Last Call For It's A Gas Gas Gas, Con't

The hard reality of the economic cost of world politics is hitting home at the pump.

U.S. gasoline prices at the pump jumped 11% over the past week to the highest since late July 2008 as global sanctions cripple Russia's ability to export crude oil after its invasion of Ukraine, automobile club AAA said on Sunday.

AAA said average U.S. regular grade gasoline prices hit $4.009 per gallon on Sunday, up 11% from $3.604 a week ago and up 45% from $2.760 a year ago.

The automobile club, which has data going back to 2000, said U.S. retail gasoline prices hit a record $4.114 a gallon on July 17, 2008, which was around the same time U.S. crude futures soared to a record $147.27 a barrel.

The most expensive gas in the country is in California at $5.288 a gallon, followed by Hawaii ($4.695), Nevada ($4.526) and Oregon ($4.466), according to AAA.

U.S. gasoline futures , meanwhile, soared to a record $3.890 per gallon on Sunday.

Gasoline price provider GasBuddy said the average price of U.S. gasoline spiked nearly 41 cents per gallon, topping $4 for the first time in almost 14 years, and stands just 10 cents below the all-time record of $4.103 per gallon.

GasBuddy said that weekly increase was the second largest ever, following a jump of 49 cents per gallon during the week of Sept. 3, 2005, after Hurricane Katrina tore through the U.S. Gulf Coast.

"Increasing oil prices continue to play a leading role in pushing prices higher," AAA said in a release, noting "pump prices will likely continue to rise as crude prices continue to climb."

U.S. crude futures soared more than 12% to $130.50 per barrel late Sunday, their highest since July 2008, as the United States and its European allies consider banning imports of Russian oil. read more

 

Gas prices around here went from $3.29 to $3.69 this week.  I expect it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better in the weeks and months ahead, too. The Biden administration is already reaching out to OPEC, who admittedly, would like to cash in on oil prices spiking to record levels.

President Biden’s advisers are discussing a possible visit to Saudi Arabia this spring to help repair relations and convince the Kingdom to pump more oil, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: A hat-in-hand trip would illustrate the gravity of the global energy crisis driven by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Biden has chastised Saudi Arabia, and the CIA believes its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was involved in the dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. 

The possibility also shows how Russia's invasion is scrambling world's alliances, forcing the U.S. to reorder its priorities — and potentially recalibrating its emphasis on human rights. 

Biden officials are in Venezuela this weekend to meet with the government of President Nicolás Maduro. Some Republicans and Democrats in Washington suggest Venezuela's oil could replace Russia's, according to the New York Times. 

Any visit to the Persian Gulf would come amid a busy presidential travel schedule during the next few months. 

Biden will likely take trips to Japan, Spain, Germany and, potentially, Israel, Axios has also learned.

 

THat's right, the Biden administration is cozying up to the regimes in both Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, who frankly want to money but would also love to tell Biden to go screw himself.  

Morals take a backseat to realpolitik, and I've run this blog long enough to more than accept that there are time where that will happen.

We'll see how this shakes out, but if this is Biden's Plan A, you probably don't want to know the political fallout of Plans B through whatever.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

Texas's unconstitutional abortion "bounty" laws remain in effect pending the Supreme Court's upcoming decision later this spring, and as such we have data on how women in the state are dealing with getting the healthcare they need, either through medication-induced abortion or by going elsewhere.

In the months after Texas banned all but the earliest abortions in September, the number of legal abortions in the state fell by about half. But two new studies suggest the total number among Texas women fell by far less — around 10 percent — because of large increases in the number of Texans who traveled to a clinic in a nearby state or ordered abortion pills online.

Two groups of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin counted the number of women using these alternative options. They found that while the Texas law — which prohibits abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be detected, or around six weeks — lowered the number of abortions, it did so much more modestly than earlier measurements suggested.

Combined, the data points to what may happen to abortion access if the Supreme Court decides to overturn Roe v. Wade when it rules on another abortion law this summer. The data shows the limitations of laws restricting abortion. Yet it also shows how restrictions erect significant obstacles, which will cause some women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.

“The law has not done anything to change people’s need for abortion care; it has shifted where people are getting their abortion,” said Kari White, principal investigator of the university’s Texas Policy Evaluation Project and the lead researcher on the new out-of-state abortion study. She expressed surprise at how few abortions were prevented by such a sweeping set of restrictions: “The numbers are way bigger than we expected. It’s pretty astounding.”

But for the architects of the Texas law, even a modest reduction in abortions is a success.

“There’s no hesitation from our side to declare this a victory for actually protecting pre-born children from elective abortion,” said John Seago, the legislative director of Texas Right to Life, who was involved in the creation of the law. “We’re realists around here, so the best we can do is incentivize women to have their children.”

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who said the bill “ensures that the life of every unborn child who has a heartbeat will be saved from the ravages of abortion” when he signed it, declined to comment on the new numbers.

As state legislatures await a Supreme Court ruling and take stock of the Texas experience this year, several have passed new abortion restrictions, even if they conflict with Roe. On Thursday night, the Florida Legislature voted to ban most abortions after 15 weeks. Somewhere between 21 and 26 states are expected to ban or substantially restrict abortion if the Supreme Court permits it. On Monday, an effort by Senate Democrats to codify abortion rights into federal law failed to attract enough votes.

Each month in the period between September 2021, when the Texas law went into effect, and the end of the year, an average of 1,400 women went to one of seven nearby states, according to one of the new studies, released Sunday. That was 12 times as many as typically sought abortions out of state before the law.

The study included seven nearby states: New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi and Colorado. Nearly half of Texans who traveled went to Oklahoma, and a quarter to New Mexico. It counted Texans who visited 34 of 44 clinics, so the total was probably higher.

An average of 1,100 women ordered abortion pills online each month from Aid Access, an overseas service that sends pills in the mail while sidestepping U.S. abortion restrictions, by connecting women with European doctors and Indian pharmacies. That is more than triple the number who ordered pills in an average month before the law, according to the second study, published last week in JAMA Network Open.

Before, there was an average of 11 requests a day. Immediately after, that spiked to 138 requests a day, and has leveled out at about 30. The study could not determine if all medication requests resulted in abortions.

“The law is semi-effective; it will not stop all abortions,” said Abigail R.A. Aiken, an author of the study, who teaches public affairs and leads a research group studying self-managed abortion at the University of Texas at Austin.

