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That danger is especially pronounced in the case of North Korea today, because it does not have any strong historical antecedents but its own. Despite all the attempts to draw assorted comparisons to explain the crisis, the best guide for it is to be found not through the close study of Khrushchev or the Kaiser, but of the Kim family.

By contrast, all evidence suggests North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs are an existential question for Kim Jong Un. Rather than an impulsive move on Pyongyang’s part, the capabilities the regime is now showcasing are the culmination of a patient, decades-long drive to acquire them. For the North, the nuclear and missile combination represents not a clever chess move in a far-off corner of the world by a global power maneuvering for advantage, but the vital guarantee of survival at home by a pygmy, pariah regime surrounded by nuclear-armed great powers.

The First World War ranks as an even less helpful guide to the Korean crisis.

Unlike in 1914, no one involved in policymaking in the relevant capitals—in this case Washington, Beijing, Tokyo, or Seoul—has evinced any illusions about the devastating consequences likely to attend a conflict. On the contrary, everyone anticipates that, should a war come to pass, it will be a bloodbath

Nor is the Kim regime akin to the Nazis. While the government ruling from Pyongyang is uniquely loathsome and evil—perpetrating crimes against humanity of a scope and scale arguably unparalleled anywhere else on earth—it has displayed none of the fanatical urgency of Hitler in his genocidal drive to conquer Europe.

The broader U.S. experience during the Cold War—particularly with respect to theories of nuclear deterrence and alliance management—offers a richer and more promising field for exploration.

In the North Korean case, by contrast, robust missile defenses are a smart and stabilizing investment for the U.S. to make—necessary to disabuse Pyongyang of any hope that it might use its nuclear arsenal as a shield behind which to conduct acts of conventional aggression against its neighbors.

The past several decades suggest that, contrary to conventional characterization of Kim Jong Un as a madman, North Korean leaders are more predictable than not.

Far more than these or other imperfect analogues, the history that ultimately provides the most useful template for thinking about the current crisis with North Korea is that of North Korea itself.

They show a strong survival instinct, and have been savvy and ruthless in remaining in power as communist regimes have crumbled nearly everywhere else. And out of this desire to survive lies the potential foundation for a successful American strategy.

When it comes to drawing analogies, the historian Lawrence Freedman once offered a useful admonishment. “History,” he said, “should alert you to factors of which to be aware, dangers that might be lurking unseen, possibilities that might be worth exploring, or questions to ask. It can provide suggestions but not rules to be followed.”

The truth is that America, and the world, have never faced a situation quite like the one that presently confronts us on the Korean peninsula. Rather than searching for an episode from the past that neatly tells us what to do now, the better approach is to acknowledge the uniqueness of today’s challenge and attempt to understand it on its own terms. In this respect, North Korea illustrates the distinction between analogy and analysis—and that the beginning of wisdom is the ability to tell them apart.

As China’s political elites converge on Beijing this week for a seminal Communist Party meeting, President Xi Jinping is sending a stern message to China and the world: I am in charge, and nothing can stand in my way.

Mr. Xi, who is all but certain next week to be handed another five-year term as China’s leader, is leaving nothing to chance.

Beijing has been placed on lockdown. Security officials — wielding assault rifles, batons and shields — have held drills across the country. Online censorship has intensified, and tools to circumvent China’s Great Firewall disrupted

Taken together, the efforts show a president who is deeply concerned by what he perceives as threats to China’s security and eager to showcase his vision of an all-powerful Communist Party.

The security measures for the party congress show that Mr. Xi will not hesitate to use a “heavy hand on those who dare to exist with differing views,” said Frances Eve

Unless the Republican-controlled Congress passes a law granting them legal status, they could soon be subject to deportation.

Though often described as “kids,” a majority of DACA beneficiaries are in their 20s—and some of them have children of their own. A recent study conducted by Tom Wong of the University of California at San Diego along with the Center for American Progress, National Immigration Law Center, and United We Dream found that 25.7 percent of DACA recipients have a child who is a U.S. citizen. “If extrapolated to the total population of DACA recipients, this suggests that at least 200,000 U.S. citizen children live in the U.S. currently who have a DACA recipient for a parent,”

“It’s been really tough, it’s been a rollercoaster of emotion,” said Eliana Fernandez, a DACA recipient and mother of two children, ages 10 and 5. “What’s going to happen with my life, with my work, with my children? I’ve been trying to process everything.”

The vast majority of DACA expirations will come after March 5, 2018. According to the Department of Homeland Security, 275,344 individuals will have their work permits expire next year and 321,920 work permits are set to run out from January through August 2019. That means that hundreds of thousands of immigrants will suddenly be eligible for deportation and lose their ability to work legally in country.

That uncertainty has instilled fear among many of the nearly 700,000 DACA recipients, but particularly those who are parents of U.S. citizens.

