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Why China's potential economic rebound could boost the US

China could bounce back from its pandemic reopening swoon both stronger and sooner than expected, offering a rare source of optimism for the U.S. economy amid rising recession fears.

The Chinese economy grew just 3 percent in 2022 and rose at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in the fourth quarter, according to statistics released Monday by Beijing. While that’s sharply down from its 8.1 percent expansion in 2021, both the annual and quarterly growth rates beat expectations and offered hope for a swift 2023 recovery.

China still faces several obstacles as it crawls out of a pandemic-induced slump, including issues within its real estate markets and the country’s ongoing refusal to approve Western COVID-19 vaccines with greater efficacy. The country’s population also shrank last year for the first time since the 1960s, which is bad sign for longer-term economic growth.

But economists are hopeful that a recovering Chinese economy could keep up demand for U.S. products and reduce pressure on supply chains as Americans face a potential recession this year.

“China’s reopening — uneven or not — is well underway and may be a catalyst for supply chain fixes and more global demand,” wrote Jeffrey Buchbinder and Thomas Shipp of LPL Research in a Tuesday analysis.

China spent the end of 2022 roiled by protests over its strict coronavirus containment policies and a surge in cases following the relaxation of those restrictions. Both took a serious toll on the economy as millions of Chinese fell ill and businesses struggled to operate.

“Data in December surprised broadly to the upside, but remains weak, particularly across demand-side segments such as retail spending,” explained Louise Loo, an economist at Oxford Economics.

“The good news is that there are now signs of stabilization,” she continued.

Loo said that while economic indicators from China may not catch up for a while, other more timely data tracking foot and automobile traffic are showing “signs of a tentative rebound.” 

Other experts, such as economist Andrew Tilton of Goldman Sachs, have expressed optimism that the worst of the reopening COVID-19 surge is over for the Chinese economy.

“It appears the peak in daily cases is already past, based on news reports as well as related information such as Internet search frequency for virus-related topics, and there is evidence that mobility is beginning to recover,” Tilton wrote in an analysis earlier this month.

“This adds to our conviction that economic activity should rebound in coming months. Policymakers also look to be very focused on reviving economic activity in 2023,” he added.

While the U.S. is seeking to limit China’s economic influence and dominance over crucial raw materials, the American economy needs for the Chinese one to avoid another serious setback.

U.S. businesses and consumers could face another round of rising prices and shipping delays if a resurgence of COVID-19 disrupts supply chains in China. A weaker Chinese economy could reduce demand for energy and bring down oil prices, but could still push inflation higher if accompanied by factory shutdowns and shipping snarls.

“Weaker output in China will push down on commodity prices, but it could interfere with supply chains ultimately. And that could push inflation up in the West. It’s very hard to say, you know, how much — how those two will offset each other,” warned Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell during a December press conference.

“Waves of COVID all around the world can interfere with economic activity. China [is] a very critical place for manufacturing,” he continued.

Source: TEST FEED1

Here's how California is trying to hold on to its rainwater 

Story at a glance

• Over the past few weeks, California has been inundated with heavy rainfall, leading to widespread flooding and power outages.  

• Many communities already had processes in place to help capture the excess water given the severe drought the state has been experiencing.  

•  Strategies include groundwater recharge projects and upgrading cities with low-impact development features.  

California is trying to hold on to as much of its rain water as it can even as it deals with a terrible series of storms that has led to widespread flooding, 19 deaths and more than 20,000 homes without power.  

The reason is simple: the Golden State is also experiencing a three-year drought that had left Californians short of water.  

The state has experimented with a number of ways to hold on to the rain when it comes.  

Groundwater recharge projects 

Researchers across the west are investigating and implementing groundwater recharge projects, or man-made interventions aimed at helping aquifers replenish themselves. 

“The general concept is you’ve got enough water on the surface. You’d like to put it in the ground,” explained Andrew Fisher, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  

Because more groundwater has been pumped out of the ground over the years than has been naturally replenished, more space is available underground to hold additional surface water.  

That space, “which is vastly greater than the sum of all of the surface storage reservoirs that exist now or could be built,” is itself a resource, said Michael Kiparsky, water program director at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at University of California, Berkeley School of Law.  

Projects aimed at moving surface water into those spaces include putting water in percolation basins and letting it settle into the ground or building injection wells that lead the water directly into aquifers. 

Over 340 projects have been proposed by communities in California, while the state itself has a goal of expanding average groundwater recharge by at least 500,000 acre-feet each year. One acre-foot is equivalent to an acre of land with water one foot deep, Fisher explained.  

“That’s about enough water for two California families for a year,” he added. 

The California Department of Water Resources has announced it is expediting the permitting process for projects. 

