Monday's Mini-Report, 5.1.17

Today's edition of quick hits:* Iraq: "An American service member was killed in an explosion on Saturday near Mosul, Iraq, the Pentagon said, as part of the battle to drive Islamic State fighters out of their last major stronghold in the country."* Deadly storms: "The severe storms and tornadoes that battered the South over the weekend have now claimed more than a dozen lives and scores more injured -- as the central U.S. braced for record flooding on Monday."* North Korea "launched a missile on Saturday, even as the United States and China have been seeking to curb the North's military ambitions. But the test ended in failure, the South Korean military said. It was the second consecutive failure in the past two weeks."* Despite all kinds of chatter about the House getting ready to pass the Republican health care bill, Donald Trump said today the bill is "not in its final form right now." Sean Spicer added today, "We're not there yet."* File this away, in case things get weird later in the week: the president said this afternoon he's "very happy with" the current funding deal, reached over the weekend, which largely ignores the White House's requests.* Remember, Trump congratulated Turkey on effectively ending its democracy: "If you try to open Wikipedia in Turkey right now, you'll turn up a swirling loading icon, then a message that the server timed out. Turkey has blocked Wikipedia. " The site has been labeled a security threat.* It's about time: "The White House is quietly starting to pull the plug on its shadow Cabinet of Trump loyalists who had been dispatched to federal agencies to serve as the president's eyes and ears."* Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) "has postponed nine executions until a federal appeals court decides whether the state should be allowed to use a controversial drug that has been blamed for complications in other lethal injections -- including one in Arkansas last week."* A case worth watching: "A Florida woman is formally appealing the settlement of civil fraud suits over the Trump University real estate seminar program, potentially tangling the $25 million deal in months or years of further litigation."Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.