ORANGE ALERT: A Georgia judge yesterday bluntly rejected an effort by former Donald Trump to throw out the investigation by a special grand jury into his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state and to disqualify the prosecutor running the investigation, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

  Judge Robert McBurney wrote in a nine-page order that Trump doesn’t have legal standing to make such a challenge before indictments are handed up, and that the “injuries” Trump claims to have suffered under the two-and-a-half-year investigation “are either insufficient or else speculative and unrealized.”

  In another development, Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and residence in Florida, made his first court appearance yesterday without making a plea on charges of conspiring with Trump to obstruct the government’s retrieval of national security documents. De Oliveira is someone to watch. Will he go down the tubes out of loyalty to Trump or save himself by becoming a prosecution witness? 

  An increasing number of Republicans who support Trump have come to believe he has committed serious federal crimes. According to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll, 17 percent of voters who prefer him over President Biden think either that he has committed serious federal crimes or that he threatened democracy with his actions after the 2020 election. They still like him.

FATHER AND SON: As House Republicans press to prove that President Biden was involved with some of his son Hunter’s shady foreign business deals, the younger Biden’s former partner Devon Archer told the House Oversight Committee that Hunter Biden tried to sell the illusion that he was providing access to his powerful father, but that the elder Biden was never actually involved. 

  Archer did say that Joe Biden occasionally spoke to Hunter’s contacts on the phone, about 20 times over the years, to sell “the brand.” Kentucky Republican James Comer, the chairman of Oversight, took that as corruption, issuing a statement saying, “Devon Archer’s testimony today confirms Joe Biden lied to the American people when he said he had no knowledge about his son’s business dealings and was not involved.” 

TRUCK STOP: The Yellow trucking company, one of the only freight companies that takes partial loads for shipment, is shutting down, according to the Teamsters union, which represents the company’s 22,000 unionized workers.

  The company has had financial trouble for years and took a $700 million federal pandemic loan. They had been locked in contract negotiations with the Teamsters when the union received notice that Yellow is ceasing operations and filing for bankruptcy.

THE WAR ROOM: A drone hit and damaged the same building in central Moscow for the second time in 48 hours. Russia says their defenses shot down two other drones on the outskirts of the city.

ANOTHER PLANET:  Idaho mother Lori Vallow Daybell was sentenced yesterday to life in prison for her conviction in the murders of her teenage children and conspiring in the murder of her husband’s first wife.

Vallow Daybell said she had spoken to Jesus, her children, and her husband’s wife after their deaths and said they were “happy and extremely busy” in heaven.

NO GOAL: Gunning for their fifth World Cup soccer title, the American women are having trouble putting the ball in the net. 

  The Americans tied Portugal 0-0 overnight in New Zealand to advance to a second-place seat in the round of 16. It was the second tied score for the US in this tournament, but they got a lucky break. A Portuguese shot that would have put them out of the tournament bounced off the post. 

THE OBIT PAGE: Actor and comedian Paul Reubens, better known by his professional name Pee-wee Herman, has died of cancer at age 70.

  As the character with a pale face, wearing a tight suit and a red bow tie, Reubens was the star of the 1980s children’s show “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” that aired on CBS for five years.

  Reubens created the character in the 1970s as a member of the Groundlings comedy troupe in Los Angeles. He toured the country with the character and in 1981 HBO made a comedy special with him.

  He hit it big in 1986 with “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” one of the marquis children’s shows in television history. But in July 1991, when “Playhouse” was in reruns, Reubens was arrested on a charge of indecent exposure in an adult movie theater in Sarasota, Florida. CBS pulled his show off the air. 

  Reubens had been dealing with cancer for years and left behind a statement to be released after his death. “Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been facing the last six years,” he said. “I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.”

THE SPIN RACK:. A group of parents, clergy, education activists, and civil libertarians in Oklahoma have sued to block the opening of what would become the nation’s first religious charter school. The group claims that St. Isidore’s, set to open in 2024, would violate the state constitution and state law, which requires that charter schools be “nonsectarian in programs, admission policies, employment practices, and all other operations.” — Angus Cloud, best known for playing the high school drug dealer Fezco in the HBO series “Euphoria,” is reported to have taken his own life at his family’s home in Oakland, California. — A body was discovered inside a barrel on Malibu Lagoon State Beach in California. There was no immediate identification. 

BELOW THE FOLD: The giant flashing “X” logo mounted on top of the former Twitter headquarters in San Francisco was removed after nearby residents complained about the bright light that advertised the re-naming of Twitter to X. Complainants said even their window shades couldn’t block the strobe-like flashing and now even the X sign itself has been Xed out.