Today’s edition of quick hits:
* A high-level delegation: “Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin slipped into Ukraine on Sunday for an extraordinary wartime meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, bringing new promises of military and diplomatic support and defying grave concerns about whether it was safe to make the journey.”
* In related news: “The U.S. hasn’t had an official ambassador to Ukraine since 2019, when former President Donald Trump removed Marie Yovanovitch from her role. After several years and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, President Biden says he plans to change that. On Monday, the White House announced Biden’s intention to nominate Bridget Brink to the position.”
* Putin’s ambitions: “U.S. and Ukrainian officials on Sunday discussed the possibility of Russian President Vladimir Putin expanding his invasion from the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine into the neighboring nation of Moldova — another former Soviet state and non-NATO member in Eastern Europe.”
* It’s tough to be optimistic about Twitter’s future: “Elon Musk is buying Twitter and taking it private. Twitter’s board of directors unanimously agreed to Musk’s offer to purchase the social media platform at a price of $44 billion, the company announced Monday. The deal brings arguably the internet’s most influential platform under the control of one of the world’s richest people.”
* We’ll see: “As news of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter broke on Monday, former President Trump declared that he remains loyal to his ‘TRUTH Social’ app even if his defunct Twitter account is reinstated by the world’s richest person.”
* SCOTUS: “The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed, who claims untested crime-scene evidence will help clear him. Reed was sentenced to death for the 1996 killing of 19-year-old Stacey Stites. Prosecutors say Reed raped and strangled Stites as she made her way to work at a supermarket in Bastrop, a rural community about 30 miles southeast of Austin.”
* A notable resignation in Bismark: “North Dakota’s longest-serving state senator announced Monday that he would resign following a report that he had traded scores of text messages with a man jailed on child pornography charges. Republican Ray Holmberg, who rose to become one of the state’s most powerful lawmakers in a career that spanned 46 years, said he would resign effective June 1.”
See you tomorrow.
