Melting Giants and Political Blocks

Welcome to Neural Newscast for January 9th, 2026. I'm Isabel Marino. And I'm Noah Feldman. Today we're looking at a historic check on executive power in Washington and a striking environmental milestone in the South Atlantic. Noah, we really have to start with the news coming out of the Senate. In a narrow 52 to 47 vote, the Senate has moved to block President Trump from further military action in Venezuela. This comes, well, less than a week after the high-profile operation that led to the capture of Nicolas Maduro. Right. It's a significant moment, Isabel. The measure is a war powers resolution. It essentially tells the White House that any further military engagement in Venezuela requires explicit congressional approval. It was brought forward by a bipartisan pair, Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Rand Paul. Exactly. And while the vote was technically procedural, it strongly suggests that the measure has the momentum to pass a final vote. For those following Latin American affairs, this is a massive shift. I mean, the capture of Maduro has already created a vacuum of power. And now Congress is signaling they want a seat at the table for whatever comes next. The political fallout was immediate. President Trump took to Truth Social to criticize the five Republicans who joined the Democrats. He called them out by name, Rand Paul, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Josh Hawley, and Todd Young. Senator Collins had a rather sharp response, actually. She told reporters she assumed the president would prefer her over a Democrat with whom he has an even worse relationship. It really shows the tension between the executive branch and these key swing votes in the Senate. Yeah, it really highlights the friction within the party regarding the limits of military intervention, especially after such a dramatic event as the capture of a foreign leader. Moving from the heat of Washington to the cold of the South Atlantic, we have some incredible but, you know, sobering images from NASA. the world's oldest and largest iceberg, known as A23A, appears to be in its final days. It's turning a deep, almost haunting aquamarine blue. Scientists say this is a sign that it is waterlogged, and likely only days or maybe weeks away from completely disintegrating. A 23A has been around for a long time. It first broke off from Antarctica's Filchner ice shelf way back in 1986. For decades, it was actually stuck on the sea floor of the WED-ELSE before it broke free in the early 2020s and started drifting north. At its peak, it was the size of Rhode Island, about 1,500 square miles. Today, it has shrunk significantly to about 456 square miles, which is still larger than New York City. but the new images from the terra satellite show pools of meltwater on the surface creating that specific blue color there are also these fascinating striations that an astronaut on the international space station captured They look like streaks of blue and white, which are actually marks from when the ice was part of a glacier dragging across the Antarctic bedrock. Right. Walt Meir from the National Snow and Ice Data Center pointed out how impressive it is that those ridges still show up after all this time and all that snow. But the weight of that meltwater is creating so much pressure that the iceberg has likely sprung a leak. It's currently floating in water that's about 37 degrees Fahrenheit. For an iceberg, I mean, that is basically a warm bath. Chris Schuman, a scientist formerly with the University of Maryland, said he doesn't expect it to last through the austral summer. It's the end of a very long journey. From the South Pole to the South Atlantic, A23A has been a witness to decades of climate shifts. A final reminder of the scale of the changes happening at our polls. Thank you for joining us today on Neural Newscast. I'm Noah Feldman. We'll be back tomorrow with more reporting on the digital economy and global affairs. Until then, have a great day. Neural Newscast is AI-assisted, human-reviewed. View our AI transparency policy at neuralnewscast.com.