—Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has been extradited to the United States from a Mexican prison, one day before Donald Trump assumes the presidency. More here
—Police in Washington, D.C. deployed tear gas as hundreds of protesters gathered outside a pro-Trump gala Thursday night. More here
—An avalanche, reportedly triggered by an earthquake, struck a hotel in central Italy; rescue workers say at least 30 people are missing. More here; live blog here
—We’re tracking the news stories of the day below. All updates are in Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5).
D.C. Police Launch Tear Gas at Anti-Trump Protesters
John Minchillo / AP
Police in Washington, D.C. deployed tear gas as hundreds of protesters gathered outside a pro-Trump gala Thursday night. Local media reports that some attendees of the “DeploraBall” were hit by objects and clashed with anti-Trump protesters as they left the National Press Club. Some protesters, blocking the street, called gala attendees “racists” and “Nazis.” Other protesters set fires in trash cans and in the middle of the street. There was also a 15-foot-tall white elephant with a banner labeled “racism” on its side. Police arrested several people.
Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has been extradited to the United States from a Mexican prison, one day before Donald Trump assumes the presidency. Guzman, a notorious cartel kingpin who was arrested by Mexican police in a raid last January, six months after escaping prison, is facing federal indictments in seven courts across the U.S. for distributing narcotics, murder, and organized crime. He landed in New York since the indictment for the Eastern District of New York requires Guzman enter the U.S. through the district to preserve the indictment. He was in a prison in Juarez, near the Texas border. Guzman, who had a net worth of $1 billion, escaped prison in Mexico twice before. In the last prison escape, he vanished through a mile-long tunnel, from a shower to a nearby construction site. The incident was a massive embarrassment for the Mexican government. A top U.S. official told Reuters that the Mexican government did not give the timing of the extradition “a whole lot of thought.”
Brazilian Judge Investigating Political Scandal Dies in Plane Crash
Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters
Teori Zavascki, the Brazilian Supreme Court justice who presided over Operation Carwash, a massive scandal that has embroiled politicians from across the political spectrum, has died in a plane crash, his son said on Facebook. The crash occurred outside Paraty, in Rio state, O Globo, the Brazilian newspaper, reported. Bloomberg adds: “Zavascki is the judge overseeing the trials of defendants in the Operation Carwash investigation at the Supreme Court.” The scandal involves corruption at Petrobras, the state-run oil firm. The investigation into the case is led by Sergio Moro, another judge.
Gambia's New President Sworn In as Old President Refuses to Leave
Crowds gather outside the Gambian embassy ahead of President-elect Adama Barrow’s inauguration in Dakar, Senegal on January 19, 2017. (Reuters)
Senegalese troops crossed the border into Gambia Thursday after the UN Security Council voted unanimously in favor of a resolution recognizing Adama Barrow as the West African country’s rightful president. The move comes one day after the troops threatened to “take action” if longtime Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh did not step down, and hours after the swearing in of Barrow as Gambia’s president from the Gambian embassy in neighboring Dakar. Jammeh, who originally conceded to Barrow in the December election only to later reverse his decision, filed an injunction barring Barrow from being sworn in and on Wednesday declared a state of national emergency. Senegal and other West African leaders have threatened to remove Jammeh by force, though the UN reaffirmed in its adoption of the resolution that the transition of power should be pursued “by political means first.”
This is a victory of the Gambian nation. Our national flag will fly high among those of the most democratic nations of the world. #Gambiapic.twitter.com/QRGZg1gzbs
Oakland Raiders File Paperwork to Move to Las Vegas
(Reuters)
The Oakland Raiders have filed paperwork to move the NFL team to Las Vegas, Steve Sisolak, the Clark County, Nevada, Commission Chair said on Twitter Thursday. The move must now be approved the owners of the NFL’s 32 teams. Mark Davis, the Raiders majority owner, needs 24 votes. The Raiders were established in 1960 and have spent much of the time since then in Oakland—though there were 12 years (1982-94) the team played in Los Angeles. Thursday’s announcement comes just days after the Chargers announced they’d leave their longtime home, San Diego, for L.A.
