Evening Briefing: Inauguration, executive orders, impeachment

January 18, 2021

Your Monday Evening Briefing

By Victoria Shannon and Judith Levitt

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

1. Inauguration week dawns in an occupied city.

The nation’s capital has been secured with checkpoints, tens of thousands of National Guard troops and miles of fencing and barricades — security at the cost of normalcy.

Thousands of troops have poured into Washington, where armored military trucks are parked in the middle of streets to block traffic, and where subway stations and roads are closed. Above, a rehearsal outside the Capitol today.

In the aftermath of the Capitol riot, the Justice Department has charged suspected members of the Three Percenters, a militia group that emerged from the gun-rights movement, and of the Oath Keepers, a militia group founded by law enforcement and military veterans, as it works to determine whether the extremist groups conspired to attack Congress.

Ahead of the inauguration ceremonies on Wednesday, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris today became the former U.S. senator from California, after resigning from her seat.

Three new Democratic senators — Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff from Georgia, and Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, who is set to replace Ms. Harris — may be sworn in as early as this week.

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Erin Schaff/The New York Times

2. Lawmakers are set to return to the Capitol.

But it remains unclear when Speaker Nancy Pelosi will formally send to the Senate the article of impeachment charging President Trump with “incitement of insurrection.” Above, National Guard troops outside the Capitol today.

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President-elect Joe Biden has said he hopes the Senate can hold an impeachment trial while also confirming his administration nominations and moving forward with pandemic relief legislation.

Janet Yellen, Mr. Biden’s choice for Treasury secretary, will tell lawmakers on Tuesday that the U.S. needs robust fiscal stimulus measures to get the economy back on track — and that now is not the time to worry about the nation’s mounting debt burden.

Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, will not be taking part in the president’s defense in the Senate trial for his second impeachment, a person close to Mr. Trump said. It is unclear who will step in, given that many lawyers have privately said they won’t represent the president.

Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

3. Joe Biden plans to issue dozens of executive directives in a 10-day blitz.

The orders will include canceling the Keystone XL pipeline permit on his first day in office, reversing President Trump’s approval of a project to move oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

Environmentalists have long targeted the nearly 1,200-mile pipeline as a contributor to climate change and a symbol of the country’s unwillingness to move away from oil energy.

Other orders expected on Mr. Biden’s first day: rescinding the travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries, rejoining the Paris climate change accord, issuing a mask mandate for federal property and interstate travel, and ordering agencies to reunite children separated from their families after crossing the border.

Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated Press

4. Los Angeles County became the first in the U.S. to surpass one million recorded coronavirus infections, and California is the first state to have more than three million cases. Much of the state is under a stay-at-home order.

It’s part of a national picture: Nearly one year after the virus was first detected in the U.S., the country has reached 24 million cases and is hurtling toward 400,000 total deaths. Above, motorists in line for virus tests in the Dodger Stadium parking lot in L.A.

Around the world, governments and public health organizations responded slowly and ineffectually to the outbreak, according to an interim report by a World Health Organization panel that described a yearlong cascade of failures.

Alexander Nemenov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

5. A judge ordered the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny to be jailed for 30 days.

Mr. Navalny, who spent months abroad recovering from a near-deadly poisoning, was arrested at a Moscow airport on Sunday as he arrived back in the country, on accusations of violating the terms of an earlier suspended prison sentence. He spent the night at a nearby police station without access to a lawyer, then was ordered jailed until Feb. 15.

Labs in Germany, France and Sweden determined he had been poisoned in August by a nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union and Russia. Above, Mr. Navalny after the ruling.

Long one of the most prominent critics of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Mr. Navalny called for protests in a video message moments after today’s order. “Take to the streets,” he told supporters. “Don’t do it for me, do it for yourselves and for your future.”

Erin Scott for The New York Times

6. Since July, the Trump administration has executed 13 inmates.

That is more than three times as many as the federal government had put to death in the previous six decades, spurring the Supreme Court’s liberal justices to question the court’s role in rejecting stays of execution. Above, security fencing around the Supreme Court building.

In a dissent issued late Friday, as the court cleared the way for the last execution of the Trump era, Justice Sonia Sotomayor took stock of what the nation had learned about the Supreme Court’s attitude toward the death penalty.

“Over the past six months, this court has repeatedly sidestepped its usual deliberative processes, often at the government’s request, allowing it to push forward with an unprecedented, breakneck timetable of executions,” she wrote.

Federal Bureau of Investigation

7. “I let you down.”

Days after Klete Keller, 38, an Olympic gold medalist in swimming, was spotted in videos of the pro-Trump crowds that assaulted the Capitol, friends and former teammates turned him in to the F.B.I.

While Keller is not accused of doing anything violent, his acquaintances were still at a loss to explain his behavior. They also noted that he had personal struggles away from the pool.

A former coach who spoke with him after his arrest said Keller was chagrined. “He kept repeating, ‘You’ve done so much for me, and I let you down,’” the coach said. “He kept saying over and over, ‘I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.’”

Gracia Lam

8. Scared of hip surgery?

Our Personal Health columnist, Jane Brody, says that improved surgical techniques and artificial hips that resist mechanical failure have been game changers for people with degenerated joints that are in serious need of replacement.

The essential fact of hip replacement has not changed. But computer-assisted surgery and robotic arms help doctors expose less tissue, leading to rapid discharge, faster return to function, and diminished need for pain management.

Robot-aided hip surgeries are typically not covered by insurance today. But as patients have faster and easier recoveries, with fewer complications, the economic advantages of robotic procedures are expected to change the insurance picture.

Xiao Hua Yang

9. The mystery of the painting thieves love.

What is it about a Frans Hals painting housed at a tiny Dutch museum that has made it so popular with thieves?

“Two Laughing Boys With a Mug of Beer,” a painting by Frans Hals, went missing for the third time since 1988 when the work, conservatively valued at more than $10 million, was stolen in August.

Does its brushwork contain some clue to hidden treasure, or a secret code? Could it be coveted by some cult that worships Hals, or perhaps beer?

Probably, experts say, the answer is more pedestrian: “They know they can get money out of it from somebody,” said the founder of Art Recovery International.

Chris Graythen/Getty Images

10. And finally, the car races are digital, but the money is real.

Simulated racing video games, where digitized cars obey the laws of physics and race on reproductions of real tracks, have been around for a couple of years.

But after the pandemic struck, NBC and Fox experimented by replacing canceled auto races with sim races. Sponsors signed on and organizers awarded big prize money to the winners. Above, an eNASCAR race in May.

The experiment seems to be paying off in sizable TV and web audiences. Will sim race fans still be aficionados when real cars hit the pavement again? Time will tell. But Fox has scheduled five sim races for its FS1 network this year.

Have a revved-up evening.

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