First Thing: Ron DeSantis prepares for 2024 White House run

Good morning.

The 2024 presidential race is showing signs of kicking into gear amid reports that Florida’s rightwing Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, is laying the groundwork for a White House run as Donald Trump finally hit the campaign trail.

DeSantis’s moves even spurred Trump to lash out at him as the former US president held relatively low-key events over the weekend in the early voting states of New Hampshire and South Carolina.

“Ron would have not been governor if it wasn’t for me … when I hear he might run, I consider that very disloyal,” Trump said, before criticising DeSantis’s actions on fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, a far-right project that has helped spread Trump’s false claims about voting fraud in 2020, and misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, is trying to expand its mission, while facing new criticism from scholars and religious leaders about its incendiary political and Christian nationalist messages.

• Why is New College of Florida in the news? The tiny Florida university finds itself in the crosshairs of DeSantis’s latest culture wars crusade, in this instance to destroy its unofficial reputation as a haven for approximately 650 generally progressive-leaning students, about half of whom identify themselves as non-heterosexual.

‘We’re not done’: end of Scorpion unit after Tyre Nichols death is first step, protesters say

Along Main Street, just outside Memphis City Hall, white and Black protesters and organizers gathered in the rain to mark a significant victory: the city police department had just announced they would permanently disband the so-called Scorpion unit whose officers were involved in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, writes Edwin Rios.

Still, they argued, that was just the first step in getting justice for Nichols, whose shocking death has stunned and angered much of the US and reopened a debate over racism and police brutality. “We’re not done,” one organizer said through a megaphone. “We’ve got a long way to go.”

They called for the release of information on all officers and personnel involved in Nichols’s death on top of the murder charges laid against the five Black officers who attacked the 29-year-old. They also demanded an end to pretextual traffic stops, such as pulling people over for broken tail lights and loud music, and the dissolution of other units and taskforces the Memphis police department operates.

Before the announcement of the Scorpions disbandment, demonstrators had marched past a fire station and Memphis police headquarters and chanted “Justice for Tyre”. The protest had come just a day after the city released video footage of the brutal mass beating that had led to Nichols’s death. At one point, protesters surrounded police vehicles that had blocked the streets.

• What is happening elsewhere? Two Florida police officers are facing armed kidnapping and battery charges for allegedly assaulting a homeless man after handcuffing him without reason and taking him to an “isolated” location where they beat him unconscious.

Zelenskiy calls for faster weapons supplies to Ukraine

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called on Ukraine’s allies to speed up the supply of weaponry to help his forces overcome Russia’s invasion. The Ukrainian president said time should be used as a weapon in his Sunday night address.

“The speed of supply has been and will be one of the key factors in this war. Russia hopes to drag out the war, to exhaust our forces. So we have to make time our weapon. We must speed up the events, speed up the supply and opening of new necessary weaponry options for Ukraine.”

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said for the first time that Ankara could accept Finland into Nato without its Nordic neighbour Sweden. Erdoğan’s main complaint has been with Sweden’s refusal to extradite dozens of suspects that Ankara links to outlawed Kurdish militants and a failed 2016 coup attempt.

It has also emerged that during a conversation between the then UK prime minister Boris Johnson and Vladimir Putin about hypothetical support for Nato on Russia’s borders if Putin decided to invade Ukraine, that the Russian president claimed he could have sent a missile to hit Britain “within a minute”.

• What else is happening? Here’s what we know on day 341 of the invasion.

In other news …

• Barclays and UBS are facing questions about their ties to Roman Abramovich after his secretive offshore trusts were reorganised shortly before Europe and the UK imposed sanctions. The leak shows the oligarch was a major client of Barclays in Monaco and UBS in Zurich, with at least $940m in assets.

• The actor Annie Wersching, best known for playing the FBI agent Renee Walker in the TV series 24, has died. Wersching, 45, died on Sunday morning in Los Angeles after being diagnosed with cancer, her publicist told the Associated Press. The type of cancer was not specified.