It is official! The @RAIDERS have filed their paperwork to relocate to #LasVegas.
Firefighters Among Dead as Landmark Tehran Building Catches Fire, Collapses
Firefighters grieve at the site of the collapsed high rise in Tehran, Iran, on January 19. (Tasnim News Agency / Reuters)
The 17-story Plasco building, a Tehran landmark, caught fire and collapsed Thursday, killing many firefighters, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported. IRNA, which described the building as “a center for making apparel,” reported the structure was engulfed in a blaze that resulted in the collapse of a wall on its northern side—and the structure’s eventual collapse. Firefighters had been battling the blaze for hours when it collapsed in a matter of seconds—a moment captured on live television. Pir-Hossein Kolivand, the head of the national emergency medical services, said it was unclear how many firemen were killed in the collapse, only that there were many fatalities. About 200 people have been taken to local hospitals, the news agency added.
URGENT: Footage shows the moment of major commercial building collapses in Iran's capital Tehran after hours of severe blaze pic.twitter.com/89GPmRa3GU
Many Are Feared Dead as Avalanche Hits Italian Hotel
(Reuters)
An avalanche triggered Thursday by several earthquakes in central Italy swept away a hotel in the Abruzzo region, leaving “many dead,” ANSA, the Italian news agency, reports. The avalanche struck the Hotel Rigopiano in the region’s Gran Sasso National Park. Rescuers pulled out one victim from the snow; about 30 others are missing. Two people have been rescued, ANSA added. Follow our live blog here
Trump Reportedly Names Sonny Perdue as Choice For USDA
President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly picked Sonny Perdue, the former Georgia governor, as agriculture secretary. Perdue, who served as governor from 2003 to 2011, was the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction. The post, which needs Senate confirmation, would put Perdue in charge of a department that has a budget of $150 billion and oversees everything from food safety to food stamps. The nomination is Trump’s last before his inauguration Friday as the 45th president of the United States. His Cabinet would be the first that hasn’t included a Hispanic since President Reagan.
When Michaeleen Doucleff met parents from around the world, she encountered millennia-old methods of raising good kids that made American parenting seem bizarre and ineffective.
At one point in her new book, the NPR journalist Michaeleen Doucleff suggests that parents consider throwing out most of the toys they’ve bought for their kids. It’s an extreme piece of advice, but the way Doucleff frames it, it seems entirely sensible: “Kids spent two hundred thousand years without these items,” she writes.
Doucleff arrives at this conclusion while traveling, with her then-3-year-old daughter, to meet and learn from parents in a Maya village on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico; in an Inuit town in a northern Canadian territory; and in a community of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania. During her outings, she witnesses well-adjusted, drama-free kids share generously with their siblings and do chores without being asked.
Adored guru and reviled provocateur, he dropped out of sight. Now the irresistible ordeal of modern cultural celebrity has brought him back.
This article was published online on March 2, 2021.
One day in early 2020, Jordan B. Peterson rose from the dead. The Canadian academic, then 57, had been placed in a nine-day coma by doctors in a Russian clinic, after becoming addicted to benzodiazepines, a class of drug that includes Xanax and Valium. The coma kept him unconscious as his body went through the terrible effects of withdrawal; he awoke strapped to the bed, having tried to rip out the catheters in his arms and leave the intensive-care unit.
