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Your Wednesday Evening Briefing |
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Good evening. Here’s the latest. |
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1. Not guilty. |
The Senate acquitted President Trump of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power, ending the third impeachment trial of a sitting U.S. president and a divisive, monthslong process. |
Mitt Romney was the only Republican senator to break ranks. He said Mr. Trump’s actions were “as egregious an assault on the Constitution as can be made.” |
We reviewed revelations from the impeachment inquiry, Mr. Trump’s own words and elsewhere for the wealth of undisputed facts of the case. |
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2. More votes trickled in from Iowa. |
Pete Buttigieg clung to his lead in the caucuses, with 85 percent of the state’s more than 1,600 precincts reporting. Bernie Sanders continues to trail in a close second. Democratic Party officials have not indicated how long it will take to finish tabulating votes. |
Candidates have already moved on to New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Tuesday. Follow the latest developments in the primary race here. |
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Joe Biden’s placement in fourth place in the caucuses on Monday dealt a damaging blow to his campaign. Some party officials say it was a long time in the works. |
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3. About last night. |
One of the enduring aspects of President Trump’s State of the Union address was the drama-filled snubbing between the president and Speaker Nancy Pelosi — he refused to shake her hand before he spoke, she tore up his speech once he was done. |
In the end, Mr. Trump made his case for another four years as only he could, our chief White House correspondent writes. |
And moments like awarding a young girl a scholarship, draping the Presidential Medal of Freedom on the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, and the reunion of a deployed soldier and his family suggested a mash-up of reality TV memes to our television critic. |
“Donald Trump argued that he has delivered America a lot of things — and one of them, as the speech ratified, was the transformation of the presidency and public life into a 24-hour reality show.” |
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4. Hundreds of Americans arrived in California from Wuhan, the center of the coronavirus outbreak. |
Delivered by two government-arranged planes, they are expected to spend days in quarantine on two military bases, including Travis Air Force Base, above. The State Department said it would stage one or two more evacuation flights from Wuhan on Thursday. There are now 12 confirmed cases of the virus in the U.S. |
Nearly 500 people in China have died from the virus, and thousands more are being infected every day, health officials said. So far, very few young children seem to be falling ill (which is not unusual).China has begun cracking down on news and social media in an effort to control the narrative. |
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5. And despite all of that, stocks closed at a record high after a third straight day of gains. |
Investors took comfort in economic reports suggesting that the American economy was on solid footing, shrugging off concerns that the virus would dampen growth in China and elsewhere. Above, shuttered businesses in Beijing on Wednesday. |
Investors also seem to be betting that even if the coronavirus weighs on growth, central banks will be ready and able to prop markets up with further rate cuts and capital injections — a shift from the pessimism that battered stocks last week. |
“It’s fear versus greed,” one analyst said. “Last week was fear and this week is greed.” |
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6. Dramatic news out of Turkey. |
Two avalanches in eastern Turkey, the second burying rescuers responding to the first, killed at least 38 people, with more still unaccounted for. |
And a passenger plane, above, skidded off the runway at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen Airport and broke into three pieces. One person was reported killed, and a government official said scores were hospitalized. Experts suggested that windy, rainy weather could have been a factor in the accident. |
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7. Dear Oscars: Wesley Morris would like to have a word. |
The Academy Awards have made mistakes before, our critic-at-large writes. But this year’s crop of best-picture nominees — largely about and directed by white men — may be the breaking point. |
“A homogeneity has set in,” he writes. “The nominated movies start to look like picture day at certain magnet schools.” |
For TV, there are hints of progress on the disability front. Disabled characters are being played by disabled performers slightly more often, a new report found. Still, most of the portrayals were negative. |
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8. Banksy is a master manipulator when it comes to the news media and the art market. But he can’t control his legacy. |
His rise — from a young upstart street artist who smuggled works into museums as pranks to pranking Sotheby’s during a $1.4 million bid on his painting — is a result of years of meticulous control over his message and his mystique. |
But what is his value to the art world? We took a look at his career and impact. |
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9. L.L. Bean, but make it fashion. |
After more than a century in business, the Maine heritage label is making its catwalk debut in New York. |
According to a collaborating designer, Todd Snyder, the challenge was to not insult the brand and still take it to a new place. He mined the archive for ducks, camouflage, buffalo plaid and other traditional motifs, and adjusted fits, toyed with scale and mashed up disparate elements of the Bean vocabulary. |
The four big fashion capitals — New York, London, Milan and Paris — begin showing fall collections on Friday. Here are three big trends to watch for. |
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10. And finally, making algebra easy (or at least easier). |
Quadratics often pop up in calculating trajectories, from a football to a profit margin. You might even remember banging your head against the quadratic equation (ax² + bx + c = 0) in algebra class. Now, a mathematician has discovered a trick to solving it. |
Po-Shen Loh, above, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, mixed together ideas dating back thousands of years to the Babylonians. The method allows people to eliminate a guessing game of factors and calculate the answers without remembering the exact formula (one of the most common trip-ups). |
Have a logical night. |
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