House January 6 committee to consider holding two Trump aides in contemptPanel to meet next week after former senior White House advisers Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino refused to appear for depositions The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack will consider holding in criminal contempt of Congress next week two of Donald Trump’s most senior White House advisers, Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro, the panel announced on Thursday.The move to initiate contempt proceedings against the two Trump aides amounts to a biting rebuke of their refusal to cooperate with the inquiry, as the panel deploys its most punitive measures to reaffirm the consequences of noncompliance.House investigators said in a notice that it would consider a contempt report against Scavino and Navarro in a business meeting scheduled for next Monday on Capitol Hill, after they defied subpoenas compelling them to provide documents and testimony.Republican says Trump asked him to ‘rescind’ 2020 election and remove Biden from officeRead moreThe select committee is expected to vote unanimously to send the contempt report for a vote before the House of Representatives, according to a source close to the panel, so that the Trump aides can be referred to the justice department for prosecution.The select committee took a special interest in Scavino, since, as Trump’s former deputy chief of staff for communications, he was intimately involved in a months-long effort by the Trump White House to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Scavino was also closely involved in the scheme to pressure then vice-president Mike Pence to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election at the joint session of Congress on January 6, according to his subpoena, first issued in October last year.The select committee sought information from Navarro since he knew of that scheme to have Pence return Trump to office, through his contacts with the former president and the Trump “war room” at the Willard hotel in Washington that oversaw its implementation.Navarro was briefed on the scheme – called the “Green Bay Sweep” – by the political operatives responsible for the operation at the Willard, including former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who was also indicted for contempt last year for subpoena defiance.The Guardian has reported that Trump discussed ways to stop Biden’s certification from taking place with the Willard war room hours before the Capitol attack, based on unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud that originated in part from Navarro’s aides.However, the select committee’s move to consider contempt reports against the two Trump aides indicate neither one complied with their subpoena. Their contempt reports are expected to be made public Sunday, said a source familiar with the matter.The panel had sought to negotiate Scavino’s testimony for months, suggesting House investigators hoped he might be prepared to shed light on the nexus between the Willard operation and the White House in the days leading up to the Capitol attack.But the abrupt termination of talks suggests that the select committee now has enough information from more than 750 depositions with other witnesses that Scavino’s cooperation is no longer essential, and can now refer him for prosecution.The much shorter timeline between Navarro’s subpoena on 9 February and the contempt report may similarly indicate the panel no longer has a burning need for his testimony – or that it was worth spending time negotiating to get his insight.Navarro entirely skipped his deposition, scheduled for 2 March, claiming that as a former top White House aide, he enjoyed immunity from congressional subpoenas after Trump, as the former president, asserted executive privilege.A spokesperson for the select committee did not respond to a request for comment.Once the select committee adopts a contempt report, it is referred to the full House for a vote. Should the House approve the report, Congress can then send the request for a criminal referral to the US attorney for the District of Columbia.The move to initiate contempt of Congress proceedings against Scavino and Navarro marks the third time the panel has pursued such action. Bannon was held in contempt last October, and former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was referred in December.TopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesTrump administrationnewsReuse this content More

Readers continue the discussion about who has the best chance to defeat President Trump as New Hampshire holds its primary. Source: Elections – nytimes.com More

Moderate Democrat, who leads alongside Bernie Sanders in Iowa with results still coming in, in buoyant mood for Tuesday primary Pete Buttigieg is taking every opportunity he can to proclaim victory in Iowa and leverage that to win in New Hampshire, before the next few state votes in the Democratic primary contest to choose the […] More

A Biden administration border policy that has had a dramatic impact isn’t getting campaign play.Good evening. Tonight, my colleague Hamed Aleaziz, who covers immigration, looks at why the sharp drop in border crossings isn’t playing a bigger role in the presidential campaign. Plus, I want to hear about your favorite books about politics. — Jess BidgoodThe situation at the southern border looks very different these days.Gone are the headlines about surging border crossings crushing border communities and cities like New York struggling to fund housing for migrants who recently came to the country.The reality is that the numbers at the southern border have dropped to levels not seen before in the Biden administration — and lower than they were during parts of the Trump administration.The dramatic drop in border crossings came after a Biden administration policy seen by White House officials as a major success for an administration that has spent three years fighting Republican attacks over its handling of surging border crossings.Vice President Kamala Harris, however, has not focused on the dramatic change at the southern border in her presidential campaign. Tonight, I’ll explain what’s happening at the border, and offer some theories about why Harris isn’t talking it up.A border shutdown that workedThe border had seen a steady drop in crossings all year, but things took a dramatic turn in June. That’s when the Biden administration took a hallmark of the failed immigration bill from February — a measure allowing border officials to turn back migrants quickly when crossings exceed a certain level — and put a version of it into place via presidential proclamation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

