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The articles accuse the homeland security secretary of refusing to uphold the law and breaching the public trust in his handling of immigration. A House committee is scheduled to approve them on Tuesday.House Republicans on Sunday released two articles of impeachment against Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, charging President Biden’s top immigration official with refusing to uphold the law and breaching the public trust in his handling of a surge of migration at the U.S. border with Mexico.Leaders of the House Homeland Security Committee laid out their case against Mr. Mayorkas ahead of a Tuesday meeting to approve the charges, paving the way for a quick House vote as soon as early next month to impeach him. It would be the culmination of Republicans’ attacks on Mr. Biden’s immigration policies and an extraordinary move given an emerging consensus among legal scholars that Mr. Mayorkas’s actions do not constitute high crimes and misdemeanors.The push comes as House Republicans, egged on by former President Donald J. Trump, dig in against a bipartisan border compromise Mr. Mayorkas helped to negotiate with a group of senators, which Mr. Biden has vowed to sign. House G.O.P. lawmakers have dismissed the agreement as too weak and argued that they cannot trust Mr. Biden to crack down on migration now when he has failed to in the past.The charges against Mr. Mayorkas, should they be approved by full the House, are all but certain to fizzle in the Democratic-led Senate, where Mr. Mayorkas would stand trial and a two-thirds majority would be needed to convict and remove him. But the process would yield a remarkable election-year political spectacle, effectively putting Mr. Biden’s immigration record on trial as Mr. Trump, who has made a border crackdown his signature issue, seeks to clinch the Republican presidential nomination to run against him.The first impeachment article essentially brands the Biden administration’s border policies an official crime. It accuses Mr. Mayorkas of willfully and systematically flouting laws requiring migrants to be detained by carrying out “catch and release” policies that allow some to stay in the United States pending court proceedings and others fleeing certain war-torn and economically ravaged countries to live and work in the country temporarily. Immigration laws grant the president broad leeway to do both.The second article charges Mr. Mayorkas with lying to Congress about whether the border was secure and obstructing lawmakers’ efforts to investigate him.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?  More

What is Nikki Haley doing? What are her real intentions? Those questions have dominated every aspect of her candidacy.So much of what’s been said about Ms. Haley the last few months has been about what she’ll do after she loses — even that the original premise of the campaign must have contained hidden ambitions or total delusion. There’s been an assumption, even from would-be allies, that there must be another angle to the campaign, that she must want the vice presidency.That’s partly because, in her speeches, Ms. Haley often resists giving her listeners satisfaction, withholding the obvious point, allowing them to fill in what they want, both to Ms. Haley’s benefit and peril. She did not make a strong moral case against Donald Trump last year.But here we are after her big loss in New Hampshire, framed by many as the definitive end. Right now, Ms. Haley’s unwillingness to publicly engage with the obvious works differently, reveals different things.For instance, in a hotel ballroom by the Charleston, S.C., airport, with people decked out in “SC ❤️ NH” stickers, cheerfully wanting something they and everybody else know they probably won’t get, she proceeded as normal, giving that homecoming crowd primarily her normal remarks. She layered in critiques of Mr. Trump that dealt with inarguable surface realities, like how he talked about her the night before rather than about solutions to the nation’s problems: “He didn’t talk about the American people once; he talked about revenge!” (When she ran through a variety of problems he could have talked about, one woman yelled, “He don’t know!”)Insofar as she engaged with the obvious, literal reason that people in the room seemed so amped — that she was still in the race — it was this: “You know, the political elites, in this state and around the country, have said that we just need to let Donald Trump have this.” That was clearly what people in the room, who dropped into a long “noooo,” had come to hear discussed.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?  More

Over the past month, we’ve watched an astonishing, high-stakes global drama play out in The Hague. A group of countries from the poorer, less powerful bloc some call the Global South, led by South Africa, dragged the government of Israel and by extension its rich, powerful allies into the top court of that order, and accused Israel of prosecuting a brutal war in Gaza that is “genocidal in character.”The responses to this presentation from the leading nations of the Western rules-based order were quick and blunt.“Completely unjustified and wrong,” said a statement from Rishi Sunak, Britain’s prime minister.“Meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever,” said John Kirby, spokesman for the United States National Security Council.“The accusation has no basis in fact,” a German government spokesman said, adding that Germany opposed the “political instrumentalization” of the genocide statute.But on Friday, that court had its say, issuing a sober and careful provisional ruling that doubled as a rebuke to those dismissals. In granting provisional measures, the court affirmed that some of South Africa’s allegations were plausible, and called on Israel to take immediate steps to protect civilians, increase the amount of humanitarian aid and punish officials who engaged in violent and incendiary speech. The court stopped short of calling for a cease-fire, but it granted South Africa’s request for provisional measures to prevent further civilian death. For the most part, the court ruled in favor of the Global South. Accusing the state created in the aftermath of the slaughter that required the coinage of the term genocide is a serious step. Scholars of genocide have raised alarms about statements from Israeli leaders and its conduct in the war while stopping short of calling the killing genocide. Some have welcomed South Africa’s application as a necessary step to preventing genocide.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?  More

