The Evening: Republicans push Biden cabinet impeachment

Also, Chita Rivera, the electrifying Broadway star, died at 91.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story January 30, 2024 By Matthew Cullen Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Tuesday. A partisan fight over border policies A truce proposal considered in Gaza Plus, how alcohol affects the gut Members of the House Homeland Security Committee during a hearing, today. Kenny Holston/The New York Times Republicans push to impeach Biden's homeland security chief The Republican-led House panel on homeland security is set to advance articles of impeachment today, seeking to oust Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, for his handling of immigration at the southern U.S. border. In what are expected to be party-line votes, the committee plans to charge Mayorkas with refusing to uphold the law and breaching the public trust — specifically citing the Immigration and Nationality Act, which mandates that migrants not otherwise admissible "shall be detained" pending their removal. The full House could vote as early as next week. The emerging consensus among legal scholars is that Republicans have produced no evidence that the secretary committed an impeachable offense, and the effort is all but certain to collapse if it reaches the Senate. But by making it there, Republicans could force an election-year trial of President Biden's immigration policies. Spurred by record numbers of border crossings and an asylum system that is effectively broken, immigration has become one of the biggest threats to Biden's re-election. While he began his presidency pausing deportations and preaching compassion, Biden last week implored Congress to grant him the power to shut down the border. Some of the circumstances are out of the president's control. But an examination by my colleagues showed that Biden has failed to overcome those obstacles, resulting in a growing humanitarian crisis at the border and in major cities around the country. Many voters now say immigration is their top concern, and they do not have confidence that Biden is addressing it. An Israeli soldier in central Gaza this month. Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times Hamas said it is considering a deal to pause the war Hamas's political chief said today that the group was considering a proposal, floated by Israel, the U.S., Qatar and Egypt, to stop the fighting in Gaza for six weeks and exchange Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners. The comments raised hopes in the region for the possibility of a longer truce. While signaling openness, the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, stuck with the group's longstanding demand for the total withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, which Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, immediately rejected. Netanyahu also appeared defiant, saying in a speech today that "we will not compromise on anything less than total victory." In the West Bank, Israeli forces killed a Hamas commander inside a hospital. In Gaza, journalists risk their lives to document death and destruction of a scale that is impossible for outsiders to grasp. At least 76 Palestinian journalists have been killed since Oct. 7. Treponema pallidum, the bacterium that causes syphilis. Richard J. Green/Science Source Syphilis is soaring in the U.S. Cases of syphilis, the sexually transmitted infection that was once nearly eliminated in the U.S., increased by 80 percent between 2018 and 2022. The rates soared in every age group, including newborns, bringing total new infections to their highest recorded rate since 1950. Syphilis has been on the rise even in countries with national health care. Experts cited increased substance use, falling condom use and dwindling sexual health services as potential factors. Chita Rivera in 1957. Associated Press Chita Rivera, the electrifying Broadway star, died at 91 The dancer, singer and actress Chita Rivera, who leaped to stardom in the original Broadway production of "West Side Story" and dazzled audiences for nearly seven decades as a Puerto Rican lodestar of the American musical theater, died today at 91. Her dancing sometimes overshadowed her thrillingly dramatic way with a song: husky yet clarion, unaffected but full of comment and character. Have a listen. Also, check out her life in photos. More top news Jobs: UPS plans to cut about 12,000 jobs this year, in an effort to slash costs in the face of falling package volumes and higher wages. Eligibility: Illinois's state elections board ruled that Donald Trump would remain on the state's ballot. Politics: Donald Trump's PACs spent roughly $50 million on legal expenses in 2023. Congress: The Justice Department is investigating the use of campaign funds by Representative Cori Bush. Business: A Tesla pay package that added billions to Elon Musk's net worth was blocked by a judge, who said it had been granted under a "deeply flawed" process. Ukraine: Kyiv is consumed with speculation that President Volodymyr Zelensky will fire his top military commander. Pakistan: Imran Khan, the former prime minister, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in what is widely seen as a campaign by the military to sideline a leading critic. Donations: Patagonia's profits have funded wildlife restoration and Democrats. Music: Months before he is to step down from the New York Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden began his term as the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra's music director. Sports: The N.C.A.A. is investigating the University of Tennessee's football program for a potential recruiting violation involving a booster group. Animals: A monkey, nicknamed "Kingussie Kong," is on the run in the Scottish Highlands after escaping from a wildlife park enclosure. TIME TO UNWIND Iowa guard Caitlin Clark during a game on Saturday. Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press The men who try (and fail) to guard Caitlin Clark Across the country, male college students — many of them good high school athletes — compete against the top women's basketball programs during practice. Their job: Use their size and strength to prepare the women for upcoming opponents. Perhaps no gig is harder than the one assigned to Will McIntire and Isaac Prewitt at the University of Iowa. They have the unenviable task of matching up against Caitlin Clark, 2023's player of the year, who is one of the most talented scorers the game has ever seen and more than willing to get into her opponent's face. Mojo Wang How does alcohol affect the gut? There is still a lot that researchers do not know about microbiome science, but evidence suggests that heavy drinking is associated with less healthy guts. People with alcohol use disorder often have an imbalance of "good" and "bad" bacteria in their guts, while moderate drinkers appear to have even more diverse gut microbiomes than people who don't drink at all. For more, my colleague Alice Callahan took a close look at the research. Mara Catalan; Tony Cenicola/The New York Times Dinner table topics A Brooklyn timeline: Follow four decades of transformation in Williamsburg, from bohemia to boom. Absurdist projects: An artist has found millions of fans with elaborate gags like 400 hot dog ice sculptures made of hot dog water. The "in" do: Barbers in America and abroad are being inundated with requests for "the Travis Kelce." There she is: Hannah Neeleman, a Juilliard-trained former ballerina and homemaker, competed in a beauty pageant two weeks after giving birth. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT WHAT TO DO TONIGHT Nico Schinco for The New York Times Cook: There aren't many ways to vary a patty melt, but try Dijon mayo. Watch: Tonight is the season premiere of "Vanderpump Rules." Here's what else is on TV this week. Listen: The new album from the Radiohead spinoff the Smile is a critic's pick. Read: Two new books consider the country's obsession with firearms. Heal: Your lip balm might be making your chapped lips worse. Perfect: Here's how to wash your hair the right way. Strategize: No one knows a surefire way to win at the game Catan, but these tips will help. Compete: Take our quiz to see if you know these short stories that became major films. Play: Here are today's Spelling Bee, Wordle and Mini Crossword. Find all our games here. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ONE LAST THING ReelShort Is America ready for minute-long soap operas? During the pandemic, minute-long, melodramatic tales of romance and revenge became hugely popular across Asia. One company is betting that the mini-soap operas, which are vertically shot and formatted for smartphone viewers, can succeed in the U.S. ReelShort aims to get people hooked as quickly as possible, with much of the action happening in the first few super-short episodes. If the content is compelling enough, some viewers will pay as much as $10 or $20 to keep watching. Have an engaging evening. Thanks for reading. I'll be back tomorrow. — Matthew We welcome your feedback. Write to us at evening@nytimes.com. Continue reading the main story Writer: Matthew Cullen Editorial Director: Adam Pasick Editors: Carole Landry, Whet Moser, Justin Porter, Jonathan Wolfe Photo Editor: Brent Lewis Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for The Evening from The New York Times. To stop receiving The Evening, unsubscribe. 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After Strike on US Forces, What Happens Next?

Options for Biden, plus: looking out for WWIII; watch Fareed's take; why Turkey took so long; and the Trump takeover …

View this email in your browser  Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good   Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here.   January 30, 2024 After Strike on US Forces, What Happens Next? US President Joe Biden has walked a carefully drawn line in the Middle East, seeking to project strength and deter enemies while avoiding a larger war. After three US Army soldiers were killed and more than 30 injured in a weekend drone attack on a US base in Jordan—said by US officials to have been perpetrated by an Iran-backed militia—can Biden keep it up?   Biden may have few (if any) good options, as hawkish voices in Washington call for a forceful response. In a written statement, the president said the US "will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner (of) our choosing."   In a Bloomberg op-ed, retired US Navy Admiral and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis outlines some of Biden's options, suggesting among other steps "5-7 days of continuous strikes against (Iranian) proxy targets in Syria and Yemen" and a cyberattack "going after Iranian command and control, severing Tehran's connectivity to its proxy forces, penetrating its oil and gas infrastructure, and reducing its armament production."   The Economist writes: "A military response appears inevitable; the only question is how far it will go. Another round of limited strikes against Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria will neither placate domestic critics nor do much to deter Iran from further attacks. Mr Biden could choose to strike more prominent or valuable (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of Iran's armed forces) targets in those countries. He could also strike Iran directly, but America has not conducted an overt military operation on Iranian soil since a botched hostage rescue in 1980 and has not hit Iranian forces outside Iraq and Syria since a large-scale strike on IRGC naval forces in 1988. America's response 'will be on a level far above [the] action we've seen thus far,' noted Gregory Brew, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group. 'This could signal a period of much more intense exchanges, with more damage and higher casualties.'"   That, of course, could produce the escalation Biden has sought to avoid: the much-feared expansion of the Israel–Hamas war into a much bigger regional conflict between the US and Israel, on one side, and Iran and its allied militias around the region on the other. At Newsweek, Daniel R. DePetris argues Biden should not consider striking Iran directly. "That a military response is in the offing isn't surprising," DePetris writes. "The scope of it, however, is extremely important. Calls for going above and beyond proportional retaliation, to targets inside Iran itself, will simply create more problems and compel the Iranians to respond directly."   