Today’s edition of quick hits:
* Gulf Coast: “Tropical Storm Nate is winding up to wallop the Gulf Coast this weekend. The latest NBC News forecast has the storm making landfall somewhere on the Mississippi or Alabama coasts sometime around 1 a.m. Sunday, possibly as a Category 1 hurricane.”
* The suspect was arrested before obtaining any weapons. “Federal authorities arrested a Canadian man this summer accused of an ISIS-inspired plot to attack music concerts, landmarks and crowded subway in New York City, according to multiple officials familiar with the case.”
* I assume I’m not the only one who found this unsettling: “President Trump said late Thursday that a meeting with his military leaders was ‘the calm before the storm,’ but what he meant by his ominous comment remained unclear, both to the press assembled in the room and to members of his own staff.”
* Donald Trump trying to say “Puerto Rico” in an affected Spanish accent, more than once, was unwise.
* Clearing a hurdle: “House Republicans passed crucial budget legislation Thursday, setting aside months of intraparty squabbles to set the stage for an ambitious tax-overhaul bill they are planning to pass without Democratic help.”
* There’s a reason Republicans are desperate to radicalize the courts: “The rapid-fire push by the Trump administration to wipe out significant chunks of the Obama environmental legacy is running into a not-so-minor complication: Judges keep ruling that the Trump team is violating federal law.”
* I guess the use of the word “moron” touched a nerve: “John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, abruptly scrapped plans to travel with President Donald Trump on Wednesday so he could try to contain his boss’s fury and manage the fallout from new revelations about tensions between the president and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, according to six senior administration officials.” * In case you missed Rachel’s segment on this: “In the latest case of an insider removing sensitive data from the nation’s largest intelligence agency, Russian hackers obtained classified documents that a National Security Agency employee had taken and stored on his home computer. Investigators believe the hackers may have penetrated the computer by exploiting Kaspersky Lab antivirus software, a Russian brand widely used around the world, that the employee was using, according to officials briefed on the matter.” * As best as I can tell, this isn’t a joke: “Ivana Trump, the first wife of President Trump and the mother of his three eldest children, is still close to her ex. Despite their tabloid-chronicled split, the pair still talk on a weekly basis, she said in a new interview, and he even offered her an ambassadorship to the Czech Republic, her native country — but she turned him down.” 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