Thanks to climate change, “we have and will continue to have too much water when we don’t want it and not enough when we do, and so storage is the key,” said Kiparsky. “The fact that we’ve created this massive space underground holds the key to that problem.” 

Expanding reservoirs and improving operations   

In 2018, California approved expansion projects for the Los Vaqueros Reservoir and Pacheco Reservoir.  

Combined, the projects, along with construction of two new reservoirs, are expected to boost California’s reservoir storage by 9 percent. Construction on each expansion is not expected to begin until the late 2020s, however. 

Reservoirs are manmade lakes formed by the construction of dams in river valleys. During times of high rainfall, reservoirs collect water which is then slowly released over the following weeks and months.  

The Pacheco project will increase the reservoir’s size from 6,000 acre-feet to 141,600 acre-feet, while the Los Vaqueros project will increase the reservoir from 60,000 acre-feet to 275,000 acre-feet.  

Although new reservoirs and expansions can improve water supply flexibility, costs are high and some environmentalists have raised concerns about the projects’ impacts on local wildlife. The four projects received a total investment of nearly $2 billion from the state of California.  

In addition, existing California regulations mandate when reservoirs are allowed to fill up and by how much, as empty space in a reservoir can be crucial to collect excess water when a major storm hits. 

“The rule might say, after a big storm in January, you must release enough water so that you’re at 60 percent, or whatever the rule is,” said Fisher. “And there’s a reason for that because if you don’t empty out part of the reservoir, it is not available for the next storm. It can’t help with flood control.” 

But if no storm hits, some reservoirs may empty too soon, leading to wasted water. On the other hand, if a reservoir does not empty enough and a dam is overwhelmed, it runs the risk of flooding downstream. To avoid this, some reservoirs, including Folsom Reservoir and Lake Mendocino, are using more advanced weather prediction technologies to guide operations.  

“A lot of these dams—federal, state dams—when they were developed decades ago, the weather forecasts weren’t as good as they are now,” said Fisher.  

Using updated forecasting technology, reservoir operators can empty out water to account for excess rain if a major storm is predicted. These forecast-informed reservoir operations could also be adopted by other states in similar situations, though different weather patterns and melting snow would need to be taken into account. 

Sponge cities and low-impact development  

Permeable pavement, or a surface that allows runoff to pass through pavement and into underlying stone beds and soil, can help California and states like it preserve water, according to California Sea Grant. The grant is a collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and universities across the state.  

The resource is a type of low impact development (LID), or system that uses or mimics natural processes to manage stormwater, according to the EPA.  

In San Francisco, permeable pavement has already been installed on some streets. The city’s utilities commission has spent upwards of $60 million on grants to help fund construction of permeable pavement and rain gardens. The city is also home to bioretention planters designed to capture water along curbs. 

It’s a key development and one that many urban and suburban communities filled with asphalt, concrete, and other impervious surfaces could copy.  

“A lot of times, this green infrastructure that’s put in place can have the benefit of not only slowing down the hydromodification, but also cleaning that water out,” said Kiparsky.  

“And that allows microbes to do their magic and remove some of the contaminants that are in that kind of urban water, so you’re handling water quality as well as the hydromodification.” 

Water boards throughout the state also are advancing the effort with rain barrels and cisterns, tree preservation and rooftop gardens.  

Completed in late 2021, the East Los Angeles Sustainable Median Stormwater Capture Project aimed to collect urban and stormwater runoff from a tributary area in East Los Angeles.  

The wells constructed as part of the project are located in highway medians and help divert storm runoff into underground aquifers, adding to local water supplies. Some medians are complete with parks, where residents can walk their dogs or exercise.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar get committee assignments back

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) are set to get committee assignments back after being stripped from their assignments in the Democratic-controlled Congress in 2021.

The House GOP Steering Committee on Tuesday selected Greene to sit on the House Homeland Security Committee and Gosar to sit on the House Natural Resources Committee, which he sat on before being stripped of his slot on the panel, according to two sources familiar with the selections.

The Steering Committee, a panel of around 30 members of House leadership and elected regional representatives, has not yet made selections for the House Oversight and Reform Committee, a panel that Greene has said that she wants to join and that Gosar sat on before being removed from the panel.

The full House GOP Conference must ratify the assignments, but it typically approves the Steering Committee’s recommendations.

The House voted to remove Greene from her committee assignments in February 2021, just a month after she was sworn into Congress, over her past embrace of conspiracy theories and social media interactions encouraging violence against Democratic officials. Greene said on the House floor that day that she regretted believing conspiracies that were not true.

Of the eleven House Republicans who voted in favor of stripping Greene from her posts on the House Education and Budget committees, seven are still in Congress: Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (Fla.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Carlos Giménez (Fla.), Young Kim (Calif.), Nicole Malliotakis (N.Y.), Maria Elvira Salazar (Fla.), and Chris Smith (N.J.).

