Today’s edition of quick hits.
* The more the climate crisis intensifies, the more we can expect weeks like these: “First the river rose in Texas. Then, the rains fell hard over North Carolina, New Mexico and Illinois. In less than a week, there were at least four 1-in-1,000-year rainfall events across the United States — intense deluges that are thought to have roughly a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year.”
* Does Trump still want to vouch for Putin’s interest in peace? “Russia launched more aerial attacks on Ukraine in June than in any other month of the war so far, causing the highest number of civilians killed or wounded since the conflict broke out more than three years ago, according to a tally by the United Nations and independent researchers.”
* At the State Department: “U.S. diplomats in Washington are bracing for cuts to the State Department workforce, with dismissal notices expected to hit inboxes as soon as Friday, according to three State Department officials with knowledge of the plans. The layoffs are part of a mass reorganization of the federal agency, including the dissolution or merging of more than 300 bureaus and offices and a 15% reduction in employees.”
* “Obliterated” was clearly the wrong choice of words: “Israel has concluded that some of Iran’s underground stockpile of near-bomb-grade enriched uranium survived American and Israeli attacks last month and may be accessible to Iranian nuclear engineers, according to a senior Israeli official.”
* The justice isn’t the only one thinking along these lines: “Ketanji Brown Jackson may be the most junior justice on the Supreme Court, but she has no qualms about making her voice heard. The Biden appointee offered a blunt response when asked Thursday what keeps her up at night. ‘Um, I would say the state of our democracy,’ Jackson said, drawing applause from the audience at the Indianapolis Bar Association event.”
* The gap between the Roman Catholic Church and the Republican Party’s anti-immigration agenda keeps growing: “The Archdiocese of Miami is condemning a controversial migrant detention facility in Florida — which state officials have named ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ — calling it ‘unbecoming of public officials’ and ‘corrosive of the common good.’”
* The first such death in nearly two decades: “A person in northern Arizona has died from a case of pneumonic plague, local health officials said. The unidentified patient, from Coconino County, showed up to the Flagstaff Medical Center Emergency Department and died there the same day, Northern Arizona Healthcare said in a statement.”
* Noted without comment: “A federal judge ordered two attorneys representing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in a Colorado defamation case to pay $3,000 each after they used artificial intelligence to prepare a court filing filled with a host of mistakes and citations of cases that didn’t exist.”
Have a safe weekend.