Here’s what you need to know at the end of the day.
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Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Tuesday.
1. President Vladimir Putin said the U.S. was trying to pull Russia into a war over Ukraine.
Addressing the Ukraine crisis for the first time since December, Putin, speaking at a news conference, said that the West had not yet satisfied Russia’s demands for security guarantees, but that he hoped “dialogue will be continued.” The U.S. and NATO delivered written responses to Russia’s demands last week as 100,000 Russian troops were massed on Ukraine’s borders.
“Their most important task is to contain Russia’s development,” Putin said of the U.S. “Ukraine is just an instrument of achieving this goal.”
The Kremlin wants NATO to vow not to expand eastward, demands that it draw down troops in Eastern European countries and says it must promise that Ukraine will never join the alliance. U.S. and European officials have dismissed such demands as non-starters.
2. Donald Trump was more involved than previously known in proposals to seize voting machines after his defeat in 2020, accounts show.
Six weeks after Election Day, Trump directed his lawyer Rudolph Giuliani to ask the Department of Homeland Security if it could legally take control of voting machines in key swing states to seek evidence of fraud. Giuliani did so, calling the department’s acting deputy secretary, who said he lacked the authority.
This came after Trump rejected a separate effort by his outside advisers to have the military oversee the seizure of the machines. He asked Attorney General William Barr about the ability of the Justice Department to seize the machines, a previously undisclosed suggestion Barr immediately shot down. The plans would have taken the U.S. into uncharted territory by using federal authority to take control of the voting systems.
3. Pfizer asked the F.D.A. to allow a two-dose coronavirus vaccine for children under 5, even as research continues on whether three doses would work better.
The request for emergency authorization came as the highly contagious Omicron variant has led to many more infections, including in children. Federal regulators could approve the shots on an emergency basis as early as the end of February. The under-5 age group includes about 19 million children and is the only one not yet eligible for vaccination.
Meanwhile, the “test-to-stay” policy that was intended to keep more U.S. students in school is on its way out in some states, a casualty of the monthslong Omicron wave that has left school districts struggling to find enough coronavirus tests to meet their needs.
4. Hundreds of Native American tribes reached a tentative $590 million opioid settlement with Johnson & Johnson and three drug distributors.
Together with a deal struck last fall between the distributors and the Cherokee Nation for $75 million, the tribes will be paid a total of $665 million. Money in the deal would go toward addiction and treatment and would be overseen by tribal leaders. Native Americans have endured disproportionately high opioid-related overdose deaths, by many metrics.
If, as expected, most tribes sign on, the deal would be notable for its size as well as its acknowledgment of the 574 tribes as a distinct litigating entity. Their voices have traditionally been excluded or downplayed in earlier national settlements involving the states, such as Big Tobacco.
5. The U.S. national debt topped $30 trillion as pandemic spending fueled government borrowing.
The borrowing binge has left the nation with a debt burden larger than the entire economy, surpassing levels of red ink not seen since World War II. Some economists contend that the nation’s large debt load is not unhealthy given that the economy is growing, interest rates are low and investors are still willing to buy U.S. Treasury securities.
The figures from the Treasury Department come amid renewed concerns in Washington over the nation’s fiscal trajectory and its ballooning budget deficit.
6. Tom Brady is retiring from the N.F.L., ending an unparalleled 22-year career.
Brady’s football career traced an arc that bordered on mythical, his ascent from sixth-round N.F.L. draft pick to seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback and global celebrity. As a quarterback for the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Brady, 44, played perhaps the toughest position in sports with trademark ease, our Sports reporter writes. By doing so, he defined an era of explosive growth for the N.F.L.
In a post on Instagram, Brady thanked his family, friends and coaches as well as teammates from the Buccaneers. There was one glaring omission: the Patriots, the team he spent 20 of his 22 seasons with. He thanked them on social media a few hours later.
Here’s a look at what could be next for Brady.
7. The residents of the San Francisco Bay Area go to great lengths to accommodate the wildlife around them. Not so for the rampaging feral pigs.
The pigs are tearing up lawns, ripping through golf course fairways, threatening the drinking water and disturbing the harvests at Napa vineyards. Many Californians want them dead. “They are a pest to just about everybody and everything,” a state wildlife official said. “They’re very, very destructive.”
A bill was introduced last week in the California Legislature that would make it easier for hunters to kill them. In what one federal official called a “feral swine bomb,” the pigs are threatening states across the U.S. New York, New Jersey and Maine have eliminated their feral pig populations, but at least 30 states still have wild pigs.
8. Can Jennifer Lopez save the rom-com?
The superstar and business mogul is betting on “Marry Me,” a movie that sounds a lot like her personal life: Lopez plays a J.Lo-like superstar trying to negotiate a love life amid the trappings of uber-fame. Think “The Bodyguard” meets “Notting Hill,” complete with a soundtrack by Lopez.
Another on-screen musician: A four-hour documentary touches on the highs and lows of Janet Jackson’s long career, but doesn’t dig deep into one of pop’s great risk-takers, our critic writes.
9. You’ve seen the Milky Way, but not like this.
A new radio-wave image reveals all the forms of frenzy that a hundred million or so stars can get up to. The astonishing image, captured recently by astronomers in South Africa, shows an electrical storm of activity in the central region of the Milky Way, with supernova remnants, threads of energy and other features.
“We are accustomed to seeing galaxies, from afar, as soft, glowing eggs of light or as majestic, bejeweled whirlpools,” our science reporter Dennis Overbye writes. “Rarely do we glimpse the roiling beneath the clouds.”
10. And finally, a very imaginative Crismis adventure.
Dillon Helbig, an 8-year-old boy from Boise, Idaho, spent his holiday break writing 81 pages of a book he wanted everyone to read. “The Adventures of Dillon Helbig’s Crismis” by the author “Dillon His Self” is a richly-illustrated tale about time travel after a star atop a Christmas tree explodes.
Without a book deal, he slipped the sole copy of his book onto a fiction shelf of a local library. Over the next month, it became one of the library’s most sought-after titles and inspired children in Boise to write their own stories. Publishers have finally come around, and the librarians are planning to make extra copies of the book.
“My next book,’’ Dillon said, “is going to be called ‘The Jacket-Eating Closet,’ based on actual events.”
Have an inspired evening.
Anna Ruch compiled photos for this briefing.
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