--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, December 3rd. Here's what we're covering.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One of the reasons the president did the pardon is because it didn't seem like his political opponents would let go of it. It didn't seem like they would move on. And so this is why this president took this action.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The White House is on defense, fielding questions about why President Biden pardoned his son Hunter after repeatedly promising not to do so. Hunter Biden was singled out because his dad is the president. That's what we're talking about here.
--:-- Corrine Jean-Pierre: On Air Force One yesterday, I repeated Biden's explanation that he felt the cases against his son were politically motivated.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Read the president's statement. Seriously, read the president's statement. But Biden's statement has raised questions about the standing of the Justice Department. What does it mean for the president to openly criticize its process?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He believes in the Justice Department. He believes that there was... After saying all that, he believes in the Justice Department? This is his words. He said this. This is the president saying this. He just said it's infected with politics.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Biden's continued explanation for the pardon in some ways echoes claims that Donald Trump has made, that federal investigations were weaponized against him, and that the justice system is unfair.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, some legal experts have been noting how broad the pardon is for Hunter Biden. It covers not just the tax charges that he pleaded guilty to and the gun charges he was convicted of, but also any crimes he might have committed in the past 11 years.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Notably, that range covers the time when Hunter Biden was conducting business overseas with a Ukrainian gas company, a Chinese energy company, and more. Our reporting shows that this is something that prosecutors did look into that is Hunter Biden foreign business and the possibility that it may have violated foreign lobbying laws.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And they actually indicated that they had evidence that could potentially support a charge of violation of foreign lobbying laws, but they did not bring those charges.
--:-- Ken Bogle: Yet the possibility that that evidence and that investigation could be revived was clearly something that the Bidens, Hunter Biden, his lawyers, as well as the president, were acutely aware of and may have been wanting to short-circuit the possibility of through this pardon.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Supreme Court is a very secretive institution, and there is a lot we don't know about how the justices debate and what they say to one another.
--:-- Abby Van Sickle: But my colleague, [Tracy Mumford], and I, we uncovered a very unusual debate that the justices had recently about their own conduct.
--:-- Jody Cantor: Times investigative reporter Jody Cantor has gotten new details about how the Supreme Court struggled behind closed doors to put an ethics code in place.
--:-- Jody Cantor: The court didn't have a code until revelations that Justice Clarence Thomas had accepted undisclosed gifts and luxury travel sparked outrage. Gifts to other justices came to light, too, raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
--:-- Jody Cantor: So under growing pressure, the nine justices started writing their own guidelines last year. The topic was so sensitive that they debated it on paper, passing envelopes back and forth instead of using email.
--:-- Jody Cantor: The Times has learned that their sharpest disagreements were about whether there should be a way to enforce the code.
--:-- Jody Cantor: The three liberal justices really believed that the rules needed to be more than symbolic and more than just promises Justice Elena Kagan even proposed a kind of starter version of enforcement in which federal judges would provide the justices with advice.
--:-- Jody Cantor: But her proposal really went nowhere. Several justices, led by Justice Neil Gorsuch, were really worried that any kind of ethics enforcement, anybody essentially policing the judges could undermine the independence of the court.
--:-- Jody Cantor: Ultimately, the justices unanimously signed an ethics code with no enforcement mechanism. They essentially police themselves, and only they can decide if they need to step back from a case.
--:-- Jody Cantor: Since then, Jody says that the justices' heated debate about enforcement has spilled out into the open. And those public disagreements outside the courtroom are raising new concerns about public trust in the court.
--:-- Jody Cantor: Her full investigation is at nytimes.com.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In the Middle East, Israel and Hezbollah have both been pushing the limits of the ceasefire they agreed to less than a week ago.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Both sides have carried out strikes and accused the other of violating the truce. Israel has repeatedly bombed sites in Lebanon, and Hezbollah hit back yesterday with its first strikes against Israeli-controlled territory.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Despite the flare-ups, analysts say that both sides have been keeping their attacks limited, as they still think it's in their best interest to avoid spiraling back into an all-out war.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One former Middle East negotiator at the State Department told the Times that this kind of smaller back-and-forth is not unusual, saying, quote, I've been around Lebanon's ceasefire agreements for decades, and there was no ceasefire agreement that wasn't initially broken.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, what kind of reaction have you gotten from people along your route?
--:-- Richard Burton: Oh, people love it. They love it. You know it looks funny but it's cool. It's real cool looking.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The United States Postal Service is rolling out its new fleet of mail trucks, and they are turning heads.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The classic boxy mail truck is out, and the new look is, it's a little hard to describe. It's a little cartoony, touch goofy. It's got some golf cart elements. It's got a gigantic windshield and a long, low hood.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I know a lot of people say it looks funny. It looks like a duck or a platypus. It does, but I tell them to get the job done. It works for me.
--:-- Richard Burton: A mail carrier in Athens, Georgia, said platypus comparisons aside, the best thing about the new trucks is the air conditioning, an absolute must in the South.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He was surviving before with just a fan. There's also a lot more space in the back for packages, which online shopping has made essential.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Postal Service has ordered 50,000 of the new trucks, and they are a long-overdue relief for mail carriers who haven't had an upgrade in the fleet since the 1980s.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The new model is also electric.
--:-- Wykeler Barnes: Another mail carrier in Georgia, Wykeler Barnes, told my colleague Michael Levinson she couldn't even tell that her truck was running because it was so quiet.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But she said on the street, the truck is hard to miss. It doesn't even look real. It looks like a spaceship.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Have people stop you? What's it like when you're driving around the neighborhood?
--:-- Wykeler Barnes: All the time. All the time. People have slowed down with their phones out the window. Because I guess they just think it's so cool.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, White House correspondent Peter Baker with the inside story of how Biden made the decision to pardon his son. 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.
