February 29 2024
Leap Day
FLASH Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell to step down in November
1 Supreme Court to hear Trump appeal
2 Lawmakers agree to stopgap funding bill, preventing govt shutdown
3 US Army redesigns force for future wars
4 Ukraine on the retreat
5 OPINION Friedman: Israel and US losing world’s goodwill
2/29/1976 Ja Rule was born on Leap Day, making him 13 today
see ad astra on x @greg_loving
1 Supreme Court to hear Trump appeal
Donald Trump’s federal trial for seeking to subvert the 2020 election is likely to remain on hold for several more months while the Supreme Court takes up his argument that he is immune from prosecution for actions he took while president. In a one-page order Wednesday, the court set an expedited schedule to hear the immunity issue, with oral arguments to be set during the week of April 22. In the meantime, proceedings in the trial court will remain frozen.
There was no noted dissent or other explanation of the high court’s action. If the court rules on the matter quickly after the arguments and rejects Trump’s immunity claim, it may permit a trial on the election-related charges to occur later this summer or fall. But the court’s decision to keep the pretrial proceedings frozen is a blow to special counsel Jack Smith’s effort to bring Trump to trial this year.
Trump claims that, as a former president, he enjoys broad immunity from criminal prosecution for acts taken while in office. Lower courts have rejected that claim, but proceedings in the trial court have been paused for more than two months while Trump has litigated the novel immunity question. If they ultimately rule that Trump has immunity, the charges will be thrown out. If they deny the immunity bid by the end of their term in June, it may still be possible for the trial judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, to schedule a trial to begin in late summer or fall. The timing of the justices’ eventual ruling could be critical since Chutkan has vowed to give Trump roughly three additional months to prepare for trial if the case is returned to her courtroom. That hypothetical schedule would guarantee that much of Trump’s general election calendar is consumed by his mandatory presence in the courtroom, perhaps overlapping with the Republican National Convention or even Election Day itself.
The trial, if it happens, is expected to last several months. It’s the second case this term that the justices have agreed to take on an emergency basis at Trump’s request. Earlier this month, they heard arguments on Trump’s effort to overturn a Colorado Supreme Court decision that he is disqualified from the ballot there as an insurrectionist due to his role in fomenting the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. The justices seemed skeptical of the Colorado court’s decision but have yet to issue a ruling on the question.
Politico
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/28/supreme-court-trump-immunity-00143985
2 Lawmakers agree to stopgap funding bill, preventing govt shutdown
Congressional leaders said on Wednesday they had agreed to another short-term stopgap spending bill to head off a partial government shutdown at the end of the week, paving the way for a temporary path out of a stalemate that has repeatedly threatened federal funding over the past six months. The deal, initially floated by Speaker Mike Johnson, would extend funding for some government agencies for a week, through March 8, and the rest for another two weeks, until March 22. The leaders said they had come to an agreement on six of the 12 annual spending bills that would “be voted on and enacted prior to March 8.” The stopgap measure was necessary, they said, to allow appropriators “adequate time to execute on this deal in principle,” and to allow lawmakers review its text.
NYT
3 US Army redesigns force for future wars
The U.S. Army is slashing the size of its force by about 24,000, or almost 5%, and restructuring to be better able to fight the next major war, as the service struggles with recruiting shortfalls that made it impossible to bring in enough soldiers to fill all the jobs. The cuts will mainly be in already-empty posts — not actual soldiers — including in jobs related to counterinsurgency that swelled during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars but are not needed as much today. About 3,000 of the cuts would come from Army special operations forces. At the same time, however, the plan will add about 7,500 troops in other critical missions, including air-defense and counter-drone units and five new task forces around the world with enhanced cyber, intelligence and long-range strike capabilities.
AP
https://apnews.com/article/9f2f41cbe512f6330ce6008709e3435b
4 Ukraine on the retreat
Ukrainian troops have pulled out of a village in the east of the country, an army spokesman said Monday, as Russian forces display advantages in manpower and ammunition on the battlefield at the start of the war ’s third year. The latest setback for Kyiv’s soldiers was in the village of Lastochkyne, where they fell back to nearby villages in an attempt to hold the line there, Dmytro Lykhovii, a spokesman for one of the Ukrainian troop groupings, said on national television. Lastochkyne lies to the west of Avdiivka, a suburb of Donetsk city that the Kremlin‘s forces captured on Feb. 18 after a four-month battle. The outnumbered defenders were overwhelmed by Moscow’s military might, and Ukraine chose to pull out its troops and mount a defense elsewhere.
AP
https://apnews.com/article/ae2da8175d4307eb65090efecc7aa7c0
5 OPINION Friedman: Israel and US losing world’s goodwill
I don’t think Israelis or the Biden administration fully appreciate the rage that is bubbling up around the world, fueled by social media and TV footage, over the deaths of so many thousands of Palestinian civilians, particularly children, with U.S.-supplied weapons in Israel’s war in Gaza. Hamas has much to answer for in triggering this human tragedy, but Israel and the U.S. are seen as driving events now and getting most of the blame. That such anger is boiling over in the Arab world is obvious, but I heard it over and over again in conversations in India during the past week — from friends, business leaders, an official and journalists both young and old. That is even more telling because the Hindu-dominated government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the only major power in the global south that has supported Israel and consistently blamed Hamas for inviting the massive Israeli retaliation and the deaths of an estimated 30,000 people, according to Gazan health officials, the majority of them civilians.
NYT
Ed note: the estimated death toll in Gaza hit 30,000 today per the NYT
2/29/1976 Ja Rule was born on Leap Day, making him 13 today. Based on traditional dating methods he is 47.
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