Daily News Brief

January 17, 2025

Editor's Note: There will be no Daily News Brief Monday, January 20, in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Top of the Agenda

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is expected to face questions in Washington today about how she would approach U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s ambitions for a mass deportation drive if confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security. Her hearing follows a closely watched session yesterday with Treasury nominee Scott Bessent, who backed tougher energy sanctions on Russia and defended Trump’s plans to raise tariffs. Also yesterday, Environmental Protection Agency nominee Lee Zeldin said that “climate change is real” when questioned if he agreed with Trump’s former claim that it is a “hoax.” 

Noem’s portfolio on immigration is where Trump is planning many of his day-one actions once inaugurated on Monday, CNN reported. Those include potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps in major metropolitan areas, deploying more Pentagon resources to the border, and rollbacks of Joe Biden-era policies, unnamed sources close to Trump told CNN. Much remains unclear about Trump’s mass deportation plans, which are expected to face logistical, legal, and financial hurdles. (NYT, WSJ, CNN, WaPo)

Analysis

“[M]any of [Trump’s] most prominent Cabinet choices have sailed relatively unscathed through their hearings and are poised to win confirmation,” the Washington Post’s Jacqueline Alemany and Liz Goodwin write. “The Trump loyalists stand in stark contrast to the president’s picks eight years ago when Gen. Jim Mattis, Trump’s first defense secretary, publicly contradicted some of Trump’s most firmly held beliefs … and former Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) vowed to rein in his new boss if he tried to go beyond his presidential authority.”

“Any plan to deport a large number of the more than eleven million undocumented immigrants in the United States would require a substantial increase in the number of immigration officials and judges to carry it out, and it would be costly. Trump has said he is considering using the U.S. military and relying on the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to facilitate deportations and internment of illegal immigrants. Both proposals would almost certainly face legal challenges in the courts,” CFR expert John B. Bellinger III writes for the U.S. Foreign Policy Program.

Pacific Rim

Amid government policies to incentivize people to have more children, China saw 9.54 million babies born last year compared to 9.02 million in 2023. But deaths still outpaced births, and overall population fell by 1.39 million people. (SCMP)

South Korea: Investigators requested that a court approve a warrant for impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol to remain in custody past an original forty-eight-hour deadline. Since being detained earlier this week, Yoon has refused to appear for questioning. (Yonhap)

South and Central Asia

Imran Khan has been jailed since 2023 and is already serving multiple sentences for corruption, revealing official secrets, and violating marriage laws. A court gave him fourteen years on charges of accepting a gift of land in exchange for laundered funds. Khan denies wrongdoing and says the cases against him are meant to keep him out of political power. (AP)

Azerbaijan: The country is not renewing its cooperation deal with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Azerbaijan’s foreign minister said. He accused Washington of using USAID to further a political agenda after the agency’s director, Samantha Power, said that Azerbaijan’s 2023 military operation in the Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh region had forcibly displaced a hundred thousand people. USAID did not immediately comment. (Reuters)

CFR expert David J. Scheffer wrote in 2023 that ethnic cleansing was happening in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Middle East and North Africa

The leader of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels said the group will monitor the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas and resume their attacks if it is violated. The Houthis have previously said that they will stop attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea if the Israel-Hamas war ends. Israel’s cabinet is deliberating on the deal today. (Reuters) 

CFR Fellow Max Boot writes for the Washington Post that Trump inherits the task of ending the war.

Iran/Russia: The two countries’ presidents are signing a strategic partnership treaty in Moscow today. It was not expected to contain the same kind of mutual defense clause as Russia’s treaties with Belarus and North Korea, but formalizes increasingly close military relations. (NYT)

Sub-Saharan Africa

The Treasury Department said military leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan was responsible for attacks on civilians and denial of humanitarian access in the country’s civil war. These follow sanctions put on Burhan’s chief rival, the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, on January 7. Unnamed U.S. officials also told the New York Times that Burhan’s troops had used chemical weapons. (Bloomberg, NYT)

U.S. envoy to Sudan Tom Perriello spoke to CFR yesterday about the war and the U.S. government’s role to end it.

U.S./Mozambique: U.S.-funded healthcare providers provided four abortions in Mozambique in a breach of rules on such procedures, Reuters reported based on a briefing to U.S. legislators yesterday. A Republican lawmaker said the development puts funding for the HIV/AIDS program known as PEPFAR—which has saved millions of lives worldwide—in jeopardy. (Reuters)

For Think Global Health, Emily Bass uncovers the PEPFAR files: what happened to put the once-popular health program under threat. 

Europe

The agreement commits the countries to defense cooperation and joint technology projects including drones, United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on a visit to Kyiv. The countries will also work together to track stolen Ukrainian grain that Russia is exporting. (AP)

Noah Berman and CFR’s Mariel Ferragamo tell the story of how Ukraine overcame Russia’s grain blockade in photos. 

U.S./Brussels: European Union regulators said that the Elon Musk-led social network X must disclose information about its content recommendation algorithms in the coming weeks as part of its work to ensure the online environment is “fair, safe, and democratic.” It comes as Musk has increasingly used his platform to wade into European politics; he is suspected of using X’s algorithm to boost far-right content.  (AFP)

Americas

Around twenty people left detention in the first round of releases, Cuban nongovernmental organizations said. Havana committed to releasing 553 people, while Washington removed certain economic restrictions on the country. (BBC)

CFR looks at how the recent deal fits into the history of U.S.-Cuba relations.

U.S./Brazil: A Brazilian court denied a request by former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to attend Trump’s inauguration. Bolsonaro is currently banned from leaving the country because he is under investigation for charges of attempting to hold onto power despite losing Brazil’s 2022 election. (NYT)

United States

U.S. President Joe Biden said the clemencies address “discredited distinctions between crack and powder cocaine, as well as outdated sentencing enhancements.” Congressional Democrats had argued for the commutations saying that harsher sentences for crack “caused disproportionate harm to communities of color.” (NBC)

Friday Editor’s Pick

What happened when Donald Trump, Jr. visited Greenland’s capital? “Things got weird,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

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