Black Friday, Climate Change, China: Your Weekend Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/25/briefing/black-friday-climate-change-china.html

Version 0 of 1.

Here are the week’s top stories, and a look ahead.

1. Global warming threatens American lives, cities and jobs, according to a major report by 13 federal agencies, unless the U.S. takes significant steps to rein it in.

At the report’s heart: Predictions are coming true — record wildfires, increasing floods, disrupted supply chains — and it could get much worse. Fire season could spread to the Southeast, crop failures could desolate the Midwest and cascading disasters could knock 10 percent off the U.S. economy by 2100.

The findings in the report are directly at odds with President Trump’s agenda of environmental deregulation, which he argues will spur economic growth. Here are five key takeaways.

The report cited California’s recent wildfire seasons as a case of worsening effects: Droughts create fire conditions, fires grow more destructive, smoke spreads and the authorities can never rest.

Our reporters traveled to Northern California, where the survivors of the Camp Fire, burning in the town of Paradise, above, found reasons to be grateful on Thanksgiving; and to Southern California, where fires incinerated movie sets and hiking trails near Malibu.

Here’s the front page of our Sunday paper, the Sunday Review from Opinion and our crossword puzzles.

____

2. Chief Justice John Roberts rebuked President Trump, ending years of studied restraint in the face of the president’s attacks on the judiciary.

In response to Mr. Trump’s criticism of a ruling he did not like — he said “an Obama judge” was to blame — Chief Justice Roberts, above, defended judges’ independence. “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” he said.

It may be a turning point: Since the arrival of two Trump appointees to the court, Chief Justice Roberts has moved to its center, a change that gives him extraordinary power and may have helped spur the statement.

Leading conservatives offered measured support for the chief justice, though they praised the transformation of the courts engineered by the White House counsel, Don McGahn.

That same counsel, now departed, rebuffed the president’s desire to use the Justice Department to prosecute two political adversaries: Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent, and James Comey, the former F.B.I. director.

____

3. A federal judge blocked President Trump’s proclamation that banned migrants from applying for asylum anywhere but a port of entry.

The temporary restraining order means the Trump administration must resume accepting asylum claims from migrants, no matter where or how they entered the U.S., at least until the case is decided.

Mr. Trump’s order was part of his effort to clamp down on immigration, especially a caravan of migrants gathering at border cities. The president has sent active-duty soldiers to the border — though his defense secretary has kept their role limited — and in Tijuana, Mexico, above, many migrants are wrestling with whether to settle or move on.

Leaders of the incoming Mexican government are in talks with American officials to allow migrants applying for asylum in the U.S. to remain in Mexico while they await a decision. On Saturday, Mr. Trump suggested on Twitter that it was as good as a done deal, but Mexican officials say no agreement has been reached, and any such plan could face immediate legal challenges.

____

4. On Sunday, Britain obtained the approval of the other 27 European Union members on a formal divorce pact from the bloc.

Prime Minister Theresa May, above, must still get approval for the Brexit deal from an unhappy British Parliament.

It’s a compromise that no one seems to like.

____

5. Black Friday was not so wild this year, but retailers and analysts said it got the shopping season off to a strong start.

We rounded up the day across the globe, including a cheat sheet of what to buy and a return to F.A.O. Schwarz, the toy seller that has reopened under new management.

But the good cheer about the economy may not last. The stock markets are a mess — with the year’s gains erased by a sell-off this week — which our columnist sees as a warning sign of trouble.

____

6. The escalating trade war between the U.S. and China is forcing nations to pick sides, raising tensions around the world over territory, trade and influence.

The U.S. has tried to rally Southeast Asian nations against China’s military buildup, and pushed Europe on the issue of foreign investment. China has made inroads in Canada and presented itself as a leading lender for smaller nations.

The power struggle threatens to disrupt the Group of 20 summit meeting on Friday in Argentina, which Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping are expected to attend.

And in a special series, we looked at how China has defied expectations for decades, what “Made in China” means now, and how China remade the American dream in its image. Today we consider how the country controls its citizens.

____

7. Rebuffing the C.I.A., President Trump sided with Saudi Arabia over the agency’s conclusion that the kingdom’s crown prince was responsible for the killing of a dissident journalist.

In an extraordinary statement, Mr. Trump described a “very dangerous” world, where transactional relationships rule the day. He suggested that it did not matter to him whether Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, above, knew of the murder of the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.

“Maybe he did,” Mr. Trump said, “and maybe he didn’t!” The C.I.A.’s leaders, he later said, only had “feelings.”

Before Prince Mohammed was implicated in the murder, U.S. intelligence agencies were trying to solve another mystery: whether he was negotiating a nuclear deal with the U.S. with the goal of building an atomic bomb.

____

8. Facebook took responsibility for hiring a lobbying group that pushed negative stories about its critics, including the philanthropist George Soros.

The company released the memo on the eve of Thanksgiving, days after Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said that she had no idea it had hired the lobby group, Definers. In the memo, she acknowledged that the group’s work had crossed her desk.

We took a look at how the firm brought “dirty P.R.” to Silicon Valley.

And far from the social media giants of Northern California, engineers and social workers are trying a different kind of tech experiment, above: Zora, a robot caregiver for the elderly in France.

____

9. Old dogs really do have trouble learning new tricks, imperiling the careers of canines on drug duty in the 10 states that have legalized recreational marijuana.

New laws and recent court rulings have forced many police dogs into early retirement, and police departments are training new ones not to detect marijuana.

Already, communities are fund-raising for new recruits — it costs thousands to buy and train a working dog — and the police are preparing their dogs for new lives. “They’re our kids,” one officer said. “When they’re done working, we’re going to make sure they’re really well taken care of.”

____

10. Finally, check out our Best Weekend Reads.

This week, we hear an oral history of Barry Jenkins’s “Medicine for Melancholy” from its admirers; watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade through the decades; and learn what drove a young American to a remote island, above, that has long been dangerous for outsiders.

And here’s the Week in Good News, including a resurgence of chess in Norway.

For more suggestions on what to watch and listen to, may we suggest the latest small-screen recommendations from Watching and our music critics’ latest playlist.

Have a great week.

Your Weekend Briefing is published Sundays at 6 a.m. Eastern.

You can sign up here to get our Morning Briefings by email in the Australian, Asian, European or American morning, or here to receive an Evening Briefing on U.S. weeknights.

Browse our full range of Times newsletters here.

What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com.