In November 2021, the House voted to censure Gosar and strip him from his committee assignments after he posted an edited anime video on Twitter that depicted him swinging swords at President Biden and killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Gosar said on the House floor that he does not “espouse violence towards anyone,” and voluntarily took the video down “out of compassion for those who genuinely felt offense.”

Then-Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) were the only two Republicans to vote to strip Gosar of his committee assignments, while Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) voted “present.”

Greene and Gosar went on to appear at a conference hosted by white nationalist Nick Fuentes in early 2022, prompting widespread condemnation from leaders in both parties. Greene said months later that if she had known about Fuentes’s views, she would not have spoken at the conference.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) pledged in November 2021 that Greene and Gosar would be put back on committees if the GOP retook the House majority, and potentially even “better” ones.

And in retaliation for Democrats removing Greene and Gosar from committees, as well as then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blocking two of his picks from the Jan. 6 select committee, McCarthy has said Republicans will block Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from sitting on the House Intelligence Committee and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from sitting on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Greene was one of the most vocal supporters of McCarthy for Speaker, in a break with many of her fellow hard-right colleagues in the House. But she repeatedly said that she had not been promised any committee assignments.

Greene had also previously expressed interest in the House Judiciary Committee in a 2022 interview, but was not selected to be on that panel.

Source: TEST FEED1

McCarthy says Santos will be seated on committees

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday said Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) will be seated on committees, after the embattled freshman lawmaker admitted to embellishing parts of his résumé.

“He’ll get seated on committees,” McCarthy said in the Capitol when asked if he would be assigned to any panels.

The comments come after McCarthy last week said Santos should not be on any top House committees — including Appropriations, Ways and Means, Financial Services and Energy and Commerce — but left the door open to seating him on other panels.

Santos has been at the center of a controversy on Capitol Hill following revelations that he fabricated portions of his résumé and biography. The freshman congressman admitted to embellishing some details, but has said he has no plans to step down from Congress despite several calls for his resignation — including some from within the GOP.

McCarthy has stopped short of demanding that Santos resign from his seat, arguing that voters in New York’s 3rd Congressional District sent him to Washington to serve.

“I try to stick by the Constitution. The voters elected him to serve. If there is a concern, and he has to go through the Ethics [Committee], let him move through that,” McCarthy said, adding “he will continue to serve.”

On Monday, however, McCarthy did say he “always had a few questions” about Santos’s résumé. The comments followed reports from CNN and The New York Times that said Dan Conston — an McCarthy ally who heads a PAC aligned with the Speaker — expressed concerns about Santos.

Asked about those comments and if he raised concerns about Santos during the campaign, McCarthy pointed to reports that someone working for the New York candidate impersonated the Californian’s chief of staff during Santos’s campaigns in 2020 and 2022.

“My staff raised concerns when he had a staff member who impersonated my chief of staff, and that individual was let go when Mr. Santos found out about it,” McCarthy said Tuesday.

Source: TEST FEED1

White House calls on McCarthy to publicize details of deals with conservatives

The White House on Tuesday called on Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to make public the details of any agreements he struck with conservative House members in exchange for their votes to win the Speakership.

Deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates warned that the extent of the deals between McCarthy and the roughly 20 Republicans who initially opposed his bid for Speaker are not fully known, but that they could wreak havoc on the economy and key government programs.

“An unprecedented tax hike on the middle class and a national abortion ban are just a glimpse of the secret, backroom deals Speaker McCarthy made with extreme MAGA members to end this month’s chaotic elections and claim the gavel,” Bates said in a statement, which was first reported by Politico. “The few agreements we know about would fundamentally reshape our economy in a devastating way for working families and criminalize women for making their own health care decisions. 

“What other hidden bargains did Speaker McCarthy make behind closed doors with the most extreme, ultra MAGA members of the House Republican conference?” Bates continued. “The American people have a right to know — now — which is why we are calling on him to make every single one of them public immediately.”

McCarthy earlier this month offered a series of concessions to hard-line conservatives in a bid to win their votes for Speaker, which he ultimately did after 15 rounds of voting.

McCarthy agreed to several procedural changes, including lowering the threshold to bring up a move to force a vote on ousting the House Speaker down to just one member, committing to moving bills through regular order and promising to bring up bills on term limits and border security for floor votes.

The California Republican also agreed to drive a hard line in upcoming budget talks, with conservatives who ultimately backed McCarthy calling for caps on spending and changes to programs like Social Security and Medicare. That assurance comes ahead of a standoff between Republicans and Democrats over raising the debt ceiling before the nation defaults.