While DACA was always supposed to be temporary, the ultimate outcome was meant to be legal status for its recipients, not deportation.

managed to fend off both the French and the British through skillful diplomacy. He adopted many European customs and was intensely interested in European technologies. He also played the British and French off of one another, preserving most of Siam's territory and its independence.

The Ottoman Empire was too large, powerful, and complex for any one European power to simply annex it outright.

the European powers peeled off its territories in northern Africa and southeast Europe by seizing them directly or by encouraging and supplying local independence movements.

the Ottoman government or Sublime Porte had to borrow money from European banks to finance its operations. When it was unable to repay the money it owed to the London and Paris-based banks, they took control of the Ottoman revenue system, seriously infringing on the Porte's sovereignty. Foreign interests also invested heavily in railroad, port, and infrastructure projects, giving them ever more power within the tottering empire. The Ottoman Empire remained self-governing until it fell after World War I, but foreign banks and investors wielded an inordinate amount of power there.

Like the Ottoman Empire, Qing China was too large for any single European power to simply grab. Instead, Britain and France got a foothold through trade

Both Great Britain and Russia hoped to seize Afghanistan as part of their "Great Game" - a competition for land and influence in Central Asia. However, the Afghans had other ideas; they famously "don't like foreigners with guns in their country,

, that gave Britain control of Afghanistan's foreign relations,

They slaughtered or captured an entire British army

This shielded British India from Russian expansionism while leaving Afghanistan more or less independent.

Like Afghanistan, the British and Russians considered Persia an important piece in the Great Game

Russia nibbled away at northern Persian territory

Britain extended its influence into the eastern Persian Balochistan region

Like the Ottomans, the Qajar rulers of Persia had borrowed money from European banks for projects like railroads and other infrastructure improvements, and could not pay back the money.  Britain and Russia agreed without consulting the Persian government that they would split the revenues from Persian customs, fisheries, and other industries to amortize the debts. Persia never became a formal colony, but it temporarily lost control of its revenue stream and much of its territory - a source of bitterness to this

Nepal, Bhutan, Korea, Mongolia, and the Middle Eastern protectorates:

Nepal lost about one-third of its territory to the British East India Company's

However, the Gurkhas fought so well and the land was so rugged that the British decided to leave Nepal alone as a buffer state for British India. The British also began to recruit Gurkhas for their colonial army.

Bhutan, another Himalayan kingdom, also faced invasion by the British East India Company but managed to retain its sovereignty.

they relinquished the land in return for a tribute of five horses and the right to harvest timber on Bhutanese soil. Bhutan and Britain regularly squabbled over their borders until 1947, when the British pulled out of India, but Bhutan's sovereignty was never seriously threatened.

Now, months after the demonstrations that followed the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police in May, the full scope of the country’s policing response is becoming clearer.

In city after city, the reports are a damning indictment of police forces that were poorly trained, heavily militarized and stunningly unprepared for the possibility that large numbers of people would surge into the streets

The New York Times reviewed reports by outside investigators, watchdogs and consultants analyzing the police response to protests in nine major cities, including four of the nation’s largest.

Almost uniformly, the reports said departments need more training in how to handle large protests.

Those first days of protest after Mr. Floyd’s killing presented an extraordinary law enforcement challenge, experts say, one that few departments were prepared to tackle.

The reports are strikingly similar, a point made by the Indianapolis review, which said that officers’ responses “were not dissimilar to what appears to have occurred in cities around the country.”

Departments also were criticized for not planning for protests, despite evidence that they would be large

As with the protests in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 that culminated in the Capitol riot, police also did not understand how angry people were, in some cases because they lacked resources devoted to intelligence and outreach that would have put them in better touch with their communities.

On May 29, Indianapolis police showed up with helmets, face shields, reinforced vests and batons. Protesters told investigators this “made the police look militarized and ready for battle.”

The reports repeatedly blamed police departments for escalating violence instead of taming it. At times, police looked as if they were on the front lines of a war.

In Portland, where protests continued nightly, police officers used force more than 6,000 times during six months, according to lawyers with the U.S. Department of Justice

In Denver, officers used similar “less lethal” weapons against people who yelled about officers’ behavior. Officers also improperly fired projectiles that hit or nearly hit heads and faces, according to the report by the city’s independent police monitor.

For decades, criminal justice experts have warned that warrior-like police tactics escalate conflict at protests instead of defusing it.

The independent report on the Los Angeles police, commissioned by the City Council, said officers who may have had insufficient training in how to use the weapons fired into dynamic crowds. “To be precise takes practice,” it said.

The Chicago police response on the night of May 29, when hundreds of people marched through the streets, “was marked by poor coordination, inconsistency, and confusion,” the city’s Office of Inspector General found.

Chicago police also did not have enough computers to process large numbers of arrestees. In Los Angeles, police did not have enough buses to transport arrested people — a problem the department has had for a decade

All told, the reports suggest the likelihood of problems in the event of future protests. The trial now underway in Minneapolis of the officer facing the most serious charges in Mr. Floyd’s death, Derek Chauvin, is one potential trigger.

