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Today’s edition of quick hits.
* A climbing death toll: “The death toll in Monday’s massive earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria climbed to 7,266 Tuesday, according to officials in both countries. In Turkey, at least 5,434 people were killed and 22,168 injured, according to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Some 8,000 people have been rescued from the rubble. In Syria, at least 812 people were killed, with another 1,832 injured, in the affected areas, according to the Syrian Health Ministry.”
* Ukraine is chipping in: “War-ravaged Ukraine will send an 87-strong search and rescue team to Turkey to ‘help eliminate the consequences’ of the earthquake. The announcement came in a decree published on the Ukrainian Cabinet office’s website Tuesday.”
* At the border: “The number of encounters U.S. Border Patrol agents had with undocumented immigrants crossing the southern border between legal ports of entry dipped below 130,000 in January, their lowest monthly number in two years, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security.”
* A rare change to the Biden White House cabinet: “Labor Secretary Marty Walsh is leaving the Biden administration to become head of the National Hockey League Players Association, two sources told NBC News. Walsh, a former Boston mayor and union president, is expected to step down from his post in the near future for his new job, which was first reported by the Daily Faceoff, a hockey news website.”
* Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told Congress to promptly raise the debt ceiling: “This really can end one way, and that is with Congress raising its debt limit in a timely fashion so that the U.S. can pay all of its bills,” Powell said. “If that doesn’t happen, no one should think that the Fed has the ability to shield the financial markets or the economy from the consequences of moving too slow.”
* Nearly every day, we’re reminded of how dangerously wrong Trump was to abandon the JCPOA policy: “The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog on Tuesday underscored the urgency of resuscitating diplomatic efforts to limit Iran’s nuclear program, saying the situation could quickly worsen if negotiations fail. Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the diplomatic effort ‘is not at its best point,’ but it wasn’t his place to declare whether the process was ‘dead or alive.’ However, he said progress is not impossible.”
* Remember the Supreme Court case about the so-called independent state legislature theory? Take a look at this piece from Jordan Rubin about developments in North Carolina: “[T]hat case, which is awaiting decision after argument in December, could become moot. Why is that? Well, another court is giving the Supreme Court a run for its money on partisanship.”
See you tomorrow.