Vox Sentences - Breyer to retire

Justice Stephen Breyer will reportedly retire, allowing President Biden to nominate a replacement; South Korea pays Iran's debt to the UN, restoring its vote in the General Assembly. 

Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes. 

Justice Stephen Breyer to retire from Supreme Court, giving Biden a chance to nominate

Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images

• Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, will retire from the nation’s highest court at the end of the court’s present term, which terminates in June. Breyer is one of the three remaining liberal justices, and his retirement will give President Joe Biden the opportunity to appoint a justice. [Washington Post / Robert Barnes]
• Concern about Breyer’s retirement plans became acute after the 2020 death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She died while Donald Trump was in office, allowing for the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose deep conservatism will shape the Court for decades to come. [WSJ / Jess Bravin]
• “He was very concerned about public perception of the court,” Alicia Bannon, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Judiciary Program, told Vox in a phone interview. The court’s shadow docket, its unwillingness to adopt a code of conduct, the number of constitutional rights at risk, all reduced public confidence in the court. This troubled Breyer, Bannon said.
• Biden is expected to formally announce the retirement on Thursday. During his campaign, Biden promised to nominate a Black woman to a Supreme Court seat should one become vacant — he’ll have to move quickly to ensure his nominee is confirmed while Democrats still have a majority in Congress. [NYT / Adam Liptak]
• One pick for Biden’s nominee is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in June of 2021. Also on the list is Judge Leondra Kruger, an associate justice for the Supreme Court of California. [CBS / Melissa Quinn]
• Republicans tend to pick Supreme Court Justices from the Federalist Society to ensure ideological coherence; Democrats don’t have a similar pool from which to draw. “Democrats are more interested in the work background” than in ideology, Anna O. Law, Herbert Kurz Chair of Constitutional Rights at CUNY Brooklyn College, told Vox in a phone interview.
• While Biden’s pick won’t change the balance of the court, their input on dissents will be crucial, Law said. “The dissenters are writing for history, they are signaling to interest groups ... about how to approach the court; they’re inviting cases. It’s playing the long game,” she said.

Iran regains UN Assembly voting rights after assets are unfrozen 

• Iran has regained the ability to vote at the UN General Assembly after South Korea paid its $18 million in delinquent membership dues using some of the $7 billion in frozen assets held there. That move came after Iran said that US sanctions were harming its ability to pay its UN dues. [Al Jazeera]
• Any decision to unfreeze Iran’s assets has to go through the US. The fact that the Biden administration approved Sunday’s transaction is likely a reflection of the state of the Iran nuclear talks; the US and European allies have indicated that only weeks remain to salvage the 2015 deal. [Reuters]
• The $7 billion in frozen assets are payments for oil shipments from Iran to South Korea. The Islamic Republic was one of South Korea’s biggest Middle Eastern trading partners prior to the US’s unilateral decision to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018 — reinstating severe sanctions against Iran. [AFP via Barron’s]
• The UN’s charter says that any nation that owes the previous two full years of dues loses its vote in the General Assembly, although exceptions can be made in the case that a member nation is facing problems “beyond the control of the member.” Other countries delinquent on their membership dues include Venezuela and Sudan. [AP / Isabel Debre]

Dozens are missing after a boat, likely used for human smuggling, capsized off the Florida coast en route from Bimini, in the Bahamas. [Washington Post / Meryl Kornfield and Paulina Villegas]

• A Kurdish militia says it has retaken a prison in northern Syria from ISIS after six days of fighting. [NYT / Ben Hubbard]
• Dutch media is having its Me Too moment after allegations of harassment and abuse of power on the set of the Dutch version of The Voice. [Reuters / Stephanie van den Berg]
• The Federal Reserve, the central bank of the US, is signaling that it will likely raise interest rates in March to combat inflation. [Guardian / Graeme Wearden]

“In the end, they had no choice but to surrender or they would all die, so they decided to surrender.”

[Siyamend Ali, a Kurdish militia official, explaining the group’s victory over ISIS after a six-day battle to recapture a prison in northern Syria]

Scientists are constantly searching for asteroids that could crash into Earth. But if they find one, will they be able to do anything about it? [Spotify]

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