Kerry expected to leave his role as climate envoy

John Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate in the Biden administration, is planning to depart his role this winter, according to a person familiar with his plans.

A former secretary of state and former senator for Massachusetts, Kerry, 80, has spent the past three years criss-crossing the globe in his specially created job, one that was intended to showcase the administration’s commitment to climate on the global stage.

His decision to join the Biden administration surprised some observers who expected that his long career in government service would end with his term as secretary of state to President Obama, as did his choice to stay in the special envoy role as long as he did. He initially planned on doing it for only one year.

“Don’t remind me of that,” he joked in an interview with the Globe last year.

Kerry, who as secretary of state played a key role in negotiating the Paris Climate Accord in 2015, spent his time as special envoy cajoling other countries to raise their ambition to cut emissions — an effort that culminated at three annual UN climate conferences, in Scotland, Egypt, and Dubai.

He also held single-track climate negotiations with China, an effort he saw as crucial for cutting global emissions despite rising tensions between China and the United States.

Kerry had been considering his departure for some time. Last February, after he informed Biden he planned to stay in the job at least through November’s UN Climate Conference in Dubai, he told the Globe that worldwide progress on climate was lagging.

“I think it definitely feels more dire,” Kerry said at the time. “A compelling reason to push on.”

Kerry’s departure was first reported by Axios. He is flying to Davos this weekend for the World Economic Forum annual meeting, a gathering of wealthy business leaders and politicians where he has become a fixture over the course of his career.

JESS BIDGOOD

Trumps cancels Iowa events due to weather

As Iowans woke up to another round of warnings of blizzard conditions and life-threatening wind chills, former president Donald Trump canceled two inperson rallies he had planned this weekend in a final bid to drum up excitement. But Trump, whose aides have worried that polls showing him with a big lead might lull his supporters into staying home, predicted the weather might in fact help him because “our people are more committed than anybody else.”

By all indications, Trump has less at stake Monday than his two main rivals, who are struggling in their efforts to pull off a strong showing Monday — Nikki Haley, a former UN ambassador, and Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor. Both pushed ahead with campaign events Saturday.

At an event in Council Bluffs, DeSantis noted that he had braved the Iowa weather, drawing a contrast with an absent Trump. “Donald Trump has phoned in,” he said. “He’s probably hanging out in Mar-a-Lago.”

DeSantis’ willingness to show up in the bitter cold was noted by some Iowa voters.

Richard Marriott of Atlantic, Iowa, said he had planned to see Trump on Saturday but the former president canceled. “And he’s from New York,” Marriott said. “He should be used to the snow. DeSantis is from Florida.”

NEW YORK TIMES

DeSantis turns attacks to conservative news media

As the Iowa caucuses draw near, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has increasingly focused on a peculiar target as he looks to win the Republican nomination: the conservative news media ecosystem that supports former president Trump.

Desperate to make his case that he is a better candidate than Trump — while trailing by wide margins in recent polls — DeSantis seems to have turned on many of the news outlets that once promoted his candidacy, for being unfair in their coverage.

“He’s got basically a Praetorian Guard of the conservative media — Fox News, the websites, all this stuff,” DeSantis told reporters outside his campaign headquarters in Urbandale, Iowa. “They just don’t hold him accountable because they’re worried about losing viewers. And they don’t want to have the ratings go down.”

He added: “That’s just the reality. That’s just the truth, and I’m not complaining about it. I’d rather that not be the case. But that’s just, I think, an objective reality.”

It was the most animated version of a message that DeSantis, despite saying he is not complaining, has delivered repeatedly over the last several days. While the former governor’s own criticisms of Trump are relatively muted, he has urged conservative news media to be more critical.

Calling on the conservative news media to hold Trump more to account allows DeSantis to appear to be doing so himself, if not directly. But he and his team have also taken to attacking Fox News, which was glowing in its coverage of DeSantis until it circled the wagons for Trump once the former president was first indicted in March 2023.

When DeSantis was a House member, he became a star among conservatives through appearances on Fox News. He soon built a supportive network with other conservative news outlets.

The New York Post, which, like Fox News, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, declared him “DeFuture” after his successful reelection effort in 2022, making him a target for some Trump allies who portrayed him as the conservative news media’s establishment pick. He had grown used to being defended by conservative news media in his culture war fights, and by an army of online allies who would defend him on social media.

But that was then. DeSantis’ standing in the race for the Republican nomination eroded over many months. Fox News hosted Trump just this past week for a live town hall from Iowa.

DeSantis, who once constantly criticized the mainstream news media, has shifted gears and gives interviews to mainstream outlets such as

CNN and even left-leaning networks like MSNBC.

He now finds himself floating attack lines against onetime allies as he fights for second place in the caucuses before bringing them on the trail. To that end, DeSantis used his line about Trump’s Praetorian Guard during an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” before deploying it again on Friday.

But for all the attacks, DeSantis has continued to spend a fair amount of time on the Fox News airwaves, including in a town hall-style interview earlier last week and two appearances Friday after he lobbed shots at the network. As for other conservative media outlets, Newsmax — often friendly to Trump — aired a Christmas special about DeSantis and his family late last year.

NEW YORK TIMES