Today’s edition of quick hits.
* A faltering ceasefire: “An American-brokered cease-fire agreement between Israel and Lebanon appeared to have had limited, if any, effect on Thursday. Just hours after it was announced, Israel battered southern Lebanon with rounds of strikes, and the leader of Hezbollah, who was not part of the talks, rejected the deal as his fighters fired rockets at Israeli forces in Lebanon.”
* On Capitol Hill: “Republicans on Thursday defeated an initial effort by Democrats to bar President Trump from establishing a fund that could compensate his political allies, although more attempts to add such a measure to the party’s immigration crackdown bill were expected later in the day that could draw their support.”
* An aggressively regressive energy policy: “President Trump on Thursday announced $700 million in new federal funding for the country’s struggling coal industry, including $185 million meant to build the first two new coal-burning power plants in the United States in more than a decade. It was the latest in a series of extraordinary efforts by his administration to improve the fortunes of coal, the most polluting of the fossil fuels and a favored industry of the president’s.”
* Family separations did not end in the president’s first term: “[E]ight years after President Donald Trump’s forcible border separations came to an official halt following global outrage, an Associated Press investigation has found that the government has re-separated dozens of children from their families, despite a landmark legal settlement meant to keep them together.”