Good Morning.
Donald Trump hired a new legal defense team for his Senate impeachment trial next week, the day after his previous team resigned en masse. The new team will have very little time to prepare for the trial, in which Trump is accused of inciting a deadly Capitol insurrection, with Tuesday setting the deadline for submitting a preliminary memorandum outlining the defense of the former president. According to CNN, all five members of Trump’s previous team resigned after disagreeing with him about the strategy.
Trial lawyers David Schoen and Bruce L Castor will now lead the Trump team. Schoen has already represented Roger Stone, who was convicted of obstructing a Congressional investigation into Trump’s collusion with Russia, and also met convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while the financier was preparing for a sexual exploitation trial. Castor is a former Pennsylvania attorney general who opposed reforms to support victims of sexual abuse and refused to prosecute Bill Cosby a decade before he was convicted.
But does it matter? While some have referred to the team’s last-minute move as a crisis for Trump, others have suggested that it is not important who defends him – Republicans are unlikely to accuse Trump, regardless of the substance of his case.
Most [Republicans] already has your answer. Trump could not offer a defense or he could go to the living room to read the lines from the movie Joker – they would still vote for absolution, ”tweeted Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer.
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Jared Kushner was nominated for the Nobel Peace premium for its role in negotiating standardization agreements in the Middle East. Trump’s son-in-law and former senior adviser to the White House was appointed along with his deputy, Avi Berkowitz, by the Harvard law professor who defended Trump in his first impeachment trial.
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Will be the republican party break with Trump? The former president is the first to be charged twice, and his Senate trial is approaching. But Trump is also responsible for a large part of the party’s support base, prompting Joan E Greve to ask whether Republicans can afford to dismiss him.
The US is preparing for a more infectious Covid strain, like the battle for a stimulus package continues
A leading infectious disease scientist said yesterday that a British strain of coronavirus, considered more contagious and deadly, could hit the United States as a “hurricane” in the spring. Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, a member of Joe Biden’s transitional coronavirus advisory board, predicted that the variant could become the dominant strain of coronavirus in the United States. It happened when the United States confirmed more than 26 million cases of coronavirus, and the death toll came close to half a million.
It seems more and more likely that the White House will try to bypass Republicans in its coronavirus aid package. Republican senators made a low offer on Sunday, launching a $ 600 billion aid plan – less than a third of the $ 1.9 trillion stimulus package released by Biden’s team. The gap between Biden’s plan and the Republicans’ offer has led to questions about whether the Republican Party is serious about negotiations.
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Thirteen states still do not have state mandates for wearing a mask, all led by republican governors. Biden may be leading the coronavirus pandemic through the horns, but there is still strong resistance to public health measures among conservatives. Lauren Arantani examines how Republican state leaders could obstruct Biden’s approach to the pandemic and what power the federal government has to act.
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The WHO research team visited the market where the coronavirus was first detected, while conducting their research on the origins of the virus. The team arrived at the Huanan market amid strong security and left on a train after about an hour.
Military coup in Myanmar
The military seized power in Myanmar, with the arrest of leader Aung San Suu Kyi and closed telephone services, banks and state media in the country’s largest city, Yangon. Aung San Suu Kyi urged the public to protest the coup, saying the military was trying to reestablish the dictatorship.
On Monday morning, military television said the army had taken control of the country for a year and handed over power to commander-in-chief, General Min Aung Hlaing. According to the report, the army declared a state of emergency and detained senior members of the government for “fraud” during last year’s general elections. The United States has threatened to “take action against those responsible” if the coup is not reversed, adding to the international condemnation of world leaders and human rights experts.
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The rise and fall of Aung San Suu Kyi: It was a decade ago that she was released from house arrest, with world leaders hailing her freedom as the beginning of democracy in Myanmar, but she the country’s de facto leadership did not live up to expectations. Ben Doherty and Rebecca Ratcliffe map Aung San Suu Kyi’s leadership.
In other news …
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Moscow was fought as supporters of Alexei Nalvany’s protest against his detention, the most significant protests in Russia in a decade. Authorities closed subway stations in the capital and blocked streets, as at least 5,100 people were arrested.
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A major storm threatens to hit the New York area today, with more than 110 million people in the Midwest and Northeast under winter weather warnings. The storm can cause more than a foot of snow and create conditions similar to a blizzard.
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CEOs of U.S. oil companies ExxonMobil and Chevron discussed the merger in early 2020, in what would have been the biggest merger of all time. Legal documents have been drafted, but negotiations are no longer underway.
Stat of the day: The Yemen conflict has claimed more lives than coronavirus have in most countries
The conflict in Yemen has already spread across 47 borders and claimed 233,000 lives. With the exception of the United States, this is more than the number of deaths from individual coronaviruses in each country. Brazil lost the second highest number of lives, with 224,500, followed by Mexico with 158,000. Bethan McKernan analyzes the impact of the conflict in the country, which is devastated by war, cholera and coronavirus and faces the world’s worst hunger in decades.
Don’t miss it: who is Merrick Garland?
Biden’s choice of attorney general was the primary prosecutor in the Oklahoma City bombing case, in which an anti-government white supremacist detonated a truck bomb that killed 168 people – the deadliest domestic terrorism incident in the history of states United. With the United States again seeing an increase in the ideology that motivated the incident, Tom McCarthy asks those who knew him during the case how it prepared Merrick Garland for the job and why he is the right man for the job of attorney general.
Last thing: My Name is Earl star is now a successful photographer
My Name is Earl star Jason Lee made his name on the hit American sitcom. But he recently found comfort in traveling with his camera, documenting “America’s strange beauty.” In this interview, he discusses work on the successful Trump show and why he fell in love with photography.
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