But Democrats have raised concerns that McCarthy has not been forthcoming about the specifics of other concessions he may have made to conservatives to win their votes for Speaker, including whether he promised votes on certain bills or subcommittee gavels to certain lawmakers.

The White House statement attacking McCarthy came as President Biden is dealing with his own controversy. 

Biden has been under fire since it was reported a week ago that classified documents from his time as vice president were found in an office he used from 2017 to 2019 while working for the University of Pennsylvania at its Washington, D.C., think tank.

Since then, additional documents with classified markings were found at Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home. The White House has faced criticism for not disclosing the findings as they happened, with House Republicans vowing to investigate whether Biden knew about the documents or what role he may have played in their discovery.

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump on possible DeSantis challenge: 'We'll handle that the way I handle things'

Former President Trump sounded a note of confidence regarding the possibility Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) might enter the 2024 presidential race, saying “we’ll handle that the way I handle things.”

During an interview with David Brody on “The Water Cooler” on Monday, Trump was asked if it would be a “bad move” for DeSantis to jump into the presidential race. The Florida governor has not officially announced a White House bid, as Trump has, but it’s been widely speculated he is considering joining the GOP primary.

“So you know, now I hear he might want to run against me. So we’ll handle that the way I handle things,” Trump said in part after boasting about his endorsement of DeSantis’s first successful gubernatorial campaign.

Several recent polls have shown DeSantis beating Trump in hypothetical matchups. One poll from Yahoo News-YouGov released last month showed DeSantis head of Trump 47 to 42 percent among registered voters.

A separate poll from Vanderbilt University also from December showed DeSantis receiving 54 percent among registered Republicans compared to 41 percent for Trump.

That led Trump to release polling of his own from polling firm McLaughlin & Associates, which had worked on his 2020 campaign, showing him beating DeSantis 58 percent to 36 percent. 

DeSantis’s profile has risen further after his 19-point gubernatorial reelection win in November, a resounding victory for the Florida Republican that members of the party saw as a silver lining in an otherwise midterm difficult night for Republicans.

Meanwhile, many of Trump’s endorsees lost their general election races, leading members of the party to question whether the former president still holds sway over voters and the party.

The Hill has reached out to DeSantis’s campaign for comment.

Source: TEST FEED1

McCarthy says he 'always had a few questions' about Santos résumé

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that he “always” had some questions about Rep. George Santos’s (R-N.Y.) résumé, showing some of his first apprehension about the freshman New York representative weeks after revelations of Santos’s vast fabrications about his background.

“I always had a few questions about it,” McCarthy told CNN on Capitol Hill on Monday, referring to Santos’s résumé.

McCarthy also commented about a person working for Santos who allegedly impersonated McCarthy’s chief of staff to solicit campaign donations during his 2020 and 2022 campaigns.

“You know, I didn’t know about that. It happened, and I know they corrected it, but I was not notified about that until a later date,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy added that he had talked to the freshman lawmaker about the impersonation.

The comments from McCarthy follow a CNN report saying that Dan Conston, president of the McCarthy-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund PAC, had expressed concerns about Santos to lawmakers and donors, citing an unnamed source.

McCarthy has declined to call for Santos to resign over his résumé fabrications and embellishments, though several other New York House Republicans have.

“I try to stick by the Constitution. The voters elected him to serve. If there is a concern, and he has to go through the Ethics, let him move through that,” McCarthy told reporters last week, referring to the House Ethics panel.

“He is going to have to build the trust here and he’s going to have the opportunity to try to do that,” McCarthy said.

Source: TEST FEED1

The Hill's Morning Report — Biden, House GOP trade blows

Editor’s note: The Hill’s Morning Report is our daily newsletter that dives deep into Washington’s agenda. To subscribe, click here or fill out the box below.

Biden, House GOP trade blows

Weekend air waves and social media were filled with barbed rhetoric and accusations so riddled with Washington-speak that few casual listeners can sort it all out.

On Sunday, a House GOP committee chairman used the term “crime scene” to describe the recent discovery by the president’s lawyers of classified documents, which long ago should have been turned over to the National Archives, found at President Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home. Separately, a federal special counsel is tasked to gather the facts as the Biden paper chase continues.

On Monday, the president knocked House Republicans as “fiscally demented” for casting Democrats in Washington as big spenders who balloon the federal deficit. 

“They don’t quite get it,” Biden said to laughter during a speech on Martin Luther King Jr. Day (The Hill).

“House Republicans are playing politics in a shamelessly hypocritical attempt to attack President Biden,” White House spokesman Ian Sams told Fox News Digital Monday.

Republicans say they don’t want to raise the cap on what the government can borrow to pay its bills without simultaneously achieving spending cuts, even as the Treasury Department warns that default is officially a real and pending danger beginning on Thursday (The Hill).

