National News Roundup: Year 6, Week 6 (February 20–26)

Kara Hurvitz
5 min readMar 1, 2022

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The news is, quite understandably, very focused on the situation in Ukraine for another cycle, and that’s some grade-A nightmare fuel right there. Sadly, drinking the nightmare fuel is still important for many reasons, even though it’s awful. I’m going to do my best to help break it down, and if all else fails, remember that small sips help.

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 panel!–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:

  • Insurrection Updates. After the invasion of Ukraine last week, Trump was in the limelight an awful lot–emphasis on “awful.” First he went on the radio to call Putin a “genius” who was “pretty savvy,” though his spokesperson’s feed opted not to include those quotes for some mysterious reason. While I generally try to ignore the inane grindings of the orange noise machine, these soundbites proved the building blocks for his campaigning for 2024 at CPAC on Saturday night, and I think we have to take that seriously. The signals about 2024 feel particularly noteworthy when stories are also hitting about the new Manhattan DA abandoning the Trump indictment groundwork laid by his successor. There were some positive scraps of news this week too, though; apparently Ivanka Trump is in talks with the House January 6 panel, and so is Rudy Giuliani.

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 Bad:

The Good:

  • Biden’s SCOTUS Pick. Biden announced his selection for Supreme Court nomination this week, which turned out to be current appellate judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. This would be at least moderately exciting no matter what was going on, because it means he fulfilled one of his campaign promises, but Judge Jackson is an incredibly solid pick for many reasons. First of all, she was approved by the sitting Senate within the past year for her current seat on the D.C. Circuit, which creates less political cover for GOP obstruction in general. Second, her actual credentials are impeccable: She’s been a sitting judge for nearly a decade; she clerked for Justice Breyer at the beginning of her career; and she was an editor on the law review at Harvard Law School during her educational years. But I am particularly excited about Judge Jackson as a nomination because she also served as a public defender for two years, and if appointed she would be the first SCOTUS judge with public defense experience in modern history.

So that’s what I have for this week, and I’m sorry, there are no news refunds. For making it through, you deserve these booped danger kittens 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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Kara Hurvitz

Boots on the ground for social change, one step at a time.