The Evening: Biden’s high-stakes State of the Union

Also, the U.S. is planning to build a pier to help get aid into Gaza.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story March 7, 2024 By Matthew Cullen Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Thursday. Biden's high-stakes address A plan to help get aid into Gaza Plus, rescuing manatees President Biden will deliver the State of the Union address at 9 p.m. Eastern time.  Tom Brenner for The New York Times Tonight's State of the Union is a big moment for Biden About three hours after this newsletter hits your inbox, President Biden will stand at the lectern on the floor of the House of Representatives and deliver his State of the Union address. The speech will offer Biden perhaps his best opportunity before Election Day to tell Americans at length about his record in office and what he would do if re-elected. The president will use some of the time to boast about the economy, which during his tenure defied gloomy expectations and delivered strong growth and low unemployment. While the address is not technically a campaign speech, Biden is expected to describe what he sees as the grim consequences for women's rights, foreign policy and American democracy if Donald Trump is returned to power. Biden will also hint at his agenda for a second term, which would include efforts to increase corporate taxes and reduce the cost of housing. Tonight's event, which is nowhere near as staid as it once was, could be the most-watched moment of the 2024 campaign, giving Biden an opportunity to confront concerns about his age. "The biggest question for many voters remains whether, at age 81, he's up to the job for another four years," my colleague Reid Epstein, a politics reporter, told me. "Democrats are hoping to see a vigorous and energetic president." The Times will carry his address live, with analysis from reporters. For more: We took a look at the 20 guests who were invited to join Jill Biden in the first lady's viewing box, and we built a quiz to test your knowledge of Biden and Trump's economic accomplishments. A U.S. airdrop of aid to the northern Gaza Strip today.  Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock The U.S. will build a pier to help get aid into Gaza President Biden is planning to order the U.S. military to build a floating pier off the coast of Gaza, to allow additional aid to be delivered by sea to Palestinians who are on the brink of starvation. Biden is set to announce the plan tonight during his State of the Union address. Officials said the temporary port would be built on ships and then moved close to shore and potentially attached to a temporary causeway. The project could take more than 30 to 60 days and require hundreds or thousands of U.S. troops, but none would be on the ground inside Gaza, the officials said. In other news from the region, Hamas negotiators left Cairo with no breakthroughs in cease-fire talks. Avdiivka, Ukraine, in October. U.S. officials say Ukraine defended the city too long and at too great a cost. Nicole Tung for The New York Times The U.S.-Ukraine alliance is showing signs of wear The U.S. has been an important ally for Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion more than two years ago. But the bond has given way to mutual frustration. The American exasperation comes down to a single, recurring issue: U.S. military officials believe that Ukraine needs to concentrate its forces on one big fight at a time instead of defending every inch of the country. Ukrainian officials are increasingly disheartened that American political paralysis has resulted in shortages of ammunition for troops on the front lines. The fake news sites could well be primed to surface disinformation ahead of the U.S. election in November. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times Russia is using mock news sites to push propaganda The New York News Daily, The Chicago Chronicle and D.C. Weekly might all sound like good places to get local news. But they are not news organizations at all. They're Russian creations. According to researchers and government officials, they are meant to push Kremlin propaganda — such as a crude, fake "leaked audio recording" of a U.S. official — by interspersing it among an at-times odd mix of stories about crime, politics and culture. More top news NATO: Ending decades of neutrality, Sweden officially entered the alliance. Texas: A utility said that its equipment may have started the Smokehouse Creek fire, the largest wildfire ever recorded in the state. Crime: The gunman who committed Maine's deadliest mass shooting had the kind of profound brain damage seen in veterans exposed to repeated weapon blasts. Climate: A study found that climate change was a driver of this year's weirdly warm winter. Hollywood: The armorer for the movie "Rust" was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of its