Two women from an environmental group threw pumpkin-colored soup at the artwork, which is behind bulletproof glass at the Louvre and did not appear to sustain damage.Two protesters from an environmental group hurled pumpkin-colored soup on the Mona Lisa at the Louvre museum in Paris on Sunday, splashing the bulletproof glass that protects the most famous painting in the world, but not apparently damaging the work itself.As the customary crowd around the 16th-century painting by Leonardo da Vinci gasped in shock, the protesters, two young women, followed up their attack by passing under a barrier and standing on either side of the artwork, hands raised in an apparent salute.“What is more important? Art or the right to have a healthy and sustainable food system?” the activists said, speaking in French. “Our agricultural system is sick.” They were led away by Louvre security guards.It was not immediately clear how the women got the soup through the elaborate security system at the museum, which borders the Seine and contains a vast art and archaeological collection spanning civilizations and centuries.One of the women removed her jacket to reveal the words Riposte Alimentaire, or Food Response, on a white T-shirt. Riposte Alimentaire is part of a coalition of protest groups known as the A22 movement. They include Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, the group that poured tomato soup over Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London in 2022.The attack on the Mona Lisa came as French farmers have blocked roads, including approaches to Paris, in recent days to protest low wages and what they see as excessive regulation. Many new regulations in France reflect the attempt to forge a green, carbon-free European economy, an objective that the farmers consider too expensive and burdensome in the near term.The protests by the two young women and the farmers appeared to reflect two starkly different views of agriculture and the appropriate priorities for European society.Staff at the Louvre on Sunday tried to erect cloth screens to conceal the soup-splashed Mona Lisa, but the screens were not effective. Images of the attack quickly went viral on social media.The Mona Lisa has been behind glass since the 1950s, when a visitor poured acid on it. In 2019, the museum installed glass of what it said was superior transparency. Three years later, another environmental activist threw cake and cream at the painting. It was undamaged.The latest attack will heighten security concerns ahead of the Paris Olympics.The opening ceremony is just six months away and will take place on the Seine. A flotilla of boats will carry about 10,000 athletes to the foot of the Eiffel Tower, as nearly a half-million spectators, including many heads of state, line the four-mile route. The boats will sail past the Louvre as part of a ceremony conceived to showcase the beauty of Paris, but which has raised serious security issues that are still under review. More

Look closely at this image, stripped of its caption, and join the moderated conversation about what you and other students see.1. After looking closely at the image above (or at the full-size image), think about these three questions:What is going on in this picture?What do you see that makes you say that?What more can you find?2. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)3. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.Each Monday, our collaborator, Visual Thinking Strategies, will facilitate a discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern time by paraphrasing comments and linking to responses to help students’ understanding go deeper. You might use their responses as models for your own.4. On Thursday afternoons, we will reveal at the bottom of this post more information about the photo. How does reading the caption and learning its back story help you see the image differently?The RevealWe’ll post more information here on Thursday afternoon. Stay tuned!More?• See all images in this series or slide shows of 40 of our favorite images — or 40 more.• Learn more about this feature in this video, and discover how and why other teachers are using it in their classrooms in our on-demand webinar.• Find out how teachers can be trained in the Visual Thinking Strategies facilitation method.Students 13 and older in the United States and the Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public. More

