US President Donald Trump has fired the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, “abruptly terminating the leader of a wide-ranging criminal investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s advisers colluded with the Russian government to steer the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.” The move immediately prompted comparisons to the “Saturday Night Massacre” of 1973, in which then-president Richard Nixon “Nixon purged the Justice Department in the middle of the Watergate investigation.” The reverberations from this one could be significant, folks, and if you — like us — are a junkie for US politics, you’ll want to nudge up the volume on your office television today. Reuters and the AP have the facts. Reuters has a long roundup of reax quotes. But the best two pieces through which to get up to speed (as of dispatch) are in the New York Times: Primary coverage here and a dive into parallels to Watergate here.

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