Willis has said her investigation will expand past Trump's call with Raffensperger to include any efforts to influence the election in Georgia. She is also investigating a phone call between Trump loyalist Sen. Lindsey Graham and Raffensperger, the abrupt departure of Byung "BJay" Pak, the US attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, and the false allegations of election fraud Rudy Giuliani made before Georgia legislators.

The former President's legal troubles began to mount in the wake of a stunning January 2 phone call. In the 62-minute call, Trump lambasted his fellow Republican for refusing to falsely say that Trump won the election in Georgia and repeatedly touted baseless claims of election fraud. "The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you've recalculated," Trump said in one part of the call.

"All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state," Trump said. A person familiar with the investigation said Willis will not hesitate to dig into the details surrounding the call, even if Trump's team tries to claim various types of privilege to shield the former President from investigative inquiries.

"The repeated calls sort of start to tell the story that this was not, again, an official trying to talk to another official about problems that he or she might see in an election," Michael J. Moore, the former US attorney for the Middle District of Georgia between 2010 and 2015 under President Barack Obama, told CNN. "They paint a picture about intent and that's an important element for every prosecutor."

"There may be nothing there," said a person familiar with the investigation, "or it may be more extensive that we thought."

In the final days of the Trump administration, after numerous public attacks from Trump following the election, some members of the Secretary of State's office retained attorneys out of fear the then-President could leverage resources for political retaliation, a source with the office told CNN. And while Republican officials in Georgia have been eager to move beyond the drama of the election, they are expected to be drawn back into the investigation as Willis runs down the details surrounding the call with Raffensperger, as well as outreach from Trump and his GOP allies to other state officials

Trump also had contact with Georgia's Attorney General Chris Carr and Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.

Graham, a South Carolina Republican, was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee when he called Raffensperger on November 13 and inquired whether Raffensperger could discard all mail-in ballots from counties that had shown higher rates of unmatched signatures, the Republican secretary of state told the Washington Post at the time. Graham has denied the assertions from Raffensperger, who has stood firm on his account. Graham's spokesman Kevin Bishop has said that accusations that the senator's call was inappropriate were "ridiculous."

Willis has also expressed interest in exploring testimony from Giuliani before Georgia state senators, in which Giuliani promoted unfounded theories about why Trump won Georgia and a handful of other states that Trump had, in reality, lost. Giuliani told a room of mostly Republican lawmakers that Georgia's voting machines could not be trusted, tens of thousands of absentee ballots were illegally cast and not properly counted, and that the legislature should appoint its own electors who supported Trump. "It's your responsibility if a false and fraudulent count is submitted to the United States government, and it is clear that the count you have right now is false," Giuliani said during the hearing.

Giuliani said "the law gives you a lot of leeway to view the case in the light most favorable to your client."

"There are lots of different pieces and they're different acts and different people involved," Cunningham said. "Lawsuits all over the place, hoping to find a judge who would issue a temporary restraining order, asking a general assembly to intervene, of course raising all kinds of allegations of fraud, pressure threatening the Governor, threatening the Secretary of State."

While Willis wasted no time in launching her investigation into the former President, she said during the AP interview that she has no set timeline for completing her inquiry. "I'm in no rush," she said. "I think people think that I feel this immense pressure. I don't."

e know enough about brain development to understand that such people are often too young to recognize the true import of what they are seeing or doing. Until 2005, this country allowed even juvenile offenders to be executed, though our laws don’t treat juveniles as adults in other respects. Teenagers are neurological works in progress. They have not yet developed the full capacity for moral reasoning, for impulse control, for understanding the long-term implications of their behavior.

It’s much harder to know how to think about the young Friedrich Karl Bergers who stood silent while innocent people were worked to death on their watch, even if they have lived good lives in the years since. Neuroscience tells us that they deserve the same understanding as the young offenders sentenced to death row for drug violence, but I can’t seem to find any understanding in my heart for the young Nazis.Well, life isn’t fair, and we all know it, but justice is about doing our best to impose fairness in an unfair world. And the presence of the once-young Friedrich Karl Bergers among us — living a good life, causing no trouble, exacting no harm — impels us into an uncomfortable gray area. Somehow we must weigh the imperatives of justice against the imperatives of compassion for the heedlessness of youth.In that context, what happened to the Oak Ridge Nazi seems to me both far too little and also exactly right. No punishment can possibly restore to life the people who died in a concentration camp that Mr. Berger helped to guard, and exile in an assisted living facility is hardly fit recompense for such unspeakable crimes. But sending him to prison at the age of 95 for what he did as a teenager also seems wrong. Surely deportation from his home of more than 60 years is a fair penalty for a nonagenarian for whom prison could provide no possible rehabilitation.So which is it: real justice, or too little too late? I honestly don’t know.Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South. She is the author of the books “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss” and the forthcoming “Graceland, At Last: And Other Essays From The New York Times.”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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

A quick succession of sexual harassment claims against Cuomo in the ensuing weeks has knocked him from his political perch

Trump might be in even greater peril. Since 2019, James’s office has been conducting an investigation of business practices inside the Trump Organization and family. Trump has fought fiercely in court, but month after month, James has succeeded in unearthing financial records that appear to be adding up to a giant legal hazard for the former president, analysts say.

