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Today's edition of quick hits:
* Vaccine news from the CDC: "People shouldn’t get the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine when the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots are available, an advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday."
* The latest increase in Covid-19 cases: "The country is reporting more than 120,000 new cases a day on average, according to a New York Times database — a 40 percent increase from two weeks ago, and 70 percent more than when cases stopped falling in early November."
* A difficult process: "The Biden administration walked away from negotiations to financially compensate families separated at the border by the Trump administration, three lawyers for the families told NBC News on Thursday."
* Climate crisis: "An Antarctic ice shelf could crack and disintegrate within the next decade, allowing a Florida-sized glacier to slide into the ocean and raising sea levels by feet, scientists warned Wednesday."
* At the White House today: "An Army sergeant who helped rescue six soldiers out of a burning vehicle in Iraq despite being engulfed in flames himself was one of three soldiers awarded the Medal of Honor on Thursday by President Joe Biden."
* An important initiative: "President Joe Biden promised his infrastructure proposal would replace every lead pipe in the country. Now the White House says it has a plan to deliver, despite a significant funding gap."
* Supply chain: "In a bid to improve the nation's ongoing supply chain problems, the White House on Thursday announced a plan to recruit and train a new generation of truck drivers to bolster an industry that's been stretched thin during the pandemic."
* A notable development on Texas' S.B. 8 abortion ban: "The Supreme Court returned the lawsuit over Texas’s restrictive abortion law to a federal appeals court Thursday, rejecting a request by abortion providers to send the case to a district judge who had previously declared the law unconstitutional. The order came from Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who last week wrote the majority opinion that left in place the law, which bans most abortions after six weeks. The decision granted a narrow path for providers to challenge the law’s unique enforcement structure."
See you tomorrow.