| Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1826, "The Last of the Mohicans" is published. If you haven't, go look up Mark Twain's "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses." | | |  | The big idea | | There are plenty of reasons for reporters to doubt the U.S. military's assessments |  (Washington Post illustration; iStock) | | | Two days after America's Aug. 29 drone attack in Kabul, the Pentagon was boasting of a "righteous strike" that thwarted a terrorist plot. By Sept. 17, the U.S. military was calling the same operation a "horrible mistake" and apologizing for killing 10 civilians, including seven children. Keep that in mind as you consider how the White House suggested Thursday that skepticism of U.S. accounts of how civilians died in an overnight U.S. Special Operations raid that killed the leader of the Islamic State might be equivalent to taking the terrorist group's word over America's. Press secretary Jen Psaki expressed disbelief that people could be "skeptical of the U.S. military's assessment when they went and took out the leader of ISIS? That they are not providing accurate information, and ISIS is providing accurate information?" Psaki went on to say the Pentagon would conduct an "extensive" review to determine exactly what had transpired in Syria. "Given these events just happened less than 24 hours ago, we're going to give them time to make a final assessment," she told reporters on Air Force One. Keep the Kabul strike in mind also as you consider what State Department spokesman Ned Price told veteran reporter (and friend of The Daily 202) Matt Lee, who was pressing him for evidence of a supposed Russian scheme to stage an attack as a pretext to further invade Ukraine. "If you doubt the credibility of the U.S. government, of the British government, of other governments, and want to find solace in information that the Russians are putting out that is for you to do," Price said. | | The simple fact is reporters cannot be in the business of reflexively accepting U.S. officials' word — not just because they can lie or be lied to by their colleagues in government, but also because they can simply get things wrong, especially in the fog of war clouding reports of military operations. For Pete's sake: Pat Tillman? Jessica Lynch? Colin Powell? This airstrike in Syria? The global drone war, more broadly? The entire 20-year history of the war in Afghanistan? And, of course, the Aug. 29 Kabul strike. In fact, as Psaki's observation about a review shows, the assumption the official version might change is built into the way the officials described the U.S. Special Operations raid in northwestern Syria, where Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the leader of the Islamic State militant group, was killed. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters "the strong indications are" three civilians killed during the operation — Qurayshi's wife and two children — lost their lives when the extremist detonated a large explosion. Another child was also killed, he said, while U.S. forces safely evacuated two adults and eight children from Qurayshi's abode. But "we're willing to take a look to just examine and make sure that there wasn't any action that we might have taken that could have also caused harm to innocents," Kirby said. Which is good, because there seem to be discrepancies between the Pentagon version and what people on the ground observed. Writing in the Guardian, Martin Chulov and Julian Borger observed: "[T]here was a significant discrepancy between the initial Pentagon report that eight children had been safely evacuated and two children were killed by the blast triggered by Qurayshi, and the accounts of first responders on the scene who say they found six children and four women dead. " 'Some of the corpses in the area do not look like they died in an explosion. They look like they were hit by extremely heavy calibre gunfire,' Charles Lister, director of the Syria program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said. 'And we do know, because I saw it in a video last night as it was happening, that at least one of the helicopters in the area fired its heavy machine guns at the building for over a minute straight.' " | | The Daily 202 reached out to Lister, who said he watched video taken during and after the operation "by people I know are in the area," and underlined photos showing buildings "pockmarked with enormous holes [that] would come from very heavy caliber gunfire." He also pointed to a statement from nonprofit Save the Children, which cited reports "[a]t least six children, including two infants" were killed in the operation. (And yes, nonprofits can get this wrong, too. So can reporters! This just shows there are conflicting accounts.) |  White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. (Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post) | | | My colleagues Kareem Fahim and Sarah Dadouch have this gripping account from people on the ground: "Ahmed, who for safety reasons spoke on the condition that he be identified by only his first name, went up to his roof, he said in a telephone interview. The thunder of the helicopters was eclipsed by a terrible clatter of gunfire 'from the sky,' he said." "At least a dozen people, including six children, were killed along with Qurayshi, according to local first responders." In the case of the Kabul strike, painstaking investigations by The Washington Post and the New York Times fueled skepticism about the initial account and helped lead to the tragic truth. It's not clear yet exactly what happened Wednesday night in Syria, and reporters will try to help figure that out. (My thanks to my tenacious colleague Felicia Sonmez for bringing Psaki and Price's remarks to my attention on Twitter.) | | |  | What's happening now | | U.S. added 467,000 jobs in January despite omicron surge |  A hiring sign outside a Murphy USA gas station in La Grange, Ky. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg News) | | | "The U.S. economy added 467,000 jobs in January as the omicron variant spiked to record heights, with the labor market performing better than many expected two years after the pandemic began," Eli Rosenberg reports. | - "In addition to the robust January, the Department of Labor also revised upward the figure for December's jobs report, to 510,000 from 199,000, and November, to 647,000 from 249,000. That means that there were some 700,000 more jobs added at the end of last year than previously estimated — showing a labor market with momentum heading into the new year."
