Today’s Times
- President Obama will meet with Xi Jinping, the president of China, in a California setting carefully chosen to nurture personal diplomacy and a high-level friendship, Mark Landler and Jackie Calmes report. The president is hoping to move beyond the usual stilted talking points, with hopes of exchanging ideas about how to best manage a complex, sometimes combustible relationship between the world’s two biggest economies.
- Republicans are viewing President Obama’s plan to fill three vacancies at once on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit as an attempt to steamroll the nominations past the opposition in Congress, Michael D. Shear and Jeremy W. Peters report. Democrats are hoping that it will call attention to Republican obstruction of his choices for the cabinets and the courts, as well as his legislative agenda.
- In a rare joint appearance, the majority of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday about the problem of sexual assault in the military. Senators from both parties pressed the issue, calling the chiefs’ responses “stunningly bad,†Jennifer Steinhauer reports.
- Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, disclosed on Tuesday that she had made telephone calls to three companies regulated by her department, urging them to help a nonprofit group promote the health care law, Robert Pear writes. She argued, though, that she was following well-established precedents.
- An audit of the Internal Revenue Service has given Republicans new reason to be outraged after it was revealed that the tax-collecting agency spent $4.1 million on a single conference in Southern California in 2010, Jonathan Weisman reports.
- Republicans plan to accuse President Obama of hypocrisy for nominating Michael Froman to be his trade representative, when Mr. Froman made millions of dollars largely because of a tax loophole the administration has sought to close, Jonathan Weisman.
Happenings in Washington
- Preside Obama will greet the Baltimore Ravens at the White House on Tuesday to honor the team’s Super Bowl victory.
- Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, will take part in a rally with college students from around the country outside the United States Capitol, urging lawmakers to prevent an increase in federally subsidized student loan interest rates.
