Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Tuesday, January 31st. I'm Nyla Boone. Here's

what we're covering today. The future of private spaceflight, plus a very rare green

comet appears in the night skies. But first, the US worries over Israel's democracy. That's

today's one big thing.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Jerusalem yesterday, where he weighed in on

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plans for a judicial overhaul. Blinken urged

the Prime Minister to build a broad consensus before moving ahead on the plan which has caused

mass protests in Israel. Blinken also stressed the need for calm after days of deadly violence

between Israelis and Palestinians. For more on what's unfolding there and the US role,

we're joined by Axios' Barack Reveed. He's actually on the road reporting in Jerusalem.

Barack, can you remind us what Netanyahu has been doing to the judicial system in Israel?

Hi, Nyla. Well, I think that what we've seen here is a blitz of proposed legislation

that is basically aimed at weakening the Supreme Court and the judicial system more broadly.

And it was expected, but I think no one expected that it would happen so fast and in such a

strong and brutal way. And even though those are just proposals for now and the legislation

is just being discussed right now in the Knesset in the Israeli parliament, it is very clear

that Netanyahu and his coalition want to push this in a very, very short order.

So can you share what Blinken said and why the US is weighing in now?

Until three weeks ago, this issue wasn't even on the radar of the Biden administration.

I think that many, many US officials wanted to sidestep this issue not to weigh in and

not to get involved hoping that somehow it will go away.

But I think that as time passed and hundreds of thousands of Israelis went to demonstrate

...