By
Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Our latest mass school shooting: “Three children and three staff members were gunned down at a private Christian school in Nashville on Monday before the shooter, a heavily armed 28-year-old woman, was killed by police, authorities said.”
* Good questions: “A woman who survived the July 4th shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, gave an emotional plea after authorities announced three students and three staff members were killed in a shooting at a small private Christian elementary school in Nashville. Following a news conference with Metro Nashville Police, mother Ashbey Beasley turned to reporters and asked, ‘Aren’t you guys tired of covering this?’ She said she was on a family vacation in the area when she learned of the shooting. ... ‘How is this still happening? How are our children still dying and why are we failing them?’”
* Netanyahu hits pause: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed Monday evening to pause a divisive plan to overhaul the country’s judicial system until the next parliament session following widespread unrest in Israel.”
* The latest from the Manhattan grand jury: “The former publisher of The National Enquirer testified on Monday before the Manhattan grand jury investigating Donald J. Trump’s role in a hush-money payment to a porn star, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The publisher, David Pecker, also testified in January, soon after the grand jury was impaneled.”
* Korean Peninsula: “North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into its eastern waters Monday, continuing its weapons displays as the United States moved an aircraft carrier strike group to neighboring waters for military exercises with the South.”
* Nuclear deployments: “NATO called his rhetoric ‘dangerous and irresponsible,’ while Ukraine accused President Vladimir Putin of making Belarus a ‘nuclear hostage’ with his announcement that Russia was going to store tactical nuclear weapons in the country, which both nations border.”
* This Guo Wengui story is striking: “An exiled Chinese tycoon indicted in New York earlier this month in a billion-dollar fraud case controls the conservative social media platform Gettr and used it to promote cryptocurrencies and propaganda, former employees have told The Washington Post.”
* That’s quite a drop: “Elon Musk said Twitter is now worth about $20 billion, according to an email he sent the company’s employees on Friday, a significant drop from the $44 billion that he paid to buy the social network in October.”
* Tentative deal in L.A.: “The union representing 30,000 education workers reached a tentative deal with the Los Angeles Unified School District on Friday, following a three-day strike that had closed hundreds of campuses and canceled classes for 422,000 students earlier this week.”
* It appears Kyrsten Sinema’s opposition helped derail Washington’s nomination: “President Joe Biden’s choice to run the Federal Aviation Administration has withdrawn his nomination, a setback for the administration that comes after Denver International Airport CEO Phillip Washington appeared to lack enough support in the closely divided Senate.”
* Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear did the right thing, but the veto-override vote is still to come: “Kentucky’s Democratic governor issued an election-year veto Friday of a sweeping Republican bill aimed at regulating the lives of transgender youths that includes banning access to gender-affirming health care and restricting the bathrooms they can use.”
See you tomorrow.