cinematographer. This is what the jury heard. Health: The F.D.A. told consumers to throw out several brands of cinnamon that were found to have elevated levels of lead. Science: A bird in Colombia appears to be a bilateral gynandromorph: It has half female characteristics, half male. Sports: Duke asked its crazed basketball fans to heckle responsibly. Wedding: The media titan Rupert Murdoch, 92, is engaged once more. Lives Lived: Buddy Duress, a heroin dealer turned movie star, died at 38. TIME TO UNWIND Images from Voyager 1's approach to Jupiter. NASA Voyager 1, the interstellar pioneer, may have gone dark In 1977, a space probe named Voyager 1 was launched on a four-year mission to take up-close images of Jupiter and Saturn. It did that and so much more, discovering active volcanoes, moons and planetary rings over more than four decades. Its most famous moment came on Valentine's Day in 1990, when it turned around and snapped a humbling photo of Earth known as the Pale Blue Dot. Now, Voyager 1 may have bid its final farewell. The probe, 15 billion miles away, hasn't sent usable data from interstellar space in months. Cat Greenleaf and Michael Rey with Neville.  Jeenah Moon for The New York Times They wanted to share the joy of living on the water Six years ago, Cat Greenleaf and Michael Rey moved from the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn to Sea Gate, a beach community at the western tip of Coney Island. It was such a refreshing change, they said, that they felt compelled to encourage others to try out living on the water. The couple set aside a budget of $450,000 to purchase a distressed waterfront property that they could renovate and rent out to a low-income tenant — preferably someone who had just left prison. They had several options to choose from; which one would you have picked? An imagining of Christopher Nolan's short film "Larceny," based on the scarce details known about it. Chris Retsina Dinner table topics His "lost" movie: In 1996, Christopher Nolan screened a short film he had made with friends. He has kept it hidden ever since. Back in the ring: Mike Tyson, the 58-year-old former world heavyweight champion, will fight an influencer turned boxer live on Netflix. Upper East Side: New York City's supper clubs are a vanishing breed. But Café Carlyle is keeping the tradition alive. Coming to your closet: The ready-to-wear fashion shows wrapped up in Paris. Here's our critic's biggest takeaway. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT WHAT TO DO TONIGHT Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Brett Regot. Cook: This chicken stew is fresh and garlicky. Watch: Kristen Stewart shines in the neo-noir "Love Lies Bleeding," a Times Critic's Pick. Read: "The Unclaimed" fills in the human stories behind unmarked graves. Listen: Our critic made a playlist of Oscar-winning songs. Comfort: Experts shared tips for supporting someone who has lost a pet. Organize: There are easy ways to tidy up your refrigerator. 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 Calliope gets a bottle.  Jason Gulley Meet the flying manatees In 2021, three orphaned manatees were brought to ZooTampa's manatee hospital. There they were given names — Calliope, Soleil and Piccolina — and nursed back to health with lots of attention, big bottles of formula and, later, huge quantities of salad. After a stint at the Cincinnati Zoo came the hard part: transporting the 1,000-pound animals from Ohio to the ocean. A full team of workers helped lift the manatees into padded crates in which they were shipped, on an airplane, back home to Florida. We followed them on their journey, and photographed their adventure at every stop. Have an uplifting 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. 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The Middle East’s ‘Interregnum’

'No one is in charge' of the region today, a Foreign Affairs essay argues. Plus: China's top priority and why Biden is running …

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.   March 7, 2024 The Middle East's 'Interregnum' No one is calling the shots in the Middle East these days, Gregg Carlstrom argues in a Foreign Affairs essay, detailing a power vacuum in which no country—within the region, or outside it—is dominant and in which no clear order has emerged.   The US and USSR jockeyed for influence during the Cold War, and Russia and China have made inroads of late—especially the former, joining Syria's civil war in 2015—but Washington has been viewed as a regional security guarantor in recent decades. That influence has been declining for some time. Before Oct. 7, as Albadr Alshateri detailed in The Cairo Review of Global Affairs last year, erstwhile Middle East rivals had begun cooperating and working out problems among themselves, in part due to America's pullback. As the veteran former US diplomat in the Middle East Martin Indyk noted in a recent Foreign Affairs essay, today "Washington enjoys far less influence and credibility in the region than it did in the 1990s, when, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the U.S.