Twenty-five historians of the civil war and Reconstruction filed a US supreme court brief in support of the attempt by Colorado to remove Donald Trump from the ballot under the 14th amendment, which bars insurrectionists from running for office.“For historians,” the group wrote, “contemporary evidence from the decision-makers who sponsored, backed, and voted for the 14th amendment [ratified in 1868] is most probative. Analysis of this evidence demonstrates that decision-makers crafted section three to cover the president and to create an enduring check on insurrection, requiring no additional action from Congress.”Lawyers for Trump argue that the presidency is not an “office” as described in the 14th amendment, that only congressional action can stop someone from running, and that Trump did not incite an insurrection.Trump was impeached in Congress (for the second time) for inciting an insurrection: the Capitol attack of 6 January 2021, an attempt to overturn defeat by Joe Biden now linked to nine deaths, more than 1,200 arrests and hundreds of convictions.Impeached with the support of 10 House Republicans but acquitted when only seven Senate Republicans voted to convict, Trump now dominates his party and its presidential primary, 91 criminal charges (17 for election subversion), civil trials and ballot challenges notwithstanding.Maine has also sought to remove Trump from its ballot, a ruling delayed, like that in Colorado, while the supreme court considers the issue. Oral arguments are set for 8 February.Amicus briefs allow interested parties to make relevant arguments. Earlier this month, nearly 180 Republicans joined a brief in support of Trump.The 25 historians – among them James McPherson of Princeton, the pre-eminent civil war scholar – pointed to 1860s congressional debate.“Senator Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, a Democratic opponent of the 14th amendment, challenged sponsors as to why section three omitted the president. Republican Lot Morrill of Maine … replied, ‘Let me call the senator’s attention to the words “or hold any office civil or military under the United States”.’ Johnson admitted his error; no other senator questioned whether section three covered the president.”The historians also cited Andrew Johnson, in 1868 the first president impeached, referring to himself as “chief executive officer”.Pointing out that section 3 of the 14th amendment is self-executing, and that “no former Confederate instantly disqualified from holding office under section three was disqualified by an act of Congress”, the historians also noted that Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, cited his own disqualification as reason an indictment for treason should be quashed.“Contemporary information provides direct evidence of the enduring reach of the 14th amendment,” the historians wrote. “Congress … chose to make disqualification permanent through a constitutional amendment.“Republican senator Peter Van Winkle of West Virginia said, ‘This is to go into our constitution and to stand to govern future insurrection as well as the present.’ To this end, the Amnesty Acts of 1872 and 1898 did not pardon future insurrectionists.”The historians also said “adverse consequences followed” amnesty, many ex-Confederates winning office and “participat[ing] in the imposition of racial discrimination in the south that vitiated the intent of the 14th and 15th amendments to protect the civil and political rights of the formerly enslaved people.”The historians concluded: “The court should take cognisance that section three of the 14th amendment covers the present, is forward-looking, and requires no additional acts of Congress for implementation.”Some political and legal observers have suggested Trump should be allowed to run regardless of the constitution, because to bar him would be anti-democratic.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a forthcoming article for the New York Review of Books, seen by the Guardian, Sean Wilentz of Princeton – an eminent historian not part of the supreme court brief – calls such arguments “risible”.“By their reasoning,” Wilentz writes, “Trump’s misdeeds aside, enforcement of the 14th amendment poses a greater threat to our wounded democracy than Trump’s candidacy. In the name of defending democracy, they would speciously enable the man who did the wounding and now promises to do much more.”Trump and allies including Elise Stefanik of New York, a House Republican leader, have refused to commit to certifying the result should Trump lose in November.Wilentz continues: “Whether motivated by … fear of Trump’s base, a perverted sense of democratic evenhandedness, a reflexive hostility toward liberals, or something else, [commentators who say Trump should stay on the ballot] betray a basic ignorance of the relevant history and thus a misconception of what the 14th amendment actually meant and means. That history, meanwhile, has placed the conservative members of the supreme court in a very tight spot.”Wilentz says justices who subscribe to originalism, a doctrine that “purports to divine the original intentions of the framers [of the constitution] by presenting tendentious renderings of the past as a kind of scripture”, will in the Colorado case have to contend with evidence – as presented by the historians’ brief – of what the framers of the 14th amendment meant.Recently used to remove the right to abortion and to gut voting rights, originalism now threatens, Wilentz says, to become a “petard … exploding in the majority’s face.”He also writes: “The conservative majority of the supreme court and the historical legacy of the [Chief Justice John] Roberts court have reached a point of no return. The law, no matter the diversions and claptrap of Trump’s lawyers and the pundits, is crystal clear, on incontestable historical as well as originalist grounds … the conservatives face a choice between disqualifying Trump or shredding the foundation of their judicial methodology.”If the court does not “honour the original meaning of the 14th amendment and disqualify Donald Trump”, Wilentz writes, “it will trash the constitutional defense of democracy designed following slavery’s abolition; it will guarantee, at a minimum, political chaos no matter what the voters decide in November; and it will quite possibly pave the way for a man who has vowed that he will, if necessary, rescind the constitution in order to impose a dictatorship of revenge.” More

