Today’s edition of quick hits.
* And so it begins: “President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, now for a landmark summit focused on ending the war in Ukraine. The two leaders did not answer shouted questions from the press as the meeting began.”
* Power grab in D.C., Part I: “Attorney General Pam Bondi further cemented the Trump administration’s takeover of D.C. law enforcement Thursday by shifting decision-making authority from its police chief and handing it to the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, drawing pushback from the city’s mayor. Mayor Muriel Bowser wrote in a post to X late Thursday that ‘there is no statute that conveys the District’s personnel authority to a federal official.’”
* Power grab in D.C., Part II: “Brian Schwalb, the attorney general for the District of Columbia, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington on Friday challenging the Trump administration’s takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department.”
* The two appellate judges who sided with the White House in this case are Trump appointees: “A federal appeals court paved the way for the Trump administration to move ahead with plans to decimate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, ruling 2 to 1 to throw out a lower court’s effort to block mass layoffs.”
* This was described as “provocative,” which seems to understate matters: “More than a dozen Border Patrol agents turned up in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday at a rally and news conference that Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding on congressional redistricting. The governor’s event had nothing to do with immigration, and local elected officials expressed outrage that the federal agents decided to stand there in a brazen show of force outside a museum where Mr. Newsom and other leaders were speaking.”
* In New Orleans: “New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell was indicted Friday on federal charges of defrauding the city while trying to keep her romantic relationship with a police officer a secret, prosecutors said. Cantrell is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to obstruct justice, making false statements and false declaration before a grand jury, according to a federal indictment filed Friday in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Louisiana.”
* More on this next week: “Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ousted three senior IRS executives this week responsible for online tax services and the scrutiny of tax-exempt organizations as the Trump administration asserts new control over the tax agency, according to three people familiar with the situation.”
* Hurricane Erin: “The first Atlantic hurricane of the year is here as Erin has strengthened to a Category 1 storm on Friday morning. Erin, swirling in the open water of the tropical Atlantic about 460 miles east of the Northern Leeward Islands, will strengthen over the next few days and could become a major hurricane by Sunday morning.”
Have a safe weekend.