Happy Wednesday! About half of today’s Quick Hits are drone-related, and they’re a lot less disconcerting to read if you imagine them referring to the little remote-control toy kind of drones and not the ominous-looking war machines that can launch missiles.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
Taiwanese soldiers fired flares and warning shots at a drone—reportedly Chinese—that flew near a group of islands off the coast of Taiwan on Tuesday. The drone began flying back to the Chinese mainland after the shots were fired, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry. Earlier in the day, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said she had ordered Taiwan’s military to take “strong countermeasures” against Chinese provocations and harassment. “We will not give China the pretext to create conflict,” she said. “We will not provoke disputes and we will be restrained, yet that does not mean we will not counteract.”
The U.S. 5th Fleet announced yesterday that U.S. naval forces prevented an attempt by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to capture an American drone in the Persian Gulf on Monday. The USS Thunderbolt and a combat helicopter reportedly responded to an IRGC ship towing the unmanned surface vessel, leading the IRGC ship to disconnect its line and depart the area. Iranian state media dismissed the Navy’s account as a “false, Hollywood narrative,” claiming the IRGC ship towed the drone “to ensure the safety of the shipping route.”
The first batch of what U.S. officials expect will be “hundreds” of Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles has arrived in Russia, Pentagon spokesman Todd Breasseale told Politico on Tuesday. The Mohajer-6 and Shahed-series drones can be used to conduct strikes, and Russia is expected to deploy them on the battlefield in Ukraine.
U.S. officials confirmed to the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that the drones that attacked a U.S. military base in Syria earlier this month were launched from an area of Iraq controlled by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia. The Biden administration retaliated for the attack a week later by striking facilities in northern Syria used by militant groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced Tuesday that Poland will more than double its military budget next year in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in line with its pledge to boost defense spending to 3 percent of its GDP. “We have the ability to significantly bolster our army and to recruit new soldiers,” Morawiecki said, hinting at plans to add 20,000 new troops in 2023.
The Education Department announced Tuesday it will automatically discharge approximately $1.5 billion in federal student loans for 79,000 borrowers who attended Westwood College—a now-defunct for-profit chain with campuses in five states—between 2002 and 2015. As it had with Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute in recent months, the Education Department found Westwood engaged in “widespread misrepresentations” about both the value of its credentials and its graduates’ employment prospects.
The Department of Health and Human Services on Monday signed an $11 billion deal with Grand River Aseptic Manufacturing in Michigan to expedite the domestic production of JYNNEOS, a vaccine made by Bavarian Nordic that is approved to prevent smallpox and monkeypox. The White House’s National Monkeypox Response team announced yesterday the Biden administration will send extra vaccine doses to a handful of upcoming gay pride events, given the virus is primarily spreading among men who have sex with men. The Texas Department of Health confirmed Tuesday that a “severely immunocompromised” adult diagnosed with monkeypox died recently—the first known U.S. fatality tied to the virus—but it’s unclear what role monkeypox played in the individual’s death.
The U.S. labor market remained extremely tight last month, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting Wednesday there were 11.2 million job openings in the United States at the end of July—near record highs and up slightly from 11 million at the end of June. The quits rate—the percentage of workers who quit their job during the month—ticked down slightly from 2.8 percent to 2.7 percent, and the number of layoffs and discharges held steady at 1.4 million.
Attorney General Merrick Garland imposed new rules yesterday on political appointees at the Justice Department, prohibiting them from attending partisan political events in both their official and personal capacities. Non-career DOJ employees had previously been allowed to attend such events in their personal capacities if their participation was passive and they obtained approval in advance, but Garland determined additional restrictions were necessary to “avoid any appearance of political influence on the Department’s activities.”
Mikhail Gorbachev—the former leader of the Soviet Union who sought to modernize and liberalize Soviet society before overseeing the empire’s dissolution in 1991—died on Tuesday at the age of 91, according to Russian state media.
The Justice Department Brings Receipts
Declan Garvey is the publisher of The Dispatch and is based in Washington, D.C. Prior to joining the company in 2019, he worked in public affairs at Hamilton Place Strategies and market research at Echelon Insights. When Declan is not assigning and editing pieces, he is probably watching a Cubs game, listening to podcasts on 3x speed, or trying a new recipe with his wife.