• Antony Blinken has arrived in the Middle East where he will attempt to ease Israeli-Palestinian tensions after an eruption of violence. The US secretary of state will meet the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem on Monday and then travel to Ramallah on Tuesday to hold talks with the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas.

• A Texas national guard soldier shot and wounded a migrant in the shoulder along the US-Mexico border. According to Texas military records reviewed by the Military Times and the Texas Tribune, the soldier fired at the person on 15 January as he was attempting to detain them.

Stat of the day: US utilities shut off power to millions amid record corporate profits – report

Some of the US’s largest utilities cut power to millions of struggling customers in recent years, even as they spent billions of dollars on stock buybacks, dividend payments to shareholders and executive salaries, an analysis of industry data has found. In the 30 states where shut-off data was available, utilities cut service 1.5m times during the first 10 months of 2022, and an estimated 4.2m times nationwide. The report also reveals the issue is worsening: the number of electric shutoffs jumped by nearly one-third and gas shut-offs rose by 76% between 2021 and the first 10 months of 2022. The shut-offs disproportionately affected those on a low income and customers from communities of color.

Don’t miss this: Sarah Michelle Gellar on Buffy, her burnout and her comeback

It’s been 20 years since Sarah Michelle Gellar laid down her stakes and scythe, but audiences are still obsessing over Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The series’ enduring appeal feels “amazing”, says Gellar. “As an actor, you hope you do something that holds up, that people still watch and that still means something to them.” But, while Buffy’s following has grown since the finale, Gellar has opted to avoid the limelight since a string of high-profile roles such as in I Know What You Did Last Summer. For most of the past decade she was on a career break, prioritizing family life with her husband of 20 years (and 2000s co-star) Freddie Prinze Jr and their children Charlotte and Rocky (born 2009 and 2012). Now, however, Gellar is getting back to work – but will she ever revive the Slayer?

… Or this: ‘It was all for nothing’ – Chinese count cost of Xi’s snap decision to let Covid rip

Over the last two months, Covid has rapidly spread through China since the country’s abrupt end to its zero-Covid policy. Up to 10,000 critical cases were registered in hospitals every day. Morgues were overwhelmed, pharmacies reported shortages of basic medications, and supply of antiviral drugs was held up by protracted negotiations with foreign suppliers. President Xi Jinping’s extraordinary backflip left analysts alarmed and confused. China was not the only country to choose a zero-Covid strategy, and certainly not the only one to “let it rip” once it dropped it. But it was the last, and global health experts say there were plenty of lessons it could have heeded – primarily, making sure vaccinations and health resources were high before the tsunami of cases hit.

Climate check: environmental calamity hits Iraq’s unique wetlands

Under the scorching sun, the hot wind kicked tumbleweed across parched yellow earth, scarred with deep cracks and crumbling into thin dust under the feet. Rising above the ground were mounds of dead reed beds upon which the marsh dwellers had built their homes, writes Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. The ruin of nearly 3,000 sq km (1,000 sq miles) of this unique ecosystem is a small example of the unprecedented environmental disaster unfolding in Iraq. Rivers and lakes that had spawned farming communities since the dawn of civilisation are drying up, the country’s water reserves reduced by half, while the Iraqi ministry of water resources estimates that one-quarter of Iraq’s fresh water will be lost in the next decade.

Last thing: ‘Fire-breathing demon’ – shelter opts for honesty in adoption ad for ‘full jerk’ dog

Maybe he’s born with it, maybe he really is a “full jerk”, “fire-breathing demon” and equally adorable 26lb dog with boundary issues. Meet Ralphie, a 14-month-old French bulldog whose owners surrendered him at a no-kill shelter in Niagara Falls, New York, this month where a very unconventional approach is being taken to finding him new owners. In its Facebook ad for his adoption, the shelter said Ralphie would need the “Mother of Dragons” as an owner – a reference to a fearsome character from Game of Thrones. In a post that garnered thousands of engagement on Facebook, the shelter admitted: “We don’t actually have too many nice things to say so we’re just going to come out with it,” they wrote. “Ralphie is a terror in a somewhat small package.”

Sign up

First Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you’re not already signed up, subscribe now.

Get in touch

If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@theguardian.com