Today’s edition of quick hits.
* A brutal mission: “A recovery mission is underway for the bodies of six people after Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed when it was struck by the container ship dali at 1:28 a.m. yesterday. The mission will be made harder by heavy rain, patchy fog and temperatures in the 40s. The six missing people, all presumed dead, are construction workers who were on the bridge filling potholes.”
* Buttigieg faces a question for which there is no good answer: “Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that he can’t estimate yet when the Port of Baltimore will be reopened. During a White House briefing today, he was asked by reporters several times if it would take days, weeks or months to resume operations at the port and he declined to answer. He noted that $100 million to $200 million of value comes through the port daily and officials are most concerned about the impact on workers’ wages, which he said is about $2 million daily.”
* Texas’ SB4: “A federal appeals court early Wednesday extended its hold on a new Texas immigration law, meaning the measure cannot go into effect while litigation continues. A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a 2-1 vote said in a decision issued overnight that the statute, known as Senate Bill 4, should remain blocked.”
* The quiet end of a case I’ve been following for a while: “Allies of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Disney reached a settlement agreement Wednesday in a lawsuit over who controls Walt Disney World’s governing district. In a meeting, the members of the board of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District approved the settlement agreement, ending almost two years of litigation that was sparked by DeSantis’ takeover of the district from Disney supporters following the company’s opposition to Florida’s so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law.”
* Following up on a story from last week: “Talks have restarted aimed at bringing top Israeli officials to Washington to discuss potential military operations in Gaza, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a planned visit this week because he was angry about the U.S. vote on a U.N. cease-fire resolution, the White House said Wednesday.”
* Energy policy: “The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it had agreed to provide a $1.52 billion loan guarantee to help a company restart a nuclear power plant in Michigan — the latest step in the government’s effort to revive the nation’s reactors.”
* An angle to the climate crisis I hadn’t thought about: “Climate change is messing with time itself. The melting of polar ice due to global warming is affecting Earth’s rotation and could have an impact on precision timekeeping, according to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature.”
* In the unlikely event that you missed this news from roughly 24 hours ago: “NBC News has reversed its decision to hire former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as a political analyst after network executives faced a chorus of fierce on-air criticism.”
See you tomorrow.
