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      Biden to Sit Out Super Bowl Interview

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      President Biden is sitting out the Super Bowl for the second year in a row.CBS said on Saturday that the White House had turned down a request for Mr. Biden to participate in a televised interview with its news division, which would have aired in the highly rated hours ahead of the big game on Feb. 11.In a tradition dating to 2009, presidents have recorded an interview with the network that broadcasts the Super Bowl, although there have been exceptions. Donald J. Trump did not appear on NBC in 2018. Last year, Mr. Biden declined to appear on Fox, home of cable hosts like Sean Hannity who are sharply hostile toward him.But the White House has been receptive to CBS News in the past. The president was interviewed by the “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell ahead of the 2021 Super Bowl, and he participated in two lengthy “60 Minutes” pieces, in 2022 and 2023, with the correspondent Scott Pelley.“We hope viewers enjoy watching what they tuned in for — the game,” Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director, said in a statement on Saturday.The Super Bowl, typically the most-watched telecast of the year, offers an unusually large audience for a sitting president to address current events and advance his agenda to the public.And there is plenty of news for Mr. Biden to comment on. Starting on Friday, the United States carried out military strikes in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Three American soldiers were killed last Sunday in Jordan. The government just released a positive jobs report. And Mr. Biden is ramping up his re-election campaign as Mr. Trump has moved closer to clinching the Republican nomination.In 2021, Mr. Biden’s pregame interview with Ms. O’Donnell was seen live by about 10.2 million viewers; millions more viewed clips that aired on other CBS programs in the days surrounding the game.For this year’s event, CBS offered the White House about 15 minutes for an interview with Mr. Biden, with three to four minutes airing live during the pregame coverage on the network, according to a person familiar with the discussions.Mr. Biden has conducted fewer media interviews than his most recent predecessors. The president’s last major network interview took place in October, with Mr. Pelley of CBS. His State of the Union address is scheduled for March 7.Katie Rogers More

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      Germany Braces for Decades of Confrontation With Russia

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      Leaders are sounding alarms about growing threats, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz is wary of pushing the Kremlin, and his own ambivalent public, too far.Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has begun warning Germans that they should prepare for decades of confrontation with Russia — and that they must speedily rebuild the country’s military in case Vladimir V. Putin does not plan to stop at the border with Ukraine.Russia’s military, he has said in a series of recent interviews with German news media, is fully occupied with Ukraine. But if there is a truce, and Mr. Putin, Russia’s president, has a few years to reset, he thinks the Russian leader will consider testing NATO’s unity.“Nobody knows how or whether this will last,” Mr. Pistorius said of the current war, arguing for a rapid buildup in the size of the German military and a restocking of its arsenal.Mr. Pistorius’s public warnings reflect a significant shift at the top levels of leadership in a country that has shunned a strong military since the end of the Cold War. The alarm is growing louder, but the German public remains unconvinced that the security of Germany and Europe has been fundamentally threatened by a newly aggressive Russia.The defense minister’s post in Germany is often a political dead end. But Mr. Pistorius’s status as one of the country’s most popular politicians has given him a freedom to speak that others — including his boss, Chancellor Olaf Scholz — do not enjoy.As Mr. Scholz prepares to meet President Biden at the White House on Friday, many in the German government say that there is no going back to business as usual with Mr. Putin’s Russia, that they anticipate little progress this year in Ukraine and that they fear the consequences should Mr. Putin prevail there.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 Finds Support but Also Protests in Michigan

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      The president’s Michigan trip underscored the fresh challenges he faces this year.President Biden’s visit to Michigan yesterday had all the hallmarks of a vintage Scranton Joe event, as he talked to United Automobile Workers members about his love of cars and affinity for the labor movement.But if the appearance was a throwback to previous campaigns — and a reminder of his historical appeal to a multiracial bloc of working-class voters — the Michigan trip itself underscored the fresh challenges Biden faces this year.Michigan is home to many Arab American and Muslim voters, who were once a solid Biden constituency but are now livid about the president’s support of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.Pro-Palestinian groups protested his visit, carrying signs that called for voters to “abandon Biden.” Demonstrators chanted “Genocide Joe” and “How many kids have you killed today?” outside a campaign stop later in the day, my colleague Michael Shear reported.Some Arab American community leaders, including the mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, recently declined a meeting with Biden’s campaign manager. And a group of activists is planning to encourage Michiganders to vote “uncommitted” in the state’s primaries on Feb. 27.“If we can demonstrate our political power and discontent through as many uncommitted votes as possible in the Michigan Democratic primaries, then the hope is that Biden would feel more at risk of losing Michigan in the general election,” said Layla Elabed, the campaign manager for the effort, who is a sister of Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. She hopes that would prompt him to “shift his policy to support a cease-fire, at least” and to urge restrictions on military aid to Israel.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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      U.S. Quietly Resumes Deportation Flights Deep Into Mexico

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      The flights had been paused for nearly two years, but the authorities are taking more forceful measures to discourage migrants from repeatedly trying to cross into the United States.The United States has quietly resumed deporting some Mexicans on flights that carry them far from the southern border, U.S. and Mexican officials said, a move designed in part to discourage them from repeatedly trying to cross into the United States.The first flight to Morelia, a city in central Mexico hundreds of miles from the nearest U.S. border crossing, took off on Tuesday carrying more than 100 Mexicans, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details.A senior Mexican official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the flights were expected to continue on a regular basis.Tuesday’s flight was the first of its kind in nearly two years. U.S. authorities more commonly deport Mexicans over land, near the border. But the number of Mexicans crossing into the United States has spiked in recent months, prompting U.S. authorities to find more forceful ways to discourage people from making the trip north.The Biden administration is struggling to contain one of the largest surges of uncontrolled immigration in American history, with people fleeing poverty, political instability and violence in Central America, South America and elsewhere. Last week, President Biden tried to address a growing political liability by imploring Congress to grant him the power to shut down the border.The United States paused deportation flights for Mexicans in 2022, when officials turned their attention to the skyrocketing number of migrants arriving from countries including Haiti and Venezuela.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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      Kamala Harris Rallies Democrats, Pumps Up Biden and Warns of Trump