The Trump case and the Cuomo nursing home scandal have generated a torrent of national attention for James, with people outside New York politics wondering how a single state officer could make such big legal waves.

she argues that “the law should be a tool for social change”

“I see the law both as a shield and as a sword,” she said in a public discussion last year about Black leadership. “And so I wake up every day with a fire in my belly, and I march into the office – well, I actually march into my kitchen – and the question is, what can I do today to make a difference in the life of somebody? Who can I sue?”

As state attorney general, James has aggressively pursued a full catalogue of progressive causes.She sued the police department over brutality against people of color, blocked unlawful evictions during the pandemic, won a major sexual harassment settlement for women in the construction industry, filed an amicus brief before the supreme court opposing a rushed census, and sued to dissolve the National Rifle Association.She also sued Amazon for allegedly failing to protect workers, sued Facebook as an alleged monopoly and investigated Google on similar grounds. She has asked federal regulators to clamp down on toxins in baby food and called for student debt relief

“When I looked around the courtroom, all the defendants and all the family members looked like me, but everyone in a position of power did not, and there was something really unbalanced about that and unfair about that,” James told Miller

Before her election to the New York city council in 2003, James worked as a public defender, as counsel to the speaker of the state assembly and as an assistant attorney general for Brooklyn, where she targeted predatory lenders, advocated for working families and brought the first case against the New York City police department for so-called stop-and-frisk abuses.

“She told us that she would be independent of the governor and I think she’s proven that,” he said.

“I think she wants to be governor, I think that’s clear, and she’d be a formidable candidate,” said Albro.“I think she’d be a formidable candidate because she is very well liked and known in the city and that’s a big chunk of the vote.”

one ordering the new education secretary to review those policies, and the other establishing a gender-focused White House policy council — Mr. Biden, an author of the Violence Against Women Act, waded into an area that has been important to him but has been politically charged for more than a decade.

“We’re looking for a process that does not turn us into courts, that allows us to treat both sides fairly and equally, and does not attempt to micromanage campus proceedings,” said Terry W. Hartle

The Trump administration’s rules have been in effect since August, and lawsuits that sought to overturn them — including one to delay them as colleges grappled with the coronavirus pandemic — have failed

Victims’ rights groups hailed the Obama-era rules for reversing longstanding practices on college campuses of sweeping sexual assault claims under the rug, and for extending wide-ranging protections from obstacles that had long stymied reporting of sexual assault. The guidance instituted a broad definition for what qualified as sexual harassment, discouraged cross-examination and required schools to use the lowest evidentiary standard in adjudicating claims.

The guidance, however, was also criticized by school administrators and due-process activists, who said it amounted to an illegal edict that incentivized schools to often err on the side of complainants. Hundreds of federal and state lawsuits have been filed by students accused of sexual misconduct since 2011, when the Obama administration issued its guidance, and dozens of students have won court cases against their colleges for violating their rights under those rules.

Civil liberties groups that endorsed those rules said they were concerned about how the Biden administration’s efforts would shake out for survivors and accused students alike.The Trump administration took into account more than 120,000 comments and several changes that victims’ rights groups pressed for, such as a dating violence definition, “rape shield” protections and mandating “supportive measures” for victims, even if they did not file a formal complaint.

“There are students who are raped on college campuses, and there are students who are wrongly accused, and we should not be choosing between which of those groups we wish to give justice,” Mr. Cohn said. “The one-sided rhetoric doesn’t lead us to have confidence at this point that the rights of the accused will seriously be taken into account.”

Ms. DeVos strongly criticized Mr. Biden’s objections to the rule last spring, when he was the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, telling The Washington Examiner that she was “disgusted” by his position.

The Biden administration’s decision to review Title IX policies also comes as states around the country introduce their own legislation to bar transgender female athletes from competing on sports teams that do not match their biological sex at birth.

“We have the tools that we have,” Ms. Klein said, “which are federal laws and the bully pulpit and clarity about our policy and values.”

The Obama administration issued guidance to schools, colleges and universities that critics in and out of academia said leaned too heavily toward accusers and offered scant protections or due process for students and faculty accused of sexual harassment, assault or other misconduct. The Trump administration swept those aside and delivered the first-ever regulations on sexual misconduct, which many saw as swinging too far the other way, offering the accused too much power through guaranteed courtlike tribunals and cross-examination of accusers.

“The policy of this administration is that every individual, every student, is entitled to a free — a fair education free of sexual violence, and that people — all involved — have access to a fair process,” said Ms. Klein, a former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton when she was the first lady.