Those who were unable to get abortions are most likely to be poor, a variety of research has found. It’s expensive to travel to another state and pay for transportation, child care and lodging in addition to the procedure.

 

It's that last paragraph that's the key. Those who can afford it will get abortion as health care. Those who can't will have to either bear the child, or turn to other means. It's these other means that Texas and other red states will target next, including making crossing state lines to get an abortion illegal, as well as outlawing abortion pills.

Should SCOTUS allow states to make their own laws, abortion is restricted severely. Should SCOTUS allow states to outlaw legal abortion entirely, the same thing results. Tens of millions of women will effectively not be able to get safe, effective abortion as health care.

This was always where the Road to Gilead was taking us next.

Sunday Long Read: Bragging Wrongs

In an update, and correction, of my post last month about how the Manhattan DA's criminal case against Donald Trump fell to ashes, the NY Times reports in our Sunday Long Read the detailed story of how DA Alvin Bragg became convinced that charging Trump would lead to an unwinnable trial.

On a late January afternoon, two senior prosecutors stood before the new Manhattan district attorney, hoping to persuade him to criminally charge the former president of the United States.

The prosecutors, Mark F. Pomerantz and Carey R. Dunne, detailed their strategy for proving that Donald J. Trump knew his annual financial statements were works of fiction. Time was running out: The grand jury hearing evidence against Mr. Trump was set to expire in the spring. They needed the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, to decide whether to seek charges.

But Mr. Bragg and his senior aides, masked and gathered around a conference table on the eighth floor of the district attorney’s office in Lower Manhattan, had serious doubts. They hammered Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne about whether they could show that Mr. Trump had intended to break the law by inflating the value of his assets in the annual statements, a necessary element to prove the case.

The questioning was so intense that as the meeting ended, Mr. Dunne, exasperated, used a lawyerly expression that normally refers to a judge’s fiery questioning:

“Wow, this was a really hot bench,” Mr. Dunne said, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. “What I’m hearing is you have great concerns.”

The meeting, on Jan. 24, started a series of events that brought the investigation of Mr. Trump to a sudden halt, and late last month prompted Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne to resign. It also represented a drastic shift: Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., had deliberated for months before deciding to move toward an indictment of Mr. Trump. Mr. Bragg, not two months into his tenure, reversed that decision.

Mr. Bragg has maintained that the three-year inquiry is continuing. But the reversal, for now, has eliminated one of the gravest legal threats facing the former president.

This account of the investigation’s unraveling, drawn from interviews with more than a dozen people knowledgeable about the events, pulls back a curtain on one of the most consequential prosecutorial decisions in U.S. history. Had the district attorney’s office secured an indictment, Mr. Trump would have been the first current or former president to be criminally charged.

Mr. Bragg was not the only one to question the strength of the case, the interviews show. Late last year, three career prosecutors in the district attorney’s office opted to leave the investigation, uncomfortable with the speed at which it was proceeding and with what they maintained were gaps in the evidence. The tension spilled into the new administration, with some career prosecutors raising concerns directly to the new district attorney’s team.

Mr. Bragg, whose office is conducting the investigation along with lawyers working for New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, had not taken issue with Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz presenting evidence to the grand jury in his first days as district attorney. But as the weeks passed, he developed concerns about the challenge of showing Mr. Trump’s intent — a requirement for proving that he criminally falsified his business records — and about the risks of relying on the former president’s onetime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, as a key witness.

This is why the civil case that state AG Tish James is proceeding. The burden of proof is much lower than in a criminal case, and James's case has much more believable witnesses, depositions, and evidence. Trump was never going to be charged with criminal wrongdoing in a state corporate tax fraud trial. In the civil case, James can recoup the lost tax revenue and levy penalties and fines, but that's about it.

The problem is that both of the prosecutors who resigned say the case was solid enough to go to trial. Bragg's decision to not do so is very much a political one, and I don't like it.

Criminal charges are going to have to come from Merrick Garland, and frankly, he has the same problem that Bragg does: being able to prove Trump's actions as criminal beyond a reasonable doubt, much less bringing a trial to a jury without absolute bloody chaos dogging the proceedings every step of the way.

Or worse.

Last Call For Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Sure was nice of not one, but two GOP senators trying to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy killed by sharing pictures of a closed online address by the leader to Congress over social media, pictures that almost certainly gave his location right to the Russian hit squads hunting him and his family down.

Two Republican senators are facing criticism after tweeting photos of a video call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy even though participating lawmakers were told to not share pictures on social media while it was in progress.

Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Steve Daines of Montana posted pictures of Zelenskyy on their Twitter accounts during the Zoom meeting Saturday morning, writing that they were on a call with him.

Democratic Reps. Dean Phillips of Minnesota and Jason Crow of Colorado criticized the senators on Twitter.

Phillips noted that the "Ukrainian ambassador very intentionally asked each of us on the Zoom to NOT share anything on social media during the meeting to protect the security of President Zelenskyy."

"Appalling and reckless ignorance by two U.S. Senators," Phillips wrote.

"The lack of discipline in Congress is truly astounding," Crow wrote. "If an embattled wartime leader asks you to keep quiet about a meeting, you better keep quiet about the meeting. I’m not saying a damn thing. Lives are at stake."

Members were explicitly asked not to tweet or post pictures of the call while it was in progress, multiple aides told NBC News. The embassy coordinated this with the offices of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as well as the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, said a Democratic leadership aide.

In separate statements, representatives for Rubio and Daines defended the senators' decision to share the photos, calling those who make an issue out of their tweets a "partisan."

"There were over 160 members of Congress on a widely reported Zoom call. There was no identifying information of any kind," said a spokesperson for Rubio.

A spokesperson for Daines said his tweet, which was posted about 23 minutes after the meeting started, was "shared well into the call ... before it was requested not to" and contained "no identifying information."

They were told not to do it, they did it anyway, they don't apologize for it, and they don't care one whit that they potentially put Zelenskyy's life and family at risk, but sure. Rubio is an attention-starved toddler, but Daines should know better, having worked for Proctor & Gamble in China for more than five years. Guy should know something about operational security.

 

The larger point is they don't care about keeping information safe. That's a running theme with these jagoffs.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Turns out the Russians just happen to have been holding WNBA superstar center Britney Griner of the Phoenix Mercury for the last several days (if not weeks) on drug charges, and are now saying it would a shame if she was found guilty of drug smuggling.

