The Shooting Gallery: Justin Jones, the Tennessee legislator expelled last week for taking part in a gun control demonstration on the House floor,

was reinstated by the Nashville City Council yesterday afternoon just hours after yet another mass shooting took four lives and wounded nine in a Kentucky bank. 

  Jones and his former colleague, Justin Pearson, were expelled for demonstrating against guns in the wake of the Covenant School shooting that killed three nine-year-olds. “No expulsion, no attempt to silence us will stop us, but it will only galvanize and strengthen our movement,” Jones said in his first formal remarks. Jones didn’t even miss a full session.

  In Louisville, the cycle of shock and grief played out yet again after a 25-year-old employee of Old National Bank who’d been told he would be fired, entered the bank with an assault rifle and live streamed as he killed four people and wounded nine. A fifth person died overnight. The injured included a rookie police officer who’d been on the job only 10 days and was critically wounded in the head.

  The gunman was killed either by his own hand, or by the cops. Kentucky’s Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear rushed to the scene and said that he had two close friends among the dead and that he knew  “virtually everyone” inside. “That’s my bank,” he said.

  Beshear said nothing about guns or the gun used in the attack. Leave that to Justin Jones in Kentucky and his former legislative colleague, who was thrown out the same day.

  In their effort to silence two rookie legislators barely known in their own state, Tennessee’s Republicans created two political martyrs for the gun control movement and gave them a national voice. Jones said on the House floor, “Last Thursday, members tried to crucify democracy, but today we have a resurrection.”

Trump World: Donald Trump filed an appeal arguing executive privilege to block former Vice President Mike Pence from testifying before the grand jury investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

  Trump has previously failed to invoke executive privilege. You can’t use it to cover a crime.

The Law of the Pecos:  More than 400 drug company executives yesterday filed a condemnation of the decision by a federal judge in Texas invalidating the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. 

  “The decision ignores decades of scientific evidence and legal precedent,” the letter said. It goes on to say that the ruling by Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, “set a precedent for diminishing FDA’s authority over drug approvals, and in so doing, creates uncertainty for the entire biopharma industry.” 

  Also yesterday, the Justice Department acting on behalf of the FDA asked the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to stay Kacsmaryk’s ruling until the department’s appeal can be heard. Reading Kacsmaryk’s decision … and looking at his record of activism … it’s clear that he has a predisposition against abortion regardless of law and regulation.

The Intel: Ukraine is changing some of its battle plans because of a leak of US intelligence documents, CNN reports.

   A cache of secret document revealing information about Ukraine, Russia, South Korea, Israel, and other countries — some documents  only weeks old — have been posted on the internet. One document says Egypt secretly planned to provide Russia with rockets.

 US investigators are trying to find who leaked. “We don’t know what else might be out there,” John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, said.

The War Room: Russian forces are using scorched earth tactics in their attempt to capture the battered city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, levelling everything in areas held by Ukrainian defenders, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces said. The fighting is house to house and building to building.

  Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky said, “They are destroying buildings and positions with airstrikes and artillery fire. The defense of Bakhmut continues. The situation is difficult, but under control.” 

  Gen. Syrsky claimed that the fighting has exhausted the Russian mercenary army, the Wagner Group. He said the Russian military commanders were now deploying large numbers of special forces and airborne assault units in the fight for Bakhmut. 

  On the political front — and somewhat ominously — some reports say that the Wagner Group’s owner Yevgeny Prigozhin is getting into politics, seeking control of a Russian political party. Let’s see whether Vladimir Putin tolerates that.

The Obit Page: Al Jaffee, the cartoonist who created the Mad Magazine fold-in page, one of the satire magazine’s most recognizable features, has died at age 102.

  Jaffee’s page said one thing when you first looked at it, but folded in thirds the page said something else. The November 2001 fold-in asked, “What mind-altering experience is leaving more and more people out of touch with reality?” The illustration showed a crowd of people ingesting various mind-altering substances, but when folded, the image showed the Fox News anchor desk.

  Jaffee created the fold-in in 1964 as a one-time thing and ended up doing it for 55 years.

The Spin Rack: The US yesterday formally declared that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is “wrongfully detained” by Russia. Gershkovich has been formally charged with espionage. — The Virginia mother whose 6-year-old son shot his school teacher has been charged with felony child neglect and recklessly leaving a firearm so as to endanger a child. — Fox News settled the lawsuit brought by Venezuelan businessman Majed Khalil, who claimed he was falsely accused on the network of helping to rig the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump. That’s interesting, because Fox is still going to trial to defend itself in the $1.6 billion lawsuit on the same issue brought by Dominion Voting Systems. 

Below the Fold: The FBI warns that you shouldn’t use phone charging ports in airports, hotels, or shopping centers because hackers are using them to infect your phone.  

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