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said in a joint statement Friday that “a default forced by extreme MAGA Republicans could plunge the country into a deep recession and lead to even higher costs for America’s working families on everything from mortgages and car loans to credit card interest rates.”

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has floated the kind of budget-cap deal seen during the last battle over the debt ceiling during the Trump administration, which would involve capping federal spending levels in return for the House votes needed to raise the statutory debt ceiling.

The clash over classified documents, which involves a criminal investigation in the case of former President Trump’s foot-dragging to return presidential records, has emboldened Trump’s supporters to go after Biden and is likely to drag on for months as Democrats try to lay out their arguments for the 2024 presidential election.

House investigators last week asked for logs of visitors to the president’s Delaware home, akin to visitor logs maintained by the White House. They were told by Biden’s representatives, corroborated by the U.S. Secret Service, that no such records are kept for the president’s private residence (The Hill, The New York Times).

Schumer’s 2024 strategy had been to run against the perceived excesses of the House GOP majority, The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports. But the New York progressive, who does not have much of a relationship with McCarthy, must also navigate legislative compromises if a U.S. default is to be averted and the government funded rather than shuttered.

Republicans have flirted with both risks in the past while messaging to voters and pressuring Democrats. Those partisan faceoffs proved popular with the base. But the public in general blamed the GOP.

Related Articles

▪ The Hill: Biden documents case marks Attorney General Merrick Garland’s latest test.

▪ C-SPAN: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, tonight will deliver a speech about the status of the working class in the Capitol Visitors Center in Washington at 7 p.m.  

▪ The Hill: Eight Senate seats most likely to flip in 2024.

▪ The Hill: Five mayoral races to watch this year.

▪ Politico: “The most important election nobody’s ever heard of”: A spring state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin has serious implications for abortion policy, voting rights and more in the perennial battleground.

▪ The Hill: Wyoming state lawmakers propose to ban electric vehicle sales to protect the oil and gas industry.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ CONGRESS

U.S. lawmakers on Monday attended a posh private luncheon with dozens of influential CEOs at the Hotel Schatzalp in Davos, Switzerland, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, which continues through Friday (CNBC). Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and a few House members were there, along with Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia. 

Top U.S. officials sent to Davos by the Biden administration are Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and Special Envoy for Climate Change John Kerry (Bloomberg News). CNN reports that the glitzy gathering in the Alps is seen by some as having less relevancy in 2023, although top government officials expected to participate include Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol.

▪ The Hill: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to meet with Chinese leader Liu in Zurich, Switzerland, on her way to Africa.

▪ Politico EU: U.S. lawmakers in Davos tell Europeans: America is not protectionist.

Truth & consequences? Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) remains firmly in the headlines this week — as well as in his House seat.

The Washington Post reported that Santos has deeper ties than previously known to a businessman who cultivated close links with a Trump confidant who is a cousin of a sanctioned Russian oligarch. According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, Andrew Intrater — whose cousin is Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in the Russian energy industry — and his wife each gave the maximum $5,800 to Santos’s main campaign committee and tens of thousands more since 2020 to committees linked to him.

Meanwhile, according to Business Insider, two of Santos’s former roommates say he took a Burberry scarf from one of them and wore it in public a year later to a 2021 “Stop the Steal” rally at which Santos claimed his own 2020 election was stolen from him.

And The New York Times reports that Santos inspired no shortage of suspicion during his 2022 campaign, including in the upper echelons of the Republican Party, yet many fellow party members looked the other way.

▪ New York magazine: The luckiest liar in politics. How Santos outran the truth.

▪ The Hill: The seven quirkiest bill names using acronyms.

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ INTERNATIONAL

The U.S. military’s new, expanded combat training of Ukrainian forces began in Germany on Sunday, with a goal of getting a battalion of about 500 troops back on the battlefield to fight Russia in the next five to eight weeks, according to Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The so-called combined arms training is aimed at honing the skills of the Ukrainian forces so they will be better prepared to launch an offensive or counter any surge in Russian attacks (NPR).

The death toll from a Russian missile strike in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro rose to 40 on Monday, with dozens more missing, making it the deadliest civilian incident of Moscow’s three-month campaign of firing missiles at cities far from the front. Officials acknowledged little hope of finding anyone else alive in the rubble, but President Volodymyr Zelensky said the rescue operation would continue “as long as there is even the slightest chance to save lives” (Reuters).