Adrienne Hurst and Corey Schreppel and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | SpotifyOn April 26, 2019, a beluga whale appeared near Tufjord, a village in northern Norway, immediately alarming fishermen in the area. Belugas in that part of the world typically inhabit the remote Arctic and are rarely spotted as far south as the Norwegian mainland. Although they occasionally travel solo, they tend to live and move in groups. This particular whale was entirely alone and unusually comfortable around humans, trailing boats and opening his mouth as though expecting to be fed.News of the friendly white whale spread quickly. In early May, a video of the beluga went viral, eventually earning a spot on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” By midsummer, he had become an international celebrity, drawing large groups of tourists. All the while, marine experts had been speculating about the whale’s origin. Clearly this animal had spent time in captivity — but where?In the years since the whale, publicly named Hvaldimir, first entered the global spotlight, the very qualities that make him so endearing — his intelligence, curiosity and charisma — have put him in perpetual danger. Hvaldimir is now at the center of a dispute over his welfare. Even as he swims freely through the ocean, he is caught in a tangle of conflicting human ambitions, some noble, others misguided, nearly all distorted by inadequate understanding. Whether to intervene, and how to do so, remain contentious subjects among scientists, activists and government officials.There are a lot of ways to listen to ‘The Daily.’ Here’s how.We want to hear from you. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at [email protected]. Follow Michael Barbaro on X: @mikiebarb. And if you’re interested in advertising with The Daily, write to us at [email protected] production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Isabella Anderson, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Elena Hecht, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez and Krish Seenivasan. More

Festival documentaries ranged across the genre map, but several explored the lengths we’ll go to communicate with lost loved ones.Everyone from the academy to streaming services splits cinema into two buckets: movies (comedy, romance, horror, whatever) and documentaries, lumped into one unholy pile. Besides being obviously reductive, the division is false: Nonfiction movies can be comedies or romances or horror or any other genre, and they can create new indescribable genres, too. But American audiences still tend to be fed documentaries of only a few types: true crime stories, cult exposés, hagiographies, and educational disquisitions full of talking heads.There’s more than that to nonfiction. And though plenty of star-driven, lightweight biographies show up at Sundance — famous folk on the carpet create much-needed social-media attention — there’s a lot of other nonfiction on offer, some of which will make its way to theaters and streaming services over the next year or two. A couple of lucky films may even eventually make their way into Oscar contention.Documentaries at this year’s Sundance, which concluded Sunday, ranged across the genre map, often playfully mixing up conventions. But it was striking how often a particular thread kept popping up: the human longing to communicate with the dead, and the lengths — technological and otherwise — to which we’ll go to make it happen.That was the theme of “Love Machina” and “Eternal You,” which feel picked by the programmers to complement one another. “Love Machina” (directed by Peter Sillen) is a romance looking at the efforts of the married couple Martine and Bina Rothblatt to create a robotic replica of Bina, powered by artificial intelligence and an extensive database of her thoughts, speech and emotions, that can communicate with her descendants when she is gone. “Eternal You” (directed by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck) takes a broader, more analytical look at the burgeoning market for “afterlife technology” designed to do what the Rothblatts hope to accomplish: let people communicate with their loved ones after death using A.I. If that sounds like a “Black Mirror” episode, you’re right — and some “Eternal You” participants note the humanity-altering danger in this quest.In “Love Machina,” the robotic likeness of a woman is part of an effect to communicate with her descendants after she’s gone.Peter Sillen, via Sundance InstituteYet, as the eminent sociologist Sherry Turkle points out onscreen, what we see in these efforts is A.I. offering what religion once did: a sense of an afterlife, a quest for meaning, the feeling of connecting to transcendence. One of the festival’s best documentaries, the sociological portrait “Look Into My Eyes,” taps into this same longing from a more mystical direction. Directed by Lana Wilson, the film drops audiences into the lives of several New York City psychics. The clients are hoping to communicate with the beloved dead through a literal rather than technological medium. (One participant helps people communicate with their pets, some of whom are still living.) But the focus is on the psychics themselves, the reasons they’ve come to their work, and what they believe they’re actually doing in their sessions — and the film is marvelously nuanced and fascinating in its examination. Is this performance? Is it “real”? And if it brings peace to the living, does it matter?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?  More