When the story of his detox became public, in February 2020, it provided an answer to a mystery: Whatever happened to Jordan Peterson? In the three years before he disappeared from view in the summer of 2019, this formerly obscure psychology professor’s name had been a constant presence in op-ed columns, internet forums, and culture-war arguments. His book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, published in 2018, sold millions of copies, and he had conducted a 160-city speaking tour, drawing crowds of up to 3,000 a night; premium tickets included the chance to be photographed with him. For $90, his website offered an online course to better understand your “unique personality.” An “official merchandise store” sold Peterson paraphernalia: mugs, stickers, posters, phone cases, tote bags. He had created an entirely new model of the public intellectual, halfway between Marcus Aurelius and Martha Stewart.
A new study of the city’s program that sent cash to struggling individuals finds dramatic changes.
Two years ago, the city of Stockton, California, did something remarkable: It brought back welfare.
Using donated funds, the industrial city on the edge of the Bay Area tech economy launched a small demonstration program, sending payments of $500 a month to 125 randomly selected individuals living in neighborhoods with average incomes lower than the city median of $46,000 a year. The recipients were allowed to spend the money however they saw fit, and they were not obligated to complete any drug tests, interviews, means or asset tests, or work requirements. They just got the money, no strings attached.
These kinds of cash transfers are a common, highly effective method of poverty alleviation used all over the world, in low-income and high-income countries, in rural areas and cities, and particularly for households with children. But not in the United States. The U.S. spends less of its GDP on what are known as “family benefits” than any other country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, save Turkey. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program spends less than one-fifth of its budget on direct cash aid, and its funding has been stuck at the same dollar amount since 1996—when the Clinton administration teamed up with congressional Republicans to turn it into a compulsory-work program. Those changes sliced into the safety net, allowing millions of people to fall through.
Why was the New York governor’s reckoning so long in coming?
Updated at 12:00 p.m. ET on March 3, 2021.
Cable-news shows treated Andrew Cuomo like a living legend this summer, thanks to his supposedly superlative handling of the coronavirus pandemic, yet his past few weeks really have been the stuff of myth.
But which myth? Is he Icarus, flying too close to the sun in his premature attempt to claim credit for New York’s public-health prowess, only to have his wings melted by the heat of scandal? Is he Oedipus, brought low by his determination to eclipse his father? Or is he simply Zeus, a powerful man prone to wrathful outbursts and sexual misconduct?
The New York governor finds himself in a perilous position right now, though it is not yet clear how perilous. Cuomo’s COVID-19 approach no longer looks quite so good. Compared with other states, New York hasn’t obviously outperformed, and if not all of that is precisely Cuomo’s fault, it does make his decision to publish a book claiming credit back in October seem unwise. Worse are revelations about the number of deaths in New York nursing homes, especially after a top aide privately acknowledged that the administration had covered up the toll.
When the polio vaccine was declared safe and effective, the news was met with jubilant celebration. Church bells rang across the nation, and factories blew their whistles. “Polio routed!” newspaper headlines exclaimed. “An historic victory,” “monumental,” “sensational,” newscasters declared. People erupted with joy across the United States. Some danced in the streets; others wept. Kids were sent home from school to celebrate.
One might have expected the initial approval of the coronavirus vaccines to spark similar jubilation—especially after a brutal pandemic year. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the steady drumbeat of good news about the vaccines has been met with a chorus of relentless pessimism.
If the party doesn’t pass new protections, it could lose the House, Senate, and White House within the next four years.
The most explosive battle in decades over access to the voting booth will reach a new crescendo this week, as Republican-controlled states advance an array of measures to restrict the ballot, and the U.S. House of Representatives votes on the federal legislation that represents Democrats’ best chance to stop them.
It’s no exaggeration to say that future Americans could view the resolution of this struggle as a turning point in the history of U.S. democracy. The outcome could not only shape the balance of power between the parties, but determine whether that democracy grows more inclusive or exclusionary. To many civil-rights advocates and democracy scholars I’ve spoken with, this new wave of state-level bills constitutes the greatest assault on Americans’ right to vote since the Jim Crow era’s barriers to the ballot.
The GOP has become, in form if not in content, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970s.
