-Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) on getting "crushed" by Trump in a GOP primary

A Trump judge in league with Stephen Miller snapped her fingers to gut one of the federal government's last significant COVID-19 mitigations, and the Biden administration seems to be fine with it, but at least nothing could go wrong?

• All major U.S. carriers made masked flying optional after unqualified 35 year-old Republican judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle—raced on to the federal bench for life by Senate Republicans during the lame-duck period before Joe Biden became president—blocked enforcement of the CDC’s transit-hub mask rule nationwide. The medical experts at Delta Airlines even welcomed the news with the revelation that COVID-19 “has now transition to an ordinary seasonal virus”—a claim so reckless it invited a rebuke from the White House. 
   
• The Biden administration seems generally fine with the end of the mask rule itself, though, considering it has had ample opportunity to rescind it legitimately, and declined to do so. Asked whether “people should continue to wear masks on planes,” Biden responded, “that’s up to them.” That’s questionable public-health policy, but worse as the latest signal to all the Trump judges throughout the country that they can stamp out enforcement of any Biden policy they want, for whatever reason, and receive no pushback.
   
• Whether and how the Biden administration appeals the ruling, so that CDC can at least reimpose mask rules if cases spike or a new virus emerges, the current Omicron picture is decidedly meh. A fourth, yet-more transmissible Omicron subvariant is now responsible for a fifth of all new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. There’s no evidence to suggest it’s deadlier than other Omicron strains, but there is evidence to suggest that unvaccinated people get little immune protection from overcoming an Omicron infection, and that Omicron can quite easily cause breakthrough infections in unboosted people which is, uh, most people in America.

The other end of the COVID-mitigation spectrum turns out to have wee problems of its own.

• Chinese ports have become horribly backlogged due to an untenable collision between Omicron’s transmissibility, China’s ineffective COVID-19 vaccine, it’s zero-COVID policy, and a more universal unwillingness to admit failure. Here’s an illustration of the commercial ships stuck offshore of locked-down Shanghai, a backlog that dwarfs bottlenecks there earlier in the pandemic. 
   
• Other ports have been able to pick up some of the slack, but an enormous trucker shortage in China has seemingly disrupted the flow of goods to and from the ports, and the supply-chain ripple effects can’t help but contribute to global inflation—if not ultimately tip the global economy into a supply-driven recession.

The contrast is striking: An authoritarian regime clinging to a failed COVID-19 policy rooted in trying to crush the virus, against a liberal democracy forced into a failed pro-COVID-19 policy, by a minority faction over the wishes of an exhausted majority. A similarly large tragedy awaits us all if the ensuing misery strengthens the hands of authoritarians in both countries.

Check out the latest episode of Takeline! This week, Salt Lake Tribune journalist Andy Larsen joins to recap the Utah Jazz's Game 1 win vs. the Mavericks and look forward to how their roster might change in the offseason. Plus, Sports Illustrated journalist Chris Mannix talks to Jason about the Boston Celtics and why they might be well suited to knock off the Brooklyn Nets. Listen to new episodes of Takeline every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts.

Having faced zero significant consequences for trying to overthrow the U.S. government, the inner circle of Donald Trump’s coup is splitting its time trying to retroactively invalidate the 2020 election and laying groundwork to steal the 2024 election. At the center of the ongoing efforts is John Eastman, the lawyer who devised the lawless procedural scheme Trump tried to set in motion to seize an unelected second term. Here’s how Eastman’s former boss, the retired conservative appeals-court judge J. Michael Luttig, put it: “Trump and his supporters in Congress and in the states are preparing now to lay the groundwork to overturn the election in 2024 were Trump, or his designee, to lose the vote for the presidency.” Sounds pretty bad! The one official Democratic Party entity designed to expose and short-circuit this effort is the House January 6 committee. Its public-hearing phase is set to begin in May, but it’s still unclear what story it will tell, or what accountability measures it will pursue, and one of the Trump loyalists currently trying to run out the clock on its investigation in court? Yep, John Eastman.

• Jared Kushner openly boasts about his ongoing influence over foreign governments and their policies, including autocrats who will subvert U.S. elections to help Donald Trump, when he pitches potential investors to park their money in his new hedge fund. 
   
• Also, one of Kushner’s partners in profiting off collusion is the husband of that Trump judge I wrote about above. A real circle-jerk of villains sliming U.S. democracy in creative, profitable, degenerate new ways.
   
• Parent-victims of Donald Trump’s child-separation policy still suffer horrifying trauma four years later, according to a new Physicians for Human Rights study. 
   
• JD Vance thought Trump might be “America’s Hitler,” then became an avid Trump supporter, in case you had doubts about what kind of person JD Vance is. 
   
• The Republican-allied Wisconsin supreme court has adopted the most partisan court-imposed map in any state in the country since at least the year 2000. 
   
• Florida Republicans, led by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) are poised to pass new legislation solely to harm Disney, in retaliation for Disney’s opposition to their “Don’t Say Gay” law. 
   
• Guns are out on the right for Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC). 
   
• In other insurrectionists, a federal judge has greenlit a lawsuit that seeks to disqualify Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) from federal office for abetting the January 6 insurrection. 
   
• Meet the right-wing crank behind the Libs of TikTok Twitter account, which has become a key driver of Republican propaganda.

The Russian assault in eastern Ukraine is underway in earnest, and it seems a bit like Russian forces are benefitting from a combination of superior numbers, smaller terrain, and a hard-to-evaluate determination not to beclown themselves again like they did when they tried to capture Kyiv. “A very large part of the entire Russian army is now focused on this offensive,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “No matter how many Russian soldiers are driven there, we will fight.” After almost two months of fighting, they appear to be on the verge of capturing the city of Mariupol, buffeted only by a force of thousands of Ukrainian troops and civilians who have turned a vast Soviet-era steel factory, built to withstand nuclear war, as a fortress. And broader Russian attacks along a 300 mile eastern front have left thousands of civilians trapped behind what might soon be enemy lines. Perhaps sensing the odds stacked against Ukraine, President Biden convened a conference with western allies to discuss how to step up military assistance, and intensify economic pressure on Russia, before the chips fall.

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The Department of Education has announced targeted student-loan relief for millions of borrowers who were blocked from accessing a repayment program that should have provided them low monthly payments and the promise of forgiveness after 20 years. 

The Biden administration has restored environmental protections, gutted by Donald Trump, that require federal agencies to analyze the climate impacts of major national infrastructure projects.

A judge has ordered Amazon to reinstate, and pay back lost wages to, a worker the company fired two years ago, apparently in retaliation for protesting safety conditions early in the pandemic. 

Homebuilding in the U.S. is on the rise.