When the Trump administration’s rules were proposed, Mr. Biden said they would “return us to the days when schools swept rape and assault under the rug, and survivors were shamed into silence.”Ms. DeVos strongly criticized Mr. Biden’s objections to the rule last spring, when he was the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, telling The Washington Examiner that she was “disgusted” by his position.

As vice president, Mr. Biden was integral to President Barack Obama’s efforts to overhaul Title IX, in part by issuing guidance that led to aggressive investigations of schools that had mishandled sexual assault complaints and threatened them with funding cuts. Rules proposed in 2018 by Betsy DeVos, the education secretary under President Donald J. Trump, wiped those out and cemented procedures that bolstered the due process rights of accused students.

“We’re really seeing it used as a way for schools to confuse and manipulate survivors, which is really what we’ve seen for decades,” Ms. Carson said of the DeVos rules. “Now it’s this really scary process on the books, and it gives the schools a way to say, ‘Do you really want to go through this?’”

“We have the tools that we have,” Ms. Klein said, “which are federal laws and the bully pulpit and clarity about our policy and values.”

“It is a slap in the face to every New Yorker that took to the streets and the polls demanding an end to the secrecy shrouding N.Y.P.D. abuse,” s

And last month, a federal appeals court rejected a last-ditch legal challenge from police unions, which argued that releasing the records would put officers in danger and harm their careers.

Before the secrecy law was repealed last year, New York was one of more than 20 states that did not make police disciplinary records public.

Critics said, however, that the database presented only a sliver of the universe of misconduct allegations, obscuring the full picture. The profiles of some notable officers known to have been disciplined in the time period covered by the data show no record of those charges.

The city announced plans to publish disciplinary summaries proactively online last summer, after the Legislature removed the law. Police unions, joined by those representing firefighters and corrections officers, sued in federal court and won a temporary delay.

Susan Hutson, New Orleans’s independent police monitor since 2010, said the scope of the records being released in New York is “ahead of the game,” and other cities would be paying attention.

educators say the newly adopted and proposed laws are already forcing teachers to second-guess whether they can lead students in conversations about race and structural racism that many feel are critical at a time the nation is navigating an important reckoning on those issues.

In Texas, a bill that has passed both chambers of the Republican-controlled Legislature would impose restrictions similar to Oklahoma's, including banning public universities from requiring students to take diversity training. It would also require teachers who discuss ugly episodes in history, or controversial current events, to explore "contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective."

"What if they say the wrong thing?" Lewis said. "What if somebody in their class during the critical thinking brings up the word oppression or systemic racism? Are they in danger? Is their job in danger?"

"We need to do it, because our students desire it," she said. "But how do we do that without opening Oklahoma City public schools up to a lawsuit?"

Lewis acknowledged that in a conservative state such as Oklahoma, there are many parents – especially white ones – who support the idea of shielding their children from uncomfortable conversations about race. But she said that's why they're so important.

Texas teachers already feel that pressure, including one of her colleagues who during the pandemic gave students a virtual lesson on race and prejudice in U.S. society.

"Then he wrote an email to the administration complaining that the teacher was accusing his child of being a racist when they were having a conversation about implicit bias and what implicit bias is and how it affects us," Dougherty said.

She said she knows teachers who are already self-censoring. They're "afraid to speak out on issues because they feel there are going to be repercussions from their districts," she said.

"Does the state of Texas want me to stand up and spend class time saying, well, let's look at all sides of this topic?" Kleiman said. "I don't think that's what the state of Texas wants. But that's what this bill does." Facebook Twitter Flipboard Email

CPS also agreed to two years of ongoing oversight of the anti-bullying program.

In January, a three-judge panel from the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected CPS' motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

The boy's parent's provided "multiple examples of specific instances" in which school officials "withheld information regarding Taye's safety and wellbeing" and failed to punish the students that attacked Taye,

"This Court finds their behavior, as alleged, to be egregious and clearly reckless, thus barring them from the shield of government immunity," Bouie Donald wrote.

At the center of the suit was security footage from two days before Taye's death, in which the boy is seen falling unconscious at school.

The lawsuit alleged that the school knowingly withheld the bathroom incident from the boy's parents.School officials maintained that a school nurse called his mother to pick Gabriel up from school and take him to the hospital.

If agreed to, the settlement will require the district to improve its efforts to track individuals involved in repeat incidents of bullying, as well as locations in the school where repeat instances of bullying take place.

The proposed settlement also calls for "placing an appropriate memorial" to Gabriel at Carson Elementary School.The Cincinnati Board of Education is expected to hold a vote Monday night that, if it passes, will finalize the proposed settlement.

It's "a return to business as usual for DOJ -- and not DOJ swinging as frantically to an anti-Trump agenda as it did to the pro-Trump one that I and many other observers abhorred,"

"I appreciate the independence. I don't always agree with the positions," said Eisen, who would like to see more released by the Justice Department. "They're going to act with that same independence in defense of what they perceive to be in the long-term interests of the executive branch."

