On the "NewsHour" tonight: The  Supreme Court considers the Biden  

administration's plan to reduce  pollution drifting between states.

Then: A key informant in the  investigation of Hunter Biden  

is accused of lying and having ties to Russia.

And the future of the United Nations'  humanitarian aid agency in Palestine  

hangs in the balance after allegations some  employees helped with Hamas October 7 attack.

MATTHIAS SCHMALE, Former UNRWA Operations  Director, Gaza: Allegations that UNRWA is  

controlled by Hamas need to  be substantiated. Otherwise,  

they are allegations for which  there is no proper proof.

(BREAK)

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Welcome to the "NewsHour."

A top Israeli official is offering  new hope tonight for a deal to  

free the hostages in Gaza and pause the  fighting there. Benny Gantz is a member  

of the Israeli war cabinet. And he spoke  today at a news conference in Tel Aviv.

BENNY GANTZ, Israeli War Cabinet Minister  (through translator): There are ongoing  

attempts to promote a new hostage deal, and there  are promising early signs of possible progress. We  

will not stop looking for a way, and we will not  miss any opportunity to bring our people home.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Gantz also  warns that, if there is no deal,  

fighting will continue into Ramadan, the  Muslim holy month that begins in March.

In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes rained down again  overnight, and hospital officials reported at  

least 67 Palestinians were killed. Palestinians  said bombs crushed family homes in Rafah,  

where more than a million Gazans have fled.  One man condemned the world's response,  

including Tuesday's U.S. veto  of a U.N. cease-fire resolution.

AHMED JUMA, Gaza Strip Resident  (through translator): This veto  

was not a surprise. The whole world  has made the decision of committing  

a genocide against the Palestinian  people. If all the images across than  

140 days did not push the world to take  action, then what are they waiting for?

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The Hamas-run Gazan  Health Ministry reported the overall  

death toll in the territory  now exceeds 29,300 people.

Israeli lawmakers today rejected international  pressure for a unilateral declaration of a  

Palestinian state. The Knesset sided  overwhelmingly with Prime Minister  

Benjamin Netanyahu, who said the statehood issue  must be part of overall peace negotiations.

A related question is now before the  world court at The Hague. U.S. State  

Department lawyers argued today  that Israel should not be asked  

to immediately withdraw from all the all  Palestinian lands that were captured in  

1967 during the Six-Day War. The U.N. court  will eventually issue a nonbinding opinion.

In Russia, Alexei Navalny's mother filed  suit against prison officials who've  

refused to release her son's remains.  The opposition leader reportedly died  

last week at a high-security Arctic  prison. Russian authorities have said  

they will hold Navalny's body for two weeks  while they investigate his cause of death.

Russia's capture of a city in Eastern Ukraine  has touched off a new exodus in the region.  

People are now fleeing areas near Avdiivka  in the Donetsk region after it was taken  

by the Russians over the weekend. Many of  the evacuees are elderly and cannot leave  

without assistance. Some say they worry  their towns will be blasted into ruins.

VALENTYNA KITUSH, Ukrainian Evacuee (through  translator): It's unbearable to endure what  

is happening. They are bombarding  and destroying everything. Shall  

I wait until they destroy us? I'm leaving  everything behind, home, flat, everything.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Meanwhile, there are signs  that the fall of Avdiivka was a bigger blow to  

Ukraine's military than first believed. New  reports indicate that up to 1,000 Ukrainian  

troops are missing, including hundreds who  may have been captured by the Russians.

A hearing has wrapped up in London, on  whether to green-light the extradition  

of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to  the U.S. Supporters today demanded his  

release. They and his defense team maintain  he shouldn't be punished for leaking troves  

of documents that exposed U.S. misdeeds in Iraq  and Afghanistan. The U.S. argues Assange put the  

lives of intelligence sources at risk. A ruling  isn't expected until March, at the earliest.

Farmer protests turn violent in India today.  One protester was killed after farmers fought  

with police, who fired tear gas. The  farmers are marching toward New Delhi  

to demand higher prices for their crops.  And in Spain, farmers drove hundreds of  

tractors into Madrid to denounce European Union  policies. It was their largest demonstration yet.