-led eviction of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait, the United States kick-started the process that eventually led to the Oslo accords" on Israeli–Palestinian peace.   Today, Carlstrom argues, the "United States' influence is undeniably on the wane, but China and Russia are not yet Middle Eastern powers." Russia's intervention in Syria, Carlstrom writes, appears in hindsight to have been the recent "high-water mark" of Moscow's Middle East influence. As a whole, Carlstrom writes, the region "finds itself in an interregnum. Forget talk of unipolarity or multipolarity: the Middle East is nonpolar. No one is in charge. The United States is an uninterested, ineffective hegemon, and its great-power rivals even more so. Fragile Gulf states cannot fill the void; Israel cannot, either; and Iran can only play spoiler and troublemaker. Everyone else is a spectator beset by economic problems and crises of legitimacy. That was the reality even before October 7. The war has merely swept away illusions." China Plans Economic Growth. Is That Its Top Goal? At their current National People's Congress, Chinese officials have set an ambitious goal of "around 5%" GDP growth for 2024, as Simone McCarthy reports for CNN Business, and have signaled a desire to transform China's economic-growth model after a disappointing year. (Despite expectations that China would boom after lifting Covid-19 lockdowns in late 2022, its economy has lagged in 2023.) The goals may be lofty, but CNN's McCarthy writes that they were not accompanied by any major stimulus plans.   On that front, the "figures disappoint," Bloomberg's Shuli Ren writes, noting that a 3% official budget deficit remains on par with last year's—hardly a bonanza of spending. Bloomberg News identifies the new buzzwords, a staple of major Chinese policy gatherings. For instance, "new three" growth drivers include electric vehicles, batteries, and solar-energy products, exports of which grew 30% last year, Bloomberg writes. "Ultra-long special central government bonds" are the form new debt financing will take. "Worry-free" consumption responds, as a slogan, to China's slumping domestic demand.   But despite recent economic troubles, growth still isn't the main priority of China's leaders, Diana Choyleva argued in a recent Nikkei Asia op-ed; it's "security." In the Chinese official lexicon, that word can mean several things, including financial and economic security. But it mostly means regime stability and control. "(T)he nature of the system," Choyleva writes, "favors eliminating threats rather than welcoming opportunities." Why Biden Is Running President Joe Biden is 81 years old, and even as he runs against 77-year-old former President Donald Trump, the age of the sitting commander-in-chief has become a major focal point in the 2024 election. It might or might not hurt Biden significantly at the polls, Patti Waldmeir opines in the Financial Times: Surveys indicate strongly that voters are concerned, but some observers argue "Biden's mental wobbles are, to some extent, already in the price."   In the current issue of The New Yorker, a long feature by Evan Osnos delves into Biden's presidency and his decision to run for reelection, despite the reservations of some Democrats. "He's not the only option that we had," Sen. Sheldon White House (D-R.I.) tells Osnos, who notes that other high-ranking Democrats told him the same. "But, once he'd made the decision to go, he became the only option that we have."   As for Biden and his motivations, Osnos writes: "Given the doubts, I asked, wasn't it a risk to say, 'I'm the one to do it'? (Biden) shook his head and said, 'No. I'm the only one who has ever beat (Trump). And I'll beat him again.' For Biden, the offense of the contested (2020) election was clearly personal. Trump had not just tried to steal the Presidency—he had tried to steal it from him. 'I'd ask a rhetorical question,' Biden said. 'If you thought you were best positioned to beat someone who, if they won, would change the nature of America, what would you do?'"   Biden "has not addressed the matter of age as forthrightly" as John F. Kennedy addressed his then-controversial Catholicism as a presidential candidate, Osnos writes, "even though it is a topic that might resonate with Americans, especially those who have suffered the condescension and dismissal that rankle him. Yes, he might stumble at the microphone, but he might also convince skeptics of the power in his patience, institutional memory, and experience. His campaign, at least, has evidently decided that the issue can't be avoided entirely." What did you think of today's newsletter? 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