The Week Magazine February 3, 2023

Tanks are finally on the way to a grateful Ukraine. After months of refusing to allow its Leopard 2 tanks to be exported to the war zone, Germany relented this week and announced it would send one company of its own tanks, or 14 units, and authorize other European countries to send their Leopards as well (see The world at a glance, p.8). What took so long? It’s partly that Germany wanted the U.S. to share blame for what Russia will surely see as an escalation—Berlin reportedly insisted that it would only commit tanks if Washington did the same. The larger reason, though, lies in the national trauma of the Nazi past. Generations of Germans have been raised as pacifists, and they feel a visceral horror at the idea that…

What happened The possibility of a catastrophic U.S. debt default loomed larger this week, after House Republicans insisted they would not raise the debt ceiling without major, unspecified spending cuts that President Biden said he would not even discuss. After meeting with congressional Democrats, Biden said he “has no intention of letting the Republicans wreck our economy” with “extreme” plans such as cutting Social Security and Medicare. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called Biden’s refusal to negotiate “irresponsible.” He said a debt-limit increase must include a plan to rein in “irresponsible government spending,” and said the two “should sit down and get this done and stop playing politics.” Biden has agreed to meet with McCarthy, but no date has been set. Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—who helped broker…

A hero of Buffalo’s December storm is getting the ultimate in honors for the football-mad city: two tickets to the Super Bowl, courtesy of the Buffalo Bills. Jay Withey found himself stranded in his car last December as a deadly storm descended on upstate New York. He huddled with two strangers in his vehicle, then set off on foot to find shelter. Withey broke into an empty school, then ventured back into the blizzard to find other survivors looking for warmth. By the end of the storm, Withey was credited with saving more than 20 people. A sailor from St. Martin was rescued by the Colombian navy last week after surviving 24 days at sea. Elvis Francois, 47, was making repairs to his sailboat in December when the current sent…

What happened Horrified Californians found their state at the epicenter of the nation’s gun violence epidemic this week, after a shooter’s rampage through a majority Asian-American suburb of Los Angeles was quickly followed by a pair of mass shootings in the San Francisco Bay Area. Last weekend, Huu Can Tran entered a dance studio in Monterey Park with a semiautomatic handgun and fired into a crowd of about 100 people celebrating the Lunar New Year. He killed 11 and wounded 10. The 72-year-old former dance instructor reportedly may have been motivated by a personal grievance. He then went to another dance hall in Alhambra but was disarmed by its 26-year-old operator. After a 12-hour manhunt, he shot and killed himself as police approached his van. Within 48 hours, another…

What happened Thousands of anti-abortion activists marched in Washington, D.C., last week to celebrate the demise of Roe v. Wade, amid growing divisions in the movement and the Republican Party about how far to take abortion bans in the states. Disagreements have arisen over whether to allow exceptions or permit abortion during the first few weeks of pregnancy, creating tension in a movement that was united for nearly 50 years in its goal of overturning Roe. Some activists, such as Marjorie Dannenfelser of SBA Pro-Life America, said they would push for a federal 13-week ban. “It’s the beginning of an entirely new pro-life movement,” she said. Republican leaders, though, are reluctant to pursue a federal law because of the disappointing GOP performance in last year’s midterms and pro-choice victories…

“Now what?” said Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch in The Hill. Just as House Republicans were readying an aggressive investigation of President Joe Biden over his illicit retention of classified documents, news broke that yet another trove of classified documents had been found—this time in the Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence, a possible contender for the 2024 Republican nomination. Pence, like Biden, had a relatively small number of classified documents in his possession—far fewer than the 48 boxes and more than 11,000 documents, including 300 with classified markings, that the National Archives and the FBI retrieved from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. Like Biden but unlike Trump, Pence claims the documents were “inadvertently boxed and transported” to his home by aides without his knowledge, and…