The Biden administration now has control over three high-profile documents that are still central to Democrats' court fights related to Trump: Trump's tax returns, held by the IRS; grand jury material underpinning the Russia investigation; and the key internal memo to former Attorney General William Barr justifying the decision not to charge Trump with obstruction in former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

Trump's taxes have been the white whale of Democratic investigators for years,

Trump's tax returns are no longer completely under lock and key, either. The Manhattan district attorney obtained them earlier this year through a lawsuit of his own.

In late April, federal agents executed search warrants on Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. Democrats have also received some documents related to Trump's Washington hotel lease that the Trump administration had kept hidden. And on Friday, House Democrats will finally get the chance to interview former White House counsel Don McGahn about Trump's efforts to obstruct justice.

But the department is now fighting to keep redacted six-and-a-half pages of legal analysis on whether a criminal case against the then-President was merited, even if he could not be charged under Justice Department policy.

Congressional Democrats urged Garland not to appeal the judge's decision.

"There is this institutional rivalry between executive and legislative branches that overlays or perhaps underlays the misbehavior that the judge found within the department,"

The Justice Department's stance shouldn't be a surprise, given that Biden came into office with a team that was vowing to move on from the Trump-era controversies.

The House committees that investigated Trump, however, have vowed to keep pursuing their cases that are tied up in court.

The Supreme Court was set to hear an appeal from the administration as it sought to keep grand jury documents cited in the Mueller report under seal, after the House won access in court. That hearing has been postponed.

The House's push for financial documents and Trump's tax returns has another obstacle beyond the Biden administration: Trump himself. The former President's involvement in the cases, now as a private citizen who has several teams of lawyers protecting his interests, may be one reason for the stalemates.

Mr. Biden’s immigration plan would provide a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, and increase diversity visas and border-security funding. But, conceding the long odds of achieving such extensive changes, lawmakers are focusing on cobbling together a package of smaller bills that would legalize about eight million or fewer undocumented immigrants.

A team of immigration activists and researchers as well as congressional aides is exploring the question, digging into the best way to present their case to Ms. MacDonough, who declined to comment for this article. They have found past precedents, including one from 2005, in which changes to immigration policy were allowed as part of a budget-reconciliation package, and they are tallying up the budgetary effects of the immigration proposals — which total in the tens of billions.

“Before we can do anything meaningful on immigration, we’re going to have to deal with the current crisis at the border,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, who has been involved in the bipartisan talks. “I don’t think the public is going to tolerate us ignoring this crisis, and it’s just going to get worse unless we deal with it.”

To pull it off, Democrats would have to grapple with strict budget rules that limit what can be done under reconciliation.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month endorsed the idea of using reconciliation to push through an immigration measure, citing the “budget impacts of immigration in our country.” Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the No. 3 Democrat, came out in favor of the approach last week.

The pro-immigration group FWD.us hired Kevin Kayes, a former assistant Senate parliamentarian, to help hone the procedural argument in favor of allowing the maneuver this year.“Those provisions are the precedent for us,” said Kerri Talbot, the deputy director of the Immigration Hub. “A lot of things we’re trying to do now relate to what was approved in 2005.”

Twenty-two Democrats, including four senators, recently wrote a letter to Mr. Biden urging him to include an immigration overhaul in his infrastructure package. Many are worried that they will lose control of Congress in the 2022 midterm elections, and fearful that the Supreme Court will strike down former President Barack Obama’s protections for Dreamers.

Yet not all Democrats are likely to support a unilateral approach

For now, Senator Richard J. Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat who has for years pushed for a path to citizenship for the Dreamers, said that he was focused on passing a bipartisan immigration bill, and that Mr. Schumer had encouraged him to work to reach a deal with Republicans.

“The crisis at the border is undisputable — even the president admits that now — so if we can work on that, and then work on some of the path options that I’ve supported in the past, I’m guardedly optimistic,” he said.

What happens to people who fall sick overseas can vary widely, in part based upon their pretrip planning. Some countries have mandatory quarantine facilities for those who test positive and people who are sent there are at the mercy of local standards. Even at the nicest hotels, policies for handling those with the virus can vary widely. Not all travel insurance covers illnesses related to the coronavirus, and most doesn’t include evacuation coverage. Some policies require travelers to be hospitalized before their coverage begins while others only require minor symptoms. And traveler expectations play a role, too

When a person gets ill far from home, even if they speak the language, knowing what to do in the midst of a developing crisis is daunting.

As the situation worsened, the couple called the U.S. Consular Agency in Oaxaca, which said no area hospital beds were available. They suggested an oxygen tank. With Mr. Arellano’s condition deteriorating, the couple spent $25,000 for a Mexican air ambulance to take him to the Naval Medical Center in La Jolla, Calif.

The insurrection left several people dead and hundreds of people have been charged in connection to the events of Jan. 6.

