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Wednesday's Mini-Report, 7.28.21

Today's edition of quick hits.

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Today's edition of quick hits:

* I'll have more on this in the morning: "Key senators negotiating a bipartisan infrastructure bill announced Wednesday they have reached a deal with Democrats and the White House, possibly setting up a vote later in the day."

* Good: "President Biden will formally announce on Thursday that all civilian federal employees must be vaccinated against the coronavirus or be forced to submit to regular testing, social distancing, mask requirements and restrictions on most travel, two people familiar with the president's plans said Wednesday."

* It doesn't have to be this way: "On average, blue counties are seeing 10.2 new cases for every 100,000 residents, while red counties are seeing 19.5 new cases per 100,000 residents. If we break every county in deciles of 2020 vote and rates of completed vaccinations — that is, 10 groups of about 300 counties apiece, ranked by vote or vaccination levels — we can see how partisanship and vaccination levels overlap."

* It was an exceedingly odd debacle: "Just as the House select committee on Jan. 6 wrapped up its first hearing Thursday, a handful of Trump's greatest Big Lie adherents attempted to hold a press conference outside the DOJ to call out the treatment of jailed insurrectionists, whom they deem 'political prisoners.' It didn't last long."

* This wasn't the first transgression: "The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it had seized a rare, ancient tablet that was sold to Hobby Lobby through an auction house under false pretenses. A federal court in Brooklyn, New York, ordered the forfeiture of a rare cuneiform tablet bearing a portion of the 'Epic of Gilgamesh,' a historic poem with roots in ancient Mesopotamia."

* Quite a story: "It was 11:30 a.m. on March 19, 2015, and the klansmen were celebrating what they thought was a successful murder in Florida. But the FBI had gotten wind of the murder plot. A confidential informant had infiltrated the group, and his recordings provide a rare, detailed look at the inner workings of a modern klan cell and a domestic terrorism probe. That investigation would unearth another secret: An unknown number of klansmen were working inside the Florida Department of Corrections, with significant power over inmates, Black and white."

See you tomorrow.