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      Can Rahm Emanuel Flip the Script Again?

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      There’s a buzz around Rahm Emanuel — the former Bill Clinton adviser, former Illinois congressman, former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, former mayor of Chicago — possibly becoming the next head of the Democratic National Committee. The progressive left despises his pragmatism and liberal centrism. He has a reputation for abrasiveness. And his current job, as ambassador to Japan, has traditionally served as a posting for high-level political has-beens like Walter Mondale and Howard Baker.But he also has a gift for constructing winning coalitions with difficult, unexpected partners.More on that in a moment. When I meet him for breakfast this week at a New York City hotel, what he wants to talk about is a looming crisis in Asia. “What started as two wars in two theaters is now one war in two separate theaters,” he says of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. “We need to ensure that it does not expand into a third theater.”How soon might that happen? I mention 2027, a year that’s often seen as China’s target date for reunification with Taiwan, if necessary by force.“I think it’s actually 2025,” he answers.What Emanuel has in mind are Asia’s other flashpoints, including along the 38th parallel that divides North and South Korea, where Russia is “poking” Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, “to do something” and where South Korea’s president briefly declared martial law, and also in the South China Sea, where China and the Philippines are coming to blows over Beijing’s illegal maritime claims. Unlike with Taipei, to which America’s obligations are deliberately ambiguous, with Manila and Seoul our defense commitments are ironclad.That could mean war for the United States on multiple unexpected fronts. Emanuel’s tenure as ambassador was distinguished by his role in engineering two historic rapprochements — last year between Japan and South Korea and this year between Japan and the Philippines — that, along with the AUKUS defense pact with Britain and Australia, form part of a broad diplomatic effort by the Biden administration to contain China.The Chinese, Emanuel says, “have a theory of the case in the Indo-Pacific. We have a theory of the case. Their attempt is to isolate Australia, isolate the Philippines and put all the pressure on that country,” often through abusive trade practices. “Our job is to flip the script and isolate China through their actions.”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

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      Biden Turns to an Unlikely Ally to Help Protect His Legacy: Republicans

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      President Biden wants to make it more difficult for President-elect Donald J. Trump to repeal his signature legislation, which sent money flowing to Republican districts nationwide.President-elect Donald J. Trump has promised to unravel President Biden’s major legislation when he takes office next month, but Mr. Biden is hoping to salvage his most prized policies with help from an unlikely source: Republicans.With just weeks left in office, Mr. Biden and his aides have emphasized that his signature economic legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, overwhelmingly benefits Republican districts, in the hopes that Mr. Trump would face blowback from his own party if he repealed it.The administration is also racing to award hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and finalize environmental regulations to lock in Mr. Biden’s economic agenda, including ramping up domestic manufacturing of clean energy products and semiconductors.“They are not going to want to undermine those jobs and those businesses that we know for the first time are really strong in so many districts around the country that have been left behind under trickle-down policies,” Lael Brainard, Mr. Biden’s national economic adviser, said in an interview.Roughly 80 percent of new clean energy manufacturing investments announced since the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022 have flowed to Republican congressional districts, according to data from Atlas Public Policy, a research firm.Mr. Trump and his allies have attacked the legislation, which provides at least $390 billion over 10 years in tax breaks, grants and subsidies for wind and solar power, electric vehicle battery production and other clean energy projects. More

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      U.S. Sending $725 Million in Arms to Ukraine, Including More Land Mines

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      The package, the largest since April, comes amid deep concerns in Ukraine that the Trump administration may cut off aid. The president-elect has vowed to end the war quickly, but has not said how.The Pentagon will send Ukraine an additional $725 million in military assistance from its stockpiles, including anti-personnel land mines, drones, portable antiaircraft missiles and anti-tank missiles.In a statement, the Pentagon said on Monday that the shipment was part of a surge in security aid as Ukraine battles a renewed Russian offensive.The new support comes amid deep concerns in Ukraine that the incoming Trump administration might cut off military aid to the country. President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to end the war quickly, though he has not said how. But Vice President-elect JD Vance has outlined a plan that would allow Russia to keep the Ukrainian territory it has seized.The new tranche will be the single largest that the United States has sent to Ukraine since a $1 billion shipment was announced April 24, just days after the House approved new aid to the country after a monthslong hold.The arms are provided under what is called presidential “drawdown” authority, which allows the administration to transfer Pentagon stocks to Ukraine instead of waiting the months or years it can take for defense contractors to manufacture weapons under new contracts.There had been 15 such drawdowns totaling $4.6 billion of arms, ammunition, vehicles and other supplies since the $1 billion package was announced.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

