Today’s edition of quick hits.
* In L.A.: “Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and several other L.A.-area mayors condemned the ICE raids happening in their region, saying residents are living in fear. … Bass slammed the Trump administration for trying to cause ‘fear and panic,’ adding that deploying military and National Guard troops was a ‘drastic and chaotic escalation and completely unnecessary.’”
* In related news: “A defense official said 700 Marines are mobilized and in the Los Angeles area but are not on city streets as part of Task Force 51. The official said some Marines could be sent out as early as today, but there are no orders to do so at this point. The Marines are still going through some basic training about the standard rules of force.”
* Donald Trump declared that a trade deal with China is “done,” but that wasn’t true: “While Mr. Trump described the agreement as a ‘deal,’ officials did not announce progress on any other trade issues, beyond rolling back the tit-for-tat measures taken against each other after Mr. Trump ratcheted up tariffs on Chinese products in early April.
* Similarly, the American president also claimed online that a federal appeals court ruled that his administration can “use tariffs to protect itself against other countries.” That wasn’t true, either.
* I’m not an attorney, but I’m hard-pressed to imagine how this could be legal: “U.S. military troops deployed to Los Angeles are allowed to temporarily detain individuals until law enforcement agents arrive to arrest them, a senior U.S. military official said on Wednesday.”
* Raise your hand if you saw this coming: “A reunion of the world’s richest man and its most powerful may not be imminent, but at least one of them has expressed his regrets as their relationship lies in ruins. Elon Musk said on X in the early hours of Wednesday that he ‘regrets’ some of the barbs he posted as he and President Donald Trump traded insults on social media, saying ‘they went too far.’”
* Sometimes, politically inconvenient images are real: ‘In the hours after the [San Francisco] Chronicle published two exclusive photos of California National Guard troops sleeping on the concrete floor of a Los Angeles federal building, a torrent of false claims and outright misinformation about the authenticity of the images hit social media.”
* Wait, you mean the Argentinian justices didn’t conclude that the country’s former president was above the law? “Argentina’s highest court upheld a six-year prison sentence for former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in a ruling Tuesday that permanently banned her from public office over the corruption conviction that found she had directed state contracts to a friend while she was the first lady and president.” * The right’s campaign against marriage equality is intensifying, not weakening: “The Southern Baptist Convention voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to call for the overturning of the Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage, with strategists citing the successful effort that overturned the right to legal abortions as a possible blueprint for the new fight.” * Harvard is not without allies: “Twenty four universities, including five Ivy League schools, and more than 12,000 alumni took measures to back Harvard University in its legal battle against the Trump administration, which has threatened it with slashing billions of dollars in grants.” * Following up on a story from earlier in the week: “Journalist Terry Moran is out at ABC News after he called top White House official Stephen Miller a ‘world-class hater’ whose ‘hatreds are his spiritual nourishment’ on social media. ABC News said Tuesday that it was not renewing Moran’s contract because of the post.” 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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