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--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, December 2nd.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Here's what we're covering. President Biden has issued a full and unconditional pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, using the power of the presidency to wave aside years of Hunter's legal troubles. His son was set to be sentenced later this month for tax evasion and federal gun charges.
--:-- Zolan Kano-Youngs: This is an extraordinary moment for the Biden presidency, and it's extraordinary because it's essentially a reversal. It's a flip-flop.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Zolan Kano-Youngs covers the White House for The Times. The president said this year that he would not issue a pardon, that he would not use his clemency powers for his son. And his press secretary repeated that denial on multiple occasions for months. And we are now seeing that that's not space.
--:-- Zolan Kano-Youngs: In a statement, President Biden announced that he was issuing the pardon because he believed the cases against Hunter were politically motivated and claimed that his opponents were going after his son in order to reach him. He said that while he still believes in the justice system, quote, I also believe raw politics has infected this process.
--:-- Zolan Kano-Youngs: Zolan says that reasoning is a remarkable turnaround for Biden, who repeatedly insisted he would never interfere with the Justice Department and campaigned on that promise.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The pardon comes less than two months before Donald Trump will return to office, where he had promised to go after Hunter. The president's son had faced as much as 25 years in prison, but was unlikely to receive anywhere near that as a first-time offender.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This is not the only time a president has used his executive power to pardon a family member. Both Trump and Bill Clinton did so in their terms.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, Donald Trump is doubling down on his vows to upend the nation's law enforcement agencies, naming Kash Patel, a hardline critic of the FBI, as his pick to run the Bureau.
--:-- Natalie Kichereff: Patel who has worked as a federal prosecutor and public defender has little law enforcement or management experience But he been fiercely loyal to Trump He promised to bring federal law enforcement quote to heel and amplified Trump's claims that the agency is part of a deep state conspiracy against him.
--:-- Natalie Kichereff: Patel even wrote a children's book about how Trump was investigated for potential ties to Russia, calling it, quote, The Plot Against the King, starring King Donald.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: During Trump's first administration, Patel cycled through several roles. But his bombast and embrace of conspiracy theories made many people in Washington nervous.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At one point near the end of his term, Trump floated the idea of making Patel the deputy director of the FBI. The attorney general at the time, William Barr, said in his memoir that would only have happened, quote, over my dead body.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Patel will now face what could be a contentious confirmation process in the Senate.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Over the weekend, Trump continued to fill out other roles in his administration, and he gave two posts to members of his extended family. He tapped Masad Boulos, his daughter Tiffany's father-in-law, to be a senior advisor on Middle Eastern affairs.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Boulos is a Lebanese-American businessman. And he picked Charles Kushner, a wealthy real estate executive, and Ivanka's father-in-law, to serve as ambassador to France.
--:-- Raja Abdulrahim: In Syria, a surprise attack by rebel groups has reignited a civil war that had been largely dormant for years.
--:-- Raja Abdulrahim: Over the weekend, rebels took control of huge swaths of the country, including most of Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city.
--:-- Raja Abdulrahim: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has violently crushed other uprisings over the last decade, even deploying chemical weapons. And he's relied on the help of three key allies to stay in control, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia.
--:-- Raja Abdulrahim: But now all those allies are distracted or weakened by their own conflict. And this is one of the most serious challenges to President Bashar al-Assad's rule that he's seen in many years.
--:-- Raja Abdulrahim: My colleague Raja Abdulrahim covers the Middle East. She says that the rebels timing was strategic with Hezbollah and Iran both fighting Israel and Russia bogged down in Ukraine.
--:-- Raja Abdulrahim: So what analysts are telling me is that these rebel groups especially the one leading the offensive Hayat Tahrir al has been watching all these developments very closely and has been training and increasing their military capabilities at the same time and timed their offensive when they thought it would be most opportune and Assad was at his weakest.
--:-- Raja Abdulrahim: What we'll be watching for now is, A, will the rebels continue to advance? And B, what is going to happen to the areas that they have taken?
--:-- Raja Abdulrahim: The main thing that has changed the balance of power in Syria over the years has been air power. The Assad regime has air power and his allies have air power. The rebels have never had air power.
--:-- Raja Abdulrahim: So what we're seeing now is rebel-held areas being bombed, civilians are being killed. So we're going to be watching, can the rebels hold on to the territory that they just captured?
--:-- Natalie Kichereff: In Mexico, the Times has been looking at one way the powerful Sinaloa cartel is trying to expand its drug empire.
--:-- Natalie Kichereff: The criminal group is largely responsible for the fentanyl pouring across the border into the U.S., and it's been recruiting from an unexpected talent pool, targeting chemistry students at Mexican universities.
--:-- Natalie Kichereff: They show up on these university campuses. They're sometimes in disguise. One student told me that he was approached by a man who looked like a janitor but was actually a cartel recruiter.
--:-- Natalie Kichereff: Times Mexico City Bureau Chief Natalie Kichereff has been speaking with students, professors, and cartel members. There's a really sophisticated process for bringing these students into the fold.
--:-- Natalie Kichereff: First, the cartel starts to talk to family members of the students. They talk to friends, even people they play soccer with, to find out if these are the right types of people for the job. If they're discreet, if they're hardworking.
--:-- Natalie Kichereff: Then they show up on campus and they offer to pay the students big money, big salaries, and often to sponsor their tuition. And then if they say yes sometimes they blindfolded taken to a secret lab in the mountains and they begin cooking
--:-- Natalie Kichereff: Natalie says the cartel has ambitious goals for the students Some young chemists who've been arrested told authorities they were working to make the fentanyl more addictive.
--:-- Natalie Kichereff: The cartels also want their help to overcome a major roadblock in the fentanyl production process. Right now, they're largely dependent on getting the necessary ingredients from China.
--:-- Natalie Kichereff: But the pandemic scrambled those supply chains, and both Chinese and Mexican authorities have stepped up enforcement. So being able to make the chemicals themselves would be a game changer.
--:-- Natalie Kichereff: If they are able to eventually do this, something that U.S. officials say is possible, this would make the cartel more powerful than ever. It would give them even greater control over the supply chain for one of the deadliest drugs around.
--:-- Natalie Kichereff: One of the students that we talked to said it would make us the kings of Mexico.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, the word of the year, according to the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, is brain rot.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Specifically, the kind of brain rot that comes from digital overload.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The, I know that I picked up my phone to look something up, but that was two hours ago and I have no idea how I ended up on a video about artisan ham brain rot.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: As the publisher's official definition puts it, it's the deterioration of your brain due to the overconsumption of trivial content, often online.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Oxford said the use of the term surged over 200% this year. But the earliest appearance of the term came way before you could even doomscroll.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Henry David Thoreau used brain rot in 1854 in his classic Walden.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: At the time, Thoreau was wondering if anyone would ever try to cure it. Still a solid question.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines today on The Daily, as Trump promises sweeping new tariffs, a look at what happened when he rolled out similar policies during his first term.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
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