Today's D Brief: DepSecDef pick testifies; ‘Provoking an insurrectionary riot’; GOP’s ‘loony lies’; Tanker ‘lemons’; And a bit more.
President Biden’s deputy defense secretary nominee, Kathleen Hicks, is testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning. That began at 9:30 a.m. ET; and you can catch the livestream over at C-Span, here.
Today in Washington: Immigration-related EOs in the Oval Office. President Biden plans to sign three new executive orders aimed at “moderniz[ing] our immigration system,” the White House said in a preview Monday evening. The orders will eventually require all federal “agencies to conduct a top-to-bottom review of recent regulations, policies, and guidance that have set up barriers to our legal immigration system.”
Among the changes expected:
- The creation of a “Task Force to Reunify Families,” following up on a Trump-era policy of separating migrant children from their parents; more than 660 of whom were still separated a week after the election in November.
- Begin "implementing a comprehensive three-part plan for safe, lawful, and orderly migration in the region."
And that three-point plan involves White House-led efforts to:
- "address the underlying causes of migration through a strategy to confront the instability, violence, and economic insecurity that currently drives migrants from their homes";
- "collaborate with regional partners, including foreign governments, international organizations, and nonprofits to shore up other countries’ capacity to provide protection and opportunities to asylum seekers and migrants closer to home";
- “ensure that Central American refugees and asylum seekers have access to legal avenues to the United States.”
A note on impact: “Senior administration officials said Monday night that most of Mr. Biden’s directives on Tuesday would not make immediate changes,” the New York Times reports. “Rather, they are intended to give officials at the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the State Department time to evaluate how best to undo the policies.” The Washington Post has more on which Trump-era policies will remain in place, at least for now, here.
Also today: Mayorkas's moment? Biden’s Homeland Secretary nominee, Alejandro Mayorkas, could advance in a full senate vote this afternoon after an inclement weather delay Monday. “Mayorkas, who served as DHS deputy secretary during the Obama administration, is a Cuban-born lawyer and one of the chief architects of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program,” Politico reports. The Washington Post previews the monumental tasks ahead for Mayorkas, which include “restoring the United States’ mythical reputation as a welcoming nation,” here.
From Defense One
Air Force Hunts for Ways to Use Not-Quite-Ready Tankers // Marcus Weisgerber: We’re “making lemonade out of lemons,” Air Mobility Command says.
The Boogaloo Bois Have Guns, Criminal Records and Military Training. Now They Want to Overthrow the Government. // A.C. Thompson, Lila Hassan, and Karim Hajj, ProPublica: ProPublica and Frontline have identified more than twenty members with ties to the armed forces.
Defense Department 4th Estate Gets Amazon Web-Services Boost // Patrick Tucker: New cloud capabilities are coming to agencies like DARPA.
Intel Agency Worker Pushed His Own Drone Company, Report Details // Patrick Tucker: The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency inspector general found one of its employees accessed classified and proprietary data, trying to cheat competitors.
How to Root Out Extremism in the U.S. Military // Heather Williams: Start by figuring out how pervasive the problem is.
Urgent Job Opening: U.S. Navy Secretary // Brent D. Sadler: The chaos and uncertainty atop the sea service is undermining national security.
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief from Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Send us tips from your community right here. And if you’re not already subscribed to The D Brief, you can do that here. On this day in 1989, the last column of Soviet armor withdrew from Afghanistan. The final tranche of Soviet troops would follow two weeks later.
“Provoking an insurrectionary riot against a Joint Session of Congress after losing an election.” That’s how Democratic House lawmakers today described former President Trump’s behavior leading up to the Jan. 6 failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. “If provoking an insurrectionary riot against a Joint Session of Congress after losing an election is not an impeachable offense, it is hard to imagine what would be,” the lawmakers write in a brief unveiled this morning.
And to the question of impeaching after POTUS has left office, Democrats insisted, “A president must answer comprehensively for his conduct in office from his first day in office through his last.” Reuters has a bit more here.