The Russian Federal Customs Service said Saturday that its officials had detained an American basketball player after finding vape cartridges that contained hashish oil in her luggage at the Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow.

The Customs Service said in a statement that the player had won two Olympic gold medals with the United States, but it did not release the player’s name. The Russian news agency TASS, citing a law enforcement source, identified the player as Brittney Griner, a seven-time W.N.B.A. All-Star center for the Phoenix Mercury. Griner, 31, won gold medals with the U.S. women’s national basketball team in 2021 and 2016.

The Customs Service released a video of a traveler at the airport who appeared to be Griner, wearing a mask and black sweatshirt, going through security. The video showed an individual removing a package from the traveler’s bag.

The screening at the airport occurred in February, according to the Customs Service, raising the possibility that Griner has been in custody for at least several days.

According to the statement, a criminal case has been opened into the large-scale transportation of drugs, which can carry a sentence of up to 10 years behind bars in Russia. The basketball player was taken into custody while the investigation was ongoing, the officials said.

In a statement, Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, said: “We are aware of the situation with Brittney Griner in Russia and are in close contact with her, her legal representation in Russia, her family, her teams, and the W.N.B.A. and N.B.A.

“As this is an ongoing legal matter, we are not able to comment further on the specifics of her case but can confirm that as we work to get her home, her mental and physical health remain our primary concern.”

The W.N.B.A. said in a statement that Griner “has the W.N.B.A.’s full support and our main priority is her swift and safe return to the United States.”

The Phoenix Mercury, USA Basketball, which oversees the Olympics teams, and the W.N.B.A. players’ union also released statements expressing support for Griner.

The detainment comes amid the escalating conflict created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and high tensions between Russia and the United States. In recent years, Russia has been detaining and sentencing American citizens on what United States officials often say are trumped-up charges. The arrest of a high-profile American could be seen as Russia’s attempting to create leverage for a potential prisoner exchange with the American government or a reduction in sanctions related to the invasion.

Many W.N.B.A. players compete in Russia, where salaries are more lucrative, during the American league’s off-season. Griner has played for the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg for several years.

Griner is set to earn $227,900 with the Mercury in the 2022 season, according to Her Hoop Stats, just shy of the W.N.B.A.’s maximum salary, $228,094. Some players have made substantially more money with Russian teams, like Griner’s Mercury teammate Diana Taurasi, who reports said earned around $1.5 million with UMMC Ekaterinburg in 2015.

Some American players began making plans to leave Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine, and a W.N.B.A. spokeswoman said on Saturday that all W.N.B.A. players besides Griner were out of Russia and Ukraine.

The Russians are making it very clear that while Griner is the only WNBA player being held, the rest of the league and American athletes in general are persona non grata, and you know they are implying, as the NY Times does, that Griner wouldn't be in this situation if she could make real money here in the States and didn't have to rely on off-season paychecks.

See how awful late-stage capitalism is, compared to, you know, holding Black female athletes as political prisoners, right?

Orange Meltdown, Con't

According to former Trump national security hand John Bolton's mustache, Trump was very serious about withdrawing from NATO, was actually going to do it in 2018, and when Trump pulled back at the ast moment, he expected he would be able to make leaving the treaty one of the first acts of his second term.

Former national security adviser John Bolton said on Friday that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin was “waiting” for a possible United States withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), claiming former President Trump would have likely made such a move had he been reelected.

Bolton, during a Washington Post Live event, was asked about his memoir, in which he claimed that Trump wanted to leave the military alliance in 2018. The newspaper’s Opinions Editor-at-Large Michael Duffy asked him how close Trump was to withdrawing the United States from NATO.

“Yeah, I had my heart in my throat at that NATO meeting. I didn't know what the president would do. He called me up to his seat seconds before he gave his speech. And I said, 'Look, go right up to the line, but don't go over it',” Bolton replied.

“I sat back down, I had no idea what he’d do. I thought he’d put his foot over it, but at least he didn't withdraw then," he continued. "In a second Trump term, I think he may well have withdrawn from NATO, and I think Putin was waiting for that."

Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for Trump, knocked Bolton’s comments.

"John Bolton is only happy when America is at war. President Trump led America into one of the most peaceful times in U.S. history, which included growing investment into NATO by $50 billion," he said in a statement. "John Bolton is just mad he was fired before it could be spent."

 

As with everything involving Trump and his cadre of crooks, take this with an entire salt mine.

 

Trump is scrambling to make everyone forget that he was very happy to abandon Europe to his friend Vladimir Putin, and Bolton has a career to salvage so that he can play a role in the next non-Trump GOP administration. 

Both are liars who should be in prison.

Jobapalooza, Con't

The Biden Boom rocketed along with another two-thirds of a million jobs added last month, and another 100,000 jobs added in upwards revisions in January and December's numbers.

Job growth accelerated in February for a U.S. economy wrestling with swelling prices, the potential for higher interest rates and intensifying geopolitical problems.

Nonfarm payrolls for the month grew by 678,000 and the unemployment rate was 3.8%, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

That compared to estimates of 440,000 for payrolls and 3.9% for the jobless rate.

In a sign that inflation could be cooling, wages barely rose for the month, up just 1 cent an hour or 0.03%, compared to estimates for a 0.5% gain. The year-over-year increase was 5.13%, well below the 5.8% Dow Jones estimate.

For the labor market broadly, the report brought the level of employed Americans closer to pre-pandemic levels, though still short by 1.14 million. Labor shortages remain a major obstacle to fill the 10.9 million jobs that were open at the end of 2021, a historically high gap that had left about 1.7 vacancies per available workers.

As has been the case for much of the pandemic era, leisure and hospitality led job gains, adding 179,000 for the month. The job gap for that sector, which was hit most by government-imposed restrictions, is 1.5 million from pre-Covid levels.

Other sectors showing strong gains included professional and business services (95,000), Health care (64,000), construction (60,000), transportation and warehousing (48,000) and retail (37,000). Manufacturing contributed 36,000 and financial activities rose 35,000.

Previous months saw upward revisions. December moved up to 588,000, an increase of 78,000 from the previous estimate, while January’s rose to 481,000. Together, the revisions added 92,000 more than previously recorded and brought the three-month average to 582,000.

The trend for jobs is clearly upward after a wintertime surge of omicron cases, while exacting a large human toll, left little imprint on employment.