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      After Biden Pardons His Son Hunter, Prison Inmates Hope They’re Next

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      President Biden has pardoned people convicted of some marijuana offenses, but advocates for prisoners say he has been slow to grant other requests.On Thanksgiving, Hunter Biden got the word from his father, President Biden, that he would be pardoned for tax and gun law violations, saving him from potentially spending a few years in federal prison.But Michael Montalvo, 78, a former cocaine ringleader who has spent nearly 40 years behind bars racking up course certifications, credits for good behavior and recommendations from his prison wardens, is still waiting to hear about his request for a pardon.So is Michelle West, who has spent more than 30 years in prison for her role in a drug conspiracy connected to a murder, while the gunman, who testified against her, has gone free. And Sara Gallegos, who is serving a 20-year sentence for being briefly involved in a drug ring after her husband was murdered when she was pregnant with her fourth child.“Everyone wants that chance,” said Lazara Serrano, who is waiting for her mother to win release from prison after more than 25 years, and who was stunned to hear that Hunter Biden’s criminal case was over. “For something just to be so sudden, and to happen right away, is crazy when there’s a line of people waiting.”Andrea James, who runs an organization that helps incarcerated women, said she did not begrudge Hunter Biden his pardon, but said she was hopeful that it would “move President Biden to consider other families who’ve endured what they have gone through for much longer periods of time.”Critics have complained that Mr. Biden has approved a smaller fraction of the requests for clemency that he has received than any other modern president. Of course, he still has time, and presidents have made a habit of waiting until the 11th hour to announce their clemency decisions.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

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      Pardoning Hunter Complicates the Legacy That Biden Envisioned

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      President Biden is facing criticism for absolving his son after insisting he would not and, according to some critics in his own party, paving the way for Donald Trump’s return to office.There was a time, not that long ago, when President Biden imagined he would etch his place in history as the leader who ended the chaotic reign of Donald J. Trump, passed a raft of “Build Back Better” laws to transform the country and reestablished America’s place in the world.Now, in the desultory final days of his administration, Mr. Biden finds himself repudiated, even by some of his fellow Democrats, as the president who refused to step aside until it was too late, paved the way for Mr. Trump’s return to power and, in a final gesture of personal grievance over stated principle, pardoned his own son for multiple felony convictions.The disappointment and frustration expressed by his own supporters since Mr. Biden intervened to spare his son Hunter from prison and any future investigations captured the disenchantment of many Democrats with the outgoing president as the end draws near. How he will be remembered by posterity may be hard to predict at this point, but the past few weeks have not helped write the legacy he had once envisioned.The pardon came as Mr. Biden’s political stock was already at a low ebb after a stinging election defeat for his party that many allies blamed more on him than on the candidate who stepped up after he belatedly dropped out, Vice President Kamala Harris. The decision to attack the credibility of the justice system to safeguard a relative aggravated admirers who sympathized with his plight as a father yet were shocked that he would break his own promise to respect the courts’ decision.“I don’t think there is any doubt that our country would have been better off if President Biden had decided not to run for re-election,” said Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, reflecting a view that has been more commonly voiced privately by his fellow Democrats since Mr. Trump beat Ms. Harris last month. “Whether our nominee was the vice president or someone else, we would have had a much better chance to defeat Donald Trump.”Mr. Bennet, a low-key lawmaker not normally given to knee-jerk public criticism of the leader of his party, added that the clemency order fit the same pattern. “His decision to pardon his son, no matter how unconditional his love, feels like another instance of putting his personal interest ahead of his responsibility to the country,” he said. “It further erodes Americans’ faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all.”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