Next up: Uncomfortable Republicans, the Washington Post reports. That’s because Trump’s ever-changing defense team is due to begin making its public case against impeachment today. Meantime, “The [House Democrat’s] effort to present new video evidence and witness testimony appears designed to make Republican senators as uncomfortable as possible as they prepare to vote to acquit Trump, as most have indicated they will do.” However, the Post notes, "The rioting left five dead, including one member of the U.S. Capitol Police. In addition, two officers, one with the D.C. police Department, have since died by suicide," and "The prospect of injured police officers describing the brutality of pro-Trump rioters to Republicans who regularly present themselves as advocates of law enforcement could make for an extraordinary, nationally televised scene.” More here.
By the way: “At least six of the 170 people charged in connection with the Capitol siege have tried to shift at least some of the blame onto Trump as they defend themselves in court or in the court of public opinion,” Reuters reports today.
“Loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country.” That’s what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday about Georgia’s conspiracy-embracing freshman GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. He never actually mentioned Greene’s name, but his words were effective enough to draw the connection, The Hill reported.
McConnell continued: “Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were prestaged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.’s airplane is not living in reality.”
Greene’s response, via Twitter later in the evening: “The real cancer for the Republican Party is weak Republicans who only know how to lose gracefully. This is why we are losing our country.”
Why this matters: McConnell’s trying to thread a needle here between more traditional Republicans like Rep. Liz Cheney and the party’s extremist wing, where Greene features prominently. Meantime, House GOP leaders have remained quiet as Greene’s past social media posts have been found despite efforts to delete them. They include “a seemingly endless array of conspiracy theories and violent behavior, including executing Democratic leaders,” the New York Times reports.
Compounding matters for the GOP, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is considering dropping Rep. Cheney from her No. 3 post as a message to others in the House GOP since Cheney voted to impeach Trump in January. McConnell jumped to Cheney’s defense on Monday, too. More at the Times, here.
Getting some face time today: Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Harker began speaking this morning at 10 a.m. for this week’s NDIA’s 2021 Virtual Expeditionary Warfare Conference, a two-day event that started today.
U.S. Navy Europe’s Adm. Burke sent pre-recorded remarks to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is hosting an online event called the Maritime Security Dialogue. Berger’s video went public this morning at 10 a.m. More here.
And later in the morning, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger speaks at NDIA just before noon. Details and registration, here.
Carrier returning home after unplanned 10-month deployment. The Nimitz’s Gulf-region tour was extended last month after Pentagon officials tried to send it home but changed their mind, citing unevidenced threats by Iran against U.S. officials. Now the Biden administration — which has been making overtures toward a renewed nuclear deal with Iran — says there’s no need to keep it there any longer.
Wearing down. The Nimitz’ extended tour was just part of a year that has seen the Navy use its carriers faster than it can maintain them. USNI News did the math in November.
Speaking of the Navy, it’s lacking a Secretary — Harker notwithstanding. Heritage’s Brent Sadler reviews the chaos atop the sea service of the past few years, and urges the Biden administration to hurry up and appoint a new SecNav. Read, here.
China just set out a series of red lines it doesn’t want the Biden administration to cross, and those are: “human rights, the coronavirus response and what [Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi] called U.S. interference in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang,” the Wall Street Journal reports, just hours after Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized China for its lack of COVID-19 transparency and for “undermin[ing] the very commitments it made during the handover of Hong Kong.” For Blinken, though, this is not an insurmountable challenge because the U.S. has an array of allies that China lacks.
Reminder: China is eager to move on from the antagonism of the Trump era, with Yang saying today that those policies “plung[ed] the relationship into its most difficult period since the establishment of diplomatic ties.” More at the Journal, here.
Iran is still enriching uranium at very concerning levels, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report obtained by Reuters today. The so-called Iranian nuclear deal authorized the refinement of “uranium only at its main enrichment site — an underground plant at Natanz — with first-generation IR-1 centrifuges,” Reuters reports. But: “Last year Iran began enriching there with a cascade, or cluster, of much more efficient IR-2m machines and in December said it would install three more,” according to the IAEA. More from Reuters here.
And lastly today: The future of Myanmar is still very much unclear. The party of detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi has today called not just for her release, but also for the military junta currently in charge to recognize Suu Kyi’s election win in November — the precise thing the junta claimed as justification for its coup on Monday. So far the military has shown no interest in giving up its power. Reuters has more here.