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “flailing” decision this week to name a new leader for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine reflects a growing sense of desperation as the Kremlin continues its unsuccessful battlefield slog, writes The Hill’s Ellen Mitchell. The appointment of Gen. Valery Gerasimov, former chief of the general staff, as overall commander of the country’s so-called special military operation has experts dubious of Putin’s wartime strategy following a series of humiliating battlefield losses this past autumn. But the switch up — which saw the demotion of Gen. Sergey Surovikin, commander of the invasion since October — could also indicate a coming escalation of Russia’s brutal war tactics, experts fear.   

▪ The Washington Post: Germany’s defense minister resigns after string of blunders — including issues of arming Ukraine.

▪ Reuters: Tanks for Ukraine in sight as holdout Germany says new minister to decide.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Dozens of Russian draftees died in a Ukrainian strike. Putin’s war machine rolled on.

▪ CNN: A high-level U.S. delegation met on Monday with Zelensky and Ukrainians in Kyiv. 

▪ CNN: Russian former military commander seeks asylum in Norway.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday moved to block gender recognition legislation passed recently by Scotland’s Parliament, opening up a constitutional rift between the two countries and stoking a highly charged debate over transgender rights. Members of the Scottish Parliament voted last month to allow transgender people to have the gender with which they identify legally recognized, but the British government in London argues that the move breaches equality legislation that applies across Britain by affording people different treatment depending on where they live.

The Hill: British government blocks Scottish law that would have made it easier for people to change their gender for legal purposes. 

“If there is a decision to challenge, then in my view then it will quite simply be a political decision and it will be using trans people, already one of the most vulnerable stigmatized groups in our society, as a political weapon,” Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said on Monday. “I think that will be unconscionable, indefensible and really quite disgraceful.”

The move marks the first time a prime minister has invoked a statute known as the Scotland Act of 1998, which sets out the powers of the Scottish Parliament and says the government in London has the ability to block laws that affect issues that fall under the purview of the British government (The New York Times).

▪ Reuters: Brazil’s crowdfunded insurrection leaves paper trail for police.

▪ Bloomberg News: Italy’s most-wanted mafia boss arrested after 30 years in hiding.

▪ The New York Times: China’s latest source of unrest: unpaid “zero COVID” workers.

▪ Bloomberg News: China’s population shrinks for the first time since the 1960s in a seismic shift.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: China’s economic growth fell to near-historic lows as COVID-19 took a bite.

Women in Afghanistan are finding avenues to pursue education as the Taliban continues to crack down on women’s rights, recently banning female students from going to university, writes The Hill’s Lexi Lonas. The December announcement from the Taliban immediately banning women from university caused at least one online U.S. college — the University of the People — to see an increase in Afghan female applicants.

The school, which works with thousands of refugees, reported in one week after the Taliban’s new ban that it received 2,208 applications. The school already has 2,000 Afghan women enrolled and 10,000 Afghan women who’ve applied. 

“I think that the women who come to us, most of them, stopped at school,” University of the People President Shai Reshef told The Hill. “They stopped studying, and they were forced to leave school. And as such, they have the desire to study. They want to feel that they’re part of the world.”

OPINION

■ The hard reality of a debt-ceiling showdown, by The Wall Street Journal editorial board. https://on.wsj.com/3iJUUdG

■ This is how red states silence blue cities. And democracy, by Margaret Renkl, contributor, The New York Times. https://nyti.ms/3knvbZ1 

■ The Supreme Court justices do not seem to be getting along, by Steven Mazie, contributor, The Atlantic. https://bit.ly/3ITwKbq

WHERE AND WHEN

👉 The Hill: Share a news query tied to an expert journalist’s insights: The Hill launched something new and (we hope) engaging via text with Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. Learn more and sign up HERE.

The House will return for legislative business on Jan. 24. It will meet briefly at 2 p.m.

The Senate meets at 1 p.m. for a pro forma session. 

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9 a.m. Bidenwill meet at the White House with Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte at 11:15 a.m. in the Oval Office. He will have lunch with Vice President Harris at 12:45 p.m. He will greet NBA champions the Golden State Warriors at 2:45 p.m. in the East Room. Harris will also make remarks. 

The vice president will have lunch with the president and join Biden in welcoming the Golden State Warriors to the White House.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff at 11:30 a.m. will speak ahead of a talk with the filmmakers of “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein. At 6:15 p.m., he will speak at a reception for the Democratic Mayors Association at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington.

Yellen will stop in Switzerland for a meeting with Chinese official Liu before traveling in Africa through Jan. 28 with itineraries in Senegal, Zambia and then South Africa. Her events in Senegal begin on Friday.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly at the department at 2 p.m. They will hold a joint press conference at 3:20 p.m.

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 1:45 p.m. 

The United States Conference of Mayors will hold a winter meeting in Washington today through Friday.

The National League of Cities will mark today’s National Day of Racial Healing with events today and Wednesday in Washington. 

