National News Roundup: Year 6, Week 5 (February 13–19)

Kara Hurvitz
4 min readFeb 22, 2022

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For most of the week, the news felt like it was holding its breath, which is never a comfortable feeling. Then this evening, one of the things we were waiting for happened when Putin invaded Ukraine via Donetsk and Luhansk. I can’t really say it’s better to have the shoe drop, but I’ll definitely keep everybody updated from here.

Standard standing reminders still apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m mostly summarizing the news within my area of expertise. NNR summaries often contain some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise–I’m a lawyer, not a text message!–but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. And, of course, for the things that are within my lane, I’m offering context that shouldn’t be considered legal advice. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Cleanup in Aisle 45:

There was a whole flood of Election Rejection stories this week, and we saw some related bits and bobs that might as well go in this section as well. Here’s what I have for you:

As I mentioned above, the big news on the Biden Rebuilding front is aggression with Russia. Here’s what has happened:

Your New Normal:

  • The Great Avocado Embargo. It feels kind of fitting that I honestly don’t have any normal news for you this week, but I do have one throwback to the Weird section. After a U.S. inspector who oversees the import of Mexican avocados received a death threat, we canceled avocado imports last Saturday, and the ban lasted for the whole week. But avocados are back on by the time I’m typing this, because the ban was lifted on Friday. So uh, welcome back to your new normal I guess?

The Bad:

The Good:

So that’s what I have for this week, and I’m sorry, there are no news refunds. For making it through, you deserve stories about Hank the Tank as well as a more consistently improved government. I’ll be back next week with more restructured and improved news, and I hope you will be back as well–but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me more hours in the day!

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