We are living in a time of bad metaphors. Everything is fascism, or socialism; Hitler’s Germany, or Stalin’s Soviet Union. Republicans, especially, want their followers to believe that America is on the verge of a dramatic time, a moment of great conflict such as 1968—or perhaps, even worse, 1860. (The drama is the point, of course. No one ever says, “We’re living through 1955.”)
Ironically, the GOP is indeed replicating another political party in another time, but not as the heroes they imagine themselves to be. The Republican Party has become, in form if not in content, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970s.
I can already hear the howls about invidious comparisons. I do not mean that modern American Republicans are communists. Rather, I mean that the Republicans have entered their own kind of end-stage Bolshevism, as members of a party that is now exhausted by its failures, cynical about its own ideology, authoritarian by reflex, controlled as a personality cult by a failing old man, and looking for new adventures to rejuvenate its fortunes.
Focus on prioritization and process, not the assignment itself.
So much of the homework advice parents are given is theory-based, and therefore not entirely helpful in the chaos of day-to-day life. People are told that students should have “grit.” They should “learn from failure.” But it’s hard to know how to implement these ideas when what you really need is to support a kid who has a chemistry test and two papers due in the next 48 hours but seems to be focused only on Instagram.
Some parents manage to guide their kids through these moments with relative ease. Others hire tutors. The large majority of us, however, are stuck at home alone, trying to stave off our own breakdowns in the face of our children’s.
While reprimanding your child for not having started her homework earlier may be your natural instinct, in the midst of stress, it will only make her shut down or lash out. In our experience as teachers, tutors, and parents, the students who feel terrible about procrastinating are more likely to have anxiety and negative feelings that will only fuel their continued procrastination. So instead of admonishing your procrastinator, take a deep breath and try to figure out how she’s going to manage the tasks at hand. Help her make a realistic plan to manage her time. Try to model understanding, even when you’re upset.
Colonizing the red planet is a ridiculous way to help humanity.
There’s no place like home—unless you’re Elon Musk. A prototype of SpaceX’s Starship, which may someday send humans to Mars, is, according to Musk, likely to launch soon, possibly within the coming days. But what motivates Musk? Why bother with Mars? A video clip from an interview Musk gave in 2019 seems to sum up Musk’s vision—and everything that’s wrong with it.
In the video, Musk is seen reading a passage from Carl Sagan’s book Pale Blue Dot. The book, published in 1994, was Sagan’s response to the famous image of Earth as a tiny speck of light floating in a sunbeam—a shot he’d begged NASA to have the Voyager 1 spacecraft take in 1990 as it sailed into space, 3.7 billion miles from Earth. Sagan believed that if we had a photo of ourselves from this distance, it would forever alter our perspective of our place in the cosmos.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Slumdog Millionaire. Parasite. And now, Minari. For years, Asian performers have been overlooked for awards, even when they star in critically acclaimed films.
Only when he began editing Minari did the writer-director Lee Isaac Chung see exactly how much his cast had done for the story. The film, about a Korean American family starting a farm in 1980s Arkansas, was inspired by his childhood, but Chung told his actors he didn’t want them imitating anyone he knew. So instead, they brought their own interpretations to the characters and made Chung’s tale theirs, too. “It’s easy when you have these actors, and every take is good,” he told me over Zoom last month, chuckling. “You have nothing bad to work with.”
Yes, Chung is overflowing with praise for his cast, whom he thanked in his acceptance speech after Minari won a Golden Globe for best foreign-language film on Sunday. But he’s concerned that one actor isn’t seeing enough appreciation: Yeri Han, who plays Monica, the anxious wife of Steven Yeun’s idealistic Jacob. “In the editing room, she was the one who we were always centering our emotional story around,” Chung said of Han. “It’s her face, it’s her looks, and the way she picks at a bedspread because she’s upset. These little, subtle things that we knew: ‘This is making the film what it is.’” He paused. “And unfortunately, it’s invisible.”
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