola University, suggested Trump's positions on abortion and national security as plausible explanations for this "really interesting statistic that kind of defies the national trend." Waller argues Trump's "black-and-white description" of issues like terrorism and immigration might appeal to a "more traditional evangelical understanding that we're all naturally depraved [which] plays into a kind of need for government to restrain and protect." Bonnie Kristian

Summer wildfires have forced the evacuation of about 12,000 residents and vacationers in southern France this week as officials scramble to arrange temporary housing across the Côte d’Azur region. More than 4,000 firefighters have mobilized to fight the "apocalyptic" flames, which are visible from many beachside resorts.

"The sky was all red," one vacationing evacuee told France's Le Monde. "It was a huge blaze with enormous flames spreading everywhere."

Wildfires are also burning in nearby Corsica, Portugal, Italy, and Albania. Bonnie Kristian

President Trump has been publicly toying with Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week, referring to the top Justice official as "beleaguered," criticizing Sessions' decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, and professing from the White House Rose Garden that he is "disappointed" in the former Alabama senator.

But when asked about Sessions' future in the Trump administration, Trump demurred, saying, "Time will tell." Many of Sessions' former Republican colleagues have come to his defense, perhaps none more strongly than Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). While Graham said in a statement Tuesday that Sessions was "one of the most decent people I've ever met in my political life," he took his rhetoric a step further Wednesday by directly criticizing the president's "weakness."

"I would fire somebody that I did not believe could serve me well, rather than trying to humiliate them in public, which is a sign of weakness," Graham said:

In tweets early Tuesday morning, Trump had denounced Sessions for being "very weak" on Hillary Clinton's "crimes." Perhaps, per Graham's comments, it takes one to know one. Kimberly Alters

Rolling Stone on Wednesday published its latest cover story, a profile of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and the language is ... sympathetic. Very sympathetic. Here are 10 embarrassingly fawning lines from this love letter to "the north star," presented without further comment:

1. "His dark hair is a color found in nature."

2. "His words are coherent and will not need to be run through Google Translate when he is done (except if you want to translate his French into English)."

3. "Where are we? Narnia? Coachella recovery tent? 2009? We are in Ottawa, Ontario, a mere 560 miles from Washington, D.C. And yet, we are half a world away."

4. "Trudeau has a tat of a raven and, sigh, the planet Earth."

5. "[A]t times Trudeau and his young staff give off the aura of a well-meaning Netflix adaptation about a young, idealistic Canadian prime minister."

6. "Is he the free world's best hope?"

7. "Trudeau reminds me of, well, Obama as he smiles and listens patiently to me droning on about my Canadian wife as if it is actually interesting. For Trudeau, listening is seducing."

8. "Justin Trudeau is now the adult in the room."

9. "As we chat, he smiles and locks in with his blue eyes ... "

10. "Trudeau doesn't play golf; he snowboards. There is a real person inside him."

Read the full profile here. Bonnie Kristian

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) has been released from the hospital, roughly six weeks after being shot in the hip during an attack on a GOP congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia. Scalise was discharged Tuesday, MedStar Washington Hospital Center said in a statement Wednesday, after making "excellent process in his recovery."

MedStar said in its Wednesday statement that Scalise's injury was initially "life-threatening." The congressman is "in good spirits" and will now undergo a "period of intensive inpatient rehabilitation," the hospital said.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), the chief deputy whip, has been serving as House majority whip in Scalise's absence. Kimberly Alters

The United Kingdom will ban all sales of new gas- and diesel-powered vehicles beginning in 2040, the British environment secretary, Michael Gove, announced Wednesday. "We can't carry on with diesel and petrol cars," Gove said in a BBC interview. "There is no alternative to embracing new technology."

While demand for low-emission electric and hybrid vehicles is rapidly rising in Britain, they accounted for less than 3 percent of new car sales in the country in 2015. Still, the "timescale involved here is sufficiently long-term to be taken seriously," said David Bailey, an automotive industry expert at the U.K.'s Aston University. Gove's plan includes nearly $2 billion in government spending to incentivize the change.

Germany's Bundesrat in October approved a similar but non-binding ban on production of all new internal combustion engines by 2030; earlier this month, France implemented a binding measure that bans all new gas and diesel car sales. Like the U.K. rule, it takes effect in 2040. Bonnie Kristian