Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Set your calendars for March 25: The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial on Thursday denied his bid to dismiss the charges against him and ordered his trial to proceed as scheduled next month. ... He said he expected the trial would last about six weeks.”
* In Atlanta: “Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis took the stand and denied allegations that Trump and one of his co-defendants made against her and the special counsel in the Georgia election interference case.”
* The latest on the mass shooting in Kansas City: “Officials say that they do not believe the motive was terrorism and that the shooting was the result of a ‘dispute between several people.’”
* Yesterday’s other mass shooting: “Four students were shot in the parking lot of an Atlanta high school on Wednesday afternoon, the police said, in the latest burst of gun violence on an American school campus.”
* Behind the scenes: “President Biden’s top attorneys exchanged confrontational letters with top Justice Department officials before and after last week’s explosive report from special counsel Robert K. Hur, contending that Hur’s comments ‘openly, obviously, and blatantly violate Department policy and practice.’”
* I have a hunch a Trump administration wouldn’t have made this decision: “President Biden on Wednesday shielded thousands of Palestinians in the United States from deportation for the next 18 months, using an obscure immigration authority as he faces mounting criticism over U.S. support for Israel in the Gaza war.”
* For the record, despite some wildly wrong political rhetoric you might’ve heard, the United States is #1 on this list by a wide margin: “Japan has lost its spot as the world’s third-largest economy to Germany, as the Asian giant unexpectedly slipped into recession.”
* There should be an honest conversation with the public about why this is happening: “Serious threats to U.S. federal judges have more than doubled over the past three years, part of a growing wave of politically driven violence, according to U.S. Marshals Service data reviewed by Reuters. The agency, responsible for the protection of 2,700 federal judges and more than 30,000 federal prosecutors and other court personnel, has seen a sharp rise in threats related to the country’s bitter political divisions, Marshals Director Ronald Davis told Reuters in a recent interview.”
* Good news for the Trump Media and Technology Group: “The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the merger proposal of former president Donald Trump’s media start-up with a special purpose acquisition company, a critical step for a long-delayed deal that would make the owner of Trump’s website Truth Social a publicly traded company and unlock $300 million in investor funds.”
See you tomorrow.