Today’s edition of quick hits.
* What a fiasco: “A federal judge has ruled that Lindsey Halligan was unlawfully appointed as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, leading the judge to dismiss the indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. The indictments are dismissed ‘without prejudice,’ meaning they could theoretically be brought again by a lawful prosecutor.”
* In the Middle East: “Israel on Sunday struck Lebanon’s capital for the first time since June, saying it killed Hezbollah’s chief of staff Haytham Tabtabai and warning the Iran-backed militant group not to rearm and rebuild a year after their latest war. The strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed five people and wounded 25 others, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.”
* Speaking of the Middle East, Iran is facing a different kind of crisis: “A staggering water shortage this year is throwing Iran’s future livability into question, with dozens of dams close to empty, residents of Tehran facing the possibility of running out of water within weeks and the president even floating the idea of evacuating the capital, though it is unclear where those millions of people would go.”
* Negotiations at COP31 did not exactly produce any breakthroughs: “Almost 200 countries gathered in Brazil acknowledged Saturday that their efforts to stop calamitous global warming were off pace — but geopolitical headwinds and fossil-fuel-producing countries snuffed out hopes of a meaningful commitment to move faster.”
* The White House’s offensive against TPS shields is ongoing and multifaceted: “President Donald Trump’s pledge to terminate temporary legal protections for Somalis living in Minnesota is triggering fear in the state’s deeply-rooted immigrant community, along with doubts about whether the White House has the legal authority to enact the directive as described.”
* In Brasilia: “Brazil’s federal police on Saturday arrested former president Jair Bolsonaro over suspicion he was plotting to escape and avoid starting a 27-year prison sentence for leading a coup attempt. The decision laid bare some of the country’s divisions, with many uncorking Champagne outside the far-right leader’s prison to celebrate as his supporters prepared a religious act in his favor.”
* A case we’ve been following: “Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is preparing to ask the state’s Supreme Court to revive her criminal case against a long list of Donald Trump’s top allies in his bid to subvert the 2020 election. Mayes’ case has been on hold for months after the trial judge ruled the indictment she obtained was flawed because grand jurors were not shown the precise text of the law the defendants had allegedly broken.”
* All is not well at the platform formally known as Twitter: “An alleged effort to promote ‘transparency’ on Elon Musk’s social media platform X recently exposed one of the worst-kept secrets of the MAGA movement: the raft of pro-Trump accounts apparently controlled by foreigners.”
See you tomorrow.