The economy also has been wrestling with pernicious inflation pressures running at their highest levels since the early 1980s stagflation days. The Labor Department’s main inflation gauge showed consumer prices rising at a 7.5% clip in January, a number that is expected to climb to close to 8% when February’s report is released next week.

Amid it all, companies continue to hire, filling broad gaps still left in the leisure and hospitality sector as well as multiple other pandemic-struck industries.

 

We still have several million jobs to go to get back to pre-pandemic levels, but we're 750,000 jobs closer than we were last month. 

The bad news is that here on out, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is now a major issue and will be for a very, very long time. How that will affect the U.S. economy is anyone's guess, but if the Fed starts tightening the screws to kill inflation as I expect they will later this month, you can kiss the Biden Boom goodbye.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

We've reached the "Russian military forces wouldn't shell Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine, would they?" phase of the invasion and I'm just exhausted.

Russian invasion forces seized Europe's biggest nuclear power on Friday in heavy fighting in southeastern Ukraine, triggering global alarm, but a huge blaze in a training building has been extinguished and officials said the facility was now safe.

Combat raged elsewhere in Ukraine as Russian forces surrounded several cities in the second week of the assault launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A presidential advisor said an advance had been halted on the southern city of Mykolayiv after local authorities said Russian troops had entered it. If captured, the city of 500,000 people would be the biggest yet to fall.

The capital Kyiv, in the path of a huge Russian armoured column that has been stalled on a road for days, came under renewed attack, with air raid sirens blaring in the morning and explosions audible from the city centre.

The fire at a training building at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant sent global stock markets plunging.

Although the plant was now said to be safe and the fire out, officials remained worried about the precarious circumstances, with Ukrainian staff operating under Russian control in battlefield conditions beyond the reach of administrators.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Raphael Grossi described the situation as "normal operations, but in fact there is nothing normal about this".

He paid homage to the plant's Ukrainian staff: "to their bravery, to their courage, to their resilience because they are doing this in very difficult circumstances."

Grossi said the plant was undamaged from what he believed was a Russian projectile. Only one reactor was working, at around 60% of capacity. He was trying to contact Russian and Ukrainian officials to sort out political responsibility.

An official at Energoatom, the Ukrainian state nuclear plant operator, said there was no further fighting and radiation was normal, but his organisation no longer had contact with the plant's management or control over potentially dangerous nuclear material.

"Personnel are on their working places providing normal operation of the station," the official told Reuters.

 

Needless to say, sentences like "Russian forces have captured Europe's largest nuclear plant" have put the world on a knife's edge.

The office of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he will seek an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting after Russian troops in Ukraine attacked a nuclear power plant and sparked a fire.

Johnson’s office says he spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the early hours of the morning. He says Britain will raise the issue immediately with Russia and close partners.

Johnson’s office says he and Zelenskyy agree Russia must immediately cease attacking and allow emergency services unfettered access to the plant. The two agree a ceasefire is essential.

“The Prime Minister said the reckless actions of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin could now directly threaten the safety of all of Europe,” Johnson’s office said in a statement. “He said (the United Kingdom) would do everything it could to ensure the situation did not deteriorate further.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he also spoke with Zelenskyy about the attacks on the power plant.

 

I understand that it's not, say, St. Louis that's going to be rendered into a nuclear wasteland if things go badly, but yeah, if this is the Russians provoking a NATO fight, it's going to work. 

 

In which case, it's not St. Louis yet. 

In all seriousness though, unless there's a major shift in force posture by NATO to defend Ukraine, the government will fall, be replaced by Russian stooges, and the country's military will shift into insurgency. Let's not sugar-coat this. NATO has already ruled out a no-fly zone, but honestly, what makes anyone think Putin won't go for NATO bases in a member country like Romania, Hungary, Slovaka, the Baltics, or even Poland?

What would NATO and President Biden do then?

That's the big question, isn't it?

Last Call For Ridin' With Biden, Con't

President Joe Biden is absolutely on the right side of history when it comes to defending trans kids from Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbot's blood hunt.

President Joe Biden put Texas officials “on notice” in a strongly worded statement Wednesday, calling recent investigations into the families of transgender youth “discriminatory actions” that “put children’s lives at risk.”

The statement, which was released alongside a list of actions that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it would take to protect trans youth and their families in Texas, was the first time Biden directly addressed a recent directive from Gov. Greg Abbott that calls on the general public and “licensed professionals” to report the parents of trans minors if it appears the children are receiving gender-affirming medical care.

The directive also ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the state’s child protective services agency, to investigate such claims.

Civil rights groups intervened, filing a lawsuit Tuesday after the department opened an investigation last week into one of its own employees who has a transgender child. On Wednesday evening, hours before Biden’s statement, a judge temporarily blocked the state’s investigation into that family, but other similar investigations were unaffected.

Abbott has not returned a request for comment regarding the lawsuit or Biden’s statement, and the Department of Family and Protective Services declined to comment.

In his statement, Biden called Abbott’s directive “government overreach at its worst.” He said that his administration is putting “the state of Texas on notice that their discriminatory actions” risk children’s lives.

“These announcements make clear that rather than weaponizing child protective services against loving families, child welfare agencies should instead expand access to gender-affirming care for transgender children,” he said.

He added that children, their parents and their doctors should “have the freedom to make the medical decisions that are best for each young person — without politicians getting the way.”

“Transgender children bring fulfillment to their parents, joy to their friends, and are made in the image of God,” he said. “Affirming a transgender child’s identity is one of the best things a parent, teacher, or doctor can do to help keep children from harm, and parents who love and affirm their children should be applauded and supported, not threatened, investigated, or stigmatized.”

In a separate statement Wednesday, U.S. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra called the Texas government’s actions “discriminatory and unconscionable.” He urged any individual or family who is targeted by a child welfare investigation due to the governor’s directive to contact the Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights, which enforces civil rights laws that protect people from health care discrimination.

“HHS will take immediate action if needed,” he said. “I know that many youth and their supportive families are feeling scared and isolated because of these attacks. HHS is closely monitoring the situation in Texas, and will use every tool at our disposal to keep Texans safe.”

Becerra’s announcement revealed that the department released guidance to state child welfare agencies that “makes it clear that states should use their child welfare systems to advance safety and support for LGBTQI+ youth, which importantly can include access to gender affirming care” and guidance on patient privacy, which states that, despite the governor’s order, “health care providers are not required to disclose private patient information related to gender affirming care.” His announcement also outlined that denying health care based on gender identity and restricting medical professionals from providing such care due to gender identity are both illegal.