| Sen. Mitt Romney condemns GOP leaders' move to censure Reps. Cheney, Kinzinger | | "Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Friday criticized his party's leaders, including his niece, for seeking to punish the two Republican members of the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob," Felicia Sonmez reports. | NFL, Washington agreed to keep details of workplace probe secret, document shows | | "Under an agreement signed shortly after the NFL took over the investigation into its Washington team's workplace, the league and team vowed that neither side would disclose information about the probe without the approval of the other, a document released by House Democrats on Friday shows," Liz Clarke reports. | Biden administration tells Congress that key coronavirus funds are dwindling | | "Nearly all of the money in a key federal program to boost coronavirus testing, therapeutics and vaccines appears to have been committed or already shelled out, raising the potential that the Biden administration may have to ask Congress to approve additional aid," Tony Romm and Jeff Stein report. | Gorsuch to headline GOP lineup of speakers at Federalist Society; media barred from his speech | | "Justice Neil M. Gorsuch is speaking to the conservative Federalist Society as part of a political lineup of former vice president Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Donald Trump's onetime press secretary, an appearance that comes as his fellow justices repeatedly dismiss criticism that the Supreme Court is partisan," Mariana Alfaro reports. | Gov. Noem signs transgender athlete ban into law in South Dakota | | "With [South Dakota Gov. Kristi L.] Noem's signature, South Dakota became the 10th state nationwide to enact such a ban, some of which are now facing legal challenges. She was the first governor this year to sign one into law," John Wagner reports. | Putin meets Xi in show of solidarity as U.S. warns against helping Russia evade Ukraine-linked sanctions | | "Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met Friday on the sidelines of the Beijing Winter Olympics in a show of solidarity amid a spiraling crisis over the Kremlin's military buildup around Ukraine that could further complicate the diplomatic standoff," Andrew Jeong and Emily Rauhala report. | | |  | Lunchtime reads from The Post | | Perspective: Jeff Zucker's legacy is defined by his promotion of Donald Trump |  Jeff Zucker in 2019. (Paul Sancya/AP) | | | "Zucker, as much as any other person in the world, created and burnished the Trump persona — first as a reality-TV star who morphed into a worldwide celebrity, then as a candidate for president who was given large amounts of free publicity," columnist Margaret Sullivan writes. "The through line? Nothing nobler than TV ratings, which always were Zucker's guiding light, his be-all and end-all and, ultimately, his fatal flaw." | - "Zucker created Trump the TV sensation, which was the necessary foundation for Trump the candidate. Years later, after moving from NBC to CNN, Zucker recollected very well that Trump was a self-proclaimed 'ratings machine' — a rare instance of Trumpian truth-telling."