"We’ve moved from just plain old fringe, extremist rants to fringe extremist and racist rants," Pocan said.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that there is "no evidence" Antifa had any role in the insurrection. MOST READ IRS partially shields some stimulus payments from debt reductions MAGA voters discovered a new home online. But it isn't what it seems. Newsom says California recall likely to qualify, tries to soften Feinstein stance McCarthy decries ‘political stunt’ after troops visit lawmaker’s office An unlikely Trump turncoat shows the GOP way to resist his influence

Johnson also has pushed the conspiracy theory that outside provocateurs were part of the riots, a claim Trump backers have often made.

It’s like political phantom limbs. He doesn't have the same political infrastructure he did three months ago as president,” added GOP strategist Matt Gorman, who previously served as communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Instead, Trump has maintained close ties to GOP officials who have committed to supporting incumbents, stayed almost entirely out of the spotlight, delivered fairly anodyne remarks the one time he emerged, and offered only sparse criticism of his successor, Joe Biden.

Trump has gone from threatening party bodies for using his name and likeness in their fundraising efforts to offering up his Mar-a-Lago estate as a host site for part of the Republican National Committee’s spring donor retreat. He savagely attacked veteran GOP operative Karl Rove for criticizing his first post-presidency speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Committee, and endorsed Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), who repeatedly scrutinized Trump’s own trade practices while in office.

In his role as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Scott has promised to stick by GOP incumbents — including Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who voted to convict Trump in his Senate trial last month on charges of inciting an insurrection. The Florida Republican said he had a “great meeting” with Trump in a tweet he shared Friday.

“For any normal politician, it would look like he’s trying to have it both ways but really he’s trying to have it his way,” said a former Trump White House official. “He only cares about maintaining his power and his stranglehold over the Republican Party and it doesn’t matter to him how any of the moves he makes affect the long-term success of institutions or individuals other than himself.”

He continues to hold court on the patio of his Mar-a-Lago resort where he is greeted by a standing ovation from members when he and the former first lady walk by. He spends his days monitoring the news, making calls and playing golf at his eponymous club just a few miles away.

But the factions that have already formed among those surrounding him suggest potential turbulence ahead. Three veterans of Trump’s 2020 campaign — Brad Parscale, Bill Stepien and Justin Clark — have been screening primary recruitments and brainstorming ways to reestablish his online presence, while Dave Bossie and Corey Lewandowski are in talks with the ex-president to launch a new fundraising entity on his behalf, according to people briefed on the recent discussions.

One former administration official who has been in contact with Trump described him as a “pinball,” noting that his tendency to abruptly change directions or seize on a new idea after speaking with a friend or outside adviser — a habit that often frustrated aides during his time in office — has carried into his post-presidency life.

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But stripped of a social media platform like Twitter, the former president has had to rely on issuing statements — some mimicking the tone and length of his past tweets — via his post-presidency office or political PAC press lists. So far, he’s issued more than two dozen endorsements and statements since leaving the White House. The more recent ones have bashed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and sought credit for the current Covid-19 vaccine distribution.

When I was talking to the president this morning… he’s like, ‘Yeah, she’s no good. I said that and now everybody’s seeing it. But you realize if you say anything negative about Meghan Markle you get canceled. Look at Piers,’” Miller said, recounting his conversation with Trump, who had been referring to Piers Morgan, the polarizing “Good Morning Britain” host who parted ways with the show this week after dismissing Markle’s revelations as lies.

But so far, many of his recent political maneuverings have been met with a shrug by the GOP. Trump’s public tussle with the Republican Party over fundraising and the use of his name and likeness in appeals for money appeared to fizzle out after attorneys for the Republican National Committee denied Trump’s cease-and-desist demands. By week’s end, the RNC was not only still using Trump’s name in fundraising solicitations, it was offering him up as an enticement.

But a prolonged period of intraparty sparring over Mr. Cuomo’s future could be problematic for Mr. Biden. It threatens to distract from his early initiatives, including mass vaccination efforts and his party’s imperative to sell the public on the nearly $2 trillion stimulus package Mr. Biden signed into law last week.

On Tuesday, the White House will hold its weekly call on the coronavirus with the National Governors Association, which Mr. Cuomo typically leads as chairman of the group. Ms. Psaki said she expected Mr. Cuomo would join the call, adding, “We’ll leave that up to him.”

Still, the governor has flatly refused to contemplate resignation while questioning the motives of the women who have accused him of sexual harassment, invoking “cancel culture,”

During the presidential campaign, Mr. Biden successfully avoided getting dragged into controversies that didn’t directly relate to him. But the bullying behavior Mr. Cuomo is accused of is contrary to the standard Mr. Biden has set for his own White House.

When Mr. Biden in 2020 was accused of sexual assault by a woman who had worked in his Senate office decades earlier, he denied her allegation but did not impugn her motives. Mr. Cuomo has questioned the motivations of some of his accusers.

Still, support for Mr. Cuomo has eroded significantly from the highs of his coronavirus press briefings in the spring of 2020 — when he hit 71 percent approval — and even from February, when his approval among all voters was 56 percent in a Siena College poll.