The Biden administration’s announcement has brought welcome relief for the parents of transgender children in Texas, who said the governor’s directive caused fear and anxiety for their families.

 

If you want to know why Republicans and the Roberts Court are doing everything they can to destroy federal protections for civil rights, voting rights, and human rights by "returning powers to the states" this is exactly why. Neutering federal protections means your rights are solely defined by the state you live in, and if you're one of those people, you become a target for the coercive and carceral power of that state.

The reason why it's called eliminationist rhetoric is simply because given this type of power, Republicans show time and again the fervent desire to use it to eliminate entire groups of people as Americans with rights, to criminalize the "other" and to throw them in jail or worse.

Abbott directed Texas child services to investigate the parents of trans kids for felony child abuse. It will not stop there if Republican get more power, and Democratic administrations are increasingly hamstrung.

The entire point is to make rights dependent on where you live in the country, and to force those who do not qualify into a life of criminal servitude. It's fascism 101, folks.

 

Republicans want this power and will never give it up without force, and they've been itching for that fight for decades.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorist Problem, Con't

The January 6th terrorist attack on the US Capitol is officially sedition, folks.

 

Joshua James, one of the 11 Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy alongside the group’s founder Stewart Rhodes, appears poised to plead guilty Wednesday afternoon, a major development in the most serious criminal case to emerge from the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

James was a member of the Oath Keeper’s leadership who repeatedly messaged with other Oath Keepers about planning for Jan. 6. Prosecutors say he breached the Capitol’s rotunda doors along with other Oath Keepers in the early part of the mob assault on the building.

The indictment against Rhodes and the others indicated that James described a massive arsenal of weaponry that the group had “on standby” in case violence escalated. Prosecutors have accused the Oath Keepers of stockpiling weapons at a Comfort Inn in Arlington, Va., though they never ultimately deployed it.

James was one of the Oath Keepers who was seen riding in golf carts from the group’s D.C. hotel to the Capitol, breaching the building about 30 minutes after a first wave of Oath Keepers also charged in the attack.

“While entering the Capitol building, JAMES and [Oath Keepr Roberto] MINUTA pushed past Capitol Police officers who placed their hands on JAMES and MINUTA in unsuccessful attempts to stop them from advancing toward the Rotunda,” prosecutors alleged in the indictment.

It’s unclear what the broader impact of James’ plea agreement will be, but other plea agreements from Jan. 6 defendants have typically included agreements to cooperate with federal prosecutors. Cooperation by James could provide prosecutors with valuable insight about the planning and mindset of those organizing the attack.

In addition to the 11 charged with seditious conspiracy, another nine Oath Keepers are facing obstruction charges for breaching the building along with their associates. The charges facing the group are the most serious to emerge from the attack on the Capitol.

 

Repeat after me:

 

Donald Trump orchestrated a terrorist attack as cover for a palace coup, and he would have gotten away with it if his minions had executed their plan more effectively.

 

It was an armed attempt to overthrow the government, and more importantly, as the January 6th committee filed in federal court yesterday, Donald Trump was materially involved.

The Jan. 6 select committee says its evidence has shown that then-President Donald Trump and his campaign tried to illegally obstruct Congress’ counting of electoral votes and “engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.”

In a major release of its findings, filed in federal court late Wednesday, the committee suggested its evidence supported findings that Trump himself violated multiple laws by attempting to prevent Congress from certifying his defeat.

“The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” the committee wrote in a filing submitted in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.

In a major release of the panel’s findings, including excerpts of nearly a dozen depositions from top aides to Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence, the committee described a president who had been informed repeatedly that he lost the election and that his claims of fraud were unfounded — only to reject them and continue to mislead the American public.

He then pushed top advisers to continue strategizing ways to overturn the election results.

 

They tried to steal the election, folks. 

One final note from Marcy Wheeler:

The most important detail from his statement of offense, as I heard it, is they had a plan to surround the White House, with arms, to ensure no one got to Trump.

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) March 2, 2022

 

At this point, the damage to the country from not charging Trump with federal crimes will exceed the backlash from his cultists.

 

 

Up to you, Merrick Garland.

The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

President Manchin lays out the Build Back Better bill that he "wants", and that he won't actually accept because he's been operating in bad faith for nearly a year now, and surprise, it's a much, much smaller bill than what Biden proposed in December.

 

Hours after President Joe Biden laid out what he hopes to salvage from Democrats’ defunct “Build Back Better” social spending plan, Joe Manchin is quickly assembling his counteroffer.

In a Wednesday afternoon interview, the West Virginia centrist laid out a basic party-line package that could win his vote, lower the deficit and enact some new programs, provided they are permanently funded. It may be Democrats’ best and last chance to get at least some of their biggest domestic priorities done before the midterm elections, but would require everyone in the party — particularly liberals — to concede that what’s possible doesn’t come close to the $1.7 trillion package Manchin spurned in December.

Manchin said that if Democrats want to cut a deal on a party-line bill using the budget process to circumvent a Republican filibuster, they need to start with prescription drug savings and tax reform. He envisions whatever revenue they can wring out of that as split evenly between reducing the federal deficit and inflation, on the one hand, and enacting new climate and social programs, on the other — “to the point where it’s sustainable.”

“If you do that, the revenue producing [measures] would be taxes and drugs. The spending is going to be climate,” Manchin said.

“And the social issues, we basically have to deal with those” afterward, he added.

Though he prefers everything in Congress to be bipartisan, Manchin said he has “come to that conclusion” that changing the tax code to make the rich and corporations pay their fair sure can only be done with Democratic votes. As far as whether he thinks his party finally understands his parameters for joining the talks, he said that Democrats “know where I am. They just basically think that I’m going to change.”

Biden’s State of the Union address called for congressional action on some of the individual portions of the wide-ranging social spending measure that the House passed last year, including drug pricing, child care, tax hikes on the wealthy and climate change. The momentum that Democrats had mustered for their trillion-dollar-plus proposal has mostly evaporated, and some lawmakers are increasingly open to slimmed-down legislation or even standalone bills to address their policy priorities.

And while Manchin said no “formal” talks are happening with the White House, there’s “informal back-and-forth.” He declined to say if he’s spoken to Biden recently about it: “Different White House people reach out, and we talk from time to time.”

 

What Manchin means by "dealing with social issues afterward" is "not at all in this bill, take what I allow you to have and be grateful because you won't get a single Republican vote for it." Then when progressives point out Manchin is being an asshole, he'll leave the table.

