Good morning everyone, and happy Friday! I’m Shreya, one of TNR’s fact-checkers, and I hope you’re all staying warm. 

If you’re in the Northeast, that’s going to take some work, as a “bomb cyclone” (extremely scary description, I’ll say it) nor’easter is due to hit tonight. Forecasts for New York City, where I am, have been for “between 2 and 20 inches of snow,” which, as many people on Twitter have pointed out, basically means “no clue.” Some narrowing has been done this morning, though: NYC is set to get eight to 12 inches, New England might get two feet, and the storm warning goes as far south as North Carolina. 

Speaking of the weather: Climate scientists say that extreme weather could worsen in 2022, as these events outpace predictions—bringing yet more urgency to Democrats’ attempts to salvage the climate elements of Build Back Better. In light of that uncertainty, TNR staff writer Kate Aronoff wrote an excellent piece in New York mag arguing for state planning, which the federal government had no qualms about using to achieve energy independence via fossil fuels. “That a policy will enrage the fossil-fuel industry isn’t a reason not to do it,” she writes, “especially when you don’t need Congress’s approval.” Meanwhile, The Nation asks whether climate activists should just start destroying fossil fuel infrastructure. (The answer: maybe.) A little good news, though: 80 million acres of oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico were canceled yesterday. Let’s hope the administration doesn’t listen to the oil industry’s push to appeal the decision. 

After months of pressure, Justice Stephen Breyer officially announced yesterday that he would step down from the Supreme Court at the end of the current term. At a White House press conference, Biden praised Breyer’s “remarkable career of public service and his clear-eyed commitment to making our country’s laws work for its people.” He also committed to nominating a Black woman to replace Breyer by the end of February. Speculation abounds about who that may be, but Representative Jim Clyburn, whose support basically won Biden his presidency, has put his weight behind Judge J. Michelle Childs. Like Clyburn, Childs is from South Carolina, and she famously struck down a pretty egregious voter-suppression law in 2020. Biden “is casting a wide net,” though.

Today at NewRepublic.com, Jordan Michael Smith writes about how exactly we got to this point with Russia—a standoff that’s been decades in the making. Tim Noah criticizes Mitch McConnell for wielding inflation to oppose Build Back Better but ignoring it when it comes to sanctioning Russia. “The conservative mind,” he says,“fixates on the smaller inflation risk and ignores the much larger one.” Natalie Shure argues that we should stigmatize the politicians who fomented the “Havana Syndrome” hysteria to promote their own foreign policy agendas. In our books coverage, Siddhartha Deb argues that Hanya Yanagihara’s To Paradise reflects the conceits of metropolitan elites generally and the publishing industry specifically, and Peter Richardson explores the rise of Hunter S. Thompson and his sui generis brand of (gonzo) journalism.   

As for omicron, the surge is declining slightly, though hospitalizations in some places continue to increase. There’s also a new variant, but it seems like it might be milder. Last night, my mother tested positive. Feel better, Ma. 

—Shreya Chattopadhyay, reporter-researcher

Every day, our journalists are exposing the right’s assaults on our democracy—and pushing the Democrats to go bold to preserve the republic. Here’s a special offer from The New Republic so you won’t miss their scoops and sharp analysis.

Yesterday’s political question: Stephen Breyer, a hopeless anglophile who married the daughter of a British viscount, famously baffled an American attorney appearing before the court in 2012 by telling him, “I think I have to say that you are on a weak wicket.”

It wasn’t too hard to figure out Breyer’s figurative meaning: He meant the lawyer was making a weak argument. But Breyer’s literal meaning was harder to grasp if you weren’t English. What game was Breyer referring to, and what is a wicket? (Excluded from play are all citizens of and immigrants from the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth countries.)

Answer: If you said “croquet,” put on a dunce cap. Breyer was referring to cricket. In cricket, the wicket is the wooden arrangement of three stumps with bails on top that the batsman defends against the bowling; in this use, though, the word refers to the rectangular area in the center of the field between two wickets, which when it gets too soft reduces the cricket ball’s bounce, hence “weak.” Apparently the phrase was common among British generals during World War II, as in, “Those chaps at Dunkirk are on an awfully weak wicket, wot wot?”

Today’s question: Art Spiegelman, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic novel Maus, about his father's experience of the Holocaust, was on CNN yesterday commenting on a Tennessee school board’s unanimous decision to remove his book from the curriculum due to profanity and female nudity. He went viral because he vaped while talking. Maus’s removal comes from a long American tradition of banning books. What was the first officially banned book in the U.S.?