The Headlines - Biden Pardons His Son Hunter in U-Turn, and Syrian Rebels’ Surprise Advance

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Plus, Oxford’s word of the year is ….  Tune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. Tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. On Today’s Episode:Biden Issues a ‘Full and Unconditional Pardon’ of His Son Hunter Biden, by Michael D. Shear and Zolan Kanno-YoungsTrump Doubles Down on Defiance After the Collapse of the Matt Gaetz Selection, by Peter BakerSyria’s Rebels Struck When Assad’s Allies Were Weakened and Distracted, by Raja AbdulrahimMexican Cartels Lure Chemistry Students to Make Fentanyl, by Natalie Kitroeff and Paulina VillegasOxford’s 2024 Word of the Year Is…, by Jennifer Schuessler

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, December 2nd. 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 waive aside years of Hunter's legal troubles. His son was set to be sentenced later this month for tax evasion and federal gun charges. This is an extraordinary moment for the Biden presidency and it's extraordinary because it's essentially a reversal. It's a flip flop. 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 the case. 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. 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. The president said last night that while he still believes

in the justice system, quote, I also believe raw politics has infected this process. And that I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision. The pardon comes less than two months before Donald Trump will return to office, where he had promised to go after Hunter Biden. 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. 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. Both Trump and Bill Clinton did so in their terms. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is doubling down on his vows to upend the nation's law enforcement agencies, naming Cash Patel, a hardline critic of the FBI, as his pick to run the Bureau.

Patel, who has worked as a federal prosecutor and public defender, has little law enforcement or management experience, but he's been fiercely loyal to Trump. He's 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. 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. Patel cycled through several roles during Trump's first administration, but his bombast and embrace of conspiracy theories made many people in Washington nervous. In 2021, Trump floated the idea of making Patel the deputy director

of the FBI. And the attorney general at the time, William Barr, said in his memoir that that would have only happened, quote, over my dead body. Patel will now face what could be a contentious confirmation process in the Senate. By announcing the pick, Trump is basically preemptively firing the current FBI director, Christopher Wray. Trump himself named Wray to the post, which is supposed to last for 10 years, but quickly turned on him and later became furious with Wray after FBI agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago for classified documents.

FBI director is just one of several roles that Trump has moved to fill in recent days. Over the weekend, he gave two roles in his upcoming administration 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. 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.

In Syria, a surprise attack by rebel groups has reignited a civil war that had been largely dormant for years. Over the weekend, rebels took control of huge swaths of the country, including most of Aleppo, Syria's second largest city. Today, they're continuing to battle the forces of President Bashar al-Assad, whose regime violently crushed earlier uprisings. Over the years, Assad has relied on the backing of three key allies to hold onto power, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. 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. My colleague, Raja Abdul Rahim, covers the Middle East. She says the rebels' timing was strategic. Hezbollah, the militant group in Lebanon, is battered, is diminished now after more than a year of war with Israel. Iran has also been under attack by Israel. And finally, Russia is now nearing almost three years of an invasion into Ukraine

and has been bogged down there. So what analysts are telling me is that these rebel groups, especially the one leading the offensive, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which is a former al-Qaeda affiliate, has been watching all these developments very closely and has been training and increasing their military capabilities at the same time. So time their offensive when they thought it would be most opportune and Assad was at his weakest. So 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? 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. 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? In Mexico, the Sinaloa Cartel is the group largely responsible for the fentanyl pouring across the border into the U.S. And the Times has been looking into who the cartel is recruiting to keep their drug empire running. They've been going after an unexpected talent pool targeting chemistry students at Mexican universities. 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. Times Mexico City bureau chief Natalie Kicherev has been speaking with students, professors, and cartel members. There's a really sophisticated process for bringing these students into the fold. 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 hard working, 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're blindfolded,

taken to a secret lab in the mountains, and they begin cooking. 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. 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. 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. If they are able to eventually do this, something that US 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. One of the students that we talked to said, it would make us the kings of Mexico. And finally, the word of the year, according to the Oxford English Dictionary is brain rot. Specifically, the kind of brain rot that comes from digital overload. The I know I opened my phone to look something up, but that was two hours ago and I don't know how I ended up on this video of artisan ham brain rot.

As Oxford's official definition puts it, it's the deterioration of your brain due to the overconsumption of trivial content, often online. 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 doom scroll. Henry David Thoreau used brain rot in 1854 in his classic Walden. At the time, Thoreau was wondering if anyone would ever try to cure it. Still a solid question.

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. That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.