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Today’s edition of quick hits.
* The Kilmar Abrego Garcia case: “Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Monday temporarily blocked a trial judge’s order directing the United States to return a Salvadoran migrant it had inadvertently deported. The chief justice, acting on his own, issued an “administrative stay,” an interim measure meant to give the justices some breathing room while the full court considers the matter. He ordered the migrant’s lawyers to file their brief on Tuesday.”
* On a related note: “A Justice Department attorney who struggled in court Friday to explain the Trump administration’s deportation of a Maryland man to El Salvador has been placed on administrative leave, a department official said. At the hearing, the government attorney, Erez Reuveni, expressed frustration over not having the information the judge was seeking in the case of the deported man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and made it clear he wasn’t getting much help from his superiors.”
* A discouraging assessment: “The world’s biggest investor thinks an economic slowdown is already here. ‘Most CEOs I talk to would say we are probably in a recession right now,’ BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said Monday afternoon at an Economic Club of New York luncheon.”
* The latest USAID firings: “Three U.S. aid workers were laid off while in Myanmar helping the rescue and recovery from the country’s massive earthquake, a former senior staffer said, as the Trump administration’s dismantling of foreign aid affects its disaster response.”
* The administration vs. veterans, redux: “The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs said Thursday that it will end a mortgage-rescue program designed to help veterans who have fallen behind on their mortgages keep their homes.”
* The United States has just lost its ability to detect drug-resistant gonorrhea: “Among the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees fired on Tuesday were 77 scientists who, among other work, gathered samples of gonorrhea and other S.T.I.s from labs nationwide, analyzed the genetic information for signs of drug resistance, and readied the samples for storage at a secure facility. No other researchers at the agency have the expertise, or the software, to continue this work.”
* Obesity treatment: “Medicare and Medicaid will not cover blockbuster drugs such as Ozempic to treat obesity, the Trump administration announced on Friday. The Biden administration in November proposed allowing the public insurance programs to expand coverage of the anti-obesity medications but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services now says that is ‘not appropriate at this time.’”
* Opening national forests to logging: “The Trump administration has removed environmental protections covering more than half of the land managed by the U.S. Forest Service as part of the president’s aim to significantly bolster the U.S. logging industry.”
* There’s reason to worry about Social Security: “Retirees and disabled people are facing chronic website outages and other access problems as they attempt to log in to their online Social Security accounts, even as they are being directed to do more of their business with the agency online.”
* There are too many stories like these: “For years, a National Park Service webpage introduced the Underground Railroad with a large photograph of its most famous ‘conductor,’ Harriet Tubman. ‘The Underground Railroad — the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil War — refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage,’ the page began. Tubman’s photograph is now gone.”
See you tomorrow.