| Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. As you watch the Russo-U.S. standoff over Ukraine, ask yourself what vital American interests are in play, and what vital Russian interests are in play, and what that might mean about who's willing to bear what sorts of costs. | | |  | The big idea | | Trump's mark on Supreme Court could soon hand conservatives some major victories |  The U.S. Supreme Court has taken on a conservative lean after e-president Donald Trump appointed three of its justices. (REUTERS/Will Dunham) | | | Climate, affirmative action, abortion, guns. The Supreme Court refashioned by former president Donald Trump's three justices could soon hand conservatives a series of far-reaching victories reshaping the landscape of some of the most difficult and divisive issues in American life. The 6-3 divide between conservative and liberal judges means Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is no longer a potential moderating middle vote — and that Trump's most consequential legacy is also the culmination of a generational campaign by a network of right-wing lawyers. It's a change Democrats don't have the power to stop — early talk from some liberals about expanding the court notwithstanding — and its effects are sure to be felt well beyond President Biden's time in office. It's also an apt example of the importance of an axiom from the 19-century French political scientist Alexis De Tocqueville. After a long journey through 1830s America, he observed "scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question." | | Consider the battle over the president's drive to require employers with more than 100 employees to require coronavirus vaccinations or regular resting as a condition to work, a pandemic mitigation opposed by Republicans. Vast swaths of the GOP have deliberately undermined the vaccine, a safe and effective defense against the virus, as the death toll has soared. | | "The Biden administration is withdrawing its requirement that large employers mandate workers be vaccinated or regularly tested, the Labor Department said on Tuesday," Emma Goldberg wrote in the New York Times on Tuesday. "In pulling the rule, the department recognized what most employers and industry experts said after a Supreme Court ruling this month — that the emergency temporary standard could not be revived after the court blocked it." Emma underlined: "The Supreme Court's decision, which was 6 to 3, with the liberal justices in dissent, said the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, did not have the authority to require workers to be vaccinated for coronavirus or tested weekly, describing the agency's approach as 'a blunt instrument.' The mandate would have applied to some 80 million people if it had not been struck down." At his news conference last week, Biden declared the ruling "was a mistake" and predicted the private sector would stick with vaccine-or-testing requirements. But the political fight over the federal requirement looks over. | Climate change and affirmative action | | How about the climate crisis? My colleague Robert Barnes reported Monday how "[t]he Supreme Court will take up a challenge to the Clean Water Act that could narrow the law's reach in ways long sought by businesses and home builders." Writing in Tuesday's Climate 202, my colleague Maxine Joselow noted: "The order was the latest indication that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court is stepping in to assess the limits of the nation's bedrock environmental laws — potentially in ways that hamstring President Biden's environmental agenda." "It comes as the justices are poised to hear oral arguments in February in cases challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants." Over at Reuters, Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung reported Tuesday how the court has decided "to hear a case that could doom university politics considering race as a factor in student admissions." "The court already was due to issue rulings by the end of June in cases giving the justices a chance to curtail abortion rights and widen gun rights — major goals of U.S. conservatives. The case targeting the student admissions practices of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, taken up by the court on Monday, gives the conservative justices a chance to cripple affirmative action policies long despised by the American right, with a ruling expected next year," they reported. | | And "[b]ased on oral arguments held last year, the court's conservatives seem poised, in a case from Mississippi, to undermine or even overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide and, in a case from New York, expand the right to carry firearms in public." The Supreme Court may also be on track to strike down "a Maine prohibition on using public money for students to attend schools that offer religious instruction in a case with wide implications for education funding," USA Today's John Fritze reported in December. "At issue is a relatively unusual program in Maine that provides subsidies for education in rural districts that don't have their own high school. The state allows parents in that situation to use the money that would have been spent locally to send their children to other public or private schools — but not to programs that offer religious instruction," John wrote. | | There's a long-shot chance the Supreme Court could take a whack