White House officials and prominent Democrats today attacked the special counsel’s report into President Biden’s handling of classified material by labeling it politically motivated. The comments were part of an effort to discredit a document that characterized the president as elderly and forgetful.
Vice President Kamala Harris and multiple House Democrats depicted the report, which legally exonerated Biden, as more of a political attack than an unbiased legal document. A spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office suggested that the special counsel, Robert Hur, violated Justice Department policy.
The report cast Biden, 81, as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” with “diminished faculties in advancing age.” It placed his age — an uncomfortable subject looming over his re-election bid — back at the center of America’s political conversation.
Hur, who worked in the Trump administration, has not responded to the criticism.
The U.S. dismissed Putin’s call for negotiations
In a two-hour interview this week with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, President Vladimir Putin insisted that he was interested in negotiating a peace deal in Ukraine. But U.S. officials are deeply skeptical.
“Despite Mr. Putin’s words, we have seen no actions to indicate he is interested in ending this war,” a White House official said. “If he was, he would pull back his forces and stop his ceaseless attacks on Ukraine.”
The U.S. had previously assessed that Putin had no intention to negotiate seriously until the U.S. elections in November, after which Russia believes Donald Trump, if elected, could offer more favorable terms.
In Ukraine, the military has a new top commander, but the challenges of the war haven’t changed.
Netanyahu asked for a plan to evacuate Rafah
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to come up with a plan to evacuate civilians in the southern Gazan city of Rafah. The move, he said, would be a prerequisite to sending ground troops into the crowded city. Israeli leaders have indicated they intend to launch an offensive in Rafah.
In recent weeks, roughly 1.4 million Palestinians have squeezed into the city, according to the U.N. Rafah is one of the last areas of the Gaza Strip in which Israeli ground troops have yet to deploy in force. It is not yet clear where the residents would go.
Catheter bills hint at a Medicare scam
More than 450,000 Medicare beneficiaries were billed for urinary catheters in 2023, a health care advocacy group found. It was a shocking surge from the estimated 50,000 in previous years, and many of the medical devices were never delivered. It suggested the existence of a far-reaching Medicare scam, according to doctors and insurance departments.
The massive uptick in billing for catheters included $2 billion charged by seven high-volume suppliers, potentially accounting for nearly one-fifth of all Medicare spending on medical supplies in 2023.
More top news
It’s Super Bowl weekend
The Super Bowl on Sunday, which pits the Kansas City Chiefs against the San Francisco 49ers, will almost certainly be the most-watched television event in the U.S. this year. But this year, an off-the-field attraction could give the event another boost: the presence of Taylor Swift, who is dating Chiefs player Travis Kelce.
Other attractions include the ads, which cost about $7 million for 30 seconds, and the food at watch parties — both homemade favorites and offerings from places like Buffalo Wild Wings, which sells about 11 million wings on Super Bowl Sunday each year. It may also be the priciest Super Bowl ever to attend. People were recently paying a median of $8,776 per ticket, thousands of dollars more than most recent Super Bowl matchups.
Snowplow parents might not be so bad
More parents, mostly Gen X, are now highly involved in their adult children’s lives than baby boomer parents, who tended to think children should be independent after 18. Sometimes it can be too much, depriving the younger generation of skills to handle adversity.
But new research suggests that intensive parenting can also be beneficial: Eight in 10 young adults rate their relationships with their parents as good or excellent, and they are more likely than their parents’ generation to have a college degree. (They are much less likely, though, to be married or have children.)
We spent a week aboard the world’s biggest cruise ship
The Icon of the Seas, Royal Caribbean’s new 250,800-ton ship, has eight neighborhoods, dozens of restaurants, water slides, a park with 20,000 plant species, a comedy club, swim-up bars, stage performances and, of course, thousands of passengers.
Our photographer captured images of the bustle and excitement during the ship’s inaugural voyage. But the most surprising thing, according to my colleague Ceylan Yeginsu, was just how easy it was to find some peace and quiet.
Have a pleasurable weekend.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back on Monday. — Matthew
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