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      How Biden Changed His Mind on Pardoning Hunter: ‘Time to End All of This’

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      The threat of a retribution-focused Trump administration and his son’s looming sentencings prompted the president to abandon a promise not to get involved in Hunter Biden’s legal problems.A dark sky had fallen over Nantucket, Mass., on Saturday evening when President Biden left church alongside his family after his final Thanksgiving as president.Inside a borrowed vacation compound earlier in the week, with its views of the Nantucket Harbor, Mr. Biden had met with his wife, Jill Biden, and his son Hunter Biden to discuss a decision that had tormented him for months. The issue: a pardon that would clear Hunter of years of legal trouble, something the president had repeatedly insisted he would not do.Support for pardoning Hunter Biden had been building for months within the family, but external forces had more recently weighed on Mr. Biden, who watched warily as President-elect Donald J. Trump picked loyalists for his administration who promised to bring political and legal retribution to Mr. Trump’s enemies.Mr. Biden had even invited Mr. Trump to the White House, listening without responding as the president-elect aired familiar grievances about the Justice Department — then surprised his host by sympathizing with the Biden family’s own troubles with the department, according to three people briefed on the conversation.But it was Hunter Biden’s looming sentencings on federal gun and tax charges, scheduled for later this month, that gave Mr. Biden the final push. A pardon was one thing he could do for a troubled son, a recovering addict who he felt had been subjected to years of public pain.When the president returned to Washington late Saturday evening, he convened a call with several senior aides to tell them about his decision.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

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      Hunter Biden Likely Wouldn’t Qualify for a Pardon Recommendation Under Justice Dept. Criteria

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      Hunter Biden likely would not have qualified for a pardon recommendation under the criteria used by the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, which is tasked with identifying and vetting worthy clemency recipients. The office mostly recommends full pardons for people who have already served their sentences.Hunter Biden has not been sentenced, let alone served his sentence.Presidents have unchecked authority to grant clemency to anyone they choose, regardless of the pardon attorney’s recommendations.During his first term in office, President-elect Donald J. Trump routinely granted clemency to people who had not been recommended by the pardon attorney, including to some who had been previously rejected by the office and others who had yet to be sentenced.“Before Trump, reaching into the middle of an ongoing case to give a full pardon was almost unheard-of,” said Margaret Love, who ran the Justice Department’s clemency process from 1990 to 1997 as the United States pardon attorney.Mr. Biden has been under pressure from groups supporting prisoners’ rights to issue more clemency grants at the end of his term.In a statement issued after the announcement of Hunter Biden’s pardon, Zoë Towns, the executive director of the advocacy group FWD.us, said, “It’s time to prioritize clemency for thousands of vetted cases. The President has the opportunity to extend mercy to those serving disproportionately long sentences in federal prisons. We absolutely must turn our attention there.”The pardon attorney has received nearly 12,000 petitions for clemency during President Biden’s term.Mr. Biden has so far issued 157 clemency grants — 25 pardons, which wipe out convictions, and 132 commutations, which reduce prison sentences — according to a tally kept by the pardon attorney. It is not clear if the tally includes the pardon to his son.Mr. Biden has issued fewer clemency grants so far than the 238 — 144 pardons and 94 commutations — issued by Mr. Trump during his first administration. More

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      Biden Pardons His Son Hunter, Citing ‘Political Pressure’

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      President Biden blamed “political pressure” for the collapse of a plea deal for Hunter Biden, but it was the judge overseeing the case who questioned the agreement.Hunter Biden’s plea deal did fall apart in dramatic form at the last minute last year. But it did so after the judge overseeing the case at the time raised issues about its unusual construction, involving two separate agreements meant to work in tandem. That construction violated one of the basic tenets of federal guilty pleas: that any agreement not have any side deals.That the plea agreement fell apart once it faced basic questioning from the judge was an embarrassment to both the prosecutors and the defense lawyers who negotiated it. But that is a far cry from the president’s suggestion that the deal for Hunter Biden to avoid prison time and a felony conviction collapsed because of political pressure. More