Happy Friday! Is a trip to North Carolina really complete if you don’t stop by the local Cook Out? Obviously not for President Joe Biden, who joined North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper at the southern staple and ordered a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake—“triple thick,” by the ice cream fiend’s own account. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced Wednesday evening that its forces had conducted their fifth strike in a week against Iran-backed Houthi militia targets in Yemen, eliminating 14 anti-ship missiles. “These missiles on launch rails presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and U.S. Navy ships in the region and could have been fired at any time, prompting U.S. forces to exercise their inherent right and obligation to defend themselves,” CENTCOM said in a statement. The strikes come amid continued Houthi attacks on commercial ships traversing the Red Sea.
• The House and Senate on Thursday passed a continuing resolution (CR) extending government funding—set to expire, for some agencies, on Friday at midnight—at current levels through March 1 and March 8. This bill mimics the previous extension, passed on November 15, which “laddered” funding for certain agencies to Friday and February 2. The measure passed the Senate 77-18, and in the House, where some Republican hardliners were opposed to extending the government’s funding for the third time, the CR passed 314-108, with 107 Republicans and 207 Democrats voting in favor. President Biden is expected to sign the bill into law later today. Both chambers will have to move the remaining appropriations bills before March 1 and March 8 in order to fully fund the government for this fiscal year, which began on October 1.
• The Justice Department found “cascading failures” in law enforcement’s handling of the May 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, according to a report released on Thursday. The review—the result of a 20-month investigation—provides a detailed accounting of “leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy, and training” failures by law enforcement, chief among them a decision not to classify the scene as an “active shooter” event. That resulted, the report concluded, in “a 77-minute gap between when officers first arrived on the scene and when they finally confronted and killed the subject.” Most of the local officials in charge during the shooting were fired or retired in the months following the incident. Had law enforcement acted more quickly that day, “Lives would have been saved, and people would have survived,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in Uvalde on Thursday. 
• Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court on Thursday in support of Donald Trump, as part of the case addressing whether Colorado can remove the former president’s name from the ballot under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause. In the brief, Cruz and Scalise argued that the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling “directly interferes with Congress’s express authority to remove a Section 3 ‘disability’ during the election season,” and “adopted a malleable and expansive view of ‘engage in insurrection,’ which will easily lead to widespread abuse of Section 3 against political opponents.” In addition to Cruz and Scalise, 177 other Republican lawmakers signed onto the brief, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Another Incremental Funding Plan

The most important piece of legislation under consideration in Congress yesterday was H.R. 2872, a bill to amend the Permanent Electronic Duck Stamp Act of 2013. The proposed changes would allow hunters who purchase migratory fowl hunting permits (aka duck stamps) to use an electronic version of the stamps as proof of purchase instead of having to wait for a physical copy to arrive from the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Sadly for the duck hunters out there, the bill—which was already under consideration—was brought up by the Senate as a legislative trojan horse. Lawmakers gutted the text and used it as a shell for a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government funded through March. Thanks in part to an impending “snowstorm” canceling votes on Friday [Midwestern Editor’s Note: Can we really call one or two inches of powder a storm?], lawmakers passed the CR on Thursday, sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk just a day before …

As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. Our full 1,391-word story on congressional efforts to avert a government shutdown is available in the members-only version of TMD.

Worth Your Time 

• “Apology” and “Russian President Vladimir Putin” don’t often appear in the same sentence—except, apparently, when he’s issuing a mea culpa for the exorbitant price of eggs. For the Wall Street Journal, Georgi Kantchev explains how the ballooning price of eggs could prove a useful window into Russia’s war economy. “The grocery staple has been in short supply in recent months and prices have skyrocketed, prompting Russians from Belgorod to Siberia to form lines reminiscent of Soviet times,” he wrote. “President Vladimir Putin has publicly apologized, blaming the egg shock on the government. Last month, a poultry-farm boss known as ‘the Egg King’ survived an assassination attempt shortly after authorities started investigating his farm due to high prices. Behind the soaring price tag—up around 60 percent in December from a year earlier, according to data released Friday—is a convergence of factors symptomatic of the economy’s travails. ‘The government looks like a bunch of firefighters who run from one small fire to another with a bucket because they cannot eliminate the underlying inflation problem,’ said Alexandra Prokopenko, a former Russian central bank official who is now a nonresident scholar at the Berlin-based Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. As the war in Ukraine enters its third year, the egg crisis shows how Russia is struggling to balance clashing economic imperatives—financing the war, placating popular discontent and keeping the economy balanced, including through stable prices. ‘It’s an impossible trilemma,’ said Prokopenko. ‘Achieving the first two goals requires higher spending, which leads to high inflation, which prevents the achievement of the third goal.’ For some Russians, such as Andrey, a 33-year-old software engineer living in Moscow, the egg episode is just one facet of a dysfunctional economy. ‘Russians will pay for the consequences of isolation out of their own pockets for a long time to come,’ he said.”

Presented Without Comment 

President Joe Biden, asked if airstrikes against Houthi rebels were “working”:  

“Well, when you say ‘working,’ are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.” 

Also Presented Without Comment

Former President Donald Trump in a post on Truth Social: 

“A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES MUST HAVE FULL IMMUNITY, WITHOUT WHICH IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM/HER TO PROPERLY FUNCTION. ANY MISTAKE, EVEN IF WELL INTENDED, WOULD BE MET WITH ALMOST CERTAIN INDICTMENT BY THE OPPOSING PARTY AT TERM END. EVEN EVENTS THAT ‘CROSS THE LINE’ MUST FALL UNDER TOTAL IMMUNITY, OR IT WILL BE YEARS OF TRAUMA TRYING TO DETERMINE GOOD FROM BAD. THERE MUST BE CERTAINTY. EXAMPLE: YOU CAN’T STOP POLICE FROM DOING THE JOB OF STRONG & EFFECTIVE CRIME PREVENTION BECAUSE YOU WANT TO GUARD AGAINST THE OCCASIONAL ‘ROGUE COP’ OR ‘BAD APPLE.’ SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO LIVE WITH ‘GREAT BUT SLIGHTLY IMPERFECT.’ ALL PRESIDENTS MUST HAVE COMPLETE & TOTAL PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY, OR THE AUTHORITY & DECISIVENESS OF A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WILL BE STRIPPED & GONE FOREVER. HOPEFULLY THIS WILL BE AN EASY DECISION. GOD BLESS THE SUPREME COURT!”

Toeing the Company Line 

• Congratulations to Dispatch contributing editor, Chris Stirewalt, who’s about to be much busier on Sundays: Starting in March, Chris will be hosting NewsNation’s new Sunday morning show, The Hill Sunday with Chris Stirewalt.
• In the newsletters: Nick argued (🔒) media outlets learned some wrong lessons from the 2016 election: Rather than keeping him off screens, it’s time to put Donald Trump back on TV.
• On the podcasts: David and Sarah dive into the oral argument in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Plus: Steve, Sarah, Jonah, Mike, are joined by Andrew Kline in this live taping of a Dispatch event (🔒) in New Hampshire to discuss the Granite State’s upcoming primary—and whether it matters it all after last week’s caucuses—on The Skiff.
• On the site: Michael Rubin argues that humanitarian aid to Afghanistan is propping up the Taliban, and Ginger Quintero-McCall explains the revelations in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein documents.