ELSEWHERE

➤ TECH & AI

ChatGPT — the new, free artificial intelligence tool — has only been around for five weeks but is already raising tough questions about the future of AI in education, the tech industry and a host of professions.

The program, which was developed by San Francisco-based research laboratory OpenAI, trawls vast amounts of data and information to generate natural-sounding text based on queries or prompts. It can write and debug code in a range of programming languages and generate poems and essays — even mimicking literary styles. While some experts say it’s a groundbreaking feat of AI that could replace humans for different tasks, others warn that ChatGPT and similar tools could flood the internet with misinformation. Bloomberg News has rounded up answers to some of the most common questions surrounding the program.

As ChatGPT gains popularity — and enterprising students start using it to perform tasks like essay writing — school systems across the country are grappling with whether to ban it outright or allow its use in certain situations. New York City school officials announced plans to block ChatGPT earlier this month, and several jurisdictions across the D.C. region have started doing the same (WTOP).

But others think differently. Writing for The New York Times, technology columnist Kevin Roose argues that “schools should thoughtfully embrace ChatGPT as a teaching aid — one that could unlock student creativity, offer personalized tutoring, and better prepare students to work alongside AI systems as adults.”

▪ Inside Higher Education: To harness the potential and avert the risks of OpenAI’s new chat bot, academics should think a few years out, invite students into the conversation and — most of all — experiment, not panic.

▪ The New York Times: Alarmed by AI chatbots, universities are revamping how they teach.

Meanwhile in October, the online emotional support service Koko ran an experiment in which GPT-3, a newly popular artificial intelligence chatbot, wrote responses either in whole or in part. While workers at Koko could edit the responses and were still pushing the buttons to send them, they weren’t always the authors.

Koko co-founder Robert Morris said about 4,000 people got responses from Koko at least partly written by AI. The experiment has blown up into an intense controversy since it was disclosed a week ago and may serve as a preview of more ethical disputes to come as AI works its way into more products and health services (NBC News).

The Wall Street Journal: Microsoft plans to build OpenAI capabilities into all products.

🚘 Drivers can expect more electric cars and autonomous features to hit the market in the next few years as car makers go high-tech and tech industry giants like Google and Amazon branch further into automotives, writes The Hill’s Rebecca Klar. Cars are offering opportunities for innovation where software and artificial intelligence “really come together in one,” Patrick Brady, vice president of automotive at Google, said during a Consumer Electronics Show panel last week.

➤ HEALTH & PANDEMIC

A woman in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C., is suing in a first of a kind lawsuit in the District Court. The reason? The smell of marijuana, which Josefa Ippolito-Shepherd said is a nuisance as it filters up to her home. 

“I have the right to breathe fresh air in my home,” Ippolito-Shepherd told The Washington Post before the trial. “I’m not talking about if I go to someone else’s house or a place people go to smoke pot. They have the freedom to do whatever. I just do not want to be invaded in my own home.”

Her lawsuit is one of the first of its kind; despite the legalization of marijuana in many states and jurisdictions, not much research has emerged regarding the effects of secondhand smoke exposure, or the smell. Overall, local governments are not passing major reform on this front, but the signature scent of marijuana is now an increasingly ubiquitous olfactory experience in cities where smoking is most common.

The omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 is still gaining ground within the U.S., accounting for at least 43 percent of sequenced cases from the last week, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the subvariant does not have any mutations known to make people sicker when they catch the virus, according to a World Health Organization risk assessment published Wednesday.

But the agency noted in the report that it doesn’t have any real-world data on how XBB.1.5 is affecting patients’ health, so it cannot draw any conclusions at this time about its actual severity (Axios and CNBC).

▪ TIME Magazine: As COVID-19 barrels through China, some are turning to the black market amid drug shortages.

▪ ABC News: Celebrities test positive for COVID-19 after the Golden Globes.

▪ The New York Times: No increased stroke risk linked to Pfizer’s COVID-19 boosters, federal officials say.

▪ NBC News: Beginning today, all U.S. military veterans who are in suicidal crisis are eligible for free care at any VA or private facility. They do not have to be enrolled in the VA health system for free mental health care without copays or fees. More than 18 million veterans in the U.S. could be eligible. 

Information about COVID-19 vaccine and booster shot availability can be found at Vaccines.gov.

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,099,885. Current U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 3,907 for the week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The CDC shifted its tally of available data from daily to weekly, now reported on Fridays.)

THE CLOSER

And finally … Step softly and carry tools! NASA astronaut and former test pilot Nicole Mann, 45, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut and structural engineer Koichi Wakata, 59, are preparing for their first spacewalk duties outside the International Space Station on Friday. Both are veterans of NASA missions and long periods in space.

