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Today’s edition of quick hits.
* An unsettling scene on Capitol Hill this afternoon: “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suddenly stopped speaking during a weekly Republican leadership news conference Wednesday afternoon, appearing to freeze, and then went silent and was walked away. ... A few minutes later, McConnell walked back to the news conference by himself. When asked about his health, he said he was fine.”
* The latest hike: “The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it had raised its key interest rate by 0.25% to as much as 5.5%, the highest level in 22 years, as it continues to fight persistent inflation in the U.S. economy.”
* In Ukraine: “The main thrust of Ukraine’s nearly two-month-old counteroffensive is now underway in the country’s southeast, two Pentagon officials said on Wednesday, with thousands of reinforcements pouring into the grinding battle, many of them trained and equipped by the West and, until now, held in reserve.”
* I feel real sympathy for the reporters who tried to keep up and explain today’s developments in this case: “Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to federal tax charges Wednesday after a plea deal he struck with the government unraveled when the judge raised questions about the terms of the agreement.”
* Even now, despite developments like these, too many Florida Republicans aren’t taking the climate crisis seriously: “On Monday, as much of the country stewed in bubbling heat, a boiling milestone was hit — a buoy in Florida registered a jaw-dropping 101.1 degrees Fahrenheit water temperature. This was on the heels of the same buoy in Manatee Bay registering 100.2 degrees on Sunday. For perspective, the average hot tub temperature is 100-102 degrees F.”
* This seems rather pointless, even by Jim Jordan standards: “The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is threatening to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress for failing to supply documents related to an investigation into supposed censorship by tech companies of conservatives.”
* It didn’t have to be this way: “Political divisions over vaccines may have caused ‘thousands’ of unnecessary deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new study, which found that registered Republicans in Ohio and Florida had a significantly higher excess death rate than Democrats — after vaccines became widely available.”
See you tomorrow.