at watering down protections for the news media against accusations of libel because of a lawsuit brought against the New York Times by former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. A federal court in Lower Manhattan had been set to hear Palin's case starting on Monday. But Palin, who has said she'll get a coronavirus vaccine "over my dead body," tested positive, postponing the case to early February. At the New York Times, Jeremy W. Peters notes Palin's case "alleges that The Times defamed her with an editorial that incorrectly asserted a link between her political rhetoric and a mass shooting near Tucson, Ariz., in 2011 that left six people dead and 14 wounded, including Gabrielle Giffords, then a Democratic member of Congress." If Palin loses in district court, she could try to take her case to the Supreme Court. | | |  | What's happening now | | U.S.-backed Syrian forces announce defeat of Islamic State in prison standoff |  Soldiers with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces set a checkpoint in Hassakeh, Syria, on Jan. 25. (Hogir Al Abdo/AP) | | | "The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said Wednesday that it had regained control of a prison for Islamic State militants in a northeast Syrian town, ending a days-long standoff that drew U.S. ground troops into the fray and exposed the jail's vulnerability to attack," Louisa Loveluck reports. | Talks in Paris aim to resolve Ukraine crisis as Russia warns the West | | "Senior representatives of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine are meeting Wednesday in Paris in a bid to revive the stalled Ukraine peace process, as analysts warn that Russia's military escalation near Ukraine's borders is moving into a more advanced stage," Robyn Dixon, Bryan Pietsch and Rick Noack report. | Market turmoil collides with Fed policy meeting | | "Facing soaring prices and swooning financial markets, the Federal Reserve is poised to reveal new details Wednesday about interest rate hikes this year, in its quest to combat inflation now at 40-year highs," Rachel Siegel reports. | Autopsy finds Palestinian American man died of heart attack after being bound and gagged by Israeli soldiers | | "An elderly Palestinian American man who was found dead after being detained by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank earlier this month suffered a stress-induced heart attack probably brought on by being bound and gagged and held in a cold construction site, according to the results of an autopsy released Wednesday," Steve Hendrix reports. | | |  | Lunchtime reads from The Post | | Much of America wants policing to change. But these self-proclaimed experts tell officers they're doing just fine. |  Police officers stand in position as demonstrators protest the fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright outside the Brooklyn Center Police Station on April 11 in Brooklyn Center, Minn. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post) | | | "With local, state and federal money for training plentiful, and with little guidance or oversight for what officers should be taught, some speakers at training conferences tell officers that pushback against conventional policing is a media invention. Others demonize civilian protesters and reformers, describing them as loud voices holding minority opinions. Still others say police should maintain a 'warrior mentality' to weather the rigors of what they describe as the most dangerous job outside of military service," Robert Klemko reports. | - "While police reformers and legislators nationwide have stressed a service-oriented approach to police training that emphasizes de-escalation and the avoidance of physical conflict, many sessions at these conferences presented violent confrontation as a rite of policing and, frequently, the only path."
| In showdown with Russia, Germany struggles over economy, unity and history | | "For Germany's new chancellor — taking over from the crisis-vetted Angela Merkel after 16 years — steering the country's Russia policy has meant trying to helm a three-party coalition, negotiating with pro-Russian voices within his own party and navigating questions over the 750-mile, $12 billion Nord Stream II gas pipeline between Germany and Moscow," Loveday Morris reports. | The recent surge in identity theft shows how easy obtaining private data can be | | "Consider some of the episodes last year in which large quantities of personal data were stolen: 300 million customer and device records for users of a service that's supposed to shield internet traffic from prying eyes; a 17.6-million-row database from a second organization, containing profiles of people who participated in its market research surveys; 59 million email addresses and other personal data lifted from a third company. These sorts of numbers barely raise an eyebrow these days; none of the incidents generated major press coverage," ProPublica's Cezary Podkul reports. "Cybertheft conjures images of high-tech missions, with sophisticated hackers penetrating multiple layers of security systems to steal corporate data. But these breaches were far from 'Ocean's Eleven'-style operations. They were the equivalent of grabbing jewels from the seat of an unlocked car parked in a high-crime neighborhood." | | |  | The Biden agenda | | Can Biden keep the West unified against Putin? |  President Biden holds an ice cream cone at Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 25. (Oliver Contreras/Sipa/Bloomberg News) | | | "The pileup of difficult moments is providing a major test of the twin pillars of Biden's 2020 candidacy: that he could get things done competently at home and restore America's standing in the world after Donald Trump's volatile four years in the White House," the Associated Press's Aamer Madhani and Zeke Miller report. | The White House is planning expedited resettlement for Afghan refugees | | "President Biden's advisers are crafting a plan to accelerate bringing potentially thousands of Afghans to the U.S. from Qatar, according to a source with direct knowledge of the administration's internal deliberations on the subject," Axios's Stef W. Kight and Jonathan Swan report. | The Biden administration's rapid-test rollout struggles to reach those who need it most | | "In the past week, the Biden administration launched two programs that aim to get rapid covid tests into the hands of every American. But the design of both efforts disadvantages people who already face the greatest barriers to testing," Kaiser Health News's Hannah Recht and Victoria Knight report. "From the limit placed on test orders to the languages available on websites, the programs stand to leave out many people who don't speak English or don't have internet access, as well as those who live in multifamily households. All these barriers are more common for non-white Americans, who have also been hit hardest by covid. The White House told KHN it will address these problems but did not give specifics." | | |  | Crypto collapse, visualized | | | |  | Hot on the left | | Entering her second year as VP, Harris is still learning to navigate the D.C. bubble |  Vice President Harris boards Air Force 2 as she departs Milwaukee on Jan. 24. (Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP/Getty Images) | | | "Harris has grumbled at times about the customs of a town where she remains a relative newcomer. She is prone to lament the Beltway's obsession with familiarity, the routine groupthink of its thought leaders; and the intense interest in collecting scraps of palace intrigue, according to more than a dozen aides and people familiar with her conversations. She's repeatedly instructed her aides to stay focused on the work. At the same time, she's allowed that her instinct to ignore the superficial elements of politics has created more work for her team, which is forced to operate aggressively in that world," Politico's Christopher Cadelago and Eugene Daniels report. "Inside Harris' office and among her advisers, confidants and close allies, there's a near universal belief that she is mired by a contradiction: While she's among the most powerful people in the world, owing to her swift rise in national politics, people still don't know her at the levels they need to." | | |  | Hot on the right | | One conservative philosopher's answer to Biden's question: 'What are Republicans for?' |  The Republican Party elephant mascot sits on display in the exhibition hall during the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News) | | | "Republican leaders haven't done enough to answer the charges against their party. Which is a pity because answers are at hand. The proponents of conservatism (Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, F.A. Hayek) have been far more impressive than those of liberalism (Jeremy Bentham, J.S. Mill, John Rawls). In fact, I wonder if the most recent proponent of conservatism, the late English philosopher Roger Scruton (1944-2020) doesn't provide the message that conservatism, and with it the Republican Party, has long needed," Joseph Epstein writes for the Wall Street Journal. "In an essay titled 'Governing Rightly,' included in his collection 'Confessions of a Heretic,' Scruton makes the case for conservatism as the party of freedom. He writes: 'Those tasks that only governments can perform — defense of the realm, the maintenance of law and order, the repair of infrastructure and the coordination of relief in emergencies — are forced to compete for their budgets with activities that free citizens, left to themselves, might have managed far more efficiently through the association of volunteers, backed up when necessary by private insurance.'" | | |  | Today in Washington | | | The president meets with private sector CEOs at 1 p.m. to discuss his Build Back Better agenda. Bloomberg News's Jennifer Epstein has the details. At 3:30 p.m., Biden will sign an executive order to "make sexual harassment an offense in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and to strengthen the military's response to domestic violence and the wrongful broadcast or distribution of intimate visual images." | | |  | In closing | | The WFT's name change is a marathon. The Cincinnati Reds once did it in a sprint. |  The Cincinnati Reds briefly became the Redlegs during the Cold War. (Andy Lyons/Getty Images) | | | "Nearly 70 years ago, the Cincinnati Reds decided that their name wouldn't cut it in a political climate of anti-communist hysteria. Days before the start of the 1953 season, the team surprised sportswriters and fans when they announced that they would now be known as the Redlegs," Frederic J. Frommer reports. "On Feb. 2, the Washington Football Team will announce a new name of its own, but the process couldn't be more different." | | Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. | | |