NASA estimates their work, which will be broadcast live, could take six and a half hours. They’re expected to complete the installation of two mounting platforms as part of planned solar power improvements, which were begun during a previous spacewalk.

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Biden documents case marks Garland's latest test

The discovery of classified documents at President Biden’s old office and Delaware home have thrust Attorney General Merrick Garland back into a situation none of his predecessors have encountered.

Garland has, over the past three months, appointed two special counsels to review the handling of classified documents: One involving the current president, and one involving the former president, both of whom may be on the ballot in 2024.

Garland appointed a special counsel on Thursday to handle the review of the Biden documents, which were found late last year but only disclosed publicly this week. The Justice Department was quickly alerted, the White House said, and the files were returned to the National Archives.

Garland’s tenure has in many ways been defined by his methodical approach to investigations of former President Trump. He has taken fire from both sides of the aisle, at times from Democrats, accusing him of moving too slowly to investigate Trump, and at times from Republicans, who’ve said he appears too focused on the former president and not on issues like crime.

But now the focus is largely on how he is handling a review of Biden and how a small number of classified documents from his time as vice president came to be found at a Washington, D.C., office and Biden’s Delaware residence in recent months.

With the appointment of a special counsel to handle the Biden documents, experts say they believe Garland is taking great pains to keep the department out of the political fray.

“Merrick Garland is very, very careful about trying to avoid even the optics of politics,” former White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday on MSNBC. “So naming a special counsel in this case means he is treating them, at least pursuing to investigate and look into these cases, equally. No president is above the law, right?”

As part of his 2020 campaign, Biden pledged to restore competence in government and independence at the Justice Department after Trump spent four years publicly pressuring his attorney general over certain investigations related to his own conduct.

Garland’s first two years as attorney general have been overshadowed mostly by investigations into Trump, which are politically sensitive given the former president is still essentially the leader of the Republican Party and had long teased a comeback bid before declaring his 2024 candidacy last November.

Garland appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, shortly after Trump declared he was running for the White House in order to handle all investigations into the former president. That included a probe over Trump’s handling of sensitive government materials after dozens of classified documents were found at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

On Thursday, Garland appointed Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate the discovery of classified documents that were potentially mishandled following Biden’s tenure as vice president.

Some legal experts argued that the existence of the special counsel for Trump made appointing one for Biden all but inevitable, even if Garland believes the two cases are different.

“I think he knows as well as anybody knows that no matter what he does, Republicans on the Hill are going to find fault with him,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University and former Justice Department official. “What he also knows is that if he appoints somebody who’s independent to take a look and then write a report, the people who are fair-minded are more likely to believe that the investigation turned up the truth.”

Andrew Weissmann, a New York University law professor who worked on former special counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russian influence in the 2016 election, argued in a Thursday tweet that the appointment of a special counsel for Biden could ultimately make it easier for a special counsel to bring charges against Trump.

He said Hur’s appointment “gives the DOJ the necessary reality and appearance of balance and fairness” should Smith pursue charges against Trump

Some liberals were frustrated by the appointment of a special counsel for Biden, saying it suggests to the public that Biden’s handling of classified materials is on the same level as Trump’s.

“When classified documents outside of government confines there are always questions that need to be answered. But it sure does feel like the attorney general was quick on the draw to make that announcement,” MSNBC host Joy Reid, a longtime liberal commentator, said Thursday.

In Biden’s case, a small number of documents with classified markings were found last November and December from Biden’s time as vice president at an old office he used from 2017-2019, and at his Wilmington home in the garage. Lawyers for Biden immediately alerted the Department of Justice to turn the documents over, the White House said.

By comparison, federal officials spent months trying to get back hundreds of classified documents Trump had taken down to Florida upon leaving the White House in 2021, with the former president refusing to cooperate. Concern over the volume and types of documents being stored at Mar-a-Lago triggered an FBI search last August.

“Given the deal that was made over Trump’s handling of documents, I think Merrick Garland did exactly the right thing, even though he’s aware the circumstances are different,” Salzburg said, adding that the two respective special counsels may reach different conclusions about Biden’s and Trump’s responsibility in each case.

When faced with questions about prosecuting Trump, Garland has consistently maintained that no American is above the law and that the Justice Department will not be swayed by outside pressure.

But with the man who nominated him to be attorney general now the subject of a DOJ review, Garland and the White House will be under added pressure to maintain the independence they’ve sought since day one of the administration.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday repeatedly deflected questions about the documents case to the DOJ or Biden’s lawyers. But when asked what the situation said about Biden’s pledge to restore competence to government, she pointed to his efforts not to meddle in the department’s affairs.

“We said we wanted to restore independence in the DOJ and that’s what you’re seeing,” she said.

Source: TEST FEED1