Good morning.
Donald Trump has hired a new legal defense team for his impeachment trial in the Senate next week, a 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 insurrection at the Capitol, with Tuesday marking the deadline to submit a preliminary memo outlining the former president’s defense. According to CNN, all five of Trump’s previous team resigned after disagreeing with him over strategy.
Trial lawyers David Schoen and Bruce L Castor will now lead Trump’s team. Schoen previously 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 acting attorney general of Pennsylvania, who opposed reforms to support victims of sexual abuse and declined to prosecute Bill Cosby a decade before he was convicted.
But does it matter? While some have been referring to the last-minute change of team as a crisis for Trump, others have suggested it isn’t important who defends him – Republicans are unlikely to impeach Trump, regardless of the substance of his case.
Most [Republicans] already have their answer. Trump could offer no defense or he can go on the floor to read lines from the Joker movie – they would still vote to acquit,” tweeted Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer.
Jared Kushner has been nominated for a Nobel peace prize for his role negotiating normalisation deals in the Middle East. Trump’s son-in-law and former senior White House adviser was nominated along with his deputy, Avi Berkowitz, by the Harvard law professor who defended Trump in his first impeachment trial.
Will the Republican party break away from Trump? The former president is the first to be impeached twice, and his Senate trial is approaching. But Trump is also responsible for a strong share of the party’s support base, leading Joan E Greve to ask if the Republicans can afford to ditch him.
The US braces for a more infectious Covid strain, as the battle for a stimulus package continues
A leading infectious diseases scientist said yesterday that a British strain of coronavirus, thought to be more contagious and more deadly, could hit the US like a “hurricane” in spring. Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, a member of Joe Biden’s transition coronavirus advisory board, predicted that the variant could become the dominant strain of coronavirus in the US. It came as the US confirmed more than 26 million cases of coronavirus, and the death toll neared half a million.
It is looking increasingly likely that the White House will attempt to bypass Republicans over its coronavirus relief package. Republican senators made a lowball offer on Sunday, pitching a relief plan totalling $600bn – less than a third of the $1.9tn stimulus package Biden’s team unveiled. The gap between Biden’s plan and the Republicans’ offer has led to questions over whether the GOP is serious about reaching a deal.
Thirteen states still don’t have statewide mask wearing mandates, all of them led by Republican governors. Biden may be taking the coronavirus pandemic by the horns, but there is still strong resistance to public health measures among conservatives. Lauren Arantani looks at how the Republican state leaders could obstruct Biden’s approach to the pandemic, and what power the federal government has to act.
The WHO investigation team has visited the market where coronavirus was first detected, as they carry out their research into the origins of the virus. The team arrived at Huanan market amid heavy security and left in a convoy after about one hour.
Military coup in Myanmar
The military have seized power in Myanmar, with leader Aung San Suu Kyi detained and phone services, banks and the state media shut down in the country’s largest city, Yangon. Aung San Suu Kyi has urged the public to protest against the coup, saying that the military was trying reimpose a dictatorship.
On Monday morning, military television said the army had taken control of the country for a year, and handed power to commander-in-chief Gen Min Aung Hlaing. According to the report, the army declared a state of emergency and detained senior members of the government over “fraud” during last year’s general election. The US has threatened to “take action against those responsible” if the coup is not reversed, joining international condemnation from world leaders and human rights experts.
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 beginning of democracy in Myanmar, but her de facto leadership of the country didn’t live up to expectations. Ben Doherty and Rebecca Ratcliffe map the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi.
In other news…
Moscow has been put into lockdown as supporters of Alexei Nalvany protest against his detention, the most significant protests in Russia in a decade. Authorities shut down metro stations in the capital and blocked off streets, as at least 5,100 people were detained.
A major storm threatens to batter the New York area today, with more than 110 million people across the midwest and north-east under winter weather alerts. The storm could cause more than a foot of snow and create blizzard-like conditions.
The CEOs of US oil companies ExxonMobil and Chevron discussed merging in early 2020, in what would have been the biggest merger of all time. Legal documents were drafted, but the talks are not longer ongoing.
Stat of the day: Yemen’s conflict has cost more lives than coronavirus has in most countries
The conflict in Yemen has now spread to 47 frontiers and cost 233,000 lives. With the exception of the US, that is more than every country’s individual coronavirus death toll. Brazil has lost the second highest number of lives, at 224,500, followed by Mexico with 158,000. Bethan McKernan looks at the impact of the conflict on the country, which is ravaged by war, cholera and coronavirus and faces the world’s worst famine in decades.
Don’t miss this: who is Merrick Garland?
Biden’s pick for attorney general was the lead prosecutor in the case against the perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing, in which an anti-government white supremacist set off a truck bomb that killed 168 people – the deadliest incident of domestic terrorism in US history. With the US again seeing a rise in the ideology that motivated the incident, Tom McCarthy asks those who knew him during the case how it prepared Merrick Garland for office and why he is the right man for the attorney general job.
Last Thing: My Name is Earl star is now a successful photographer
Jason Lee, star of My Name is Earl, made his name in the hit American sitcom. But he’s recently found comfort travelling with his camera, documenting “America’s strange beauty”. In this interview, he discusses work on the hit show, Trump, and why he fell in love with photography.
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