“The state is about to be flush with Covid cash,” Mr. Sellers said. “Better days ahead for constituents. Hang on until you become everyone’s favorite bank.”

Some members of Congress and their aides were put off by a statement that the former senior member of the delegation, Representative Nita Lowey, of Westchester, had made in defense of Mr. Cuomo, according to a person familiar with the matter. The members had the sense that Ms. Lowey was inappropriately “instrumentalized” as a shield for Mr. Cuomo, the person said, adding that while it wasn’t the precipitating event for other members to speak out last Friday, it had left an impression.

Mr. Biden’s fondness for Mr. Cuomo does not necessarily extend to the staff level. The governor’s sharp-elbowed political operation has jabbed at many people in his path over the years.

Scientists have said that reinfections are likely to be asymptomatic or mild because the immune system will suppress the virus before it can do much damage.

“You can certainly not rely on a past infection as protecting you from being ill again, and possibly quite ill if you are in the elderly segment,” said Steen Ethelberg, an epidemiologist at Statens Serum Institut, Denmark’s public health agency.

Rigorous estimates of second infections have generally been rare because many people worldwide did not initially have access to testing, and laboratories require genetic sequences from both rounds of testing to confirm a reinfection.

The researchers looked at the results from 11,068 people who tested positive for the coronavirus during the first wave in Denmark between March and May 2020. During the second wave, from September to December, 72 of those people, or 0.65 percent, again tested positive, compared with 3.27 percent of people who became infected for the first time.

She and other experts noted that while 80 percent might not seem superb, protection from symptomatic illness was likely to be higher.

The findings indicate that people who have recovered from Covid-19 should get at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine to boost the level of protection, Dr. Krammer added.

“I wish it had actually been broken down into specific decades over 65,” Dr. Pepper said. “It would be nice to know whether the majority of people who were getting reinfected were over 80.”

“This really does emphasize the need to cover older people with the vaccine, even if they have had Covid first.”

Since the days of Deng, the mantra of Beijing’s top policy makers had been “reform and opening up,” which stressed integration with the global economy. Xi, however, wants to limit that integration, or at least engage with the wider world on different terms

Perhaps he thinks that a heftier role for the state could help firm his hold over party and government. “He wanted more control, and he thought having a big state sector was an element of achieving that,” Lardy explained.

Deng Xiaoping, one of Xi’s predecessors, who launched China’s now-famous pro-market reforms in the late 1970s, understood that the country was destitute because it was strangled by the Communist state and cut off from the world. Deng and his successors steadily lifted controls on private investment, trade, and foreign business. Unfettered by overbearing state planners, China’s entrepreneurial energies, mixed with imported capital and technology, unleashed an explosion of growth and wealth.

In other words, China will stay open for business—if that business helps protect its own interests.

“He is feeling under siege,” James McGregor, the chairman of the China arm of the consulting firm APCO Worldwide, told me. Chinese officials “are eliminating all vulnerabilities to the outside world, or reducing them as much as they can.”

an economist at the research firm Capital Economics, dubbed the self-sufficiency drive a “lose-lose” for China’s economy, because it diverts resources from more productive purposes and forces firms to choose suppliers for political, not economic, reasons

Xi wishes to reduce China’s reliance on other countries, especially potential adversaries such as the United States. From Beijing’s perspective, the Trump administration’s restrictions on technology sales to the telecom giant Huawei Technologies and other Chinese outfits exposed the dangers of counting on untrustworthy foreigners, and Xi intends to ensure that China’s advance can’t be upset by politicians in Washington or elsewhere.

To protect national security, China needs “independent, controllable, safe, and reliable” supply chains, Xi said in an April speech, with “at least one alternative source for key products and supply channels, to create a necessary industrial backup system.” Localizing technology has been a long-standing Chinese ambition, but China watchers think Xi has thrown that plan into hyperdrive

All of this adds up to a grand experiment in the kind of state-directed development unseen since the days of Mao Zedong.

Classically trained economists frown upon Xi’s program. He’s ticking just about every box of what not to do to propel incomes and innovation

et we shouldn’t immediately dismiss his plans as doomed to fail. As a gargantuan market of 1.4 billion people, China can develop local companies of size and scope without bothering much with the outside world. (Ma’s Ant is a prime example.) If the program works, economists may have to rewrite their textbooks.

et the undertaking is fraught with risks. By favoring the state sector, Xi is funneling valuable money and talent to notoriously bloated and inefficient government enterprises instead of far more nimble and creative private firms

This dovetails nicely with another of Xi’s goals, self-sufficiency. China, he believes, should produce homemade substitutes to key products now bought from overseas—especially microchips and other critical technologie

learly, Xi is preparing for protracted conflict between the world’s two largest economies by attempting to fireproof China from measures President-elect Joe Biden might use against him. Yet in doing so

if Xi succeeds in replacing more of what China purchases from the world, he will also undermine the economic rationale for continued engagement with a brutal authoritarian regime. Xi thinks he is shielding China against isolation. He could instead be causing it.