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Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Another provocative move: “The U.S. flew Air Force B-1 bombers near Venezuela on Thursday, stepping up pressure on President Nicolás Maduro only days after other American warplanes carried out an ‘attack demonstration’ near the South American country. Two B-1 Lancers took off from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas on Thursday and flew near Venezuela, though they remained in international airspace, according to a U.S. official and flight tracking data.”
* Shortly after I wrote about the eighth deadly U.S. military strike on civilian targets in international waters, the administration announced a ninth: “For the second time in two days, the Trump administration launched deadly strikes on a vessel suspected of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific, expanding its campaign beyond the Caribbean Sea, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said late Wednesday.”
* Several months overdue: “The Treasury Department announced new sanctions targeting Russia’s oil sector Wednesday, the day after President Donald Trump confirmed that a planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss Russia’s war with Ukraine was off.”
* Kim Jong Un apparently wants attention again: “North Korea performed its first ballistic missile tests in five months Wednesday, days before President Donald Trump and other leaders are expected to meet in South Korea.”
* It’s a fact that I’m still struggling to wrap my head around, but at least for now, the East Wing of the White House no longer exists.
* On the big list of “worst things the administration has done this year,” the abandonment of mRNA research is a top contender: “Covid-19 vaccines, credited with saving millions of lives during the pandemic, set off a powerful alarm that rallies the human immune system against cancer and nearly doubles the median survival length of patients, according to a new retrospective study by researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Florida.”
* Another step backward on human rights: “The US State Department has removed an online portal for reporting alleged human rights violations by foreign military units supplied with American weapons. The Human Rights Reporting Gateway (HRG) acted as a formal ‘tip line’ to the US government.”
* Details to remember the next time there’s a conversation about the parties and fiscal responsibility: “In the midst of a federal government shutdown, the U.S. government’s gross national debt surpassed $38 trillion Wednesday, a record number that highlights the accelerating accumulation of debt on America’s balance sheet. It’s also the fastest accumulation of a trillion dollars in debt outside of the COVID-19 pandemic — the U.S. hit $37 trillion in gross national debt in August this year.”
See you tomorrow.