| | | | |  | | By Garrett Ross | | | |  The Supreme Court will wrap up its term on Thursday, at which time Justice Stephen Breyer will officially retire from the bench. | Saul Loeb/Pool via AP Photo | The Supreme Court is hurtling toward the end of its term, which will end tomorrow — along with the tenure of Justice STEPHEN BREYER. Breyer's retirement will be effective at noon on Thursday , he announced in a letter to President JOE BIDEN. Read the letter Today, the court released two opinions: — The court ruled "that Oklahoma can prosecute non-Native Americans for crimes committed on tribal land when the victim is Native American. The 5-4 decision cut back on the high court's ruling from 2020 that said a large chunk of eastern Oklahoma remains an American Indian reservation," per the AP. — And the court said "in a 5-4 ruling Wednesday that state agencies are not immune from private lawsuits brought under a federal law meant to protect employment rights of returning veterans," CNN's Ariane de Vogue and Tierney Sneed write. "The ruling will strengthen work protections for thousands of state-employed veterans returning to work after service in the Reserves or National Guard." The two more-contentious cases that await decisions — one with major climate implications and another that will inform the Biden administration's immigration policy — will be announced Thursday starting at 10 a.m. Some context: — On climate: "The case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, started out years ago as a battle over how much authority the EPA has to force power plants to cut down their pollution — but it's turned into a bigger fight over how much power federal agencies have to enforce all kinds of regulations." Read more from The Verge's Justine Calma — On immigration: The case centers on whether "the Biden administration can scrap a Trump-era policy that forces asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico as their cases make their way through U.S. immigration courts." Read more from the Texas Tribune's Uriel García WOOD LAUNCHES MO SENATE BID — The Missouri Senate race just got more crowded. JOHN WOOD, who up until a few weeks ago was the Jan. 6 committee's top investigator, is launching an independent bid for the seat of retiring Sen. ROY BLUNT (R-Mo.). "Wood, 52, who also served as U.S. attorney for Missouri's western district, predicted in an interview Tuesday that former Gov. ERIC GREITENS would win the GOP primary on Aug. 2 and said voters deserved an alternative in the heavily Republican state," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Jack Suntrup writes. "Wood's entry will represent a seismic shift in the Senate race — if he can generate the financial backing and grassroots support necessary to mount a serious campaign. … 'I am not looking to be a spoiler. I'm in this race to win it,' Wood told the Post-Dispatch. 'I think that there is a coalition of common-sense voters that can be put together.'" HEADS UP — Our colleagues Betsy Woodruff Swan, Nicholas Wu and Kyle Cheney scoop some more details on the scuttle over CASSIDY HUTCHINSON's testimony that former President DONALD TRUMP physically lashed out at Secret Service agents after his Jan. 6 rally. "The Jan. 6 committee didn't reach out to the Secret Service in the days before it aired explosive testimony about an alleged physical altercation between Donald Trump and his security detail on the day of the riot, according to an agency spokesperson," they write. "The committee's lack of outreach in the days before Hutchinson's hearing is notable because the Secret Service has said Jan. 6 investigators can access any documents or witnesses they deem relevant." Good Wednesday afternoon.
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Learn how Meta is helping build the metaverse. | | | AMERICA AND THE WORLD NATO NEWS — The U.S. is making moves to beef up its presence overseas, Biden announced this morning, amounting to the "biggest military expansion in Europe in decades, including a permanent troop presence in Poland," WSJ's Alex Leary and Tarini Parti report. — The deets: "The U.S. will add to the 100,000 troops it now has in Europe and deploy more military equipment to NATO allies. The additions include rotational deployments to Romania and the Baltic region, and a permanent Army headquarters base and other units in Poland, the White House said." — What Biden said: "We're stepping up. We're proving that NATO is more needed now than it ever has been." Biden also touched on North Korea today, saying he is "deeply concerned" that the country may test a nuclear weapon. "Biden discussed the threats from Pyongyang with Washington's Asian allies Japan and South Korea on Wednesday, on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Spain," the AP writes. "Japanese Prime Minister FUMIO KISHIDA said a nuclear missile test by North Korea should be met with a coordinated reaction from the three countries present at the meeting. 'I hope that response can be taken at a trilateral level,' he said." NUKE TALKS ON ICE AGAIN — "Indirect negotiations between Iran and the U.S. over Tehran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers will end Wednesday in Qatar, authorities in Tehran said," per the AP . "The U.S. State Department and the European Union, which is mediating the talks in Qatar, did not immediately acknowledge the end of the negotiations in Doha. However, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency, believed to be close to Iran's hard-line Revolutionary Guard, described the negotiations as finished and having 'no effect on breaking the deadlock in the talks.'" CONGRESS DURBIN SEEKS MOVEMENT ON IMMIGRATION REFORM — Senate Majority Whip DICK DURBIN (D-Ill.) told our colleague Andrew Desiderio in Madrid that "he has restarted his immigration reform talks with Sen. THOM TILLIS (R-N.C.) while the senators have been traveling together throughout Europe this week." What Durbin said: "We've been talking the last couple days about reviving that effort. And I think what happened at the border with finding 51 dead migrants in that tractor trailer is what I would call a 'Uvalde moment.' I hope it sparks an interest in finding a bipartisan approach to dealing with immigration."
| | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | ALL POLITICS QUITE THE PHOTO — Rep. VAL DEMINGS (D-Fla.) gets the Vanity Fair treatment in a big profile: "Val Demings Is On A Mission: The former police chief helped impeach Donald Trump and survived an insurrection — now the third-term congresswoman has her eyes on the Senate. 'In Val there's hope,' says fellow representative ROBIN KELLY, 'that we can move closer to that promise of America.'" AFTERNOON READ — NYT Magazine's Jason Zengerle is up with a big piece this morning, headlined: "The Vanishing Moderate Democrat." In it, he explores the position of the moderate Dem — namely, New Jersey Rep. JOSH GOTTHEIMER — and whether they can hang on in this year's midterms and beyond. "The bigger, more consequential question — not just for the moderates but for all Democrats — is whether this projected midterm wipeout is merely a cyclical occurrence or the manifestation of a much deeper and more intractable problem," Zengerle writes. "While some of them remain reluctant to publicly concede the reality that the Democratic Party has indeed shifted left — either out of fear of angering their fellow Democrats or validating Republican attacks — they will readily acknowledge that voters perceive the party as having drifted out of the mainstream. And they are convinced that this is threatening their political survival." ABORTION FALLOUT KNOWING TINA SMITH — The Star Tribune's Hunter Woodall has an interesting read on Sen. TINA SMITH (D-Minn.), the "lone senator who worked for Planned Parenthood" — a unique distinction that is "primed to make her an important political figure in a Democratic party shaken by the Supreme Court's decision." And she's pushing back on those who would blame Dems: "During an interview in her Senate office earlier this month, Smith bristled at a question about whether Democrats were at fault and should have done more. That was like blaming the victim, she said, for Republicans 'taking away people's fundamental freedoms.'" RIPPLE EFFECT — The Supreme Court's decision to wipe out Roe v. Wade pierced through much more than just the right to an abortion: "In dozens of interviews this week, American women who support abortion rights … reflected on how access to legal abortion had quietly undergirded their personal decisions, even if they had never sought one themselves. They worried that the progress many women have made since abortion was legalized — in education, the workplace and in the culture — would be halted," NYT's Julie Bosman writes from Chicago. PELOSI TAKES COMMUNION AT VATICAN — Speaker NANCY PELOSI "met with POPE FRANCIS on Wednesday and received Communion during a papal Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, witnesses said, despite her position in support of abortion rights," writes AP's Nicole Winfield from Rome . "Pelosi attended the morning Mass marking the feasts of St. Peter and St. Paul, during which Francis bestowed the woolen pallium stole on newly consecrated archbishops. She was seated in a VIP diplomatic section of the basilica and received Communion along with the rest of the congregants, according to two people who witnessed the moment."
| | | | A message from Meta:   | | | THE PANDEMIC FOR YOUR RADAR, PART I — "Continuing their rapid march across the United States, the Omicron subvariants known as BA.4 and BA.5 have together become dominant among new coronavirus cases, according to new estimates on Tuesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," NYT's Adeel Hassan writes. FOR YOUR RADAR, PART II — "The federal government's stores of a key Covid-19 antibody drug, a crucial weapon for keeping the infected out of the hospital, are expected to be used up in late August because pandemic funding is running out," WSJ's Stephanie Armour and Liz Essley Whyte report. THE ECONOMY INFLATION NATION — Fed Chair JEROME POWELL this morning said he's "more concerned about the risk of failing to stamp out high inflation than he was about the possibility of raising interest rates too high and pushing the economy into a recession," WSJ's Nick Timiraos writes. What Powell said: "Is there a risk we would go too far? Certainly there's a risk. The bigger mistake to make — let's put it that way — would be to fail to restore price stability."
| | | | INTRODUCING POWER SWITCH: The energy landscape is profoundly transforming. Power Switch is a daily newsletter that unlocks the most important stories driving the energy sector and the political forces shaping critical decisions about your energy future, from production to storage, distribution to consumption. Don't miss out on Power Switch, your guide to the politics of energy transformation in America and around the world. SUBSCRIBE TODAY. | | | | | WAR IN UKRAINE — Our colleagues Paul McLeary, Andrew Desiderio and Cristina Gallardo have the breakdown on the diverging views that Ukrainian officials and its allies are taking as they view Russia's war. "Ukrainian leaders are eying the calendar as they ask allies for more weapons, fearful that without a major push this summer, Russia will be able to use the winter months to solidify captured ground in the eastern Donbas region. At the same time, Western leaders are increasingly settling in for the long haul, talking about building up Ukrainian stocks of ammunition and training programs for what they see as a drawn-out struggle that will last well into next year, at the least." — "In New Poll, 89% of Ukrainians Reject Ceding Land to Reach Peace With Russia," by WSJ's Aaron Zitner MEDIAWATCH DEPRESSING NEWS — "Over 360 newspapers in the United States have gone out of business since just before the start of the pandemic, according to a new report from Northwestern University's journalism school," writes NYT's Isabella Simonetti. "Overall, 2,500 newspapers in the United States — a quarter of them — have closed since 2005. The country is set up to lose one-third of its newspapers by 2025. And in many places, the surviving local media outlets have made major cuts to staff and circulation." PLAYBOOKERS TRANSITIONS — Former Trump Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe is joining American Global Strategies as a senior adviser. He is also chair of the AFPI Center for American Security. … Christopher Hoff has joined Microsoft to work on the global privacy and regulatory affairs team. He most recently was deputy assistant secretary for services at the Commerce Department. … Emily Cummings is now senior manager for comms on KKR's public affairs team. She most recently was senior associate at Teneo. … … Jessica DeLoach is now senior comms manager at the Partnership for Public Service. She previously was campaign manager for Anna Beth Gorman's Arkansas secretary of state campaign. … Caylie Milazzo and Halley Burnside are now research associates for Ervin Graves Strategy Group. Milazzo previously was a research assistant at the Kinder Institute of Constitutional Democracy. Burnside is a second-year grad student at Carnegie Mellon University. BONUS BIRTHDAY: Alexa Newlin
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