 

As I've been saying for months now, Manchin doesn't hold every single card, but he's willing to play every card that he does have, and he remains 100% in control of the process as a direct result. He wins because he lays out what he'll "accept", then refuses to actually do so because he knows he can get away with bad faith negotiations, then shuts down negotiations for a period, then moves the goalposts to a new, much smaller bill.

We'll see what that means, as if the legislation doesn't pass by Labor Day, it's almost certainly done for another decade or two.

Last Call For Biden Goes Viral, Con't

Part of President Biden's State of the Union speech last night was dedicated to the White House's plan on COVID-19 moving forward, and that plan, unlike the Trump "plan" of "deal with it" is "we now have the weapons to fight the virus and we're going to use them".

The White House on Wednesday unveiled a plan to move the nation to a new stage of the pandemic where Covid-19 "does not disrupt our daily lives," while also preparing the nation for any new variants that may emerge.  

The National Covid-19 Preparedness Plan, which will require additional funding from Congress, is focused on spending on treatments for Covid-19, preparing for new variants, keeping schools and businesses open and continuing the effort to vaccinate the nation and the world. 

"Vaccines, treatments, tests, masks -- these tools are how we continue to protect people and enable us to move forward safely and get back to our more normal routines. Going out to eat at a restaurant, taking that trip that's been long delayed, arranging a play date for your kids, attending a sports game, a movie or a concert again," White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters at a White House briefing. 

A major new part of the plan includes a new "Test to Treat" initiative that President Joe Biden announced during his State of the Union address Tuesday night. He said Americans would be able to get tested for Covid-19 at a pharmacy and receive free antiviral pills "on the spot" if they test positive.  

Zients said hundreds of these "One-Stop Test to Treat" locations will open across the country this month. These sites will be at pharmacy-based clinics, community health centers, long-term care facilities and US Department of Veterans Affairs facilities across the country. 

Pfizer's antiviral pill, Paxlovid, has been shown to significantly reduce hospitalizations and severe illness and was authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration last year. Upon its authorization, Biden announced a purchase of 10 million courses. The President has since said the federal government will double its order from 10 million to 20 million treatment courses.  

Zients said Americans who have already received free at-home Covid-19 tests that they ordered through COVIDtests.gov will be able to place a second order starting next week. He said the administration will continue to make hundreds of millions of high-quality masks available to Americans at pharmacies, grocery stores and community health centers across the country. 

The administration will launch a website later this month, Zients said, to help Americans locate vaccines and masks at convenient locations. 

"This plan lays out the roadmap to help us fight Covid-19 in the future as we move America from crisis to a time when Covid-19 does not disrupt our daily lives and is something we prevent, protect against and treat," a summary of the plan shared with CNN reads. 

"We look to a future when Americans no longer fear lockdowns, shutdowns, and our kids not going to school. It's a future when the country relies on the powerful layers of protection we have built and invests in the next generation of tools to stay ahead of this virus." 

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told reporters that the administration has distributed more than 270 million N95 masks to local pharmacies and community health centers and that 70 million households have received rapid at-home Covid-19 tests.

 

It's a good start to a plan, but Biden completely fails to address three huge problems:

 

First, the one-quarter to one-third of American adults who still refuse vaccinations aren't going to give a damn about tests, antiviral treatments, N95 masks, or anything. That guaranteed tens of millions of Americans as a fertile ground for further mutations of COVID-19 well past Omicron.

 

Second, immune system compromised Americans who can't vaccinate will still face a populace where COVID is rampant, continuous, and a threat.

Third, the rampant mutations could very well lead to a super-strain of COVID that is not affected by our current arsenal, and all of this goes back to the dumbasses who refuse the damn vaccine.

Still, Katie Mack is right.

Depressing to see Covid denial follow exactly the same trajectory as climate denial:
> It’s not real
> It’s real but not bad
> It’s real & bad but there’s nothing we can do
> We could do something but it would inconvenience us (& mostly help the more vulnerable) so not worth it

— Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) February 28, 2022

 

We're definitely into phase four here, moving on from a preventable disease that killed roughly 60,000 Americans in February. We're still in the part where we're averaging 2,000 dead per day.

 

COVID death denial is like climate denial at this point, she absolutely right.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The White House is considering sanctioning Russian oil exports over Ukraine as part of the snowballing sanctions by the US and EU.

 

The possibility of the US sanctioning Russian oil exports is "still on the table" as President Joe Biden looks for more ways to punish the country for its invasion of Ukraine, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday. 

Taking such a step would be an extraordinary measure that could have an intense effect on domestic gas prices, however, and Psaki made clear that the White House's top priority is to minimize the impact at home. 

"What (Biden) does not want to do is topple the global oil markets or the global marketplace or impact the American people more with higher energy and gas prices," Psaki told CNN's John Berman on "New Day." 

"That's something we heavily weigh. It's still on the table. It's not off the table. But again, that's how the President looks at this as we're announcing and pursuing additional steps," she added. 

The US has already announced a slew of sanctions against Russia and President Vladimir Putin since the country's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine last week. But the unprecedented step of sanctioning its oil experts would likely send prices skyrocketing, dealing a painful blow to consumers around the world as Russia is the world's No. 2 oil producer. 

Though the US consumes very little Russian oil -- oil imports from Russia stood at just 90,000 barrels per day in December -- the interconnected global market means supply shocks in one part of the world can impact prices everywhere.

 

However, that 90,000 barrels per day is almost certainly going to be blocked by Congress whether Biden wants it or not.

U.S Senator Joe Manchin is calling for President Joe Biden to halt oil imports from Russia, following its invasion of Ukraine last week.

The West Virginia Democrat said it was "hypocritical" to ask other countries to, "do what we can do for ourselves."

"If there was ever a time to be energy independent, it is now," Manchin said. "While Americans decry what is happening in Ukraine, the United States continues to allow the import of more than half a million barrels per day of crude oil and other petroleum products from Russia during this time of war."

Manchin has been openly critical of Biden's efforts to scale back U.S. oil production in a bid to address climate change at the same time he has called on OPEC+, of which Russia is a member, to pump more crude to offset recent price increases.

 

Senators ranging from Kansas Republican Roger Marshall to Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey want to ban Russian oil imports, and that seems like a bill that will be on Biden's desk with a veto-proof margin before the end of the month, if not in the next week or two.

