Today’s edition of quick hits:
* A major announcement: “The Biden administration on Wednesday came out in support of waiving intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines, a breakthrough for international efforts to suspend patent rules as the pandemic rages in India and South America.”
* A Trump-nominated judge issued this ruling: “A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national eviction moratorium aimed at helping victims of the pandemic hold onto their homes exceeds the agency’s authority and should be vacated.”
* Another Jan. 6 charge: “A soldier in the Wisconsin National Guard was charged Monday in connection with the Capitol riot Jan. 6, becoming the fourth service member linked to the violent attempt to thwart the certification of Joe Biden’s election as president.”
* Notable clarification: “Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Tuesday she is neither predicting nor recommending that the Federal Reserve raise interest rates as a result of President Biden’s spending plans, walking back her comments earlier in the day that rates might need to rise to keep the economy from overheating.”
* Across all of 2020, more active-duty police officers died of COVID-19 than all other causes combined. And yet: “Police officers were among the first front-line workers to gain priority access to coronavirus vaccines. But their vaccination rates are lower than or about the same as those of the general public, according to data made available by some of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies.”
* The images associated with this report are deeply unsettling: “The official calculation of what constitutes ‘normal’ U.S. climate has been updated — and to virtually nobody’s surprise, it’s a warmer picture than ever before.”
* Oh my: “Declaring Lubbock a ‘sanctuary city’ for the unborn, voters have approved a local ban on almost all abortions, and the Texas legislature is considering a law to bar the procedure as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.” * Responding to a lawsuit backed by Steven Miller: “Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Wednesday defended a provision in Biden’s sweeping $1.9 coronavirus relief bill that has drawn lawsuits from White farmers because much of the funding is earmarked for Black and other disadvantaged farmers.” * Quite a paragraph from Thomas Friedman’s latest column: “To be a leader in today’s G.O.P. you either have to play dumb or be dumb on the central issue facing our Republic: the integrity of our election. You have to accept everything that Trump has said about the election — without a shred of evidence — and ignore everything his own attorney general, F.B.I. director and election security director said — based on the evidence — that there was no substantive fraud. What kind of deformed party will such a dynamic produce? A party so willing to be marinated in such a baldfaced lie will lie about anything, including who wins the next election and every one after that.” See you tomorrow.
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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