Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Taking the Russian threat seriously: “The European Union says it will race to build a ‘drone wall’ along its borders with Russia and Ukraine after a spate of drone incidents in NATO airspace exposed the vulnerability of the U.S.-led alliance to cheap, highly lethal weaponry that has changed the nature of warfare.”
* An update on last week’s mass shooting in Dallas: “A second detainee shot in an attack on a Dallas immigration field office last week has died, his family said Tuesday. In a statement shared by the League of United Latin American Citizens, the family confirmed that Miguel Ángel García-Hernández, 32, succumbed to his injuries after being removed from life support.”
* SCOTUS news: “The Supreme Court has set a January hearing to consider whether President Donald Trump can fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. In doing so, the court put off deciding immediately whether to let Trump keep her off the board while her lawsuit proceeds against his bid to fire her. That means Cook stays on the board for now, pending further action from the high court.”
* The anti-climate administration: “The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it planned to relax a Biden-era rule that requires grocery stores, air-conditioning companies, semiconductor plants and others to sharply and rapidly reduce some powerful greenhouse gases used in cooling equipment. The Environmental Protection Agency plan would unravel what many industry leaders and environmentalists view as a rare success for the climate: a bipartisan agreement that those man-made chemicals, known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, should be rapidly phased down.”
* Welcome news out of Nevada: “A federal judge on Tuesday disqualified Nevada’s top federal prosecutor from handling cases, a rebuke to the Trump administration’s attempts to circumvent federal appointment procedures put in place by Congress. Judge David G. Campbell of the Federal District Court in Arizona, who was temporarily assigned to handle the case in Nevada, said that the prosecutor, Sigal Chattah, was ‘not validly serving as acting U.S. attorney’ and that her involvement in cases ‘would be unlawful.’”
* Speaking of federal prosecutors: “In the past month or so, federal prosecutors in Washington have been repeatedly embarrassed as nearly a dozen grand juries have rejected their efforts to secure indictments against people caught up in President Trump’s plan to use federal troops and agents to crack down on local crime.” * A case I’ve been following: “A Texas federal judge late Tuesday declined to dismiss a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration seeking to sharply restrict the abortion pill mifepristone, instead transferring the case to Missouri and keeping the effort alive. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that Idaho, Missouri and Kansas — which were not the original plaintiffs — have no ties to Amarillo, Texas, where the original lawsuit was filed.” * I’m glad a plurality of Americans noticed: “Forty-three percent of Americans think the current Supreme Court is too conservative. Though that proportion is not meaningfully different from 2022-2024 readings, it is the highest Gallup has measured by one percentage point. The remainder of Americans are more inclined to say the court is ‘about right’ (36%) rather than ‘too liberal’ (17%).” 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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