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Today’s edition of quick hits.
* The latest on the Georgia school shooting: “The teenage suspect, who used an AR-style weapon in the shooting, surrendered immediately and will be charged as an adult, law enforcement officials said. He was taken into custody within minutes. The suspect was a new student at the school, having only been there for a partial day. The day of the shooting was his first full day at the school, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said. He was charged with four counts of murder today.”
* Difficult diplomacy: “A cease-fire between Israel and Hamas is ‘not close,’ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday, rejecting U.S. optimism over a deal and saying his red lines have become ‘redder’ in the wake of the killing of six hostages in Gaza. Speaking a day after a senior Biden administration official said a deal had been ‘ninety percent’ agreed, Netanyahu told the ‘Fox and Friends’ morning show that was ‘exactly inaccurate.’”
* In Central America: “Nicaragua’s dictatorial government on Thursday freed 135 political prisoners, including 13 members of a Texas-based evangelical Christian organization, in a secret operation negotiated by the Biden administration, officials announced. The prisoners, all Nicaraguan citizens, were flown to Guatemala and will be able to apply for U.S. legal status.”
* Investments like these matter: “President Joe Biden is returning to southwest Wisconsin to make good on his promise to provide new investments in rural electrification and other infrastructure improvements. Biden will be in Westby on Thursday to announce $7.3 billion in investments for 16 cooperatives that will provide electricity for rural areas across 23 states. The intent is to bring down the cost of badly needed electricity connections in hard-to-reach areas.”
* The latest trouble for Eric Adams: “FBI agents on Wednesday searched the homes of multiple top officials in the administration of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, two city officials said.”
* Because registering people to vote in Texas is bad? “Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas went to court on Wednesday to try to stop county leaders in San Antonio from sending out more than 200,000 voter registration applications to unregistered residents of Bexar County.”
* Retired U.S. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gets the final word on Donald Trump’s Arlington scandal: “To intrude upon that scene — to visit politics upon it — is to do much more than violate those rules; it is to betray the very nature of Arlington. It is to mock the apolitical nature of our military and to dishonor the sacrifices made by those who rest there. Worse, it may lead others to think less of those sacrifices, to view them as smaller than they actually were. And that’s a travesty, no matter what the visitor may have intended.”
* What could possibly go wrong? “The State Freedom Caucus Network is holding its first summit this week in Dallas, bringing together a dozen state Freedom Caucuses that represent their legislatures’ hard-line conservative Republicans. Andy Roth, a veteran GOP strategist who serves as president of the network, said the summit demonstrates how the conservative principles of the House Freedom Caucus have spread to legislatures across the U.S.”
See you tomorrow.