Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Deadly strike #22: “U.S. Southern Command said Thursday that the Defense Department carried out another ‘lethal kinetic strike’ at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s direction on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean that killed four men. … It’s the 22nd military strike reported by the Trump administration against alleged drug-carrying boats in recent months.”
* This case isn’t over just yet, but the administration’s failures are humiliating: “A federal grand jury decided not to reindict New York Attorney General Letitia James on Thursday on charges of mortgage fraud, according to two law enforcement people briefed on the case.”
* Republican-appointed justices do the GOP yet another important favor: “The Supreme Court sided with Texas over civil rights groups in an emergency appeal over the Donald Trump-backed congressional map that aimed to benefit Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.”
* Speaking of the high court: “The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review President Donald Trump’s bid to upend birthright citizenship. A ruling for the government would discard the long-held understanding of automatic citizenship for people born in the U.S., regardless of their parents’ immigration status.”
* Inflation news: “The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, released Friday, showed that it had risen 2.8% in September from a year ago. The personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, index measures consumer spending on goods and services. It accounts for about two-thirds of nationwide spending and is a significant part of national economic output.”
* The geopolitical significance of such a warning matters: “French President Emmanuel Macron warned the U.S. could be about to ‘betray’ Ukraine, according to a leaked transcript of a call between European leaders strategizing about how to protect Kyiv.”
* Trump-appointed judges: “President Donald Trump may remove members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board at will, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The 2-1 decision from a panel of judges in Washington, D.C., reverses lower-court rulings blocking Trump’s attempts to fire members of the key labor and employment panels.”
* Epstein case: “A federal judge in Florida on Friday ordered the release of grand jury transcripts from the federal sex trafficking cases of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith said a recently passed federal law ordering the release of records related to the cases overrode a federal rule prohibiting the release of matters before a grand jury.”
* Elon’s latest loss: The Trump administration’s ultimatum to stop regulating social media platforms in exchange for tariff relief does not appear to have persuaded officials with the European Union. On Friday, Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, was hit with a $140 million fine for violating the EU’s Digital Services Act, a set of transparency laws designed to curb the corrosive powers of tech platforms like social media sites.”
* A story out of Oregon, from off the beaten path, that we’ve been monitoring: “The Trump administration has reversed plans to remove a U.S. Coast Guard rescue helicopter from a fishing and crabbing community in Oregon, lawmakers said Thursday, after facing uproar from worried residents and a temporary restraining order by a federal judge.”
* I’ll never understand why anyone thought this was a good idea: “Meta Platforms is planning cuts to the metaverse, an arena Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg once called the future of the company. … Meta has seen operating losses of more than $77 billion since 2020 in its Reality Labs division, which includes its metaverse work.”
Have a safe weekend.