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      On the final day before South Carolina’s primary election officially kicks off the Democratic presidential nominating contest, Vice President Kamala Harris urged supporters not to ignore a contest that is widely expected to be uncompetitive but where she and President Biden are hoping for a morale-lifting rout.“South Carolina, you are the first primary in the nation, and President Biden and I are counting on you,” Ms. Harris told a crowd on Friday at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg. “Are you ready to make your voices heard? Do we believe in freedom? Do we believe in democracy? Do we believe in opportunity for all, and are we ready to fight for it?”The rally was Ms. Harris’s ninth trip to South Carolina as vice president and was already her third of the year, an indication of the importance she and Mr. Biden’s campaign have placed on a dominant performance to begin their party’s presidential nominating season.Standing before two banners bearing the slogan “First in the Nation” — with the word “First” underlined — Ms. Harris highlighted the Biden administration’s achievements, including expanding high-speed internet access, increasing federal funding for historically Black colleges and universities, and reducing prescription drug costs.She also warned supporters about what former President Donald J. Trump could do with another White House term.“For years, the former president has stoked the fires of hate and bigotry and racism and xenophobia for his own power and political gain,” she said. “The former president has told us who he is, and it is on us, then, to recognize the profound threat he poses to our democracy and to our freedoms.”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 Urged to Re-examine Israel Support After Lawsuit Dismissed

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      A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit by Palestinian Americans who sought to force the White House to withdraw support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, as was widely expected based on constitutional precedent that only the political branches of U.S. government could determine foreign policy.But, unexpectedly, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White indicated that he would have preferred to have issued the injunction were he not limited by the Constitution, and he implored the Biden administration to “examine the results of their unflagging support” of Israel.The determination came five days after a hearing in Oakland, Calif., in which Judge White allowed the head of a humanitarian group, a medical intern and three Palestinian Americans with relatives in Gaza to tell the court that their loved ones were being slaughtered. They alleged that the U.S. government has underwritten a genocide by backing Israel’s military response to the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.“President Biden could, with one phone call, put an end to this,” Laila el-Haddad, a Palestinian activist and author living in Maryland, told the judge. She said that Israeli attacks had killed at least 88 members of her extended family in Gaza. “My family is being killed on my dime.”Judge White, who last week had called the testimony “gut-wrenching,” wrote that the evidence and testimony “indicate that the ongoing military siege in Gaza is intended to eradicate a whole people.”But, he added, “there are rare cases in which the preferred outcome is inaccessible to the court.”This, he wrote, was such a case: “It is every individual’s obligation to confront the current siege in Gaza, but it is also this Court’s obligation to remain within the metes and bounds of its jurisdictional scope.”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

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      Running for President Is Not a Hobby

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      Think I have something good to report, people. No, it’s not about how to get your kids Taylor Swift tickets in Tokyo.My news is that Dean Phillips is not going to run as a third-party candidate for president.“No! No!” he assured me when I asked him the big question this week.OK, you’re thinking that you’ve had more thrilling news from the grocer on banana prices. But follow along for a minute.Phillips is a representative from Minnesota who campaigned very energetically in the New Hampshire presidential primary. People there were a tad piqued by the Democrats’ decision to move the first official party vote to South Carolina. Despite all that rancor, Phillips, who, unlike President Biden, was on the ballot, got about 24,000 votes to Biden’s nearly 80,000 write-ins.But he’s marching on. “Look at the data,” he said. (I discovered during our phone interview that Phillips says “Look at the data” a lot.) “I’m from the business world. It’s time to come out with a new product.”If you want to run for president and it doesn’t look as if your party is going to nominate you, you have two real choices. You can do what Phillips is doing: keep competing in the primaries and hope voters will embrace your message. Or you can get yourself on the ballot in November as a third-party candidate.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

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      Frozen U.S. Funding for UNRWA in Gaza Is Minimal, State Dept. Says

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      Just $300,000 is on hold after Israeli claims that UNRWA employees joined the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, U.S. officials say.The State Department downplayed the significance on Tuesday of its decision to pause funding for the main U.N. aid agency in Gaza, explaining that it had already provided virtually all the money allocated by Congress for that purpose and that the Biden administration hoped the matter could be resolved quickly.More than 99 percent of American dollars approved by Congress for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, has been sent to the agency, the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said on Tuesday.The State Department paused the money “temporarily” on Friday after accusations by Israel that a dozen UNRWA employees participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, with some holding hostages within Gaza. At least 17 other donor nations have also suspended their funding to the agency, according to the group U.N. Watch.Human rights groups and progressive Democrats in Congress have denounced the move, saying that it will deprive innocent Palestinians of desperately needed aid. But Mr. Miller said the State Department had sent all but $300,000 of about $121 million budgeted for UNRWA to the agency, suggesting that the near-term effect of the U.S. action within Gaza will be minor.U.S. officials suggested that the real question is how much more money Congress will be willing to approve for an agency that many Republicans condemn for what they call anti-Israel bias and Hamas sympathies. Underscoring that uncertainty, witnesses at a House subcommittee hearing on Tuesday denounced UNRWA and called for its restructuring or replacement.Israel’s government says that at least 12 employees of the agency participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, and that UNRWA employs as many as 1,300 Hamas members. Israel estimates that the attack left roughly 1,200 people dead; another 240 people were taken hostage.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