| Michael Flynn's forever war |  Presidential candidate Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up as he speaks with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn during a town hall on Sept. 6, 2016. (Evan Vucci/AP) | | | "The general tried to persuade Donald Trump to use the military to overturn the 2020 election. A year later, he and his followers are fighting the same battle by other means," Robert Draper reports for New York Times Magazine. "One year since Trump's departure from office, his Make America Great Again movement has reconstituted itself as a kind of shape-shifting but increasingly robust parallel political universe, one that holds significant sway over the Republican Party but is also beyond its control…In this world, Flynn is probably the single greatest draw besides Trump himself." | - "Flynn possesses unique credibility among the ex-president's followers, with his own compelling story line: that of a distinguished intelligence official who, he claims, experienced firsthand the nefariousness of the deep state…In the right's transfigured portrayal of Flynn, 'America's general' was at most guilty of being a conservative who dared to accuse Obama of being soft on Islamic extremists, who dared to chant 'lock her up' about the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton — and who dared to ally himself with Donald Trump at a moment when doing so, for a retired military figure of his stature, was still deeply taboo. That an American three-star general had faced such persecution — that, as Eric Trump said, 'they did it to him' — meant, by extension, that no conservative patriot was safe."
| | |  | The Biden agenda | | Inside Biden's decision to target ISIS's elusive leader |  President Biden talks in a classroom with K. Bain of Community Capacity Development for an event on combating gun-violence strategies, at PS111 Jacob Blackwell on Feb. 3. (Alex Brandon/AP) | | | "By December, as it became clear that the United States had located the leader of the Islamic State, a group of military commanders had arrived in the Situation Room to outline for President Biden how to take down the terrorist target in northwestern Syria. But it also became clear just how complicated it would be, with the possibility of civilian losses, American troop casualties and other grave risks," Matt Viser reports. | The relaunched cancer moonshot lacks funding for liftoff | | "President Joe Biden's reignited moonshot to halve cancer deaths, improve care and eventually end the disease gives a lift to one of his longest-held and most personal goals — but the mission hasn't been refueled," Politico's Sarah Owermohle reports. "Missing from the ambitious plan to boost screening, reduce inequities and strengthen prevention efforts is a funding boost to the existing moonshot, which is in the sixth year of a $1.8 billion, seven-year allotment from Congress." | Biden seeks to burnish anti-crime credentials in NYC visit | | "The moment marked Biden's most significant attempt to focus his presidency on an issue that's been roiling the country for two years and to rebut calls to 'defund the police' that some Democrats believe contributed to their congressional losses in 2020," Annie Linskey reports. | | |  | Rapid testing, visualized | | | "The federal government in January launched a website so that people in the United States can order free at-home antigen test kits in response to the surge in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations. But many people remain confused about these rapid tests and how they work. If you're one of them, don't worry," our colleague Shelly Tan writes. Tan explains how reliable these tests are and what your next move should be if you're looking to get tested. | | |  | Hot on the left | | How Joe Manchin, Big Oil and Facebook killed Build Back Better |  U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) speaks on his phone in a hallway on Feb. 3. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters) | | | "Big Oil has spent millions promoting fossil fuels on Facebook in recent years, but the American Petroleum Institute—which is backed by oil majors including ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP—has been particularly blunt about its goal of killing or rolling back key climate and energy provisions of Build Back Better. The campaign included ads with the contact phone numbers for 47 members of Congress and urged Facebook users to call legislators and tell them not to raise taxes on natural gas. According to InfluenceMap estimates, the group spent the most on ads naming Manchin, and those spots got more than twice as many views as any other politician in the campaign," Vice News's Greg Walters reports. | | |  | Hot on the right | | | "Paths to power and winning elections inside the GOP are changing rapidly and radically, spawning a new generation of kingmakers while diminishing the clout of many who lorded over the party for years," Axios's Jonathan Swan and Lachlan Markay report. "Fourteen of the Republican Party's top consultants and operatives across the country spoke in detail with Axios about how profoundly primary races have changed since 2014 — the last pre-Donald Trump midterm election and the last midterms in which a Democrat occupied the White House. | - "Those sources — whose clients range from as Trumpy as they come to establishment Republicans — described a clear shift in the party's power brokers. They spoke of changes to the ecosystem across four categories: institutional upheaval, endorsements, conservative media and donors."
| | |  | Today in Washington | | | At 2 p.m., Biden will deliver remarks and sign an executive order on project labor agreements at Ironworkers Local 5 in Upper Marlboro, Md. Vice President Harris and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh will also speak. Biden will leave the White House for Wilmington, Del., at 5:30 p.m. | | |  | In closing | | | Thanks for reading. See you next week. | | |