 

On the other hand, Biden knows this will drive gas prices higher, especially international sanctions on Russian oil, but the US blocking imports will still force oil higher. It's already at $110 a barrel. It's a trap and Republicans will blame Biden in every commercial from now until November 2024 if he does, even if Republicans are forcing him.

On the gripping hand, of course we're in the middle of a European Land War™ so all bets are off.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

Legislation passed y the House last November to legalize abortion healthcare services in all 50 states was of course killed in the Senate by Republicans, and of course, by Joe Manchin.

 

Republicans on Monday blocked the Senate from taking up sweeping abortion rights legislation as Democrats sought to put lawmakers on the record on the issue in advance of the midterm elections and a coming Supreme Court ruling on access to abortion.

Democrats fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to bring the Women’s Health Protection Act to the floor for consideration after the House last September passed it on a narrow party-line vote. One Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, joined all Republicans in opposition to beginning debate on the measure.

Lawmakers said it was the first time that the Senate had voted on a separate bill to enact the constitutional protections of Roe v. Wade into law. The outcome was anticipated, but Democrats were determined to hold the vote as members of both parties draw battle lines over what is expected to be a major election-year issue. The conservative-dominated Supreme Court is set to rule later this year on a case that could undermine or overturn the landmark abortion decision.

“We want Americans to know where their legislators stand on this important issue,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the No. 3 Democrat and a leading backer of the abortion rights bill.

The measure would codify in federal law abortion rights that have long been protected by the 1973 court ruling. It was pursued by Democrats and abortion rights groups as a way to counter the increasingly severe abortion restrictions being enacted at the state level as well as the prospect of a high court ruling upholding tough new abortion limits in Mississippi and leaving in place a Texas law that has severely limited abortion in that state.

“People are counting on the Senate to do what the Supreme Court will not,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

About two dozen states have readied legislation that would immediately restrict abortion rights if the court upholds the Mississippi law, which bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, about two months earlier than Roe and subsequent decisions allow.

During Supreme Court arguments in December, conservative justices indicated a willingness to scale back, if not undo, the federal abortion protections and leave most of the regulation up to individual states. Democrats say the measure is needed to guarantee that women around the nation have equal access to abortion and to prevent states from imposing restrictions that are not medically necessary as a way to unconstitutionally curtail abortion.

 

So, as with voting rights, Democrats both don't have the votes to change the filibuster, and don't have the then necessary 50 votes to pass the Senate anyway, thanks to the same Dems blocking filibuster reform.

 

By 4th of July, medically safe abortion procedures will be illegal in roughly half of the US. Your rights to your womb will depend entirely on where you live.

 

And I'm pretty sure a large enough percentage of women voters, especially white women, will not give a shit in November that Republicans will control Congress again. (We already know that the vast majority of men won't.) 

I just don't think either letting half the states ban abortion or banning it altogether in the country will create a enough of a backlash against GOP control. If that were true we'd be seeing signs of it now, but I guess joni Mitchell is right. Don't know what you've got til it's gone.

Last Call For Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

I'm definitely not an expert on geopolitics, but I do try to gather as many opinions from the actual experts as I can, and nearly all the Russia experts that I've read have said the same thing: Putin wants to, at the minimum, recreate the Soviet Union. It's humbling that anyone reads my opinions, and I've gotten plenty of stuff wrong in the past, both on my opinions and on material facts that I glossed over (and you, the readers, have definitely called me out on it.)

But one person who has consistently been right about Putin, Russia, and the Ukraine situation now has been former CIA Russia analyst and author Fiona Hill, and if anything, she says that we're vastly underestimating the lengths that Putin will go to when it comes to building a new Russian empire out of the ashes of Europe and Asia in this interview with Politico Senior Editor Maura Johnson.

Maura Reynolds: You’ve been a Putin watcher for a long time, and you’ve written one of the best biographies of Putin. When you’ve been watching him over the past week, what have you been seeing that other people might be missing?

Fiona Hill: Putin is usually more cynical and calculated than he came across in his most recent speeches. There’s evident visceral emotion in things that he said in the past few weeks justifying the war in Ukraine. The pretext is completely flimsy and almost nonsensical for anybody who’s not in the echo chamber or the bubble of propaganda in Russia itself. I mean, demanding to the Ukrainian military that they essentially overthrow their own government or lay down their arms and surrender because they are being commanded by a bunch of drug-addled Nazi fascists? There’s just no sense to that. It beggars the imagination.

Putin doesn’t even seem like he’s trying to make a convincing case. We saw the same thing in the Russian response at the United Nations. The justification has essentially been “what-about-ism”: ‘You guys have been invading Iraq, Afghanistan. Don’t tell me that I can’t do the same thing in Ukraine.”

This visceral emotion is unhealthy and extraordinarily dangerous because there are few checks and balances around Putin. He spotlighted this during the performance of the National Security Council meeting, where it became very clear that this was his decision. He was in a way taking full responsibility for war, and even the heads of his security and intelligence services looked like they’ve been thrown off guard by how fast things were moving.

Reynolds: So Putin is being driven by emotion right now, not by some kind of logical plan?

Hill: I think there’s been a logical, methodical plan that goes back a very long way, at least to 2007 when he put the world, and certainly Europe, on notice that Moscow would not accept the further expansion of NATO. And then within a year in 2008 NATO gave an open door to Georgia and Ukraine. It absolutely goes back to that juncture.

Back then I was a national intelligence officer, and the National Intelligence Council was analyzing what Russia was likely to do in response to the NATO Open Door declaration. One of our assessments was that there was a real, genuine risk of some kind of preemptive Russian military action, not just confined to the annexation of Crimea, but some much larger action taken against Ukraine along with Georgia. And of course, four months after NATO’s Bucharest Summit, there was the invasion of Georgia. There wasn’t an invasion of Ukraine then because the Ukrainian government pulled back from seeking NATO membership. But we should have seriously addressed how we were going to deal with this potential outcome and our relations with Russia.

Reynolds: Do you think Putin’s current goal is reconstituting the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire, or something different?

Hill: It’s reestablishing Russian dominance of what Russia sees as the Russian “Imperium.” I’m saying this very specifically because the lands of the Soviet Union didn’t cover all of the territories that were once part of the Russian Empire. So that should give us pause.

