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The underwhelming vice presidency of an unpopular former prosecutor has created a succession problem for the Democrats. When she announced that she was running for president in January 2019, Kamala Harris was met with glowing profiles, grassroots excitement, and ready donors. Almost immediately, her campaign was plagued by inconsistent policy positions and internal disarray. Meanwhile, Harris was haunted by her tough-on-crime past as a California prosecutor. Because of her own dismal polling numbers, Harris left the race eleven months later. But Biden picked her as his running mate anyway. And so she became the first female vice president, a black and Asian woman with a sleek image and a willingness to say things young progressives liked to hear. She went on to bungle interviews, flip-flop repeatedly, and fail to own any issue or commit to anything. Which is to say, Harris’s vice presidency has looked a lot like her shambolic presidential campaign. Now she’s considered the Democratic front-runner in waiting—yet no one can quite explain why. "Harris arrives somewhere with the plane and the motorcade and the Secret Service agents, makes a few mostly bland statements, then tells whomever she’s meeting with about how she’s going to bring their stories back to Washington. Then she’s quickly out of sight again,” wrote Edward-Isaac Dovere in The Atlantic in May 2021. Two months prior, Biden had put Harris in charge of “leading the Administration’s diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras,” as the White House put it. It was a "stopping-the-seas-from-rising" kind of job, says Cato Institute immigration analyst David J. Bier, especially since Harris had no authority to actually change U.S. immigration policy. Still, a vice president could at least play a robust rhetorical role here, shifting the conversation around the issue , or rallying Democrats behind an inspiring message. But rather than outline a coherent policy vision, Harris made a series of awkward decisions and comments that angered many Democrats and gave fodder to Republicans. If Harris runs for president, she can’t point to her record as a prosecutor because it’s mostly become an embarrassment. As San Francisco district attorney, she increased prosecutions and convictions for "misdemeanor quality-of-life crimes” and pushed for giving fewer people access to the city’s Drug Court, which offers alternatives to incarceration. She opposed a prostitution decriminalization measure, helped federal officials raid immigrant businesses, hid misconduct by a drug lab technician, and helped launch an anti-truancy initiative that would bring criminal charges against parents if their kids missed too much school. As California attorney general, she fought against a court ruling that the state’s death penalty was unconstitutional, fought to keep people in overcrowded prisons after a court ordered them released, defended the state corrections department’s denial of surgery for transgender inmates, and refused to back a measure requiring more scrutiny of police use-of-force cases. She also fought to shut down the sex-worker friendly ad platform Backpage while publicly ignoring sexual misconduct involving Oakland police and an underage girl. 1,974 people were sent to state prisons for marijuana or hashish possession while Harris was California’s top cop. Part of a politician's job is finding a way to work together with those in their coalition. Harris, meanwhile, has struggled to work comfortably with even her own staff, many of whom have departed after brief stints on the job. A June report in Politico described Harris' office as "tense and at times dour," marked by chaotic moments, low morale, and low trust. One person "with direct knowledge of how Harris’ office is run" described it as an unhealthy and "abusive" environment where “people are thrown under the bus from the very top." “Should Biden Run Again? The Question Is Dividing Democrats” read a September 2022 headline in Time, about the oldest president in U.S. history. But if not Biden, then who? A LATimes analysis of national opinion polls said that as of October 2022, 53% find Harris unfavorable, a drop of 14% since she took office. It’s hard to avoid the sense that the Democrats have been so enamored with the package this particular candidate comes in that they're willing to overlook what lies beneath the surface. Harris’ problems are her own. But in making her an avatar of its future, the party has made her problems their own too, embracing box-checking at the expense of political or administrative competence. Some say "third time's a charm," but a more relevant adage may be “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Eventually, Joe Biden will leave politics. When that happens, will Harris fool progressives a third time?

Iran has executed a British-Iranian national who once served as its deputy defence minister, its judiciary and state TV reported on Saturday (January 14), defying calls from London for his release after he was handed the death sentence on charges of spying for Britain. Britain, which had declared the case against Alireza Akbari as politically motivated, condemned the execution and said it would not stand unchallenged. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called it "a callous and cowardly act carried out by a barbaric regime with no respect for the human rights of their own people". In an audio recording purportedly from Akbari and broadcast by BBC Persian on Wednesday, he said he had confessed to crimes he had not committed after extensive torture. Sunak said on Twitter he was "appalled by the execution". Cleverly said in a statement it would "not stand unchallenged". "We will be summoning the Iranian Charge d’Affaires to make clear our disgust at Iran’s actions." British statements on the case have not addressed the Iranian charge that Akbari spied for Britain. Iranian state media broadcast a video on Thursday that they said showed that Akbari played a role in the 2020 assassination of Iran's top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, killed in a 2020 attack outside Tehran which authorities blamed at the time on Israel. In the video, Akbari did not confess to involvement in the assassination but said a British agent had asked for information about Fakhrizadeh. Iran’s state media often airs purported confessions by suspects in politically charged cases.

"Russia is trying to create an army of 2 million. For this, that country will hold new waves of mobilization." This was reported by the General Intelligence Department of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. It was noted that as a result of the first wave of mobilization, 300,000 people were drafted into the Russian Armed Forces: "Those people are sent to the combat zone in Ukraine after a short training." Ukraine's military intelligence does not rule out that the Russian leadership will announce another wave of mobilization in the coming days: "Another 500,000 Russians will enter the Russian Armed Forces, which will allow that country to create strategic reserves." According to intelligence information, Russia is already preparing for a new wave of mobilization: "For this, they are changing the laws that will regulate the conduct of the call."

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