When Joe Biden is sworn in on Inauguration Day, he will be 78, the oldest president to take the oath of office since the birth of our Republic. No shortage of observers on both the left and the right have written about this historic curiosity, as often with frustration (the left) and contempt (the right) as they have with awe.I can’t be bothered with the despicable Sleepy-Joe canard that the right is peddling, except to say that if this is what dementia looks like, I don’t know what to call my own flashes of forgetfulness, in which words, keys and hair scrunchies regularly desert me. As for those on the left who are disappointed that the Democratic Party, a diverse coalition of young and old, Black and white, male and female, has resorted to an older white man to give another older white man the boot: It’s true. Biden is hardly the face of change.But … may I tilt the prism and suggest we look at this from another angle?Can we also, perhaps, celebrate the idea that after 46 years of public service and three exhausting presidential runs, someone nearing the ninth decade of his life actually got the brass ring?And maybe even think of this as inspiring?Or possibly even proof that we, as a culture, still choose wisdom and experience from time to time?I am not saying that it’s unusual for older white men to win elections in American politics. It happens with dreary, rather irritating frequency. Ronald Reagan was 69 when he was sworn into the White House; Donald Trump was 70; and the U.S. Senate, for better or for worse, is a great place to grow old. (By my count, there are 29 sitting senators who are 70 or older.)But we also make a fetish of youth in modern politics. You can trace this obsession back to the dawn of the television age and the president who rang it in: J.F.K., inaugurated at 43, who promised to restore this country’s youthful “vigor.” Democrats have been on a quest to find his likeness ever since, whether it was Bill Clinton, sworn in at 46, or Barack Obama, sworn in at 47. (It has, come to think of it, been a long while since we’ve had a Democratic president who was particularly old: Jimmy Carter was 52 on Inauguration Day, and L.B.J. was 55 on Nov. 22, 1963.)More subtly: There’s a difference between sending a 70-year-old to the White House and sending a 78-year-old. Those aren’t a trivial eight years. Biden will be older when he enters the building than Reagan was when he left it. We’ve elected a man who’ll be in his eighties during his first term.It’s astonishing, if you stop and think about it. The Democratic primary started with a field of 27 candidates.It’s only more astonishing — and more poignant — when you consider how little the marketplace seems to value experience and expertise. According to a joint analysis conducted in 2018 by ProPublica and the Urban Institute, more than half of older American workers with stable jobs are forced out of them before they choose to retire — and once they’re out of a job, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show they struggle for far longer with joblessness. (An unemployed 54-year-old, for instance, will search for a job for almost a year.)In his thoughtful — if depressingly headlined — story for The Atlantic last year, “Your Professional Decline is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think,” Arthur C. Brooks noted that while most people’s happiness increases between the ages of 50 and 70 in wealthier countries, all bets are off after that, especially if you’re male: Both depression and suicide rates go up in men after 75.The story also noted that peaking early in life, as Biden did — he was first elected to the Senate at 29 — can often set unrealistic expectations for old age, and the inevitable decline in our ability to reason and solve novel problems, “or fluid intelligence,” can be a recipe for utter devastation.But here, to me, was the real takeaway from Mr. Brooks’s piece: If our fluid intelligence declines as we age, our “crystallized intelligence,” or the ability to use what we know, increases. And what better profession is there to make use of what you know than politics?On some level, voters intuited as much. They decided to replace a savage clown and chaos-sowing novice with a man defined by decency and nearly half a century of public service. After briefly (and disastrously) defining competency down, they defined it back up.They also chose someone who is capable of change and admitting error, two qualities one associates with wisdom. During the second and final debate, Biden not once but twice confessed he’d made big mistakes in public office — in not persuading Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform during the Obama years, and in supporting the 1994 crime bill during the Clinton ones.Compare that with “I don’t take any responsibility at all.”Age has tempered and humbled Biden. We see precious little, now, of the strutting and gasbaggery we saw from him in his youth. Whereas Trump has remained ever the same since he was an insipid real estate developer whose businesses filed serially for bankruptcy. Time and experience have not shaped him. His misshapen personality does not permit it. A disordered psychology renders him immune.The next government will be a veritable gerontocracy, with an 80-year-old speaker of the House and perhaps a 78-year-old Senate majority leader. I sympathize with those who say this arrangement is less than ideal. It’d be wonderful if our government could be more representative of the United States in every respect.But right now, we have a president who won’t concede defeat, much less allow the victor into the building. Thank God we’ve elected someone who can build a cabinet in his sleep. Who knows the future players in Congress and in many statehouses. And best yet, knows the country. His bones may be a tad more brittle, but he’s got a body of knowledge rivaled by few.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More