Today’s edition of quick hits:
* Imagine if you’d knew this was coming when the crisis began: “An NBC News tally has confirmed more than 700,000 deaths from the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic…. It took the United States 119 days to go from 600,000 deaths to more than 700,000 deaths.”
* He’s fully vaccinated: “Justice Brett Kavanaugh has tested positive for Covid-19 but has no symptoms, the Supreme Court said Friday.”
* Texas’ abortion ban: “Lawyers for the Justice Department appeared in federal court on Friday to ask a judge to block Texas’s restrictive abortion law, arguing it’s ‘in open defiance of the Constitution.’”
* Korean Peninsula: “North Korea said on Friday that it had test-launched a newly developed antiaircraft missile, carrying out the latest in a flurry of weapons tests in recent weeks even as it has declared an openness to dialogue with the South.”
* Following up on a story from earlier in the week: “The Austin Fire Department Arson Investigators and the FBI are announcing an arrest in an incident involving a person who tried to vandalize and start a fire at the Travis County Democratic Party Headquarters earlier this week.”
* All 50 Senate Republicans voted the wrong way: “The evenly divided Senate narrowly turned back a Republican amendment Thursday that sought to curtail assistance to Afghan refugees who were rapidly evacuated to the United States and that would have made it more difficult for them to obtain Real IDs.”
* Confirmation news: “The Senate narrowly approved Tracy Stone-Manning on Thursday to lead the Bureau of Land Management, capping months of efforts by Republican lawmakers to block her confirmation because of her connection to a decades-old tree spiking incident. Ms. Stone-Manning was approved 50-45 along party lines late Thursday evening.” * I’ll look forward to seeing how severe the damages are: “Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones may have to pay a fortune in damages to the parents of two children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre after he failed to produce evidence to back up lies he spread calling the 2012 shooting a “giant hoax,” according to court documents unsealed Thursday.” * The end of an error: “Pat Robertson, who turned a tiny Virginia television station into a global religious broadcasting network, is stepping down after a half-century running the ‘700 Club’ on daily TV, the Christian Broadcasting Network announced on Friday. Robertson, 91, said in a statement that he hosted the network’s flagship program for the last time on Friday, and that his son Gordon Peterson will take over the weekday show starting on Monday.” Have a safe weekend.
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."
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