Back in this country, the gap in campaign cash  between President Biden and former President  

Trump is getting wider. The Trump campaign reports  it ended January with $30 million on hand after  

spending more than it took in. Biden's reelection  campaign jumped to a surplus of $56 million.

And on Wall Street, tech stocks drifted  lower again, while the rest of the market  

managed fractional gains. The Dow  Jones industrial average added 48  

points to close at 38612. The Nasdaq fell  50 points. The S&P 500 was up six points.

Still to come on the "NewsHour": Alabama's Supreme  Court rules that frozen embryos are children;  

a new app aims to make traffic stops in  Minnesota safer; the potentially scary  

implications of an A.I. tool that creates  extremely realistic video; plus much more.

The Supreme Court heard arguments today in  a major environmental case over a rule that  

requires states to stop their air pollution  from drifting over to neighboring states.

Three states, led by Ohio, are  claiming the rule is too costly,  

and they're asking the court to block  the so-called good neighbor plan.

Coral Davenport is following all  this closely. She covers energy  

and environmental policy at The New York Times.

Coral, great to have you back on the program.

So, the good neighbor plan, as I mentioned,  says that states have to do everything they  

can to stop their pollution from  sullying their neighbors' air.  

The states that are protesting this rule,  what is it that they don't like about it?

CORAL DAVENPORT, The New York Times: So  this rule is the Biden administration  

strengthening a rule that was already on  the books from the Obama administration.

The Obama rule said that power plants had  to control their pollution that goes over  

state lines and pollutes in other states. The  law actually says that governments have to go  

back and strengthen this rule every number  of years. The Trump administration did not  

do that. The Biden administration went  back, they expanded the rule and said,  

we're also going to apply this to a lot of  other industrial pollution, steel mills,  

factories, cement plants, so a really  significant expansion of these controls.

And this is what the industrial states say,  

this is too much. This is going to cost  millions, if not billions of dollars.  

It's a burden. It's a tremendous economic  imposition on the engines of our state.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And what is the argument  for it? I mean, I guess broadly speaking,  

we could say air pollution is bad. But the  argument for stopping this pollution is what?

CORAL DAVENPORT: So, again,  

the Clean Air Act specifically stipulates  that the federal government has to do this.

It says that there's -- and this is sort of  interesting because it has to do with the  

way the winds blow. You have heard the phrase  the westerly winds that blow across the United  

States. That's real. So when you have a lot of  air pollution, smog in the middle of the country,  

it is very well-documented that winds actually  blow that to the eastern part of the country.

So when you have a lot of smog in states  like Ohio and Indiana, it ends up in the  

air of Delaware and Connecticut. The  senator from Delaware recently said,  

we are the tailpipe of the United States. And  there's a lot of evidence that that's true.

So the law created this specific  regulation, essentially saying,  

you states in the middle of the  country where this is coming from,  

you have to clean up to protect your neighbors.  Well, that's part of it. And the other part  

is that there's a lot of evidence that this  smog is really devastating for human health.

The EPA finds that this rule would indeed be  very costly. It would cost the industry about  

$900 million a year to comply. That's huge.  It also finds that it would save the economy,  

in terms of work days, sick days, increased  asthma, respiratory diseases, it would save  

the economy about $13 billion a year in costs  that are measured in public health impacts.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And that seems like  a pretty clear cost-benefit analysis.

CORAL DAVENPORT: It is a magnitude of difference.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The court took up this  case on what's known as its emergency  

docket. And several of the justices  today, including Ketanji Brown Jackson,  

seemed to take issue with that,  asking why this was so urgent.

We talked with our Supreme Court analyst,  

Marcia Coyle, about this earlier.  Here's what she had to say about this.

MARCIA COYLE: Justice Jackson said  she didn't see the emergency. In fact,  

she wondered if this was not just a  case of the states and industry wanting  

not to obey the law as the lawsuit  proceeded through the D.C. Circuit.

So what the court has is very unusual here  right now. They always claim that they are  

court of review, not first view. And they  have nothing to review in front of them,  

because no lower court has yet to look  at the merits of the good neighbor plan.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And yet the court  seemed very eager to hear this.

