Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Russia’s intensifying war in Ukraine: “Russia launched a sweeping overnight air attack on Ukraine that injured at least four railway workers and damaged critical infrastructure, Ukrainian authorities said on Wednesday.”
* A powerful event on Capitol Hill: “A group of Jeffrey Epstein accusers on Wednesday told emotional, gut-wrenching stories of sexual abuse at the hands of the late convicted sex offender and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, raising pressure on lawmakers to back the release of all of the files in the Justice Department’s years-long Epstein investigation.”
* The list of cities keeps growing: “President Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested he could deploy federal troops to New Orleans in his latest threat to use the federal government to crack down on crime in a Democrat-run city.”
* A closely watched case: “Google must hand over its search results and some data to rival companies but does not need to break itself up by selling its Chrome web browser, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. The decision, by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, falls short of the sweeping changes proposed by the government to rein in the power of Silicon Valley.”
* The administration’s latest legal setback: “A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated a Democrat who was fired by President Trump from the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year, dealing a blow to Mr. Trump’s monthslong attempt to permanently remove her from the consumer protection and antitrust enforcement agency.”
* There are some legitimate legal questions surrounding this deadly strike: “President Donald Trump said Tuesday the U.S. has carried out a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug-carrying vessel that departed from Venezuela and was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang.”
* It often seems as if the White House actually wants the climate crisis to get worse: “More than 85 American and international scientists have condemned a Trump administration report that calls the threat of climate change overblown, saying the analysis is riddled with errors, misrepresentations and cherry-picked data to fit the president’s political agenda. The scientists submitted their critique as part of a public comment period on the report, which was to close Tuesday night.”
* All is not well at the FDA: “Paul Offit, a pediatrician who has sparred with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over childhood vaccination, has been blocked from participating in a vaccine advisory committee for the Food and Drug Administration.” * All is not well at the CDC, either: “For the past few years, a small team of health scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been tasked with answering basic statistical questions like: Who is drowning? Where is it happening — in lakes, rivers, swimming pools? And what works to prevent it? The team was starting to answer some of those questions when it was put on administrative leave in April, according to two former CDC officials familiar with the program.” * Well, this ought to be interesting: “Newsmax filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing conservative media giant Fox News of acting as a monopoly and suppressing its right-leaning competitors.” 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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