Good morning. I hope you’re staying warm. President Trump is expected to announce that Kevin Warsh, a former Fed official, will replace Jerome Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve. Senate Democrats, Republicans and the White House reached a deal to avoid a partial government shutdown last night. And Trump is weighing new options for military action in Iran. We have more news below. I’m going to start today, though, with an oral history of what’s been happening at the F.B.I.
A new F.B.I.When President Trump returned to office last year, he declared the Federal Bureau of Investigation a “corrupt” and partisan agency and vowed to clean house. Perhaps that was no surprise. The bureau had investigated him several times. To run the show, Trump appointed Kash Patel, a former public defender and intelligence official who had never worked for the agency, though he had spun conspiracy theories about it. Patel immediately began to transform the F.B.I. by undoing its nonpartisan rules and norms, alarming many of its 38,000 employees. He fired people who had worked on the Trump investigations. He assigned 20 percent of the agency’s staff to immigration enforcement, meaning that there are now fewer agents and analysts to stop terrorism, drug trafficking, white-collar crime, public corruption and cybercrime. One thing that hasn’t changed: Employees still can’t speak to the press without permission. But 45 people who work at the bureau or who left last year talked to my colleagues Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser anyway — a sign, they say, of how unnerved many people there are. This new F.B.I., many current and former employees of the agency told them, has made the United States less safe. Before I share some of what they heard, though, I’ll tell you what a spokesman for the F.B.I. said in response to their reporting: This story is a regurgitation of fake narratives, conjecture and speculation from anonymous sources who are disconnected from reality. They can whine and peddle falsehoods all they want — but it won’t change the facts that the F.B.I. under this administration worked with partners at every level and delivered a historic 2025. So, noted. Immigration enforcementLast winter, Patel directed the bureau to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement in its raids and arrests. (The F.B.I. has no authority to enforce immigration laws. That is not the agency’s job.) Jill Fields, who worked on violent crimes in the Los Angeles field office, said she was alarmed to see federal agencies, including the F.B.I., arrest protesters who weren’t impeding immigration enforcement: Yes, they’re yelling, they’re taunting, but that’s their right. This is what I was worried about and why I pushed back when the L.A. office was asked to investigate protesters last year. It was unthinkable to me then, and now it’s happening. If you start arresting or investigating people for exercising their First Amendment rights, then they don’t have those rights. Jet ski diplomacyEmily and Rachel also heard about Patel’s behavior in the field. One senior executive told them about some unusual requests Patel had in advance of a secret conference of the Five Eyes, an intelligence alliance formed after World War II between the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Before the conference, his staff says he’s unhappy because he doesn’t like meetings in office settings. What he wants is social events. He wants Premier soccer games. He wants to go jet skiing. He’d like a helicopter tour. Everyone who heard about this was like: Hold on. Is he really going to ask the MI5 director to go jet skiing instead of meeting? The schedule is set, and every Five Eyes partner is doing this. They can’t just say that he’s not participating and instead he wants to go to a Premier soccer game. This is a job, guys. BookkeepingPatel has promoted arrest statistics that agents and analysts say are misleading. This month, Patel claimed on social media that he had overseen a “100% increase” in arrests in his first year and a “210% increase” in the disruption of gangs and other criminal enterprises. Here’s what an F.B.I. field-office leader told Emily and Rachel about that: When you make F.B.I. agents street cops, you get street-cop numbers. We didn’t used to count immigration arrests, because we didn’t do immigration. Now we do. We didn’t do street patrols in D.C. in the past. Now we do. In the past, we mostly worked the complex investigations the F.B.I. is famous for. Complicated work with wires and sophisticated techniques — all aimed at taking out the entire criminal enterprises or national security threats. Now, under Kash, we are counting stuff that has been historically left to local police departments and other agencies and saying, Wow, look at us. Camera-ready
Patel and Dan Bongino, at the time his deputy director, changed the bureau’s fitness test for new agents — replacing, among other things, sit-ups with pull-ups. Why? A senior executive told The Times: Bongino wanted to establish a new physical-fitness test without any evidence-based research. He wanted to have men and women do the exact same pull-ups, which all of the data said would lead to losing a number of female recruits and potentially female agents that hadn’t been tested for pull-ups before. When he was informed of that, Bongino said, You can have the best female agent take down the biggest case in our history, but if on the Ring door-camera video she’s out of shape or overweight, that’s going to be the story. He was worried about whether or not they’d look good on a doorbell camera. He said it’s the way these times are. There’s much, much more. I urge you to read the whole article.
Congress
Iran
Immigration
More on Politics
International
Other Big Stories
Conventional wisdom says that chugging sodas, pounding Big Macs, chain-smoking and binge-drinking will shorten your life. It also says that eating healthy foods, going on runs, lifting weights and getting a good night’s sleep will make you live longer. Maybe not, according to a new study that says your life span is largely written in your genes. If your genetic potential is to live to be 80, for instance, then it’s unlikely that anything you do will make you reach 100. To see how much genes contribute to life spans, the researchers used data from studies of twins. Their conclusion: Genes predominate, especially for people who live to be very old. Read more about their research and what it may mean for you. (Just remember: Healthy habits can still improve your quality of life!)
David Brooks is leaving The Times after more than 20 years. Here’s an excerpt from his final column: We could use better political leadership, of course, but the crucial question facing America is: How can we reverse this pervasive loss of faith in one another, in our future and in our shared ideals? I do not believe that most people can flourish in a meaningless, nihilistic universe. Students are using artificial intelligence to avoid becoming adults. One possible solution is a shift back to a more oral culture, writes Clay Shirky, a vice provost at New York University. Introducing Crossplay Go word to word in our first 2-player game. Spell. Score. Outsmart your opponent. Download app
A taste of home: After a typhoon destroyed their villages, Alaska Natives lost access to the wild food that makes up most of their diet. Neighbors in the state stepped up, donating dried seal, fish heads, walrus flippers, bowhead whale blubber, frozen salmon and quarts of inky blueberries. Making department stores great again: Saks Fifth Avenue’s bankruptcy filing has revived questions about the purpose and future of luxury shopping emporiums. Ginia Bellafante, who covers the culture of recreational acquisition, found some answers. Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was a video about how federal agents used battlefield technology for an immigration arrest at a home in Minneapolis.
53.4— That is the percentage of A’s awarded to Harvard undergraduates during the fall semester. The school issued a report in October proposing the introduction of an A+ grade as a way to recognize the best work among so many regular-shmegular A’s.
N.B.A.: The league will meet with the Cleveland Cavaliers to discuss changes to their unusual “raised” court after the Los Angeles Lakers star Luka Dončić narrowly avoided serious injury this week. The Cavs have the only raised court in the N.B.A., with a gap between the floor and an ice rink below. |