CORAL DAVENPORT: And it's very surprising.

One reason is that the entities that are  specifically the plaintiffs in this case  

are the newly covered entities.  So the power plants had already  

been covered. This regulation expands  the rules and the controls to steel,  

cement, power plants factories. Those  rules don't kick in, in until 2026.

And yet -- so they're not...

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Directly impacted now.

CORAL DAVENPORT: They're not directly  impacted. And yet they brought this  

case to the Supreme Court on this emergency  filing, saying that this is going to have  

an emergency impact right now and that  the rule essentially needs to be frozen,  

not implemented at all, until  all the litigation is complete.

But it is extremely unusual for the Supreme  Court to even hear a case like this. And that  

is kind of part of a trend that we're  starting to see in this Supreme Court.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: But this court has shown a  

good deal of skepticism towards a  lot of environmental regulations.

CORAL DAVENPORT: Well, that's always true of a  conservative court historically, ideologically.  

There's more justices appointed by Republican  presidents on this court. That's not surprising.

Here's what's new. This is the third in  cases that they are taking where, again,  

the regulation is not fully implemented.  Last year, the Supreme Court heard a case  

on a water regulation that was not yet  implemented, not yet fully on the books.  

Very surprising. Again, analysts said they  were surprised that they took that case.

They ended up choosing to sharply limit the  regulation. So even before the government was  

done writing the regulation, the court had told  it, you have to really rein back what you're  

doing. Same thing happened the year before  on a major climate change regulation. Again,  

very unusual for the court to have even taken  up the case before the regulation was even done.

The court told the government, you're really  restricted in what kind of regulating you do.  

That regulation still isn't out. But the  government has -- is taking its marching  

orders from the court on how it can write  these rules. This is a new trend where  

it's not just conservative justices  expressing skepticism of regulation.

It's taking it to a new level of  ruling on these policies before  

they're even on the books and dictating to  the federal agencies what they can then do,  

kind of handcuffing them before  they're even done with their work.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And it sounds  like, from the arguments today,  

that the same thing might happen again.

Coral Davenport of The New York Times,  always great to see you. Thank you.

CORAL DAVENPORT: Always great to be here.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: An informant who's  been charged with lying to the FBI about  

President Biden recently told law enforcement  he's been in contact with Russian agents.

That informant's story is at the center of  

Republicans' ongoing effort  to impeach President Biden.

Laura Barron-Lopez has more.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: In a court filing last  night, special counsel David Weiss said ex-FBI  

informant Alexander Smirnov told them he met with  Russian operatives as recently as last December.

In the filing, prosecutors wrote:  "Smirnov admitted that officials  

associated with Russian intelligence  were involved in passing a story  

about Businessperson 1," referring to  President Biden's son Hunter Biden.

Prosecutors say that story of a Ukrainian  energy firm bribing President Biden and his  

son is a complete fabrication being  used to interfere in U.S. elections.

Joining me to discuss the  implications is Ryan Goodman,  

former special counsel for  the Department of Defense.

Ryan, thank you so much for joining. What's  the big takeaway from this latest revelation?

RYAN GOODMAN, Former Department of Defense  Special Counsel: So, the big takeaway is that  

Mr. Smirnov appears to have been acting  as an agent of Russian intelligence.

And, according to the Department  of Justice's filing in court,  

he was knowingly passing on false derogatory  information about President Biden and Hunter  

Biden to the FBI, and that he's been  doing so recently and actively. So  

that's the kind of bombshell of that  court filing by the Justice Department.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Alexander  Smirnov first made this raw,  

unverified allegation in  2020. It was not corroborated.

So why is David Weiss, who is a  Trump-appointed U.S. attorney,  

deciding to bring these charges now?  And, also, why do you think Smirnov is  

just revealing last week that he's been  in contact with Russian intel officials.

RYAN GOODMAN: So it seems as though Mr. Weiss  has been building a case against Mr. Smirnov  

and that the FBI knew along the way that Mr.  Smirnov was telling them lies and fabrications.