Today’s edition of quick hits:
* This isn’t the sort of record anyone should be proud to break: “The House broke for the weekend Friday, all but ensuring that the partial government shutdown would become the longest in U.S. history, while President Trump continued his efforts to sway public opinion on the need for a U.S.-Mexico border wall.”
* In case the administration’s position wasn’t muddled enough already: “The U.S.-led military coalition in Syria has begun the process of withdrawing troops from Syria, a U.S. military official said Friday, declining to comment on specific timetables or movements.”
* A little follow up following Rachel’s RBG segment from last night: “Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will return to work and needs no further medical treatment, the court said Friday.”
* Isn’t it a little late for this? “Rep. Steve King spoke on the House floor Friday to address what he referred to as ‘heartburn that seems to be churning across the media and America today’ after the New York Times quoted him questioning how labels like ‘white nationalists’ and ‘white supremacists’ became offensive.”
* At least a dozen Ukrainian political and business figures attended Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017, which “prompted interest from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, as he investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election, and has spawned a number of related inquiries by federal prosecutors.” * A case of interest: “Six families of victims killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School won a legal victory Friday in their fight against controversial radio and internet personality Alex Jones. A judge in Connecticut has granted the families’ discovery requests, allowing them access to, among other things, InfoWars’ internal marketing and financial documents.” * When this first crossed my radar a few days ago, I was skeptical it was real, but here we are: “The writer and animator Alex Hirsch on Thursday flagged a quirk of television history with an odd connection to present-day politics: In 1958, CBS aired an episode of the series ‘Trackdown’ called ‘The End of the World,’ in which a confidence man named Trump attempts to sell a western town a ‘wall’ — in the form of supposedly mystical parasols — to protect them from the fake threat of a meteor shower.” Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past." Recommended