As The Economist points out, the weekend strike on US forces was particularly problematic as it happened just as the US and other intermediaries reportedly have been working on a deal to free Israeli hostages held in Gaza and suspend fighting between Israel and Hamas. At the Middle East Institute, Paul Salem urges Washington to think strategically, rather than reactively, as it plots its next moves: "Diplomatic progress toward prisoner exchanges and ending the Israel-Hamas war will be a strategic win for the US and its friends in the region, and it will be a blow to Iran and its allies, which have been making great headway as long as the conflict continues." The Big One Staying on the topic of war and terror: Hal Brands writes in a Foreign Affairs essay that, today, the world looks disturbingly like it did in the run-up to World War II.   For Americans, the beginning of World War II was cataclysmic: The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, followed four days later by Hitler's declaration of war on the US, immediately globalized the conflict. But the Axis powers had their differences beforehand, and a world war took a while to coalesce. (The acceleration toward it was spurred on by three factors, Brands writes: the closeness between fascist powers Germany and Italy, a "perverse form of interdependence" in which "instability in one region exacerbated instability in another," and "programs of extreme aggression" that "polarized the world and divided it into rival camps.")   To Brands, today's loose geopolitical alignments—the US and Europe on one side, the authoritarian powers China, Russia, and Iran on the other—look ominous as wars unfold in Gaza and Ukraine. Brands writes: "The United States isn't facing a formalized alliance of adversaries, as it once did during World War II. It probably won't see a replay of a scenario in which autocratic powers conquer giant swaths of Eurasia and its littoral regions. Yet with wars in eastern Europe and the Middle East already raging, and ties between revisionist states becoming more pronounced, all it would take is a clash in the contested western Pacific to bring about another awful scenario—one in which intense, interrelated regional struggles overwhelm the international system and create a crisis of global security unlike anything since 1945. A world at risk could become a world at war. And the United States isn't remotely ready for the challenge." Watch Fareed's Take In a world of conflict, Fareed noted on Sunday's GPS, perhaps the most dangerous potential flashpoint looks encouragingly calm. The US–China relationship—which has been tense in recent years, producing fears of a global superpower war—is trending in a positive direction as both Beijing and Washington appear to have realized the danger and moved to lower the temperature.   "A crucial attribute of America's age of hegemony, which began 80 years ago, was that Washington created a security system in which other countries could grow and prosper," Fareed said. "As long as they did not try to disrupt the international order, they could thrive economically, politically, socially, and culturally. … If China plays by these rules, Washington should give it some space. As America's economy powers ahead, the country would do well to maintain confidence in itself and design a foreign policy based on that accurate premise rather than one that is forged on doom and despair." Why Turkey Took So Long After Sweden submitted its application to join NATO in May 2022, Turkey and Hungary signaled they would withhold approval. Last week, Turkey's parliament and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan approved Sweden's membership, after a long drama involving American F-16 sales to Ankara and Turkish complaints about Sweden's relationship with Kurdish militants deemed by Turkey to be terrorists. (Hungary remains as a holdout.)   As for what took Turkey so long, and why Sweden's accession became a materially oriented negotiation, Reuben Silverman writes for Foreign Policy that Turkey has always had a give-and-take relationship with NATO's major Western powers. "Turkey did not gain firm U.S. support for its NATO membership until after 1950 and 1951, when Ankara sent thousands of Turkish soldiers to fight alongside the United States in some of the most brutal months of the Korean War," Silverman writes. "Washington proposed Turkey's accession in May 1951, and support from and the whole NATO Council followed. Turkey was admitted in 1952, along with Greece. From the beginning, Turkey's relationship with NATO was transactional." The Trump Takeover Is Donald Trump's nomination inevitable? Maybe, maybe not: As Heather Cox Richardson wrote in her Letters from an American newsletter, the former president's New Hampshire Republican primary win was commanding in one sense but not at all in another, as "more than 45% of Republican primary voters—those most fervent about the party—chose someone other than Trump."   Still, Trump's takeover of the Republican establishment has been something to marvel at. At The New York Times, Lakshua Jain and Armin Thomas note that in 2016, almost no Republican elected officials endorsed Trump's presidential bid. Today, almost all of them have. "The former president now controls the Republican Party by virtually every conceivable measure," they write. "He has a commanding lead in fund-raising and polling. His policies are a beacon to which most conservative lawmakers orient themselves in affairs both foreign and domestic. His endorsement remains the single most coveted asset that any Republican could hope to brandish in a primary race, and he has already received support from an overwhelming majority of prominent elected Republicans." What did you think of today's newsletter? Send ideas, questions and feedback to  globalbriefing@cnn.com   You are receiving this newsletter because you signed up for Fareed's Global Briefing. To stop receiving this newsletter, unsubscribe or sign up to manage your CNN account   Learn more about the CNN app |  Get CNN web alerts  |  Sign up for a free CNN account   ® © 2024 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All Rights Reserved. 1050 Techwood Drive NW, Atlanta, GA 30318