Putin has articulated an idea of there being a “Russky Mir” or a “Russian World.” The recent essay he published about Ukraine and Russia states the Ukrainian and Russian people are “one people,” a “yedinyi narod.” He’s saying Ukrainians and Russians are one and the same. This idea of a Russian World means re-gathering all the Russian-speakers in different places that belonged at some point to the Russian tsardom.

I’ve kind of quipped about this but I also worry about it in all seriousness — that Putin’s been down in the archives of the Kremlin during Covid looking through old maps and treaties and all the different borders that Russia has had over the centuries. He’s said, repeatedly, that Russian and European borders have changed many times. And in his speeches, he’s gone after various former Russian and Soviet leaders, he’s gone after Lenin and he’s gone after the communists, because in his view they ruptured the Russian empire, they lost Russian lands in the revolution, and yes, Stalin brought some of them back into the fold again like the Baltic States and some of the lands of Ukraine that had been divided up during World War II, but they were lost again with the dissolution of the USSR. Putin’s view is that borders change, and so the borders of the old Russian imperium are still in play for Moscow to dominate now.

Reynolds: Dominance in what way?

Hill: It doesn’t mean that he’s going to annex all of them and make them part of the Russian Federation like they’ve done with Crimea. You can establish dominance by marginalizing regional countries, by making sure that their leaders are completely dependent on Moscow, either by Moscow practically appointing them through rigged elections or ensuring they are tethered to Russian economic and political and security networks. You can see this now across the former Soviet space.

We’ve seen pressure being put on Kazakhstan to reorient itself back toward Russia, instead of balancing between Russia and China, and the West. And just a couple of days before the invasion of Ukraine in a little-noticed act, Azerbaijan signed a bilateral military agreement with Russia. This is significant because Azerbaijan’s leader has been resisting this for decades. And we can also see that Russia has made itself the final arbiter of the future relationship between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Georgia has also been marginalized after being a thorn in Russia’s side for decades. And Belarus is now completely subjugated by Moscow.

But amid all this, Ukraine was the country that got away. And what Putin is saying now is that Ukraine doesn’t belong to Ukrainians. It belongs to him and the past. He is going to wipe Ukraine off the map, literally, because it doesn’t belong on his map of the “Russian world.” He’s basically told us that. He might leave behind some rump statelets. When we look at old maps of Europe — probably the maps he’s been looking at — you find all kinds of strange entities, like the Sanjak of Novi Pazar in the Balkans. I used to think, what the hell is that? These are all little places that have dependency on a bigger power and were created to prevent the formation of larger viable states in contested regions. Basically, if Vladimir Putin has his way, Ukraine is not going to exist as the modern-day Ukraine of the last 30 years.

Reynolds: How far into Ukraine do you think Putin is going to go?

Hill: At this juncture, if he can, he’s going to go all the way. Before this last week, he had multiple different options to choose from. He’d given himself the option of being able to go in in full force as he’s doing now, but he could also have focused on retaking the rest of the administrative territories of Donetsk and Luhansk. He could have seized the Sea of Azov, which he’s probably going to do anyway, and then joined up the Donetsk and Luhansk regions with Crimea as well as the lands in between and all the way down to Odessa. In fact, Putin initially tried this in 2014 — to create “Novorossiya,” or “New Russia,” but that failed when local support for joining Russia didn’t materialize.

Now, if he can, he is going to take the whole country. We have to face up to this fact. Although we haven’t seen the full Russian invasion force deployed yet, he’s certainly got the troops to move into the whole country.

 

If you think about it, we're in the same kind of "But he won't go that far, right?" mentality about Putin as a lot of Americans we were about Trump. Trump tried a palace coup, folks. Putin is doing the same thing, only the palace is Eastern Europe and Central Asia. He's already invaded Ukraine, and continues to commit more force to the theater every day.

 

In response, Ukraine has applied to join the European Union in an expedited fashion and President Zelenzskiy is asking the bloc to "prove that you are with us".

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the EU on Tuesday via video link to an emergency session of the European Parliament to "prove that you are with us" in Ukraine's war with Russia, a day after Kyiv officially asked to join the bloc.

European Union lawmakers, many wearing #standwithUkraine T-shirts bearing the Ukrainian flag, others with blue-and-yellow scarves or ribbons, gave Zelenskiy a standing ovation.

"We are fighting to be equal members of Europe," Zelenskiy said in Ukrainian in a speech translated into English by an interpreter who spoke through tears.

"Do prove that you are with us. Do prove that you will not let us go. Do prove that you are indeed Europeans, and then life will win over death and light will win over darkness," he said. "The EU will be much stronger with us."

Zelenskiy has remained in Kyiv to rally his people against the invasion. As he spoke on Tuesday, a Russian armoured column was bearing down on Ukraine's capital. read more

The presidents of eight central and eastern European nations on Monday published an open letter calling for Ukraine to be granted immediate EU candidate status and for the start of formal membership talks. read more

But Ukraine is well aware that any membership process will be long and difficult, even if it manages after the war to avoid falling back under Moscow's domination.

Charles Michel, the chairman of EU leaders, told the EU Parliament after Zelenskiy's speech that the bloc would have to seriously look at Ukraine's "legitimate" request to join.

But he added: "It is going to be difficult, we know there are different views in Europe (about further enlargement)."

According to a draft text they will vote on later on Tuesday, EU lawmakers are expected to brand Russia a "rogue state" and urge member states to agree even tougher sanctions.

The EU has taken unprecedented steps, including financing weapons deliveries to Ukraine, after President Vladimir Putin launched war on Russia's neighbour last week. read more

According to the draft resolution and amendments backed by the assembly's main parties, lawmakers will call for the scope of sanctions to be broadened and "aimed at strategically weakening the Russian economy and industrial base, in particular the military-industrial complex".

Russia's invasion of Ukraine "effectively makes Russia a rogue state," the lawmakers are set to say.

We've already slapped sanctions on him and the Russian ruble faceplanted this week. There are still more sanctions we can impose, but at some point there won't be.

Putin's hoping he can just get to that point and yell "Whatcha got left, boys?"  The notion that Putin will cut and run in Ukraine is not going to happen. He wants, if not needs, a direct military conflict with the West, and he's going to keep turning up the heat. If there's a miscalculation with the stakes that high, well, we all pay the price.

Take all of this seriously, folks. Realize that 21st century Europe is being forged before our eyes. It only gets more complicated and more visceral from here, and the consequences of something spiraling out of control get worse every day.

Interesting times are not fun and I want to get off this ride some days.