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Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Fallout from Memphis, Part I: “The fallout from Tyre Nichols’ fatal beating continued Monday when the Memphis Police Department said a seventh police officer who responded was relieved of duty.”
* Fallout from Memphis, Part II: “Three EMTs who responded to the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols were fired Monday after an internal investigation, the Memphis Fire Department said Monday.”
* Infrastructure: “For more than a decade, commuters have watched as state and federal officials promised and failed to revamp the century-old rail tunnel connecting New Jersey to Midtown Manhattan, which has become a symbol of America’s aging infrastructure. During a trip to New York City on Tuesday, President Biden promoted his $1 trillion infrastructure package as the solution.”
* Classified docs: “The FBI searched the offices of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in mid-November after classified documents were discovered there, two senior law enforcement officials confirmed to NBC News on Tuesday. The officials said President Joe Biden’s lawyers cooperated with the search and no search warrants were used.”
* Inflation news: “Employment costs increased at a slower than expected pace in the fourth quarter, indicating that inflation pressures on business owners are at least leveling off.”
* Good news on the public health front: “The US public health emergency declaration for mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, ends Tuesday. The outbreak, which once seemed to be spiraling out of control, has quietly wound down. The virus isn’t completely gone, but for more than a month, the average number of daily new cases reported to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has hovered in the single digits, plummeting from an August peak of about 450 cases a day.”
* Remember those prices your paid at the pump? “The country’s largest oil companies made more money in 2022 than ever before, eclipsing windfalls of earlier years and making themselves a potential target for driver frustration as prices at the pump rise. ExxonMobil on Tuesday reported a record-smashing annual profit of $55.7 billion for 2022, soaring past its earlier record of $45 billion in 2008. The news comes just days after another American oil behemoth, Chevron, drew the ire of the White House when the company announced its biggest windfall ever, with $36.5 billion in profits for the year.”
* IRS: “Black taxpayers are at least three times as likely to be audited by the Internal Revenue Service as other taxpayers, even after accounting for the differences in the types of returns each group is most likely to file, a team of economists has concluded in one of the most detailed studies yet on race and the nation’s tax system.”
* The more Donald Trump insists Mar-a-Lago is a “highly secured facility,” the more we’re confronted with evidence to the contrary: “A 25-year-old man was arrested at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month after he was found wandering the property without authorization, just hours after being denied entry when he sought to speak with former President Donald Trump, according to federal and Palm Beach County court records.”
See you tomorrow.